The canned official repeated news said yesterday voter turnout today would be light for Shelley Berkley and Dean Heller, who faced only token opposition.
Maybe that's why.
For the sake of our own justice, life, liberty, peace, prosperity, sound money and the tokens of the world, let's show them wrong or suffer the consequences.
Thanks to all who have participated in our campaign to restore Republican Constitutional government.
We have a few unpaid bills and appreciate donations at this time:
We run a shoestring campaign budget and return all funds from identified lobbyists.
We worked on a successful campaign - Movement for a New Congress - 42 years ago, served on the Reagan Task Force, contributed to the House Ways and Means Report on Replacing the Income Tax, worked on a successful Governor recall, ran for Congress, and now is the time again to make a difference.
There are two days left to vote for better government...
Lobbyist tied to Sen. Harry Reid [and Dean Heller] pleads not guilty
The Associated Press
Thursday, June 7, 2012 | 4:19 p.m.
A former developer and lobbyist with long ties to Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and Nevada's political elite says he's not guilty of violating federal campaign contribution laws.
Harvey Whittemore stood Thursday wearing a white shirt, blue suit and leg chains for a brief arraignment in U.S. District Court in Reno.
Whittemore pleaded not guilty to all four counts in an indictment stemming from campaign contributions of more than $100,000 on a single day in 2007 to an unnamed elected federal official.
U.S. Magistrate Judge William Cobb said the 59-year-old Whittemore can remain free pending trial Aug. 7.
Whittemore contributed to numerous politicians including Republican Sen. Dean Heller and Democratic Rep. Shelley Berkley.
But records show only Reid received donations of more than $100,000 on a single day in 2007.
THIS IS A BREAKING NEWS UPDATE. Check back soon for further information. AP's earlier story is below.
A former developer and lobbyist with long ties to Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and Nevada's political elite turned himself in to federal authorities Thursday after being indicted on criminal charges involving federal campaign contributions.
Harvey Whittemore planned to plead not guilty later in the day before a federal magistrate in Reno, his lawyer, John Arrascada, told The Associated Press.
Whittemore, 59, was indicted by a federal grand jury Wednesday on four counts related to campaign contributions made in 2007 to an unnamed elected federal official.
Once a kingpin in state political circles, Whittemore made campaign contributions to numerous politicians including Republican Sen. Dean Heller and Democratic Rep. Shelley Berkley.
But records show only Reid received donations of more than $100,000 on a single day in 2007.
Prosecutors say he solicited campaign contributions from family members and employees and skirted federal election law limits by reimbursing them. He's also charged with lying to federal agencies.
Justice Department officials said Whittemore allegedly concealed the scheme from the elected official, his campaign committee and the Federal Election Commission.
If convicted, Whittemore faces up to 20 years in prison and $1 million in fines.
"Mr. Whittemore allegedly used his family members and employees as conduits to make illegal contributions to the campaign committee of an elected member of Congress," Assistant Attorney General Lanny Breuer said in a written statement.
Whittemore also "attempted to conceal his crimes by lying to the FBI," he said.
In 2007, federal election law limited campaign contributions to $4,600 from an individual and $9,200 from a couple. The law also prohibits making contributions in another person's name to hide the identity of the true donor.
Prosecutors allege Whittemore met with the politician in February 2007 and agreed to try to raise $150,000 for the official's campaign committee.
Reid had become the Senate majority leader several weeks before, after Democrats won the upper chamber majority in 2006.
The following month, Whittemore solicited employees, family members and their spouses to make maximum campaign donations and reimbursed them with personal checks and wire transfers, according to the indictment.
On March 28, 2007, authorities allege that a Whittemore employee transmitted $138,000 in contributions to the elected official's campaign committee.
Two weeks later, the campaign committee "unknowingly filed false reports with the FEC stating that the conduits had made contributions, when in fact, Whittemore had made them," prosecutors said.
We run a shoestring campaign budget and return all funds received from identified lobbyists, because, despite what SCOTUS ruled and Mitt Romney declared, corporations are not people:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corporate_personhood
Click on or copy and paste names to see which special interests they represent.
Nevada citizens now have two days to vote...
http://nvsos.gov/index.aspx?page=1089
Dean Heller (R-Nev) Contributions from Lobbyists, 2012 Cycle
Feel free to distribute or cite this material, but
please credit the Center for Responsive Politics. For permission to
reprint for commercial uses, such as textbooks, contact the Center.
Yes, twice, according to AP, Wall Street Journal and Reno Gazette-Journal, who gave it 7/10 on the Truth Meter.
This is important for all voters who suffered healthcare costs rising in double digits with diminishing healthcare results.
America
spends the most for healthcare in the world, yet sits near the bottom
of developed nations in infant health and life expectancy, a very real
election issue:
When will we voters hold our elected public servants accountable?
The
two National Committee Party Candidates want to either raise debts,
regulations, spending and taxes, or promise to cut them, as they did for
two generations, with increasingly disastrous results.
There
is another Constitutional approach to health, justice, life, liberty,
peace and prosperity represented by the Silver Senator serving people,
not corporation, foundation or union special interests.
We can send this to friends and family and vote for freedom right now, or suffer the same tired old candidates and consequences:
http://nvsos.gov/index.aspx?page=1089
Hat Tip to SHG:
http://www.youtube.com/embed/PJ-p29xEM0s 4:33
Fact Checker: Did Heller vote for or against Medicare cuts?
Mark Robison is the Reno Gazette-Journal’s community analysis
writer. Fact Checker is our weekly analysis on whether the facts and
figures floated in the media are true.
Have something you think we need
to examine? Email factchecker@rgj.com or call 775-846-5368.
The claim
Sen.
Dean Heller, R-Nev., celebrates that he voted to restore $500 billion
in Medicare cuts when he also voted for the same cuts twice.
The background
Heller
is running against Democrat Shelley Berkley for one of Nevada’s two
U.S. Senate seats (Democrat Harry Reid holds the other one).
Heller
sent out a mailer last month touting his accomplishments, including
that he “voted to restore $500 billion back to Medicare that was cut by
the president’s healthcare law.”
Zac
Petkanas, senior communications adviser to the Nevada State Democratic
Party, contacted Fact Checker to look into the statement. He said Heller
“voted twice for those very same ‘cuts.’”
Petkanas
put the word “cuts” in quote marks because the so-called Obamacare
legislation didn’t call for cuts in the Medicare budget but for changes
that are expected to lead to about $500 billion in less growth in
Medicare spending.
The
Congressional Budget Office, a nonpartisan organization charged with
analyzing the financial effects of legislation, says that spending on
Medicare will slow by about seven percent over the next decade under
Obamacare.
It says this will result in Medicare costing about $7.1
trillion instead of $7.6 trillion over the next 10 years.
Republicans
said this half-trillion-dollar difference is a cut in the program
whereas
Democrats called it savings from new policies and efficiencies.
You can decide whether you think they are cuts or savings.
It doesn’t
matter for this Fact Checker, but let’s use “cuts” for consistency.
The
claim under consideration is whether Heller is claiming to have fought
against these cuts while simultaneously voting for them, twice.
The
first part is undisputedly true.
As Heller’s Washington-based spokesman
Stewart Bybee told Fact Checker, “Senator Heller has voted to repeal
the president’s healthcare law in its entirety, which would restore the
$500 billion cut from Medicare.”
Now for the second part, which involves the budget plan proposed by Rep. Paul Ryan, R-Wisc.
The
Associated Press reported on it:
“In a postelection reversal, House
Republicans are supporting nearly $450 billion in Medicare cuts that
they criticized vigorously last fall when Democrats and President Barack
Obama passed them as part of their controversial health care law.”
The Wall Street Journal wrote:
“Last fall, Republicans spent millions on TV ads attacking Democrats for cutting Medicare.
Those cuts — which reduced reimbursements to drug companies, hospitals and insurance companies and totaled about $500 billion over 10 years —
were made to pay for the new subsidies to younger, uninsured Americans. …
“But Republicans may not be all that hostile to those reductions after all. … (Ryan’s)
plan keeps in place the Medicare reductions.”
Heller — who switched from the House to the Senate when he replaced John Ensign
— told the Associated Press about the Ryan budget,
“I’m proud to be the only member of Congress who will get to vote for it twice.”
OK, so Obamacare included $500 billion in cuts to Medicare and Heller proudly
opposed them.
Basically those same cuts were included in the Ryan plan and he
proudly supported that.
How to reconcile this?
Bybee said that Obamacare is the law of the land and the Republican budget doesn’t
address
the Medicare cuts. He gave the analogy of the FDA. A vote for or
against the budget — which doesn’t address the FDA — is not a vote for
or against the FDA
because it’s not mentioned in the budget.
This argument is problematic because it’s not simply that the Medicare savings were
not addressed in the budget — they were intentionally spared.
Consider this passage from the Associated Press story mentioned above:
“Ryan’s spokesman, Conor Sweeney, said the cuts are virtually the only part of ‘Obamacare’…that the Wisconsin Republican preserved when he drafted his budget.”
Bybee repeated that the mailer’s reference to protecting Medicare relates only to
Heller’s vote to repeal Obamacare.
As
for the budget vote, he said, “The budget is a broad document. It’s
guidelines, not prescriptive policy. The generalization that is being
made is that if it’s not specifically addressed then it’s a sign of
support. That is simply not the case because that is not the function of
a budget.”
And Bybee offers another analogy: “There are a lot of members of Congress that do
not like the Endangered Species Act. Under your premise, if funding is reduced for
enforcement, but the budget does not specifically repeal the program then it’s a
sign of support. (That’s) just not the case. The context that you are applying under
this scenario could apply to anything within the federal government.”
The verdict
Is Heller promoting his vote to restore cuts to Medicare even though he later voted on
a plan that went out of its way to keep those cuts?
Yes. A weak argument could be made that the Ryan plan doesn’t contain those cuts
and so Heller didn’t technically vote for them.
But to say a vote for a budget plan that intentionally and specifically and
prominently saves those Medicare cuts is in no way a vote in support of those cuts
doesn’t square with reality.
This wasn’t abudget
compromise hammered out over weeks with both parties where each side
had to agree to some things they didn’t like. This was crafted by
Republicans to show their priorities for the nation, including on
Medicare, where they went out
of their way to save the cuts Obama came up with.
Truth Meter: 7 out of 10
That rating, though, doesn’t get into whether there’s a problem with doing what
Heller did.
Is it problematic for him to have his cake (“see how I fought Obama’s Medicare changes”) and eat it too (“the budget I supported that singled out
keeping those changes is just a budget and shouldn’t be construed as support for
those changes”)?
Let’s leave it this way: If Berkley or Reid voted for a plan that would get rid of X and
later twice voted for a plan that specifically supported X — and then appealed to
voters based on opposition to X — would you say that makes sense?
Or would you say something’s fishy?
If you’d say Berkley and Reid were making sense, then what Heller did is good, too. If
you’d say Berkley and Reid were being misleading, then what Heller did is problematic, too.
ask fact checker
Mark
Robison is the Reno Gazette-Journal’s community analysis writer. Fact
Checker is our weekly analysis on whether the facts and figures floated
in the media are true. Have something you think we need to examine?
Email factchecker@rgj.com or call 775-846-5368
Dean
Heller votes the way he's told, and not by or for the citizens of
Nevada. Heller is voting the way the Koch brothers, Grover Norquist and
the rest of the tea baggers tell him....or else.
Nevada needs a US Senator that represents us, the citizens of Nevada. Shelly Berkley 2012
Apparently
you still can't spell "Republican" without "perfidious." Reading this
explanation is like walking a tightrope. Let your attention wander for a
second, and it's over.
It's
interesting how the press bends over backward to try and prove
Republicans wrong. The medicare cuts were criticized because it's
always an issue that Dems say they support; thus, criticizing them
showed the Dems hypocracy. The cuts were a small part of the terrible
(and soon unconstitutional) Obama care plan and the well thought out
Ryan budget. To say that Heller was wrong to vote in against one and in
favor of the other exposes the ever present Media Bias.
Facts
are facts and the Media has just reported them. Republicans believe in
their ideology and truth and reasoning that contradicts must be wrong;
they are unwilling to find a compromise or middle ground. They worship
at the alter of Fox Noise lies and bigotry because it's easier to
believe the lies that support their ideology than consider the merits of
a contradictory positions.
What
is interesting is the “spin.” Republicans say they want entitlements
to be cut, but when cuts for future Medicare spending are made, not even
cuts to current spending by Democrats, Republicans flip flop and take
the other side of the argument. The Ryan plan on the other hand which
includes the very same cuts looks good to Republicans. It’s just an
example of the games; the Republicans are playing to make Obama a one
term president. Republicans have been exposed in their diabolical
fiendish strategy that puts party ahead of country.
Heller has
signed on to this strategy and is just another Republican puppet. It
used to be that candidates would disagree with their party on occasion
but now they are afraid of being called a RINO by the Tea Party bullies
who are being riled up by billionaires, like the Koch brothers, who have
their own agendas and who are buying our elections for their own best
interests.
Okay
Karen, you have added to my list of adjectives for Republican
strategies (or "strateegery"?) with "diabolical fiendish"... Great
post!
It is hard for folks to recognize that the whole Grover
Norquist affiliation and ongoing allegiance practically guarantees six
figure money from Koch Brothers and big oil. Remember, Amodei received
bucks from Koch, Exxon and big mining...
Has anyone else
noticed how the oil industry has started their campaign via TV ads
painting themselves as warm and cuddly? Has anyone also noticed that as
Washoe County has "battleground" fame now, OUR oil prices are a lot
HIGHER than other areas? You see, high oil prices get blamed on a
president (the president has the price stamper right there at his desk
in the oval office) and the oil companies would add more PROFITS in a
big big way with a Romney win. The oil companies humongous profits
under Obama are just not enough... ah, greed - it's alive and well
across the fruited plain.
