Jon Stewart · Ted Cruz · The Daily Show

On March 23, 2015, the thinkprogress.org website posted an article by Kay Steiger detailing information from Ted Cruz’ presidential campaign announcement.

During his speech he detailed the following things, “supporting the side that isn’t popular with women.”

• Repealing Obamacare
• A flat tax and eliminating the IRS
• Immigration reform
• Abortion and Same-Sex Marriage
• Gun control
• Government data collection
• School choice and Common Core, and
• Foreign Policy.

There’s too much detail for us to post here. Please visit the pos

t and read the full detail.

GOP war on women · Rep. Cruz · Ted Cruz

from Timothy Karr, Campaign Director, Free Press and SavetheInternet.com, posted  on Huffington Post’s “The Blog”:

By now it seems pretty clear that Sen. Ted Cruz has a plan to occupy the White House. But he doesn’t want people to know too much about it.

And he definitely doesn’t want you to know about the special interests that have already begun to bankroll his political ambitions.

That’s why the Texas senator’s latest crusade targets the Federal Communications Commission — and its efforts to better identify the funders of political ads.

Cruz has placed a hold on the Senate confirmation of Tom Wheeler to head the agency, despite bipartisan agreement to vote on Wheeler without delay. Cruz wants assurances from Wheeler that the FCC won’t follow the law and require disclosure of the real funders for dark-money political groups that clog the airwaves with negative and misleading ads.

These nominally independent 501(c)4 groups plowed millions of dollars into the 2012 elections, and there’s every indication they’ll be back in even greater numbers in 2014.

And while the Federal Elections Commission has a limited ability to identify the funders of the groups that emerged in the wake of the Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision, the FCC has a clear legal path to transparency.

Broadcasters are obliged by law to disclose who pays for political ads in exchange for using the airwaves. It’s a public interest bargain stretching back almost a century, and one that forms the foundation of U.S. communications law.

Free Press and our allies won a major victory in 2012 when the FCC ordered all television stations to post this information to an online database the agency manages. In the past, you could find this information only by visiting each station, a time-consuming process that uncooperative receptionists, steep photocopying fees and incomplete and unwieldy paper files made even more complicated.

Now you can go to a single website and find important data on who is spending how much on political ads at major stations in the nation’s 50 largest television markets. (The FCC plans to include political file data from stations in all 210 U.S. broadcasts markets by 2014.)

While a vast improvement over its paper-file predecessor, the system has some glitches. The FCC should make it easier to aggregate, search and analyze the data by requiring television stations to upload their political files in a machine-readable format.

It should also require fuller disclosure. Communications law expert Andrew Schwartzman, who serves as a legal adviser to Free Press, has petitioned the FCC to enforce existing sponsor identification requirements and disclose the names of principal funders in the body of the ads themselves.

Taking this action would let viewers know that an ad from Concerned Taxpayers of Americais actually the creation of two multimillionaires: the owner of a Maryland concrete company and a New York hedge-fund manager.

And that scares Sen. Cruz and his supporters in groups like the Koch brothers funded-Americans for Prosperity, which raises millions of dollars from anonymous donors to run attack ads against their political foes.

Letting the FCC do its job means advancing the public interest at a time when politicians are running amok in Washington. And that means shedding light on the money that helped elect many of these individuals, no matter which party they’re from.

Sen. Cruz shouldn’t deny us our right to know. His reckless ambitions are hurting our democracy. Cruz needs to lift his hold and stop blocking the FCC’s vital work on political disclosure.

— Originally published at Bill Moyers & Company

2016 · campaign finance · FCC · presidential candidate · Senator Cruz · Ted Cruz

From Jennifer Rubin, the Washington Post, October 11, 2013:

There has been, to put it mildly, some mass self-delusion going on in right-wing circles. Here’s how to tell if you are suffering from the ill-effects of the echo chamber:

1. You think Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Tex.) has it nailed when he tells the Value Voters Summit that the Dems are “feeling the heat” in the shutdown fight.

2. You think the problem is Ken Cuccinelli isn’t conservative enough.

3. You think if only the shutdown went on longer the GOP would win this fight.

4.  You think poll numbers showing the plummeting favorability of Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah) and Cruz’s 2-to-1 negatives are “skewed.”

5.  You think that if the GOP doesn’t win the shutdown fight it will be because of the mainstream media.

6.  You think Americans want to shut down the government to get rid of Obamacare.

7.  You think the problem is that Cruz didn’t talk long enough or that the media didn’t cover his 21-hour speech fairly.

8.  You think the right-wingers who lost Senate races in 2010 and 2012 should run for the Senate in 2014 because the GOP “let them down.”

9.  You think it is better to have 30 “true conservatives” than 51 Republicans in the U.S. Senate.

10. You think Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) had it wrong when he backed immigration reform and right when he went to bat for the shutdown strategy.

11. You think the biggest threat to the GOP is politicians like Gov. Chris Christie and Sen. Bob Corker (R-Tenn.). You think it’s about time someone primaried Sens. Rob Portman (R-Ohio) or John Cornyn (R-Tex.) from the right.

12. You think the GOP should have stood pat on the shutdown.

13. You think Hispanics will never vote for Republicans so there is no use in pursuing immigration reform. You think it is fine for the GOP to win elections relying almost entirely on white voters.

14.  You think Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) is a sell out because he thinks repealing Obamacare can only happen by electing a GOP Senate majority and capturing the White House.

15. You think Sens. Tom Coburn (R-Okla.) and Jeff Flake (R-Ariz.) have betrayed the conservative movement.

16.  You think the GOP needs candidates like Ted Cruz to run in for Senate places like Michigan, Virginia and Colorado.

17.  You think the GOP would have done better with Newt Gingrich, Herman Cain, Rick Santorum or Ron Paul as its 2012 presidential nominee. You think Santorum blew it when he stopped talking about contraception.

18. You think Republicans should run hard at the national level on a constitutional amendment to ban gay marriage.

19.  You think President Ronald Reagan would decry compromise and support primarying the Senate minority leader.

20.   You think right-wing talk radio hosts are a good barometer of American public opinion.

If you answered “yes” to more than half of these, it’s time to rethink your political assumptions.

GOP · government shutdown · Ted Cruz

In Tea Partyland, common sense is usually in short supply, but we had a severe “huh?” moment this weekend when Sen. Ted Cruz, he of the shutdown the government filibuster who’s still getting paid, and everyone’s favorite half-term governor of Alaska who can’t resist a media op incited a group of Tea Partiers to near violence in Washington, DC.

The source of their extreme ire? National monuments being closed. Hello!!! The National Park systems employees are furloughed because of the government shutdown brought on by Democrats not caving to the whim of a group of Congresspeople (mostly white males) who represent less than 20% of the population.

Could it be that they believe if you’re not part of the 1%, you should work whether your paid or not?  Or, are they attempting to exploit veterans?  Don’t believe us?  Read more here.

government shutdown · national monument · Sarah Palin · Tea Party · Ted Cruz