ACVDN Investigates Fox News and Americas Next President

There is a dream agenda being chased by Roger Ailes and Rupert Murdoch.     Ailes was a media consultant for Republican presidents Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan, and George H. W. Bush, as well as Rudy Giuliani’s first mayoral campaign in 1989 so his republican leanings come as no surprise.      Ailes served as a political consultant for many Republican candidates during the 1960s, 70s and 80s.      His first such job was as media advisor for the Nixon campaign in 1968.      He returned to presidential campaigning as a consultant to Ronald Reagan.      Ailes is president of Fox News Channel and chairman of the Fox Television Stations Group.

Prices Store Virginia News, Amherst County

Roger's dream is to support, control and elect the first Fox News President of the United States of America.

Who is Rupert Murdoch?     I'll give you the short answer and then the long answer.     Rupert Murdoch is a wealthy dirtbag with no morals or concience and far right wing leanings and republican party sympathies.       Now (below his photo) the longer more accurate answer.

Ruritan Virginia News, Amherst County

In recent years, Australian-born billionaire Rupert Murdoch has used the U.S. government's increasingly lax media regulations to consolidate his hold over the media and wider political debate in America. Consider Murdoch's empire:    According to Businessweek, "his satellites deliver TV programs in five continents, all but dominating Britain, Italy, and wide swaths of Asia and the Middle East. He publishes 175 newspapers, including the New York Post and The Times of London.     In the U.S., he owns the Twentieth Century Fox Studio, Fox Network, and 35 TV stations that reach more than 40% of the country...His cable channels include fast-growing Fox News, and 19 regional sports channels.     In all, as many as one in five American homes at any given time will be tuned into a show News Corp. either produced or delivered."      But who is the real Rupert Murdoch?     As this report shows, he is a far-right partisan who has used his empire
explicitly to pull American political debate to the right.     He is also an enabler of the oppressive tactics employed by dictatorial regimes, and a man who admits to having hidden money in tax havens.     In short, there more to Rupert Murdoch than meets the eye.

In 2003, Rupert Murdoch told a congressional panel that his use of "political influence in our newspapers or television" is "nonsense." But a close look at the record shows Murdoch has imparted his far-right agenda throughout his media empire.
Sandusky Park Virginia News, Amherst County

MURDOCH THE WAR MONGER:     Just after the Iraq invasion, the New York Times reported,   "The war has illuminated anew the exceptional power in the hands of Murdoch, 72, the chairman of News Corp… In the last several months, the editorial policies of almost all his English-language news organizations have hewn very closely to Murdoch's own stridently hawkish political views, making his voice among the loudest in the Anglophone world in the international debate over the American-led war with Iraq."      The Guardian reported before the war Murdoch gave "his full backing to war, praising George Bush as acting 'morally' and 'correctly' and describing Tony Blair as 'full of guts'" for his support of the war.     Murdoch said just before the war, "We can't back down now – I think Bush is acting very morally, very correctly."    [New York Times, 4/9/03; Guardian, 2/12/03]    Sandy Bottom Virginia News, Amherst County

MURDOCH THE NEOCONSERVATIVE:     Murdoch owns the Weekly Standard, the neoconservative journal that employed key figures who pushed for war in Iraq.      As the American Journalism Review noted, the circulation of Murdoch's Weekly Standard "hovers at only around 65,000.     But its voice is much louder than those numbers suggest." Editor Bill Kristol  "is particularly adept at steering Washington policy debates by inserting himself and his views into the discussion."     In the early weeks of the War on Terror, Kristol "shepherded a letter to President Bush, signed by 40 D.C. opinion-makers, urging a wider military engagement."    [Source: AJR, 12/01]    Sardis Virginia News, Amherst County

MURDOCH THE OIL IMPERIALIST:     Murdoch has acknowledged his major rationale for supporting the Iraq invasion: oil.      While both American and British politicians strenuously deny the significance of oil in the war, the Guardian of London notes, "Murdoch wasn't so reticent.    He believes that deposing the Iraqi leader would lead to cheaper oil."      Murdoch said before the war, "The greatest thing to come out of this for the world economy...would be $20 a barrel for oil.     That's bigger than any tax cut in any country."      He buttressed this statement when he later said, "Once [Iraq] is behind us, the whole world will benefit from cheaper oil which will be a bigger stimulus than anything else."       [Guardian, 2/17/03]   Viking Fiord Virginia News, Amherst County

MURDOCH THE INTIMIDATOR:    According to Agence France-Press, "Rupert Murdoch's Fox News Channel threatened to sue the makers of 'The Simpsons' over a parody of the channel's right-wing political stance…In an interview this week with National Public Radio, Matt Groening recalled how the news channel had considered legal action, despite the fact that 'The Simpsons' is broadcast on sister network, Fox Entertainment.     According to Groening, Fox took exception took a Simpsons' version of the Fox News rolling news ticker which parodied the channel's anti-Democrat stance with headlines like 'Do Democrats Cause Cancer?'"    [Source: Agence France-Press, 10/29/03]
West Bethel Virginia News, Amherst County

MURDOCH THE NEWS EDITOR:     "When The New York Post tore up its front page on Monday night to trumpet an apparent exclusive that Representative Richard A. Gephardt would be Senator John Kerry's running mate, the newspaper based its decision on a very high-ranking source:  Rupert Murdoch, the man who controls the company that owns The Post, an employee said yesterday.   The Post employee demanded anonymity, saying senior editors had warned that those who discussed the Gephardt gaffe with other news organizations would lose their jobs."    [NY Times, 7/9/04]   West Briar Virginia News, Amherst County

Just as Fox claims to be "fair and balanced,"  Rupert Murdoch claims to stay out of partisan politics.      But he has made his views quite clear – and used his media empire to implement his wishes.      As a former News Corp. executive told Fortune Magazine, Murdoch "hungered for the kind of influence in the United States that he had in England and Australia"  and that meant "part of our political strategy [in the U.S.] was the New York Post and the creation of Fox News and the Weekly Standard."

ACV Democratic News

MURDOCH THE BUSH SUPPORTER:     Murdoch told Newsweek before the war, Bush "will either go down in history as a very great president or he'll crash and burn.     I'm optimistic it will be the former by a ratio of 2 to 1…One senses he is a man of great character and deep humility."    [Newsweek, 2/17/03]
Westview Virginia News, Amherst County


MURDOCH THE BUSH FAMILY EMPLOYER:     As Slate reports, Murdoch "put George W. Bush cousin John Ellis in charge of [Fox's] Election Night vote-counting operation:   Ellis made Fox the first network to declare Bush the victor" even as the New Yorker reported that Ellis spent the evening discussing the election with George W. and Jeb Bush.     After the election, Fox bragged that it attracted 6.8 million viewers on Election Night, meaning Ellis was in a key position to tilt the election for President Bush.    [Source: Slate, 11/22/00; New Yorker, 11/20/00]   ACVDN
Williamsburg Manor Virginia News, Amherst County

MURDOCH THE MIXER OF BUSINESS AND POLITICS: James Fallows of the Atlantic Monthly points out that most of Murdoch's actions "are consistent with the use of political influence for corporate advantage."     In other words, he uses his publications to advance a political agenda that will make him money.      The New York Times reports that in 2001, for example, The Sun, Britain's most widely read newspaper, followed Murdoch's lead in dropping its traditional conservative affiliation to endorse Tony Blair, the New Labor candidate.     News Corp.'s other British papers, The Times of London, The Sunday Times and the tabloid News of the World, all concurred.      The papers account for about 35% of the newspaper market in Britain.     Blair backed "a communications bill in the British Parliament that would loosen restrictions on foreign media ownership and allow a major newspaper publisher to own a broadcast television station as well a provision its critics call the 'Murdoch clause' because it seems to apply mainly to News Corp.     [Atlantic Monthly, 9/03; New York Times, 4/9/03]   ACVDN

MURDOCH THE NEW YORK CITY POLITICAL BOSS:   The Columbia Journalism Review reported that during New York Mayor Rudolph Giuliani's first term "News Corp. received a $20.7 million tax break for the mid-Manhattan office building that houses the Post, Fox News Channel, TV Guide and other operations. During Giuliani's 1997 reelection campaign, News Corp. was also angling for hefty city tax breaks and other incentives to set up a new printing plant in New York City. Most dramatically, Giuliani jumped in to aggressively champion News Corp. when it battled Time Warner over a slot for the Fox News Channel on Time Warner's local cable system…Three years into Giuliani's first term, veteran Village Voice political reporter Wayne Barrett asked Post editorial page editor Eric Breindel if the paper had run a single editorial critical of the administration; Breindel, he says, admitted it had not.     According to Barrett, the paper pulled off a perfect four-year streak" of not one critical editorial.    [Columbia Journalism Review, 6/98]   ACVDN


Rupert Murdoch thinks of himself as a staunch anti-communist.     But a look at the record shows that when his own profits are on the line, he is willing to do favors for the most repressive regimes on the planet.

MURDOCH THE DEFENDER OF REPRESSIVE REGIMES: The last governor of Hong Kong before it was handed back to China, Chris Patten, signed a contract to write his memoirs with Murdoch's publishing company, HarperCollins.      But according to the Evening Standard, when "Murdoch heard that the book, East and West, would say unflattering things about the Chinese leadership, with whom he was doing satellite TV business, the contract was cancelled. It caused a furor in the press - except, of course, in the Murdoch papers, which barely mentioned the story." According to BusinessWeek, internal memos surfaced suggesting the canceling of the contract was motivated by "corporate worries about friction with China, where HarperCollins' boss, Rupert Murdoch, has many business interests."     [Evening Standard, 8/13/03; BusinessWeek, 9/15/98]   ACVDN

MURDOCH THE APOLOGIST FOR DICTATORSHIPS:  Time Magazine reported that while Murdoch is supposedly "a devout anti-Soviet and anti-communist" he "became bewitched by China in the early '90s."    In an effort to persuade Chinese dictators that he would never challenge their behavior, Murdoch "threw the BBC off Star TV"  (his satellite network operating in China)  after BBC aired reports about Chinese human rights violations.     Murdoch argued the BBC "was gratuitously attacking the regime, playing film of the massacre in Tiananmen Square over and over again."      In 1998 Chinese President Jiang Zemin praised Murdoch for the "objective" way in which his papers and television covered China."    [Source: Time Magazine, 10/25/99]


MURDOCH THE PROPAGANDIST FOR DICTATORS:  While Murdoch justifies his global media empire as a threat to "totalitarian regimes everywhere," according to Time Magazine, Murdoch actually pays the salary of a top TV consultant working to improve the Chinese government's communist state-run television CCTV.     As Time notes, "nowadays, News Corp. and CCTV International are partners of sorts," exchanging agreements to air each other's content, even though CCTV is "a key propaganda arm of the Communist Party."    [Source: Time Magazine, 7/6/04]

MURDOCH THE ENABLER OF HUMAN RIGHTS VIOLATORS:      According to the LA Times, Murdoch had his son James, now in charge of News Corp.'s China initiative, attack the Falun Gong, the spiritual movement banned by the Chinese government after 10,000 of its followers protested in Tiananmen Square.     With Rupert in attendance, James Murdoch called the movement a "dangerous" and "apocalyptic cult" and lambasted the Western press for its negative portrayal of China's awful human rights record.     Murdoch "startled even China's supporters with his zealous defense of that government's harsh crackdown on Falun Gong and criticism of Hong Kong democracy supporters." Murdoch also "said Hong Kong democracy advocates should accept the reality of life under a strong-willed 'absolutist' government."     It "appeared to some to be a blatant effort to curry favor" with the China's repressive government.    [LA Times, 3/23/01]   ACVDN

MURDOCH THE HIDER OF MONEY IN COMMUNIST CUBA:     Despite a U.S. embargo of communist Cuba, the Washington Post reports, "News Corp.'s organizational chart consists of no less than 789 business units incorporated in 52 countries, including Mauritius, Fiji and even Cuba."    [Washington Post, 12/7/97]   ACVDN


From union busting to tax evading, Rupert Murdoch has established a shady business record that raises serious questions about his corporate ethics.

MURDOCH THE UNION BUSTER:     The Economist reported that in 1986 Murdoch "helped smash the British print unions by

transferring the production of his newspapers to a non-union plant at Wapping in East London."     The move "proved to be a
turning-point in Britain's dreadful industrial relations."     AP reported Murdoch specifically "slashed employment levels" at the union plant and said he would "dismiss the 6,000 striking workers" who were trying to force concessions out of the media baron.     The London Evening Standard called the tactics "the biggest union-busting operation in history."      [Sources: The Economist, 4/18/98; AP, 1/27/86; Evening Standard, 11/12/98]   ACVDN


MURDOCH THE CORPORATE TAX EVADER:    The BBC reported that "Mr. Murdoch's die-hard loyalty to the tax loophole has drawn wide criticism" after a report found that in the four years prior to June 30, 1998, "Murdoch's News Corporation and its
subsidiaries paid only $325 million in corporate taxes worldwide. That translates as 6% of the $5.4 billion consolidated pre-tax profits for the same period…By comparison another multi-national media empire, Disney, paid 31%.     The corporate tax rates for the three main countries in which News Corp. operates - Australia, the United States and the UK - are 36%, 35% and 30% respectively. Further research reveals that Mr. Murdoch's main British holding company, News Corp. Investments, has paid no net corporation tax within these shores over the past 11 years.     This is despite accumulated pre-tax profits of nearly $3 billion."     [Source: BBC, 3/25/99]   ACVDN


MURDOCH THE LOVER OF OFFSHORE TAX HAVENS: When a congressional panel asked if he was hiding money in tax havens, including communist Cuba, Murdoch responded "we might have in the past, I'm not denying that."   The Washington Post reports, "through the deft use of international accounting loopholes and offshore tax havens, Murdoch has paid corporate income taxes at one-fifth the rate of his chief U.S. rivals throughout the 1990s, according to corporate documents and company officials."       Murdoch "has mastered the use of the offshore tax haven."     His company "reduces its annual tax bill by channeling profits through dozens of subsidiaries in low-tax or no-tax places such as the Cayman Islands and Bermuda.     The overseas profits from movies made by 20th Century Fox, for instance, flow into a News Corp.-controlled company in the Caymans, where they are not taxed."     [Source: Congressional Testimony, 5/8/03; Washington Post, 12/7/97]    ACVDN


MURDOCH THE ABUSER OF TAX LOOPHOLES:     Even though Murdoch changed his citizenship in order to comply with U.S. media ownership rules, many of his companies have remained Australian, allowing them "to utilize arcane accounting rules that
have pumped up reported profits and greatly aided Murdoch's periodic acquisition sprees."     IRS officials point out that "U.S.-based companies face U.S. taxes on their offshore subsidiaries in the Caymans and elsewhere if more than 50 percent of the subsidiary is controlled by American shareholders.     But that doesn't apply to News Corp., an Australian company."
[Source: Congressional Testimony, 5/8/03; Washington Post, 12/7/97]   ACVDN

ACVDN BOTTOM LINE

Will Fox News pick the USA President?     Employeed as Fox News analysts are Sarah Palin, Mike Huckabee, Rick Santorum, and Newt Gingrich and they are considering pitching their hats into the ring and Fox is giving them all the support it can muster.   

 Fox offers money and support freely to the republican party. It has been said and only half jokingly that the GOP is the political arm of Fox News.     Any republican candidate can count on friendly, 24 hour a day, 7 day a week coverage by the Fox Group and any Democrat can count on being attacked and trashed continually.      Four candidates for the republican party nomination are on the Fox payroll and are sheltered from real scruiny and interviewed only by Sean Hannity and other friendly Fox anchors.    As always our last line of defense is the intellegence level of the American voter.    Be afraid, be very afraid.






ACV Democratic News

Obama's Economic Advisers

President Barack Obama named Jeffrey Immelt, General Electric Co.’s chief executive officer, to head his outside panel of

economic advisers, replacing former Federal Reserve Chairman Paul Volcker.

In announcing Immelt’s appointment to take the helm of the newly renamed President’s Council on Jobs and Competitiveness, Obama said the economy is “in a different place” from where it was during the financial crisis when Volcker was brought on, and new ideas are needed to keep the momentum going.

“The past two years was about moving our economy back from the brink,”  Obama said alongside Immelt during an event in

Schenectady, New York, home to the birthplace of GE’s energy business. “Our job now is putting our economy into overdrive.”

He said Immelt “understands what it takes for America to compete in the global economy.”

As head of the world’s biggest maker of jet engines, medical-imaging equipment and power-plant turbines, Immelt gives the

White House a corporate heavyweight to help burnish Obama’s pro-business credentials.      Immelt, 54, GE’s CEO since 2001, is

an original member of the panel, which was formed as the President’s Economic Recovery Advisory Board in February 2009.

In Schenectady, Immelt said while more than half of GE’s revenue comes from outside the U.S., he wants to ensure that “this is the most competitive country in the world.”

GE had 304,000 employees at the end of 2009, down from 310,000 at the end of 2001. About 134,000 were based in the U.S.

Even as some executives and the Chamber of Commerce have criticized Obama, GE’s chief has sounded many of the administration’s themes: boosting jobs through exports, ensuring companies can compete with China and India, and jumpstarting a clean-energy economy.

“It’s the right aspiration,”  Immelt said of the president’s goal of doubling American exports to more than $2 trillion in five years, during a Nov. 6 interview in Mumbai, where he joined Obama for a meeting with business leaders.     “We’ve done it in the last five years as a company.”

Still, Immelt and GE have clashed with the administration on some fronts, including funding for the company’s alternative engine for Lockheed Martin Corp.’s Joint Strike Fighter and some aspects of the financial regulatory overhaul.

The administration today reiterated its opposition to the jet engine program.     “The secretary of defense, the president have made the point that this is not something that we need,”  White House press secretary Robert Gibbs told reporters aboard Air Force One en route to Schenectady.

GE, which reported results today, climbed after fourth- quarter profit growth topped analysts’ estimates, industrial equipment orders rose and sales increased for the first time in two years. Shares rose $1.31, or 7.1 percent, to $19.74, the highest close since November 2008.

On a conference call with investors to discuss the results, Immelt said his commitment to the company won’t change with his new role on the council.     “My leadership at GE, that doesn’t change,” he said.

The council plans to meet quarterly with Obama and is supported by Treasury staff, spokeswoman Deirdre Latour said.     Gibbs

said Obama will “meet probably more regularly with the new group.”

Immelt has reshaped his company, selling units such as plastics and bond insurance while expanding energy, health care, transportation and jet engines.

Last year, GE’s stock outpaced the Standard & Poor’s 500 Index for the first time since 2004 after lagging amid asset sales and investor concern about the GE Capital finance unit.      The shares fell 55 percent from Aug. 31, 2001, just before Immelt took over from Jack Welch, to the end of 2010.     That compares with an 11 percent rise in the S&P 500.

The advisory panel that he will head was originally meant to bring together business executives and other experts to advise Obama on combating the worst recession in seven decades.

The panel’s start-up was delayed, and Volcker, known for taming inflation as Fed chairman in the 1980s, told colleagues he sometimes felt it was more of a public relations tool for the White House, according to a person familiar with his views.

He did advise the administration on the rewriting of financial laws, however. And the Volcker rule -- which banned proprietary trading at banks and restricted their investments in private-equity and hedge funds -- was named after him.

Volcker, 83, had agreed to serve only for two years as head of the board and plans to be available to advise the administration, according to another person familiar with the matter.

“I have relied on Paul Volcker’s counsel as we worked to recover from the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression,”  Obama said in a statement.    “I have valued his friendship and skill over the years, and I will rely on his counsel for years to come.”

Members of the existing advisory board include Robert Wolf, head of UBS AG’s Americas unit, Jim Owens, former chairman of

Caterpillar Inc., and Richard Trumka, president of the AFL-CIO labor union federation.     Immelt, a self-described Republican, has emerged as one of Obama’s most visible outside economic advisers. In addition to the summit in India, he was among the executives who met with Obama and Chinese President Hu Jintao this week and later attended the state dinner honoring the Asian leader.

GE, which received regulatory approval for the sale of a majority stake in its NBC Universal unit to Comcast Corp. this week, has also made its presence known in Washington through lobbying:   It spent $39.3 million in 2010, more than any other company, new Senate filings show.

Immelt’s relationship with Obama wasn’t always close.     During the 2008 campaign, he donated $2,300 to Obama’s Democratic

primary challenger, Hillary Clinton, and $2,300 to the Republican presidential nominee, Senator John McCain of Arizona, according to the Center for Responsive Politics.

Yet in recent months, Immelt has championed some administration goals against criticism.

He described as “real positives” Obama’s agreement to extend Bush-era tax cuts and “the tone of just being open to work

with business.”

While Obama has come in for criticism from some business groups, U.S. corporate profits in the third quarter of 2010 exceeded the 2006 high reached before the recession.      Optimism about the economy among CEOs of the largest companies rose in the fourth quarter to the highest level since the start of 2006, according to a Business Roundtable survey.

While the S&P 500 has risen more than 50 percent since Obama took office, the country is dealing with the longest stretch of unemployment rates above 9 percent since monthly records began in 1948.

GE has announced 6,500 new U.S. manufacturing jobs and retained more than 8,700 permanent and temporary positions across its manufacturing units in the past two years.

Many of the jobs are tied to Immelt’s export push. GE this week announced joint ventures and orders for Chinese rail, aviation and energy projects that may yield $2.1 billion in sales, creating or retaining about 5,000 jobs.

ACVDN BOTTOM LINE

Big business runs the show and be ye Democrat, Republican or  any where in between you will toe the line. 

Obama to Speak to Country and GoodBy Joe

President Barack Obama will deliver the 2011 State of the Union address before a joint session of Congress on Tuesday, January 25th.     The prime time speech is scheduled to begin at 9:00 PM.

                                                                                                                   Amherst Virginia Democrat
When President Obama takes to the podium to deliver his second State of the Union speech on Tuesday night, he’ll face a decidedly more Republican Congress than in 2010.     He’ll also have new House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) looking over his shoulder instead of Nancy Pelosi (D-CA).


To help diffuse partisan tensions at the 2011 State of the Union address, members of both parties are calling for mixed seating at the event.     ABC News took note yesterday when Secretary of State Hillary Clinton voiced her support for the proposal.     House majority whip Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) also likes the idea, according to Politico.     They aren't alone.

                                                                                                                     Amherst Virginia Democrat
Having Democrats and Republicans sit side by side would be a symbolic showing of bipartisanship at a time when Americans are demanding more cooperation between the two major parties.     It's just what the doctor ordered.


Partisan rancor hit an all-time high at the 2010 State of the Union address, when Congressman Joe Wilson (R-SC) famously shouted the words “You lie!” at the President.     

Last week, CNN reported that one gun distributor had gone so far as to engrave the phrase on semi-automatic rifle part.     The part is no longer for sale, much to the relief of Wilson.     Maybe sitting beside a Democrat will make the South Carolina Republican think twice before opening his big mouth this time around.


If the republicans do create another disturbance you can expect them to fall in line and defend the offender as they always do.     I'm hoping for a night of good behavior.      These types of outbursts are degrading for the whole country not just the republican party (as if you could degrade a republican).


TV Guide has the 2011 State of the Union scheduled to air on all of the major television networks, as well as on CNN, CNBC, Fox News, and MSNBC.

ACV Democratic News

GOOD-BY JOE

Amherst Democrat

In a message to supporters Joe Lieberman announced that he's ending his Senate career, quoting the Old Testament.     "I have decided it is time to turn the page to a new chapter, and so I will not be a candidate for re-election to a fifth term in the U.S. Senate in 2012," he wrote.     "The reason for my decision, after 40 years in elective office, is best expressed in the wise words from Ecclesiastes:   'To everything there is a season, and a time to every purpose under Heaven.'   For me, it is time for another season and another purpose under Heaven."      ACVDN applauds Joe's decision.

Joe Lieberman will not run for reelection in 2012, Connecticut Democratic sources revealed.     Joe Mentum has run out of steam and Democrats welcome the  ending of his four-term Senate career.     Two prominent House Democrats, Chris Murphy and Joe Courtney, are eyeing a bid, with Susan Bysiewicz, a thrice-elected former secretary of state, also jumping into the race.

Lieberman, who lost a 2006 primary to netroots insurgent Ned Lamont, announced his retirement on Wednesday.     "Senator A Connecticut Democratic insider said that Courtney, Murphy and Bysiewicz all benefit from a Lieberman campaign.     "They would raise so much money, they'd get a ton of enthusiasm and a ton of earned media,"  he said.      "I don't think he has a path to victory at all, period.     That said, a Democrat has a better chance of winning against, say, Linda McMahon alone than Linda McMahon, Joe Lieberman and a Democrat."

Both Courtney and Murphy have reached out to the Connecticut labor community to gauge support for a run and, say two different Washington-based Democrats, each is all but certain to make a bid.


"My interest in running for Senate in 2012 is well known in the state, and I expect to announce my decision very soon," Murphy said.      "All I can say now is that this is going to be a pretty busy few weeks."

A well-sourced Connecticut blogger first reported that Lieberman would announce his departure.      Lieberman's staff has been notably silent about the Senator's plans, and D.C.-based Democrats say -- as of Tuesday afternoon -- they have no clue what his thought process is going into tomorrow's announcement.      Local press, however, has also reported that the Senator will announce that he won't run for re-election.      "You can bet the farm" that Lieberman won't seek a fifth term in 2012, a Democratic insider close to the Senator told the Hartford Courant.

                                                                                                                                  ACV Democratic News
Lieberman made a decision about his future over the holidays which he plans to announce on Wednesday," a Lieberman
spokesman said.     In 2006, Lieberman ran under a party he created called Connecticut for Lieberman.     Anti-Lieberman activists, however, have since taken it over.     In other words Connecticut for Lieberman  is now Connecticut for Anybody But Lieberman.     So Joe is faced with the realiziation that nobody wants him and so JoeTirement looms.


As Lieberman deliberated, the new chair of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, Sen. Patty Murray (D-Wash.), said that the party would consider supporting Lieberman if he returned to the fold.     Sen. Murray needs to get her hat adjusted and let Lieberman go his merry way.    Joe the Democrat supported Republican Party Candidate John McCain in the last Presidential election.    The quicker Joe disappears the better.


"This is first a Connecticut decision.    It's a Joe Lieberman decision and we'll work our way through all of that," Murray
said. "He and I have chatted a number of times."       Sen. Murray the power of your chatting ability is next to zero if Joe is the evidence you present of its usefulness.     The Democratic Party should have ejected Joe two years ago and all of his committes should have been stripped.     If you folks in leadership don't maintain order in the ranks there will be none.      An orderly well run party doesn't happen all by itself, the active hand of leadership is needed.      I've got three words for you, Let Joe Go.


Lieberman serves as a repository for the anger progressive Democrats have for centrists in -- and out of -- the party, and
some would like little more than to unseat him at the polls.     The feeling of ill will is mutual:   Lieberman said during the health care debate that one reason he opposed a Medicare buy-in compromise was that progressives were embracing it.


Lieberman's participation in the race would have drawn national attention -- and money -- to the Connecticut race, leaving his political adversaries hoping that he would run.

                                                                                                                              Amherst Democratic News
ACVDN Bottom Line.     Joe was a self centered, petty prick.     He opposed a Medicare buy-in compromise because progressives were embracing it.     He turned his back on his party and supported the opposition at election time.      He was a keynote speaker at the Republican Convention.      His action on the Medicare buy-in caused damage to over 100 Million Americans.     Joe thought he was much greater than he really was.     His feelings were bruised by not being chosen by the party to run for president.      Joe is like a clump of dog do you step in.      You slide your foot around in the grass and clean your shoe as best you can but the smell lingers on for awhile.     That is Joe Lieberman.      Good Riddance.

ACV Democratic News


The Republicans got their symbolic victory in the House on health care.     But with Speaker John Boehner’s repeal effort is going nowhere fast.

In a move that, with any justice, would enshrine the notion of “Kabuki Democracy” in the nation’s consciousness, the Republican leadership of the House of Representatives engineered an entirely symbolic 245 to 189 vote to “repeal and replace” the Obama administration’s health-care reform plan with unnamed and so far secret “free-market solutions” to control health costs and expand coverage.

They’re calling it Repealing the Job-Killing Health Care Law Act, and almost nothing about the melodrama on the floor of the House that passed it was on the level.      Most obviously, the vote will not, in anyone’s imagination, lead to the repeal of the bill, as Harry Reid has made it clear the Senate will not be taking it up, ever.      This is just as well with the Republicans, however, as they have not bothered even to begin crafting an alternative.     “I don’t know that we need artificial deadlines set up for the committees to act,”  Speaker John Boehner said.      “We expect them to act in an efficient way, allowing all of their members on their committees to be heard, both Democrats and Republicans.”

Nor would it be accurate to term what happened on the House floor to be a “debate” by any of the known definitions of the term.      As Ezra Klein observed,  “Each representative gets a minute to speak before they yield the floor…No exchange of views.    No probing of weak arguments.     Just a lot of quick and poorly written sound bites, one after the other, over and over again.”


It’s hardly a wonder that no minds were changed.      In fact the “repeal” side appears to have given up ground.     Republicans had hoped to secure a significant number of Democrats to join them in this exercise but managed only three.

Suzy Khimm notes, this means “10 House Democrats who voted against the original health-reform bill refused to repeal it today.” This may have something to do with the fact that suddenly, Barack Obama is popular again, with more Americans approving of his performance and more seeing him as a political moderate, according to a new Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll.      In the survey, 53 percent said they approved of the job Obama is doing as president, which marks a rise of eight percentage points from December, a jump of nearly 20 percent.      And remember, this is with unemployment still stuck at 9.4 percent and likely destined to fall.
And while it’s true that about as many Americans tell pollsters that the law should be repealed as say it should be retained—another recent Journal/NBC poll shows 46 percent of Americans either “strongly” or “not so strongly” oppose the repeal, compared with 45 percent who either “strongly” or “not so strongly” favor its elimination, while another poll finds an even 39-39 percent split on the question, the “repeal” side has the fanatics on its side.      Some 34 percent say they feel “strongly” that the law stinks while only 29 percent feel “strongly” the other way around.


But digging down even inches below the surface, one finds a panoply of positions at odds with the Republican “repeal at
any cost” position.      For instance, when pollsters working for ABC News/Washington Post asked opponents of the health-care law to name their preferences, only 26 percent said they really wanted repeal.      Others wanted the law expanded or reformed or scaled back in specific areas.      In fact, the number who wants the law expanded is just about equal to the number who wants it repealed.

Democrats know this, and know that repeal is extremely unlikely to take place.     New York’s Rep. Anthony Weiner tried to turn it into a drinking game:  “You take a shot whenever the Republicans say something that’s not true.”


They also know that now that the law has been passed, a great many vested interests—interests with powerful Washington
lobbies—are not interested in having all the planning and investment they have done on that basis thrown into question.


Neither, presumably, will the estimated 129 million Americans with pre-existing medical conditions likely be supportive once Democrats start accusing their opponents of looking to throw them to the mercy of an all-but unregulated insurance industry.      We will see how serious the Republicans are when it comes time to cut off funding for the bill many months from now.


In the meantime, the entire exercise raises the question of who is really running the Republican Party.      After all, who benefits from this vote?      My answer would be conservative Capo de tutti capi Roger Ailes and Fox News.      They get days and days of free programming and pretend debate with congressman after congressman expressing the same talking points that viewers hear on a daily basis from Hannity, Beck, O’Reilly, and Palin.

Plenty of free outrage will be on display, and Stewart and Colbert can rerun it as parody the following night.      (Remember all those folks who think the law really, really stinks.     Well, they all watch Fox…)     Meanwhile, the folks on Fox can pretend, with Republican House Majority Leader Eric Cantor, that (all of a sudden) it is an outrage that the Democratic Senate is playing a dysfunctional role in our democracy.      “The American people deserve a full hearing,”     Cantor said, “they deserve to see this legislation go to the Senate for a full vote.”


Nancy Pelosi’s House majority passed fully 300 bills that, as David Weigel reports, “never got anywhere in the Senate,” and that was under a supermajority of the same party.      Now all of a sudden one meaningless bill is bottled up and it’s a national emergency.

Still, it will sound just great on Fox News…over and over again.

ACV Democratic News



 

Tuesday 1-18-2011 GOP KILLS Health Care

Tommorow the republicans try to kill health care.

ACVDN

AGAIN

Some of those benefits have been implemented, such as allowing adult children younger than 26 to be on their parents' insurance policies, closing the "doughnut hole" so seniors don't pay so much for prescriptions and allowing Medicare to cover preventive care without a co-pay.     If you've recently started being covered by any of the above be concerned but don't worry too much.

                                                                                                                                  Amherst VA Democrats
John Boehner and House Republicans have enjoyed their assassination vacation, but they don’t have time to try out the titles of any other Sarah Vowell books, because they have to spend next week performing their most important legislative achievement of the next two years:    pretending they can repeal Obamacare.  

Pretending they can repeal Obamacare.

This is what Gabrielle Giffords would want, after all.      She put her life on the line every day, especially when meeting her violent constituents, because she believed she was doing important work, un-like these pointless exercises.     If only that dead nine-year-old could have lived to see this, eh?     If only.      She would be so proud of her country and game playing republicans.




In light of the shootings, the health care debate will be closely watched to see if lawmakers show new restraint after calls from President Obama and many others to bring a more civil tone to political discourse.     In his statement, Mr. Dayspring said, “It is our expectation that the debate will continue to focus on those substantive policy differences surrounding the new law.”


Right.     Such as how Obama wants to murder all of your family and, more importantly, probably even your precious pets, with socialism.     This is not going to be civil.


Democrats will probably even try to defend their health care legislation.

The House of Representatives had planned to vote on the repeal last week, but after Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, D-Ariz., was

critically wounded in an assassination attempt, the House called off all business to pay its respects.     Debate is now scheduled to begin Tuesday with a vote likely Wednesday.


"Americans have legitimate concerns about the cost of the new health care law and its effect on the ability to grow jobs in our country," said Laena Fallon, House Majority Leader Eric Cantor's spokeswoman.


When the vote to repeal the law does take place, congressional watchers said, it will likely pass in the Republican-controlled House, and then not even be brought up in the Senate, where Democrats hold the majority.     Meanwhile, both sides are making plans for what comes next.


"The Republicans see this as a window of opportunity," said Drew Altman, president of the non-partisan Kaiser Family Foundation, referring to midterm election results and polls that show Americans' unhappiness with the law.     "The Democrats will try to shift it on its head to talk about popular benefits."

Thomas Scully, who was administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services under President George W. Bush, said he expects Republicans to present funding challenges and attempt to delay key pieces, using potential costs as a driving force.

Republicans, including House Speaker John Boehner, say the law will cost "billions," while the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office says repealing the law would increase the deficit by $230 billion from 2012 to 2021.


Scully said Republicans and moderate Democrats could try to delay a provision, which is supposed to take effect in January 2014, that extends Medicaid to everyone who falls below 133% of the poverty level — or about $14,000 a year for a family of four — until the states can afford it.     The federal government will fund the first three years of coverage.


Michael Cannon, director of health policy studies at the libertarian Cato Institute, sees other options.     "There are lots of things short of an all-out repeal that could throw sand in the gears to slow it down and possibly bring it to a screeching halt,"  he said.     That might include votes on individual mandates and investigations into how the bill is being implemented and how it was passed.


Democrats are using the repeal effort as an opportunity to sell the law and educate people about the benefits that are already in place. Rep. Jim McDermott, D-Wash., spoke with Doctors for America during a Jan. 6 news conference about why the law is necessary. "Our job right now is to play defense," he said.
Amherst County Democrats

U.S. split on health care law repeal

Americans are closely divided over whether the new Republican-controlled House should vote to repeal the health care law that was enacted just last year, a Gallup Poll finds.


But partisans on both sides are united: Republicans solidly back repeal, and Democrats overwhelming want to let the law stand.

The survey results help explain why Republican leaders are determined to forge ahead with repeal — House Speaker John

Boehner has scheduled a vote for Wednesday — even though the effort is virtually guaranteed to fail in the Senate.


The findings, which show independents almost evenly split, also highlight an opportunity for Democrats to renew efforts to make the case for President Obama's signature legislative achievement.


Forty-six percent of those surveyed Tuesday and Wednesday say they want their representative to vote for repeal; 40% want the law to stand.


Nearly eight of 10 Republicans support repeal.     In contrast, about two-thirds of Democrats want the law to stay in effect.


Independents are inclined to support repeal, but by a margin too small to be statistically significant.


Drew Altman, president of the Kaiser Family Foundation, calls the repeal effort "dramatic political signaling" by Republicans that they plan to use the health care issue to keep Tea Party supporters satisfied and their political base united.


The more significant battles will come later, he says.     The repeal vote is likely to be followed by months of efforts to chip away some provisions of the law and to deny other provisions the federal funding they need to be implemented.


Republican sponsors say the law will cost the country billions, and they have named their bill the "Repeal The Job-Killing Health Care Law Act."

However, the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office on Thursday concluded that repealing the law would increase the national debt by about $230 billion from 2012 to 2021.

                                                                                                        Democrats of Amherst County VA
House Majority Leader Eric Cantor questioned the CBO report. Budget office accountants, though non-partisan, "are only able to score the bill that was put in front of them," he said in a statement.


He said Democrats had used tax increases, "gimmicks that double count savings," and Medicare cuts to fund the law.    Democrats call the repeal vote a "stunt."

"The Republican effort to repeal the health reform law will not pass, and it is little more than a stunt to score points with their base," says Regan Lachapelle, spokeswoman for Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev.


The White House and congressional Democrats are launching a full-court press of speeches, events and press releases to spotlight popular parts of the law that already have gone into effect, such as provisions that allow young adults to stay on their parents' health insurance plans to age 26.


Three members of Obama's Cabinet sent a letter to Congress warning that repealing the law would exacerbate the problems that prompted the law in the first place, including higher premiums for consumers and less competition among insurers.


In the poll, a majority of men endorse repeal while women are inclined to want the law to stand.

One of the most dramatic divides is by age.     By 50%-30%, young adults under 30 support the law.     But their middle-aged parents, those 50-64 years old, favor repeal by an almost equally wide margin.


The poll of 1,025 adults has a margin of error of +/–4 percentage points.

ACV Democratic News

Update on Vote To Kill Health Care

The Republican-led House of Representatives voted Wednesday to repeal the 10-month-old health reform law, a symbolic rebuke of President Obama's signature legislative accomplishment.

Each of the chamber's 242 Republicans voted to support the bill;  all but three Democrats voted against it.


The move fulfilled a pledge Republicans made to voters in the 2010 campaign for a swift vote to undo what they called the "job-killing" measure.

Republicans in the House didn't need help from Democrats to repeal the health care reform law but they got a little anyway.     Three Democrats voted against their party in the mostly symbolic vote.    Who are these three Democrats who can't support their party on a symbolic vote.

Dan Boren of Oklahoma, Mike McIntyre of North Carolina and Mike Ross of Arkansas 

All three are members of the Blue Dog coalition, a group of moderate Democrats from conservative districts, republicans pretending to be democrats.     Returning these gentlemen to the public sector at the earliest possible moment is the mission.



They were among 39 Democrats who voted against their party nearly a year ago when it first passed the historic health care overhaul.    Of the 30 Democrats who voted no and ran for re-election, there were only 13 who were re-elected.

So you see we got something out of the mid terms to be thankfull for also.     Only 13 of the original 39 remain.     9 stepped aside and didn't run and 17 that did run got defeated.     Having useless do nothings in the caucus serves no purpose unless their numbers push you into a position to control the house.     When you are in the minority these people are just dead weight that serve no purpose.


ACV Democratic News

Early Signs of Alzheimer's

                                                                                                   Amherst Virginia Democratic News

In an interview with "20/20", Ron Reagan, the son of President Ronald Reagan, said that when his father was in office, no one thought he had Alzheimer's disease -- the devastating illness he was diagnosed with less than two years after leaving the White House.

But Ron Reagan said that he did notice something had changed about his father during his presidency.    The father and son often had spirited, fast-paced political debates when Ron visited the president at the White House.     But during one such debate, Ron Reagan grew concerned.


"There was just something that was off. I couldn't quite put my finger on it," he told "20/20's" Elizabeth Vargas.

Ron Reagan grew worried enough to spend a day at the White House shadowing the president.     That was when he noticed something else -- his father was reading note cards as he made phone calls.     It wasn't an obvious sign that something was wrong, but it bothered Ron Reagan nonetheless.


"It wasn't like oh my God he doesn't remember he's President...You know, it was just -- I had an inkling something was going on," he said.


In hindsight, Ron Reagan believes what he say were early signs of Alzheimer's.     But Reagan is adamant that his father's illness shouldn't mar his legacy.

"This no more discredits or defines his presidency than Lincoln's chronic depression, Roosevelt's polio, Kennedy's Addison Disease any of those things," he said.     "You can't define their presidencies in terms of that."

To mark the hundredth anniversary of President Ronald Reagan's birth, son Ron Reagan has written "My Father at 100: A Memoir."

                                                                                         Amherst Democratic News
Michael Reagan blasted as "falsehoods and lies and conspiracy theories to sell books," the suggestion by half-brother Ron Reagan that their father may have had Alzheimer's disease while still in the White House.

"In order for that that happen, you would have to have doctors, the Secret Service and other family members all part of the same conspiracy,"  he told Politics Daily.     Reagan's diagnosis of Alzheimer's was not announced publicly until 1994, five years after he left office.

Michael ripped the excerpt from Ron's book, "My Father at 100," that appears in Sunday's Parade magazine.      Ron Jr. cites a 1989 post-presidential visit to the Mayo Clinic in Minnesota after a riding accident.     "Surgeons opening his skull to relieve pressure on the brain emerged from the operating room with the news that they had detected probable signs of Alzheimer's disease.      Further tests conducted the following year confirmed those suspicions."


Ron dates his suspicions about the disease to the 1984 re-election campaign.     "I felt the first shivers of concern that something beyond mellowing was affecting my father" during the first debate against Democratic nominee Walter Mondale.     "My heart sank as he floundered his way through his responses.     He looked tired and bewildered."      Ron Jr. also notes that by 1986 his father couldn't remember the names of familiar canyons when flying over California, adding that doctors now know the disease can go unrecognized for some time.      "The question, then, of whether my father suffered from the beginning stages of Alzheimer's while in office more or less answers itself,"  he writes.

"Nobody was happy with the debate,"   Michael told me by phone from Miami.      But Ron's suggestion of early onset of the disease "is the last thing I would have expected from him, to take this kind of shot at his Dad with no evidence except he watched a debate between Dad and Mondale."

                                                                                                                                 ACV Democratic News
The semi-siblings who haven't spoken in years, are political and religious opposites.     Michael Reagan, 65, is a conservative former radio talk show host who was adopted by Reagan and his first wife, actress Jane Wyman.     He sired the Gipper's only two grandchildren with longtime wife, Colleen, and is a regular churchgoer.

Ron, 52, the natural son of Reagan and his second wife, actress and former first lady Nancy Davis Reagan, is a liberal former talk show host on the defunct left-ish Air America network.     He is also a self-professed atheist.


Michael, who hopes to become a GOP political consultant, told me that as the author of a half dozen books,  "I know publishers want to have that 'ah-ha' moment, something to put out to promote the book.      But to go to this extent to just tell falsehoods and lies and conspiracy theories to get it out there, is outrageous.     Really, to do this to his mother at 89 and as fragile as she can be, Ron and Patti (Davis) are the only two children she's got, and for him to do this just to sell a book, I mean it's just unconscionable.     There are enough great stories he could share that would make news, great 'inside baseball' stories."

U.S. News & World Report reported Friday that although Ron, "who became a liberal and atheist, disappointing his dad" writes about presidential brain surgery in San Diego, "there is no reporting about any San Diego operation on Reagan.     News reports at the time of his fall say Reagan was flown to a hospital in Arizona, where he was treated for scrapes and bruises and released after five hours."      The U.S. News blog Washington Whispers, which first reported the Ron Reagan story, also notes that the president's four White House doctors said they saw no evidence Reagan had Alzheimer's while in office.


"Basically Ron has my dad looking like the Congresswoman in Arizona, with his head shaved and half his brain exposed,"
Michael Reagan told me.     He was referring to Democratic Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, who was shot in the head during last Saturday's Tucson massacre.     "I saw my father on and off and I never saw anything that looked like that.     Certainly he would have shared that story."

Michael readily admits he is estranged from both Ron and half-sister Patti Davis, whose liberal views also caused her parents grief over the years.      In 2005 she wrote "The Long Goodbye," a loving, first-person account of her father's decline into dementia that starts in 1995, six years after he left Washington.


Michael says he hasn't spoken to Ron since the reading their father's will after his death in 2004.      While he refused to discuss inheritance details, he says, "it wasn't enough for Ron or for anybody to retire on...I hope Patti doesn't come out and try to support Ron.     He needs to own this deal because it's a conspiracy theory that everybody has to be involved in, including my father's own children."


On Friday, the Ronald Reagan Foundation and Library in Simi Valley, Cal., issued a statement calling Ron's book "wonderfully warm and engaging."      But, "as for the topic of Alzheimer's, this subject has been well documented over the years by both President Reagan's personal physicians, physicians who treated him after the diagnosis, as well as those who worked closely with him daily.     All are consistent in their view that signs of Alzheimer's did not appear until well after President Reagan left the White House."


Ron Reagan's national publicity tour kicks into high gear next week, culminating with his father's 100th birthday Feb. 6.


Michael is also taking advantage of his father's centennial with a book of his own, "The New Reagan Revolution."

ACVDN Bottom Line

The theory of medecine and the reason for regular medical checkups is that diseases may start years before they become a problem and our doctor may catch an early warning signal and lessen the effects.     It isn't possible to pin point the day alzheimers began to show effects on President Ronald Reagan.     Perhaps his family members who interacted with him more than even his doctors can make the best guess.     The dialog now taking place between Ron and Michael Reagan says more about them than it does their dad.       Michael seems to be the driving force behind this madness and unless it is publicity he seeking, handle it privately.

Here are the top six Bills before Congress per public interest.    These are the ones the people are watching.

ACV Democratic News