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Tuesday, January 3, 2012
Congressional Committee asks Perdue to explain release of embargoed data
Are you old? Under Obamacare you're not likely to get much older!
Article provided by Andrew Koeppel, convervative Wilmington activist, January 3, 2012 -- and it doesn’t apply to Congress!
I PRAY THAT OBUMMA CARE WILL BE REPEALED AND WE WILL HAVE A NEW PRESIDENT!!!!! WHEN YOU READ THIS IT WILL MAKE YOU MAD!!
LOOK AT WHAT THEY HAVE DONE TO US!!! EVERYONE IN CONGRESS WHO VOTED FOR THIS BILL SHOULD BE KICKED OUT IN THE STREET - OR WORSE!!
THIS ARTICLE NEEDS TO BE READ BY ANYONE WHO HAS TO RESIDE IN THE USA FROM NOW ON. IT IS REALLY UNBELIEVABLE!!!!!!
This is the law that was passed. God have mercy on us
YOU ARE NOT GOING TO LIKE THIS...
At age 76 when you most need it, you are not eligible for cancer treatment
What Nancy Pelosi didn't want us to know until after the healthcare bill was passed. Remember she said, "pass it and then read it!!." Here it is!
______________________________
Obama Care Highlighted by Page Number
THE CARE BILL HB 3200
JUDGE KITHIL IS THE 2ND OFFICIAL WHO HAS OUTLINED THESE PARTS OF THE CARE BILL.
Judge Kithil of Marble Falls, TX - highlighted the most egregious pages of HB3200
Please read this........ Especially the reference to pages 58 & 59 !!!!!!
JUDGE KITHIL wrote:
** Page 50/section 152: The bill will provide insurance to all non-U.S. Residents, even if they are here illegally.
** Page 58 and 59: The government will have real-time access to an individual's bank account and will have the authority to make electronic fund transfers from those accounts.
** Page 65/section 164: The plan will be subsidized (by the government) for all union members, union retirees and for community organizations (such as the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now - ACORN).
** Page 203/line 14-15: The tax imposed under this section will not be treated as a tax. (How could anybody in their right mind come up with that?)
** Page 241 and 253: Doctors will all be paid the same regardless of specialty, and the government will set all doctors' fees.
** Page 272. Section 1145: Cancer hospital will ration care according to the patient's age.
** Page 317 and 321: The government will impose a prohibition on hospital expansion; however, communities may petition for an exception.
** Page 425, line 4-12: The government mandates advance-care planning consultations. Those on Social Security will be required to attend an "end-of-life planning" seminar every five years. (Death counseling..)
** Page 429, line 13-25: The government will specify which doctors can write an end-of-life order.
HAD ENOUGH???? Judge Kithil then goes on to identify:
"Finally, it is specifically stated that this bill will not apply to members of Congress. Members of Congress are already exempt from the Social Security system, and have a well-funded private plan that covers their retirement needs. If they were on our Social Security plan, I believe they would find a very quick 'fix' to make the plan financially sound for their future."
- Honorable David Kithil of Marble Falls, Texas
All of the above should give you the ammo you need to support your opposition to Obamacare. Please send this information on to all of your email contacts.
This is the law that was passed. God have mercy on us
YOU ARE NOT GOING TO LIKE THIS...
At age 76 when you most need it, you are not eligible for cancer treatment
What Nancy Pelosi didn't want us to know until after the healthcare bill was passed. Remember she said, "pass it and then read it!!." Here it is!
______________________________
Obama Care Highlighted by Page Number
THE CARE BILL HB 3200
JUDGE KITHIL IS THE 2ND OFFICIAL WHO HAS OUTLINED THESE PARTS OF THE CARE BILL.
Judge Kithil of Marble Falls, TX - highlighted the most egregious pages of HB3200
Please read this........ Especially the reference to pages 58 & 59 !!!!!!
JUDGE KITHIL wrote:
** Page 50/section 152: The bill will provide insurance to all non-U.S. Residents, even if they are here illegally.
** Page 58 and 59: The government will have real-time access to an individual's bank account and will have the authority to make electronic fund transfers from those accounts.
** Page 65/section 164: The plan will be subsidized (by the government) for all union members, union retirees and for community organizations (such as the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now - ACORN).
** Page 203/line 14-15: The tax imposed under this section will not be treated as a tax. (How could anybody in their right mind come up with that?)
** Page 241 and 253: Doctors will all be paid the same regardless of specialty, and the government will set all doctors' fees.
** Page 272. Section 1145: Cancer hospital will ration care according to the patient's age.
** Page 317 and 321: The government will impose a prohibition on hospital expansion; however, communities may petition for an exception.
** Page 425, line 4-12: The government mandates advance-care planning consultations. Those on Social Security will be required to attend an "end-of-life planning" seminar every five years. (Death counseling..)
** Page 429, line 13-25: The government will specify which doctors can write an end-of-life order.
HAD ENOUGH???? Judge Kithil then goes on to identify:
"Finally, it is specifically stated that this bill will not apply to members of Congress. Members of Congress are already exempt from the Social Security system, and have a well-funded private plan that covers their retirement needs. If they were on our Social Security plan, I believe they would find a very quick 'fix' to make the plan financially sound for their future."
- Honorable David Kithil of Marble Falls, Texas
All of the above should give you the ammo you need to support your opposition to Obamacare. Please send this information on to all of your email contacts.
Sunday, January 1, 2012
Star-News finally publishes story exonerating Ilario Pantano of bogus murder charge in Iraq. Better late than never?
Verne Strickland Blogmaster / January 1, 2012
The re-release of Ilario Pantano's book includes a proclamation of his innocence by Dr. William Rodriguez III, the recently retired former chief deputy medical examiner for special investigations at the Office of the Armed Forces Medical Examiner in Washington, D.C. Associated Press file photo
Published: Sunday, January 1, 2012 at 4:43 p.m.
Last Modified: Sunday, January 1, 2012 at 4:43 p.m.
Ilario Pantano's well-documented shooting of two Iraqis in 2004 became ammunition for political foes during his recent election bids and put questions in the minds of voters.
But now, as the Republican Wilmington resident again seeks a seat in Congress in 2012, Pantano says the recent words of the military medical examiner who inspected the remains of the two men after they were exhumed in 2005 should put those questions to rest.
"In my mind, it really closes the book," Pantano said.
Pantano recently re-released his book detailing the killings and the Article 32 hearing – the military equivalent to a grand jury proceeding – that followed.
"Warlord: Broken by War, Saved by Grace" also includes an April 2011 letter to Pantano from Dr. William Rodriguez III, the recently retired former chief deputy medical examiner for special investigations at the Office of the Armed Forces Medical Examiner in Washington, D.C.
In the letter, Rodriguez expresses frustration that premeditated murder charges would be brought against Pantano without first examining the remains of the dead Iraqis. Without that evidence, Rodriguez writes, Pantano's prosecution hinged on the testimony of one member of the platoon that Pantano led.
Rodriguez also expressed concern that the military rushed to prosecute Pantano, then 33, as the shootings closely followed the incident at Abu Ghraib prison, a black eye for the military.
When the bodies were exhumed about a year after the shootings, with Pantano's case still open, Rodriguez conducted the examination.
What he saw, he said in a phone interview with the StarNews, made it "very clear" that the men were not shot from behind, as some had suggested.
"I said to all assembled, ‘Here is solid scientific evidence that these two Iraqis were shot from the front and not in their backs,'" he wrote in the letter. "Lt. Pantano is innocent."
Rodriguez said the positions of bone fragments fractured by bullets were a clear indication that the shots came from the front. Also, he said, copper oxidation stains on the front side of the skeletons also suggested the bullets entered from the front. Bullets, Rodriguez said, are encased in copper jackets that peel away and break up in the body. Over time, the copper oxidizes and leaves stains, he said.
Rodriguez said he read Pantano's book and has spoken with him since he sent the letter. He said Pantano's life might be much different if the bodies had been examined before the military brought charges against him.
"I feel that he is a true patriot, a caring individual and a good man," Rodriguez said.
But whether the new developments in the years-old case will improve his election chances in 2012 remain to be seen. Pantano is expected to face state Sen. David Rouzer of Johnston County in the 2012 GOP primary for the 7th Congressional District seat. The winner likely would challenge U.S. Rep. Mike McIntyre, D-Lumberton, in November. Pantano lost an election bid against McIntyre in 2010.
Articles about Rodriguez's letter have been published recently in The Washington Times and other publications outside of North Carolina.
UPDATE FROM VERNE STRICKLAND JAN. 1, 2012
What he saw, he said in a phone interview with the StarNews, made it "very clear" that the men were not shot from behind, as some had suggested.
UPDATE FROM VERNE STRICKLAND JAN. 1, 2012
What he saw, he said in a phone interview with the StarNews, made it "very clear" that the men were not shot from behind, as some had suggested.
"I said to all assembled, ‘Here is solid scientific evidence that these two Iraqis were shot from the front and not in their backs,'" he wrote in the letter. "Lt. Pantano is innocent."
Rodriguez said the positions of bone fragments fractured by bullets were a clear indication that the shots came from the front. Also, he said, copper oxidation stains on the front side of the skeletons also suggested the bullets entered from the front. Bullets, Rodriguez said, are encased in copper jackets that peel away and break up in the body. Over time, the copper oxidizes and leaves stains, he said.
Rodriguez said he read Pantano's book and has spoken with him since he sent the letter. He said Pantano's life might be much different if the bodies had been examined before the military brought charges against him.
"I feel that he is a true patriot, a caring individual and a good man," Rodriguez said.
But whether the new developments in the years-old case will improve his election chances in 2012 remain to be seen. Pantano is expected to face state Sen. David Rouzer of Johnston County in the 2012 GOP primary for the 7th Congressional District seat. The winner likely would challenge U.S. Rep. Mike McIntyre, D-Lumberton, in November. Pantano lost an election bid against McIntyre in 2010.
Articles about Rodriguez's letter have been published recently in The Washington Times and other publications outside of North Carolina.
"Clearly, the Pantano campaign thought this was an issue in the 2010 campaign, and this could be an attempt to put it behind him before the campaign kicks into high gear," said Jonathan Kappler, research director for the N.C. FreeEnterprise Foundation and a close follower of N.C. politics.
Rouzer, Pantano's opponent in the May primary, declined to comment on the Iraq incident or the recent development.
"My campaign is going to focus on the issues and what we need to do to move the country forward and my conservative record in the state legislature," he said.
For his part, Pantano said he believes he was exonerated six years ago, when the Marine Corps decided not to pursue murder charges against him. But, he wrote in his book, the Rodriguez letter "clears the air around any mystery that lingers among conspiracy theorists."
He said it shows that he's not a "cold-blooded murderer" and that he didn't execute the two men.
The letter, Pantano said, also shows that there was an urgency to prosecute him, not find the truth.
"Not only was I not protected by the military, I was made an example of," he continues. "I have known this all along, but until I received this letter, there was no proof."
In 2005, a Marine Corps official decided to dismiss the murder charges after a hearing in Jacksonville, in part because of the autopsy evidence.
On April 15, 2004, Pantano led his platoon to search a house. There, two Iraqi men were stopped as they left the area in a white sedan. After ordering the men to search their own car, Pantano shot and killed them, firing as many as 50 shots. The Iraqis had made a threatening move, he said, and the rules of engagement dictated that he had a right to defend himself.
Pantano admitted placing a sign on the car with the slogan, "No Better Friend No Worse Enemy." A Marine Corps official deemed that ill-advised.
Pantano said he didn't believe the letter would have a strong impact his 2012 election bid.
"I think my election chances are very good without this information," he said.
He added that he believed the "whisper campaigns" would continue about Iraq.
"For years, I have been living with and struggling with the fact that you can't put my name into Google without charges of murder coming up," Pantano said.
Speaking of the Internet age, he added, "An allegation today, even if it's a false allegation, never goes away."
Patrick Gannon: (919) 854-6115
On Twitter: @StarNewsPat
Wednesday, December 28, 2011
jlf windpower
Carolina Journal News Reports
Wind Power Does Not Help Economy or Environment, Experts Say
JLF-hosted event in Wilmington makes case against renewable energy mandate
Dec. 28th, 2011
WILMINGTON — State law requires North Carolina utility companies to generate 7.5 percent of their electricity from renewable sources by 2018. The standard can’t be met without wind, an energy source some scientists call counterproductive.
Electricity generated from the wind is inefficient, extremely expensive, and bad for the environment, argued scientists and economists at a forum sponsored by the John Locke Foundation Dec. 5, at the University of North Carolina-Wilmington.
John Droz, a fellow at the American Tradition Institute, is a physicist, economist, and self-described environmentalist. He spent most of his professional life working in management at General Electric.
Droz said he initially supported wind energy. But after some research, he concluded that wind is neither economically viable nor environmentally responsible.
For the first hundred years after electricity was invented, Droz said, there were six guiding principles that helped determine which sources we would use in the United States. Traditionally, energy sources were expected to: provide large amounts of electricity; provide reliable and predictable electricity; provide electricity supplies that can be increased or decreased to satisfy demand; meet the demand for either a base load (operating 24 hours a day, seven days a week) or a peak load; have a compact facility; and provide electricity economically.
“These criteria became the basis for what developed into the most successful grid system on the planet, which has a large amount to do with our country’s economic success,” Droz said.
Today, the power sources that meet those standards are coal, nuclear, natural gas, and hydro, he said. Sources that failed to meet the standards, like oil, which became too expensive, were pushed out of the electricity business.
“That’s how the market works when left on its own,” Droz said.
But recently a nonmarket-driven principle has been added to the list. The state and federal governments have decided that sources of electricity also must make a positive environmental impact, reducing carbon emissions and fighting global warming.
This principle is mandated by the state government — through a law known as the Renewable Energy Portfolio Standard (REPS) or Senate Bill 3 — and subsidized by both the state and federal governments.
Before S.B. 3 mandated renewable energy in 2007, a program called NC Green Power allowed North Carolinians to decide if they want to help put renewable energy on the grid voluntarily.
“The problem was the public was not supporting NC Green Power,” said Daren Bakst, director of legal and regulatory studies for the John Locke Foundation. “There was no support whatsoever. It was embarrassing how bad it was.”
Bakst said there is no way utilities will be able to meet the 7.5 percent renewable energy mandate without including wind energy in their portfolio.
There are only two places in the state wind power can work, he said: in the mountains and on the coast. Because the state’s Ridge Law prohibits tall structures from being constructed in the mountains, “there’s going to be intense pressure to allow wind power plants on the coast” over the next couple of years, Bakst said.
Talks are under way about building a wind power project in Beaufort County. “One of the justifications for allowing the project is the fact that S.B. 3 exists,” Bakst said.
“If you didn’t have the mandate, there wouldn’t be any proposed wind power plants,” he said. “Even with all the subsidies wind power gets, we wouldn’t be discussing it, because the subsidies by themselves weren’t enough. The state actually had to mandate it.”
Droz said the mandate will cost North Carolinians millions of dollars in higher energy bills and won’t help the environment in the least.
Wind doesn’t meet any of the six traditional market-driven criteria for what makes a good energy source, he said.
“Because of the wide fluctuations of wind, it typically produces less than 30 percent of its nameplate capacity,” Droz said. “This problem is made worse by the fact that there is no practical or economical way to store the electricity produced.”
It’s not reliable or predictable and cannot be counted on to provide power on demand, he said.
Wind power plants aren’t compact either, he added. They cover more than 1,000 times the surface area of a conventional facility.
Most importantly to Droz, wind power is not economical. The cost of running a wind power plant is higher than any other type of plant.
“The more wind power an energy company uses, the higher the consumer’s electric bill,” he said. “Denmark, which uses more wind power than any country in the world, has the highest cost of electricity of any country in the world. Their residential electricity rate is more than three times as much as ours.”
Finally, wind does not make a consequential reduction in carbon emissions, said Droz. “No scientific study has ever proven that wind power saves a meaningful amount of CO2. A National Academy of Sciences study says U.S. CO2 savings by 2020 will be at about 1.8 percent."
“More than 90 percent of all CO2 saved in the last 35 years is due to nuclear power, very little due to renewables,” he said.
David Schnare, director of the Environmental Law Center at the American Tradition Institute, suggested wind turbines actually create more pollution than other energy sources.
Because wind is inconsistent and its energy cannot be stored, wind power plants must be backed up by another type of power plant.
“In Colorado, [sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxide] — which create smog — were significantly higher than they would have been had they not cycled the coal plants to compensate for wind generation,” Schnare said. “Cycling a coal plant causes more pollution than letting it run constantly.”
Droz said a law mandating wind power “makes about as much sense as an edict mandating that a certain percentage of our trucks and automobiles must be operated by horse power in a few years.” It’s a step backward that will decrease our standard of living.
Big oil companies like BP have become wind-power investors because they can use their investment in wind power to offset corporate tax liabilities, he said. “The company that pioneered wind power to avoid paying taxes was Enron.”
Sara Burrows is an associate editor of Carolina Journal.
Tuesday, December 27, 2011
pantano 'are we in retreat?'
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Dear Fellow Patriot,
As 2011 comes to end I wonder -- Is America on the retreat?
Recently, our armed forces began their hurried, and massive, withdrawal from Iraq. Our headquarters and rally point -- Camp Victory -- is now under Iraqi control. Every war must have its end, but are we putting Americans at risk by giving up on a key front in the War on Terror? Is it a sign of progress? Or is it the retreat of America’s will? I pray that Iran doesn’t force us to answer that question before we are ready. Or did the jamming of one of our most super secret drones by the Iranian Government, no doubt using Chinese Technology, answer the question for us?
As we pull back in Iraq, I have trouble ignoring that we are pulling back everywhere. The recent failure of the Super Committee to reach a debt deal and cut $1.2 trillion from the federal government marks just another example of where our leaders have backed down. Or maybe I’m thinking of the debt ceiling -- which we raised despite skyrocketing amounts of spending that will cripple multiple generations of Americas.
Well I’ve had enough of it. It’s time we had lawmakers with some backbone who understand that the hard things are the things worth doing and that voters aren’t willing to accept more do-nothing, retreatist leadership out of Washington.
I’m ready to show Washington that the retreating is over. It’s time to advance. With an immediate contribution to my campaign for Congress, you can send a strong message to all of America that we’re done with weak-willed leadership.
It’s time we stopped with the half measures. We’ve got to stop lounging around looking for what parts of ObamaCare we can repeal...we just need to repeal it all! We can’t keep debating about which parts of entitlement programs are running up debt...because it’s the whole thing! Every time our will to act weakens our critics and enemies grow a little bit stronger. I hate to say it, but someday they are going to grow strong enough to beat us.
I promise you -- that I would be willing lay down my life fighting before I’d see that happen. I’ve been in combat. I know what that promise means and it’s not idle talk.
Stand with me. Make an immediate contribution of $25, $50, $75, $100, $250, $500 or more -- whatever you can give -- and give to my campaign today. I won’t let you down in Washington.
It’s not enough for me to be brave. We all need to be brave together to succeed. We need leaders in Washington that will advance America forward and not accept retreat as a solution to adversity.
Stand with me today and stand for a strong, prosperous America. As we head into 2012, I ask for you support.
Semper Fi,
Ilario
P.S. We need leaders in Washington that will advance America forward and not accept retreat as a solution to adversity. Stand with me. Make and immediate contribution of $25, $50, $75, $100, $250, $500 or more -- whatever you can give -- and give to my campaign. I won’t let you down in Washington.
Has a conservative multimillionaire taken control in North Carolina -- one of 2012's top battlegrounds?
Verme Strickland Blogmaster / December 27, 2011
STATE FOR SALE? (Don't think so. Dems jumpstart left-wing propaganda mill.)
A conservative multimillionaire has taken control
in North Carolina, one of 2012’s top battlegrounds.
So says Sanford/Hunt/Easley/Perdue (SHEP) gang.
“In a very real sense, Democrats running for
office in North Carolina are running against
In the spring of 2010, the conservative political strategist Ed Gillespie flew from Washington, D.C., to Raleigh, North Carolina, to spend a day laying the groundwork for REDMAP, a new project aimed at engineering a Republican takeover of state legislatures. Gillespie hoped to help his party get control of statehouses where congressional redistricting was pending, thereby leveraging victories in cheap local races into a means of shifting the balance of power in Washington. It was an ingenious plan, and Gillespie is a skilled tactician—he once ran the Republican National Committee—but REDMAP seemed like a long shot in North Carolina. Barack Obama carried the state in 2008 and remained popular. The Republicans hadn’t controlled both houses of the North Carolina General Assembly for more than a century. (“Not since General Sherman,” a state politico joked to me.) That day in Raleigh, though, Gillespie had lunch with an ideal ally: James Arthur (Art) Pope, the chairman and C.E.O. of Variety Wholesalers, a discount-store conglomerate. The Raleigh News and Observer had called Pope, a conservative multimillionaire, the Knight of the Right. The REDMAP project offered Pope a new way to spend his money.
That fall, in the remote western corner of the state, John Snow, a retired Democratic judge who had represented the district in the State Senate for three terms, found himself subjected to one political attack after another. Snow, who often voted with the Republicans, was considered one of the most conservative Democrats in the General Assembly, and his record reflected the views of his constituents. His Republican opponent, Jim Davis—an orthodontist loosely allied with the Tea Party—had minimal political experience, and Snow, a former college football star, was expected to be reëlected easily. Yet somehow Davis seemed to have almost unlimited money with which to assail Snow.
Snow recalls, “I voted to help build a pier with an aquarium on the coast, as did every other member of the North Carolina House and Senate who voted.” But a television attack ad presented the “luxury pier” as Snow’s wasteful scheme. “We’ve lost jobs,” an actress said in the ad. “John Snow’s solution for our economy? ‘Go fish!’ ” A mass mailing, decorated with a cartoon pig, denounced the pier as one of Snow’s “pork projects.” It criticized Snow for “wasting our tax dollars,” citing his vote to “spend $218,000 on a Shakespeare festival,” but failing to note that this sum represented a budget cut for the program, which had been funded by the legislature since 1999.
In all, Snow says, he was the target of two dozen mass mailings, one of them reminiscent of the Willie Horton ad that became notorious during the 1988 Presidential campaign. It featured a photograph of Henry Lee McCollum, a menacing-looking African-American convict on death row, who, along with three other men, raped and murdered an eleven-year-old girl. After describing McCollum’s crimes in lurid detail, the mailing noted, “Thanks to arrogant State Senator John Snow, McCollum could soon be let off of death row.” Snow, in fact, supported the death penalty and had prosecuted murder cases. But, in 2009, he had helped pass a new state law, the Racial Justice Act, that enabled judges to reconsider a death sentence if a convict could prove that the jury’s verdict had been tainted by racism. The law was an attempt to address the overwhelming racial disparity in capital sentences.
“The attacks just went on and on,” Snow told me recently. “My opponents used fear tactics. I’m a moderate, but they tried to make me look liberal.” On Election Night, he lost by an agonizingly slim margin—fewer than two hundred votes. After the election, the North Carolina Free Enterprise Foundation, a nonpartisan, pro-business organization, revealed that two seemingly independent political groups had spent several hundred thousand dollars on ads against Snow—a huge amount in a poor, backwoods district.
Art Pope was instrumental in funding and creating both groups, Real Jobs NC and Civitas Action. Real Jobs NC was responsible for the “Go fish!” ad and the mass mailing that attacked Snow’s “pork projects.” The racially charged ad was produced by the North Carolina Republican Party, and Pope says that he was not involved in its creation. But Pope and three members of his family gave the Davis campaign a four-thousand-dollar check each—the maximum individual donation allowed by state law.
Snow, whose defeat was first chronicled by the Institute for Southern Studies, a progressive nonprofit organization, told me, “It’s getting to the point where, in politics, money is the most important thing. They spent nearly a million dollars to win that seat. A lot of it was from corporations and outside groups related to Art Pope. He was their sugar daddy.”
Though conservatives like Pope took the lead in exploiting the new possibilities for corporate spending, the use of ostensibly nonpartisan advocacy groups has been proliferating on both the left and the right. Fred Wertheimer, who heads Democracy 21, another group that works for campaign-finance reform, says, “Tax-exempt organizations that are supposed to ‘promote the social welfare’ are being improperly used by Democratic and Republican supporters alike to engage in extensive campaign activities.” He just filed a complaint about the practice with the Internal Revenue Service. “The disastrous Citizens United decision has opened the door wide to influence-buying,” he says.
John Snow was not the only candidate in North Carolina to fall victim to such tactics. In Fayetteville, an hour south of Raleigh, Margaret Dickson, a sixty-one-year-old retired radio broadcaster and media executive who had been married for thirty-one years and had three grown children, was seeking reëlection to the North Carolina State Senate. She’d served seven years in the state’s General Assembly, had the backing of much of the business community, and considered herself a centrist, pro-business Democrat. Then came what she calls “the hooker ad.” Her Republican opponent released an ad suggesting that Dickson was using her seat to promote her personal investments. As Dickson describes it, “They used an actress with dark hair who was fair, like me. She was putting on mascara and red lipstick. She had on a big ring and bracelet.” A narrator intoned “Busted!” and the actress’s hand grabbed what appeared to be a wad of hundred-dollar bills. Dickson says, “The thrust of it was that I am somehow prostituting myself.” Another television ad, paid for by Real Jobs NC, described Dickson as a “Tax Twin” to Nancy Pelosi, saying that there was “not a dime’s worth of difference” between them. (Dickson’s voting record is substantially less liberal than Pelosi’s.) Dickson held a press conference to defend her record, but it was too late: “Those ads hurt me. I’ve been through this four times before, but the tone of this campaign was much uglier, and much more personal, than anything I’ve seen.”
Variety Wholesalers, Pope’s company, had contributed two hundred thousand dollars to Real Jobs NC. Roger Knight, the group’s executive director, told me that the Citizens United decision made it much easier to raise money, because “it allowed us to direct the fund-raising toward businesses.” He added that Pope provided the fund-raising effort with essential seed money. “Art would provide some of the guidance” on the attack ads, Knight said, and because Pope was on the board “he would approve them.” Pope says that he was dismayed when he saw the “hooker” ad, which was paid for by Dickson’s opponent. But he and three family members gave money to the opponent’s campaign, and Dickson argues that “political contributors make paid advertising possible” and “bear some responsibility.”
Dickson’s opponent, meanwhile, was championed by another corporate-backed group with financial ties to Pope, Americans for Prosperity, a national Tea Party group, which spent eleven thousand dollars disseminating its message. In the past decade, Pope and groups affiliated with him have contributed more than two million dollars to Americans for Prosperity. Pope is one of the organization’s four directors. Americans for Prosperity bills itself as an independent, nonpartisan “social welfare” organization. But, that fall in North Carolina, its ads, like those of Real Jobs NC, promoted only Republicans.
On Election Night, Dickson fell about a thousand votes short of victory in her district, which has a population of more than a hundred and fifty thousand. “I’ve never met Art Pope,” she says, but she is convinced that “Art Pope was after my seat. It wasn’t personal. They wanted control, and they were willing to say anything and do anything to achieve it.” That same fall, Chris Heagarty, a Democratic lawyer, ran for a legislative seat in Wake County, which includes Raleigh, where Pope lives. He had previously directed an election-reform group, and was not naïve about political money.
Yet even he was caught off guard by the intensity of the effort marshalled against him. Real Jobs NC and Civitas Action spent some seventy thousand dollars on ads portraying him as fiscally profligate, and Americans for Prosperity spent heavily on behalf of his opponent. One ad accused him of having voted “to raise taxes over a billion dollars,” even though he had not yet served in the legislature. Another ad depicted Heagarty, who has dark hair and a dark complexion, as Hispanic. (He is Caucasian.)
The ad was sponsored by the North Carolina Republican Party, to which Pope had contributed in 2008. Heagarty said, “They slapped a sombrero on a photo of me, and wrote, ‘Mucho Taxo! Adios, Señor!’ ” He said, “If you put all of the Pope groups together, they and the North Carolina G.O.P. spent more to defeat me than the guy who actually won.” He fell silent, then added, “For an individual to have so much power is frightening. The government of North Carolina is for sale.”
http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2011/10/10/111010fa_fact_mayer?currentPage=all
*** This New Yorker feature will be continued in an upcoming USA DOT COM post.
Snow recalls, “I voted to help build a pier with an aquarium on the coast, as did every other member of the North Carolina House and Senate who voted.” But a television attack ad presented the “luxury pier” as Snow’s wasteful scheme. “We’ve lost jobs,” an actress said in the ad. “John Snow’s solution for our economy? ‘Go fish!’ ” A mass mailing, decorated with a cartoon pig, denounced the pier as one of Snow’s “pork projects.” It criticized Snow for “wasting our tax dollars,” citing his vote to “spend $218,000 on a Shakespeare festival,” but failing to note that this sum represented a budget cut for the program, which had been funded by the legislature since 1999.
In all, Snow says, he was the target of two dozen mass mailings, one of them reminiscent of the Willie Horton ad that became notorious during the 1988 Presidential campaign. It featured a photograph of Henry Lee McCollum, a menacing-looking African-American convict on death row, who, along with three other men, raped and murdered an eleven-year-old girl. After describing McCollum’s crimes in lurid detail, the mailing noted, “Thanks to arrogant State Senator John Snow, McCollum could soon be let off of death row.” Snow, in fact, supported the death penalty and had prosecuted murder cases. But, in 2009, he had helped pass a new state law, the Racial Justice Act, that enabled judges to reconsider a death sentence if a convict could prove that the jury’s verdict had been tainted by racism. The law was an attempt to address the overwhelming racial disparity in capital sentences.
“The attacks just went on and on,” Snow told me recently. “My opponents used fear tactics. I’m a moderate, but they tried to make me look liberal.” On Election Night, he lost by an agonizingly slim margin—fewer than two hundred votes. After the election, the North Carolina Free Enterprise Foundation, a nonpartisan, pro-business organization, revealed that two seemingly independent political groups had spent several hundred thousand dollars on ads against Snow—a huge amount in a poor, backwoods district.
Art Pope was instrumental in funding and creating both groups, Real Jobs NC and Civitas Action. Real Jobs NC was responsible for the “Go fish!” ad and the mass mailing that attacked Snow’s “pork projects.” The racially charged ad was produced by the North Carolina Republican Party, and Pope says that he was not involved in its creation. But Pope and three members of his family gave the Davis campaign a four-thousand-dollar check each—the maximum individual donation allowed by state law.
Snow, whose defeat was first chronicled by the Institute for Southern Studies, a progressive nonprofit organization, told me, “It’s getting to the point where, in politics, money is the most important thing. They spent nearly a million dollars to win that seat. A lot of it was from corporations and outside groups related to Art Pope. He was their sugar daddy.”
Bob Phillips, the head of the North Carolina chapter of Common Cause, an organization that promotes campaign-finance reform, said that Snow’s loss signals a troubling trend in American politics. “John Snow raised a significant amount of money,” he said. “But it was exceeded by what outside groups spent in that race, mostly on commercials against John Snow.” Such lopsided campaigns will likely become more common, thanks to the Supreme Court, which, in a controversial ruling in January, 2010, struck down limits on corporate campaign spending. For the first time in more than a century, businesses and unions can spend unlimited sums to express support or opposition to candidates.
Phillips argues that the Court’s decision, in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, has been a “game changer,” especially in the realm of state politics. In swing states like North Carolina—which the Democrats consider so important that they have scheduled their 2012 National Convention there—an individual donor, particularly one with access to corporate funds, can play a significant, and sometimes decisive, role. “We didn’t have that before 2010,” Phillips says. “Citizens United opened up the door. Now a candidate can literally be outspent by independent groups. We saw it in North Carolina, and a lot of the money was traced back to Art Pope.”Though conservatives like Pope took the lead in exploiting the new possibilities for corporate spending, the use of ostensibly nonpartisan advocacy groups has been proliferating on both the left and the right. Fred Wertheimer, who heads Democracy 21, another group that works for campaign-finance reform, says, “Tax-exempt organizations that are supposed to ‘promote the social welfare’ are being improperly used by Democratic and Republican supporters alike to engage in extensive campaign activities.” He just filed a complaint about the practice with the Internal Revenue Service. “The disastrous Citizens United decision has opened the door wide to influence-buying,” he says.
John Snow was not the only candidate in North Carolina to fall victim to such tactics. In Fayetteville, an hour south of Raleigh, Margaret Dickson, a sixty-one-year-old retired radio broadcaster and media executive who had been married for thirty-one years and had three grown children, was seeking reëlection to the North Carolina State Senate. She’d served seven years in the state’s General Assembly, had the backing of much of the business community, and considered herself a centrist, pro-business Democrat. Then came what she calls “the hooker ad.” Her Republican opponent released an ad suggesting that Dickson was using her seat to promote her personal investments. As Dickson describes it, “They used an actress with dark hair who was fair, like me. She was putting on mascara and red lipstick. She had on a big ring and bracelet.” A narrator intoned “Busted!” and the actress’s hand grabbed what appeared to be a wad of hundred-dollar bills. Dickson says, “The thrust of it was that I am somehow prostituting myself.” Another television ad, paid for by Real Jobs NC, described Dickson as a “Tax Twin” to Nancy Pelosi, saying that there was “not a dime’s worth of difference” between them. (Dickson’s voting record is substantially less liberal than Pelosi’s.) Dickson held a press conference to defend her record, but it was too late: “Those ads hurt me. I’ve been through this four times before, but the tone of this campaign was much uglier, and much more personal, than anything I’ve seen.”
Variety Wholesalers, Pope’s company, had contributed two hundred thousand dollars to Real Jobs NC. Roger Knight, the group’s executive director, told me that the Citizens United decision made it much easier to raise money, because “it allowed us to direct the fund-raising toward businesses.” He added that Pope provided the fund-raising effort with essential seed money. “Art would provide some of the guidance” on the attack ads, Knight said, and because Pope was on the board “he would approve them.” Pope says that he was dismayed when he saw the “hooker” ad, which was paid for by Dickson’s opponent. But he and three family members gave money to the opponent’s campaign, and Dickson argues that “political contributors make paid advertising possible” and “bear some responsibility.”
Dickson’s opponent, meanwhile, was championed by another corporate-backed group with financial ties to Pope, Americans for Prosperity, a national Tea Party group, which spent eleven thousand dollars disseminating its message. In the past decade, Pope and groups affiliated with him have contributed more than two million dollars to Americans for Prosperity. Pope is one of the organization’s four directors. Americans for Prosperity bills itself as an independent, nonpartisan “social welfare” organization. But, that fall in North Carolina, its ads, like those of Real Jobs NC, promoted only Republicans.
On Election Night, Dickson fell about a thousand votes short of victory in her district, which has a population of more than a hundred and fifty thousand. “I’ve never met Art Pope,” she says, but she is convinced that “Art Pope was after my seat. It wasn’t personal. They wanted control, and they were willing to say anything and do anything to achieve it.” That same fall, Chris Heagarty, a Democratic lawyer, ran for a legislative seat in Wake County, which includes Raleigh, where Pope lives. He had previously directed an election-reform group, and was not naïve about political money.
Yet even he was caught off guard by the intensity of the effort marshalled against him. Real Jobs NC and Civitas Action spent some seventy thousand dollars on ads portraying him as fiscally profligate, and Americans for Prosperity spent heavily on behalf of his opponent. One ad accused him of having voted “to raise taxes over a billion dollars,” even though he had not yet served in the legislature. Another ad depicted Heagarty, who has dark hair and a dark complexion, as Hispanic. (He is Caucasian.)
The ad was sponsored by the North Carolina Republican Party, to which Pope had contributed in 2008. Heagarty said, “They slapped a sombrero on a photo of me, and wrote, ‘Mucho Taxo! Adios, Señor!’ ” He said, “If you put all of the Pope groups together, they and the North Carolina G.O.P. spent more to defeat me than the guy who actually won.” He fell silent, then added, “For an individual to have so much power is frightening. The government of North Carolina is for sale.”
http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2011/10/10/111010fa_fact_mayer?currentPage=all
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