Around Town: Tea party, Plant Sale and some Tennis Columbus Ledger-Enquirer The first annual Dirty Spokes Iron Hill Trail race will be held Saturday at Red Top Mountain State Park, Cartersville, Ga. The trail takes runners on single and double-tracks for an off-road running experience. The course is beautiful and perfect for ... |
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Around Town: Tea party, Plant Sale and some Tennis - Columbus Ledger-Enquirer
The case against Steve Stockman is growing.
After being arrested on conspiracy charges earlier this month, the former Texas congressman and his ex-employee were hit Tuesday with a 28-count indictment alleging they stole hundreds of thousands of dollars from charities, some of which they used to finance his campaigns and pay for personal expenses. Stockman and the former aide, Jason Posey, are also accused of trying to cover up the scheme, in which another ex-employee has already pleaded guilty.
According to the indictment, from May 2010 to October 2014, Stockman sought out about $1.25 million in donations based on false pretenses. Over those years, Stockman allegedly diverted part of that sum for personal and campaign expenses including to fund what the U.S. Department of Justice described as a covert surveillance project targeting a perceived political opponent.
Stockman has said he will be vindicated in the case. He initially blamed his arrest on the deep state, a term used to describe political adversaries in the federal bureaucracy that has gained prominence under President Donald Trump. His lawyers have since distanced themselves from that claim.
Stockman served twice in Congress, first from 1995 to 1997 and then from 2013 to 2015. He gave up his seat to unsuccessfully challenge U.S. Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, in the 2014 GOP primary.
BY PATRICK SVITEK, THE TEXAS TRIBUNE
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Former Tea Party congressman Steve Stockman hit with 28-count indictment over charity fraud - Raw Story
In American politics, "when it really looks like we're forever going to be in X, that's a pretty good sign to start betting on Y," says Reason's Matt Welch. After a period of wall-building and anti-immigrant fervor, in which "more people die in the desert," we can expect that the political pendulum will swing way back in the opposite direction.
On today's podcast, Nick Gillespie, Katherine Mangu-Ward, and Welch discuss Trump and immigration in the context of Robert Draper's masterful New York Times Magazine story on Steve Bannon, in which the presidential adviser slimes libertarians for "not living in the real world." The Reason crew also talks about what do about "the giant loogie" hanging off Paul Ryan's face after the collapse of the GOP's health care bill and the Speaker's failure to live up to the title of "wonk king;" whether the coming push for tax reform will go any better than the health care debacle; and the Associated Press' controversial decision to permit journalists to use "they" as a single, gender-neutral pronoun. Is it language evolution or devolution? What would rap super-producer DJ Khaledfamous for invoking the phrase they don't want you to...think?
To wrap things up, Katherine Mangu-Ward explains the genesis of Reason magazine's buzz-generating new punctured-wall cover. Need to know how to import marijuana from Mexico via catapult? Subscribe!
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Photo of Steve Bannon by Gage Skidmore (Creative Commons license) and of ersatz Captain America by Reason.
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Steve Bannon vs. the Tea Party Libertarians [Reason podcast] - Hit ... - Reason (blog)
How is it that the 37 most rightwing members of the House, the so-called Freedom Caucus, have disabled the Republican majority?
The explanation is the relatively recent tradition that Republicans never make bipartisan agreements with Democrats, except in the rare cases when they can peel off a few conservative Democrats to totally capitulate to Republican terms. If Republicans could bring themselves to work with Democrats the norm for most of American history the outsized influence of the most extreme Republicans would collapse.
The Republican posture of ultra-partisanship, which has now backfired, is something recent in American legislative politics. It dates only to the presidency of George W. Bush, and more recently to the Republican wall-to-wall blockage of Democratic initiatives under President Obama.
Before that, President Bill Clinton, who had a Republican majority in Congress for six of his eight years, frequently reached across the aisle to win majorities for policies, some of them liberal and some conservative.
This posture, commended by the strategist Dick Morris, was called Triangulation. It drove liberals crazy, but enabled Clinton to govern. (Clinton was also willing to play partisan hardball when then Speaker Newt Gingrich shut down the governmentand had to back down.)
Under Clinton, liberal legislation like the Family and Medical Leave Act and the hike in the minimum wage were passed with mostly Democratic votes, but also with support of some Republicans. Conversely, more conservative bills, like the NAFTA deal in 1993 and the enactment of a draconian welfare reform (TANF) in 1996, passed with mostly Republican votes and a minority of Democrats.
Before Clinton, Republican President George H.W. Bush governed the same fashion. He reached across the aisle to get Republican and Democratic support for the Americans with Disabilities Act and the 1990 Clean Air Amendments. He enlisted Democrats when his fellow Republicans balked at a tax increase.
Several bills in the eras of the first president Bush and Bill Clinton bore the names of Ted Kennedy and Republican co-sponsors Nancy Kassebaum or Orrin Hatch.
Early in the Bush II Administration, W worked with Democrats over the objection of some Republicans to win support for an expansion in federal aid to education in exchange for federal standards, and to add a Medicare drug benefit.
And then partisanship gradually hardened. Under the so-called Hastert Rule, Republicans avoided bipartisan coalitions. It was first propounded in November 2004 by the then House Speaker, Dennis Hastert, as a way to maintain tighter party discipline. The Hastert rule bound Republicans to vote with a majority of the Republican caucus position.
Hastert left Congress in 2007, after Republicans lost control of the House. Hastert was subsequently found guilty of ethics violations and went to prison in a sex scandal, after it was revealed that he had been paying hush money to former students who he had abused as a wresting coach.
But when Republicans took back the Congress after 2010, they imposed a more extreme version of the same idea. They simply stopped working across the aisle.
This strategy worked well enough in their cynical opposition to anything Barack Obama imposed, but it has now given a de facto veto power to their own most extremist members the Freedom Caucus. Basically, the caucus has inverted the Hastert Rule, and feels free to oppose the GOPs rightwing policies if the are not rightwing enough. This has made it all but impossible for the Republican majority to govern.
There is a very simple cure, one that would consign the Freedom Caucus the political oblivion that it so richly deserves Trump and the Republicans should rediscover the benefits of bipartisanship.
After all, Trump did not campaign as a conservative but as a populist. He is not much of a partisan Republican and is cordially detested by most Republicans, who tolerate him only to the extent that they can use him.
If any president should be practicing triangulation, it is Donald Trump. Where is the ur-opportunist Dick Morris now that we need him? (Morris fell from grace in 1996 when he was caught with a hooker.) He and Trump were surely destined for each other.
If Trump and relatively sane Republicans could get together with Democrats to improve the aspects of the Affordable Care Act that do in fact need fixing, like rising premiums, they could tell the Tea Party Republicans in the Freedom Caucus to take a hike. Likewise on infrastructure and trade measures.
That maneuver and repositioning would show true artistry of the deal. With upwards of a hundred Democrats supporting bipartisan measures, the 37 whack jobs in the Freedom Caucus, who surely have no loyalty to Trump, would cease to have influence.
Are some House Republicans and Trump himself ready to acknowledge that reality and this option? It would allow for a restart of his presidency, more consistent with the promises he made in the campaign.
Or do they just share a hatred of Democrats so profound that they will continue to allow the Freedom Caucus to wreck the Republican Party and the Trump presidency alike?
Robert Kuttner is co-editor of The American Prospect and professor at Brandeis Universitys Heller School. His latest book is Debtors Prison: The Politics of Austerity Versus Possibility. http://www.amazon.com/Debtors-Prison-Politics-Austerity-Possibility/dp/0307959805
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How To Marginalize The Tea Party - Huffington Post
A national tea party group is supporting the health care bill that President Trump and House Speaker Paul D. Ryan are urging lawmaker to pass on Capitol Hill.
Sal Russo, the co-founder and chief strategist of Tea Party Express, which bills itself as the largest tea party political action committee, told Medium that the bill is the first step in President Donald Trump and Speaker Paul Ryans promise to repeal and replace Obamacare.
Admittedly, this is far from a perfect repeal, and no conservative would propose this if it werent for the reality of the obstructionist Democrats in the Senate, Mr. Russo said. But President Ronald Reagan had the right idea as he faced a Democratic-controlled House throughout his presidency. He would regularly say about working with the Democrats, If they offer you half a loaf, what do you do? You take half a loaf and then you come back for more.
Lacking support for the plan, House GOP leaders postponed a vote on the proposal on Thursday and rescheduled it for Friday after it became clear that the votes were not there on both the left and the right in particular in the House Freedom Caucus, which has refused to get on board despite pleas from Mr. Ryan and Mr. Trump.
Outside groups such as Heritage Action and the Club for Growth have called on lawmakers to shoot down the bill, arguing that it does not go far enough.
But Mr. Russo said lawmakers should take the victory and move on to other parts of the conservative agenda.
The American Health Care Act (AHCA) is the first step in President Donald Trump and Speaker Paul Ryans promise to repeal and replace Obamacare, he said in a statement. Conservatives of every stripe should take this opportunity to support this phase of the process by casting what will be remembered as one of the most consequential conservative votes in decades.
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Tea Party Express urges lawmakers to pass health care bill ...