webodec3ARCHIVEPreview
Open in TheBrain

Akin, T Sen

rex elsass nasty

Todd Akin, Allen West Lavished Government Money On Staff After Losing Reelection

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/04/01/todd-akin-allen-west-government-money_n_2990163.html?view=print&comm_ref=false

In '05 and '08, Todd Akin Entered American History Lies in the Congressional Record: The Congressional History Lie Project

"The Bible was foundational to development of our country. The English Puritans came to the New World to follow the Bible according to the convictions of their own consciences. Of the 56 signers of the Declaration of Independence, 24 had what today would be considered Bible college or seminary educations. Only a few years later, in 1782, Congress itself authorized the printing of the Bible." -- Congressional Representative Todd Akin of Missouri, Thursday December 6, 2005, statement to Congress during National Bible Week

While Representative Akin's statement on the Bible and the Puritans was accurate, his claim on the "Bible college" or "seminary" educations of 24 of the signers, which traced to claims advanced by David Barton, was not, and Akin's statement that "Congress itself authorized the printing of the Bible" was also false. Congress did nothing but certify the accuracy of a Bible edition printed by Thomas Aitken, and did so for secular reasons - to promote the struggling American book printing industry, under pressure because of a British blockade.

Akin also read the same statement in Congress on September 26, 2008, for the occasion of National Bible Week. But even more importantly, Rep. Akin was one of the original cosponsors, along with Rep. Randy Forbes, of the history lie-packed House Resolution 888, that Forbes introduced in Congress on December 18, 2007 (see subsection on H. Res. 888, and its history lies, towards the end of this article).

Since then, the style of history lies promoted in H. Res. 888, exemplified in the work of author David Barton, has been denounced even by conservative evangelical scholars as factually challenged and in 2012 conservative evangelical publisher Thomas Nelson withdrew from publicationBarton's bestselling book The Jefferson Lies because of numerous factual errors.

While the historical accounts of Christian nationalist author David Barton have at long last been widely recognized as inaccurate and misleading, neither mainstream media nor mainstream academia have acknowledged the extent to which Barton's brand of Christian nationalist pseudohistory has permeated national politics, manifested through the spectacle of national politicians declaiming, with fair frequency, Barton-esque American history lies on the floor of the U.S. Congress, and sponsoring Congressional resolutions packed with such history lies.

Why does any of this matter? Why should we care? Talk To Action cofounder Frederick Clarkson explains, in a trenchant essay, History is Powerful: Why the Christian Right Distorts History and Why it Matters:

"The notion that America was founded as a Christian nation is a central animating element of the ideology of the Christian Right. It touches every aspect of life and culture in this, one of the most successful and powerful political movements in American history. The idea that America's supposed Christian identity has somehow been wrongly taken, and must somehow be restored, permeates the psychology and vision of the entire movement. No understanding of the Christian Right is remotely adequate without this foundational concept."

Several years ago, driving through New Jersey, I stopped by to visit Chris Rodda, author of Liars For Jesus: The Religious Right's Alternate Version of American History....

http://www.alternet.org/speakeasy/brucewilson/05-and-08-todd-akin-entered-american-history-lies-congressional-record?page=entire

==

legit rape

grist

odd Akin is not only fundamentally deluded about the basic facts of women’s reproductive systems. He’s also fundamentally deluded about the basic facts of climate change.

Akin, a U.S. rep from Missouri, is now the state’s GOP Senate candidate. Here he is on the floor of the House in 2009, flaunting his ignorance for all the world to see:

This whole thing strikes me, if it weren’t so serious, as being a comedy, you know. I mean, we just went from winter to spring. In Missouri, when we go from winter to spring, that’s a good climate change. I don’t want to stop that climate change, you know. So, and who in the world would want to put politicians in charge of the weather anyway? What a dumb idea.

During that same spiel, he also said, “Some of the models said that we’re going to have surf at the front steps of the Capitol pretty soon. I was really looking forward to that.” Hang ten!

Here’s more on climate change from Akin’s official website, in which he tries to sound science-y smart and just doesn’t quite manage to pull it off:

Although some of the physics and meteorology surrounding climate is well understood, the question of predicting future climate trends as well as man’s ability to definitively influence them is still an active field of scientific research. Moreover, despite our desire for complete certainty, we must understand that global climate is very complex phenomena. No one variable can be taken as the sole driver of climate and there exist cycles within cycles of meteorological variability. [Editor's note: blah blah blah.] Scientists state that the planet has gone through many natural heating and cooling cycles over the last thousand years.

While scientists understand that increased levels of CO2 and other greenhouse gases work to trap heat, those gases are not the only variables when it comes to Earth’s temperature trends. For example, the sun itself has variable output, which affects temperature cycles. Currently, scientists are somewhat puzzled by a current-extended minimum in solar activity.[Editor's note: blah blah.] Such a long-term lack of solar output in the early 18th century, referred to as the Maunder Minimum, is thought to have contributed to the last mini-ice age. Of course, factors such as solar variability — that could cause a mini-ice age — would probably not afford a man-made solution. [Editor's note: herp derp.]

That’s just in case you needed a reason to dislike Todd Akin. You know, besides the fact that he categorizes rape based on its legitimacy and would oppose abortion in every conceivable scenario save his being abducted by space worms who then laid eggs in his brain. Or maybe that already happened. That would explain a lot.

small words

6. Todd Akin, R-MO: Last year Akin appeared on the radio program of Family Research Council President Tony Perkins. That would ordinarily be enough to dismiss him as a fringe-dweller, but Akin took the opportunity to broadcast his opinion that, “The heart of liberalism really is a hatred for God and a belief that government should replace God.” Akin was also the sponsor of a bill to prohibit courts from hearing legal challenges to the Pledge of Allegiance – an ironic attempt to unconstitutionally elevate Congress over the judiciary in order to suppress “liberty and justice for all.”

 ===

On Tuesday night, Rep. Todd Akin (R-MO) wrapped up his state’s Republican Senate nomination, defeating two other Tea Party Republicans in a race that split the GOP’s hard right faction. Akin’s highest profile backers were former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee and Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MN), which should be no surprise — Akin has a long history of taking inflammatory, extremist positions, particularly with respect to religion and equal rights for gays and lesbians:

1. Akin believes Medicare is unconstitutional. In a set of remarks that also questioned the validity of climate science, Akin asserted that providing healthcare for the elderly is unconstitutional, saying “I don’t find in the Constitution that it is the job of the government to provide health care.” He also called for a repeal of the 17th Amendment, which allows voters, rather than their state legislatures, to choose who will represent them in the Senate.

2. Akin said that “the heart of liberalism really is a hatred for God.” Akin once claimed, after an NBC broadcast accidentally omitted “under God” from the Pledge of Allegiance, that the network intentionally took it out as part of a “systematic effort to try to separate our faith and God” because “the heart of liberalism really is a hatred for God and a belief that government should replace God.” Despite a strong backlash from religious leaders, Akin refused to apologize and doubled down on his remarks.

3. Akin is one of the most anti-gay GOP members of the House. According to a ThinkProgress analysis, Akin is one of the seven leading sponsors of anti-gay legislation in Congress, which perhaps follows from his belief that “anybody who knows something about the history of the human race knows that there is no civilization which has condoned homosexual marriage widely and openly that has long survived.” Akin has focused on gay members of the military, pushing legislation that would protect soldiers who chose to harass and bully their LGBT colleagues. He also attempted to block funding for the military unless the Defense of Marriage Act was used to block marriage equality on military bases.

4. Akin called recent legislation streamlining the student loan process a “state three cancer of socialism.” During the debt ceiling negotiations in 2010, Akin referred to President Obama as “a flaming socialist,” presumably because his massive concessions to GOP priorities weren’t quite massive enough for Akin’s tastes. He has also suggested that recent legislation streamlining the student loan process has contributed toAmerica’s “stage three cancer of socialism.”

5. Akin wants the United States to withdraw from the UN. He advocated for full withdrawal from the international organization during a recent bus tour, according to a report by Chesterfield Patch.

William Todd Akin has served as a Republican member of the U.S. House of Representatives, representing the Second Congressional District of Missouri, since 2001. (map)

Contents[hide]

Record and controversies

General information about important bills and votes for can be found in Congresspedia's articles on legislation. You can add information you find on how Todd Akin voted by clicking the "[edit]" link to the right and typing it in. Remember to cite your sources!

Iraq War

For more information see the chart of U.S. House of Representatives votes on the Iraq War.

Akin voted for the Authorization for Use of Military Force Against Iraq Resolution of 2002 that started the Iraq War.[1]

Environmental record

For more information on environmental legislation, see the Energy and Environment Policy Portal

Same sex marriage

Akin opposes same-sex marriage and called the 2004 decision by the Massachusetts Supreme Court an act of "judicial activism [that is] undermining the sanctity of marriage " and argued that a state-based law "seeks to usurp the legislative authority of elected representatives" and called for a U.S. constitutional amendment. [1] A month later, apparently rethinking his position on federalism, he supported a state-level ban on same-sex marriage in Missouri. [2]

National security and foreign policy

During the debate in mid-February 2007 of a nonbinding resolution opposing President Bush's troop "surge" in Iraq, Rep. Akin, who opposed the measure, discussed Davy Crockett during the Battle of the Alamo in 1836. He brought up a hypothetical scenario by which Crockett was struggling in battle and received a message on his Blackberry from Congress saying "we support you", but would not be sending any reinforcements. He continued, "I'm sure that would be really impressive to Davy Crockett."

Main article: Congressional actions regarding President Bush’s 2007 proposed troop “surge” in Iraq

Bio

Background

Todd Akin was born July 5, 1947, in New York City. He is a graduate of Worcester Polytechnic Institute in Worcester, Massachusetts, where he earned a B.S. in Management Engineering. After graduation, he served as an officer in the U.S. Army with the Army Combat Engineers at Fort Belvoir in Alexandria, Virginia. He received an honorable discharge from the Army Reserves in 1980. Upon completing his active duty in the Army, Todd spent four years with IBM and later moved into corporate management at Laclede Steel.

Akin was appointed by Governor Ashcroft to the Bicentennial Commission of the U.S. Constitution in 1987. In 1988, Akin ran and won a seat in the Missouri House of Representatives. He served twelve years as a Republican State Representative and the ranking Republican on the powerful Ways and Means Committee. While serving in the Missouri House, Todd drafted legislation on Roth IRAs and a tax limitation amendment currently in the Missouri Constitution. He also took a leading role in opposing gambling, resulting in more rigorous enforcement of gambling laws and regulations.

Congressional Career

According to an USA TODAY.com profile, "Akin strongly opposes abortion, same-sex marriage and gun control. He has urged the Bush administration not to tighten ozone standards for the St. Louis area and urged the Navy not to cut back its production of Super Hornet aircraft at Boeing's local plant." The profile reports that "The American Conservative Union gave his 2003 legislative record an 88 out of 100 points. The liberal Americans for Democratic Action gave him 5 percent." [3]

In the 107th Congress, Akin was joined by U.S. Rep. Jerry Costello (D-IL) in offering the Clean Coal Initiative amendment to the Securing America's Future Energy (SAFE) Act. The Amendment authorized an extensive program for clean coal research and development at the Department of Energy and included provisions for public-private partnerships to upgrade existing coal-fired power plants in accordance with current clean coal technology.

In 2004, Akin sponsored leglislation to prevent judicial review in cases involving the Pledge of Allegiance.[4]

2006 elections

In 2006, the Democrats nominated George D. Weber to face Akin in his November 2006 bid for reelection. (See U.S. congressional elections in 2006) [5] Akin retained his seat.

Money in politics

This section contains links to – and feeds from – money in politics databases. cid=N00009677&cycle=2006

Links to more campaign contribution information for Todd Akin

from the Center for Responsive Politics' OpenSecrets.org site.

Links to more campaign contribution information for Todd Akin

from the Center for Responsive Politics' OpenSecrets.org site.

Links to more campaign contribution information for Todd Akin

from the Center for Responsive Politics' OpenSecrets.org site.
Fundraising profile:2006 election cycleCareer totals
Top contributors by organization/corporation:2006 election cycleCareer totals
Top contributors by industry:2006 election cycleCareer totals
Retired$80,050
Health Professionals$43,300
Automotive$42,800
Misc Manufacturing & Distributing$38,200
Misc Defense$38,200
Defense Electronics$34,280
Defense Aerospace$34,000
Construction Services$25,450
Misc Finance$21,800
Securities & Investment$19,522
Education$18,500
Republican/Conservative$15,550
Lawyers/Law Firms$15,300

Committees and Affiliations

Committees

Committee assignments in the 109th Congress (2005-2006)

Boards and other Affiliations

More Background Data

Wikipedia also has an article on Todd Akin. This article may use content from the Wikipedia article under the terms of the GFDL.

Contact

DC Office:

117 Cannon House Office Building

Washington, DC 20515-2502

Phone: 202-225-2561

Fax: 202-225-2563

Email: rep.akin AT mail.house.gov

Website

District Office- Saint Charles:

Post Office Box 519

820 South Main Street, Suite 206

Saint Charles, MO 63302

Phone: 636-949-6826

Fax: 636-949-3832

District Office- Saint Louis:

301 Sovereign Court, Suite 201

Saint Louis, MO 63011

Phone: 314-590-0029

TollFree: 1-866-236-3392

Fax: 314-590-0037

Articles and Resources

Sources

  1. ↑ Roll call vote, Authorization for Use of Military Force Against Iraq Resolution of 2002.

External resources

Local blogs and discussion sites

External articles

Corresponding article on Wikipedia and Cause Caller. (If Cause Caller link does not work, pick from its list of senators and representatives.)

===

Rep. Todd Akin may not be exiting the Missouri Senate race. But he has, apparently, exited the state: According to Politico, the Republican candidate behind the “legitimate rape” boo-boo is shacked up in the Ohio headquarters of his longtime political consultant, adman Rex Elsass.

And therein lies a story.

Elsass, the man Akin chose to helm his challenge to Sen. Claire McCaskill, represents the perfect place for the beleaguered right-winger to turn after having been abandoned by his party. A free agent with a preternatural knack for pissing off fellow Republicans, the Lee Atwater acolyte also possesses the necessary skills for the Akin campaign’s unique challenge: Enabling a guy who has marginalized rape victims to go negative on his female opponent.

Even within the mean-spirited world of political attack dogs, Elsass is known as an unpleasant sort, a reputation he sealed in the early ’90s. His first major undertaking, a 1990 campaign to unseat the Democratic Ohio House speaker, was so venomous that it unnerved even many of his fellow Republicans. The effort, which Elsass dubbed “Operation Kill The King” painted the speaker as the “conductor of the pay-to-play orchestra” over the public objections of Republicans who had long and collegial relationships with him. After the election, rumors circulated that Elsass and his cohorts had left a dead cat on the victorious speaker’s front porch. A local Democratic consultant dubbed Elsass and his crew the “nasty boys”—and it stuck.

Even Elsass’s mentor, state GOP chair Bob Bennett, recommended him to a colleague with a warning: “You keep the string tight on Rex. In other words, keep an eye on him,” according to a 1993 interview Bennett gave to an Ohio paper. A call to Elsass’s office was not returned.

Still, Elsass was an up-and-comer. His rise only buckled when, as manager of Bernadine Healy’s 1994 U.S. Senate campaign in Ohio, a GOP investigation determined that Elsass or someone under his management had purloined a donor list of some 60,000 names and addresses from the Ohio Republican Party—where Elsass had worked for four-and-a-half years immediately before jumping to the Healy campaign. Though Elsass always disputed the accusations, Healy asked for his resignation; she went on to lose the GOP primary.

Elsass, meanwhile, exiled himself to Alabama to rebuild his reputation. At around the same time, he got religion. In a January interview with the Cleveland Plain Dealer, Elsass recalled this period as one of pious reflection that led him to strive toward a higher ethical standard in his work. He became, he explained, “much more serious about my faith” and discovered “a relationship with Christ.” (Today, he practices as a born-again Christian.)

Two years later, he went to work with Akin–running a campaign that he later called his proudest professional moment. The God-fearing future Senatorial candidatewon a House primary by just 57 votes.

But having returned to Ohio politics, Elsass’s political reputation remained somewhat less than saintly. In 2000, Elsass produced what remains his most infamous spot. It starred a garish, 7-foot-tall plaster of Paris statue, painted gold, of “Lady Justice.” The prop, which would have looked at home in a low-rent attorney’s side-of-the-bus advertisement, cost Elsass $4,000, and Elsass used it in an advertisement that suggested an Ohio Supreme Court justice had been compromised by union bribery. Even as the Ohio Election Commission considered whether to order the spot off the air, Elsass displayed Lady Justice on the front lawn of his suburban Columbus home.

More vitriol followed. Elsass cast his young son in a 2006 attack ad that portrayed ominous figures wresting away the child’s toys and security blanket, a metaphor for the government spending cuts championed by a rival candidate for governor. In 2007, Steve Buehrer, a Congressional primary candidate who had retained Elsass just one year earlier for his state assembly campaign, found himself appearing in ads for his primary opponent—Elsass’s new client. Elsass has cobbled together unflattering outtakes from the ads Buehrer had paid him to produce and transformed them into humiliating attack spots.

None of this—the betrayals, the acrimoniousness—fazed the candidates who sought his help in more high-stakes, nationally prominent races. In recent years, Elsass has worked for Rand Paul’s Senatorial bid and Michele Bachmann’s presidential run. He is the media man on call for Gov. John Kasich’s office. His burgeoning client list is such that by day, Elsass is chauffeured around town in a Cadillac Escalade; after hours, he drives his Bentley.

Having rolled out the welcome mat for his old client, Elsass also spent some of this week rolling out a new, nice-guy vocabulary: He was the one who filmed Akin’s Tuesday apology ad. He’s even spotted a silver lining to Akin’s ongoing ordeal. “As a result of going through this valley and climbing to the peak,” hetold a local reporter, “ the reality is he’s just going to be that much stronger.”

Follow me on Twitter*@mtredden*

Source URL: http://www.tnr.com/blog/plank/106406/meet-rex-elsass-todd-akins-hatchet-man