Crossroads GPS, the nonprofit “social advocacy” organization that acts as a shill for the GOP, is doing it’s thing and firing off the opening salvos in next year’s Missouri senatorial race in hopes of weakening Claire McCaskill in advance of the Republican primary. The latest ad, though, prompts Politico‘s David Catenese to ask if Crossroads might be shooting itself in its metaphorical foot. Although the ad attempts to saddle an imaginary McCaskell-Obama duo with “$14,000 of new debt” for every Missourian, it ends with a prominently displayed quote from MCCaskill stating that “all of us need to realize the debt is a real problem.” Catenese asks:

A casual observer doing laundry or on the treadmill may read that quickly and be left with the impression that McCaskill is … serious about the debt problem.

Personally, if I were McCaskill, I might take the ad as a partial gift, do nothing defensive, but somewhat further down the road, make my own ads excoriating the free-spending GOP who got us into a financial mess and exploded the debt in order to give their rich cronies a tax break. What do  you think?

UPDATE: PoliticMo tells us that with this ad Crossroads has spent $1.1 million dollars trying to soften up McCaskill. Her strategy:

While the ads are designed fire up opposition to McCaskill, McCaskill has tried to use the attacks as material to encourage supporters to contribute to her campaign.

“Rove and the anonymous billionaires funding his attacks have a lot of money – and they’ll use every cent to distort the truth,” McCaskill wrote in September, in a fundraising email entitled “Rove is Back.”

Catilin Legacki, spokeswoman for the Missouri Democratic Party, said the ads prove McCaskill has “stepped on the toes” of special interests in Washington.

“All of the attacks against Claire are going to be about distorting her record,” said Legacki. “[W]hy won’t this group say who is paying for these ads? Missourians shouldn’t believe what’s in them unless they know who is behind them.”

The last paragraph references the fact that, by claiming to be a social advocacy group addressing only issues, Crossroads manages to avoid disclosing its donors. If these ads are any evidence, they’re walking a might thin line in terms of their disclosure status.

I voted today.

According to the Center for Responsive Politics, political groups spent $4 billion to influence that vote. Thanks to the “speech” rights bestowed on corporate America’s dollars by the Roberts Court, that spending has the potential to significantly skew results:

Identifiably conservative organizations are spending more than $2 on advertisements and other communications for every $1 liberal organizations do. While corporations are behind much of this money, many of these companies have skirted public scrutiny by laundering their cash through intermediary organizations, which often sport nondescript names and don’t immediately, if ever, reveal who funds them.

Think Crossroads, Chamber of Commerce, Americans for Job Security (which was recently outed by the New York Times as “a front for a coterie of political operatives, devised to sidestep campaign disclosure rules.”)

What’s at stake? Rachel Maddow’s retrospective of the numerous achievements of the past couple of years makes it clear what Democrats really stand for, despite the diluting effect of a few weak, Democratic “centrists”:

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/32545640

Historian Michael Beschloss, who speaks briefly at the end of the segment, sums up the administration’s choices as substantive achievement over political expediency. Not such a bad epitaph if it comes to that.

And what, on the Republican side, are all those corporate dollars buying?  Steve Benen suggests that a new K-street project may already be in the works; our anti-big government, Tea Party approved GOP wants to solidify their control over corporate donations so that they can funnel all those dollars to the best advantage in 2012. Otherwise, apart from lots of talk about eviscerating the Constitution, the Party of No, hasn’t promised anything constructive aside from shutting down government whenever they can’t have their corporate-approved legislative way. How else are they ever going to repay all that campaign boodle?

Here in Missouri, state Republicans are so confident that all the national level momentum (i.e. spending) will leave them safe in the driver’s seat that they’re already squabbling amongst themselves about how the various factions (Tea Party, far right, rightwing)  will divide the spoils. Thanks to Crossroads’ saturation of the airwaves with false talking points (did you know that Robin Carnahan will cut $500 billion from Medicare?), Roy Blunt’s planning what to wear to his his victory party as I write this. Meanwhile, if the latest polls are confirmed, Prop. A’s daddy, Rex Sinquefield, will sleep tonight, a couple of million dollars lighter in the pocketbook, but secure in his faith that the almighty dollar can buy just about anything.

Nevertheless, I voted today; I know what my votes stands for and it isn’t slick, dishonest politicking. I know that you all have the same belief about what government can and should do, so go forth … and vote.

Last week Greg Sargent’s Plum Line detailed some of the falsehoods in the flood of third party ads produced by Carl Rove’s Crossroads group and by the Chamber of Commerce. Because of the furor over their funding – the undisclosed donors, the possibility of foreign contributors, etc. – the fact that these ads are chock full of blatant, egregious falsehoods had not received much attention earlier. The onslaught has now truly begun; third party ads have been flooding the airwaves (on some evenings I have seen the same ad over six times – and I don’t watch that much TV). Many of us were worried about what Citizens United would mean for our democracy; these ads, the ugly spawn of that decision, prove that we were more than right to be concerned.

One ad in particular centers around absurd claims that the Affordable Care Act cuts Medicare by 500 billion dollars – the ad has been directed at several Democrats with only slight variations. You can see some of the versions of the ad and get the real facts about its lies here (you can also see one such ad below the fold). Take a look at it and then compare it with the new Roy Blunt ad (also shown below the fold) – not too much difference, right?

Given Blunt’s past propensities for abusing the truth, I’m not surprised that he is putting out one more dishonest ad, nor am I surprised that the subject matter is Medicare. He is clearly hoping to stem the damage Carhanan did in their last debate when she not only brought up Roy’s past statements about Medicare, but confronted him with proof when he denied them:

Among other things, the Carnahan camp disputed Blunt’s apparent denial during the debate that he had ever said that Medicare shouldn’t have been created. Carnahan’s campaign sent out a number of links to numerous news accounts — including two videos (click here and here) — in which Blunt appeared to disparage the government health-care program for the elderly, voted for cuts or voted for a proposal to turn the program into a voucher system.

What better way to save face when you are caught in a lie, but to lie some more – hence this new Medicare ad. Of course, if you are Roy Blunt, your contempt for your constituents is so great that you don’t even bother to come up with something plausible – you simply crib from your Crossroads GPS pals and adapt their all-purpose lies to do your dirty work. After all, Carl Rove proved that if you tell a lie often enough, everyone will think it’s the truth.

Update: FiredUp! Missouri has video of a KMBC TV segment that factchecks the Blunt ad.

One of the Crossroads GPS ads, the new Blunt ad, and two videos of Blunt dissing Medicare can be found below the fold:

Crossroads GPS ad attacking Joe Sestak (PA):

New Roy Blunt ad:

Roy Blunt on Medicare:

And:

I came across some interesting nuggets tonight while reading Think Progress. According to a report from a nonpartisan group, Campaign Money Watch:

— Missouri has lost 102,608 jobs due to trade policies that encourage outsourcing since 1994.

— So far, during this election cycle, the Chamber of Commerce, a leading proponent of outsourcing, has spent $259,375 on attack ads targeting Robin Carnahan.

A Connecticut Post blogger who summarized several GOP candidates’ records on outsourcing noted that Blunt “voted five times to protect loopholes that reward companies that ship American jobs overseas and voted against providing extra assistance to Missouri workers who lost jobs due to outsourcing.”

Do you see a pattern emerging? One that perhaps explains Blunt’s failure to even mention outsourcing in that “Jobs Plan” he is always ballyhooing. Instead, he promises to:

— Repeal the Affordable Care Act (ACA) which will not go into effect until 2014 and which has had no appreciable effect on our current employment problems – although, since repealing the ACA will, according to the CBO, exacerbate the deficit problem, it might well make unemployment worse long-term.

— Fight against energy legislation that has the potential to create new clean-energy jobs.

— Cancel the stimulus funding that has not been paid out – although most of the remaining funds have been committed and projects have commenced; canceling these projects would do little but contribute to even more unemployment and misery.

— Cut taxes and cut them again – which has an arguable stimulative effect on the economy, but which would definitely zoom the deficit into the stratosphere.

— Cut spending to reduce the deficit – and given the effect on the deficit of his proposed tax-cutting spree, those cuts would have to be mighty indeed to have any effect, gutting essential programs like Social Security, Medicare and defense.

As you see, there’s lots of questionable verbiage about jobs, but not one mention of outsourcing. Does anyone need to be reminded that a similar formula didn’t perform that well during the Bush years?  Nor is there any reason to think it will be more effective the second time around, when conditions are worse and the need greater.

There are many factors that make outsourcing jobs attractive. Labor is defenseless in many countries and can be exploited for next to nothing; some favored locations are more than willing to degrade their natural environment, offering a regulation-free environment; and currency issues can be exploited to make the already lowered costs even more appealing.

There’s also plenty that Congress could do to make outsourcing less attractive and keep good paying jobs here in America, where workers would spend their surplus wages on American-made goods, creating even more jobs. Of course, that probably wouldn’t work so well for Blunt’s Chamber constituency, nor for their foreign donors who might just stand to gain when American workers lose.

Remember George Bush’s infamous “Brownie” of “heckuva job” fame?  Would you be surprised to learn that Missouri has its own bumbling BushCo veteran?

Tom Schweich, who is not a CPA, is running to replace State Auditor, Susan Montee (who, incidentally, is a CPA). Judging by Schweich’s webpage, his main qualifications for the State Auditor job are his fiscal conservatism and his administrative experience as an appointed official during the Bush regime. In respect to the level of competence that characterized Bush appointees, I remind you that there’s a reason for the evil chuckles when folks hear “heckuva job.” And Schweich, it seems is no exception to the rule.

According to an audit by the Office of the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction, Schweich, during his tenure as a senior official in the Law Enforcement Division of the of the US State Department (2005-2008), not only bungled the audits of the Division that he boasts on his webpage that he “initiated,” but failed to correct problems when they were brought to his attention by the government’s real auditors.

The report is replete with phrases like “weak contract administration and oversight,” areas where one would expect to find Schweich’s fingerprints. Nor does such incompetence come free. The report estimated the cost of the administrative failures poor stewardship during the period 2004-2009 to be in the area of 2.5 billion dollars.

To get an idea about the scope of the State Auditor’s job, I consulted Wikipedia:

The State Auditor of Missouri is an elected official responsible for serving as the State of Missouri’s chief fiscal regulator, conducting financial and performance audits for approximately 200 state agencies, boards, and commissions, and the state’s judicial branch. The State Auditor also conducts audits for county and city governments lacking their own auditor or when requested by citizen petition.

I infer from this that the State Auditor is the financial watchdog for the entire state. Consequently, I can only wonder why Missourians would want to entrust this level of responsibility to an amateur auditor and failed administrator? I’m not a CPA myself, but even I can assure you that fiscal conservatism won’t do the job all by itself.

Last night Rachel Maddow nailed the key to Claire McCaskill’s 2006 victory over Jim Talent: the minimum wage. The GOP’s business constituency hates it, everyone else loves it.  It  didn’t hurt that a minimum wage initiative was on the Missouri ballot then either:

To their credit, the DSCC does get that this is a potent issue. I just saw an ad last night that they produced for Carnahan that hits Roy Blunt for his past opposition to the minimum wage – a past record that he is eager, by the way, to keep quiet:

I take the ad as indicating that Robin Carnahan gets it too, although she certainly isn’t running hard with it.

Another issue that strikes me as having all the positive mojo of the minimum wage is wiping out the BushCo tax giveaways for the wealthy – but wait – Carnahan already blew that. To be fair, she’s not alone in this lack of judgment, since the entire Democratic Congress crapped out on ending the tax breaks for the wealthy when they had a chance to use a vote on the issue to make a statement before the midterms. Remember operant conditioning? The GOP has been far too successful in training the Democrats to fold their tails between their legs and run whenever they hear the dreaded “T” word.

The real import of what Maddow is saying, though, lies in what both these issues have in common. They represent a core Democratic principle: fairness. When Democratic politicians fail to stand up for this principle, they deny their intrinsic identity, what it means to be a Democrat – and you can be sure that a self-hating Democrat isn’t likely to inspire much love from voters.

I was taking a little break from my morning chores when I came across this great video Steve Benen and  his friend, filmmaker Bill Simmon, put together. It’s short and sweet and visceral in its impact, so I decided to post it here for those of you who don’t make it over to the Washington Monthly’s “Political Animal” at least once a day:

Think about this video when the political scene leaves you feeling a little squeamish – just remember that the other guys don’t know what squeamish means.

Via FiredUp!, Robin Carnahan’s newest ad goes after Blunt for his earmarking sins:

I have always been a little bored with all the noise about earmarks. I leave the issue to someone like Claire McCaskill who wants to get her kudos in the least controversial way possible. To be sure, I don’t think use of earmarks constitutes good budgeting practice, and they may even have such unexpected effects as, according to a new study, stiffling job growth, but they are also, in terms of expenditures,  pretty small potatoes. Earmarks amount to less than 2% of the federal budget.

However, Carnahan is probably right to go after Roy Blunt over earmarks. She has been, correctly I think, hammering Blunt about the whiffs of corruption he exudes. And, of course, the real problem with earmarks is their potential to contribute to the quid pro quo type corruption that is associated with Blunt. It is far too easy to insert earmark provisions into legislation without oversight – a situation ready-made for wheeler-dealers like our Roy.

Certainly, at the very least, earmarking practices are crying out for extensive, systematic reform, and until Congress does something about it, we will be stuck with “pork-meisters” like Blunt – although, if we are lucky this November, as far as Blunt himself goes,  we might be able to call the whole thing off.

Following up on an earlier report that connected money from foreign sources to Chamber of Commerce spending on behalf of GOP candidates in target states like Missouri, Think Progess today explores possible coordination between the ad buys of the Chamber and Carl Rove’s Crossroads GPS:

At every turn, from the operatives running the two organizations to their targeted races to their media firms, American Crossroads and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce are bound to one another.

In Missouri, for instance, the seemingly “uncanny” coordination between their scheduling of ad buys insures that there will be always be a Chamber or Grossroads anti-Carnahan attack ad running:

Missouri

Crossroads GPS ads: 8/18-9/3

Chamber of Commerce ads: 9/3-9/8

American Crossroads ads begin: 09/15

Bear in mind that these two groups go to great lengths to conceal their donors, and that they account for over a fourth of the money that will be spent in this election by conservative interest groups. And it isn’t just TV ad buys. I’m sitting here as I write this looking at a glossy brochure put out by Crossroads proclaiming Robin Carnahan’s support for a “national energy tax.”

Sadly, if Congress magically decided to close the Pandora’s box opened by the Citizens United ruling, which now permits the GOP to launder donations through organizations like Chamber of Commerce; if a DOJ investigation found the Chamber guilty of violating laws that prohibit foreign entities from attempting to influence American elections; if if the (501(c)(4) tax status of organizations like Crossroads GPS were to be changed to that of a 527 political PAC (which it almost indisputably is) so that it would have to disclose its donors, all of this would happen too late to offset the unfair advantage these groups are giving the GOP in the upcoming election. For the time being we’ve got to suck it up and get on with it, no matter how badly the opposition is bending the law while working hand in hidden glove with each other and with the GOP.

It doesn’t bode well for the future – particularly if that future is is sullied by elephant crap in a GOP-controlled congress – that the Disclose Act, which would have insured some degree of transparency, couldn’t even make it though the Senate when that body has been, nominally at least, under the control of Democrats.

At any rate, there’s probably nothing to be done right now but get out and hustle our you-know-whats off. If we don’t, we’ll surely get’em handed to us on election day. We may anyway – and then it’s good bye to the good life in the old U.S. of A. for a good long while, at least for those of us who haven’t already got ours bigtime, like the richest 2% whom the GOP struggles to protect.

.