Cleaning up a mess in 2 years that took 8 years to create

In my recent post about how conservatives want to gain power through any means necessary I noted that one tactic is to flood campaigns with oodles of cash and doing it through organizations that don't have to disclose their donors. This effort is getting assistance through an unexpected ally.

The National Organization for Marriage spent their oodles of cash in recent anti-marriage efforts in Maine and Washington state. In both places they have defied local laws saying donors to such campaigns must be disclosed. Court cases have ensued, and so far NOM has lost each time the cases work their way up the appeals process. Of course, their goal is to overturn campaign finance transparency laws. Though NOM and the anti-gay crowd are the immediate beneficiary there are a large number of conservative causes (and conservative legal help) that will dive in if the laws are repealed.




Richard Lyon has been poking around the Human Rights Campaign, the largest national gay lobbying organization. He doesn't much like what he sees (neither do I -- I stopped contributing to them several years ago). Lyon wrote a multi-part essay looking at HRC's fund raising, the salaries of their top employees, and the political contributions it makes. His opinion is that HRC is operating on behalf of the Democratic Party, not on behalf of gays. The final installment asks the question, "What do we get for our money?" Lyon's conclusion: not much.

A commenter explains that HRC has no political bargaining power. The reason why it doesn't is because politicians are not afraid of HRC, and that's because they know HRC will donate to them whether or not they do what HRC wants. HRC doesn't know how to walk away, still clutching that donation check.




We're past Labor Day now and the political topic is the November elections, something like 55 days away. The Obama Admin is swinging into campaign mode in hopes of minimizing the predicted GOP tsunami. But they come up with this? David Axlerod says a GOP Congress could be "more extreme" that Bush.

That's the best you've got? What have you been doing the last two years? Progressives see the Obama gang ignoring them in hopes of garnering a phantom slice of the American public. The Obama initiative come across as so tepid that there is no campaign narrative and the only thing left to run on is the GOP is more evil.

In the meantime the GOP is crowing that they created such a gigantic mess under Bush that it has taken more than two years to clean up -- allowing them to blame Obama for not being able to undo the damage. Let that rattle around in your brain for a while.




Governor Bill Ritter of Colorado has filled a vacancy in that states Supreme Court. Monica Marquez, the new jurist, makes two firsts for that court -- first Latina and first lesbian. Hooray for Colorado!