Tag: Rush Limbaugh

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The Vast New Left-Wing Conspiracy

Obama is using federal property, and a select group of smear merchants to attack private citizens. Get out the pitchforks.

The new left-wing conspiracy

The vast new left-wing conspiracy sets its tone every morning at 8:45 a.m., when officials from more than 20 labor, environmental and other Democratic-leaning groups dial into a private conference call hosted by two left-leaning Washington organizations.

The “8:45 A.M. call,” as it’s referred to by members, began three weeks ago, and it marks a new level in coordination by the White House’s allies at a time when the conservative opposition is struggling for a toe-hold and major agenda items like health care reform appear closer than ever to passage.

The call has helped attempts to link the Republican Party to radio host Rush Limbaugh, and has served as the launching ground for attacks on critics of Obama’s policy proposals. It springs from a recognition of what was lacking in the Clinton years, said Jennifer Palmieri, the senior vice president for communications at the Center for American Progress Action Fund, one of the groups hosting the call.

“[CAP President John] Podesta’s and my experience was in the White House during the Clinton years, and we didn’t have a coordinated echo chamber on the outside backing us up,” she said. “There’s a real interest on the progressive side for groups to want to coordinate with each other and leverage each other’s work in a way I haven’t ever seen before.”

The call is hosted by Progressive Media, a project of the CAP Action Fund and the Media Matters Action Fund. The project began last year as a launching pad for attacks on John McCain, but failed to raise money for television advertisements, and served in the later days of the presidential campaign as a platform for disseminating opposition research critical of his policy plans. White House officials do not take part in the calls.

The calls are led by its top staffer, Tara McGuinness, who will also head Progressive Media’s “communications research and analysis war room” to wage spin and policy wars throughout the day, Palmieri said.

The call has proved particularly effective at coordinating attacks on critics, said Jacki Schechner, the national communications director for Health Care for America Now, a labor-backed alliance of groups that support Democratic efforts to expand health care.

“There’s a coordination in terms of exposing the people who are trying to come out against reform —they’ve all got backgrounds and histories and pasts, and it’s not taking long to unearth that and to unleash that, because we’re all working together,” Schechner said.

When a new group called Conservative for Patients Rights, for instance, launched an ad campaign featuring former health care executive Rick Scott, “There was a discussion about what do we know about this guy and in a very quick period of time we were able to come up with his background,” she said.

Scott, as progressive groups quickly informed reporters, had reportedly been forced to resign as head of the company became known as Columbia/HCA amid fraud charges, and the company eventually paid a massive settlement in the case.

When Betsy McCaughey, best known for her attacks on Clinton’s 1993 health care plan, published a column criticizing Obama, groups on the call coordinated attacks on her recalling questions about her 1993 article and noting her seat on the board of a medical device maker, in which she also owned stock.
The results of the new coordination are perhaps most obvious in the ongoing effort to saddle the Republican Party and its allies with radio host Rush Limbaugh’s hope that Obama “fails.” The Center for American Progress’s blog seized on Limbaugh’s “fail” comment early, as did congressional Democrats, and participants in the call drove it well beyond its obvious political range.

Media Matters, for instance, launched a “Limbaugh Wire” http://mediamatters.org/limbaughwire/; and even the League of Conservation Voters Tuesday released a video in which Limbaugh’s attacks on conservation and global warming theory are played over the talking heads of Republican leaders.

“We know the oil and coal industry are going to spend $20 million this year trying to get their message out there, so us coordinating to get our message out in terms of trying to advance a progressive agenda is a huge opportunity,” said Navin Nayak, the director of the global warming project at the League of Conservation Voters.

Though White House officials do not participate in the calls, Palmieri said, the new infrastructure is closely tied to the White House. Podesta directed Obama’s transition, and Americans United for Change exists largely to run ads promoting the White House agenda. Some on the left, however, remain skeptical of the White House’s embrace.

“When something works for us we’ll pick up on it anyway, like the Rush Limbaugh story — we don’t need to be told,” said Jane Hamsher, the creator of the liberal blog Firedoglake. “I think we serve everyone better if we maintain our independence and preserve our ability to pick up on popular sentiment like that, rather than just bang on the same drum everyone else is.”

Politico

Amusing

Rush Limbaugh’s Bipartisan Stimulus

This makes total sense – which is precisely the reason our Corruption politicians in Washington would never adopt it.

My Bipartisan Stimulus

There’s a serious debate in this country as to how best to end the recession. The average recession will last five to 11 months; the average recovery will last six years. Recessions will end on their own if they’re left alone. What can make the recession worse is the wrong kind of government intervention.

I believe the wrong kind is precisely what President Barack Obama has proposed. I don’t believe his is a “stimulus plan” at all — I don’t think it stimulates anything but the Democratic Party. This “porkulus” bill is designed to repair the Democratic Party’s power losses from the 1990s forward, and to cement the party’s majority power for decades.

Keynesian economists believe government spending on “shovel-ready” infrastructure projects — schools, roads, bridges — is the best way to stimulate our staggering economy. Supply-side economists make an equally persuasive case that tax cuts are the surest and quickest way to create permanent jobs and cause an economy to rebound. That happened under JFK, Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush. We know that when tax rates are cut in a recession, it brings an economy back.

Recent polling indicates that the American people are in favor of both approaches.

Notwithstanding the media blitz in support of the Obama stimulus plan, most Americans, according to a new Rasmussen poll, are skeptical. Rasmussen finds that 59% fear that Congress and the president will increase government spending too much. Only 17% worry they will cut taxes too much. Since the American people are not certain that the Obama stimulus plan is the way to go, it seems to me there’s an opportunity for genuine compromise. At the same time, we can garner evidence on how to deal with future recessions, so every occurrence will no longer become a matter of partisan debate.

Congress is currently haggling over how to spend $900 billion generated by American taxpayers in the private sector. (It’s important to remember that it’s the people’s money, not Washington’s.) In a Jan. 23 meeting between President Obama and Republican leaders, Rep. Eric Cantor (R., Va.) proposed a moderate tax cut plan. President Obama responded, “I won. I’m going to trump you on that.”

Yes, elections have consequences. But where’s the bipartisanship, Mr. Obama? This does not have to be a divisive issue. My proposal is a genuine compromise.

Fifty-three percent of American voters voted for Barack Obama; 46% voted for John McCain, and 1% voted for wackos. Give that 1% to President Obama. Let’s say the vote was 54% to 46%. As a way to bring the country together and at the same time determine the most effective way to deal with recessions, under the Obama-Limbaugh Stimulus Plan of 2009: 54% of the $900 billion — $486 billion — will be spent on infrastructure and pork as defined by Mr. Obama and the Democrats; 46% — $414 billion — will be directed toward tax cuts, as determined by me.

Then we compare. We see which stimulus actually works. This is bipartisanship! It would satisfy the American people’s wishes, as polls currently note; and it would also serve as a measurable test as to which approach best stimulates job growth.

I say, cut the U.S. corporate tax rate — at 35%, among the highest of all industrialized nations — in half. Suspend the capital gains tax for a year to incentivize new investment, after which it would be reimposed at 10%. Then get out of the way! Once Wall Street starts ticking up 500 points a day, the rest of the private sector will follow. There’s no reason to tell the American people their future is bleak. There’s no reason, as the administration is doing, to depress their hopes. There’s no reason to insist that recovery can’t happen quickly, because it can.

In this new era of responsibility, let’s use both Keynesians and supply-siders to responsibly determine which theory best stimulates our economy — and if elements of both work, so much the better. The American people are made up of Republicans, Democrats, independents and moderates, but our economy doesn’t know the difference. This is about jobs now.

The economic crisis is an opportunity to unify people, if we set aside the politics. The leader of the Democrats and the leader of the Republicans (me, according to Mr. Obama) can get it done. This will have the overwhelming support of the American people. Let’s stop the acrimony. Let’s start solving our problems, together. Why wait one more day?

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