If only they would use their powers for good :)

Sorry but I can't let this lie stand.

PAC to PAC transfers. Former Alabama Congressman Glen Browder says they "encourage, facilitate, and enhance corruption" in Alabama and that a particular problem is unrestricted PAC to PAC transfers. They allow contributors/interest groups to pour huge sums of money into the political process and hide its origin.

This is said BEFORE the author successfully follows the money and describes the transfer process of how much to whom, when, and how often by taking a stroll through their FCPA (Fair Campaign Practices Act) reports show that, well, there's a whole lot of check writing going on.

It sounds good for effect but there is no such thing as "legal money laundering". Money laundering is the practice of engaging in financial transactions to conceal the identity, source, and/or destination of illegally gained money. It is common to refer to money legally obtained as "clean", and money illegally obtained as "dirty".

So unless there is evidence of illegally obtained PAC to PAC money being used in the process it's factually correct to say it's "legal money laundering",it's like saying someone is a little bit pregnant, or someone kind of robbed a bank.

PAC to PAC transfers are legal and evidently the money trail can be followed for those with the time and the inclination, so this statement is not factually correct either;

Our candidates could be getting money from North Korea and most of us would be none the wiser.

I wonder why right leaning Left in Alabama chose to follow the Alabama Education Association (AEA) money trail and not a republican PAC? I really don't understand the blatant hostility displayed by a progressive blog toward a progressive organization that represents the interest of public school teachers, administrators and support personnel. A majority of the members of Alabama Education Association are loyal democrats. They fight for the rights of the least and the left out. They fight for women to have the right to choose to obtain a safe, legal abortion. They fight for the right of all Alabamians to have access to quality affordable health care. They fight for the right of all Alabama students to have equal access to a quality public education. They fight for the rights or workers to organize. They fight for our LBGT sisters and brothers to have equal rights. They fight for civil rights. They fight for comprehensive immigration reform They aren't laundering illegally gained money, nor are they using PAC's to enrich themselves or maintain the status quo.

They use their powers for good.

Update~Tuesday This and That

I had to include this must read in today's edition,Obama's unkept promise to Alabama's blacks.
H/T to my pure Anglo-Saxon, save for distant branches of Scots and German friend Publius IX.

The election of Barack Obama was guaranteed to have far reaching, and long lasting implications for Alabama politics. The first election of an African-American President could not be anything other than a paradigm-shifting event. On the one hand, Obama’s presence on the ballot seems to have brought out the worst in white Alabama.

It's the vicious, never ending cycle of POVERTY, and the stereotypical myths stoopid!

Daniel Patrick Moynihan, then an assistant labor secretary in the Johnson administration, introduced the idea of a “culture of poverty” to the public in a startling 1965 report. Although Moynihan didn’t coin the phrase (that distinction belongs to the anthropologist Oscar Lewis), his description of the urban black family as caught in an inescapable “tangle of pathology” of unmarried mothers and welfare dependency was seen as attributing self-perpetuating moral deficiencies to black people, as if blaming them for their own misfortune.

Moynihan’s analysis never lost its appeal to conservative thinkers, whose arguments ultimately succeeded when President Bill Clinton signed a bill in 1996 “ending welfare as we know it.” But in the overwhelmingly liberal ranks of academic sociology and anthropology the word “culture” became a live grenade, and the idea that attitudes and behavior patterns kept people poor was shunned.

Democrats who try to break the cycle of poverty either get investigated, prosecuted and convicted for being "corrupt" or they are ignored and ridiculed by the party Elite.

None dare call it racism.

This is an ongoing problem with falling in bed with right wing radical groups: their support and energy is helpful to you, and their fundraising can be strong, but then you are placed in the uncomfortable position of being completely incapable of responding properly to overt racism.

Repeat after me, this is the gop plan for balancing the budget

End education, take away seniors income and give it to CEOs,take food and shelter away from the poor; give the power back to the CEOs instead of doctors to decide who should live and who should die, more deregulation, and outsourcing of jobs. And the rich live happily ever after.

No justice, you know the rest....

The Justice Department is going to defend John Ashcroft and argue that NO ONE has the right to sue ANY Attorney General EVER?

It's the stoopid media!

The paradox that exists in the media is the never ending relativism that does not allow for crucial facts to be agreed upon, thus no REAL policy can be agreed to. The media recognizes two main perspectives (right and left) puts the "talking heads" into either category, and never gives proper authority to one side based on their arguments or knowledge. Rather the media just makes it a "perspective", in which everyone has a perspective, and both left and right have a justified opinion on an issue, no matter how factually wrong they are. Every issue is interpreted as someones opinion, and all opinions are justified.

But were does this paradox lead us? To where this country is now. With little to no legislation being passed, no real change, and no hope that there will be any progress because no one can recognize what the facts are. If we want to change the political system, we need to agree on facts.

About those secret donations....

Donors to nonprofit groups that are spending millions on political ads this election have escaped public scrutiny because their donations don't have to be disclosed. But can they escape a hefty tax bite?

Oh what a tangled web we weave...

The more things change, the more they stay the same in Sweet Home Alabama

Five African Alabama workers say they were ordered to vote republican and President Obama was threatend at their workplace here in the land of cotton. Talk about a hostile working enviroment. Thank goodness we don't have to depend on the *ahem* traditional media to keep us informed about what's happening in Dixie besides the so called Bingo/democratic culture of corruption and cronyism *snark*. God forbid the MSM investigate and report on some some real cronyism and corruption.
H/T Deep Harm

Mon Oct 18, 2010 at 08:41:34 AM PDT
In recently filed lawsuits, five black employees of Altec Industries, in Birmingham, Alabama, say they were ordered to attend a rally at the firm for Sen. Jeff Sessions (Republican) in October 2008, were given pre-marked ballots, and ordered to vote Republican.

The workers add, in separate federal complaints, that when Barack Obama was elected president, "an employee drew cross hairs or a target on a picture of President Obama and posted it in the workplace." (Courthouse News, October 18, 2010)
Altec is described as a "holding company for a global manufacturer of aerial lifts, digger derricks, truck-mounted cranes and specialty equipment for the electric utility, telecom and contractor industries."

Truth forever on the scaffold, wrong forever on the throne. - James Russell Lowell

Get 10 people you know to commit to vote Democratic on November 2; and ask them to each seek 10. ~blogvirgin

Part of being President is
Recommended by:FreeStateDem
understanding that you represent more than your base, something the Republicans have never mastered, which is how they ended up being so corrupt. The people who advise you on Wall Street, for instance, should be the people who know Wall Street from the dirty side of the tracks. The people who advise on keeping jobs here need to be the people who exported those jobs in the first place. What's the reason they did it? Is it simple greed, or a decision to keep the company alive in a global economy? If it's a business decision to keep a flailing business alive, who knows better than the owner of the flailing business what weakened their position? How are you going to know what's driving people if you never talk to them?

The world isn't that simple: evil greedy conservatives vs caring, responsible Progressives. There's a lot of evil out there on both sides, and a lot of caring. It's too easy to make this us vs them on every front. We're in a process of enormous change on a huge number of levels, and change engenders fear in human beings - we go back to lizard brain if the fear is strong enough. President Obama is smart enough and has a long enough vision to understand that this is way beyond partisan politics, capitalism, socialism, even campaign funding issues. Societies that can't adapt when the world around them is in flux don't survive. We're at survival point now, and that makes us as scared as the conservatives are.

Simple answers and quick fixes won't move us into the 21st Century. A good solid Democratic win in November would make a huge difference, and that's what I hope all of us are focused on right now.

by I love OCD

This is why we must VOTE on November 2, 2010.~Redeye

Real Liberal Quotes from Real Liberals, for the Real Liberal Mind to Chew On

"The only thing we have to fear is fear itself"~President Franklin D. Roosevelt

Franklin D. Roosevelt had campaigned against Herbert Hoover in the 1932 presidential election by saying as little as possible about what he might do if elected. Through even the closest working relationships, none of the president-elect’s most intimate associates felt they knew him well, with the exception perhaps of his wife, Eleanor. The affable, witty Roosevelt used his great personal charm to keep most people at a distance. In campaign speeches, he favored a buoyant, optimistic, gently paternal tone spiced with humor. But his first inaugural address took on an unusually solemn, religious quality. And for good reason—by 1933 the depression had reached its depth. Roosevelt’s first inaugural address outlined in broad terms how he hoped to govern and reminded Americans that the nation’s “common difficulties” concerned “only material things.”

The problem of power is how to achieve its responsible use rather than its irresponsible and indulgent use — of how to get men of power to live for the public rather than off the public.~Senator Robert F. Kennedy

First is the danger of futility; the belief there is nothing one man or one woman can do against the enormous array of the world's ills — against misery and ignorance, injustice and violence. Yet many of the world's great movements, of thought and action, have flowed from the work of a single man. A young monk began the Protestant reformation, a young general extended an empire from Macedonia to the borders of the earth, and a young woman reclaimed the territory of France. It was a young Italian explorer who discovered the New World, and 32-year-old Thomas Jefferson who proclaimed that all men are created equal. "Give me a place to stand," said Archimedes, "and I will move the world." These men moved the world, and so can we all.

"Politics is about the improvement of people’s lives, lessening human suffering, advancing the causes of peace and justice in our country and the world… Politics is what we create out of what we do, what we hope for, what we dare to imagine."~
Senator Paul Wellstone 1944-2002

I remember how he stood his ground in an era during which the needs of average Americans were largely ignored while power and money became even more concentrated in already wealthy, powerful hands; how he fought for economic justice, for universal health care, for a higher minimum wage and prescription drug benefits under Medicare; how he always had time to listen; how he challenged us, asking in The Conscience of a Liberal, ”How can we live in the richest, most privileged country in the world and still hear from Republicans, and too many Democrats, that we cannot afford to provide a good education for every child, that we cannot afford to provide health security for all our citizens?”; how he expressed concern for the safety of Muslim Americans after the 9-11 attacks; how he set aside an hour a week to talk with his interns to stay in touch with their lives; how he relied on and frequently sought the advice of his # 1 campaigner, his wife Sheila, who died with him; how he chose to run again despite the onset of multiple sclerosis, relying on his bubbling spirit to pick up the slack while the money poured in from out of state conservatives who were determined to bring him down; and how he was winning despite the efforts of corporations like the big pharmaceuticals that blessed his opponent with $200,000 while giving Wellstone $900 and change. Paul Wellstone was outspent time and again, but he was a winner because he played no favorites and was never outworked. Senator Tom Harken, Paul’s best friend and comrade through many Senate battles, fought back tears to say it best: “Paul was hampered by a bad back, but he had a backbone made of steel!”

A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death. Martin Luther King, Jr., Where Do We Go from Here: Chaos or Community? 1967.

I believe it will end with a ruling of the 11th Circuit Court of
Appeals or a ruling of the U. S, Supreme Court. If this can happen to me, it can happen to mayors, congressman or presidents who appoint or take some action favorable to a contributor.

My conviction is anti-American in the sense politics must be funded and presidents who are elected appoint contributors as ambassadors, members of Congress vote in favor of issues that benefit contributors and governors appoint contributors to all kinds of positions. This is done every day in America, in every state and in Washington, DC.~Former Alabama Governor Don Siegelman

"I'm sick and tired of being sick and tired"~Fannie Lou Hammer

Fannie Lou Hamer, a Mississippi sharecropper, changed a nation's perspective on democracy.

Hamer became involved in the civil rights movement when she volunteered to attempt to register to vote in 1962. By then 45 years old and a mother, Hamer lost her job and continually risked her life because of her civil rights activism. Despite this and a brutal beating, Hamer spoke frequently to raise money for the movement, and helped organize the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party, to challenge white domination of the Democratic Party. In 1964, the MDFP challenged the all-white Mississippi delegation to the Democratic Convention, and in l968, the Convention seated an integrated challenge delegation from Mississippi.

Deeply committed to improving life for poor minorities in her state, Hamer, working with the National Council of Negro Women and others, helped organize food cooperatives and other services. She continued political activities as well, helping to convene the National Women's Political Caucus in the 1970s. She is buried in her home town of Ruleville, Mississippi, where her tombstone reads, "I am sick and tired of being sick and tired."

"If you think Halloween is scary, don't vote on November 2nd and see how scary it will be"~Redeye

If democrats lose blame it on black voters

The script is already written; Democrats lost the majority in congress. Blame it on them there trifling black voters. I can already hear the post election, armchair quarterbacks and Talking TeeVee Pundit Heads blaming black folks because the gop infused, media enabled, Tea Party is in control of the government again. They are counting on black folks not showing up at the polls because "Obama is not on the ticket" and everyone knows they only showed up to vote for the black guy. *Snark*

Democrats know black voters hold the fate of the democratic majority in their hands and turnout is the key. Republicans also know their fate is in the hands of black folks, that's why they are already planning stuff like THIS. But I digress.

Democrats' hope could depend on black voter turnout

ATLANTA --- How Georgia Democrats fare in next month's election could depend on whether black voters show up at the polls.

Observers say turnout will be especially key among African-Americans, who turned out in record numbers two years ago across the country to elect President Obama. Obama's absence on the ballot, combined with an overall lack of interest in the midterm vote, will likely mean waning black support this year for Democratic candidates.

Democrats courting black voters in midterm elections

While President Obama's approval rating among African-Americans remains high, Democrats have voiced concerns that his popularity may not translate into votes come November's midterm elections.

The party has an added worry in that, historically, midterm elections generate smaller voter turnout than in presidential election years. The level of African-American votes Obama won in 2008, which was abnormally high, may be all but impossible to recreate during this less popular election season.

Bright's fate may depend on black voter turnout (Ain't this a dip?)

WASHINGTON -- The fate of Democrats in 20 competitive House races, including Rep. Bobby Bright, could rest on how many black voters show up at the polls on Election Day, a new report says.

Bobby not so Bright republican is the perfect example of candidates who run on the democratic ticket to take advantage of black voters and after they win govern like republicans. Bright voted with the republicans on 13 out of 15 major issues. Black democratic voters didn't vote for that. Democratic women didn't vote for that. Democratic labor voters didn't vote for that. If they had wanted that they would have voted for the republican candidate. Oh wait. They did. He's already saying he won't vote support Nancy Pelosi as SOH . Black democratic voters are damned if they do, damned if they don't vote for Bobby not so Bright republican. @#$%! And they wonder why black folks aren't excited about voting?

I blame the democratic leadership, specifically the DCCC, for the Bright fiasco. Their first mistake was letting Bobby Bright decide if he was going to run as a republican or a democrat. Psst! If a candidate has to decide which party he's a member of that should be your first clue. This is your second clue they are NOT a democrat;

A Southern Baptist deacon, Bright opposes abortion. He favors gun rights and once, angered by a crime wave, urged Montgomery citizens to buy firearms, learn how to use them, and do so when necessary. He champions the military in a region that is home to big installations. He frowns on taxes.

Their second mistake was not supporting the real, progressive democrat Cheryl Sable for US Congress.

I believe that Alabama is ready for positive change. I am the only candidate in this race who is promising something different. I have spent the better part of my life standing for equality and social justice. I fought for human rights in Alabama , and I will fight for justice in Washington. I have the background and qualifications to do a good job.

Hate to say it, but the democratic party takes black voters for granted. They need the black vote to get elected and to stay elected, but if they could figure out a way to accomplish either task without the black vote they would. What are black voters to do and where are black voters to go?

Can Democrats get the votes they need simply because they're not Republicans? You might think so in this presidential campaign. African-American and urban votes are critical to any Democratic victory. Bill Clinton won two terms without winning the most white votes. His margin was the overwhelming support of black voters. George Bush learned that lesson; that's why his campaigns spent so much effort suppressing the black vote in key states like Florida in 2000 and Ohio in 2004. His victory margin was the tally of votes suppressed or uncounted.
Republicans are looking at another bloodbath in House and Senate elections next year -- the Presidential race is their great hope to hang onto some power and they will throw everything but the kitchen sink at it. Look at their committee fundraising if you don't believe me on that. Democrats can't afford to turn off African American voters -- or any other big chunk of our coalition -- if we want to win next November.

African American voters are the most loyal democratic voting block. The right to vote for African Americans is steeped in blood, sweat, tears, and pain. African Americans don't vote for candidates based on race, gender or sexual orientation. African American voters for candidates who share their INTERESTS.

Time and time again white democratic voters prove they will vote based on race/sex and against their INTEREST. For example,more Alabama white democrats voted for McCain/Palin than Obama/Biden in the 2008 Presidential election. More white democrats voted for Artur Davis than Ron Sparks in the Alabama democratic gubernatorial primary. Some would say it's because Davis didn't evoke a negative fear among whites. Based on the theory "the politicians that evoke negative fear among whites are those who have done the most for black representation in this state...especially Joe Reed. Hank Sanders and Richard Arrington have worked to increase political opportunity for blacks, but not at the expense of whites. Are you only liked by white voters if you water down the truth and ignore political reality?"

If democrats want to get African Americans out to vote they should start by working on their friends, neighbors, and co-workers now! Tell them to quit voting against their own interests. Black democrats will do our part, as we always do, so don't expect us to "take one for the team". In other words, give us something to vote for or we'll stay our Ebony Donkey's at home. The right NOT to vote for candidates who don't share our INTEREST is sacred to us too.