The Richmond-based right wing ultra conservative Family Foundation pretends it is “non-profit” and “non-partisan”. They will host two high-profile Republican politicians at its annual gala dinner Saturday night: Senator Ted Cruz (R-TX) fresh from the federal government shutdown, and the Republican candidate for governor of Virginia, Ken Cuccinelli fresh from the pocket of Johnny Williams. What these two have in mind for our state is beyond sick.
Ken's real battle is with the things he has said and supported that he now wants to back away from. Ken says I never supported that and suddenly a video pops up with him supporting it in his own words. The court system has even caught Ken playing fast and loose with citizens of Virginia in dealings with energy companies. He's been caught taking money from businesses the state is dealing with. Ken is unfit to be elected to office.
The Family Foundation is a group that seeks to “strengthen families in Virginia by applying founding principles and faith to policy and culture.” They want to control womens bodies and have the main say on all issues of women's health care. Is it any wonder the female vote in Virginia is trending to McAuliffe and the democrats by over 20 points. The chairman of the group, David R. Barrett, was appointed a senior advisor to then governor-elect Bob McDonnell. After the Republican governor’s election, Barrett was appointed by McDonnell to the board of directors of the Virginia Birth-Related Neurological Injury Compensation Program.
Ken said to Bob "We're in trouble, they have caught us red handed. What can we do now?" Bob told Ken we'll do what we always do "We'll lie and say the liberal democrats are attacking us. The dim witted republicans will take our side, they always do."
The dinner has not gone unnoticed by furloughed federal workers in Virginia. Virginia has a large number of federal workers and contractors who are going without a paycheck due to Ted Cruz and tea party nuts like Ken Cuccinelli shutting down the government. The last thing Virginia needs is an association with this type of political terriorist and electing one Governor is unthinkable.
If you doubt Ken Cuccinelli shares the thoughts of Ted Cruz consider this. In 2004, Cuccinelli said he "wished" Virginia Republicans had shut down the state over then Governor Warner's bipartisan budget bill that he opposed, going so far as to brag that "in my view we shouldn't have chickened out. I'd have taken them right to the brink. I'd have gone right over the brink" to stop Warner's budget bill. That's the story in Cuccinelli own words. Ken Cuccinelli is a dangerous and twisted man and the last person who should be trusted with any power.
Ken Hates Women. Ken says women are created to follow the orders of a man. Old white male republicans like to gather in a group and make decisions on women's health issues.
The Tea Party shutdown is already negatively impacting thousands of Virginians and will hurt more every day, but Ken Cuccinelli refuses to condemn the tactics that Cruz and his Tea Party allies used to implement this ideology-driven shutdown. Now, Cuccinelli is bringing the architect of the Tea Party shutdown to Virginia to campaign for him. Virginians deserve real leadership from their next governor, not someone who will continually put his own ideological agenda ahead of Virginia jobs.
When asked about it Ken Lied.
For years, Cuccinelli has supported so-called “personhood” legislation that would outlaw many forms of birth control — both as a legislator and as attorney general. But when a voter asked him whether he would “support and sign personhood legislation that contains restrictions on birth control medication and birth control devices,” Cuccinelli denied his own record. He claimed that he’s “never supported legislation that invades people’s choices about contraception.” Ken Cuccinelli outright lied right to the voters face.
I understand why you’d want to walk away from unpopular positions, I’m not fooled by your recent attempt to confuse the voters. I know your record and will do my best to inform voters and counter your lies. You've heard that Cuccinelli Abused His Office to Advance Fossil Fuel Industry Interests and screwed over citizens and pocketed contributions from those same energy companies. That is not myth, its true.
Richmond, VA — A Federal Court judge has issued an opinion stating she was “shocked” that Cuccinelli’s office was assisting natural gas companies in a law suit between those companies and Virginia land owners who have alleged that the gas companies removed gas from under their land without compensation, bilking the land owners out of natural gas royalty dollars.
In response, Glen Besa, Sierra Club-Virginia Chapter Director, issued the following statement:
“Frankly, we at the Sierra Club are not shocked at all by this latest revelation of corruption."
“Almost from first day he was elected, Attorney General Cuccinelli has abused his office on behalf of fossil fuel polluters. Hundreds of thousands of taxpayer dollars have been spent in unnecessary litigation costs as Cuccinelli pursued frivolous suits against the Environmental Protection Agency and even the University of Virginia, all in the name of publicity, climate denial and political gamesmanship."
“Just this year Cuccinelli issued an official advisory opinion siding with the natural gas industry over local governments.
“So, one has to wonder, whose interests are Attorney General Cuccinelli representing? The people of Virginia or the fossil fuel industry?”
No Need to Guess, this man is corrupt.
You don't need to wonder any more, Now You Know. Ken Cuccinelli is a corrupt and dishonest politician.
You get one vote. It is time for you to pull the wool away from your eyes and cast this one wisely. Todays republicans are dangerous, corrupt individuals owened by the special interest. This is not your grandfather's republican party. There was a time when republicans were honest and decent and only wanted the goverment to function smoothly and for the citizens to be helped.
Republicans worked hand in hand with Democrats to make government work for everyone. That time may someday return but it is not available to you today.
Ken Cuccinelli is corrupt. Bob McDonnell faces federal charges and prison time. Your Vote is Important.
Vote Democratic, Vote Smart, Vote for Honesty and Fairness
Vote Terry McAuliffe for Governor
A Commentary by Joe Conason
By Washington standards, the current government shutdown is an everyday disaster -- of a kind we are gradually learning to expect whenever the Republican Party controls Congress. The impending breach of the nation's credit, however, when those same Republicans refuse to raise the debt limit to cover the funds they have spent, threatens a singular catastrophe: unpredictable, global, yet entirely avoidable.
The blame for this disgrace seems to be apportioned properly by most Americans, according to the latest polling data. But the future of the country and the world may well rest on whether voters understand the roots of this crisis -- in a party controlled by an extremist faction that is violating every public value that party has supposedly espoused for 30 years and more.
Republicans used to tell us, often with a self-righteous air, that they were the true upholders of constitutional order, the rule of law, fiscal probity, personal responsibility, majority rights and market
principles. In their unquenchable zeal to oppose President Obama and all his works, they have discarded every one of those ideals.
Care Act -- a law duly passed under the Constitution and declared to be so by a majority of the Supreme Court, including its very conservative chief justice.
(Following that decision, the Republicans spent the next year campaigning to defeat the president on a platform of repealing health care reform -- and were soundly defeated by him instead.)
To measure just how grossly the current attempts to obstruct Obamacare violate their supposed devotion to "law and order," just imagine the Republican reaction if House Democrats had shut down government to force George W. Bush to repeal his beloved tax cuts.
Such hypocrisy is business as usual. But what about the substance of the Republican complaint against health care reform? To anyone aware of the law's historical context, the fanatical Republican opposition simply seems bizarre. Here, after all, is a market-based system, originally conceived and promoted at the ultra-conservative Heritage Foundation as an alternative to Democratic plans for universal coverage. Its fundamental
premises are individual responsibility and the power of competition to control costs and stop waste. Its first proven success occurred in a state governed by a Republican business executive -- whom they later nominated for president.
Nevertheless, the tea party Republicans remain so determined to eradicate Obamacare that they are willing to jeopardize the economic recovery and the nation's future prospects. They justify these outrages in the name of the budget, which they insist will be ruined by the costs of subsidizing health care for the country's
uninsured millions. But there is nothing fiscally responsible about shutting down government, an act that costs the U.S. economy at least $300 million each day -- not including the additional burdens likely to arise from cancelled food inspections, disease monitoring, flu vaccinations and weather reporting, to mention a few vital services that actually save enormous amounts of money and prevent untold suffering.
Should they continue to foment anarchy by causing a debt default, the ultimate costs are totally unpredictable, except that they will be very large. Even the threat of a shutdown in 2011 caused an immediate slowdown and an increase in unemployment. What will the real thing do? Nobody knows for certain, but the resulting market chaos and economic downturn will cause deeper fiscal problems as well as enormous public pain -- at a time when deficits are falling faster than at any time in the past seven decades.
That is why the president and Senate Democrats are right to reject the House leadership's demand for "negotiations". Encouraging the destructive strategies of the extremists would convey precisely the wrong message to them and to the world. No doubt many Republicans, appalled at the shame that the tea party has brought upon their once Grand Old Party, are quietly applauding the president's new found firmness.
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A Commentary By Froma Harrop
Note how tea party politicians routinely start their remarks with "The American people want." And what "the American people want" conveniently coincides with their ideological preferences.
It would seem that the American people -- meaning a massive majority -- don't want this government shutdown.
So scrambling Republicans have come up with "modest" and "common-sense" proposals to end the impasse:
Note how tea party politicians routinely start their remarks with "The American people want." And what "the American people want" conveniently coincides with their ideological preferences.
It would seem that the American people -- meaning a massive majority -- don't want this government shutdown.
So scrambling Republicans have come up with "modest" and "common-sense" proposals to end the impasse:
We can keep the national parks open, they are offering. Also the Department of Veterans Affairs. Let's just yank the tax on medical devices out of the Affordable Care Act or the requirement for contraception coverage.
Simply delay the individual mandate. That's all we ask, and we'll reopen the government.
What about the panda cam? They forgot the panda cam. The American people love watching Mei Xiang licking her adorable cub at the National Zoo. No government, no panda cam.
You see where this is going. And that is why America's leaders, Democrats and sane Republicans, must drive a stake in the heart of the idea that you can close down the government -- and threaten economic meltdown by playing games with the debt ceiling -- to win political concessions.
Nothing the tea party people demand can't be had through the normal political process. It happens that a duly elected House and Senate passed Obamacare. And when asked, the U.S. Supreme Court said it's cool with it.
But if "the American people do not want Obamacare," to quote Rep. Jim Bridenstine and other Republican radicals, they don't have to have Obamacare. They can vote more right-wingers into office and do away with it.
As the public grows ever testier over the shutdown, tea party extremists bleat more loudly about their "modest" and "common-sense" ideas for restarting the government. Here's an analogy:
Guy opens a restaurant. Mobster barges in demanding $10 a week or the place burns down. Owner says no. Mobster
responds in wounded tone, "But $10 is such a modest request."
The more modest the Republican demands, the nuttier they sound. Pious posturing does not alter the fact that we're viewing an extortion racket.
Only unconditional defeat of this tactic can save the principle that you don't shut down government to get this or that concession.
Obama made a serious mistake by negotiating during past trumped-up crises. He's been strong so far.
Here's a happy ending: Republican House Speaker John Boehner does what he should have long ago, sends a spending measure to the House to keep government going. It passes with Democratic and pragmatist Republican votes.
Party hotheads may well respond by stripping Boehner of his speakership. Boehner can frame his action as a personal sacrifice, a patriotic act to stop the shutdown's mounting damage -- to the economy and to America's reputation as a serious power.
Republicans appalled by these antics can regroup and work to cut down the tea party coalition's power and size come the next election. They've got to take the car keys away. Either that or Republicans will crash in districts with sophisticated electorates.
As for the little tea party tyrants, they go on. Defeat is never a problem for them. They can return home blaming their loss on betrayal by "moderate" Republicans. They are martyrs, you see.
But by the 2014 elections, the welcome reality of Obamacare will have sunk in, and even these folks probably won't fight it. They'll come up with new self-serving claims about "what the American people want."
What Americans need right now is an abject defeat of the idea that government shutdowns offer a respectable forum for negotiations. Pray that Obama stands firm on this.
Follow Froma Harrop on Twitter @fromaharrop.
Amherst County Virginia Democratic News
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