Tag Archives: republican

GOP Senate Hopeful: "Less Than 2,000" Women Sued My Company For Pay Discrimination

by GiuseppMcmullin Posted on October 27, 2014

Mother Jones

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David Perdue, the Republican nominee for Senate in Georgia, has a lady problem—at least according to recent polls, which show Democrat Michelle Nunn ahead with women voters in this toss-up election.

In a Sunday night debate between Perdue and Nunn, the moderator suggested that ads about Perdue’s time as the CEO of Dollar General, a discount chain, had damaged the GOPer’s campaign. Shortly after Perdue stepped down as Dollar General’s CEO, hundreds of female managers sued the company for pay discrimination that allegedly took place during Perdue’s tenure. Nunn’s campaign and EMILY’s List have both aired millions of dollars’ worth of negative ads describing the class-action lawsuit. The moderator urged Perdue: “Talk to those women in particular.”

Here’s how Perdue responded: “If you look at Dollar General as an example, there was no wrongdoing there,” he said. “That lawsuit, or that claim, or that complaint was settled five years after I had left…And it was less than 2,000 people. We had upwards of 70,000 employees in that company.”

An annual report Dollar General submitted to the Securities and Exchange Commission puts the actual number of female managers in that class action at 2,100. As Mother Jones reported in May, the women had been paid less than their male peers between the dates of November 30, 2004 and November 30, 2007—almost exactly the dates that Perdue was CEO (from April 2003 to summer 2007.) The class action began in late 2007, and Dollar General settled the lawsuit for $18.75 million without admitting to discrimination.

“Two thousand women, that actually seems like quite a lot to me,” Nunn said at the debate.

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GOP Senate Hopeful: "Less Than 2,000" Women Sued My Company For Pay Discrimination

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How the World Series Might Just Help the GOP Win the Senate

by KishaAnsell Posted on October 21, 2014

Mother Jones

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Kansas City sports fans aren’t used to celebrating. The town’s NFL team, the Chiefs, hasn’t won a playoff game since 1994. The Royals, the other major sports franchise in town, hadn’t made a playoff appearance since 1985. But local baseball fans are experiencing a rare bit of jubilation this year. Not only did the Royals sneak into the playoffs as a wild card, they won the AL pennant last week and are hosting the San Francisco Giants in game one of the World Series Tuesday night.

That’s an exciting development for any millennial-aged sports fan from Kansas City who has lived a full life without post-season baseball. It’s also welcome news for a pair of Republican politicians from Kansas, Gov. Sam Brownback and Sen. Pat Roberts, both of whom are battling their way through tight reelection bids: Research has shown that important wins by local sports teams around election season can boost an incumbent’s performance.

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Post by Governor Sam Brownback.

A 2010 study by researchers from Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles and Stanford University’s business school looked at presidential, gubernatorial, and senate elections between 1964 and 2008, and overlaid their outcomes with results from college football games. When the local team won within two weeks of the election, the incumbent on the ballot received 1.05 to 1.47 percent more of the vote on Election Day.

But not all sports fandom is created equally, with certain victories carrying extra weight. When one of the teams that the researchers termed “locally important” won ahead of an election, they found that it could boost the incumbent’s vote share by as much as 2.42 percent—a large enough margin to swing any close contest. “We find clear evidence that the successes and failures of the local college football team before Election Day significantly influence the electoral prospects of the incumbent party,” the researchers wrote, “suggesting that voters reward and punish incumbents for changes in their well-being unrelated to government performance.”

The researchers attributed these results to an improvement in overall happiness among voters around the election, boosting a willingness to support the political status quo when they’re feeling content about other parts of their lives. The recent success of the long-struggling Royals reaching the championship round would certainly make the cut as a now important team. “These are different times in Kansas City,” declares the Boston Globe. “Passengers arriving at Kansas City International Airport on Monday were greeted with stacks of blue and white balloons with yellow crowns on top.”

Though the Royals are actually from Kansas City, Missouri, they’ve got plenty of boosters just across the border in the Sunflower State. About 20 percent of Kansas’ population resides in Johnson County, the ring of suburbs outside Kansas City and one of the pivotal electoral zones that could decide whether Brownback and Roberts get to keep their jobs next year.

Brownback, who won by 30 points four years ago, has struggled in polls against his Democratic opponent all year as voters have turned against him over his giant tax cuts and efforts to purify the state GOP. And questions about Roberts’ residency hurt his image enough that independent Greg Orman has run about even with Roberts since the Democratic candidate dropped out of the race. Both races have tightened as Election Day approaches, so don’t be surprised if Roberts and Brownback strut around town in royal blue until November 4.

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How the World Series Might Just Help the GOP Win the Senate

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This Republican’s Campaign Promise Is: Elect Me and I’ll Kill That Guy

by MadgeWight Posted on October 17, 2014

Mother Jones

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When he first ran for statewide office in 2010, John Hickenlooper, the Democratic governor of Colorado, told voters he supported the death penalty. But last year, as the state prepared to kill Nathan Dunlap, a convicted quadruple-murderer whom doctors had diagnosed with bipolar disorder, Hickenlooper said that new information—about the cost of execution, Dunlap’s mental illness, and members of the jury who had changed their minds about killing Dunlap—had caused him to change his opinion. Hickenlooper stayed the execution but stopped short of granting full clemency—thus leaving his successors with the option of ordering Dunlap’s execution at some future date. “Colorado’s system of capital punishment is imperfect and inherently inequitable,” Hickenlooper said at the time. “Such a level of punishment really does demand perfection.”

Now Bob Beauprez, Hickenlooper’s Republican opponent, is running a campaign centered on a simple promise: Elect me and I’ll kill that guy.

“When I’m governor, Nathan Dunlap will be executed,” Beauprez, a former congressman who represented Colorado’s 7th District from 2003 to 2007, promised during a GOP primary debate in May. “This is not a flippant issue,” Beauprez’s communications director said in an email, “but Bob does believe capital punishment should be an option for our most heinous crimes.”

Hickenlooper, a once-popular mayor of Denver, is now running about even in the polls with Beauprez. And although it’s unclear exactly how much Hickenlooper’s death penalty stance plays into his struggles, a poll last year found that 67 percent of Coloradans disapproved of his decision in the Dunlap case.

“It was handled very clumsily,” says Kyle Saunders, a political scientist at Colorado State University. “It was a very nuanced decision in his head, but it came off being very wishy-washy and weak.”

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This Republican’s Campaign Promise Is: Elect Me and I’ll Kill That Guy

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Court Strikes Down Arkansas Voter ID Law

by ConnorT10mv Posted on October 16, 2014

Mother Jones

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On Wednesday, the Arkansas Supreme Court struck down the state’s restrictive voter ID law, ruling that it violated the state’s constitution. The unanimous decision, which comes just days before early voting begins in the state, could impact a Senate race considered key to a Republican takeover of the Senate.

Arkansas’ law, enacted in 2013 after the Republican-controlled legislature overrode the Democratic Gov. Mike Beebee’s veto, would have required voters to show a government-issued photo ID at the polls. Studies have shown that photo ID laws disproportionately burden minority and poor voters, making them less likely to vote. The state Supreme Court ruled that the voter ID law imposes a voting eligibility requirement that “falls outside” those the state constitution enumerates—namely, that a voter must only be a US citizen, an Arkansas resident, at least 18 years of age, and registered to vote—and was therefore invalid.

The court’s ruling could help swing in Democrats’ favor the tight Senate race between Democratic Sen. Mark Pryor and his opponent, Republican Rep. Tom Cotton.

After the Supreme Court gutted a section of the Voting Rights Act last year, Republican state legislatures around the country enacted a slew of harsh voting laws. Since the 2010 election, new restrictions have been enacted in 21 states. Fourteen of those were passed for the first time this year.

Arkansas was one of seven states in which opponents of restrictive voting laws filed lawsuits ahead of the 2014 midterms. Last week, the Supreme Court blocked Wisconsin’s voter ID law. A federal court last Thursday struck down a similar law in Texas—only to have its ruling reversed this week by an appeals court. The US Supreme Court recently allowed North Carolina and Ohio to enforce their strict new voting laws.

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Court Strikes Down Arkansas Voter ID Law

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Rick Scott Takes Late Lead In Southeast Division of Jackass Competition

by FrancisGottscha Posted on October 16, 2014

Mother Jones

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WTF?

In one of the weirdest, and most Floridian moments in debate history, Wednesday night’s gubernatorial debate was delayed because Republican Governor Rick Scott refused to take the stage with Democratic challenger Charlie Crist and his small electric fan….Rather than waiting for the governor to emerge, the debate started with just Crist onstage. “We have been told that Governor Scott will not be participating in this debate,” said the moderator. The crowd booed as he explained the fan situation, and the camera cut to a shot of the offending cooling device.

“That’s the ultimate pleading the fifth I have ever heard in my life,” quipped Crist, annoying the moderators, who seemed intent on debating fan rules and regulations. After a few more awkward minutes, Scott emerged, and the debate proceeded, with only one more electronics dispute. When asked why he brought the fan, Christ answered, “Why not? Is there anything wrong with being comfortable? I don’t think there is.”

There are plenty of Republicans who I find more extreme, or more moronic, or more panderific than Rick Scott. But for sheer pigheaded dickishness, he’s a hard act to beat. Jeebus.

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Rick Scott Takes Late Lead In Southeast Division of Jackass Competition

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Red Dawn: The GOP’s Growing Monopoly on State Government

by pitery Posted on October 14, 2014

Mother Jones

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There’s never been a worse time to be a Democrat in a red state. Republicans now hold all the reins of power—the governorship and both houses of the state legislature—in 23 states. That’s up from just nine before the 2010 elections. There are now more states under single-party control than at any time since 1944. And without even token Democratic opposition, Republicans have busted unions in Michigan and Wisconsin, passed draconian tax cuts in Kansas, and enacted sweeping new abortion restrictions across the nation.

This November, more Americans could find themselves living under single-party GOP rule. There won’t be nearly as many states flipping to single-party rule as in 2010’s GOP romp, but Republicans are hoping to add Arkansas and Iowa to the list of states where they can implement their agenda free of Democratic resistance. In Arkansas, Republicans won the state House and Senate in 2012 and hope to add the governorship this year. And in Iowa, a razor-thin two-seat Democratic Senate majority is all that has held back a wave of conservative legislation.

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Red Dawn: The GOP’s Growing Monopoly on State Government

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And the Prize for Ebola Fearmongering Goes to Louisiana

by Wyatt3221cnnews Posted on October 13, 2014

Mother Jones

Louisiana attorney general Buddy Caldwell has a plan to stop Ebola: file a restraining order. Caldwell, a Republican, called the proposal to dispose of Dallas Ebola victim Eric Duncan’s incinerated belongings at a Lake Charles landfill “absurd” and pledged to use the legal process to stop the transfer. WBRZ Baton Rouge reports:

“We certainly share sadness and compassion for those who have lost their lives and loved ones to this terrible virus, but the health and safety of our Louisiana citizens is our top priority. There are too many unknowns at this point,” Caldwell said. The Louisiana Attorney General’s Office is in the process of finalizing the application for temporary restraining order and expects it to be filed as early as Monday morning.

Additionally, the office is sending a demand letter to Texas state and federal officials, along with private contractors involved seeking additional information into the handling of this waste.

Caldwell, whose decision was quickly supported by GOP Gov. Bobby Jindal, didn’t offer any details on how burying the incinerated materials would affect the people of his state. It’s hard to see any risk—Ebola is transmitted only through bodily fluids, and Chemical Waste Management Inc., which operates the storage facility, sees no problem. And it’s not as if the ashes are going particularly far, anyway—Lake Charles is just a quick jaunt over I-10 from Port Arthur, Texas, where Duncan’s belongings were burned.

But Caldwell’s stance is especially bizarre in light of the great lengths Louisiana lawmakers have gone to position the state as a repository for every other kind of waste. Fracking-waste disposal, for instance, has become a $30-billion industry nationwide over the last decade. Much of that waste water has been dumped into old wells in Louisiana. Louisiana may also soon begin accepting thousands of tons of other states’ shale waste-water, which will be shipped down the Mississippi on barges. In Louisiana you can even store radioactive materials in an abandoned salt cavern, and then, after the salt cavern collapses, creating a massive sinkhole and forcing hundreds of people to permanently relocate, pour wastewater directly into the sinkhole. Just don’t try to truck the ashes of an Ebola victim’s belongings across the Sabine.

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And the Prize for Ebola Fearmongering Goes to Louisiana

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Chart of the Day: Kansas Successfully Reduces Voting Rate of Blacks, Young People

by EmileWhitney Posted on October 9, 2014

Mother Jones

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Hey, guess what? If you pass a photo ID law, you reduce voter turnout. The nonpartisan GAO studied the effect of photo ID laws and, after applying all the usual demographic controls, came up with this chart for Kansas and Tennessee compared to similar states without photo ID laws:

Voter turnout was reduced by 2-3 percentage points in both states. But of course there’s more to the story. Some groups were more strongly affected than others. Here are the results for Kansas:

Age. In Kansas, the turnout effect among registrants who were 18 years old in 2008 was 7.1 percentage points larger in size than the turnout effect among registrants between the ages of 44 and 53.

….Race or ethnicity. We estimate that turnout was reduced among African-American registrants by 3.7 percentage points more than among Whites in Kansas.

….Length of registration. In Kansas, the reduction in turnout for people registered to vote within 1 year prior to Election Day 2008 was 5.2 percentage points larger in size than for people registered to vote for 20 years or longer prior to Election Day 2008.

Victory! Turnout plummeted among blacks, young people, and college students. What more could an enterprising Republican legislature want?

Oh, and, um, maybe voter fraud was reduced. The Kansas Secretary of State responded to a draft of the GAO report by explaining that “if lower overall turnout occurs after implementation of a photo ID law, some of the decrease may be attributable to the prevention of fraudulent votes.” You betcha.

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Chart of the Day: Kansas Successfully Reduces Voting Rate of Blacks, Young People

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Wisconsin’s Strict Voting Law Requiring Photo ID Upheld

by GiselleBatson Posted on October 7, 2014

Mother Jones

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On Monday, a federal appeals court upheld Wisconsin’s harsh voter ID law, which requires voters to provide specific types of government-issued photo identification at the polls.

A district court judge had struck down the law in April, deeming that it unconstitutionally violated the rights of minorities and low-income voters. The appeals court panel disagreed, ruling that the law, one of the strictest in the country, did not amount to racial discrimination.

The AP has more:

State elections officials are preparing for the photo ID law to be in effect for the Nov. 4 election, even as opponents continue their legal fight. The American Civil Liberties Union and the Advancement Project asked the U.S. Supreme Court last week to take emergency action and block the law.

Opponents argue that requiring voters to show photo ID, a requirement that had, until recently, been on hold since a low-turnout February 2012 primary, will create chaos and confusion at the polls. But supporters say most people already have a valid ID and, if they don’t, there is time to get one before the election.

The ruling gives Republican incumbent Scott Walker a major lift in his fight against Democratic challenger Mary Burke. As The New Republic explains, Republican voters are much more likely to have the required identification.

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Wisconsin’s Strict Voting Law Requiring Photo ID Upheld

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Meet the Former Bike Executive Who Could Crush Scott Walker’s White House Dreams

by MichaelPud Posted on October 2, 2014

Mother Jones

This March, Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker launched what, in the post-Citizens United era, amounts to a de facto presidential exploratory campaign. He jetted to Las Vegas for a private audience with Sheldon Adelson, the billionaire casino mogul and Republican Party kingmaker who is said to have spent nearly $150 million during the 2012 elections and may dump as much as $100 million more into this year’s midterms. It was a pinch-me moment for Walker, who in four short years had ascended from county executive to conservative hero. Inspired by his boyhood idol, Ronald Reagan, Walker took on Wisconsin’s public-employee unions and refused to buckle in the face of massive protests and a weeks-long occupation of the state Capitol. When the unions subsequently tried to oust him via a recall election, he barnstormed the state, raised a record $37 million, and won with 53 percent of the vote. Soon the preacher’s son and college dropout began appearing alongside Chris Christie and Jeb Bush on 2016 short lists.

But these days, Walker’s presidential dreams are hanging by a thread as he battles for reelection against a political neophyte whose only previous electoral campaign was a self-financed 2012 run for the local school board. Why is he vulnerable? Walker devoted his first term to ramming through a chunk of the modern conservative agenda: He limited collective-bargaining rights, slashed taxes on the wealthy, enacted new voter ID requirements, boosted funding for vouchers at the expense of public schools, curtailed abortion access, and weakened environmental protections. These policies have sharply polarized Wisconsin—splitting families, church groups, golf foursomes—with only a sliver of the electorate not firmly pro- or anti-Walker.

Mary Burke, Walker’s opponent, is running as a McKinsey moderate, the anti-politician with business savvy who will jump-start the state’s economy and heal a divided Wisconsin. She believes her pro-business message can win over those key undecided voters. In a nonpresidential year when turnout could decide the election, Burke’s strategy is a gamble—and it just might work.

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Meet the Former Bike Executive Who Could Crush Scott Walker’s White House Dreams

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