Displaying 421 To 450 Of 16,275 Comments Remarks by the President at the A.P. Luncheon Oh I really like that Kalima! Only people with a genuine passion, who speak from a place of truth and not of deception and lies, can encourage us to be better. And I think that is what he did today, he spoke the truth. I have and heard various criticisms of the speech today but none saying he lied. Can’t say that about Mitts speeches. » Posted By bito On April 3, 2012 @ 9:33 pm Good question funk, and I don’t have the answer except that perhaps they are waiting for the primary to get to the point where Santo drops out and only Romney remains (Nwet and Paul don’t count) before they fully reveal their team of attack-dogs. Just a thought. » Posted By bito On April 3, 2012 @ 9:09 pm You got it perfectly Kalima, it wasn’t filled with empty words and lies that come from the R’s. Of course it had it’s share of campaigning but it had a lot of facts that the R’s are incapable of answering so far. Both Mitts and Paul Ryan’s speeches tonight didn’t come close to answering PBO’s speech., just more BS and lies. » Posted By bito On April 3, 2012 @ 8:19 pm Sally, with the primary being basically over, Mitt is going to be held accountable with what he says about PBO and what he says PBO says according to Mitt. He has to be listened to by someone. Are you saying that it’s not you that’s going to be doing the listening? đ » Posted By bito On April 3, 2012 @ 8:05 pm Pants on fire: Romney manipulates the Presidentâs words on the deficit Mitt Romney has resorted to lying about what President Obama has actually said in order to attack him. Take a look at how Romney blatantly twists the Presidentâs words about the deficit, and then share it with your friends. http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=IH9pIDUshww » Posted By bito On April 3, 2012 @ 7:50 pm I’m having difficulty finding a favorite passage or one that typifies the whole speech, but after listening to Mitts speech and his sloganeering and empty phrasing perhaps the comparison is easy to see by many. What will happen when Mitt gets off the primary speeches and has to fill in his empty slogans, will he have the facts to back them up or does he think he can win with the “liberty of free enterprise” type slogans. May sound like it means something but they don’t. From PBO’s speech: And the choice is really very simple. If you want to keep these tax rates and deductions in place â or give even more tax breaks to the wealthy, as the Republicans in Congress propose â then one of two things happen: Either it means higher deficits, or it means more sacrifice from the middle class. Seniors will have to pay more for Medicare. College students will lose some of their financial aid. Working families who are scraping by will have to do more because the richest Americans are doing less. I repeat what Iâve said before: That is not class warfare, that is not class envy, that is math. And Mitt wants to try some more trickle on policy, facts be damned. The contrast is there and it is stark, IMHO » Posted By bito On April 3, 2012 @ 7:22 pm Like the joke says k’es about the world’s smallest book being “Business Ethics.” » Posted By bito On April 12, 2012 @ 4:04 pm Two more bite the dust: The American Legislative Exchange Council, a right-wing corporate front group that helped passed âstand your groundâ laws and voter suppression initiatives in states across the country, lost two more member companies. In an email sent to Color of Change, a progressive group organizing the petition against ALEC, Mars, Inc., the maker of M&Mâs and Snickers, announced that they have âdecided not to renew the ALEC membership in 2012.â Arizonaâs largest energy company, Arizona Public Service, has severed ties with ALEC as well. Following pressure from progressives, a host of other companies announced they would no longer contribute to ALEC in the past two weeks, including Coca Cola, Pepsi Co, Intuit, Kraft, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and Wendyâs. http://thinkprogress.org/justice/2012/04/12/463893/mars-inc-severs-ties-alec/ » Posted By bito On April 12, 2012 @ 3:56 pm Seems they got “The Letter,” that they were next. McDonaldâs Now Claims To Have Ditched ALEC, Despite Recently Defending Its ALEC Membership The fast food giant tells Mother Jones that it recently decided to cut ties with ALEC, the corporate-backed group that drafts pro-free-market legislation for state lawmakers around the country. âWhile [we] were a member of ALEC in 2011, we evaluate all professional memberships annually and made the business decision not to renew in 2012,â Ashlee Yingling, a McDonaldâs spokeswoman, wrote in an email. Yingling didnât mention any specific campaign or outside pressure as playing a role in the companyâs decision to leave ALEC. . . . […] McDonaldâs sought to clarify its relationship with ALEC after a coalition of progressive groups with members in all 50 states, including Common Cause and Color of Change, announced plans on Tuesday to target McDonaldâs for its ongoing membership in ALEC. Rashad Robinson, Color of Changeâs executive director, said groups in the coalition were âfloodingâ McDonaldâs, Johnson and Johnson, and State Farm with phone calls demanding they stop backing ALEC. This is a weird and interesting part of their statement: In a February 29 letter to Robinson, McDonaldâs said that it remained a member of ALEC â although it disclaimed involvement with ALECâs model Voter ID legislation which disenfranchises thousands of poor, minority and elderly voters. Do members get to pick and choose what they support, but doesn’t paying dues to ALEC in effect mean they are backing them and all their endeavors? Is this how it’s going to have to be done? One corporation at a time before all consumer corporations quit ALEC? » Posted By bito On April 10, 2012 @ 2:29 pm Hey, don’t shoot the messenger! đ đ I agree with both of you that it’s a shame that a spotlight has to on them before they do the right thing and investigate exactly who they are giving money and grants too. The information on them didn’t just come out recently, many groups have been complaing about them for years, not just the last couple of months. I think we brought them up as far back as 2009 on our pages. The people that quit recently knew, they just didn’t want to admit it. A CMD Special Report on ALEC’s Funding and Spending Sue has this link in her post, just a reminder: » Posted By bito On April 9, 2012 @ 5:31 pm Gates Foundation Will Withdraw Support for ALEC Nonprofit The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation today became the latest backer to withdraw financial support for the American Legislative Exchange Council. A foundation spokesman told Roll Call that it does not plan to make future grants to the conservative nonprofit, which has come under fire from progressive activists for its support of voter identification laws and other contentious measures. […] âWe have made a single grant, narrowly and specifically focused on providing information to ALEC-affiliated state legislators on teacher effectiveness and school finance,â said Chris Williams, the spokesman, noting that the foundation was never a dues-paying member. The foundation advocates for global health initiatives and efforts to reduce poverty. » Posted By bito On April 9, 2012 @ 3:36 pm Intuit quits ALEC! A stampede seems to be on the way as more and more groups break ties and dump ALEC. Intuit, Inc. (maker of Quicken and QuickBooks accounting software) told the Center for Media and Democracy (CMD) that Intuit also decided not to renew its membership after it expired in 2011. That comment came from Bernie McKay, Vice President of Government Affairs. He gave this response when CMD identified that Intuit was no longer listed on the board and contacted the company. CMD began its effort to spotlight Intuit and other corporate funders and tie these corporations to the ALEC agenda when it launched ALECexposed.org in July 2011 Wal-Mart and Koch still want to suppress votes and take away your health care. » Posted By bito On April 6, 2012 @ 10:29 am Sally, I didn’t know that about Pepsi, they left before the CoC petition was even out. It could have been the AFL-CIO’s petition, who knows? » Posted By bito On April 5, 2012 @ 6:12 pm Sally, you type faster than I do! đ đ » Posted By bito On April 5, 2012 @ 6:07 pm John Nichols just reported that Kraft food has just withdrawn their membership! » Posted By bito On April 5, 2012 @ 6:01 pm Sue, According to the Ed Show, Pepsi has joined Coke and als quit ALEC!! Wal-Mart needs to be next! (methinks Van Jones is taking a little bit too much credit and giving too much to “Color of Change” too. Too many other organizations have been working on exposing ALEC and for long time.) » Posted By bito On April 5, 2012 @ 5:37 pm Well lookee here, Sue! Coke caves in face of Democratic boycott threat Democratic officials Wednesday launched a two-pronged attack on states with new laws requiring identification before voting, the highlight being a call to boycott Coke, Walmart and others that back a leading organization pushing for voter ID laws. Coke was quick to react to the political boycott threat, pulling support from the targeted group just five hours after it was called. Walmart said that support for a group does not mean it backs every decision by those groups. At issue: Liberal claims that some states are trying to keep minority voters from the polls via voter ID laws, a suggestion conservatives call silly. […] Officials from another party-backed group, Color of Change, kicked off a boycott of Coke and other financial backers of the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) which supports new voter ID laws. Other supporters include Walmart and Koch Industries. The boycott call started with a tweet (@CocaCola is helping undermine voting rights. Tell them to stop) and a webpage. The group also has tied the Council to the Trayvon Martin shooting case. [….] In caving into the economic threats, Coke told Secrets: “The Coca-Cola Company has elected to discontinue its membership with the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC). Our involvement with ALEC was focused on efforts to oppose discriminatory food and beverage taxes, not on issues that have no direct bearing on our business. We have a long-standing policy of only taking positions on issues that impact our Company and industry.” OMG, can’t believe the ignorant comments, read at your own risk. » Posted By bito On April 4, 2012 @ 4:47 pm Sue, I thought of you when I heard him bring up AE yesterday and I just stole your tweets and sent them to Ratagain. Amazing that he has staff to look into things before he starts spewing or perhaps he knows and doesn’t care because it ruins his “both parties are the same meme. » Posted By bito On April 3, 2012 @ 1:41 pm Sue it amazing how much damage ALEC has done to democracy in the US while Dems were either asleep or bickering amongst ourselves. Thanks for keeping them exposed and for posting this article! They are stealth no longer due to the work you and others have done exposing them. » Posted By bito On April 3, 2012 @ 1:29 pm Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito’s “Caskets R Us!” Can you just find a chicken farm and throw Karl Rove in the chickenshit compost heap? » Posted By bito On March 30, 2012 @ 4:46 pm Cher, C’lady, » Posted By bito On March 29, 2012 @ 2:42 pm I wonder how many hospitals and clinics Mississippi, and as you say, other states, would have to shut down or curtail severances without the subsidies if they didn’t get any federal monies for non-payment on emergency service, which is now at 63% and Medicaid. Don’t forget they can also write-off all those loses. If ACA is unconstitutional, so are emergency services, no? » Posted By bito On March 29, 2012 @ 2:30 pm đ đ đ » Posted By bito On March 29, 2012 @ 1:04 pm Of course I ate lutefisk! It’s the Lutheran version of RC’s doing penance. đ » Posted By bito On March 29, 2012 @ 12:52 pm Cher & C’Lady, your mention of George Lakoff got me reading. This article is from 2003 and did the Dems even bother to read it let alone attempt to institute any of his suggestions? We were warned! Why do conservatives appear to be so much better at framing? Because they’ve put billions of dollars into it. Over the last 30 years their think tanks have made a heavy investment in ideas and in language. In 1970, [Supreme Court Justice] Lewis Powell wrote a fateful memo to the National Chamber of Commerce saying that all of our best students are becoming anti-business because of the Vietnam War, and that we needed to do something about it. Powell’s agenda included getting wealthy conservatives to set up professorships, setting up institutes on and off campus where intellectuals would write books from a conservative business perspective, and setting up think tanks. He outlined the whole thing in 1970. They set up the Heritage Foundation in 1973, and the Manhattan Institute after that. [There are many others, including the American Enterprise Institute and the Hoover Institute at Stanford, which date from the 1940s.] And now, as the New York Times Magazine quoted Paul Weyrich, who started the Heritage Foundation, they have 1,500 conservative radio talk show hosts. They have a huge, very good operation, and they understand their own moral system. They understand what unites conservatives, and they understand how to talk about it, and they are constantly updating their research on how best to express their ideas. http://berkeley.edu/news/media/releases/2003/10/27_lakoff.shtml » Posted By bito On March 29, 2012 @ 12:44 pm Cher, Sorry for bringing up the emergency care mandate, but why can’t that be brought up as unconstitutional? The hospitals and doctors get some federal dollars now to help defray the costs/expenses along with Medicaid. Congress is already in their commerce stream are they not? » Posted By bito On March 28, 2012 @ 8:48 pm I don’t get the humor, have you ever seen or been around those Missouri Synod people?!? đ » Posted By bito On March 28, 2012 @ 7:23 pm Hey C’Lady, I wish that from the very beginning of HCR all Dems would have used the real name of the provision that is now called “the mandate.” It is know as the “Personal Responsibility Provision” and that the word mandate would have never been uttered by a single Dem. I would have drove the R’s crazy to use the correct term since they tout personal responsibility so much. Uninsured people not paying for free services is now at 63% of all cases. I had the close to the same question yesterday about the “mandate” on doctors, hospital, ambulance and EMT services and didn’t congress get involved in their commerce when they passed that law? Can congress now pass a law that says that they now have to go beyond just emergency services, how about to full recovery? Would that be constitutional? It’s just a matter of degree is it not? » Posted By bito On March 28, 2012 @ 7:02 pm What If? The Affordable Care Act and the Supreme Court And stone soup tastes better knowing that you added that can of green beans into the pot. It does for me. » Posted By bito On March 27, 2012 @ 6:34 pm This is just what the ACA has done so far: And I want to see the R’s defend doing away with this part that has been instituted. » Posted By bito On March 26, 2012 @ 10:43 pmComments Posted By bito
Two More Companies â Including Candymaker Mars, Inc. â Sever Ties With ALEC
Well. water under the bridge, we have to keep the pressure on them and expose them.
ALEC Exposed
Great comments on the wordsmithing/Lakeoff subject. This topic needs it’s own post, anyone know a big Lakoff fan to write one? đ I do like that “Path to Poverty,” now to make it the only name for the Ryan plan and make it stick!
( I was brought up in the Swedish Lutheran Church)
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