EMILY's List Up It Its Old Tricks Again... Trying To Slip In A Corrupt Conservative Over A Progressive Because They Like The Plumbing's Better

Except when it's bad women candidates like Michele Bachmann, Colleen Hanbusa or Katherine Clark 

I got into a friendly Twitter argument the other day with a guy who works for the Victory Fund, an LGBT PAC. He was cheering slimy New Dem Sean Patrick Maloney, who is the Democratic freshman with the worst-- i.e, most conservative-- voting record this year. He's corrupt and unworthy of being reelected, despite the fact that he's gay and married with two adorable children. His lovely family does not excuse his excruciating bad votes. (Watch this video, please.) But the Victory Fund guy and I just could not see eye to eye on this. Finally I said something like, "we both support Carl Sciortino for Congress. I back him because he has a record as the most progressive and effective member of the Massachusetts state legislature. Why do you?" I don't want to put words in his mouth; here's the exact tweet exchange:

Blue America also endorsed Heather Mizeur for governor of Maryland. It's cool that she's a woman and it's cool that she's an up front lesbian, but that certainly is NOT why we think she will make as good a governor as Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren are senators. No, Mizeur is dynamite on policy and big on ideas and that's what attracted us to her. Maybe Victory Fund will back her because she's a lesbian and maybe EMILY's List will back her because she's a pro-Choice woman-- I hope so-- but Blue America backs her because she's the best candidate running.

Last year the Victory Fund endorsed a conservative Republican-- albeit a mainstream one, not a teabagger-- for Congress, Richard Tisei, over John Tierney, one of the most progressive Members of Congress AND a guy with a career-long 100% voting record on LGBT issues (unlike Tisei who was a typical Republican dick to the LGBT community when he was still a closet case). Ugghh. Maybe that's the only time the Victory Club ever made that kind of mistake, I hope so. EMILY's List, however, turned away from the progressive coalition long ago and seems to take particular delight in screwing up progressive male candidates-- especially ones with impeccable pro-Choice records-- on behalf of corrupt, untrustworthy women candidates (untrustworthy even on Choice), like when they backed the horrific anti-Semite Nikki Tinker in Memphis against Rep. Steve Cohen and the way they're pushing for corrupt warmonger Colleen Hanabusa now against Senator Brian Schatz in Hawai'i.

A friend of mine in Massachusetts sent me a post from Blue Mass about EMILY's List latest nightmare candidate, Katherine Clark, who they're running against the aforementioned Carl Sciortino. Clark is trying to pass a bill that would allow the cops to wiretap virtually anyone for anything, anytime, anywhere. She's the lead sponsor of a bill she claims would "just update" the organized crime wiretap bill on the books. The ACLU doesn't agree that she's trying to update it and they're horrified by Clark's Big Brother position that advances in communications technology,” necessitates it. The ACLU has said otherwise: “It’s not an ‘update.’ It’s a broad expansion of the wiretap law," asserts the ACLU, "to allow law enforcement to listen in to private conversations for virtually any investigative purpose.’” The ACLU is working with the Bill of Rights Defense Committee, Demand Progress, Digital Fourth, the Electronic Frontier Foundation, and Fight for the Future to stop Clark.

While Carl was fighting in the legislator to preserve benefits for ordinary working families, EMILY's List managed to find the lead sponsor of the very Republicanesque pension "reform" bill that was premised on cutting employee benefits and drastically raising the retirement age. That's why a coalition of over 20 Massachusetts unions including the AFL-CIO, the Massachusetts Teachers Association and AFSCME, opposed Clark's unfair conservative anti-worker approach. This is all typical of a ConservaDem who fights for corporate special interests and against ordinary working families. There are enough of them in Congress already-- way too many. Clark's vote for putting punitive restrictions against poor people in the welfare bill tells you all you need to know about her: she's a Republican at heart, masquerading as a Democrat in a blue state. Did you watch that video I suggested up near the top?

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Ed Markey Won The Senate Seat-- Now Let's Make Sure Carl Sciortino Wins Ed's Old House Seat

Carl and Ed, Massachusetts progressives

Only weak minded and self-deluded Republicans were surprised by Ed Markey's healthy win yesterday in the Massachusetts special election to fill John Kerry's old Senate seat. Markey has been the foremost champion of climate change amelioration of any elected official in the entire federal government. And the Republicans put up some wealthy, crooked, right wing businessman to oppose him. Gomez spent his last days of the campaign blaming his defeat on the Republican Party. "They're wrong on too many issues. I mean, you know, you gotta realize, they gotta realize we’re in the 21st century." That helped Markey run away with a 10 point lead yesterday, despite the last minute flood of money from rich rightists and hatemongers from around the country.

As Alan Grayson, Markey's colleague in the House, put it last weeked, "Who cares about climate change? Ed Markey does." Grayson explained what thay means for the country.

Ed Markey served as the one and only Chair of the U.S. House Select Committee on Energy Independence and Global Warming, during its four years of existence. Let me explain to you what an utterly thankless job that is. If you are the Chair of a committee on global warming, you've got Big Oil against you. You've got the electrical utilities against you. You've got the auto manufacturers against you. You've got the pipeline and tanker and drilling companies against you. What kind of person would want all of those headaches, just for a shot at saving Planet Earth?

Ed Markey. That kind of person.

After the Democrats took over the House in 2007, Speaker Nancy Pelosi wanted action on climate change, so she chartered a new House Committee, and put Ed Markey in charge of it. The Republicans named Rep. Jim Sensenbrenner (R-WI) as their Ranking Member. Sensenbrenner has said that the science of climate change is a "global conspiracy." Sensenbrenner has said that labeling carbon dioxide as a pollutant is "propaganda." Mocking concerns over climate change, Sensenbrenner once suggested that we "put catalytic converters on all our noses." Ignoring the havoc that climate change and extreme weather have wrought, Sensenbrenner suggested that climate change might help "crop yields go up." When Nobel Prizewinner Paul Krugman called climate denial "treason against the planet," Sensenbrenner boasted, "I plead guilty as charged."

For almost four years, Markey and Sensenbrenner battled it out, through 80 committee hearings and briefings. Markey gamely publicized clean energy technology, and the risks caused by climate change. Markey pushed forward legislation like H.R. 2454, the American Clean Energy and Security Act (which passed the House, and then Republicans filibustered it to death in the Senate). Markey's Committee educated the nation about global warming facts both horrifying (according to the World Health Organization, climate change already causes 150,000 deaths each year) and ironic (by 2030, there will be no glaciers in Glacier National Park). Markey faced down Big Oil, and ignored the steady drumbeat of nonsense and distraction from the see-no-evil, hear-no-evil, speak-evil Republican tools and zealots on the Committee.

With enemies like that, Ed Markey needs friends. And deserves them.

When the Republicans took over the House of Representatives after the 2010 election, they shut down Ed Markey's Committee. But Ed Markey remains the leading environmentalist in the U.S. House of Representatives.

Who speaks for the trees? Ed Markey does.

No one thinks Markey's win yesterday means it's time to relax. In fact, the very next thing we need to do is fill Markey's own House seat. It's a deep blue district and a Democrat will certainly win there. While Obama was winning the state of Massachusetts last November with 61% of the vote, he was winning Markey's district (MA-05) with 65%-- while Markey was being reelected with a stunning 77%! There are 24 counties in the district and Markey won every one of them. His "weakest" performance was a healthy 58% win in Southborough. There are a number of Democrats running for the seat, even progressives, but only one, state Rep. Carl Sciortino, is of a leadership caliber worthy of Ed Markey and the kind of people who elected Ed Markey. Grayson is meeting Carl today to give him some advice about how to win his race. And Blue America endorsed him a couple of months ago.

"Ed Markey’s win today," Carl told us last night, "is not just a victory for the people of Massachusetts, but a victory for the progressive movement. As Americans, we are fortunate to have his voice in the Senate-- but it comes at the cost of losing a true progressive leader in the House. There are real differences in the race to replace Senator-Elect Markey and we, as a movement, need to come together and make sure his legacy as a progressive leader in the House continues." Amen! And there's no one running quite like Carl, one of the organizers of the Massachusetts legislature's progressive caucus.

He reminded me that "in 2004, I was told by my Democratic state representative that 'we’ve done enough for ‘you people,’ when I asked him why he wouldn’t support marriage equality. Then and there, I decided to run against him in the Democratic primary-- and I beat him by 93 votes. When I got to the Massachusetts House, I was told by liberal members that the state wasn’t yet ready for a Transgender Equal Rights bill, but I filed the bill, organized a coalition, and now Massachusetts has protections for its transgender citizens. When the Democratic leadership decided to slash the retirement funds public sector employees had been promised when they signed up for their jobs, I stood up to the Democratic leadership and fought and voted for middle class workers."

Yes, so maybe you can see why Blue America-- and why House progressives-- are so enthusiastic about Carl taking over Markey's seat. I just got off the phone with him and I hope I wrote this down right:

"In Washington, there’s no question we need more strong progressives-- not just working on issues of civil rights, but on issues of economic justice. Never in American history has the gap between the wealthy and the rest of us been so great. Families are working hard, but only just able to afford the bare necessities. I will sign onto the bill to raise the minimum wage and index it to the cost of inflation. I will join the fight to close corporate tax loopholes at the federal level, just as I did in Massachusetts. And as a citizen signer of the Grayson-Takano letter, I will fight to protect Social Security, as well as fight to keep protections for those living in poverty that are so often left out of the public debate. Please help me keep Ed Markey’s seat progressive by supporting my campaign."

Monday, Carl was one of the first Democrats to react to he misguided 5-4 Supreme Court decision against women's health. On the campaign stump for Markey at the time, he told supporters that “I was proud to author and pass the Buffer Zone Bill after witnessing patients and their loved ones force their way through protestors to get to a health clinic. I always respect the right to free speech-- but there is no right to harassment and brutal intimidation, which is exactly what was going on before the bill’s passage. This law is important to ensure women’s access to reproductive health, and this challenge is just another attack from the right in the war on women-- something I will continue to aggressively fight against as a member of Congress.” If that's the kind of congressmember you want to see working in DC, please consider giving him a hand here.



Carl's statement today after the Supreme Court ruling:

“When I first ran for State Representative in 2004, I couldn’t have imagined how much progress we would make on marriage equality in nine short years. We are headed to the day to all couples have the right to marry whoever they love in any state in the country. But we are not there yet. Today is a great step forward for the thousands of couples living in states with marriage equality, and I’m so proud of Massachusetts for being a leader for equal rights. We must keep working until there is true marriage equality in every state.”

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The House Finally Voted To End The War In Afghanistan

It's been a dozen years but on Thursday the House finally voted to end the war in Afghanistan. By backing an amendment to a military spending bill, all but 9 Democrats and just over half the Republicans removed House Republicans' language supporting a post-2014 military presence in Afghanistan and replaced it with a statement that the President should come back to Congress and specifically seek new authorization if he wants to keep troops there after the 2014 deadline.

The bipartisan amendment was sponsored by Jim McGovern (D-MA), Walter Jones (R-NC), Barbara Lee (D-CA), John Garamendi (D-CA) and Ranking Member of the House Armed Services Committee Adam Smith (D-WA) and passed 305-121, with 112 Republicans and 9 Democrats voting NO. So which 9 Democrats? Half a dozen reactionary Blue Dogs and New Dems, two conservaDems who vote with the New Dems (Bill Enyart and Dutch Ruppersberger) and one confused elderly lady (Corrine Brown). The reactionary Blue Dogs and New Dems:

• John Barrow (Blue Dog/New Dem-GA)
• Henry Cuellar (Blue Dog-TX)
• Pete Gallego (Blue Dog-TX)
• Jim Matheson (Blue Dog-UT)
• Bill Owens (New Dem-NY)
• Terri Sewell (New Dem-AL)

It's worth remembering these names when the DCCC asks you for money because several are on the DCCC Frontline list. That means part of any contribution you make towards the DCCC will go to fund the reelection efforts of pro-war reactionaries John Barrow, Pete Gallego, Jim Matheson, Bill Owens, and Bill Enyart. A better way to contribute to Democrats is give support directly to candidates whose legislative agenda you agree with. Blue America offers a well-vetted bunch of candidates for House seats who would make Congress-- and the congressional Democratic Party-- better, not worse. Like state Rep. Carl Sciortino, who's running for the Massachusetts seat Ed Markey is goving up to move over to the Senate.

"My father served in Vietnam," he told us this morning. "My brother and close friends served in Afghanistan and Iraq. An entire generation has been asked to serve in two wars, and then told "good luck paying for them." This is an issue that is close to my heart. I am glad to see a majority of Congress voting to support this combat mission coming to a close.

"Just because there is progress on ending the Afghanistan conflict, it does not excuse the members who voted for misguided hawkish policies over the past decade. The time when we really needed a principled vote was in fall of 2002-- when we could have stopped a war we already knew was unnecessary. It’s easy to vote to end a war long after its popularity has faded. Remember, 82 Democrats in the House of Representatives voted to authorize the war in Iraq, instead of standing with our principles and leading. We needed members of Congress to stand up and demonstrate to the American people that the War in Iraq was completely unnecessary-- instead of folding and becoming pawns of the Bush foreign policy doctrine."

Blue America is well aware that Carl and other other House candidates will be congressmembers who do stand up-- and not just against bad ideas from Republican presidents, but against bad ideas from Democratic presidents as well. That's why we're asking our supporters to consider contributing to Carl and the other Blue America candidates.

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Wall Street Shill Maria Bartiromo Exposes A "Continued Assault On The Banks" (No, Really)

Watch CNBC's Maria Bartiromo (above) further ingratiating herself with the banksters on Thursday: "While the banks have done wrong, it is time to ask the question, 'what more does the public want from the banks and why are we trying to destroy this vital industry?' Federal Reserve official Dan Tarullo's recent speech on the banks, creating another alternative to break up the mega banks, he is proposing linking liquidity and capital, meaning the more a financial firm relies on wholesale funding, the more capital it must carry. This is one way to target the big supermarket banks like J.P. Morgan, Citi, Deutsche Bank, Bank of America, and others. Those all have large broker/dealer operations and tend to rely more on wholesale funding than traditional banks. My question is 'how come we never hear about the changes that have already been put in place in the last few years?' Debt: it's been cut by institutions. Capital: it is soaring; has been raised by hundreds of billions of dollars across the industry. Compensation has come down, has been cut across the world, in particular severely in Europe. Money in reserve: the highest levels many of these companies have ever seen. That's why some of them are not lending the way you would want. Yet it is probably inevitable that regulators will adopt more measures that go beyond what they are proposing in Europe, the Basel Three, to ensure that the biggest banks have huge piles of cash in the event of another financial Armageddon. While I do not believe the push for this kind of capital, stockpile and other regulations will in fact result in the major banks splitting up right now, it is having a major impact nonetheless. The uncertainty, the confusion-- we don't even know which companies will be deemed systemically important to the economy, which would totally change the terms for those banks and how they would need to operate-- all of these open questions are causing the banks to sit on money, reluctant to hire, reluctant to lend, unable to invest in the future, and hire workers. I would love to hear some of the positives from regulators as opposed to the constant drumbeat of attacks. Banks are not angels, but they are not the devils they are being made out to be. They remain a vital part of what makes capitalism the best system in the history of the world."

Blue America doesn't endorse candidates who aren't 100% pro-Choice and pro-equality. But that isn't to say that we endorse every pro-Choice/pro-equality candidate. We look for courageous men and women of good character who have fully embraced economic and well as social justice. Right now there is a concerted-- and quite successful-- effort to roll back the modest achievements of Dodd-Frank reforming a few aspects of the giant Wall Street rip-off. Despite Bartiromo's wailing, none of the criminal banksters-- not one-- was sent to prison. Not one was arrested or tried or forced to pay back the millions they looted from the economy. I haven't heard a single politician demanding that banksters should be rounded up en masse and put in front of firing squads before their estates are confiscated. If that happened, I might not agree with Bartiromo, but I could at least understand her pathetic caterwauling on behalf of the horribly beset .001%.

Lately we've seen sleazy New Dems make common cause with the Republicans and the banksters to undermine Dodd Frank. EVERY New Dem on the House Financial Services Committee was pimping the Wall Street agenda last week. Fighting valiantly for working families and ordinary bank customers were Maxine Waters (D-CA), Al Green (D-TX), Nydia Velázquez (D-NY), Mike Capuano (D-MA), and Keith Ellison (D-MN). The worst culprits and bank whores on the committee were Jim Himes (New Dem-CT), Patrick Murphy (New Dem-FL), Kyrsten Sinema (New Dem-AZ), John Delaney (New Dem-MD), John Carney (New Dem-DE), Denny Heck (New Dem-WA), Terri Sewell (New Dem-AL) and David Scott (New Dem-GA). Maria Bartiromo and her CNBC colleagues are part of the captive media pumping those efforts up to the public. ALL of the Blue America candidates want to strengthen financial reform, not weaken it. We asked a couple of them to take a look at what Bartiromo had to say about the banks.

Massachusetts state Rep. Carl Sciortino is running for the congressional seat that Ed Markey is giving up. He faces a gaggle of middle-of-the-road, garden variety Democrats. That's not something anyone will ever label Carl, who helped organize the Massachusetts legislature progressive caucus and takes on the cutting edge issues that everyone else is afraid of. "The worst economic collapse in three generations was created when big Wall Street banks exploited policies of severe under-regulation. Does anyone just assume that banks left to their own devises would protect the interests of the economy and middle class? History would clearly tell us otherwise.

"We have seen far too many predatory loans resulting in foreclosures, a barely-avoided systemic collapse of our financial system, and blatantly illegal practices by some of our largest institutions. When private institutions have so much power over the economic security of our citizens, it is the federal government’s role to make sure they operate on a level playing field and everyday peoples' interests are protected.

"It’s true that banks are a vital part of the economy. But appropriate regulations ensure banks continue to function and support our economy-- instead of being a part of breaking it.

'What more does the public want from banks,' she asks? We should demand full accountability for past illegal and predatory practices, and less whining about how big banks are somehow the victim."

Daylin Leach is also a progressive icon in his state legislature, the Pennsylvania Senate. He's running for the seat Allyson Schwartz is abandoning in northeast Philly/Montgomery County and he sees Bartiromo's outburst a lot like Carl did. "Nobody is assigning religious attributes to banks," he began. "It's not a question of them being 'angels' or 'devils.' Mitt Romney's musing aside, they are not even people. They are financial institutions created to serve us. When they do so honestly, fairly and transparently, they should be applauded. When they cheat, lie, rig the system or violate the law they should be punished and reformed.

"Maria's apologia glosses over the very real damage that some banking practices have wrought on our country. She dedicates precisely one sentence to 'banks have done wrong.' Really? Have they?? The rest of her speech makes the case for not enacting the very changes that will ensure we never have the sort of economic collapse we've recently seen again. If I could distill her speech down to its essence, it would be 'move along, nothing to see here.' The truth is, that consumers are going to need a lot more than that to ever again feel the system works for them."

And Nick Ruiz, a young father and professor, is taking on grotesque and longtime bankster apologist, John Mica in the Orlando area. As always, he sees the problem through the eyes of a typical American family. "The public wants the banks to work for everyone, not just the mega-account holders, and those receiving mega-compensation and mega-bonuses."

Banks are vital, and should be treated as such. But what that means, is that they must function to sustain adequate levels of capital circulation, rather than function to exact austerity and sequestration. Their job is to help people and society through the 'miracle' of reasonable capital security and credit-- not cause people and society enormous pain and suffering. But that is what they have done.

And so now, we have to process that history and decide what to do. It's clear that left to their own devices, too many financial institutions will hoard and speculate, but that does not in itself produce a greater society with a better standard of living. Left to their own devices, too many have acted in such a way as to concentrate their wealth and political power, sequestering the lion's share of the gains to themselves and their most intimate beneficiaries. Their behavior has a wide-ranging effect: it is devastating our society and we must act to alter this historical course now.

The truth of the matter is, a change in this financial aspect of our society will require far more than shoring up capital requirements and the size of different financial institutions-- rather, it will require a progressive change in the ideology of finance and banking itself, along with the redefinition of what banks exist to do. There is a new measure of corporate social responsibility that banks have come to be recognized as worthy of, and it's up to us to be sure that responsibility materializes in our body of laws. In reality, the collective activity of these financial institutions comes to bear upon all sectors of society; from employment, basic scientific research and industry-- to the arts, childhood education, the military, the social safety net and more-- their reach is foundational and constitutive of our entire socioeconomic circulatory system. If they fail-- all of society fails with them. It is this level of understanding, collective reciprocity and solidarity that must come to be expected and managed between Wall Street and Main Street. It is all of this that we must work toward.

Again, if you'd like to help bring about a different world that folks like John Mica, Maria Bartiromo, Ayn Rand and Paul Ryan envision, you can help Carl, Daylin and Nick here.

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