Tag Archives: Mitt Romney

~ politics petitions pollution and pop culture

1 Million … Barack Obama

10/17/2011 Nativegrl77

Our campaign is about to hit 1 million grassroots donors.

I wanted to write to you because this is something that only happens once.

No matter what our opponents do — and however many people end up becoming a part of this campaign — this first million will always be the group that put this movement in the best position possible for the fights ahead.

Thank you. And know that while you’re one of the first million to step up, you represent millions more across the country who are counting on us.

But we can’t do this alone. We’ve always relied on each other, not Washington lobbyists or corporate interests, to build this campaign. That’s why I’m asking you to inspire someone to make their first donation today by promising to match it.

WWW.BARACKOBAMA.Com

Make a donation to match a first-time donor, and help put us over 1 million today:

Thanks,

Barack

~ politics petitions pollution and pop culture

Republicans comment on Wall Street Protests

10/14/2011 Nativegrl77

by madmanscottmon Oct 7, 2011

A pair of Republican presidential candidates had some harsh words for the protesters who’ve been hectoring Wall Street for the past three weeks: Cut out the “class warfare” and “blame yourself” for being poor and jobless.

Speaking to the Wall Street Journal, Republican presidential candidate Herman Cain said the demonstrators are coming across as “anti-capitalism.” The former CEO of Godfather’s Pizza said the Occupy Wall Street protesters are trying to distract the country from President Obama’s “failed policies.”

“Don’t blame Wall Street, don’t blame the big banks, if you don’t have a job and you’re not rich, blame yourself!” Cain said. “It is not a person’s fault because they succeeded, it is a person’s fault if they failed. And so this is why I don’t understand these demonstrations and what is it that they’re looking for.”

At a campaign stop in Florida Tuesday, Mitt Romney said the demonstrations were “dangerous” and “class warfare.”

When ABC’s Emily Friedman asked Romney today about the protests, the GOP front-runner declined to elaborate on his previous comments, saying “I’m just trying to get myself to occupy the White House.”

Published on Oct 7, 2011 by CBS

At the Value Voters Summit on Friday, Rep. Eric Cantor (R-Va.)said he is “increasingly concerned” by “Occupy Wall Street” demonstrations which began in New York and spread to other major cities.

Oct 5, 2011 by Current

Sen. Bernie Sanders takes issue with Mitt Romney’s definition of class warfare, saying, “Class warfare is being waged in America today – the problem is, the wrong side is winning.” Sanders continues, “In America now you have the most unequal distribution of income and wealth of any major country on Earth, with the top 400 wealthiest people owning more wealth than the bottom 150 million Americans

~ politics petitions pollution and pop culture

From GALLUP.Com: Texas and Mass. Still at Health Coverage Extremes in U.S.

10/12/2011 Nativegrl77

Texas residents continue to be the most likely in the United States to lack health coverage, with 27.2% reporting being uninsured in the first half of 2011. At the other end of the spectrum is Massachusetts, where 5.3% of adults are uninsured.

www.GALLUP.com

~ politics petitions pollution and pop culture

Republicans say NO NO NO

09/22/2011 Nativegrl77

Let me sum up this week for you:

President Obama: JOBS, JOBS, JOBS.
The Republican Party: NO, NO, NO.

President Obama presented his plan. The only plan Republicans have put forward is to say no to President Obama and yes to big corporations calling the shots, undermining the social safety net we pay for with our taxes, and, if you get sick: you’re on your own. In short: their plan is an assault on our values.

Their vision is dangerous – and we’re in danger of it becoming reality if Republicans flip just FOUR Senate seats in 2012. We can’t let that happen.

That’s why the DSCC needs your help to raise $585,000 before Sept. 30 so we can make sure Democrats don’t lose races that we can win. We literally can’t afford to fall short.

Please give $5, $10 or whatever you can give to the DSCC right now. The DSCC has only 10 days to raise $585,000 and fight the GOP’s assault on our values.

Rick Perry calls Social Security a “Ponzi scheme” and Mitt Romney compares it to a criminal enterprise. And now one GOP Congressman is complaining that President Obama’s plan would force him to live on just $400,000 a year. Once again the GOP just doesn’t understand the challenges Americans are facing today.

2012 will decide whether we focus on creating jobs, like Democrats want, or protecting millionaires and big corporations, like Republicans demand. We can win. But we need your help.

Please give $5, $10 or whatever you can give to the DSCC right now. The DSCC has only 10 days to raise $585,000 and fight the GOP’s assault on our values.

There are many reasons we’re Democrats. But perhaps one of the most important is this: We know that a strong middle class makes our country stronger. Thanks for joining me to fight for what we believe in.

Sincerely,

Karen Finney

~ politics petitions pollution and pop culture

Aug 2011: GOP Presidential Field – Yet Another Summer Disaster

08/31/2011 Nativegrl77

What we Accomplished in Wisconsin

Progressives gained two seats in the Wisconsin Senate when Wisconsin voters voted to hold right-wing state senators accountable for their attacks on working families.We changed the game and seized momentum heading into the next battles, and many legislators across the country — especially those in competitive districts — got a message that there are consequences to their overreaching.The successful recalls of Republican Sens. Dan Kapanke and Randy Hopper were in districts where PFAW was very active and PFAW enthusiastically endorsed both Senators-Elect Jessica King and Jennifer Schilling — two strong progressive women who will be strong advocates for working families in the Wisconsin Senate.

Rick Perry: Uniting the Really Far Right and the Really, Really Far Right

Texas Gov. Rick Perry formally launched his presidential campaign this month and quickly shot to the top of national polls, where he continues to dominate. Maintaining his healthy lead by appealing to Tea Party, he recently came very close to accusing Federal Reserve chairman Ben Bernanke of treason and has raised new concerns over his previous assertions that Social Security and Medicare were unconstitutional by calling Social Security a Ponzi scheme and a “monstrous lie.” People For the American Way continued its coverage of the 2012 presidential primaries with a piece by PFAW president Michael Keegan exposing Perry’s cozy ties with the various factions which comprise the Far Right.

‘What You Talkin’ Bout, Willard?’

If you watched TV in the 1980s, you surely remember the show Diff’rent Strokes— which featured the iconic tagline “What you talkin’ bout, Willis?” It was produced by PFAW cofounder Norman Lear’s production company. When Norman heard some of the recent things coming from presidential candidate Mitt Romney — whose first name is actually Willard — it rang a bell.In a piece in Variety, Norman asks Willard Mitt Romney, “What you talkin’ bout, Willard?”

Koch Brothers Sink to a New Low to Undermine Public Education

A new video from our friends at Brave New Foundation — a part of their “Koch Brothers Exposed” series — details the disturbing rise of racial resegregation in one award-winning North Carolina school district. The story goes like this: the Koch-created and funded Americans for Prosperity supported a slate of right-wing school board candidates who ran on a platform that echoed those of 1960’s southern segregationists like George Wallace almost verbatim … they won, and now they are using their power to hurt the public school system by not only erasing the district’s commendable achievements of diversity, but hurting the quality of public education received by all the district’s students.People For the American Way and PFAW’s African American Ministers in Action (AAMIA) program are both incredibly proud to cosponsor the release of this video, and we’re hopeful that we can help shine a light on this latest right-wing attack on public education, racial equality and civil rights.

Watch the video and help spread the word >

Perry, Prayer, Politics and the Presidency

Casual viewers of “The Response,” including some political reporters who don’t pay a lot of attention to the Religious Right, may have watched Texas Governor Rick Perry’s prayer rally earlier this month and wondered what all the fuss was about. Most of the time was taken up with prayer and praise music. Few of the speakers seemed overtly political. Nobody used the occasion to endorse Perry’s pending presidential bid.But context is everything, and the context for this event was remarkable: a governor launching a presidential bid by teaming up with some of the nation’s most divisive extremists to hold a Christians-only prayer rally that suggested Americans are helpless to solve the country’s problems without divine intervention. Some media coverage is missing the boat: the issue wasn’t whether it was ok for a politician to pray, or the size of the audience, but the purposes of the event’s planners and their disturbing vision for America.

Pay-Per-View Congress?

Showing a profound disregard for representative democracy and the First Amendment, several Republican members of Congress decided not to hold open-to-the-public town hall meetings for their constituents this August recess and instead, held meetings that required an admission fee — or as Politico put it, “strictly pay-per-view.”

FEATURED VIDEO

Mitt Romney: People Person?

Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney turned a few heads this month when he told an audience at the Iowa State Fair that “corporations are people.”PFAW responded immediately by producing and running a TV ad in New Hampshire, where the Romney campaign’s focus has been.

Watch >

And if you have not done so already, please add your name to our petition to Gov. Romney telling him that he’s wrong, corporations are NOT people >

News & Blogs

Anonymous Attacks Against LA Progressives

This summer, an organization called Los Angeles Alliance for a New Economy (LAANE) finds itself the target of dozens of baseless public records requests instigated by an anonymous right wing entity apparently seeking to intimidate and harass the organization.LAANE has long fought for policies to raise wages, protect the environment, and enhance community input on new box stores. In other words, they have gotten in the way when giant corporations have put profit maximization over the rights of workers, consumers, and communities. Perhaps that is why they now find themselves the subject of an extensive fishing expedition for public records that can be taken out of context and demagogued ad nauseam.

Darrell Issa’s Two Hats

Rep. Darrell Issa’s ties to big business run deep, and as chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform committee, Issa has functioned quite efficiently as an arm of a Wall Street lobbying shop. He has demanded that government regulators back off from applying new rules to Goldman Sachs, and he has fought tooth-and-nail to deny the new Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, and its yet-unconfirmed director Rich Cordray, any significant means to protect the public from fraud and abuse by the financial industry.

Michael Keegan in Politico’s The Arena: Should disaster aid be conditional?

Republicans in Congress never even suggested “pay as you go” for two wars and massive tax cuts for the rich under George W. Bush, but they are now willing to withhold urgent aid from American communities in crisis in order to prove some point about their new found budget orthodoxy. Republican budget brinkmanship over the debt ceiling cost the country its top credit rating; let’s hope brinkmanship over emergency spending funds don’t cost Americans in storm-damaged states their homes and livelihoods.

Taking it Back to 1987, Mitt Romney Teams Up with Judge Bork

Mitt Romney yesterday announced the members of his campaign’s legal advisory team, which will be led by none other than Robert Bork.This is interesting because Judge Bork’s views of the law and Constitution were so extreme that his 1987 Supreme Court nomination was rejected by the Senate.

People For the American Way aired a TV spot about Bork at the time…

Anti-Gay Groups Rally To Defend Anti-Gay ‘Charity’ Group

A campaign spearheaded by LGBT rights and women’s rights groups Change.org and AllOut.org, encouraging companies to drop their ties to the Charity Give Back Group (formerly the Christian Values Network), unsurprisingly has the Religious Right up in arms. The CGBG “operates a sort of online mall, donating a portion of each purchase to religious nonprofits,” Michelle Goldberg explains. “Among them are conservative organizations like Focus on the Family, The Family Research Council, Promise Keepers, and a number of anti-abortion crisis pregnancy centers.”

ACLU DNA, Lead Paint, and the Judges who Made it Through GOP Obstruction

As we like to remind people often, the current GOP senate has been shameless in its enthusiasm for obstructing judicial nominees just for the sake of obstruction. For instance, a PFAW memo on August 2 reported that of 24 nominees then waiting for confirmation votes, 21 had been voted through the Senate Judiciary Committee with no recorded opposition. Instead of sending through at least the unopposed nominees in a voice vote and moving on with its business, the Senate decided to keep these potential jurists off the bench for as long as possible despite the pressing problem of unfilled judicial seats leading to slowed down justice. Ultimately, 4 of those nominees were confirmed by the Senate before it left for its August recess, and 20 remain waiting. (The Washington Postthis morning lamented that such “gamesmanship is not only frustrating but also destructive”)