The Perfect District For The DCCC-- MI-06-- Has Been Taken Off The Table By Steve Israel

Fred Upton is one of the most vulnerable Republicans in the House. But he's considered safe by the Beltway Establishment, with another nice free reelection pass signed by his old crony from the Center Aisle Caucus, Steve Israel. The Center Aisle Caucus alumni don't try to defeat each other. Since Pelosi made the colossal mistake of appointing Israel chair of the DCCC, the corrupt, conservative Long Island Democrat has protected some of the most obvious seats needed for a Democratic takeover of Congress. Southwestern Michigan's 6th district is one of the most obvious.

In 2008 Obama smash McCain 53-45% in the district, easily Obama's best showing in any of the 9 Michigan GOP-held districts. Even a remotely competent DCCC chair-- or one that was being properly supervised-- would have targeted MI-06 in 2010 and 2012. In 2008, while Obama was stacking up a substantial lead in the district, the DCCC ignored Kalamazoo City Commissioner Don Cooney, the Democratic nominee. He spent $84,883 against Upton's $1,527,587 and Upton beat him 59-39%. Two years later, the DCCC was perfectly content to see him as the party's candidate again-- and ignore him again. In 2010 Upton spent even more money-- $2,083,790-- and Cooney only managed $61,614 and scored a dismal 34%.

Steve Israel took over as DCCC chair for the next cycle and he didn't do anything about recruiting but, fortuitously, ended up with an excellent candidate in Mike O'Brien. Upton was worried and more than doubled his spend-- $4,724,798-- but with no help whatsoever from the DCCC, O'Brien only managed to raise $293,987. He held Upton down to a 54-43% win and tied him in Kalamazoo County, the district's biggest county.

This is a district where the DCCC should be recruiting. Are they? I don't think so. Israel doesn't recruit against his fraternity brothers. There's a very qualified political science professor from Western Michigan University who is backed by local Democrats, Paul Clements who is running, but the DCCC is studiously ignoring his race, the same way they ignored O'Brien and Coons in the last three races. If Pelosi was paying attention, this district alone would have her kicking Israel's ass out of the DCCC chair. This is district has a PVI of R+1, a MUCH better bet than most of the districts Israel has decided to stake the 2014 congressional battle in. And voters there are sick of the way Upton, formerly a mainstream conservative, has been dragged further and further right by the racists and teabaggers who control the House Republican Caucus. His overall career-long ProgressivePunch score is a respectable-- for a Republican-- 12.38. But for 2013 it's a shocking 1.67... pure Tea Party territory. His constituents now see Upton as a political coward.

Paul Clements teaching about international development administration but when he spoke with me on the phone yesterday, he mostly talked about how there can be no democracy-- here or anywhere else-- without economic justice. BINGO! He also wanted to talk about green energy alternatives and how that could make life better for people in western Michigan-- a topic that puts him at odds with Upton, a dedicated shill for Big Oil and Gas. (Upton has accepted $517,250 in legalistic bribes from Big Oil and their payoffs have accelerated since Boehner named him chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee. In his "heart" he may agree with Paul Clements about climate change-- but not in his voting record. Clements:

Climate change is the greatest threat to Michigan and to the world in the 21st century. We need to keep global warming under two degrees Celsius, but this takes a strong international agreement limiting greenhouse gas emissions in each country. Such an agreement can only be reached with American leadership.

Recently Michigan has seen failures of apple and cherry crops, Lake Michigan at historic lows, some of the hottest and driest summers in our history, and increased flooding from stronger storms and heavier rainfall. These and other influences from climate change are likely to get worse. With runaway climate change we could lose half our species of plants, trees, animals and birds. West Michigan could have a climate similar to West Texas by the end of the century, with summers seven degrees Fahrenheit hotter than today. But around the world it would be even more disastrous. Runaway climate change is likely to cause droughts and floods that drive millions from their homes, collapsing governments, and wars over water and other resources.

The technology exists to keep global warming below two degrees Celsius. Southwest Michigan must lead in manufacturing based on this technology. America must take the lead to negotiate an international agreement, address the harms from climate change, and develop the technologies for a clean energy future.

...In America and around the world we are “mining” natural resources such as water supplies, fisheries, and forests. We are withdrawing more each year than nature regenerates. Also, polluters and others who harm the environment usually do not pay the cost of their pollution.

We should move toward full cost accounting, taxing polluters for environmental harms. For example, coal-based power plants should be taxed for the health effects from their pollution, and nuclear energy and natural gas companies should be held liable for accidents and other harms they may cause.

Michigan is blessed with great lakes, forests, rivers and wildlife. It is our responsibility to sustain these blessings for future generations.

Please consider joining me in giving Paul a hand in his uphill-- but very winnable-- battle against Fred Upton.

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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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There's an America where workers are paying more and more of their modest wages just to GET those wages

"Natalie Gunshannon, 27, with her daughter, Anie Popish, 7, said she had to use a card because her employers would not deposit her pay directly into her account." (NYT caption)

Krystal McLemore, 22, makes $7.65 an hour at a Taco Bell in St. Louis. She said she was told to sign up for a payroll card. (Taco Bell says it "offers direct deposit and a voluntary option of payroll cards as an added convenience" for employees.)

But she grew tired of being charged $1.75, in addition to the A.T.M.'s fees, to withdraw cash. After a tip from a co-worker, Ms. McLemore realized she could reduce her charges if she took out all her wages once a month. Now, supplied with one of the most modern banking products, Ms. McLemore has a decidedly old-fashioned way of handling her pay: it is stacked in a shoe box in her closet in $10s and $20s.

"It costs too much to get my money," she said.

-- from "Paid via Card, Workers Feel
Sting of Fees," in today's NYT

by Ken

This really sucks. From this report today by the NY Times's Jessica Silver-Greenberg and Stephanie Clifford:

A growing number of American workers are confronting a frustrating predicament on payday: to get their wages, they must first pay a fee.

For these largely hourly workers, paper paychecks and even direct deposit have been replaced by prepaid cards issued by their employers. Employees can use these cards, which work like debit cards, at an A.T.M. to withdraw their pay.

But in the overwhelming majority of cases, using the card involves a fee. And those fees can quickly add up: one provider, for example, charges $1.75 to make a withdrawal from most A.T.M.’s, $2.95 for a paper statement and $6 to replace a card. Some users even have to pay $7 inactivity fees for not using their cards.

These fees can take such a big bite out of paychecks that some employees end up making less than the minimum wage once the charges are taken into account, according to interviews with consumer lawyers, employees, and state and federal regulators.

And they offer some cases in point, like that of 21-year-old Milwaukee McDonald's employee Devote Yates, who "says he spends $40 to $50 a month on fees associated with his JPMorgan Chase payroll card," and says, "It’s pretty bad. There’s a fee for literally everything you do."

Now it's not exactly a new phenomenon to make employees pay to get paid. For ages check-cashing stores have stayed in business servicing workers who don't have the luxury of a bank account to deposit checks into. But now having a bank account no longer guarantees that you can access your pay without paying.

Many employees say they have no choice but to use the cards: some companies no longer offer common payroll options like ordinary checks or direct deposit.

At companies where there is a choice, it is often more in theory than in practice, according to interviews with employees, state regulators and consumer advocates. Employees say they are often automatically enrolled in the payroll card programs and confronted with a pile of paperwork if they want to opt out.

"We hear virtually every week from employees who never knew there were other options, and employers certainly don’t disabuse workers of that idea," said Deyanira Del Rio, an associate director of the Neighborhood Economic Development Advocacy Project, which works with community groups in New York.

As you could surely have imagined, the use of these cards didn't come about for the convenience of workers. It saves companies money, and that's all that matters.

Taco Bell, Walgreen and Wal-Mart are among the dozens of well-known companies that offer prepaid cards to their workers; the cards are particularly popular with retailers and restaurants. And they are quickly gaining momentum. In 2012, $34 billion was loaded onto 4.6 million active payroll cards, according to the research firm Aite Group. Aite said it expected that to reach $68.9 billion and 10.8 million cards by 2017.

Companies and card issuers, which include Bank of America, Wells Fargo and Citigroup, say the cards are cheaper and more efficient than checks -- a calculator on Visa’s Web site estimates that a company with 500 workers could save $21,000 a year by switching from checks to payroll cards. On its Web site, Citigroup trumpets how the cards "guarantee pay on time to all employees."

According to Chuck Harris, president of NetSpend, based in Austin, described as "the largest issuer of payroll cards": "We built a product that an employer can fairly represent to their employees as having real benefits to them." Yeah, right, Chuck. That's what it's all about: "real benefits" to the employees.

It gets worse.

Sometimes, though, the incentives for employers to steer workers toward the cards are more explicit. In the case of the New York City Housing Authority, it stands to receive a dollar for every employee it signs up to Citibank’s payroll cards, according to a contract reviewed by The New York Times. (Sheila Stainback, a spokeswoman for the agency, noted that it had an annual budget of $3 billion and that roughly 430 employees had signed up for the card.)

Some of those interviewed fell back on the hoary check-cashing services, pointing out that for workers without bank accounts, the fees associated with the payroll cards are less than those. And "this population -- people who tend to use few, if any, bank services -- is swelling."

About 10 million households in the United States do not use a bank at all, up from nine million four years ago, according to estimates from the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation. And 24 million households that do have a bank account still use expensive financial services like prepaid cards, the agency said.

For banks that are looking to recoup billions of dollars in lost income from a spate of recent limits on debit and credit card fees, issuing payroll cards can be lucrative -- the products were largely untouched by recent financial regulations. As a result, some of the nation’s largest banks are expanding into the business, banking analysts say.

All to provide financial services to those who have fallen through the banking net. Philanthropists! Or maybe not.

The lack of regulation in the payroll card market, while alluring for some of the issuers, can potentially leave cardholders swimming in fees. Take the example of inactivity fees that penalize customers for infrequently using their cards. The Federal Reserve has banned such fees for credit and debit cards, but no protections exist on prepaid cards. Cards used by more than two dozen major retailers have inactivity fees of $7 or more, according to a review of agreements.

Some employees can also be hit with $25 overdraft fees, called "balance protection," on some of the prepaid cards. Under the Dodd-Frank financial overhaul law, banks with more than $10 billion in assets are barred from levying overdraft fees on customers’ checking accounts.

Many fees are virtually impossible to dodge, some employees say. A Victoria’s Secret employee, Bintou Kamara, for example, said it cost her $1.50 just to transfer money from her Citi payroll card to her checking account.

"I just make such little money that it seems like a lot to pay just to get access to it," said Ms. Kamara, 23, who works as a sales clerk in New York.

Naoki Fujita, a policy associate at Retail Action Project, an advocacy group for retail workers, said, "These are people who can least afford to fork over huge fees."

It turns out that having a checking account can make life harder, not easier.

For Natalie Gunshannon, 27, another McDonald’s worker, the owners of the franchise that she worked for in Dallas, Pa., she says, refused to deposit her pay directly into her checking account at a local credit union, which lets its customers use its A.T.M.’s free. Instead, Ms. Gunshannon said, she was forced to use a payroll card issued by JPMorgan Chase. She has since quit her job at the drive-through window and is suing the franchise owners.

"I know I deserve to get fairly paid for my work," she said.

The franchise owners, Albert and Carol Mueller, said in a statement that they comply with all employment, pay and work laws, and try to provide a positive experience for employees. McDonald’s itself, noting that it is not named in the suit, says it lets franchisees determine employment and pay policies.

There's a lot more to the report, but I think you get the drift. Employers save money, employees get screwed, and the banks and other financial-services companies producing these financial products make out like bandits.

It's a shame we don't have any prominent politicians willing to talk about something like, I don't know, "The Two Americas," one of which would be the America that doesn't know or care what it's like to be in the low-wage America where your economic status forces you to suffer this further lowering of your wages.

#

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Tea Party Civil War

We all love watching the Republican civil war between the greed and selfishness wing and the hate and bigotry wing as it unfolds. In the radio interview above, Palin declares war, again, on Marco Rubio and Kelly Ayotte. But how about the civil war that's tearing apart the Tea party itself... a civil war within a civil war? Those are always the most fun.

Over the weekend Luke Mullins covered an aspect of that for the Washingtonian: Armey In Exile. A month before Romney went down in flames, Dick Armey had agreed to resign as chairman of FreedomWorks, one of the big-money Tea Party fronts, forced out by Matt Kibbe with an $8 million payoff to just go away. Mullins asks and answers the question about what had turned Armey and Kibbe into bitter enemies and ripped FreedomWorks apart just as-- in their deranged minds-- Romney was sweeping into the White House and Republicans were taking over the Senate?

Though Armey rose to political prominence during the Gingrich Revolution, congressional staffers saw that he lacked political instincts-- "forgetting people’s names and arriving late to votes because he was chatting with his staff. 'He was a Mr. Magoo type of character,' says a former GOP leadership aide. 'Everyone knew that he didn’t know what was going on.' Armey also talked himself into controversy. He referred to Hillary Clinton as 'Marxist' and to Massachusetts Democrat Barney Frank-- an openly gay congressman-- as 'Barney Fag.'" After resigning from Congress, Armey joined Matt Kibbe's radical right Citizens for a Sound Economy, an early version of the Tea Party, funded by the John Birch Society's Koch family. Armey's starting salary was $430,000 a year and he was able to keep his $750,000 a year job as a slimy K Street lobbyist at DLA Piper. The Kochs soon left in a huff over something or other and started their own teabagger front, Americans for Prosperity, and the Kibbe-Armey rump renamed itself FreedomWorks. They struggled for a while before glomming on to Rick Santelli's anti-Obama rant on CNBC, at which time Kibbe started quietly paying off Hate Talk Radio hosts Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh to endorse the organization on the air.

Despite being Beltway elites, Armey and Kibbe emerged as emissaries for the populist, anti-Washington revolution. The New Yorker described Armey-- who flew first class and had a chauffeur-- as “the de-facto leader of the Tea Party movement.” Newsweek called Kibbe-- a former chief of staff to a Republican congressman-- a Tea Party “mastermind.”

As FreedomWorks’ profile expanded, contributions doubled from $7 million to $14 million between 2008 and 2010. Its number of volunteers jumped from 500,000 to 1.2 million. FreedomWorks fired up a long-dormant political-action committee and supported hard-line conservatives-- such as Republicans Marco Rubio in Florida and Mike Lee in Utah-- in Senate primary campaigns against more moderate GOP opponents for the 2010 midterms.

Fueled by Tea Party enthusiasm, the GOP picked up 63 seats in the House-- enough for control of the chamber-- six seats in the Senate, six new governorships, and nearly 700 seats in state legislatures.

It was finally happening-- Armey and Kibbe were at the center of the most powerful conservative movement in a generation. Together they wrote a bestselling book, Give Us Liberty: A Tea Party Manifesto, and appeared on NBC’s Today show. Driving to Tea Party rallies around the country, Kibbe played his Grateful Dead tapes for Armey, hoping to convert the country-music lover.

But Armey was lame and considered, at 70, too old. His public comments made right-wing operatives at FreedomWorks cringe, often insulting people on TV-- echoes of "Barney Fag"-- and more often screwing up details of anything he talked about, including the names and work of right-wing heroes. He clearly needed to be kept away from live microphones. The go-go wingnuts saw him as a liability that could destroy their whole mission-- and the big salaries they were drawing. Kibbe's wife, an ugly stereotype of a catty, overly ambitious wife, wanted to push Armey out and make Kibbe the sole head of FreedomWorks. She was jealous of Armey's wife and made fun of her for being a devout Christian. Mrs. Kibbe is an atheist filled with contempt for Christians. Meanwhile Mr. Kibbe's priorities were changing. He went from being obsessed with elections and campaigns and grassroots and public-policy fights to his own image and selling books and doing Glenn Beck TV. Armey was pushed out of the media spotlight and media requests for him were given to Kibbe.

The ostensible break came over Kibbe's new book. Profits from the book he and Armey had written belonged to FreedomWorks. Kibbe insisted that the profits from the new book were his personally, even though the book had been written by FreedomWorks staffers on company time. "Diverting nonprofit resources for personal use is a violation of federal tax code," writes Mullins. "If Kibbe had used 'significant staff resources' to produce his book, he would have put FreedomWorks’ tax-exempt status at risk. Kibbe, Armey says, 'had put the organization in jeopardy, and he had done it to line his own pockets.'”

Kibbe has mutton chops-- and a childish impulse to insult Hillary Clinton

Furious, Armey and his wife flew to Maine to show the document to FreedomWorks’ third trustee: C. Boyden Gray, a former White House counsel.

Armey and Gray called a special meeting of the board for Tuesday, September 4, 2012. Kibbe arrived at Gray’s DC law office without knowing why he’d been summoned. When they were around a conference table, Armey argued that Kibbe had pilfered his media requests and used FreedomWorks’ resources to profit personally.

The trustees voted two to one-- Armey and Gray for, Kibbe against-- to remove Kibbe from the board, and then put Kibbe and Brandon [FreedomWork's press secretary] on administrative leave.

Before Kibbe left, the trustees asked him to sign a document preventing him from launching an organization similar to FreedomWorks for the next four years, a FreedomWorks executive says, adding that the agreement came with a $100 signing bonus: “It was meant to be insulting.” (Armey denies that there was a signing bonus and says that the document was just a confidentiality agreement.)

Kibbe refused to sign.

Armey worried that Kibbe might instruct his allies to destroy documents related to the book deal, so he telephoned Jean Campbell, who was waiting outside FreedomWorks’ Capitol Hill headquarters.

“Go ahead,” Armey told her.

She secured the office, marshaling employees away from their computers and into the conference room. An armed former Capitol Police officer accompanied her-- in case there was any trouble.

“Dick Armey will be here soon with an announcement,” Campbell told the staff.

Some 30 anxious staffers surrounded the rectangular table when Armey and his wife marched in. Armey announced that Kibbe and Brandon had been put on leave, but he didn’t explain why.

FreedomWorks staff divided into two camps. While some senior employees respected Armey’s authority, many newer ones weren’t old enough to remember his days in Congress and-- because Armey worked from Texas-- didn’t really know him. In Kibbe, they found a hip libertarian who went on television and hosted parties at his home. Younger staffers developed a “cultish admiration” for Kibbe, a former official says. Some even wore their chops you can believe in T-shirt at the office.

To the young staffers, Armey seemed ill suited to run the organization. He put three additional FreedomWorks employees on administrative leave but-- when they broke down in tears-- immediately reinstated them. Staffers say he referred to a Japanese employee with a ponytail as “that Indian fella.” (Armey denies this.) And when Armey kicked his cowboy boots up on a table in Kibbe’s office, that was it. “It was kind of like, ‘Well, I’ll be damned if this is going to happen,’ ” a young employee says.

Kibbe and Brandon had retreated to Kibbe’s Capitol Hill home, where they contacted FreedomWorks donors, activists, and board directors to establish support outside of headquarters. Directors were angry that Armey hadn’t consulted them before taking action. Glenn Beck and members of Congress called Kibbe to offer encouragement.

Soon after Armey’s takeover, a group of young Kibbe loyalists arrived at Kibbe’s house for pizza and wine. They told Kibbe about Armey’s office management. Among Armey’s first moves was ordering the removal of all references to Kibbe from the FreedomWorks website. (Armey says he only asked for the removal of references to Kibbe’s book.)

“In our limited experience dealing with Armey, [we] saw him as this lovable grandpa,” says a young staffer. “To see him tailspin into this power-hungry, totally out-of-touch person was really frightening.”

The younger staffers used their cell phones to record conversations with Armey or Campbell. They disregarded Armey’s instructions, refusing, for example, to provide him with Kibbe’s schedule of upcoming donor meetings. Says Armey: “They started trying to sabotage things right from day one.”

...Armey and his wife stopped at the Chicago home of Richard Stephenson on their way back to Washington. A reclusive millionaire who had founded the for-profit Cancer Treatment Centers of America, Stephenson was a big FreedomWorks donor and Kibbe’s strongest ally on the board of directors.

When Armey arrived, Stephenson introduced a therapist who he suggested could mediate Armey and Kibbe’s dispute. Armey didn’t know it, but Kibbe had flown in from Washington and was waiting in another room. “If you think you’re going to therapize me into working with Matt Kibbe again, you’re kidding yourself,” Armey told the therapist.

He had previously told Stephenson that the allegedly rerouted media requests gave him a legal case against FreedomWorks for tortuous interference. He calculated damages at $8 million-- the potential earnings Armey felt he’d sacrificed by staying at FredeeomWorks. (The figure is based mostly on Armey’s $750,000 annual contract with DLA Piper, which his position at FreedomWorks forced him to give up.)

Either Kibbe goes or I go, Armey said. “And if I go, I’m going to have to sue. I can’t go away with empty pockets.”

As Armey left, he saw Kibbe sitting on a couch in an adjacent room. Neither said a word.

The next afternoon, C. Boyden Gray summoned Armey to his Washington office: Stephenson was willing to pay Armey $8 million to retire. The deal would be arranged as a consulting contract between Armey and Stephenson, payable in annual installments of $400,000 over 20 years. In return, the trustees would reinstate Kibbe as FreedomWorks president and Armey would leave the organization after the election.

Armey accepted.

Kibbe and Brandon were back in the office by the end of the day and spent the next few weeks settling scores, former staffers say. They labeled employees who had been helpful to Armey as “collaborators” and stripped them of authority. Kibbe promoted two young staffers who had remained loyal to him during the crisis, and he donated his $50,000 book advance to FreedomWorks. (Brandon denies punishing employees and says all promotions were merit-based.)

...Meanwhile, FreedomWorks is struggling. Key staffers and board members have fled, and first-quarter fundraising has slipped. Things may get even worse. Two watchdog groups have asked federal authorities to examine $12 million in suspicious donations that FreedomWorks received right before the election.

...Following the disastrous 2012 election, public support for the Tea Party has crumbled, and establishment GOP figures such as Karl Rove have launched initiatives to prevent less electable Tea Party candidates from winning primary campaigns. At its most recent tax-day rally at the Capitol, the crowd numbered in the dozens-- a turnout that recalled FreedomWorks’ early days.

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Issa Issa, Baby

We've been trying to make the case-- so far without any success-- that the DCCC make an effort, even if it's one that takes more than one cycle, to defeat Darrell Issa in a purple district Obama won in 2008. Last cycle Issa beat grassroots candidate Jerry Tetalman 59-41-- primarily because of Issa's huge margin in the smaller part of the district, the Orange County part. The biggest part of the district, San Diego County, saw a closer result, Issa 56% and Tetalman 44%. Issa, who always acts in the interests of corporate behemoths raised $2,478,710 last cycle. Jerry Tetalman raised $131,168. Did the DCCC come in and even the playing field a bit? No, Steve Israel has put Darrell Issa off the table and not one cent was spent-- even though Obama had won the district 4 years previous!

We'll figure out which side Steve Israel is really playing for in another post on another day. This one is about Issa-- or at least about Joe Conason's awesome idea about investigating Issa himself-- and applying his own dubious methods and standards to the effort. He starts with the premise that Congress is held in such historically low esteem by Americans because of misconduct by Republicans, especially committee chairs and no one more than Issa, chairman of the committee charged with investigations. "Without any evident embarrassment," he asserts, "these mighty politicians deny science, defy mathematics, and dismiss every fact that contradicts their prejudices. But bad as these chairs tend to be, none is quite as flamboyantly awful as Rep. Darrell Issa, chairman of the Government Oversight Committee, a special investigative panel whose latest effort to conjure scandal from nothingness at the Internal Revenue Service would provoke his removal by a responsible leadership." John Boehner and Eric Cantor are not exactly "responsible leadership."

[T]here was no political motive in the agency’s treatment of the Tea Party and associated groups seeking tax exemption (in many cases illegitimately).

It is now equally obvious that the behavior of Issa himself, with his attempts to skew his committee’s investigation and conceal testimony that exonerated the agency, represents the most serious wrongdoing in the supposed “IRS scandal.” But this isn’t the first time that the California Republican, who happens to be the wealthiest man in Congress, has misused the broad powers of his chairmanship. Actually, that is all he does-- as he demonstrated in equally opportunistic and amateurish examinations of both the Benghazi tragedy and the “Fast and Furious” affair.

Issa’s stewardship of the House Government Reform Committee has failed even by the standards of the Republican congressional leadership, which must have hoped that he would have collected some Obama administration scalps by now. He delayed the Fast and Furious probe solely to extend it into the election year, blustered against Attorney General Eric Holder, and accomplished… nothing.

There is little hope that Speaker John Boehner, who has enough problems maintaining a semblance of authority and dignity, will question Issa’s fitness to chair this important committee. But still we are left wondering: What would become of Issa if he were subjected to the Republican style of investigation? What if the presumption of guilt, the preference for insinuation over evidence, the omission of exculpatory facts, and the promulgation of conspiratorial speculations that feature in all of Issa’s theatrical probes were applied to him?

As the richest member of Congress, Issa seems to enjoy the same veneer of respectability that great wealth has provided to many dubious figures. But his past includes several troubling encounters with law enforcement, from alleged car thefts to weapons offenses. So what would the public learn from an Issa-style investigation of Darrell Issa?

First, the committee chair would reveal the troubling findings about Issa, namely that he was arrested not once but twice for illegal weapons offenses. Worse yet, he would explain, Issa had been convicted the second time. Then he would release slightly redacted copies of court records on file in Cleveland Heights, Ohio, where Issa grew up, showing an arrest, charges of auto theft and carrying a concealed weapon only one month after his discharge from the Army in the winter of 1972. Those same records would also reveal that Issa and an older brother were both suspects in the theft of a “new red Maserati sports car” from an auto dealership, and that Issa was eventually indicted for larceny.

And then the committee might leak a second, even more damaging set of records showing that Issa had been picked up several months later on another weapons charge in Michigan, where he attended college. Police arrested him for possession of an unregistered handgun, leading ultimately to his conviction.

What we might not learn-- at least not until the facts were excavated by less partisan probers-- is that Issa was only 19 years old at the time; that the first set of charges in Ohio was eventually dropped by prosecutors; and that the Michigan charge was a misdemeanor, punishable by a $100 fine. Which young Issa paid.

Yet whatever Issa did as a foolish kid could be made to look quite sinister by a congressional committee chair like him, dedicated to trumping up minor irritations into major scandals. How fortunate he is that nobody in authority has ever misused the investigative power to smear him-- and that those currently in authority over him have no appetite for reining in his abuses of that power.

Why is Conason covering up the fact that Issa became rich as an arsonist and that he's a terrorist sympathizer? The investigation needs to be thorough. And why is Steve Israel protecting him?

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Lee Rogers Is Running For The House Seat Currently Occupied By Buck McKeon

After the closest call with political mortality of his life in 2012, Santa Clarita Republican Buck McKeon has told political allies that he won't run in 2014 if Lee Rogers challenges him again. Today he's getting the bad news: Rogers-- this time with the solid backing of the DCCC-- is running for the CA-25 seat. McKeon has promised the seat to Tony Strickland but Santa Clarita Mayor Bob Kellar, state Sen. Steve Knight, former Assemblyman Cameron Smythe, State Equalization Board chairman George Runner and Assemblyman Scott Wilk all agree that the seat isn't McKeon's to give away and that Tony Strickland, who ran against Julia Brownley last year, is a carpetbagger. This promises to be a very bloody primary-- at least on the Republican side.

Democrats in Santa Clarita, Simi Valley and the Antelope Valley have closed ranks behind Rogers, who has built a solid base of supporters, a network of donors and volunteers and a top notch campaign team to take on McKeon or whoever replaces him if he's too scared to face him again-- or too eager to go into the lobbying business his brother and nephew have already started for him.

Rogers, a nationally acclaimed surgeon and a recent national spokesman for the American Diabetes Association, has impressed district voters as a health care and patient advocate with the experience and know-how to reduce medical costs by making appropriate adjustments in the Affordable Care Act. Last year he was endorsed by Blue America and we're endorsing him again this year.

"I'm running for Congress, because I still believe that one person can make a difference. Nothing worthwhile comes easy. I could have done the easy thing and get back to my life being a doctor and treating patients who need me. But the district and the country also need me. Washington is constipated and it requires an enema. There is no progress. We demand improvements to the Affordable Care Act, passing universal criminal background checks for gun purchases, achieving comprehensive immigration reform by providing a reasonable path to citizenship for undocumented residents, getting out and staying out of wars in the Middle East, and preventing corporate money from influencing elections. I need your help to put progress back in Congress."

Rogers opposed the Sequestration which McKeon supported and which has held back economic growth. Rogers also opposes the Obama-Boehner scheme to cut Social Security benefits by messing with the cost-of-living adjustments, which McKeon supports. Here are a dozen important votes McKeon took since he was reelected that Rogers disagrees with (chronologically):

• H.R. 678- McKeon voted against requiring that when practicable, all materials used for conduit hydropower generation be manufactured in the United States
• H.R. 624- McKeon voted for CISPA, a Big Brother type domestic spying bill.
• McKeon also voted against a motion to make H.R. 624 less intrusive by prohibiting employers, prospective employers, or the Federal Government from requiring the disclosure of social networking or personal account passwords by an employee or job applicant without a court order.
•H.R. 1406- McKeon voted to penalize workers who receive overtime pay for overtime work.
•H.R. 807- McKeon voted to prioritize payments to China, Saudi Arabia and wealthy bondholders if the Republicans decide to stop funding the government.
• H.R.3- McKeon voted to approve building the Keystone XL Pipeline would will bring toxic tar sands into the U.S. from Canada so it can be trans-shipped to China
• H.R. 1911- McKeon voted to double the cost of student loan rates-- starting today!
• H.R. 1960- McKeon voted against giving the victim of sexual abuse in the military the power to choose whether to allow the Office of Chief Prosecutor to make the binding decision on whether a case goes to trial, or to allow the commander to proceed with the case.
• H.R. 1797 McKeon voted to make it illegal for a woman and her physician to go through with an abortion after 20 weeks.
• H.R. 1947- McKeon voted over and over to cut the food stamps program.
• H.R. 1613- Mckeon voted against allowing California to decide on its own whether or not to allow offshore drilling for oil.

• And, of course, McKeon and Rogers have a basic disagreement over the Affordable Care Act. Rogers sees a flawed bill that needs to be fixed and made better. McKeon voted 37 times to just repeal it, even though it is already saving Californians hundreds of millions of dollars in health care costs.

"We can't let crazy extremist social policies, like limiting a woman's right to make healthcare choices with her doctor, rule the day," Rogers told me yesterday. "If you want someone to go to Washington and stick up for our values, to fight for individual freedoms, and to prioritize challenges faced by our country, I'm your guy!" We know that... please consider being a first-day-supporter, right here.

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Big Money Invented Paul Ryan To Work For Them, Not For Teabaggers

Palin's not happy with the Republican Party Establishment-- and she claims she may be ready to bolt and start one of her own. No one represents that Establishment better than Paul Ryan. Ryan's a packaged product, courtesy of Wall Street and Madison Avenue. That's all he's ever been and Boehner was more than happy to boost him into the chair of the Budget Committee to please the banksters both serve. Recall, if you will, Ryan's first big effort for the criminal banksters who lifted him out of obscurity.

It's September 2008 and the GOP kleptocrats are winding up their last months in office. They wanted to deliver one more grand giveaway to Wall Street-- Henry Paulsen's bankster bailout. One problem: enough Republicans (133 of 'em) joined with Democrats to defeat it 205-228 when it was first brought up for a vote. Wall Street's best-paid shills, Boehner, Cantor and Paul Ryan, mobilized for battle. At the time Ryan, a relatively junior Member, had already taken $1,704,095 in legalistic bribes from Wall Street (a number that has now risen to $$3,303,872, just slightly more than the $3,283,687 the banksters gave Democratic crook Steve Israel). After the defeat in the House, Wall Street and the banksters went bonkers and pulled all Bush's strings and he and Paulsen easily got the monstrosity passed in the House of Lords and then went back to the House with a no less odious version of the bill that they had rejected a few days before. This time it passed 263-171 with not 65, but 91 Republicans joining in. Among the vote switchers who had had their arms twisted by Boehner, Cantor and Ryan plus the official registered Wall Street lobbyists:

• Gresham Barrett (R-SC- $807,723)
• Judy Biggert (R-IL- $1,675,717)
• Charlie Dent (R-PA- $760,872)
• Mary Fallin (R-OK- $336,576)
• Jim Gerlach (R-PA- $1,670,352)
• Pete Hoekstra (R-MI- $295,830)
• Gary Miller (R-CA- $807,688)
• Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-FL- $928,068)
• Mean Jean Schmidt (R-OH- $458,449)
• John Shadegg (R-AZ- $1,218,261)
• Lee Terry (R-NE- $1,246,007)
• Patrick Tiberi (R-OH- $2,438,284)

At the time some people wondered if teabaggers and fiscal conservatives would hold a screamingly hypocritical Ryan accountable at all. Yesterday's selection by Romney-- popular with the GOP base-- shows they didn't give a damn. At the time, Ryan was the ranking Republican on the House Budget Committee and a member of the Ways and Means Committee. He' had assigned himself the job of spokesperson for fiscal austerity but he had already taken more money from the banksters than any other politician in the history of Wisconsin politics and, as we saw, he voted for the bank bailout not once, but twice. In fact, Ryan was one of the hypocrites exposed in Michael Moore's film, Capitalism: A Love Story:

In a section of the critically acclaimed examination of how Wall Street insiders diverted hundreds of billions of tax dollars into their accounts, Moore illustrates how the bailout happened. Democratic and Republican members of Congress who do the bidding of the bankers scared their colleagues and the American people into approving a massive bailout of the speculators whose misdeeds created the financial meltdown that shocked the nation in September 2008.

Ryan, the Republican congressman from southeast Wisconsin's hard-pressed 1st District, is shown playing the fear card by telling the House that it had to steer almost $800 million BILLION to Wall Street's sleaziest players.

"If we fail to do the right thing, heaven help us-- if we fail to pass this I fear the worst is yet to come," claimed Ryan.

The statement from the Wisconsin Republican who has positioned himself as a budget specialist in the House played a significant role in securing support for a bailout bill that had not been adequately analyzed and that included few protections against fraud.

Had Ryan used his reputation and his role on key committees to aggressively oppose the bailout, he might have blocked the rush to judgment that economists now say could end up costing American taxpayers trillions of dollars-- and a big chunk of their country's future.

Instead, the GOP establishment's favored point man on fiscal issues claimed-- without benefit of facts, figures or any grounding in economic reality-- that a failure to give the bankers everything they were asking for could bring on a depression.

"This is a Herbert Hoover moment," Ryan told the House, as he reached a fear-mongering crescendo. "(Hoover) made mistakes during the Great Depression-- let's not make those mistakes."

It was a virtuoso performance. Moore was right to highlight it.

The filmmaker has given Wisconsin taxpayers a dramatic illustration of how it came to pass that we are bailing out bankers and billionaires at the same time that auto plants are closing in cities such as Janesville and Kenosha-- both of which are in the 1st District. More importantly, Moore has reminded the voters of southeastern Wisconsin how key members of Congress such as Paul Ryan determined to take care of the speculators on Wall Street rather than working families on Main Street.

Ryan was overjoyed to bail out his bankster/paymasters on Wall Street but when it came to bailing out their victims who, through no fault of their own, were swamped with screwed up mortgages, he changed his tune... drastically. Ryan always stands up for corporations and never stands up for working families.

And Ryan's a gift that keeps on giving. Over the weekend, a far right propaganda website wigged out at the way Ryan's playing Pied Piper to Republican House backbenchers over immigration, just as he did in the TARP battle.

Ryan has been meeting with House conservatives to persuade them that reform of the immigration system, including a path to citizenship for illegal immigrants, is an economic necessity and critical to fixing the nation's fiscal problems.

...Anti-tax activist Grover Norquist said the sheer amount of time Ryan has spent talking with House Republicans about budget issues gives him the credibility to court them on immigration reform.

"I would bet you a nickel that he has had more face time with each member than anyone else in the caucus," said Norquist, an influential conservative who also believes immigration reform is vital to the economy.

Republican strategist Whit Ayres calls Ryan "one of the most effective messengers the Republican party has in the House," adding that "If Paul Ryan talks, the House Republicans will listen."

That assessment may be overly optimistic, considering the large number of House Republicans from conservative districts who see legalization of illegal immigrants and offering them a path to eventually become U.S. citizens as an "amnesty."

But Ryan said a Republican-backed amendment to the Senate bill to boost security on the U.S.-Mexico border improves the chances that the House and Senate could ultimately agree on a compromise version of the legislation.

The amendment "brings the Senate bill closer to the House's position and that gives me the belief that we have a better chance at getting this law fixed at the end," he said.

Unlike Republican Senator Marco Rubio, an architect of the Senate immigration bill and a potential rival for Ryan if both seek the presidency, Ryan is not writing legislation or participating in a congressional working group on the issue.

But both Ryan and Rubio face risks from the divisiveness of the immigration issue among Republicans.

Support for immigration reform could cost either man votes with conservatives who will nominate a 2016 Republican candidate. On the other hand, the influence of Hispanic-Americans in U.S. elections could make it harder for any candidate who opposes immigration reform to win the White House.

...In April, Ryan teamed up with his friend, Democratic Congressman Luis Gutierrez, who is a staunch supporter of immigration reform, to tout the issue at an event in Chicago. He has also co-sponsored immigration reform bills in the past.

Like Rubio, the son of Cuban immigrants, Ryan talks of the work ethic of immigrants and the high proportion who start businesses. He often tells of his Irish ancestors who fled the potato famine in the 1850s and started a family farm in Wisconsin.

In the interview, he cited future budget deficits as a reason for urgency on immigration reform. With 10,000 baby boomers retiring from the workforce each day, "our economy is going to need more labor in the future," he said.

Ryan said he believes the country needs a system "designed for the economy, to bring workers in to do jobs that people won't do or to bring their high-tech intellectual capital."

The fiscal argument helped fuel momentum for the Senate immigration bill when the Congressional Budget Office estimated it would reduce deficits by $197 billion over a decade because of additional workers paying income and payroll taxes.

If Ryan is worried about a conservative backlash on immigration, he is showing no signs of it.

He has offered to debate anyone who says an "earned" path to citizenship is the equivalent of amnesty.

And the man who has sparred for years with Democrats on budget issues believes he can play a role in getting the two parties to work together. "I think when you get Democrats to listen to Republicans and Republicans to listen to Democrats you can find the common ground," he said.

Alex Nowrasteh of the libertarian Cato Institute said Ryan could give other Republicans political cover to support immigration reform. "Nobody is going to question the conservative credentials of Paul Ryan," he said.

Really?

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