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[BREAKING NEWS: Commerce Secretary Involved in Hit and Run]
Talk about the old "dirty tricks" squad. What was old is now new again, if it were ever actually old.
And do you notice that they are still overwhelmingly pasty-faced white boys?
From Mark Crispin Miller we learn:
Romney Quietly Hires Consulting Firm With Sordid History Of Destroying Democratic Voter Registration Forms
Lee Fang
June 6th 2012
Nathan Sproul
Republic Report has covered how political money can corrupt government by influencing the actions of elected representatives. But professional hacks can also disrupt democracy by interfering with the voting process itself.
Late last year, Mitt Romney’s presidential campaign began paying Nathan Sproul, a political consultant with a long history of destroying Democratic voter registration forms and manipulating ballot initiatives. Sproul, who changed his firm’s name from Sproul and Associates to Lincoln Strategies, has received over $70,000 from Romney’s campaign. Much of the campaign coverage has focused on the rhetoric of surrogates and the role of high-priced television advertisements. But if Sproul continues to play a role in the campaign, and if his previous work is any guide, his firm may have an impact on key swing states.
ThinkProgress covered Sproul and his work for the coal industry. The post, which is partially reprinted below, goes through his greatest hits, including evidence that his firm systematically suppressed Democratic overs on behalf of the Bush-Cheney 2004 presidential team and deceiving voters during registration drives in 2006:
- In Oregon and Nevada, Lincoln Strategies — then known as Sproul and Associates — was investigated for destroying Democratic voter registration forms. The Bush-Cheney 2004 presidential campaign paid Sproul $7.4 million for campaign work. [CNN, 10/14/04; KGW News, 10/13/04; East Valley Tribune, 09/07/06]
- In Nevada, people who registered as Democrats with Lincoln Strategies — then known as Sproul and Associates — found their names absent from the voter registration rolls. [Reno Gazette-Journal, 10/29/04]
- During the 2006 midterm elections, Wal-Mart banned Lincoln Strategies for partisan voter registration efforts in Tennessee. The Republican National Committee had hired the firm. [Associated Press, 08/24/06]
- In Arizona, Lincoln Strategies employed a variety of deceptive tactics — including systematically lying about the bill — to push a ballot initiative to eviscerate the state’s clean elections law. [Salon, 10/21/04]
- Lincoln Strategies, then employed by the Republican Party, was behind efforts to place Ralph Nader on the ballot in states such as Arizona. [American Prospect, 06/25/04]Though Romney and his allies have decried supposed voter fraud by his opponents, they don’t have any evidence that people are illegally voting. Most accusations of Democratic voter fraud center on registration forms filled out by fake people — usually because signature gatherers are paid per-form — but these accusations do not include examples of these fake people actually attempting to vote.
On the other hand, when a person goes to vote and learns their voter registration form was never turned in, they are denied their rights. Former Rep. Chris Cannon (R-UT), during a hearing on voter fraud, admitted that “the difference between ACORN and Sproul is that ACORN doesn’t throw away or change registration documents after they have been filled out.”
Republic Report reviewed disclosures from the Federal Elections Commission. Sproul’s Lincoln Strategy Group has received about $71,391 in payments for “field consulting” and “rent & utilities” by the Romney for President Inc. committee from November 30th through March 2nd of this year.
Lincoln Strategy Group did not respond to multiple requests for comment.
And now Dylan Ratigan is scheduled to be gone from the public airwaves during the next election?
Will wonders never cease. (Watch out Rachel!)
BEYOND TALK – On Leaving Cable News
Dylan Ratigan
June 11, 2012
Dear Friends,
I left a fifteen year career in financial journalism amid the crisis of 2008. I did this to join the traditional cable news ranks with a clear goal of revealing the ruthless truth about our biggest problems and telling the inspiring stories of those who are resolving them despite all odds.
After three years at MSNBC, two national roadshows and one book, (and a couple of rants,) my objections to our current political process and our dominance-at-all-costs culture that gives us all less, while we pay more is well documented.
Fortunately, I have been inspired by meeting countless “doers” like Bea Cohen, 102 years old and one of the original “Rosie the Riveter’s” to contemporaries like Marine Veteran Colin Archipley who after serving 3 tours in Iraq, started “Archi’s Acres” with his wife in San Diego to teach returning veterans how use low-cost, hydroponic, organic farming techniques to create good jobs that produce twice as much food, at a higher quality, using 90% less soil and water.
They are pointing us — through their actions in history and today — on a clear mission – to seize new tools and take cultural risks to resolve our challenges. Bea Cohen, and millions of other women did this in the past. Millions of men and women are doing this now — simply by daring to create new, sustainable, tolerant, problem-solving cultures in almost every social, personal and financial system.
It is in this context that I have decided to leave cable news to collaborate and join with some of these leaders to experiment and explore new ways to tell their stories.
While it may seem unconventional to leave a rapidly growing political cable show on the eve of a Presidential election, to me, the timing couldn’t be better.
In fact, the thrill of an opportunity to expand new systems that cost less and give us more in every part of life is impossible to pass up. I believe if we are honest about where we are now, honest about where we want to go and honest about how we are going to get there, we may well end up as the hero of our own stories. While I don’t know exactly how my own story will develop, I hope to share some initial details with you soon. In the meantime, keep in touch.
I have had the privilege and confidence of NBC News, MSNBC, and CNBC for nine years and want to thank everyone who worked with me in that time, especially Phil Griffin and Steve Friedman, who made the work of the past three years possible along with The Dylan Ratigan Show and MSNBC staff. I look forward to collaborating with all of you in learning, sharing, and building new ways to solve old problems in this expanding mission.
Onward and Upward,
Dylan
As a testament to the cause, and credit to you, here are some of the latest ratings:
The Dylan Ratigan Show is the only cable news program to show total audience growth in 2012 (Year-over-Year/4pm ET). While CNN and Fox fell at 4pm ET, The Dylan Show on msnbc showed healthy gained.
The Dylan Ratigan Show gained in total viewership 18%, while CNN and Fox fell 15% and 7% respectively in total audience (Year-over-Year/4pm ET).
In the 18-34 demographic, The Dylan Ratigan Show gained 17%. Competitors, CNN and Fox fell 42% and 14% respectively (Year-over-Year/4pm ET).
And the elections are still five months away, friends.
Speaking of upcoming elections, Ralph Nader has some economic data you might be interested in before voting again.
Don’t 30 Million Workers Deserve 1968 Wages?
Ralph Nader
June 08, 2012
Thirty million American workers arise, you have nothing to lose but some of your debt!
Wednesday morning, Rep. Jesse Jackson, Jr. (D-Ill.) introduced the “Catching Up to 1968 Act of 2012” (H.R. 5901) – legislation to raise the federal minimum wage to $10 per hour. The present minimum wage is $7.25, way below the unrealistically low federal poverty definition of $18,123 per year for a family of three. Adjusted for inflation, the 1968 minimum wage today would be a little above $10 per hour.
Together with Rep. John Conyers (D-Mich.), Rep. Dennis Kucinich (D-Ohio) and Robert Weissman, president of Public Citizen, I was pleased to be with Rep. Jackson at a news conference to explain this long-overdue necessity for millions of hard-pressed, working Americans of all political persuasions.
The policy behind the minimum wage, first enacted in 1938 under President Franklin Roosevelt, was to provide a minimally livable wage. This implied at least keeping up with inflation, if not with new living expenses not envisioned seventy-five years ago. While businesses like Walmart and McDonalds have been raising their prices and executive compensation since 1968, these companies have received a windfall from a diminishing real minimum wage paid to their workers.
The economics behind the Jackson bill are strongly supportive of moral and equitable arguments. Most economists agree that what our ailing economy needs is more consumer demand for goods and services which will create jobs. Tens of billions of dollars flowing from a $10 minimum wage will be spent by poor families and workers almost immediately.
Historically, polls have registered around 70 percent of Americans favoring a minimum wage keeping up with inflation. That number includes many Republican workers who can be consoled by learning that both Mitt Romney and Rick Santorum, during their political careers, have supported adjusting the minimum wage.
Were the Democrats in Congress to make this a banner issue for election year 2012, their adversaries, Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) and Senator Mitch O’Connell (R-Ky.), would not be able to hold 100 percent of their Republicans on this popular issue. That means the bill’s backers could override these two rigid ideologues – so-called public servants – who make nearly $200 per hour plus luscious pension, health insurance, life insurance and other benefits.
President Obama, who has turned his back on many worker issues, can champion his promise in 2008 to press for a minimum wage of $9.50 by 2011 as well as benefit his campaign by helping people who have lost trust in government and their enthusiasm over Obama’s “hope and change.” Getting the attention of 30 million potential voters can change the dynamics of a tediously repetitive Obama-Romney campaign.
A debate over the minimum wage throws a more acute spotlight on the gigantic pay of the big corporate bosses who make $11,000 to $20,000 per hour! Their average pay was up another 6 percent in 2011 along with record profits for their companies.
If the Democrats want intellectual heft to rebut the carping, craven objections of the corporatist think tanks and trade associations, headed by bosses making big time pay themselves, they cannot do better than to refer to Alan Krueger, the former Princeton professor and now chairman of the White House Council of Economic Advisers to President Obama, who is the leading scholar behind inflation-adjusted minimum wages producing net job growth.
Moreover, there is no need to offset an inflation-adjusted minimum wage with lower taxes on smaller business. Since Obama took office there have been 17 tax cuts enacted for small businesses.
Many organizations with millions of members around the country are on the record, if not on the ramparts, as favoring an inflation-adjusted increase in the federal minimum wage. They include the AFL-CIO and member unions, especially the nurses union, the NAACP and La Raza, and the leading social service and social justice nonprofits.
In 2007 at the “Take Back America” conference, then Senator Obama delivered a ringing oration making “the minimum wage a living wage (tied) to the cost of living so we don’t have to wait another 10 years to see it rise.” Even Ontario, Canada’s minimum wage is $10.25 per hour.
So why aren’t all these supporters of the minimum wage inside and outside of Congress making something happen? Because they’re either out of gas and need to be replaced, or they are waiting on each other to make the first move.
The nonprofits and the labor unions are waiting on a signal from senior legislator, Rep. George Miller (D-Calif.). Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi and the House Democratic Caucus are also waiting for Miller, who has not introduced a bill increasing the minimum wage since Obama took office (the Fair Minimum Wage Act of 2007 was the last, with increases to $7.25 ending in July 2009). Of course, in turn, Obama is waiting on the Democratic leadership in Congress who, though firmly behind the increase, is waiting on Obama and, of course, Miller, who hails not from Dallas, Texas, but from the progressive San Francisco Bay area of California. Go figure.
So maybe this cycle of insensitive lethargy by the Democratic Party can be broken by the congressional stalwarts who have joined with Rep. Jesse Jackson, Jr. in supporting his proposal (H.R. 5901) for a modest increase in the minimum wage to help tens of millions of downtrodden workers catch up with 1968!
For more information on efforts to raise the federal minimum wage, see: TimeForARaise.org.
Somehow, I don't see how picking up this 10 million strong minimum-wage-increase-inspired group of voters has gotten even a second thought in the Obama administration as this could have been the first measure which they submitted and lobbied for vigorously when the wind was at their backs.
But it's certainly an election-changing thought, Ralph.
So, thanks. Again.
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