Oh that Eric Cantor!  He has a knack for really digging into the crust of the political earth and pulling out the nitty, gritty details.  Cantor  has taken it upon himself, with the help of some other jaunty House GOPers, to establish the Young Guns Program.  This cute little group works real hard to essentially unseat Democrats, bluntly stated.  The title Young Guns is so catchy among young, debonair GOP that Cantor decided to name his new book just that.  Oh that Eric Cantor!  Revivin’ the Republican Party like a good ol’ fashioned southern evangelical awakening!  Ain’t it sweet?

I feel obligated, now, to point out that the title to this post is an absolute lie.  Cantor decided to stake this claim during a guest spot on the Daily Show earlier this month.  Politifact chose to investigate this clearly absurd claim, and concluded that it deserved a “Pants on Fire” ranking on the truth scale.  (Pants on Fire, for those not familiar with politifact, is the furthest away from the truth one can wish to obtain according to their scale)  Thank goodness we have fiscal masterminds like Eric Cantor in Congress to manage our budgetary decisions.   The excerpt that follows is taken from Politifact’s analysis of Cantor’s taradiddle.

“What you’ve seen (in Washington),” he said, “is a crowd that has taken advantage of a crisis back in late ’08, early ’09 and spent more money than this country has spent in the last 200 years combined, in the two years since.”

We first looked at federal spending for 2009 and the estimate of spending for 2010. Combined, federal spending in those two years amounted to a little more than $7.2 trillion.

We didn’t have to add up all 200 years — you only have to add together 2006, 2007 and 2008 to reach $8.3 trillion, which exceeds the $7.2 trillion of 2009 and 2010. So by that measure, Cantor is wrong.

Why focus on a seemingly meaningless gaffe?  Because this statement indirectly illustrates the mantra of today’s Republican Party agenda, embellishing spending lies about Democrats and championing themselves as fiscal “hawks.”  Which, to anyone who paid any attention at all to any type of spending measures taken during the previous Bush administration, should sound somewhat hypocritical.  George W. Bush, the self described “compassionate conservative,” vastly expanded government spending during his 8 years in office.  This isn’t a secret, although the GOP wishes it was.  Those who wish to deny entirely that any vast increase in spending was the fault of Republicans will attempt to blame the Bush spending/deficit explosion on the Democratic Congress that was present for part of the Bush years, however this is hardly the case.  . . . Read the rest of this entry →

As most of you probably know by now, Citizens United V. FEC was the biggest SCOTUS decision this year, and arguably for awhile. The 5-4 decision supposedly ended a limit on corporations first amendment rights, according to some of the advocates for the decision.

I personally enjoyed Slate writer Dahlia Lithwick’s take on the decision, saying that it creates a "Pinnochio Project" in which the Court transforms "a corporation into a real live boy."

McCain-Feingold advocates most likely wanted to beat their heads against a wall once they caught wind of this decision, because it was a proverbial slap in the face.

Public opinion of what currently stands is overwhelmingly negative. A Washington Post poll taken after the ruling this February showed 8 of 10 respondents were opposed with 65% of polltakers being “strongly opposed” to the ruling. There isn’t even much of a partisan divide when it comes to opposition of this ruling. Bipartisan opposition of this ruling continues, and Congressional Democrats have a lot on their plates when they try curtail some of what the ruling set in place.

Democrats plan to introduce legislation next week that would sharply limit the ability of foreign-connected companies to participate in U.S. politics and require greater transparency from corporations, unions and nonprofit groups that pay for political advertising, according to a confidential summary of the bill.

Source: Washington Post

The legislation being proposed wouldn’t fully negate the decision made by the Supreme Court by any means. The crux of the bill would address would require greater transparency from corporation, unions, etc. who finance political advertising while limiting non-domestic companies participation in American elections. Other facets of the bill would include executives or group leaders to include their names on ads that they fund, much like McCain-Feingold’s “Stand by your ad” provision

According to the summary, obtained by The Washington Post, the legislation would require corporate chief executives or group leaders to publicly attach their names to ads, much like political candidates are required to do. It would also mandate disclosure of major donors whose money is used for "campaign-related activity.

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Many Republicans are in opposition to the plan constructed by Schumer and Rep. Chris Van Hollen (D-MD).

Campaign finance reform, has been a controversial issue in American politics for a long time and will continue to be. The McCain-Feingold Act (Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act) was the first type of legislation in any form to amend/change the Federal Election Act of 1971. The law was passed in 2002, meaning for 30 years the same election standards were in place. Even at that, Russ Feingold and John McCain had been working on getting this through Congress for almost 8 years.

The act faced opposition by everyone’s favorite Senator, Mitch McConnell, and eventually led to a Supreme Court case. McConnell V. FEC challenged the Constitutionality of McCain-Feingold.

Schumer and crew hope they can rally some support from Republicans to help pass legislation for this, but only time will tell if that plan comes to fruition.