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The next thing to examine is the Terry campaigns claim that Lee Terry was the one to bring about tax credits for energy efficient devices in homes and in offices. Their release states:
"The Terry law amends the Internal Revenue Code to allow to credit against the income tax for certain energy efficient property placed in service or installed in an existing principal residence or property used by business.
As we've seen previously, they claim that because Terry introduced H.R.424, he's the one that is responsible for the concept, authorship, and final passage of H.R.6, claiming Section 1335 of that final bill was all Terry's. The fact is that H.R.424 went nowhere and was not a part of the final law.
(Happy Independence Day everyone! Our friend at The Oh, Really? Factor has done some great work with this latest batch of videos featuring Lee "No Legislation" Terry and Mike "Job Unfinished" Johanns. For those unfamiliar with "Oh, Really?" I also highly recommend their Attack Ad-Omatic. - promoted by Kyle Michaelis)
I thought I'd get ready for the fourth by posting a couple of snarky projects from my site. I've got some love up and down the ticket for Nebraska's candidates.
Now, before I post these, a disclaimer. I have a nasty streak. It's more fun for me to blast the opponent than to extoll the virtues of my own candidates. Besides, we all know Barack, Scott and Jim kick butt.
And now, the snark, starting with the Indistinguishable Gentleman from the Second Congressional District:
This next claim was so easily debunked, I'm still shaking my head at just how blatantly the lie is told this time.
This is what is on the release:
"This legislation addresses the proliferation of proposed sites for liquid natural gas terminals off the East Coast. Congressman Terry's law will ensure reasonable and fair standards are developed governing such facilities."
In their claim, they say Terry's bill that he introduced, H.R.359, eventually become a part of Public Law 109-58, Section 317 - Federal-State Liquefied Natural Gas Forums.
First off, neither are even similar to each other, and you can go and check for yourself at the links.
This Friday, we celebrate 232 years of independence. We celebrate not only our country's independence - but the independent spirit we as Americans all share.
Independence Day isn't just about our past, it's also about our future. Our campaign is committed to practicing a new brand of politics, and that requires each of us to recommit ourselves to the principles our founding fathers fought for.
Kyle has done an excellent job keeping the NNN community informed on any and all news concerning Ward Connerly's efforts to get an Affirmative Action ban. I just wanted to take this opportunity to reproduce a post I just put on MidwestDemocrat.com (my site) on the petition effort and certain things about Affirmative Action we should all know in the event that Connerly does get the initiative on the ballot for the fall.
In Nebraska, a petition effort being led by Ward Connerly and funded by Paul Singer aims to amend the State Constitution in order end Affirmative Action. The initiative effort itself seeks to amend the constitution so that it reads:
The state shall not discriminate against, or grant preferential treatment to, any individual or group on the basis of race, sex, color, ethnicity, or national origin in the operation of public employment, public education, or public contracting.
Connerly's group, despite its inflammatory and insidious goals, approaches the public as if they are progressives trying to further the cause of civil liberties in the state. The group's methods are as questionable as the men behind them. In fact, fraud has become such a problem among the signature collectors that groups like Nebraskans United have been created to document incidents of deception from the petitioners.
On July 4th, the group has to turn in its 115,000 signatures required to get the initiative on the ballot. It is my sincere hope here at Midwest Democrat that the group is unable to get the necessary signatures, dealing yet another blow to the group which has already suffered similar setbacks in Oklahoma and Missouri.
But should Connerly get enough signatures to get his initiative on the ballot for this fall, we all need to be ready to campaign against it. We all need to know everything we can to help people realize this fraud is bad for Nebraska.
In the next claim to debunk, Terry is claims he promoted "Ethanol use in the Federal Vehicle Fleet". Specifically, the release states:
Under legislation introduced by Terry (HR 3117), all such centers must have at least one E85 fuel pump.
It then says for reference "H.R. 2927 - House Energy and Commerce Committee Amendment", and that it's found under PL 110-140, Section 141.
First, this is an example of completely sloppy work by Terry and his staff. How so?
Well, H.R. 2927 has nothing to do with E85 Fuel Pumps. Just click on the link, and go to the text of the legislation, and look for "Federal Fleet Fueling Centers". Nothing.
Second, Section 141 of H.R. 6, which became PL 110-140, it's about "Federal Vehicle Fleets", not about setting up E85 pumps. Matter of fact, that particular section can be traced to Rep. Emanuel Cleaver (D-Missouri), when it was put into H.R. 3221 as an amendment.
(Now updated, debunking Terry's false claim to have "authored" the fuel cell legislation. Great work, Lisa! - promoted by Kyle Michaelis)
I've noticed we have a Lee Terry supporter in our midst lately that seems to think that Lee Terry is some great leader who has done great things in the House of Representatives. He/She has claimed hat Terry has "authored" and passed 7 bills. So I decided to take a closer look at Terry's record.
When someone says "authored", that means that person was the "Sponsor" on the bill. Not Co-Sponsor, not someone who submitted an amendment, but Sponsored the bill. When you go to THOMAS, which is the website that provides all activities in the House and Senate, you find out a pattern very quickly. When you look at a bill, it will list the number, the title, and then the name of the Sponsor.
Then there is the claim of "bills passed" itself. A "Bill" is something that has to pass in both the House and Senate, and then is signed into Law by the President of the United States.
Then there are Resolutions. There are Resolutions, Concurrent Resolutions, and Joint Resolutions. Resolutions are only passed in the chamber where it was introduced. Concurrent Resolutions are used when the same resolution is introduced in both chambers at the same time. A Joint Resolution is then a resolution that is introduced in one chamber, but passed in both, similar to a bill. All resolutions are then just printed into the official record. They are not laws.
Finally, there are Amendments, which are just added into bills or resolutions during debate.
When the supporters of Terry claim 7 "Bills", are they meaning those that became laws?
But what does THOMAS say about Terry's record? Here's a list of everything passed that lists Terry as the "Sponsor".
Democratic Second Congressional District challenger Jim Esch appeared on the Monday episode of Todd & Tyler. The whole interview runs 20 - 25 minutes and is definitely worth a listen.
Jumping into a short discussion of the high-powered and deadly storm that struck Omaha last Friday, Esch goes on to make a very strong case against incumbent five-term Congressman Lee Terry, whose greatest accomplishment has to be his total lack of accomplishment after an entire decade in Washington D.C.
Esch does a particularly good job of taking aim at Terry's record on energy, which he's actually trying to highlight in this campaign despite the total failure of our country's energy policy throughout his years in Congress.
Esch is right on in his understanding that in this race, "It really does come down to if [the voters] want to get rid of the guy that's in there." With Terry, that shouldn't take any more than making people aware of his embarrassingly non-existent record. Unfortunately, after the 10-year free pass Terry's received from the local media, that's a deceptively tall order. But, Esch is the best-positioned candidate we've seen to finally put Terry's sad legislative career out of its misery.
Other notables from the interview include Todd and Tyler going on record with their support of Sen. Barack Obama for President, while celebrating that Obama has a real chance of winning in the 1st and 2nd Congressional Districts. At the same time, Esch demonstrated that unruly and unscripted independent streak for which he's come to be known, going on record with his skepticism about the Democratic Speaker of the House ("My verdict's still out on if Pelosi is a good leader or not.")
While this is generally an asset with voters, I don't know that it's going to make Esch particularly popular around these parts suggesting that "Democrats have to realize that you can't lead from the left...you have to lead from the middle."
Still, that's a pretty common prescription from any Democratic candidate running in Nebraska. Others are welcome to rake Esch over the coals for failing to be the king of the liberal blogosphere. Me? In the future, I'd recommend more artful language that doesn't concede Republican talking points against the current Democratic Congress. But, I'm content to give Esch until his first day in Congress before really getting on his case.
(Thanks to everyone who helped out on Saturday. A lot of Omahans were hit hard on Friday by the storm and every little bit helps. - promoted by Dave Sund)
Candidates in Nebraska are getting dirty…in rivers and parks that need to be cleaned up. Come meet some of the candidates running for office in Nebraska that are taking part in new brand of politics—the politics of service. (video below).
The candidates talk about what service means to them, why young voters are so important this election and what each of us can do to take a stand as a generation. Democrats Work is a national organization, founded by two young people Thomas Bates and James Carter, that encourages individuals and campaigns to live and show their Democratic values through service. A chapter was started here in Nebraska by Natalie Benson.
In all six of their reports to the Nebraska Accountability and Disclosure Commission, the deceptively-named Nebraska Civil Rights Initiative has lied about the purpose and the scope of their petition to end affirmative action. In describing the issue they hope to put before voters on the November ballot, NCRI relies upon the same misleading rhetoric that has been used by their bands of signature-gathering mercenaries all across the state.
They explain their efforts as such:
Ballot Question - Ballot Issue:Ini[ti]ative Petition to prohibit discrimination & preferences to ANY individual or group in public: employment; education; & contracting by the state.
Considering the double-speak and deception that has fueled this petition since its very inception, it shouldn't surprise that those responsible for this farce would even lie on their official filings with the state of Nebraska.
There is no stretch of the imagination by which this petition could possibly be understood to prohibit "ANY" discrimination or preference. If that were the case, it would include discrimination based on sexual orientation and other classifications that go well beyond those that are actually targeted: race, ethnicity and gender.
It's precisely this unprincipled deception that reveals the utter and complete hypocrisy of these NCRI charlatans. They make a pretend play for the higher ground, offering a fairy tale conception of fairness and equality that is only sustainable through willful blindness to the world in which we actually live. But, they don't even have the courage to truly stand by that fairy tale of a colorblind American society with glass ceilings removed because they've purposefully blinded themselves to the most prevalent and malicious forms of discrimination.
If NCRI had the courage to truly offer a constitutional amendment that would prohibit discrimination against "ANY individual or group", this might well be a debate worth having. Instead, they're picking and choosing what sorts of discrimination to allow based on whatever's most convenient for their radical far-right agenda.
As is, all they've offered us is a fraudulent debate built on demonstrably false and misleading rhetoric. They've been lying to the people of Nebraska from the start. Now, they've lied to the state itself. For that, it's long past due that they finally be held to account.
In April, Attorney General Jon Bruning declared his intention to defend Nebraska's use of the electric chair by appealing to the U.S. Supreme Court the decision that ruled it unconstitutional. Since then, it now appears he's come to his senses.
Nebraska Attorney General Jon Bruning said Thursday he won't appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court on a state court's ruling that the electric chair is unconstitutional.
Bruning said the chances were slim that the nation's highest court would have heard an appeal because justices just considered the death penalty in April, upholding Kentucky's use of lethal injection.
He said his office will focus on working with the governor and Legislature to pass a law to allow Nebraska killers to be executed by another method - most likely lethal injection.
"My goal is to have Nebraska with a constitutional method of carrying out the death penalty as quickly as possible," Bruning said Thursday evening. "I'm not in the least bit bothered by electrocution as a punishment. I'm simply trying to be practical here."
Nebraska has been left without a method of execution since the state Supreme Court ruled in February that the state's only method, electrocution, is cruel and unusual punishment....
The Republican governor, Dave Heineman, and Bruning plan to have a proposal for state lawmakers to consider in their next session, which starts in January.
Of course, for Bruning, "coming to his senses" is only a matter of political calculation. Even in giving up this fight, he feels the need to emphasize how big a fan he is of the electric chair. Only unprincipled, unbridled ambition can explain how Bruning went from proclaiming "it is cruel and unusual" as a State Senator to now stating he's "not in the least bit bothered by electrocution."
That's not being "practical." That's called being a politician - the very worst sort who stands for nothing but his own political advancement. Right now, that ambition is best served by restoring Nebraska's death penalty, so that's precisely what Bruning intends to do - with all possible haste and no genunine concern for the larger philosophical questions demanded by a state's assuming the right to kill.
The Politico today highlights Barack Obama's strategy of casting a wide net in states won by George W. Bush in 2004:
Barack Obama will focus his resources largely in 14 states George W. Bush won in 2004, his chief field operative said Tuesday, hoping to score upsets in places such as Virginia, Indiana and Georgia.
But winning the White House won't be his only goal, deputy campaign manager Steve Hildebrand told Politico: In an unusual move, Obama's campaign will also devote some resources to states it's unlikely to win, with the goal of influencing specific local contests in places such as Texas and Wyoming.
Toward the end of the article, Hildebrand predicts that the Obama campaign will compete in Nebraska's Second District:
Hildebrand also said Obama would campaign in part of Nebraska, which distributes its electoral votes to the winner of each individual congressional district.
"We're going to go in and play Nebraska 2, which is Omaha and surrounding [areas], in the hopes that we can pick up that one electoral vote," he said.
A strong campaign presence by Barack Obama will certainly be positive news for Jim Esch in his race for Congress, and Scott Kleeb in his race for Senate. The fact that Obama doesn't have to spend any extra advertising dollars in Omaha that weren't already targeted for Western Iowa doesn't hurt, either. But this is the clearest signal yet from the Obama campaign that they intend to compete in Nebraska.
Former Republican Congressman Bob Barr will not be the next president of the United States, but there has been some talk about his playing the role of spoiler as the Libertarian Party's 2008 presidential nominee.
The inclusion of Barr on the November ballot isn't going to help Republican John McCain anywhere in the country. McCain's left himself open to precisely this sort of challenge from the right by his shameless embrace of George W. Bush policies on the campaign trail with little regard for how well they conform with so-called "conservative" principles.
That's why the following should definitely be welcome news to Barack Obama's supporters here in Nebraska. The Associated Press reports:
The Libertarian Party's presidential candidate will be on Nebraska's November ballot.
Organizers needed about 6,000 signatures from voters and say they gathered nearly 10,000. The Secretary of State's office confirms the Party is recognized.
The candidate, former Georgia Congressman Bob Barr, left the GOP in 2006 over what he called bloated spending and civil liberties intrusions by the Bush administration.
John McCain doesn't seem particularly concerned about protecting Americans' civil liberties, and he hardly bats an eye at the hundreds of billions of dollars we're spending on the occupation of Iraq. That's going to leave a bloc of traditionally Republican voters who demand something different but can't bring themselves to vote for the Democratic nominee - even with Obama's cross-party appeal.
If those voters are in a fickle enough mood, they might well cast their vote for Barr in protest of the Bush-McCain policies that are bringing this country (not to mention the Republican Party) into ruin. In 1992, Ross Perot received more than 23% of the vote in Nebraska, and he went on to receive almost 11% in 1996. It would only take a fraction of those results to make a huge difference with polls already showing McCain and Obama running neck and neck in two of Nebraska's congressional districts.
But, for now, let's just continue working to make Nebraska part of a generational wave powerful enough to carry Obama into office with or without Barr's presence on the November ballot. The hunger for change in this country is so urgent that we don't need to count on divisions on the right. We just have to continue giving the people what they want - mainly, a better vision and a new beginning.
I'm going to argue here that the Scott Kleeb race is one of the places we ought to make that gamble in. Nebraska is a Republican state, for sure, but so are the others I listed above. Scott's opponent Mike Johanns is a fairly well-liked former governor, so he will be tough to beat, but he's not an incumbent and compared to the well-established incumbents referenced above, he's no more formidable than any of them, and can't point to seniority, committee chairmanships, or pork he's brought home as the incumbent to bolster his case. The fact that Johanns was Bush's Agriculture Secretary, given the messy politics of the farm bill, isn't going to help him either.
The polling on the race also shows that Scott has a shot at this thing. One private poll I'm aware of shows only a 10-point gap, which would put this closer than Slattery in Kansas, Hagen in NC, and Noriega in TX, all races that many of us think are potentially winnable. And what that poll does not reflect is that young people in NE are registering Democratic by a two-to-one margin over Republicans, and that there is some serious outside organizational money being put into youth registration and turnout in NE.
The latest public poll, released by Rasmussen today, shows Mike Johanns with a 60-33 lead. But Kleeb has shown an ability to close the gap before and he'll need to do just that in order to win in November.
One way to close that gap is to keep hammering Johanns on his ties to the Bush administration. As The Politico pointed out last week:
In his bid for Nebraska's open Senate seat, Mike Johanns has a problem. On the one hand, he's eager to tout a résumé that includes a stint as secretary of agriculture. On the other, he's reluctant to fully embrace his former boss, President Bush, at a time when the president's approval ratings are at record lows.
While Bush is more popular in Nebraska than in most other places, Johanns still faces the conundrum confronting Republican candidates across the country: what to do about the lame-duck president.
Johanns, a former governor who's running for the Senate seat left open by the retirement of Republican Sen. Chuck Hagel, has so far charted a middle course that navigates between full flight from Bush and a hearty embrace.
Kleeb points out, rightly, that Johanns close ties to Bush go back to the very start of his campaign:
"One of the first things [Johanns] did was hold fundraisers with Bush," said Kleeb. "It's very hard to distance yourself when half of your money comes from your work in the White House."
No doubt that Mike Johanns took this valid criticism of his record as a bitter personal attack, and decried the "partisan bickering."
One of the more controversial decisions of the 2008 legislative session was the override of Gov. Dave Heineman's veto of a three cent hike in the gas tax to pay for road construction. Heineman got exactly what he wanted out of the issue - the appearance of standing against higher taxes even though he's made those higher taxes the only responsible choice by his calculated refusal to cut waste and demand reform from the powerful interests that control the Nebraska Department of Roads.
Now, amidst record high gas prices, Heineman reaps his reward while the people pay through the rear.
At a time when some public officials have called for suspending gas taxes to give motorists a break on high gasoline prices, Nebraska is among a handful of states raising gas taxes this year.
Nebraska will add 3 cents of tax per gallon July 1. The new Nebraska rate of 26.9 cents will rank 20th in the nation; the national average for state gas taxes is 25.6 cents. Motorists on average pay 44 cents per gallon in taxes when factoring in the federal gas tax.....
Nebraska's gas tax is higher than those levied by its neighbors, some of which have not raised fuel taxes for nearly two decades.
I don't know how much outrage our gas tax raising marginally higher than the national average will honestly provoke with Nebraska voters. But, I do know that some legislative challengers are counting on this being a very combustible issue for those State Senators who supported the override and are seeking re-election in this terrible economic climate.
Nebraska families are hurting and they might well be looking for someone to blame this November. Unfortunately, they won't have the chance to lay a good share of that blame at the door of the Governor's mansion.
