GOP

mickeyrat

https://twitter.com/kaitlancollins/status/1689712999278235649?t=RFht81VV0v41bl_hBZjDxg&s=19

mickeyrat

https://twitter.com/meiselasb/status/1690410640484249600?t=XKqgX_cBhb_hYhz7l_dXrw&s=19

mickeyrat

https://apnews.com/article/direct-democracy-ballot-initiatives-republicans-ohio-abortion-bdf2dd061925e49d8dad69e2bd00f835

 

The failed Ohio amendment reflects Republican efforts nationally to restrict direct democracy

By JULIE CARR SMYTH

Today

COLUMBUS, Ohio (AP) — After Ohio voters repealed a law pushed by Republicans that would have limited unions' collective bargaining rights in 2011, then-GOP Gov. John Kasich was contrite.

“I’ve heard their voices, I understand their decision and, frankly, I respect what people have to say in an effort like this,” he told reporters after the defeat.

The tone from Ohio Republicans was much different this past week after voters resoundingly rejected their attempt to impose hurdles on passing amendments to the state constitution — a proposal that would have made it much more difficult to pass an abortion rights measure in November.

During an election night news conference, Republican Senate President Matt Huffman vowed to use the powers of his legislative supermajority to bring the issue back soon, variously blaming out-of-state dark money, unsupportive fellow Republicans, a lack of time and the issue's complexity for its failure.

---

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He never mentioned respecting the will of the 57% of Ohio voters across both Democratic and Republican counties who voted “no" on the Republican proposal.

The striking contrast illustrates an increasing antagonism among elected Republicans across the country toward the nation’s purest form of direct democracy — the citizen-initiated ballot measure — as it threatens their lock on power in states where they control the legislature.

Historically, attempts to undercut the citizen ballot initiative process have come from both parties, said Daniel A. Smith, a political science professor at the University of Florida.

“It has to do with which party is in monopolistic control of state legislatures and the governorship,” he said. “When you have that monopoly of power, you want to restrict the voice of a statewide electorate that might go against your efforts to control the process.”

According to a recent report by the nonpartisan Fairness Project, Ohio and five other states where Republicans control the legislature — Arizona, Arkansas, Florida, Missouri and North Dakota — have either passed, attempted to pass or are currently working to pass expanded supermajority requirements for voters to approve statewide ballot measures.

At least six states, including Ohio, have sought to increase the number of counties where signatures must be gathered.

The group found that at least six of the 24 states that allow ballot initiatives have prohibited out-of-state petition circulators and nine have prohibited paid circulators altogether, the group reports.

Eighteen states have required circulators to swear oaths that they've seen every signature put to paper. Arkansas has imposed background checks on circulators. South Dakota has dictated such a large font size on petitions that it makes circulating them cumbersome.

Sarah Walker, policy and legal advocacy director for the Ballot Initiative Strategy Center, said Republicans in Ohio and elsewhere are restricting the ballot initiative process in an era of renewed populism that’s not going their way. She said conservatives had no interest in amending the ballot initiative process when they were winning campaigns in the 1990s and early 2000s.

“Since then, you’ve seen left-leaning organizations really developing their organizational skills and starting to win,” she said. “The reason given for restricting the ballot initiative is often to insulate the state from outside special interests. But if lawmakers are interested in limiting that, there are things they can do legislatively to restrict those groups, and I don’t see them having any interest in doing that.”

Aggressive stances by Republican supermajorities at the Ohio Statehouse — including supporting one of the nation's most stringent abortion bans, refusing to pass many of a GOP governor's proposed gun control measures in the face of a deadly mass shooting, and repeatedly producing unconstitutional political maps — have motivated would-be reformers.

That prompted an influential mix of Republican politicians, anti-abortion and gun rights organizations and business interests in the state to push forward with Tuesday's failed amendment, which would have raised the threshold for passing future constitutional changes from a simple majority to a 60% supermajority.

Another example is Missouri, where Republicans plan to try again to raise the threshold to amend that state’s constitution during the legislative session that begins in 2024 — after earlier efforts have failed.

Those plans come in a state where state lawmakers refused to fund a Medicaid expansion approved by voters until forced to by a court order, and where voters enshrined marijuana in the constitution last fall after lawmakers failed to. An abortion rights question is headed to Missouri’s 2024 ballot.

Ohio Secretary of State Frank LaRose is among Republicans in the state who cast Issue 1 as a fight against out-of-state special interests, although both sides of the campaign were heavily funded by such groups.

He called the $20 million special election “only one battle in a long war.”

“Unfortunately," he said, "we were dramatically outspent by dark money billionaires from California to New York, and the giant ‘for sale’ sign still hangs on Ohio’s constitution,” said LaRose, who is running for U.S. Senate in 2024.

Fairness Project Executive Director Kelly Hall said Ohio Republicans’ promise to come back with another attempt to restrict the initiative process “says more about representational democracy than it does about direct democracy.”

She rejected the narrative that out-of-state special interests are using the avenue of direct democracy to force unpopular policies into state constitutions, arguing corporate influence is far greater on state lawmakers.

“The least out-of-state venue is direct democracy, because then millions of Ohioans are participating, not just the several dozen who are receiving campaign contributions from corporate PACs, who are receiving perks and meetings and around-the-clock influence from corporate PACs,” she said.

"Ballot measures enable issues that matter to working families to actually get on the agenda in a state, rather than the agenda being set by those who can afford lobbyists and campaign contributions.”

cblock4life

mickeyrat said:

https://apnews.com/article/direct-democracy-ballot-initiatives-republicans-ohio-abortion-bdf2dd061925e49d8dad69e2bd00f835

 

The failed Ohio amendment reflects Republican efforts nationally to restrict direct democracy

By JULIE CARR SMYTH

Today

COLUMBUS, Ohio (AP) — After Ohio voters repealed a law pushed by Republicans that would have limited unions' collective bargaining rights in 2011, then-GOP Gov. John Kasich was contrite.

“I’ve heard their voices, I understand their decision and, frankly, I respect what people have to say in an effort like this,” he told reporters after the defeat.

The tone from Ohio Republicans was much different this past week after voters resoundingly rejected their attempt to impose hurdles on passing amendments to the state constitution — a proposal that would have made it much more difficult to pass an abortion rights measure in November.

During an election night news conference, Republican Senate President Matt Huffman vowed to use the powers of his legislative supermajority to bring the issue back soon, variously blaming out-of-state dark money, unsupportive fellow Republicans, a lack of time and the issue's complexity for its failure.

^

“then-GOP Gov. John Kasich was contrite.

“I’ve heard their voices, I understand their decision and, frankly, I respect what people have to say in an effort like this,” he told reporters after the defeat.”

This is the Republican Party that I considered respectable.  Open minded politicians are gone from this party now.  Even the “Romneys” of government are over it, just waiting to retire.  

Someone, somewhere on one of these threads the comment “what happened to America?” was posted by a Trump supporter.  Seriously?

Trump did not create the racist white loving mentality but his rhetoric gave those with it permission to speak/act on their truths/hatred.

 If I can find it I’ll post it there as well. 

mickeyrat

https://twitter.com/lindyli/status/1690142905686523904?t=sq4gtSlDiLbBp06cIqIDUg&s=19

mickeyrat

https://twitter.com/MarkJacob16/status/1690374658372014080?t=H-xokYpx8eiK16RWRK3cOQ&s=19

mickeyrat

https://twitter.com/TheTNHoller/status/1690395072913653760?t=qAFDaPdbixqdY1gBAwYb9A&s=19

mickeyrat

https://twitter.com/alimbrady/status/1690474309351858176?t=f6gw5aywibU3beJZ16aTEQ&s=19

Halifax2TheMax

mickeyrat said:

https://twitter.com/alimbrady/status/1690474309351858176?t=f6gw5aywibU3beJZ16aTEQ&s=19

Imagine being black and having your history erased? What’s next? The holocaust didn’t happen or ahhh well, we don’t need to teach that part of history anymore, we’ll teach the injustice of tourists at the capitol instead?

And we’ve been told it couldn’t happen here.

mickeyrat

https://twitter.com/realTuckFrumper/status/1690783283947446272?t=XVAXodMel0Qj2IVKOBqlNQ&s=19

Lerxst1992

tempo_n_groove said:

Merkin Baller said:

tempo_n_groove said:

mickeyrat said:

tempo_n_groove said:

mickeyrat said:

I wanna see confirmation of this from a tx news source...

https://twitter.com/LaikenJordahl/status/1688976652234371072?t=7ZgfUjQF1Hu76RGQW6hAJg&s=19

Don’t cross the border illegally.  

Cutting the line to get in is now seen as a good thing when it’s trying to be stopped.

Not understanding why people are supporting a free for all?

no matter how one crosses, they have the right to request asylum. per dept of state.....

This is 100% correct.  Problem is that is not happening.

Someone mentioned that Republicans don’t want to fix immigration.  Nether do Democrats.  The Dreamer bill/executive order was a nice “see I care while I don’t” gesture.

I do not want people coming in illegally, I don’t want to see people hurt either.

I should save this for the immigration thread as we have people sleeping outside the hotels now who are asylum seekers.  We do not have the resources to help all these people.

I thought I made my point well enough, but I'll clarify:

Republicans don't want to fix this because they have a vested interest in the immigration crisis, it drives their base to the poles. 

trump knew this, that's why the wall was one of his campaign's primary platforms. 


You said you don't understand why people are supporting a free for all... who is supporting a "free for all"?

What does that even mean, open borders? 

You have your opinion and I have mine.

I agree w this.  I also don’t see Biden admin doing anything to remedy the situation either.

Supporting a free for all is letting people come in unaccounted for yet when there is a stop gap in place trying to circumvent the amount of people it gets backlash, wall, concertina wire, etc.

When you have people coming over the rio grande and not through the gates that is an open border.  It isn’t secured, there isn’t anyone monitoring the area.

I would love to see them processed and papered and get jobs and to start paying taxes but like you said, there’s an agenda to not let that happen.

surprised I missed this. The Rio Grande has been decimated by global warming yet, in spots, it is still deadly. Since death is free, I guess that supports the free for all comment. 

 Rio Grande an International Boundary River Is Drying up and in Need of Restoration
https://www.scirp.org/journal/paperinformation.aspx?paperid=113832



…

Migrant deaths at the U.S.-Mexico border hit a record high, in part due to drownings

The river that divides Texas and Mexico is known on the U.S. side as the Rio Grande. On the other side, it has a different name: El Río Bravo, "the angry river" or "the fierce river."

"It seems like it's a slow moving river, but it's fairly swift. It is very deceptive, very dangerous," says Manuel Mello, the fire chief in Eagle Pass, a small city in South Texas that's become one of the busiest crossing spots on the entire border.

https://www.npr.org/2022/09/29/1125638107/migrant-deaths-us-mexico-border-record-drownings

mickeyrat

https://twitter.com/NoLieWithBTC/status/1690815717447229440?t=bOhLEsglg9jFQExrwG-P8A&s=19

mickeyrat

https://twitter.com/theliamnissan/status/1690714709199032320?t=r3dK8jGGBwORX9izfwmrlw&s=19

mickeyrat

putting this here.....

https://twitter.com/NoLieWithBTC/status/1690860165577220096?t=0Ct9HGBNRu6zfsrbm3PYeA&s=19

mickeyrat

https://apnews.com/article/pennsylvania-mccormick-residency-mansion-connecticut-oz-e84500b848f0be7efb9f9b3c495dd066

 

David McCormick is gearing up for a Senate run in Pennsylvania. But he lives in Connecticut

By BRIAN SLODYSKO

Today

WASHINGTON (AP) — David McCormick had a clear explanation for why his fellow Republican, Dr. Mehmet Oz, lost a critical Pennsylvania Senate seat last year: Voters viewed the daytime television celebrity as an interloper from New Jersey with limited ties to the state he hoped to represent.

“People want to know that the person that they’re voting for ‘gets it,’” McCormick, who narrowly lost to Oz in a GOP primary, said in March when asked to offer a postmortem of the general election defeat. “And part of ‘getting it’ is understanding that you just didn’t come in yesterday.”

As Republicans aim to gain the one seat they need to retake the Senate in next year's elections, McCormick is a top recruit. And before his anticipated campaign, he's working to avoid Oz's fate, frequently noting his upbringing in Pennsylvania, his ownership of a home in Pittsburgh and a family farm near Bloomsburg.

“I live in Pennsylvania,” McCormick said during a March appearance on Texas Sen. Ted Cruz’s podcast.

---

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But the reality is more complex. While McCormick does own a home in Pittsburgh, a review of public records, real estate listings and footage from recent interviews indicates he still lives on Connecticut's “Gold Coast,” one of the densest concentrations of wealth in America. The former hedge fund CEO rents a $16 million mansion in Westport that features a 1,500-bottle wine cellar, an elevator and a “private waterfront resort” overlooking Long Island Sound.

The trappings of a wealthy enclave, well outside Pennsylvania, offer a jarring contrast with the political identity McCormick has sought to cultivate, which emphasizes his upbringing buck hunting, his Army service and his desire to serve his home state.

Whether voters care will be tested anew should McCormick formally launch a campaign to unseat three-term Democratic Sen. Bob Casey in the 2024 election, which will help determine partisan control of the chamber. Recent Senate history suggests that even favorite sons can be stung when loose ties to home become a campaign issue.

Chris Borick, a professor of political science at Muhlenberg College in Allentown, said McCormick has “more legitimate connections to Pennsylvania than Mehmet Oz.” But he questioned the decision to spend significant time out-of-state, particularly given the decisive role that residency played in the 2022 matchup between Oz and Democratic Sen. John Fetterman.

“He spent a big chunk of time working for Wall Street and living in Connecticut," Borick said of McCormick. “There’s nothing wrong with that choice — unless you want to be a U.S. senator from Pennsylvania.”

He added, “As someone who is aware that he is going to have to confront this, it’s questionable to not really devote yourself."

A spokeswoman for McCormick, Elizabeth Gregory, declined to make him available for an interview and would not say how much of his time he spends at his Connecticut mansion, which also boasts a spa, pool and heated pavilion nestled in an area that real estate listings describe as a “summer playground of America’s wealthiest families.”

“Dave has called Pennsylvania home for 30 years and served our country outside of Pennsylvania for an additional 13," she said. “It's the place he mailed letters back to when he served in Iraq and the place where three of his daughters were born.”

She said, "While he maintains a residence in Connecticut as his daughters finish high school, Dave’s home is in Pittsburgh and for the last 10 years he has owned a working farm in his hometown of Bloomsburg, which has been in the family for decades.”

McCormick was raised in that Susquehanna River town, where his father was a local college president. Political ads emphasize a biography of high school sport, hunting and trimming Christmas trees on his family's farm.

His career since leaving Pennsylvania has been considerably more gilded.

After graduating West Point, McCormick served as an officer in the Gulf War and later earned a doctorate from Princeton. During the heady days of the dot-com bubble, McCormick was CEO of the internet auctioneering house FreeMarkets — amassing wealth as he steered the Pittsburgh-based company to a nearly $500 million acquisition deal in 2004.

He served several years in President George W. Bush's administration, including a stint as a top deputy to then-Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson. Afterward, he joined the upper executive ranks of the global hedge fund behemoth Bridgewater Associates, eventually climbing to CEO. In 2022, McCormick and his wife, Dina Powell McCormick, a former Goldman Sachs executive, held a net worth that ranged between $95.7 million and at least $196.7 million, and included homes in Dallas and the Colorado Rockies, according to an analysis of a candidate financial disclosure he filed with the Senate last year.

Once McCormick set his sights on the U.S. Senate, he began to make some well-timed adjustments.

Three months before launching his first Senate run in January 2022, McCormick sold his family's $6.5 million home in Fairfield, Connecticut. That was followed by the $2.8 million purchase of a stately Tudor-style home in Pittsburgh's Squirrel Hill North neighborhood, records show.

Around the same time, the Connecticut mansion, which he now lists as his home address in some public documents, was taken off the rental market.

McCormick has also not received a homestead tax exemption on his Pittsburgh home, a tax break reserved for an individual's primary place of residence. He voted in a Pennsylvania election for the first time in 16 years during the 2022 Republican primary, when he was on the ballot, voting records show.

When McCormick delivered his concession speech after losing to Oz by just over 900 votes, he was unequivocal about where he lived.

“We’re not going anywhere. This is my home. This is our home,” McCormick said. “This is where my dreams were launched, and this is where we plan to have a future."

Meanwhile, his children continued to attend a $53,000-a-year Connecticut private school where one is still enrolled, according to the school’s website.

In January, as McCormick started to eye another run, he shed his $13.4 million condo on Manhattan's Upper East Side. A document signed by McCormick that was filed in connection with the sale was notarized in Westport, Connecticut, and lists the nearby beachfront home as his address.

This spring, McCormick participated in a series of virtual interviews from the kitchen of his Westport home. Distinguishing features in the background match pictures that were posted publicly before the McCormicks moved in.

A $5,000 campaign contribution made in late March also lists the beachside house as McCormick's home.

McCormick's wealth, which he can channel into his political aspirations, makes him an attractive potential candidate to the Republican Washington establishment, which is cheering him to run again.

But it also presents an opportunity for Democrats, who are likely to seize on his ties to Wall Street in what is expected to again be one of the most competitive Senate matchups in the country.

“This is all dress up," said J.B. Poersch, the head of Senate Democrats TV spending campaign arm. “Covering up for the years that he spent as a hedge fund-monger appears to be just as important as pretending that he fits in."

___

Associated Press writer Marc Levy contributed from Harrisburg, Pennsylvania.

mickeyrat

https://twitter.com/reedgalen/status/1691182173246885890?t=2roibgFQ_A_Mkmo4-8dCuQ&s=19

mickeyrat

Has stated he wasn't drunk or otherwise under the influence.

https://twitter.com/MeidasTouch/status/1691240003354173440?t=_2XYiPWiHcn2sskUDC2CFw&s=19

mickeyrat

Rep Ronny Jackson everyone......

https://twitter.com/petestrzok/status/1691444835121512448?t=BX2GtpPDLfUBhB_PcsMxEg&s=19

Merkin Baller

mickeyrat said:

Rep Ronny Jackson everyone......

https://twitter.com/petestrzok/status/1691444835121512448?t=BX2GtpPDLfUBhB_PcsMxEg&s=19

"Back the Blue"

Not because you give a shit about the cops, but because you need gullible Americans to vote for you. 

Halifax2TheMax

mickeyrat said:

Rep Ronny Jackson everyone......

https://twitter.com/petestrzok/status/1691444835121512448?t=BX2GtpPDLfUBhB_PcsMxEg&s=19

White privilege.