Update on Recall Scheduling

The dates are set!  Let the campaigning commence!
Two states which are like Minnesota, in having northern borders with Canada, in having Republican majorities which have been destructively polarizing, are Michigan and Wisconsin.  Both of those states have recall options built into their government. I'm undecided if that would be a good course of action for Minnesota to follow, but it makes a heckuva lot more sense than any of the Constitutional Amendments the Republicans in Minnesota are putting on the ballot for November 2012.
Here is an update from Ballot News, an excellent non-partisan site that generally does a very good job of being unbiased.  In addition to accessing the specific article through the link, readers can access it through the listing on our blog roll at any time; our blog roll is on the lower left column alongside our posts.  (There is a small blurb on a successful recall of an Arizona extremist, included for interest; the same nut job is running again in the November 2012 Arizona elections.)

Wisconsin

The Wisconsin State Senate finished its work for the year on Thursday, the last day scheduled for passing bills, after meeting for less than an hour. The Assembly, however, did not adjourn until late Friday after Democrats held a 30-hour long filibuster over a bill that would have dissolved the Milwaukee Area Technical College board. Democrats returned to the floor at 3 a.m. on Friday, giving speeches and interrupting GOP attempts to adjourn until Republicans finally agreed late in the afternoon to reappoint the current members of the MATC board.^[9]
The contentious end of the two-year long session was just the latest in a long line of partisan fighting that began in February 2011 when Gov. Scott Walker (R) introduced his budget repair bill which limited collective bargaining rights, compensation and fringe benefits of public employees. Also noteworthy was the passage of a bill allowing citizens to carry concealed weapons and one to require photo ID at the polls, which Democrats argued was unconstitutional.^[10] Last week a circuit court judge agreed with Democrats, issuing a permanent injunction against the Voter ID measure.^[11]
The end of the session saw a firestorm over a mining reform bill aimed at getting Florida-based Gogebic Taconite to open an iron mine in northwestern Wisconsin, creating hundreds of jobs. Republicans were unable to amass the necessary number of votes when Sen. Dale Schultz (R) sided with Democrats against the bill. Schultz and Democrat Bob Jauch are being targeted for possible recall over their opposition to the bill, while Republican leaders are said to be considering a special session to try and get the measure passed.^[12]

Recalls

Currently, 18 states permit the recall of state officials. Between 1913 and 2008, there were just 20 state legislative recall elections in five states. Of the 20 state legislative recall elections, 13 out of 20 resulted in the state legislator being recalled. In 2011, there were 11 state legislative recalls in three states, 4 of which resulted in the legislator being recalled.

Arizona

Former state Sen. Russell Pearce (R) became the first legislator to be removed in state history when voters recalled him from office last November. Up till now he has not made his future plans clear, but that could change today – Pearce is speaking at an event where many expect him to announce a campaign for state Senate. Following redistricting, Pearce was moved from the 18th to the 25th District – if he does chose to run that could set up a primary between Pearce and current Republican incumbent Rich Crandall.^[13]

Michigan

2011 saw a wave of recall attempts in Michigan. While most of those efforts dried up, at least two campaigns are continuing on (the recall of Paul Scott was successful on November 8, 2011). Organizers of the campaigns to recall Bruce Caswell (R) and Phil Pavlov (R) are aiming for the August 2012 ballot.

Wisconsin

Democrats in Wisconsin filed recall petitions on November 15, 2011 against four Republican state senators – Pam Galloway, Scott Fitzgerald, Terry Moulton and Van Wanggaard.^[14] Campaign organizers turned in more than the necessary number of signatures in each of the four races on January 17, 2012.
Last week was a busy one – on Monday the board dismissed all of the challenges submitted by the senators against the petitions, voting unanimously to order recalls against all four.^[15] On Tuesday, GAB received an extension on their deadline to certify the results, giving them until March 30. The following day Dane County Circuit Judge Richard Niess signed an agreement scheduling primaries for May 8 with general elections on June 5. If there is no primary the general election takes place on May 8.^[16]
The Senate wrapped up their 2012 session on Thursday^[17], and on Friday Sen. Galloway announced she was resigning her seat, effective the following day, but said it had to do with her family and not the recall. GAB said the recall will continue as scheduled and Republicans are now seeking a candidate to take Galloway’s place.^[18]
Meanwhile, conservative group Citizens for Responsible Government said they are going forward with plans to recall senators Dale Schultz (R) and Bob Jauch (D) who both worked to reject a compromise on a bill aiming to increase the speed of the state’s approval for iron ore mines. CRG is expected to announce more details about their plans today.^[19]

Ohio Senate Bill 5 Overwhelmingly Repealed "Conservative Overreach" Undone Moderate Republicans Join Democrats to Push Back the Extremists

Republican Governor John Kasich had his butt handed to him on Tuesday. 

Republicans overreach, they do it every time they win majorities in elections that they believe give them mandates, mandates which they mistake for support for right wing extremists.  But after the 2010 elections, they outdid themselves.

Kasich, along with Governor Scott Walker of Wisconsin, were in the front of the right wing Union Busting, in the false name of making a friendly business climate in their states.  Their careers and their 'centerpiece' legislation was heavily funded by the right, notably in some instances by the Koch Brothers directly and indirectly.  Kasich is consistently noted along with Wisconsin Governor Walker (who has a 47% disapproval rating) and Florida Governor Rick Scott as the most unpopular governors in the nation.  Walker faces a possible recall after only a year in office, despite attempts to change the recall process to save his job.

The numbers appear to indicate that more people voted to repeal Senate bill 5 than voted to elect Governor Kasich.


The legislation was repealed by a vote of 61% to 39%, by one report, while an AP source in Cleveland puts it at 63%.  This is a landslide, this is overwhelming, in the face of yet more attempts at voter suppression by the right, and is more noteworthy than ever that this occurred in an off-year election, and was distinguished by unprecedented numbers of petition signatures to initiate the ballot initiative.

Along with this signal repeal were other significant elections rejecting the extremists on the right.

Remember all those claims by the right to justify their voter ID measures that they were only supporting fair and honest elections?  In Ohio, as has been the case in other locations, the Right - funded apparently by the Koch Brothers - have engaged in dirty tricks in an attempt to cheat to win elections.   If they can't buy elections outright, they will try to buy elections through dirty tricks.

In Ohio, it failed. In Ohio, people won and big money lost.  But in Ohio, despite the overwhelming numbers, the right wing extremists are staying bought by their wealthy would-be union-busting wealthy interests; they are going to attempt to RE-pass the same provisions of the legislation that was repealed as separate bills.

Just a hunch, but I'm betting that won't be a successful re-election strategy.

According to Politico (bold emphasis mine - DG)

COLUMBUS - Republican Gov. John Kasich warned Democrats that they needed to support a hard-edged anti-union law or get run over by “the bus” — but on Tuesday Ohio voters left serious tread marks on Kasich and, quite possibly, the national GOP.
Unions hung a humbling defeat on Kasich, who has fast become his party’s poster boy for conservative overreach, by rolling back Senate Bill 5, a new collective bargaining law that bars public sector strikes, curtails bargaining rights for 360,000 public employees and scraps binding arbitration of management-labor disputes.

and this summed up the rejection by the center of the extremist right:

“Hey, I’m a Republican, but I’m telling you, Republican firefighters and police officers aren’t going to be voting Republican around here for a while,” said Doug Stern, a 15-year veteran of the Cincinnati fire department who joined the non-partisan “We are Ohio” coalition that helped repeal the bill.
“We’ll see what happens in 2012, but our guys have a long memory. We’re angry and disgusted.”

and Politco further wrote:

...one senior state Republican blamed the governor, whose approval rating languishes in the low 30s, for “snatching defeat from the jaws of victory” by alienating labor-friendly independents in the state.

Look for more posts later today about the dirty right wing political tricks of voter suppression.  Look for more posts about OTHER elections, including unprecedented numbers of successful recall elections, notably the Republican President of the Arizona senate Russell Pearce and in Michigan, also in a recall election, Michigan State Representative Paul Scott was removed from office. In Virginia a recount will determine if their state senate will change to a Democratic majority; and in Iowa, the election of an Independent keeps their state senate in the hands of Democrats.

In an equally important rejection of an extremist right wing position, extremely conservative, extremely anti-abortion Mississippi overwhelmingly rejected the attempts to change the fundamental definition of personhood to conception, a position which has no scientific justification but is promoted by the extremists on the religious right.  If this doesn't fly in Mississippi, where it appears to have been rejected by 55% of voters, it is not going to succeed ANYWHERE.  This is going to pose a problem for many of the current crop of GOP Presidential candidate wannabees, who in an attempt to move further right in order to win primary support, have embraced that position. Look for a separate post on that in the near future.

From the Excellent Non-Partisan Site Ballot News- Wisconsin Recall Update!

Here is the link to their web site; along with GoJo, this is one of the best non-partisan sources for information on the web, nationwide, not only for Wisconsin. But I have been relying on them for accurate WI information throughout 2011. Check them out for yourself, here. And/or follow them using the link on our blog roll in the left-hand bar of this blog.

Wisconsin recall fever, take 2

October 14, 2011

By: Greg Janetka
MADISON, Wisconsin: Less than two months ago Wisconsin held the last of the nine state Senate recall elections that dominated the state’s politics for most of 2011. Total campaign spending for the recalls surpassed $44 million, while costing state and local governments approximately $2.1 million.^[1] With the state still working to put itself back together (there’s a special election for Assembly District 95 taking place November 8 to fill the seat left open when Jennifer Shilling (D) defeated Dan Kapanke (R) in a recall), it looks as if it may all happen again in 2012.
Democrats made no bones about their desire to recall Gov. Scott Walker (R) for his role in targeting the repeal of most collective bargaining rights for public employees, officially announcing on October 10 that they, in conjunction with United Wisconsin, would officially begin the recall campaign against Walker on November 15.^[2] They would have likely have gone after him sooner, but under Wisconsin law incumbents are not eligible for recall until they have been in office for a year.
It was due to this rule that more state legislators were not targeted this year. 17 of Wisconsin’s 33 incumbent state senators, 6 Democrats and 11 Republicans, won election or re-election on November 2, 2010, meaning they could potentially be recalled in 2012. They are:

1. Chris Larson (D)
2. Jon Erpenbach (D)
3. Kathleen Vinehout (D)
4. Robert Jauch (D)
5. Tim Carpenter (D)
6. Tim Cullen (D)
7. Dale Schultz (R)
8. Frank Lasee (R)
9. Joseph Leibham (R)
10. Leah Vukmir (R)
11. Michael Ellis (R)
12. Neal Kedzie (R)
13. Pam Galloway (R)
14. Rich Zipperer (R)
15. Scott Fitzgerald (R)
16. Terry Moulton (R)
17. Van Wanggaard (R)

Additionally, two Republicans and four Democrats who were targeted last year but did not see enough signatures collected against them to face recall could see a second attempt.
With the Republicans holding a 17-16 majority in the Senate, state Democratic Party Chairman Mike Tate said he expects his party will run recall efforts against Walker as well as GOP senators. “It would be irresponsible of the party to not jump on that opportunity,” he said.^[3]
Senate Majority Leader Scott Fitzgerald, meanwhile, said of trying to recall Democratic senators, “I haven’t ruled it out, that’s for sure.”^[3] Dan Romportl, head of the Committee to Elect a Republican Senate, said, “At this point, all options are on the table. We are waiting to see what transpires on the Democrat side and then we will go from there.”^[4]
Hold on Wisconsin, it’s gonna be a bumpy 2012.

Factcheck.org Busts Congressman Ryan, Including Lyin' Ryan Promoting False 'Mediscare' Claims

Ryan and the Right Continue to LIE about their Plan and Medicare, because they need to; they aren't listening to the people of the United States, they listen only to their big donors, particularly the big insurance companies.

Ryan and the Right is trying to do something bad, something wrong.  They keep saying we 'don't understand their plan'.  We understand it perfectly, and the overwhelming majority of us REJECT their plan. 

Lyin' Ryan and the Republicans, THEY are the ones who don't understand.  But as we have more elections where they lose, they will eventually get the message.  Or it will cease to matter if they understand because they will have been thrown out, beginning with the recall elections in states like Wisconsin and Michigan.

Ryan Revises History on Medicare Reform


May 23, 2011

Rep. Paul Ryan revises history when he says his Medicare plan is "in keeping with the Bill Clinton bipartisan committee" proposal in 1999. Contrary to the impression left by Ryan, the commission's final report failed largely along partisan lines. Clinton opposed it, and all four of his appointees voted against it.

It's true, though, that both proposals recommended providing a government subsidy for seniors to buy insurance — that's one of the issues that caused the plan to fail to win final approval. (my emphasis-DG)

Not Clinton's Committee

On "Meet the Press," Ryan called his Medicare plan "sensible" and compared it to the work of a "Bill Clinton bipartisan commission" — referring to a 1999 final draft report issued by the National Bipartisan Commission on the Future of Medicare.

Ryan, May 22: And the way in which we propose reforming for the next generation, it's in keeping with the Bill Clinton bipartisan commission that — to reform Medicare, it's an idea that's been around for a long time called premium support: guaranteed coverage options for Medicare where the government subsidizes the poor and the sick a whole lot more than the wealthy, and people get to choose.

He's right that both plans recommended "premium support payments" — or government subsidies — to help seniors buy insurance. Under Ryan's plan, future beneficiaries (those currently younger than 55) would use the subsidies to buy private insurance. Under the 1999 plan, seniors would have been able to apply the subsidies toward the traditional government-run Medicare program or buy private insurance. So, to that extent, his plan indeed is in keeping with the 1999 proposal.

But any attempt to cast the 1999 report as bipartisan or suggest it was Clinton's commission is misleading. (emphasis added - DG)

The commission was created by Congress as part of the Balanced Budget Act of 1997. The New York Times reported that Clinton appointed just four of the 17 commission members, and all four of them voted against the report. Clinton himself opposed the final draft report. He issued a statement on the day of the vote that criticized the plan for, among other things, potentially increasing premiums for seniors who remain in the traditional government-run Medicare plan. Why? Clinton and other Democrats feared the subsidies would not keep pace with inflation.

Rep. John Dingell, a Michigan Democrat and commission member, voted against the report and criticized it in words that echo today's partisan criticism of Ryan's plan: "The proposal before us would convert Medicare from a universal guarantee to a Government voucher for private insurance."

The commission failed to get the 11 votes it needed to approve the final report. All eight Republican appointees and only two centrist Democrats, chairman John Breaux of Louisiana and Sen. Bob Kerrey of Nebraska, voted for it. The report failed by a 10-7 vote.

'Mediscare': A True Bipartisan Plan

Ryan is correct, though, when he blames both parties for engaging in what he called "Mediscare" — which we documented as recently as May 19 in the special House election in New York's 26th congressional district.

Ryan, May 22: Look, of course people are scared of entitlement reform because every time you put entitlement reform out there, the other party uses it as a political weapon against you. Look, both parties have done this to each other.

He proved his point when he engaged in, well, a bit of Mediscare himself.

Ryan repeated a false claim that the Independent Payment Advisory Board created by the new federal health care law will "ration" Medicare to cut costs.

Ryan, May 22: The alternative to this, David, is a rationing scheme, are the 15 bureaucrats the president's going to appoint next year on his panel to ration Medicare spending. We don't think we should give the government the power to ration spending to seniors.

As we have written before, the health care law specifically states that the advisory board “shall not include any recommendation to ration health care.” And the voting board members are doctors, economists and other outside experts, not Washington bureaucrats.

Posted by Eugene Kiely on Monday, May 23, 2011 at 6:29 pm

Filed under The FactCheck Wire · Tagged with medicare, Paul Ryan