“What Could Have Been”: The Most Important Bills Blocked By Republicans In 2012
1. A minimum wage increase
House Democrats proposed legislation in June that would have raised the national minimum wage to $10 an hour, but Republicans blocked it. The minimum wage is currently $7.25 an hour, even though it would need to be raised to $9.92 to match the borrowing power it had in 1968. If it was indexed to inflation, it would be $10.40 today.
2. Campaign finance transparency
The DISCLOSE Act of 2012, repeatedly blocked by Congressional Republicans, would have allowed voters to know who was funding the attack ads that flooded the airways from secretive groups like Karl Rove’s Crossroads GPS.
3. The Buffett Rule
Senate Republicans in April filibustered the Buffet Rule, which would have set a minimum tax on millionaires. Huge majorities of Americans consistently support the rule, which would raise tens of billions of dollars per year from Americans who have seen their incomes explode while their tax rates plummeted.
4. The Employment Non-Discrimination Act
ENDA, which would prohibit discrimination in hiring and employment on the basis of sexual orientation or gender identity, has languished in Congress for decades, and Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) “hasn’t thought much” about bringing it to a vote.
5. U.N. treaty to protect the equal rights of the disabled
Republicans blocked ratification of the United Nations treaty to protect the rights of disabled people around the world, falsely claiming it would undermine parents of disabled children. In fact, the treaty would require other nations to revise their laws to resemble the Americans With Disabilities Act and had overwhelming support from veterans and disabilities groups. It failed by 5 votes.
6. The Paycheck Fairness Act
It’s about to be 2013, and women are still getting paid less than men for the same job. This year the Paycheck Fairness Act came up for a vote again (previous efforts to pass the law have been unsuccessful), but the Senate GOP still couldn’t get it together to pass the legislation. Republicans oppose the measure, saying it helps trial lawyers instead of women. But the country’s female doctors, lawyers, and CEOs might be inclined to disagree.
By: Think Progress, December 28, 2012
“Shadow Republican Money Groups”: Soft Cash Changes Hands Between Crossroads GPS And The NRA
While the National Rifle Association has been making headlines in the wake of the school shooting in Newtown, Conn. last week, its nonprofit affiliate has been flying under the radar.
The NRA Institute for Legislative Action is a conservative 501(c)(4) group that is not required to disclose its donors, but the Center for Responsive Politics dug up a six-figure contribution from a similar tax-exempt group.
In its investigation into shadow money groups, the Center uncovered a $600,000 donation to the NRA’s nonprofit from Crossroads GPS — the 501(c)(4) associated with Karl Rove and his super PAC, American Crossroads. In the 2012 election cycle, the NRA Institute for Legislative Action spent $7.4 million on independent expenditures, bringing the overall total spent by NRA-affiliated groups to $17.6 million.
In order to maintain 501(c)(4) status with the Internal Revenue Service, social welfare must be the main focus of these groups, so they cannot have more than half of their overall spending go toward politics.
According to an OpenSecrets Blog report from earlier this year, in 2010, Crossroads gave large sums to Americans for Tax Reform, National Federation of Independent Business, Center for Individual Freedom and National Right to Life. Recipients of Crossroads for the 2012 election cycle will not be available until next year when it files with the IRS.
The NRA, with its nonprofit affiliate, spent $11.4 million of the money they spent in the general election opposing Democrats and $5.9 million supporting Republicans. Within the NRA Institute for Legislative Action, about 63 percent of its $7.4 million was spent against Democrats, according to data from the Center for Responsive Politics.
Although the money trail is further clouded when one 501(c)(4) gives money to another, Crossroads GPS and the NRA Institute for Legislative Action’s goals were similar, as shown by their overlapping targeted candidates.
The NRA Institute for Legislative Action focused on 62 candidates, spending at least $100,000 on 11 of them. The most it dropped on a single candidate was the $3.2 million opposing President Barack Obama, followed by the $885,000 it spent favoring Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney.
In addition to Obama, other Democratic candidates the nonprofit opposed this election were Ohio Sen.-elect Sherrod Brown ($408,000), Florida Sen. Bill Nelson ($378,000) and Virginia Sen.-elect Tim Kaine ($350,000) — all of whom nevertheless won their respective races. On the other side, Republican benefactors included Sen.-elect Jeff Flake ($322,000), Wisconsin Senate candidate Tommy Thompson ($243,000) and Ohio Senate candidate Josh Mandel ($168,000).
The NRA’s PAC also spent about $9.5 million on independent expenditures that targeted many of the same candidates. The PAC spent about $16.1 million overall.
By: Michelle Martinelli, OpenSecrets.org, December 17, 2012
“Bad For Women’s Health”: The People Who Brought You Curves Are Actually Working Against Women
The latest filings from Karl Rove’s American Crossroads show a last minute contribution of $1 million received just days before the election (10/29/12) from Gary Heavin — the co-founder of Curves International Inc., which calls itself “the world’s leader in women’s fitness.”
Curves, a chain of women-only fitness center franchises, claims nearly 10,000 locations in more than 85 countries. Heavin and his fellow co-founder, his wife Diane, sold Curves International to a private equity firm in October, but they remain prominently featured on the company’s website. The Heavins say they “share a passion for and commitment to women’s health and fitness.” But his massive donation to the right-wing super PAC is only the latest in a long pattern of their efforts in support of policies that undermine women’s equality in the workplace and restrict women’s access to health care services.
American Crossroads spent $91 million to elect Mitt Romney over President Obama. Romney refused to endorse key pro-women legislation including the bipartisan Violence Against Women Act, the Lily Ledbetter Fair Pay Act, and the Paycheck Fairness Act, but backed reinstating the “global gag rule” on even discussing abortion as a family planning option and supported the infamous Blunt Amendment to allow employers to deny health benefits that go against their personal views. Crossroads also worked to help far-right extremists like Todd Akin, Richard Mourdock, and George Allen. Much of the American Crossroads attack strategy focused on criticizing Obamacare and those who backed the effort to expand health insurance access to all Americans.
In addition to helping fund American Crossroads, the Heavins also combined to give $92,400 to the House and Senate Republican campaign arms, $2,500 to Texas Governor Rick Perry (R), $30,800 to the Republican National Committee, $7,300 to Romney’s campaign, and $2,500 to House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) in 2012.
And this past election isn’t the only time that Curves and the Heavins have worked against women’s reproductive rights. Gary Heavin pledged hundreds of thousands of dollars for controversial “pregnancy crisis centers” that try to talk women out of abortions and have been accused to providing false information. They also made large donations to abstinence-only education programs — programs which often misinform and make teens more likely to engage in risky behavior and become pregnant. Curves also pulled its funding for the Susan G. Komen Breast Cancer Foundation over its objection to the charity’s funding for Planned Parenthood’s breast cancer screening services. In a 2004 editorial, Mr. Heavin attacked Planned Parenthood’s sex education literature, writing “I have a 10-year-old daughter. I would absolutely not allow her to be exposed to this material. I don’t want her being taught masturbation and told that homosexuality is normal.”
That anti-choice and anti-LGBT stance was further demonstrated when Curves partnered with the American Family Association — a group that has been identified by the Southern Poverty Law Center as a “hate group.” They joined for a 2009 healthy recipe contest and sold a Curves fitness CD on the AFA’s website. Gary Heavin has also been an outspoken enthusiast for televangelist Pat Robertson, who has blamed natural disasters on same-sex marriage equality and blamed 9/11 on abortion, the separation of church and state, and civil liberties groups.
By: Josh Israel, Think Progress, December 7, 2012
“The Emperor Has No Clothes”: Shattering The Myth Of Karl Rove
To some he’s a hero, to others a villain, but everyone — right, left, and center — seems to agree on one thing about Karl Rove: He’s really really smart. Rove is, most political observers assume, one of the savviest operators in politics today, so when he speaks, people listen. After Citizens United and the 2010 GOP wave, when Rove ruled Washington from his non-perch at American Crossroads, I saw more than one very smart liberal go from mocking Rove as a liar and hack one minute to having the blood drain from the face when he made an ominous political prediction the next. Such is the power of the Rove.
Or at least it was. Tuesday night may have shattered the Myth of Rove, just as it shattered Rove himself when he had a meltdown in front of millions on Fox News viewers after the network called Ohio for Obama. The moment, which has since gone viral, was the perfect encapsulation of Emperor Has No Clothes realization that Rove is now experiencing. Rove was proven wrong. On live TV. By Fox News. And of course, that wasn’t the only thing he got wrong. He blew the whole election, predicting Romney would win.
But if you take a look at Rove’s record of prognostications, this should be no big surprise. Before Tuesday, Rove’s most famous wiff came in 2000, when he predicted that George W. Bush would beat Al Gore in a landslide. Rove predicted Bush would get “in the vicinity of 320 electoral votes” and even suggested that Bush had a shot at deep blue California. “I mean, the governor is going to start off in New Mexico, spend a day and a half in California, go to Oregon and Washington, go to Minnesota, go to Iowa,” Rove told CBS News host Bob Schieffer. Of course, 2000 came down to nail biter, with Bush winning 271 votes — just 1 more than necessary to win — and losing the popular vote (later, it turned out that Gore probably actually won).
He was so chastened by the blown call that when reporters asked him to make a prediction the night before the 2004 election, he refused. “Rub my nose in it,” Rove snapped at a reporter who brought up the 2000 prediction. “With a circle of tape recorders humming, Rove said he was making no such predictions this time around,” the New York Times reported on November 1, 2004.
After the election, Andrew Sullivan was actually prescient about this on CNN: “He didn’t get a majority of the popular vote in 2000, he squeezed a 51 percent victory in 2004. He’s been teetering on the brink ever since, and the base strategy now shows him not to be a genius but to be a real failure.”
But two years later, Rove was back to wildly miscalculating results. “Look, I’m looking at all these Robert and adding them up. And I add up to a Republican Senate and a Republican House. You may end up with a different math, but you’re entitled to your math. I’m entitled to ‘the’ math,” Rove said in a testy exchange with NPR host Robert Siegel the week before the 2006 election. Democrats ended up winning a huge wave that gave them control of both the House and Senate.
In 2008 Rove, who wasn’t involved in John McCain’s campaign, correctly predicted that Obama would win (but how you could you not that year?), though he was too bearish. In 2010, he correctly predicted that Republicans would take the House and make gains in the Senate (but how you could you not that year?), though he was overly bullish.
For conservative donors who entrusted millions with Rove and his American Crossroads groups, only to see a 1 percent success rate, the Rove bubble is bursting. “There is some holy hell to pay. Karl Rove has a lot of explaining to do … I don’t know how you tell your donors that we spent $390 million and got nothing,” a donor told John Ward. “The billionaire donors I hear are livid.”
If Rove needs something to do, perhaps he could join his former boss George W. Bush — in obscurity.
By: Alex Seitz-Wald, Salon, November 8, 2012
“From Bush’s Brain To Romney’s Butt”: Karl Rove Has Some Explaining To Do
After declaring a new national post-election holiday yesterday—Liberal Schadenfreude Day—we’re starting to think it should be a week-long celebration. So much to gloat over after all these years of despair! Our favorite gloat-worthy item on Thursday came courtesy of the Sunlight Foundation. The money-in-politics watchdog did a nifty calculation of the returns that 2012’s big spenders got for their money. It’s not complicated math: Sunlight simply calculated how much outside groups (super PACs, non-profits, and political committees) spent per “desired result” in Tuesday’s elections—supporting candidates who won, in other words, or opposing candidates who lost.
The two groups that fared the worst? Coming in dead last, in terms of “desired results,” was the National Rifle Association’s optimistically named National Political Victory Fund, which spent $11 million for a success rate of less than one percent. But the biggest money-waster of all, you will be eternally gratified to hear, was Karl Rove’s American Crossroads super PAC, which forked out a whopping $104 million and had a “desired result” rate of 1.29 percent. That’s right, folks: The great genius of American Republicanism wasted more of his donors’ money than anyone else. (His non-profit group, Crossroads GPS, did marginally better—a 14-percent “desired result” rate.) Looked at one way, though, American Crossroads had a kind of perfect score: The super PAC supported zero candidates who won on Tuesday.
And whose money paid the highest dividends? Planned Parenthood’s two political funds—both with much less money than the aforementioned conservative groups—both had success rates of more than 97 percent. The League of Conservation Voters notched up a 78 percent score. And labor groups got some serious bang for their bucks: The SEIU’s two outside spending groups, for instance, had “desired results” in 74 percent and 85 percent of the races in which they invested.
The delightful takeaway: There’s a certain block-headed, bespectacled campaign wizard who’s going to have some serious explaining to do to some of the nation’s richest conservatives. For the man formerly known as “Bush’s brain,” it appears that his memorable Election Night meltdown actually wasn’t the lowlight of his week. And those mega-millions might be just a tad bit harder to come by in 2014 and 2016.
By: Bob Moser and Jamie Fuller, The American Prospect, November 8, 2012
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