Is Grover Norquist What's Wrong With America?

Few people outside of central Florida's 24nd congressional district have ever heard of Congresswoman Sandy Adams, a doctrinaire right-wing fanatic and member of the House Tea Party caucus. She's in Washington to vote against everything... except for more tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans. No list of the worst Members of Congress would be complete without her-- and last week, her constituents let her know they've been watching her dismal performance. Blue America's first endorsement for the 2012 cycle went to Nick Ruiz, a former Green Party candidate who joined the Democratic Party and is now mounting a serious progressive campaign against Adams. He wasn't at Adams' acrimonious town hall meeting in Port Orange Thursday night but he told us that her ideological extremism has been bad for the district.

"Our congressional district, like most of America, is made of hard-working people that need government to work for them. Most citizens are not responding favorably to ideologues like Sandy Adams because the Republican plans Sandy presents don't help most people. However, her plans fit real well for the upper 1% of Americans she seems to know so well. Our district rejects such a narrow prescription for America-- and I am glad to bring that voice to Capitol Hill in 2012."

Adams is like a zombie who endlessly repeats right-wing talking points. Rather than participating in discussions of problem solving with her constituents, she parrots mindless focus-group tested Boehnerisms like "I don't believe we have a tax problem. We have a spending problem" and peppers her pronouncements with charged anti-government, class warfare phrases straight from Fox and Limbaugh like "failed stimulus," "job-killing taxes," and "government takeover of health care." And she's far from alone. Her town hall meeting in Port Orange could have been basically anywhere in the country where a teabagger was elected last year. This week, the Washington Post took a look at how Democrats are striking back against the zombie-ism that has infected the Republicans in Washington. The Post story featured another mindless teabagger, this one from Illinois, Randy Hultgren. He tried vomiting out the same catch phrases Adams had. His constituents weren't amused.

“We have clear information that... tax cuts, especially to the super rich, has not increased any more jobs,” one man told him. “I want to know under what conditions you would be willing to consider increasing taxes, especially on those who can afford it?"



“I just have one question for you tonight,” said another. “Did you sign Grover Norquist’s pledge to never raise taxes?”-- referring to the promise that has been signed by most congressional Republicans, including Hultgren.



“Don’t you have the confidence in your own ability in Congress to make up your own mind? You need Grover Norquist to tell you?” the man continued.



It is a scene that has been repeated at town hall meetings across the country this August as Democrats make a concerted effort to use this month’s congressional recess to change a national narrative on taxes.



For years, it has been Republicans who have wanted to talk about the issue, winning elections promising not to let government take more from voters.



But since the showdown over raising the debt ceiling, Democrats have been unusually eager to embrace tax increases, gambling that voters will see the Republican refusal to consider higher taxes for the wealthy as recalcitrant and out-of-touch.

Voters are starting to wake up to this everywhere in the country. A random letter to the editor yesterday in Spokane's Spokesman-Review:

Cathy McMorris Rodgers has proved that she is nothing more than a puppet dancing on strings. Those strings are being pulled by the leadership of the tea party. They include people like David and Charles Koch, oil billionaires who fund many of the radical right wing’s unscrupulous activities that allow them to accumulate more wealth.



They also include Grover Norquist, who through his signed pledges forces politicians into a corner and makes it impossible for them to vote in the best interest of the country as a whole or think on their own. (Norquist was also tied to the Jack Abramoff money laundering  scandal.)



Tim Phillips is also a tea party leader who years ago was paid $380,000 to “mobilize religious leaders and pro-family groups” to push energy deregulation in Congress that soon led to an energy crisis and economic meltdown. Sound familiar? Are these wealthy individuals the people you want your representative answering to? Do they identify with the majority of people in our district?



Cathy McMorris Rodgers, start doing the job you were elected to do. Represent the people of your district and not the wealthy elite.



John C. Eagle

Last week Warren Buffett's NY Times Op-Ed, Stop Coddling The Super-Rich served as a wake-up call to many who accepted the right-wing ideology being spouted by tools like Adams in Florida, Hultgren in Illinois and McMorris Rodgers in Washington. It sets up a debate between those who embrace Grover Norquist's goal of shrinking the government (and drowning it in a bathtub) and those who feel there is a robust and crucial role for government to play in balancing the immense power of wealth against the greater good of society.



Less than half a dozen Republicans in Congress have refused to sign Norquist's anti-government pledge. Norquist is basically a sleazy lobbyist, a crony of Jack Abramoff's who managed to get away without a prison sentence. He takes around a quarter million dollars a year from the Republican Party front group, Americans for Tax Reform, and also works as a free-lance lobbyist, pushing every sort of crooked operation near and dear to right-wing extremists' hearts, from stealing from American Indians to overthrowing foreign governments that put their people's interests before corporate interests. A notorious closet case-- and member of the board of the self-loathing anti-gay gay group, GOProud-- Norquist is one of the primary behind the scene's string pullers who has turned the Republican Party into a dysfunctional, treasonous mess that is threatening the social cohesion of the United States while worthless predators, like Norquist and his followers, enrich themselves.

Do Central Florida Voters Know What Sandy Adams Gave Them When She Rubber Stamped Paul Ryan's Budget?

The congressional election in central Florida's 24th congressional district could be one of the most interesting to watch in the country. So far the race pits a right-wing zombie and notorious healthcare hypocrite, freshman teabagger Sandy Adams, against one of the Democrats' most cutting edge progressives, publisher and educator Nick Ruiz. The district will be subject to considerable redrawing and is likely to shed many of its Orlando suburban areas in Orange and Seminole counties-- including the Adams family home-- and consolidate in Brevard and Volusia counties along the Atlantic coast. The district was originally drawn by state legislator Tom Feeney for his own congressional race, which he won.

In 2008 Feeney's sleaze finally caught up with him and washed out his political career. Unfortunately worthless quasi-Democrat Suzanne Kosmas grabbed the seat, winning all 4 counties. She proceeded to vote with the Republicans on key issues-- like healthcare-- and distinguished herself in the Financial Services Committee with her lack of participation, spending committee meetings out on the town with lobbyists. And she did outraise her opponent 3-1. But it didn't help. This time she lost all 4 counties, Democrats and left-leaning independents simply staying away from the polls in droves, unable to distinguish between two anti-family conservatives, Republican Sandy Adams and Democrat Suzanne Kosmas. Steve Israel would like to see Kosmas run again. I'm sure Sandy Adams would as well. But she's been on a serious bender since her defeat and isn't likely to run again. Nick Ruiz is the first candidate for Congress Blue America endorsed this cycle.

Nick has been successfully presenting Florida voters a tapestry of Republican ideas-- a tapestry another Nick, this one in the NY Times Saturday, showed to point to the U.S. turning into Pakistan. And key to Nick Ruiz' thesis is the Republican attitude-- and specifically Sandy Adams' attitude-- towards health care. Short version, they're against it for anyone who isn't wealthy. Adams voted to repeal healthcare reform and she voted to turn Medicare into an inadequate voucher program that would be a virtual death sentence for hundreds of thousands of Florida seniors. Nick has a very different way of looking at it, a perspective that presumes healthcare is a right of every American citizen, something antithetical to the Ayn Rand/Law of the Jungle approach of the GOP. Nick:

We must decide, once and for all, what sort of society defines America. We have already decided that law enforcement (i.e. the police department) is a guaranteed service for all, regardless of social or economic status. We have also decided that the fire department is a guaranteed service. Our society, rightfully so, honors both of these public features. They are freely available to all, regardless of the size of one's wallet.

Why should healthcare be any different?

Social justice in a lawful commonwealth of society demands that when a person is attacked or threatened by crime or fire, the public will come to his or her aid. And when a person is attacked or threatened by disease, should the public not do the same?

We already employ an integral non-profit, for profit and single payer scaffolding to provide healthcare services. There is no reason to believe that all of these systems may not continue to work side by side in a free society. However, it is difficult to imagine that we can continue to allow profiteering to masquerade as uncontrollable healthcare costs that must consume such a large piece of our national income. Costs will have to be controlled through regulation. What is most important now is to take that final step and declare universal access to comprehensive healthcare as a standard public service, in the same way that fire and police services are a social norm everywhere. When will America realize that it is her ethical, logical, common sense and spiritual duty to provide universal healthcare services to her people?

America must no longer accept the false narrative of scarcity and withholding when it comes to healthcare. Social justice demands that all of our people receive universal access to all of these vital basic services. It is no great nation that denies these basic human services to people. In fact, anything less is uncivilized.

Adams, like most of the zombie Republicans have tried to claim that they didn't vote to kill Medicare, just to fix it. This morning, Paul Krugman examined that lie in the NY Times and concludes that Republicans "don’t want to make Medicare sustainable, they want to destroy it under the guise of saving it... in voting for the House budget plan, Republicans voted to end Medicare."

Last week Democrats on the House Committee on Energy and Commerce put out a report that shows very specifically what the impact of Sandy Adam's vote to kill Medicare would be on the residents of Volusia, Orange, Brevard and Seminole counties that are part of FL-24. It's a chilling picture and it shows what happens when a mindless partisan like Adams just follows along with the herd. She believed Paul Ryan's and John Boehner's lies about how their budget would be "good" for Medicare. But the Ryan budget "raises costs for seniors and individuals with disabilities enrolled in Medicare, reduces their benefits, and puts private insurance companies in charge of the program. For current beneficiaries, important benefits – such as closing the hole in Medicare’s drug coverage – would be immediately eliminated. For individuals age 54 and under, Medicare’s guarantee of comprehensive coverage would be replaced with a “voucher” or “premium support” to buy private health insurance. By design, this federal contribution does not keep pace with medical costs, shifting thousands of dollars in costs onto the individual." This is what Sandy Adams decided to do to her own constituents. This is what she voted for on April 15th; her idea of what's "good" for Medicare would

• Increase prescription drug costs for 8,800 Medicare beneficiaries in the district who enter the Part D donut hole, forcing them to pay an extra $87 million for drugs over the next decade.

• Eliminate new preventive care benefits for 122,000 Medicare beneficiaries in the district.

The Republican proposal would have even greater impacts on individuals in the district age 54 and younger who are not currently enrolled in Medicare. It would:

• Deny 570,000 individuals age 54 and younger in the district access to Medicare’s guaranteed benefits.

• Increase the out-of-pocket costs of health coverage by over $6,000 per year in 2022 and by almost $12,000 per year in 2032 for the 127,000 individuals in the district who are between the ages of 44 and 54.

• Require the 127,000 individuals in the district between the ages of 44 and 54 to save an additional $29.7 billion for their retirement-- an average of $182,000 to $287,000 per individual – to pay for the increased cost of health coverage over their lifetimes. Younger residents of the district will have to save even higher amounts to cover their additional medical costs.

• Raise the Medicare eligibility age by at least one year to age 66 or more for 72,000 individuals in the district who are age 44 to 49 and by two years to age 67 for 438,000 individuals in the district who are age 43 or younger.

No one knows for sure what the new 24th CD will look like. Rumors are flying that Republican powers in Tallahassee want Adams out and that hey plan to create a district she won't rake in a GOP primary. Replacing her with another Republican rubber stamp isn't the answer though. Replacing her with a tough, savvy progressive, Nick Ruiz, is exactly the answer. If you can, please consider contributing to his campaign at the Blue America page. Below is the ad Blue America has been running in the district: