tedcruz txt

<div>tedcruz921</div><div>
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</div><div>&nbsp;brooks bros or recount? clerked for rhenquist</div><div>
</div><div>got gov gig after</div><div>
</div><div>see ted cruz 2</div><div>
</div><div>rank member jud subcomm that voted for 28th</div><div>
</div><div>capt 921</div><div>
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</div><div>omg Bush v gore</div><div>
</div><div>On election night in Florida, Bush led Gore by 1,784 votes. Because of the closeness of the election, an automatic recount began two days later in every county. Hundreds of lawyers flocked to Florida. Ben Ginsberg, national counsel for the Bush campaign, called it “Woodstock for constitutional lawyers.”</div><div>
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</div><div>Ted Cruz, a 29-year-old domestic-policy adviser on the Bush campaign at the time and a former law clerk for Chief Justice William Rehnquist, put together Bush’s legal team. One of his first calls was to John Roberts, whom Cruz knew from the close-knit network of former Rehnquist clerks,nicknamed the Cabal.</div><div>
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</div><div>“We started to assemble a team of the best lawyers and in particular the best Supreme Court lawyers in the country, and John’s name naturally came near the top of the list,” Cruz told The New York Times in 2005. Roberts, who had clerked for Rehnquist in 1980 and was now in private practice, caught the next flight to Tallahassee.</div><div>
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</div><div>Ted Cruz, then 29, put together George W. Bush’s legal team in the 2000 election fight.</div><div>
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</div><div>Roberts had a long history of opposition to voting rights. As a young lawyer in Ronald Reagan’s Justice Department, Roberts led the charge against the 1982 reauthorization of the VRA, writing more than two dozen memos criticizing the landmark civil-rights law. Voting-rights violations “should not be made too easy to prove,” he wrote, and would lead to “a quota system in electoral politics.” Now he was helping the Bush team prevent eligible votes from being counted.</div><div>
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</div><div>Roberts edited legal briefs, including the Bush campaign’s 50-page submission to the Supreme Court, and ­prepared Theodore Olson, a former assistant attorney general under Reagan, for oral arguments. He also advised Florida’s governor, Jeb Bush, on how the state legislature could assign its presidential electors to George W. Bush before the recount was finished. “I really appreciate your input on my role in this unique and historic situation,” Bush wrote to Roberts.</div><div>
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</div><div>Roberts’s name appeared on no briefs, but his influence was unmistakable. “He is one of the finest legal writers of his generation,” Cruz said. “His editing pen was invaluable.”</div><div>
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</div><div>The Bush campaign, which led by 327 votes after the automatic recount, wanted as few disputed ballots accepted as possible. When the Florida Supreme Court ordered a statewide manual recount, which favored Gore, Bush appealed to the Supreme Court. The Supreme Court halted Florida’s recount four days later, on December 12, thereby declaring Bush the winner of the election. No justice put his name on the unsigned 5–4 opinion.</div><div>
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</div><div>The Court asserted that the recount violated the equal-protection clause of the 14th Amendment— established in 1868 to secure the rights of African-Americans—because there was no uniform statewide standard for counting disputed ballots in each county. In a draft of her dissent, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg observed in a footnote that if there was any equal- protection violation in Florida, it was because black voters encountered a disproportionate number of problems voting. Justice Antonin Scalia, her closest friend on the Court, objected to Ginsburg’s “Al Sharpton” footnote, according to The New Yorker’s Jeffrey Toobin, and she took it out. When one read the Bush v. Gore decision, it was as if the disenfranchisement of black voters had never occurred.</div><div>
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</div><div>Lawyer R. Ted Cruz, a Bush-Cheney campaign worker and former clerk to U.S. Chief Justice William Rehnquist, arrived in Tallahassee for the first time in his life within 24 hours of the election to work on briefs. He became part of an early inner circle that included more nationally prominent Republican lawyers such as George J. Terwilliger III and Benjamin L. Ginsberg, who had been an outside counsel to the campaign.</div><div>
</div><div>''It did give an opportunity for lawyers who had been supporting Bush to shine, to demonstrate what they were capable of,'' Cruz said. ``On a day-to-day basis, a campaign does not deal with senior constitutional litigators that often. It was an opportunity for the senior people on the campaign to see firsthand the abilities of these lawyers.''</div><div>
</div><div>Today, Cruz is director of policy and planning at the Federal Trade Commission, earning $138,200. Earlier, he did a stint as a Bush administration lawyer at the Justice Department, working on the transition to Ashcroft from former Attorney General Janet Reno.</div><div>
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</div><div>up and coming?</div><div>
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</div><div>This week Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) introduced the American Energy Renaissance Act(AERA), a plan to create new jobs and opportunities by harnessing our nation’s energy resources.&nbsp; Speaking at the Heritage Action for America’s 2014 Conservative Policy Summit, Sen. Cruz stated that:</div><div>
</div><div>“The government will not solve our economic problems by controlling the economy or placing bureaucratic barriers to growth. The only thing that it must do is what it did in the Ronald Reagan era: get out of our way and let Americans do what they do best: dream, innovate, and prosper.”</div><div>
</div><div>Five key measures for economic growth in the American Energy Renaissance Actare: (1) passage of the REINS Act; (2) Empowering the states to regulate energy development; (3) Stopping the EPA’s regulatory overreach and the War on Coal; (4) Improving domestic energy prosperity and security; and (5) Reducing the national deficit. Specific measures under AERA are outlined below:</div><div>
</div><div>REINS Act</div><div>The REINS Act is proposed legislation that would require Congress and the President to vote on any EPA regulation that will have a negative impact on jobs.</div><div>The REINS Act would allow for an open discussion on the potential impact on jobs of proposed EPA regulations prior to passage.</div><div>Empowering the states to regulate energy production</div><div>Each state would be empowered to regulate and benefit from its own hydraulic fracturing – as opposed to the Federal government restricting a state’s ability to control its own resources and the resulting benefits.</div><div>Provide states the option of leasing, permitting and regulating energy resources on federal lands within their borders.</div><div>Rein in out of control EPA</div><div>Exclude greenhouse gases from regulation by the EPA and other federal agencies</div><div>Repeal of the Renewable Fuel Standard</div><div>Improving Domestic Energy Prosperity and Independence</div><div>Streamline the permitting process for upgrading and building new refineries</div><div>Approve and allow the private sector to build the Keystone pipeline</div><div>Remove barriers to developing and approving national pipelines and cross-border energy infrastructure</div><div>Increase energy development on federal land</div><div>Expand LNG exports by facilitating permits, ending the crude oil export ban, and preventing excessively broad environmental review of coal export terminals</div><div>Reducing the national deficit</div><div>Creation of the “Debt Freedom Fund” – which would direct all additional revenues generated by exploration and drilling on federal lands (excluding the share allocated to the states) exclusively to national debt reduction&nbsp;</div><div>&nbsp;</div><div>The AERA would not only create jobs, enhance American energy independence, reduce trade barriers, but would allow America to reach its full energy potential.&nbsp; In stark contrast, the President and the EPA have consistently killed jobs through onerous EPA regulations and their continued opposition to the Keystone XL pipeline. Federal overregulation of the economy has stifled America’s quest for domestic energy independence by unnecessarily locking up key energy reserves.</div><div>
</div><div>Sen. Cruz’s American Renaissance Act would breathe new life into America’s economy and begin to undue the failed energy policies of the Obama Administration and the EPA.</div><div>
</div><div>https://www.atr.org/sen-cruzs-legislation-harnesses-americas-energy-a8145</div><div>
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</div><div>7. And Then There’s Agenda 21</div><div>Among the conspiracy theory elite there is only one supreme and all-encompassing doctrine of apocalyptic disaster: Agenda 21 [12]. The furor over this initiative dates back to the John Birch Society. In reality it is just a UN guide to sustainable environments that recommends some completely voluntary measures aimed at advancing smart growth and safer, more livable communities. It was adopted by 178 countries and signed for the U.S. by President George H.W. Bush. It was, however, never ratified by the senate.</div><div>
</div><div>Somehow this benign project was transformed in the minds of conservative mythmakers into a monstrously evil plot to steal the liberty of all mankind. Glenn Beck even wrote a book [13] describing it as “centralized control over all of human life on planet earth.” But the panic doesn’t stop there. Multiple state resolutions banning its implementation with a foreboding tenor have been enacted. For example, Tennessee’s resolution condemned its “destructive and insidious nature” and began by saying…</div><div>
</div><div>“WHEREAS, the United Nations Agenda 21 is a comprehensive plan of extreme environmentalism, social engineering, and global political control that was initiated at the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development…”</div><div>
</div><div>That’s fairly typical of the numerous legislative measures aimed at defending America from a tyrannical, global, one-world government, orchestrated by despotic environmentalists and the liberal media. And we might as well throw in George Soros because that’s who freshman senator Ted Cruz of Texas believes [14] is responsible for the whole affair. Cruz has promised that he will “…continue leading the fight, to stop Agenda 21 and any other globalist plan that tries to subvert the U.S. Constitution and the liberties we all cherish as Americans.”</div><div>
</div><div>These delusional and thoroughly discredited inventions from the paranoia factories of Glenn Beck, Alex Jones, Rush Limbaugh, etc., were once the province of the radio backwoods and militia ham operators. And as frightening as these grim fairy tales are, what’s truly scary is that this conspiratorial fiction is now being embraced by elected officials in Washington and state houses across the country.</div><div>
</div><div>See more stories tagged with:</div><div>conspiracy theory [15],</div><div>threat [16],</div><div>rush limbaugh [17],</div><div>agenda 21 [18]</div><div>Source URL: http://www.alternet.org/media/7-weirdest-conspiracy-theories-now-taken-seriously-gop</div><div>=</div><div>hedges: U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz—whose father is Rafael Cruz, a rabid right-wing Christian preacher and the director of the Purifying Fire International ministry—and legions of the senator’s wealthy supporters, some of whom orchestrated the shutdown, are rooted in a radical Christian ideology known as Dominionism or Christian Reconstructionism. This ideology calls on anointed “Christian” leaders to take over the state and make the goals and laws of the nation “biblical.” It seeks to reduce government to organizing little more than defense, internal security and the protection of property rights. It fuses with the Christian religion the iconography and language of American imperialism and nationalism, along with the cruelest aspects of corporate capitalism. The intellectual and moral hollowness of the ideology, its flagrant distortion and misuse of the Bible, the contradictions that abound within it—its leaders champion small government and a large military, as if the military is not part of government—and its laughable pseudoscience are impervious to reason and fact. And that is why the movement is dangerous.</div><div>The cult of masculinity, as in all fascist movements, pervades the ideology of the Christian right. The movement uses religion to sanctify military and heroic “virtues,” glorify blind obedience and order over reason and conscience, and pander to the euphoria of collective emotions. Feminism and homosexuality, believers are told, have rendered the American male physically and spiritually impotent. Jesus, for the Christian right, is a man of action, casting out demons, battling the Antichrist, attacking hypocrites and ultimately slaying nonbelievers. This cult of masculinity, with its glorification of violence, is appealing to the powerless. It stokes the anger of many Americans, mostly white and economically disadvantaged, and encourages them to lash back at those who, they are told, seek to destroy them. The paranoia about the outside world is fostered by bizarre conspiracy theories, many of which are prominent in the rhetoric of those leading the government shutdown. Believers, especially now, are called to a perpetual state of war with the “secular humanist” state. The march, they believe, is irreversible. Global war, even nuclear war, is the joyful harbinger of the Second Coming. And leading the avenging armies is an angry, violent Messiah who dooms billions of apostates to death.</div><div>
</div><div>Dominionists believe they are engaged in an epic battle against the forces of Satan. They live in a binary world of black and white. They feel they are victims, surrounded by sinister groups bent on their destruction. They have anointed themselves as agents of God who alone know God’s will. They sanctify their rage. This rage lies at the center of the ideology. It leaves them sputtering inanities about Barack Obama, his corporate-sponsored health care reform bill, his alleged mandated suicide counseling or “death panels” for seniors under the bill, his supposed secret alliance with radical Muslims, and “creeping socialism.” They see the government bureaucracy as being controlled by “secular humanists” who want to destroy the family and make war against the purity of their belief system. They seek total cultural and political domination.</div><div>
</div><div></div><div>in gop convention said Fr tortured , implying by commies, but fought w/ Castro and che</div><div>=</div><div>
</div><div>said UN is coming for golf, hwy and pasture agenda 21 DN; no real pol diff from incumbent he flanked. Freedomworks, Heritage , other PACs; dereg&nbsp; (cf wayne slater on rove)</div><div>&nbsp;</div><div>
</div><div>=</div><div>https://www.atr.org/sen-cruzs-legislation-harnesses-americas-energy-a8145</div><div>
</div><div>This week Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) introduced the American Energy Renaissance Act(AERA), a plan to create new jobs and opportunities by harnessing our nation’s energy resources.&nbsp; Speaking at the Heritage Action for America’s 2014 Conservative Policy Summit, Sen. Cruz stated that:</div><div>
</div><div>“The government will not solve our economic problems by controlling the economy or placing bureaucratic barriers to growth. The only thing that it must do is what it did in the Ronald Reagan era: get out of our way and let Americans do what they do best: dream, innovate, and prosper.”</div><div>
</div><div>Five key measures for economic growth in the American Energy Renaissance Actare: (1) passage of the REINS Act; (2) Empowering the states to regulate energy development; (3) Stopping the EPA’s regulatory overreach and the War on Coal; (4) Improving domestic energy prosperity and security; and (5) Reducing the national deficit. Specific measures under AERA are outlined below:</div><div>
</div><div>REINS Act</div><div>The REINS Act is proposed legislation that would require Congress and the President to vote on any EPA regulation that will have a negative impact on jobs.</div><div>The REINS Act would allow for an open discussion on the potential impact on jobs of proposed EPA regulations prior to passage.</div><div>Empowering the states to regulate energy production</div><div>Each state would be empowered to regulate and benefit from its own hydraulic fracturing – as opposed to the Federal government restricting a state’s ability to control its own resources and the resulting benefits.</div><div>Provide states the option of leasing, permitting and regulating energy resources on federal lands within their borders.</div><div>Rein in out of control EPA</div><div>Exclude greenhouse gases from regulation by the EPA and other federal agencies</div><div>Repeal of the Renewable Fuel Standard</div><div>Improving Domestic Energy Prosperity and Independence</div><div>Streamline the permitting process for upgrading and building new refineries</div><div>Approve and allow the private sector to build the Keystone pipeline</div><div>Remove barriers to developing and approving national pipelines and cross-border energy infrastructure</div><div>Increase energy development on federal land</div><div>Expand LNG exports by facilitating permits, ending the crude oil export ban, and preventing excessively broad environmental review of coal export terminals</div><div>Reducing the national deficit</div><div>Creation of the “Debt Freedom Fund” – which would direct all additional revenues generated by exploration and drilling on federal lands (excluding the share allocated to the states) exclusively to national debt reduction&nbsp;</div><div>&nbsp;</div><div>The AERA would not only create jobs, enhance American energy independence, reduce trade barriers, but would allow America to reach its full energy potential.&nbsp; In stark contrast, the President and the EPA have consistently killed jobs through onerous EPA regulations and their continued opposition to the Keystone XL pipeline. Federal overregulation of the economy has stifled America’s quest for domestic energy independence by unnecessarily locking up key energy reserves.</div><div>
</div><div>Sen. Cruz’s American Renaissance Act would breathe new life into America’s economy and begin to undue the failed energy policies of the Obama Administration and the EPA.</div><div>
</div><div></div><div>Ted Cruz, Tea Party’s new Latino hero, is a bit loony on green issues</div><div>By Lisa Hymas</div><div>
</div><div>After triumphing in the Republican primary in Texas last week, Tea Party It Boy Ted Cruz is virtually assured of winning a Senate seat in November. Unlike most of his Tea Party compatriots, he’s widely considered to be super-smart, one of the right’s leading legal minds. Conservatives are even embracing him as (gasp!) an “intellectual” — a label usually only deployed to heap scorn on scientists and other egg-headed freedom-killers.</div><div>
</div><div>But for a guy who’s so smart, Cruz has some truly stupid views.</div><div>
</div><div>On Glenn Beck’s radio show earlier this year, he said: “The federal government’s already shown that they believe they can control every aspect of our life. I mean, right now Congress is trying to tell us what kind of light bulbs to buy and what kind of toilets. Right now you are prevented from buying a toilet that actually flushes because the bureaucrats in Washington know better than you do.”</div><div>
</div><div>That old lavatory lament? Clearly Cruz hasn’t been keeping up with the latest in toilet R&D.</div><div>
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</div><div>Cruz is cray-cray on Agenda 21, totally buying into the right-wing conspiracy theory. Agenda 21 is a two-decade-old, non-binding U.N. document that calls in general terms for things like improving living standards and protecting ecosystems; it was almost universally forgotten until American ‘wingers glommed onto it a couple of years ago. Cruz claims that George Soros is behind the whole nefarious plot and that “Agenda 21 attempts to abolish ‘unsustainable’ environments, including golf courses, grazing pastures, and paved roads. It hopes to leave mother earth’s surface unscratched by mankind. … Agenda 21 subverts liberty, our property rights, and our sovereignty.”</div><div>
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</div><div>Cruz also, like many of his fellow Republicans, frequently spreads misinformation on environmental issues — particularly if it benefits the oil and gas biz. Cruz literally owes his existence to Big Oil: His parents met at an oil-exploration company and went on to start a business that processed seismic data for oil companies, and he seems to have inherited their affection for the industry.</div><div>
</div><div>Cruz has called for fast-tracking the Keystone XL pipeline, claiming (erroneously) that it would “create tens of thousands of jobs.” He says Obama’s refusal to rubber-stamp the Keystone plan “hurt the environment, by ensuring that we will continue to import more and more of our oil from overseas on tankers that inevitably suffer the risk of spills.” Apparently he hasn’t heard that pipelines spill too — right on American soil, no less — and that under Obama the U.S. is importing less oil than at any time in the last 16 years. Cruz also boasts on his website that he “helped lead the fight” against the offshore drilling moratorium put in place by the Obama administration after the BP oil spill.</div><div>
</div><div>Step No. 2 of Cruz’s 12-step economic plan is “Kill Cap and Trade.” He seems to have missed the two-year-old news that it already died. He claims (erroneously) that a cap-and-trade system “would take thousands of dollars from every family in America.” And he claims (erroneously) that the EPA is still trying to foist it on America “by adopting back-door regulations.”</div><div>
</div><div>Step No. 5 of Cruz’s economic plan is “Restrain Abusive Environmental Enforcement.” He explains the need for this plank by claiming (erroneously) that the Obama administration is trying to ban fracking.</div><div>
</div><div>And he seems to think the Endangered Species Act is a vast conspiracy designed to cripple capitalism as we know it. He writes, “Currently, the Obama Administration is using the alleged presence of a lizard to try to stop oil and gas exploration in West Texas.” (Here’s more on that dastardly lizard.) And Cruz proudly notes on his website that he has defended property developers threatened by the dreaded arroyo toad.</div><div>
</div><div>Cruz may have gone to Harvard Law School and clerked for the Supreme Court, but on environmental issues, he sounds about as intellectual as Sarah Palin.</div><div>
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</div><div>Cruz was born in Calgary, Alberta, Canada, where his parents, Eleanor Darragh and Rafael Cruz, were working in the petroleum business.[1][6] His father was a Cuban immigrant to the U.S. His mother was American, and was raised in Delaware, in a family of Irish and Italian descent.[6][7] His father was imprisoned and tortured in Cuba by the Batista regime until he escaped to freedom in Texas in 1957.[8]</div><div>
</div><div>Cruz attended high school at Faith West Academy in Katy, Texas,[9] and then graduated from Second Baptist High School in Houston.</div><div>
</div><div>Cruz earned his Bachelor of Arts from Princeton University and his J.D., magna cum laude, from Harvard Law School. He was an editor of the Harvard Law Review, an executive editor of the Harvard Journal of Law & Public Policy, and a founding editor of the Harvard Latino Law Review.[10] While at Princeton, he competed for the American Whig-Cliosophic Society's Debate Panel as one of North America's top-ranked parliamentary debaters, winning the top speaker award at both the 1992 U.S. National Debating Championship and the 1992 North American Debating Championship.[11] In 1992, he was named Speaker of the Year and Team of the Year (with his debate partner, David Panton) by the American Parliamentary Debate Association.[11] In 1991 he and his partner came in second to Austan Goolsbee and partner David Gray. Cruz was also a semi-finalist at the 1995 World Universities Debating Championship.[12]</div><div>
</div><div>Legal career</div><div>Cruz also served as a law clerk to William Rehnquist, Chief Justice of the United States, and J. Michael Luttig of the United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit.[13] Cruz was the first Hispanic ever to clerk for a Chief Justice of the United States.[14]</div><div>
</div><div>Cruz has authored more than 80 briefs before the United States Supreme Court and presented 43 oral arguments, including nine before the United States Supreme Court.</div><div>
</div><div>In the landmark case of District of Columbia v. Heller, Cruz assembled a coalition of thirty-one states in defense of the principle that the Second Amendment to the United States Constitution guarantees an individual right to keep and bear arms.[15] Cruz also presented oral argument for the amici states in the companion case to Heller before the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit.</div><div>
</div><div>In addition to his victory in Heller, Cruz has successfully defended the Ten Commandments monument on the Texas State Capitol grounds, the recitation of the Pledge of Allegiance in public schools and the 2003 Texas redistricting plan.[16]</div><div>
</div><div>Cruz also successfully defended, in Medellin v. Texas, the State of Texas against an attempt by the International Court of Justice to re-open the criminal convictions of 51 murderers on death row throughout the United States.[17]</div><div>
</div><div>2012 U.S. Senate election</div><div>Main article: United States Senate election in Texas, 2012</div><div>On January 19, 2011, following an announcement that U.S. Senator Hutchison would not seek reelection, Cruz announced via blogger conference call his candidacy for the position.[4] Cruz faced opposition from sitting Lieutenant Governor David Dewhurst in the Republican senatorial primary. He won the Republican nomination runoff on July 31, 2012. [18] He will face Democratic nominee Paul Sadler in the general election.</div><div>
</div><div>Cruz has been endorsed by David Barton, founder and president of WallBuilders;[19] the Club for Growth, a conservative political action committee;[20] Erick Erickson, editor of prominent conservative blog RedState;[21] the FreedomWorks for America super PAC;[22] Princeton University professor Robert P. George;[23] nationally syndicated radio host Mark Levin;[24] former Attorney General Edwin Meese;[25] Tea Party Express;[26] Young Conservatives of Texas;[27] and U.S. Senators Jim DeMint,[28] Mike Lee,[29] Rand Paul,[30] and Pat Toomey.[31] He has also been endorsed by former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin, Texas Congressman Ron Paul[32], Michigan Congressman Justin Amash[33], and former-U.S. Senator from Pennsylvania Rick Santorum.[34]</div><div>
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</div><div>"America's Leading Lawyers for Business," Chambers USA (2009 & 2010)</div><div>"50 Most Influential Minority Lawyers in America," National Law Journal (2008)</div><div>"25 Greatest Texas Lawyers of the Past Quarter Century," Texas Lawyer (2010)</div><div>"20 Young Hispanic Americans on the Rise," Newsweek (1999)</div><div>Traphagen Distinguished Alumnus, Harvard Law School</div><div>Primary Editor, Harvard Law Review</div><div>Executive Editor, Harvard Journal of Law and Public Policy</div><div>Founding Editor, Harvard Latino Law Review</div><div>John M. Olin Fellow in Law and Economics, Harvard Law School</div><div>
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</div><div>NYT</div><div>
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</div><div>Rafael Edward Cruz was born on Dec. 22, 1970, in Calgary, Alberta, where his parents worked in the oil business.</div><div>
</div><div>Mr. Cruz’s parents are central to the personal narrative he tells, how he got so devoted to his conservative brand of freedom. His father, also Rafael, now a Baptist pastor, fled Cuba in 1957 with $100 sewn into his underwear and worked his way through the University of Texas. His mother, Eleanor, was the first in her family to finish college, at Rice, and ran an energy company. They returned to Texas when he was a child, and he graduated from a Baptist high school in Houston.</div><div>
</div><div>His father told him as a child, Mr. Cruz often says, that “if we lose our freedom here, where do we go?”</div><div>
</div><div>Tuesday night, Mr. Cruz was joined on the victory stand by his parents, his wife and two small, blond daughters who held their hands over their ears as the large crowd cheered wildly.</div><div>
</div><div>Mr. Cruz tends to spend any spare time with his daughters, said his friend Kelly Shackelford, president of the Liberty Institute, an evangelical Christian legal group based in Texas.</div><div>
</div><div>Mr. Cruz worked in private law practice in the late 1990s and then began his turn into politics, working on the presidential campaign of George W. Bush and then working at the Federal Trade Commission and the Justice Department.</div><div>
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</div><div>In 2003 he returned to Texas as solicitor general, giving him a direct chance to press for his ideals in the courts.</div><div>
</div><div>Mr. Cruz argued before the Supreme Court nine times and has trumpeted his successes. In his most notable victory, the court affirmed the right of Texas to ignore instructions from the International Court of Justice and the Bush administration to review an illegal immigrant’s death sentence.</div><div>
</div><div>He also helped argue that Texas could have a monument to the Ten Commandments at the Capitol, and keep the words “under God” in the Pledge of Allegiance. But critics say that in the campaign he took too much credit for his own role in those cases, which are red meat for his evangelical supporters. Since 2008 he has worked in a private law firm here, Morgan Lewis, often representing corporate clients.</div><div>
</div><div>In the runoff campaign, Mr. Cruz scorched his opponent with charges that he was a conciliator, too quick to compromise. But Mr. Cruz has yet to grapple with the seemingly impossible choices faced by Congress as it seeks to balance the budget without gutting Medicare or Social Security, for example.</div><div>
</div><div>In the last few days of the campaign — perhaps in a last-minute effort to attract mainstream Republicans, or perhaps in a preview of the tasks ahead — Mr. Cruz sounded a bit more conciliatory himself, suddenly talking about “reaching across the aisle.”</div><div>
</div><div>In a brief interview on Tuesday, he said that his role model in this respect was Ronald Reagan. “President Reagan stood for conservative principles in a way that brought people together,” he said.</div><div>
</div><div>Republicans have too often had it backward, he said, “making hateful attacks but then compromising on basic principle.”</div><div>
</div><div>“But I am not willing to compromise on allowing the government to keep growing and expanding our debt,” he said.</div><div>
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</div><div>http://grist.org/politics/ted-cruz-tea-partys-new-latino-hero-is-a-bit-loony-on-green-issues/</div><div>
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</div><div>lots of $ from lobbyists and fedsoc</div><div>
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</div><div>http://www.campaignmoney.com/individual.asp?pg=13&cycle=12&candidateID=S2TX00312&statename=Virginia&statecode=VA&cname=WOOD%2C+JOHN&prevpage=18</div><div>
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</div><div>http://www.rightweb.irc-online.org/profile/cruz_ted</div><div>&nbsp;</div><div>
</div><div>Sen. Ted Cruz is a “Tea Party” Republican from Texas who was first elected to the U.S. Senate in 2012. An aggressive proponent of conservative principles and the son of a Cuban emigrant, Cruz has been likened by at least one Republican admirer to a “Republican Barack Obama.”[1] Elected with the support of Tea Party-aligned groups like FreedomWorks and the Club for Growth—as well as major "pro-Israel" donor Sheldon Adelson, who reportedly gave some $250,000 to a group backing Cruz's candidacy[2]—Cruz has been described as the Tea Party’s “ambassador” to the GOP Senate leadership, which Cruz joined in 2012 as a vice-chairman of the National Republican Senatorial Committee.[3]</div><div>
</div><div>Despite his domestic platform promoting “limited” government, Cruz has given strong indications that he sympathizes with an interventionist, neoconservative-leaning view of U.S. power abroad. In a 2012 campaign statement, Cruz wrote that “Iran and North Korea present perhaps the greatest danger in the modern world, specifically nuclear weapons (and the threat of nuclear weapons) in the hands of two of the world’s most murderous regimes. We must pursue all means necessary to contain that threat. International sanctions should continue to pressure the Iranian and North Korean elites to decide it’s in their best interests to abandon nuclear weapons—and, ideally, overthrow their current regimes. In the meantime, Iran and North Korea must understand they face a threat of overwhelming force if we see any evidence that they might pass nuclear weapons on to terrorists or threaten us with nuclear blackmail.”[4]</div><div>
</div><div>Declaring that Cruz was mostly “reading from the interventionist script,” Daniel Larison observed: “It isn’t clear how Cruz reconciles his goal of U.S.-sponsored regime change in both countries with an effort to persuade these regimes that they should not have a nuclear deterrent. … If Cruz is going to promote the cause of limited government, it appears that this will not extend to the government’s activities overseas.”[5]</div><div>
</div><div>Cruz has also expressed strong support for a “pro-Israel” foreign policy. Shortly after taking office in January 2013, Cruz visited Afghanistan and Israel as part of a Senate Republican delegation. Meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu—who called Cruz “a friend of Israel”—Cruz declared, “In my view the United States should stand unshakably alongside the Nation of Israel.”[6]</div><div>
</div><div>A New McCarthy?</div><div>
</div><div>Cruz has been heavily criticized for mischaracterizing of his opponents’ views and making outlandish accusations. In February 2013, the New Yorker reported that at an Americans for Prosperity event in 2010, Cruz claimed that the faculty of Harvard Law School, which he attended from 1992 to 1995, contained at least 12 members ”who would say they were Marxists who believed in the Communists overthrowing the United States government.”[7] Cruz was apparently referring to a group of Marxist-inspired professors who advocate "Critical Legal Studies," or the notion that "law ends up reflecting the will and the interests of the powerful," according to Think Progress' Zack Beauchamp.[8]</div><div>
</div><div>Cruz's assessment was dismissed by Charles Fried, a Republican law professor who taught Cruz at Harvard. Fried complained that Cruz's remark "lacks nuance" and "misunderstands what [the CLS professors] were about."[9] Nonetheless, a spokesperson for Cruz doubled down on his assertion, calling the "substantive point" about Marxists in the faculty "absolutely correct."[10]</div><div>
</div><div>Several commentators likened Cruz's charges to McCarthyism, with some suggesting that Cruz's inflammatory rhetoric could hurt the GOP's efforts to rebrand itself after its poor showing in the 2012 elections. "Cruz is now positioned as a major obstacle to the ideological modernization that the Republican Party is desperately in need of," wrote Salon's Steve Kornacki. "If his brand of conservatism is treated as the gold standard of purity by the conservative media and conservative activists, Republican leaders will have a hard time moving the party away from its Obama-era orthodoxy."[11]</div><div>
</div><div>Cruz attracted similar attention for his questioning of Chuck Hagel during the future Defense Secretary's confirmation hearings in early 2013. Highlighting a 2009 appearance Hagel had made on an Al Jazeera English call-in show, Cruz attempted to link Hagel to remarks made by one of the show’s callers referring to the United States as “the world’s bully.” Hagel, Cruz alleged, had appeared on “a foreign network broadcasting propaganda to nations that are hostile to us” and “explicitly agree[d] with the characterization of the United States as the world's bully. I would suggest is not the conduct one would expect of a secretary of defense."[12]</div><div>
</div><div>Cruz also insinuated that Hagel had publicly accused Israel of committing war crimes in Gaza and “sickening slaughter” in Lebanon, highlighting clips that observers said were taken out of context. “Judged kindly,” wrote blogger Zack Beauchamp, “Cruz’s performance in each of these two hearings was aggressively inaccurate. Judged more harshly (and accurately), it was mendacious demagoguery at its finest. … [I]f you want to know why the Republican Party will remain broken for the foreseeable future, go watch the Ted Cruz game tape from this week.”[13]</div><div>
</div><div>Subsequently, Cruz successfully pressured the Senate Armed Services Committee to delay a vote on advancing Hagel’s nomination by circulating a letter, signed by 25 Senate Republicans, demanding further information from Hagel before they would allow a vote. The Daily Beast’s Ali Gharib reported that “the Republicans' requests go far beyond the scope of Hagel's personal finances and records, varying between asking him for materials that don't exist or that would violate legal agreements to release.” Gharib quoted congressional procedures expert Norm Ornstein, a political scientist based at the American Enterprise Institute, who complained that “this goes even beyond the intrusive questionnaires candidates fill out during the vetting process. … That a Freshman senator would ask for that level of information says more about Ted Cruz than about anything else. I’ve never heard of anything like that before.”[14]</div><div>
</div><div>The Senate eventually voted to confirm Hagel, but not before Cruz had also insinuated that the nominee may have taken money from Saudi Arabia or North Korea, a remark for which the senator was widely ridiculed.[15]</div><div>
</div><div>Views and Trajectory</div><div>
</div><div>A 2012 Mother Jones profile of Cruz described the senator’s views as “an amalgam of far-right dogmas,” including “a Paulian distaste for international law; a Huckabee-esque strain of Christian conservatism; and a [Rick] Perry-like reverence for the 10th Amendment, which he believes grants the states all powers not explicitly outlined in the Constitution while severely curtailing the federal government's authority to infringe on them. Toss in a dose of [fictional Republican sitcom character] Alex P. Keaton and a dash of Cold War nostalgia, and you've got a tea party torch carrier the establishment can embrace.”[16]</div><div>
</div><div>Before joining the Senate, Cruz served as solicitor general for the state of Texas, during which time he argued several cases before the U.S. Supreme Court. “Of Cruz's eight oral arguments before the Supreme Court on behalf of Texas,” Mother Jones reported, “five involved the death penalty, with Cruz arguing, at various points, that Texas should be allowed to execute the mentally ill, a Mexican national who hadn't been informed of his Vienna Convention right to speak to his consulate, and a man who raped his stepdaughter.”[17] In one case, Medellin vs. Texas, Cruz successfully fought an attempt by the International Court of Justice to reopen the cases of 51 convicts on the U.S. death row, which Cruz touted on his website as a defense of “U.S. sovereignty against the UN and the World Court.”[18]</div><div>
</div><div>Cruz has also boasted of defending the inclusion of the words “under God” in the Pledge of Allegiance recited by schoolchildren and preserving a Ten Commandments display on public property.[19]</div><div>
</div><div>Cruz’s resumes includes serving as a clerk for former Chief Justice of the Supreme Court William Rehnquist, a domestic policy adviser to the 2000 George W. Bush campaign, an associate deputy attorney general under John Ashcroft, and as a director of policy planning at the Federal Trade Commission.</div><div>
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</div><div>TWO</div><div>
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</div><div>see main for older</div><div>
</div><div>rival to hawley for trump 2.0</div><div>
</div><div>capt 921</div><div>
</div><div>&nbsp;=</div><div>
</div><div>~ paris hands off</div><div>
</div><div>cf trms legis vs PR/hit enemy dems own libs</div><div>
</div><div>https://www.alternet.org/2021/01/ted-cruz-2650069802/</div><div>
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</div><div></div><div>an 921</div><div>...Cruz asked Tolson, "In your judgement, are voting ID laws racist?" — to which she replied, "It depends." And when Cruz wanted to know which ones in particular she considers racist, Tolson responded, "Apologies, Mr. Cruz, your state of Texas, perhaps."</div><div>Cruz told Tolson, "OK, so you think the entire state of Texas is racist" — and the USC law professor clarified, "I'm not saying the entire state of Texas is racist…. The voter ID law was put into place to diminish the power of Latinos, with racist intent."</div><div>
</div><div>Cruz asked her what the evidence for this claim was, and she quickly had an answer: A federal district court ruled that the voter ID law was enacted for an "unconstitutional discriminatory purpose." Cruz had no response to this reply, so he just moved on.</div><div>
</div><div>The hearing was titled, "Restoring the Voting Rights Act: Combating Discriminatory Abuses."</div><div>
</div><div>Here are some responses to Tolson's testimony:...</div><div>
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</div><div>kremlin cruz</div><div>
</div><div>https://www.alternet.org/2021/05/ted-cruz-2653083243/</div><div>
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</div><div>trump camp money back?!</div><div>
</div><div>https://www.alternet.org/2021/06/ted-cruz/</div><div>
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</div><div>cf trms legis vs PR/hit enemy dems own libs</div><div>
</div><div>https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2021/06/donald-trumps-parting-gift-to-washington-was-a-party-of-shitposters/</div><div>
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</div><div>rkj</div><div>
</div><div>i've&nbsp; seen many things at the Conservative Political Action Conference over the years, including many things I wish I hadn’t. But until Ted Cruz spoke to a ballroom of activists from the main stage in Orlando in February, I had never seen an elected official interrupt his own speech to promote a podcast.</div><div>
</div><div>“Please go subscribe,” barked the Texas Republican, sounding more like a street performer with a SoundCloud than a second-term senator. “Verdict With Ted Cruz! Verdict With Ted Cruz! Click on ‘subscribe.’ Five stars, please!”</div><div>
</div><div>One week earlier, Cruz had left his constituents and his poodle behind to wait out his state’s deadly grid failure at the Ritz-Carlton in Cancun. It was the sort of PR disaster that would leave many politicians reeling. Cruz tried to monetize the controversy instead, printing a line of Barstool Sports–chic “spring break” tank tops with a caricature of his nascent mullet. He may never lead the Republican Party, but Cruz always knows its temperature, and in the space of a few minutes in Orlando, between jokes about his ill-advised Mexican vacation and plugs for his side project, he managed to distill this conservative moment to its essence. Increasingly, as world-­historical crises unfurl all around them—often exacerbated by their own policies and actions—the GOP’s most ambitious officials view their primary responsibility less as public servants than as content creators, churning out an endless stream of takes, memes, stunts, and podcasts. So many podcasts.</div><div>
</div><div>The Republican Party has long been infused with an irrepressible hustle, what the historian Rick Perlstein calls “mail-order conservatism.” Talk radio and direct mail were not only effective at peddling reactionary politics to voters; they were also perfect vehicles to sell products, such as gold and home-­security systems. For decades these conjoined strains of politics, entertainment, and marketing have eroded trust in public institutions and the media and provided a template for self-aggrandizement and enrichment. There is nothing really like this on the left; Infowars and Goop sell the same pills, but Gwyneth Paltrow is not fomenting rebellion.</div><div>
</div><div>The way conservatism manifested itself over the airwaves has shaped what rank-and-file conservatives expect to be told and how they expect to feel about it. The late Rush Limbaugh’s listeners called themselves “dittoheads,” eager to nod along with everything. Newt Gingrich used to distribute tapes of himself talking so that candidates could emulate his language. In the 1980s, he weaponized C-SPAN’s new House cameras—where members previously addressed each other, Gingrich and his allies began speaking past them. They turned the Capitol into a studio and made politics into a product. Donald Trump easily won the Republican base because it had been primed for someone who could provide both the programming and the commercial breaks, sometimes all at once; in conservative politics, after all, you’re always being asked to buy something.&nbsp;</div><div>
</div><div>Trump’s presidency blew past the old frontiers: The performance of politics became the purpose of it.</div><div>
</div><div>But Trump’s presidency blew past the old frontiers: The performance of politics became the purpose of it, and the grind of governance became secondary to the responsibilities of posting.&nbsp;</div><div>
</div><div>It was as if, after years of awkward but largely profitable power-sharing between conservative politicians and conservative media, the Republican Party at last stumbled upon the ultimate efficiency: What if both roles could be played by the same person? Trump once dreamed of spinning a losing presidential bid into his own media entity.&nbsp;</div><div>
</div><div>During the pandemic, in lieu of crisis management, he turned briefings into a variety show, assembling a rotating cast of characters, and plugging an array of sponsors—MyPillow, Carnival, Pernod Ricard. You would not necessarily get good medical advice, but you would learn that Hanes is a “great consumer cotton products company” that’s being recognized more and more.</div><div>
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</div><div>There was no issue grave enough to take seriously and no controversy too petty to weigh in on. Anything could be resolved via tweet, precisely because nothing really can; the ephemerality was the point. And a rising generation of politicians learned an important lesson about what conservative voters wanted. If Limbaugh taught them all how to talk, Trump taught them how to govern. His enduring gift was a caucus of content creators.</div><div>
</div><div>Just consider the Republican congressional class of 2021—the new arrivals to Washington who modeled themselves most directly after Trump. They seem almost blissfully detached from the work of Congress. There is 25-year-old Madison Cawthorn of North Carolina, who was elected on the strength of a largely invented personal story amplified with loads of influencer-style Instagram posts. He recently posted a 19-second video of himself punching the bark off a tree. Cawthorn boasted to his colleagues that he had built his staff “around comms rather than legislation.” He was in Washington, in other words, mostly just to post.</div><div>
</div><div>Cawthorn boasted to his colleagues that he had built his staff “around comms rather than legislation.”</div><div>
</div><div>When Marjorie Taylor Greene, the QAnon representative from Georgia, was stripped of her committee assignments in February by colleagues upset that she had harassed fellow members of Congress and blamed forest fires on the Rothschilds, she greeted the news with relief. “If I was on a committee, I would be wasting my time,” she said. Now she was more free to share videos of her CrossFit workouts with the hashtag #FireFauci. Not that showing up for committee hearings necessarily means you’re there to work. Colorado’s Lauren Boebert, who like Cawthorn and Greene spent her first weeks on the job scaring the shit out of her co-workers, recently hijacked a virtual committee hearing by posing like John Wick in front of a shrine of firearms in her living room. (“Who says this is storage?” she responded to critics. “These are ready for use.”)&nbsp;</div><div>
</div><div>Cawthorn, Greene, and Boebert were all members of the National Republican Campaign Committee’s “Young Guns” program, which takes its name from an earlier trio of House Republicans—one of whom, Paul Ryan, went on to become a vice presidential nominee and speaker of the House and unite the party behind a vision of budget austerity. There is surely some sort of ideology at work here, too, but it’s more Jake Paul than Paul Ryan; they are treating the Capitol like their own hype house, using the stature of their office for clout.</div><div>
</div><div>R. Kikuo Johnson</div><div>
</div><div>These younger, gunnier guns are taking cues from their elders. Texas Rep. Dan Crenshaw, a content farm of a congressman who has filmed not one but two Avengers-style videos in which the ex–Navy SEAL parachutes out of airplanes to fight Democrats, also hosts a podcast. So does Devin Nunes. Florida Rep. Matt Gaetz has a podcast called Hot Takes. Before he became publicly embroiled in a federal sex-trafficking investigation (“If you aren’t making news, you aren’t governing,” Gaetz once said), he was considering retiring to take a job at the conservative cable channel Newsmax. In February, more than a dozen House Republicans—including Gaetz and Nunes—skipped work to speak at CPAC with Cruz. They took advantage of a covid-era policy that let members vote by proxy in medical emergencies; to them, promoting their brands is the job.</div><div>
</div><div>After watching Cruz’s speech I took his advice and checked out Verdict, which he co-hosts with Michael Knowles, who rose to prominence after publishing an entirely blank book called Reasons to Vote for Democrats. Cruz recorded the first episode at 2:40 a.m. after the opening day of Trump’s Ukraine impeachment trial—hence the name of the show—and returned to the studio every night of the proceedings. Within days of its debut, Verdict had passed Joe Rogan on the iTunes charts. At CPAC, Cruz announced it had been downloaded 25 million times. It is almost certainly the most popular thing he has ever done.</div><div>
</div><div>From the start, there were gestures that this was all “for work”; while Cruz plugs his book with regularity, he does not hawk brain pills or sell ads. In the premiere episode, Cruz solicited listener questions he could ask during the impeachment. When Knowles asked him why he was doing the show, Cruz replied with two words: “Substance. Matters.”</div><div>
</div><div>This is true in a technical way: Cruz talks on his show about many of the things he and his Republican colleagues talk about in the Capitol. But that Washington conversation is increasingly just an extension of what they talk about on their podcasts. The biggest crises in America right now, according to Cruz, CPAC, and Trump, are the interlocking threats of Big Tech and “cancel culture.” Hearings with tech executives have become a must-watch for conservatives. Cruz advertised his hearing-room clash with Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey last summer with a Christopher Nolan–ish movie trailer and a poster reminiscent of welterweight boxing—“The Free Speech Champion vs. the Czar of Censorship.” There are substantive things to say about corporate power, but this brand of conservative opportunism zips past what’s real to fixate on what isn’t. Twitter moderators, or someone being “canceled,” is not something Congress is really positioned to do much about. They are just creating content about content creation; this is the uroboros of mail-order conservatism.&nbsp;</div><div>
</div><div>Twitter moderators, or someone being “canceled,” is not something Congress is really positioned to do much about. They are just creating content about content creation.</div><div>
</div><div>Big Tech and “cancel culture” have emerged as key villains for the new right, not just because of how neatly they fit into long-standing tropes about “cosmopolitan elites,” but because so much of modern conservatism lives online. Offline, there are issues that warrant serious attention from one of the nation’s two governing parties—cities without water, cities soon to be underwater, whole states without power, and a world still suffering from a deadly virus. But with a nudge from Trump, the right has become ever more dissociated from reality, channeling its energy into an endless series of fights over “deplatforming” and who’s triggering whom. During the Obama years, a Breitbart provocateur interrupted a White House press conference to complain about losing his Twitter verification badge. Then, it was a sideshow; now, it’s the whole point. Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, a likely presidential candidate, recently signed a law prohibiting social media companies from banning public officials.</div><div>
</div><div>The rise of politics as content creation is hardly the sole domain of the right. After his 2016 presidential campaign ended, Bernie Sanders kept his media imprint running. He organized town halls on Facebook Live and recorded a regular podcast. Sanders, who has made no secret of his distaste for corporate-owned media, hoped to build out his own information stream for his supporters. So did Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the New York representative whose prolific posting has gotten her in trouble with other members of her caucus. (Her arrival in Washington precipitated a closed-door meeting in which a colleague pleaded, “Everyone stop tweeting!”)</div><div>
</div><div>The content creators of both the left and the right pose some of the same big-picture challenges—the rise of politicians as independent news sources, of politics as stan culture, and the acceleration of the permanent campaign. A Pew analysis found that the outgoing 116th Congress was one of the least productive of the last half-century, but the most prolific ever when it came to posting. Members sent 50 percent more tweets than they did two terms ago; they were still talking—just not to each other. The more politicians function as affinity brands peddling a product to be consumed, the more “politics,” the entertainment vehicle, becomes dissociated from politics, the distributor of power. Barack and Michelle Obama run a media company now and each hosts podcasts, too; the ease with which political figures can rebrand themselves as entertainers speaks to the two spheres’ increasing coziness. This is not what “seizing the means of production” was supposed to mean.</div><div>
</div><div>But the way this dynamic is unfolding on the left and the right is asymmetrical. Though you would not necessarily know it from listening to Gaetz, Obama is not in office. Sanders and Ocasio-­Cortez are not angling for TV gigs; nor are they reducing the world of lawmaking to the kind of retrograde distractions that get you booked on Tucker. They use their enormous social media platforms for civics lessons, offering behind-the-scenes glimpses of the legislative process and the work of movement building, in an effort to get more people invested in both. You can buy the “Tax the Rich” sweatshirt Ocasio-Cortez wears when she holds court on policy and procedure on Instagram Live, but it is not the only thing she is selling. She and Sanders are trying to make the online world more engaged with the real world, rather than the other way around, to advance an ambitious governing program. It is a theory of change, of which clout and performance are merely a means, not the endpoint, of politics. That is the opposite of the reductive nihilism of Cawthorn or Boebert, or the eternal stagecraft of Cruz.</div><div>
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</div><div>In the first few months of the Biden administration, the world of Twitter and real life have become increasingly estranged. In a paradoxical way, the transformation of a major political party into a meme factory has even eased some of Washington’s dysfunction. While Republicans were pitching their podcasts and talking about Dr. Seuss and his imaginary canceling—Cruz began selling copies of Green Eggs and Ham, signed by himself—Democrats pushed through a $1.9 trillion covid relief and stimulus package with little dissent.</div><div>
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</div><div>In March, Trump, banned from Facebook and Twitter, announced that he was considering launching his own social media network. “I’m doing things having to do with putting our own platform out there,” he promised. “You’ll be hearing about [it] soon.” The website he unveiled didn’t amount to much, but that’s what made it so perfectly Trump—there’s not supposed to be a there there. Meanwhile, younger Republicans aiming to take his place continued their auditions. In April, Marco Rubio called on the government to treat companies that pollute “our culture” just as harshly as it treats companies that pollute our water—sort of like an Environmental Protection Agency for tweets. Cruz, himself accused of poisoning the discourse by John Boehner, polled his hive on whether he should shoot the former speaker of the House’s new book with a machine gun.&nbsp;</div><div>
</div><div>But none of the Republicans vying for Trump’s role have embraced the new posting reality as fluidly as DeSantis. In May, not long after guaranteeing Florida politicians the right to shitpost, DeSantis scored his biggest coup yet: passage of a bill to roll back voting access in the state, fueled by Trump’s lies about the 2020 election. When it came time to sign it, local reporters were stopped at the door—only a crew from Fox and Friends got in. DeSantis had turned an attack on fundamental rights into a live television event. Supporters of the ex-president stood behind him, cheering on cue, as the governor bantered with the hosts via satellite. Then he picked up a blue Sharpie, scrawled his name, and held up the embossed legislation for the cameras.</div><div>
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</div><div>Trump may be gone, but the show never ends.</div><div>
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</div><div>https://www.alternet.org/2021/05/ted-cruz-walks-out-of-gun-violence-hearing-when-democratic-senator-refuses-to-let-him-change-the-subject/</div><div>
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</div><div>"cancun" cruz</div><div>
</div><div>ivy Leaguer Ted Cruz attended Kentucky Derby — then told Fox News the GOP is a 'blue collar party'</div><div>=</div><div>
</div><div>an alexh 421</div><div>
</div><div>Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas, like many other far-right Republicans, has been railing against corporate America for what he sees as promoting "woke" liberalism and has been tweeting "get woke, go broke" — a phrase that has become popular on the far right. Cruz, in a Wall Street Journal op-ed published on April 28, warned corporations, "When the time comes that you need help with a tax break or a regulatory change, I hope the Democrats take your calls, because we may not. Starting today, we won't take your money either." And the Washington Post's Philip Bump, in an article published the following day, stresses that Cruz has said something that many other politicians are reluctant to come out and say.</div><div>
</div><div>Bump explains, "A senator is not only suggesting that he may ice out an affected constituency when developing policy, but also, that he understands that both access and contributions can be used as leverage against them. It's like the guy who runs the sausage factory taking out an ad on television to ensure everyone knows the manufacturing process."</div><div>
</div><div>Railing against large corporations is a recent trend among Republicans, who for many years, defended them vigorously. But the Republican Party took a pseudo-populist turn with Donald Trump's presidency, which brought Patrick Buchanan's ideas — a combination of far-right nativism, protectionism and isolationism — to the forefront of the GOP. And Cruz is among the Republicans who has been attacking corporations for speaking out against the voter suppression bills that members of his party have been pushing in Texas, Arizona and many other states. Georgia's so-called Election Integrity Act of 2021 has been vehemently criticized by Delta Airlines, Coca-Cola and other major companies based in the Peach State.</div><div>
</div><div>"It's important to recognize that some of the motivation for the corporate response to the Georgia law and the attempt to upend the 2020 presidential election — that Cruz also supported and that led to some corporations halting their contributions to him — is a simple capitalist calculation," Bump observes. "Younger Americans skew heavily Democratic and embrace corporate activism. Businesses that want young people as customers at times see politics as a way to build that loyalty."</div><div>
</div><div>Bump continues, "What's more, the working-age population itself skews more heavily Democratic. If we roughly combine data on the distribution of the workforce by age with the 2020 presidential exit polls, it suggests that workers tend to be more than five points more Democratic than Republican. This makes sense, given how much more Republican older Americans are."</div><div>
</div><div>Obviously, major companies like Delta, Coca-Cola and Texas-based Dell Computers aren't being totally altruistic when they criticize voter suppression laws that are designed to make it harder for African-Americans to vote. African-Americans buy Dell laptops, book flights on Delta and purchase smartphones made by Apple — and corporations, mindful of their bottom line, know that, which is why they sometimes do the right thing for selfish reasons.</div><div>
</div><div>"If workers skew more heavily Democratic, companies will often listen," Bump notes. "Combine that with a corporate leadership that itself is more likely to skew left than in years past, and you get a business community that's less interested in aligning overwhelmingly with the GOP than it had been in the past…. I still think it's the case that policy influence happens one-on-one, but the senator does make a compelling counterpoint."</div><div>
</div><div>FROM YOUR SITE ARTICLES</div><div>Where is Ted Cruz in the middle of Texas' growing humanitarian ... ›</div><div>Ted 'Cancun' Cruz gets destroyed by Trevor Noah after starting ... ›</div><div>Ted Cruz spews disgust at 'waiters and waitresses' who he says don ... ›</div><div>Did Ted Cruz just accidentally drop a major confession?? - Alternet.org ›</div><div>RELATED ARTICLES AROUND THE WEB</div><div>Scientific Evidence Doesn't Support Global Warming, Sen. Ted Cruz ... ›</div><div>AOC rejects Cruz support over Wall Street chaos: 'You almost had ... ›</div><div>Ted Cruz's Cancún Trip: Family Texts Detail His Political Blunder ... ›</div><div>---</div><div>
</div><div>https://www.alternet.org/2021/04/anti-corporate-gop/</div><div>
</div><div>no lnx twt</div><div>
</div><div>how 'anti-corporate rhetoric' captured 'the paranoid, vindictive post-Trump GOP': conservative</div><div>
</div><div>Alex Henderson April 27, 2021</div><div>&nbsp; &nbsp;</div><div>Historically speaking, right-wing Republicans are strident defenders of corporate America. Economist Milton Friedman argued that corporations had no obligation to anyone but their shareholders, and the late talk radio host Rush Limbaugh equated anti-corporatism with anti-capitalism — that is, before he flip-flopped and endorsed former President Donald Trump's pseudo-populism. And in 2021, railing against "woke corporations" is a badge of honor for Sen. Josh Hawley of Missouri and other Trumpian GOP wingnuts. Never Trump conservative Amanda Carpenter takes an in-depth look at the strident "anti-corporate rhetoric" coming from the far right in an article published by The Bulwark on April 27 — stressing that it underscores the "paranoid, vindictive" nature of the "post-Trump GOP."</div><div>
</div><div>The message of Republicans who have been railing against "woke capitalism," according to Carpenter, is "Screw with our elections…. and we'll screw your trusts, tax cuts, loopholes and credits."</div><div>
</div><div>"Republicans try to pretend that their bullying is something more principled — that it's anti-woke corporate populism — but in reality, it's little more than grievance weaponized as policy," Carpenter explains. "But don't laugh. The way things are going, this could be the next grand unifying theory for the GOP."</div><div>
</div><div>Carpenter points out that everyone from Hawley to Fox News' Tucker Carlson to Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas has been lambasting Corporate America for being "woke." Cruz, who once employed Carpenter as his communications director, came up with the hashtag #GoWokeGoBroke.</div><div>
</div><div>"The GOP's clash with business over the last few weeks is different in two ways from what came before," Carpenter observes. "First, on the business side, this case is different because the 'activism' in question — the holding back of donations, the criticism — is not related to some matter of policy or party, but rather, to election administration and the preservation of democracy itself. And on the GOP's side, this case is different because it is based solely upon the politics of retaliation."</div><div>
</div><div>The Republicans who have been raging against corporations, Carpenter notes, are upset because the companies have acknowledged Joe Biden as the legitimate president of the United States — rejecting Trump's false claims of voter fraud — and spoken out against GOP voter suppression bills.</div><div>
</div><div>"Republicans are proposing punitive action in direct response to political speech from companies about the post-election Big Lie, the attempts to overturn the 2020 election, and Georgia's recently enacted voting law," Carpenter observes. "Threatening to use the power of the state to crack down on that speech is repulsive…. This anti-corporate rhetoric has captured the paranoid, vindictive imagination of the post-Trump GOP."</div><div>
</div><div>By "post-Trump GOP," Carpenter isn't saying that the former president is no longer influential in his party. Most Republicans are afraid to say one word against him. Rather, Carpenter means "post-Trump White House GOP" or "post-Trump presidency GOP." And she stresses that the GOP, following Trump's presidency, has maintained his mean-spirited nature.</div><div>
</div><div>"There is a culture clash underway," Carpenter writes. "Hawley and the rest of the anti-woke crusaders are saying that Corporate America must heed their 'values' or get smashed — just like Hawley's rioters smashed up the Capitol when the Democrats didn't agree with their 'values' about 'election integrity.' It's all the same brute idea. Comply with my party, or get the fist."</div><div>
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</div><div>// gaetz sees role as soc media tweeter own the libs punish those losers who hate am?</div><div>
</div><div>dynamic duo; st'd GOP hardball retaliation for corps that step out of line?</div><div>
</div><div>https://www.alternet.org/2021/04/mlb-georgia/</div><div>
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</div><div>Cruz melts down over voting rights bill because people on 'welfare' might vote</div><div>David Edwards Raw Story</div><div>&nbsp;</div><div>
</div><div>&nbsp;March 28, 2021</div><div>Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) answered questions about the border and voting rights on Sunday by repeatedly accusing Democrats of enabling child rape.</div><div>
</div><div>Cruz made the remarks on Fox News after host Maria</div><div>
</div><div>=</div><div>
</div><div>Cruz sparks outrage over his cruel attack on Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez</div><div>David Badash The New Civil Rights Movement&nbsp; &nbsp;February 26, 2021</div><div>U.S. Senator Ted Cruz (R-TX) delivered what many are calling "unhinged" remarks at CPAC, the Conservative Political Action Conference, Friday.</div><div>
</div><div>During his speech he once again appeared to try to...</div><div>
</div><div></div><div>
</div><div>https://www.alternet.org/2021/03/ted-cruz-merrick-garland/</div><div>
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</div><div>chris hayes sez victim of new GOP trump model that MOC is not about governing/serving constit but just podcast/twt/own the libs</div><div>
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</div><div>compensatory cpac rant ie pound the table? FREEEE_DUMB! wow combines star wars and nazi ref</div><div>
</div><div>https://www.alternet.org/2021/02/ted-cruz-speech/</div><div>
</div><div>U.S. Senator Ted Cruz (R-TX), fresh from near-universal condemnation over his Cancun vacation during the Lone Star State's ice and snow storms, power outages, and water shortage, spoke at CPAC Friday morning in an apparent effort to win back some of his lost approval rating.</div><div>
</div><div>He screamed for nearly a minute.</div><div>
</div><div>"These are dark days and the media tells us this is the new Galactic Empire forever and 1000 years, but already Joe Biden and the radicals in his administration they are already overshooting, they are already going too far, their policies don't work, they are disasters, they are bad, they are destroying jobs, they are stripping our freedom," Cruz said, screaming out unsubstantiated falsehoods.</div><div>
</div><div>"There is a natural pendulum to politics and the country will come back to sanity and mark my words, 2022 is going to be a fantastic election year, and so is 2024, as we stand together and defend liberty, defend the Constitution, defend the Bill of Rights of every American. In the immortal words of William Wallace, 'Freedom!'" he screamed.</div><div>
</div><div>Watch:</div><div>
</div><div>---</div><div>
</div><div>https://www.alternet.org/2021/02/cruz-cancun/</div><div>
</div><div>pranked by sen?!</div><div>
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</div><div>running hard trump 2.0 2024?&nbsp; no choice but 2x 3x down? recall he passes himself off as an intellectual, so does not bode well for GOP //chomsky most dang org in hist.</div><div>
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</div><div>https://www.alternet.org/2021/01/ted-cruz-2650069802</div><div>
</div><div>when President Joe Biden announced his intent to rejoin the Paris Climate Accord, Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) was one of the first Republican lawmakers to publicly slam the newly-elected president's decision. Echoing a line from former President Donald Trump, Cruz claimed to be protecting the interests of Pittsburgh over Paris. Almost immediately after he shared his statement via Twitter, critics began firing back.</div><div>
</div><div>Now, according to CBS-Pittsburgh, local official Rich Fitzgerald has a message for the embattled Texas senator. When asked about Cruz's remarks, Fitzgerald did not mince words when he expressed his level of disdain for the Republican lawmaker. He also offered a clear message to Cruz: stay out of Pittsburgh business.</div><div>
</div><div>"Outrageous. He doesn't know what he's talking about. He's been a climate denier. He was a COVID denier. We believe in science around here," Fitzgerald told KDKA. "We'll run what we need to do here, Senator, and keep your nose out of our business."</div><div>
</div><div>Allegheny County Executive gave us this answer when we asked for his reaction to Senator Cruz’s statement about the… https://t.co/5omQ18KP9j</div><div>— Chris Hoffman (@Chris Hoffman)1611261666.0</div><div>Fitzgerald's remarks come just one day after Cruz released a full statement about Biden rejoining the Paris Climate Accord. On Wednesday, Jan. 20, Cruz tweeted, "By rejoining the Paris Climate Agreement, President Biden indicates he's more interested in the views of the citizens of Paris than in the jobs of the citizens of Pittsburgh. This agreement will do little to affect the climate and will harm the livelihoods of Americans."</div><div>
</div><div>By rejoining the Paris Climate Agreement, President Biden indicates he’s more interested in the views of the citize… https://t.co/cFjZu8k2z7</div><div>— Senator Ted Cruz (@Senator Ted Cruz)1611186621.0</div><div>On Thursday, Cruz tweeted another message that suggested he was standing by his previous remarks.</div><div>
</div><div>Who do you stand with? Paris or Pittsburgh? If you support blue-collar union workers, if you stand for jobs, get… https://t.co/pRVH9vRT2D</div><div>— Ted Cruz (@Ted Cruz)1611253558.0</div><div>However, Fitzgerald argued that Biden made the right decision by rejoining the accord as he explained the benefits of addressing environmental issues.</div><div>
</div><div>Fitzgerald added, "We have green initiatives that have happened around here, not just with our governmental side of things, but our private sector."</div><div>
</div><div>He continued, "It is also improving our quality of life here. So companies continue to grow here."</div><div>
</div><div>"Extremists who don't want to do anything, Senator Cruz, who have their head in the sand. The flat-earth society that basically doesn't believe in science," Fitzgerald said, adding, "You have other people who want to shut everything down tomorrow."</div><div>
</div><div>FROM YOUR SITE ARTICLES</div><div>Watch: Viral video calls for Ted Cruz and Josh Hawley to be ... ›</div><div>Ted Cruz helped Texas fracking billionaires reap millions in COVID ... ›</div><div>Ted Cruz Has Been Ridiculed for Years by His Former College ... ›</div><div>Ted Cruz spews disgust at 'waiters and waitresses' who he says don ... ›</div><div>RELATED ARTICLES AROUND THE WEB</div><div>How Ted Cruz's attempt to overturn election ended in violence at the ... ›</div><div>Editorial: Resign, Senator Cruz. Your lies cost lives ... ›</div><div>Elected Officials Directory: U.S. Senator Ted Cruz | The Texas Tribune ›</div><div>
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</div><div>=</div><div>HNN</div><div>
</div><div>https://www.alternet.org/2021/01/conservative-movement/</div><div>
</div><div>One of the challenges in trying to understand what has happened to a conservative movement that has clearly become detached from reality, is that for decades we've heard that some conservatives needed to be taken seriously as intellectuals. These chosen conservatives are often anointed as "serious" due their academic pedigree (usually Ivy Leaguers). But the equating of impressive degrees with intellectual seriousness has an especially bad track record for conservatives. Time and again when it comes to the integrity, honest analysis, and basic grasp of facts that are the basic standards of any "serious" scholar, they have failed.</div><div>Let's make a list of today's conservatives who currently get the "serious" designation by virtue of their elite education and for not being Louis Gohmert. In light of last week's conspiracy-driven, right-wing attack on Congress, Senators Josh Hawley and Ted Cruz stand out for their unrelenting intellectual dishonesty. Both Hawley (Yale, JD) and Cruz (Princeton BA, Harvard JD) took to the floor of the Senate just hours after right-wing collaborators had vandalized the Capitol and threatened their colleagues out of an unmoored conviction that the 2020 election had been stolen. Multiple recounts, election certifications, and dozens of court cases later, these two Ivy Leaguers shamelessly continued to raise "concerns" about the election's basic fairness. Yet, when Hawley lost his book contract on the dangers of "big tech" with Simon & Schuster over the weekend, the Washington Post's Fred Hiatt expressed a hesitant reservation at a publisher deciding it didn't like the author instead of the manuscript....Up until that point, Simon & Schuster "obviously believed" that Hawley's manuscript had "merit" and Hiatt assumes that it would have made "a useful contribution to public debate on a vital subject." Especially after Hawley's surreally dark turn last Wednesday night, why should we assume that a "useful contribution" was forthcoming from him on any debate? Hawley had led investigations into Google and Facebook, to be sure. But certainly part of the answer is that Hawley was seen a "serious" conservative. Ana Marie Cox's recent Washington Post article on Ted Cruz meanwhile stands out for her refreshing willingness to suggest that perhaps, just perhaps, Cruz, despite his reputation for smarts, is "devastatingly average." Mimi Swartz has also started to peel the protective cover of seriousness back. Cruz used "his pseudo-intellectualism and his Ivy League pedigree as a cudgel." And now, she adds, "Any decent soul might ask: If you are so smart, how come you are using that fancy education to subvert the Constitution you've purported to love? Shouldn't you have known better?" Assuming that an Ivy League degree translates into conservatives knowing better has been the problem all along. Swartz adds correctly that Cruz "did know better; he just didn't care." And because he was tabbed as a "serious" conservative, he didn't have to.</div><div>
</div><div>Senator Tom Cotton (Harvard BA, JD) stood out last Wednesday by not joining his fellow Ivy Leaguers in their objections on the Senate floor; but he'd already shown his flair for dangerous hyperbole and distortion last summer when the New York Times ran the Senator's opinion piece calling for the troops to march on Black Lives Matter protestors. Cotton cherry-picked the most extreme examples of unrest to malign the overwhelmingly peaceful protests happening on the streets. As any scholar will tell you, cherry-picking the evidence is both lazy and untrustworthy. Not a good look for someone posing as a "serious" conservative.</div><div>
</div><div>And one could go on. What really connects these elite-educated Senators is precisely their lack of seriousness intellectually. It's not new, however. Going back to the 1960s, alarmed that the conservative movement was falling into the grips of the delusional John Birch Society, William F. Buckley (Yale, BA) was anointed as that generation's "serious" conservative. While Buckley was public intellectual rather than an office-holder, his political influence was considerable and timely for the conservative movement. In particular, Buckley disavowed the Birchers, whose view of the world was rife with conspiracy theories and seething anti-communism. Some Birchers were convinced that Dwight Eisenhower himself was a communist plant, so the bar was pretty low here for a "serious" conservative to clear. The soft bigotry of low expectations, I guess. But Buckley also wrote in 1957 that the white South was right to oppose the civil rights movement because, he wrote, "for the time being, it is the advanced race." This was, he continued, "a fact . . . that cannot be hidden by ever-so-busy egalitarians and anthropologists." While over his long career Buckley did continue to reexamine the state of conservatism – indeed he had grave reservations about the war in Iraq – his entry into the ranks of "serious" conservatism was by virtue of his patrician background and elite education. Once in, like the "serious" conservatives of today, he had permission to be either wildly wrong or occasionally right.</div><div>
</div><div>in between Buckley's heyday and the current crop of Ivy League-right wingers, we had the era of William Bennett and Newt Gingrich in the 1980s and 1990s. Bennett (Williams College BA, University of Texas PhD, Harvard JD) harrumphed his way to becoming the nation's high school principal, or officially, the Secretary of Education, under Ronald Reagan. In the early 1990s he published The Book of Virtues: A Treasure of Great Moral Stories. It started with a quote from Plato's Republic, and invoked Aristotle in the first paragraph, so you knew it was serious. The book included lessons on the importance of saying "please" and a Laura Richards poem, "In which we which learn to sit still." That this was heralded as an "important" book can only be attributed to the fact that Bennett had earned his stripes as a "serious" conservative. Newsweek practically sighed with gratitude: "Maybe this is just what the country needs."</div><div>
</div><div>And then there was Newt Gingrich (PhD, Tulane). After having been denied tenure at West Georgia College, Gingrich eventually won a seat in the House of Representatives in 1978. He injected into the increasingly conservative Republican Party the slashing political style we all recognize now. Democrats were not simply the opponent, they were "radical" and "traitors." Pundits and columnists of the 1990s raised their collective eyebrow over Gingrich's style even as they soberly reminded their readers that Gingrich had a doctorate and had been a college professor. A 1995 New York Times profile noted that he compared himself to, "Washington, Lincoln, Roosevelt, Eisenhower, Churchill, and De Gaulle." But it also noted that while Gingrich "came to congress in 1979 as a 35 year-old history professor," he often used "hyperbole, absolutes and distortion to make his points, and he can be careless with facts and numbers." While perhaps these are just tools of the trade in politics, they make one unserious as a scholar. But Professor Gingrich has dined out for years now on his farcical reputation as a "serious" conservative.</div><div>
</div><div>Like Gingrich, today's elite-educated conservative politicians continue to get a pass when it comes to the basic ethical standards of real scholars, especially the moral obligation to be true to the evidence and facts. Ironically, toward the end of that long day of sedition last week, this principle was articulated poignantly by another conservative, one known more for his religion and wealth than his academic credentials. Mitt Romney (Harvard, JD/MBA), looking exhausted and shaken, pleaded with his fellow Republican senators, "The best way we can show respect for the voters who are upset is by telling them the truth." Sadly, Hawley, Cruz, Cotton, et al., will likely continue to spread lies to keep their conservative base shored up. Their seriousness lies in the danger of their politics, but they themselves are not "serious" conservatives.</div><div>
</div><div>=</div><div>=</div><div>
</div><div>https://www.alternet.org/2021/01/ted-cruz-2649965748</div><div>
</div><div>Three House Democrats from Texas have called on party leaders in the U.S. Senate to back the expulsion of a member of their state's congressional delegation, Republican Sen. Ted Cruz, for what they term "seditious" behavior related to the insurrectionist mob that overran the U.S. Capitol on January 6.</div><div>
</div><div>Signed by Reps. Veronica Escobar, Joaquin Castro, and Sylvia Garcia—all from Texas—a Friday letter addressed to Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (soon to exchange title) argued that it "is evident that Senator Cruz echoed Trump's false voter fraud claims for political gain, going so far as sending a fundraising plea during the armed stand-off in the Capitol where members of Congress, staff, and journalists were held hostage for hours."</div><div>
</div><div>In addition to Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.), Cruz led the Republican effort in the Senate to block certification of President-elect Joe Biden's 2020 electoral victory by making baseless claims of voter fraud—the same false claims made by Trump and those in the mob who ransacked the U.S. Capitol in an insurrectionist effort that left five people dead, including one Capitol Police Officer who was murdered.</div><div>
</div><div>Cruz's conduct, Escobar said in a tweet that mirrored the letter's message, "was seditious. He must be held accountable and expelled from the Senate."</div><div>
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</div><div>
</div><div>.@SenTedCruz’s objection to the election helped incite the January 6 attack, gave credence to a process that had no… https://t.co/M2x1XGgtF0</div><div>— Rep. Veronica Escobar (@Rep. Veronica Escobar)1610763343.0</div><div>The letter argues that "Cruz's objection to the election of Joe Biden and Kamala Harris helped incite the attack and gave credence to a process that had no chance of succeeding and put all of us in danger."</div><div>
</div><div>"In his effort to appease Donald Trump and his supporters," it continued, "Cruz encouraged these terrorists to wage armed insurrection against America."</div><div>
</div><div>The Texas lawmakers cite Article I, Section 5 of the U.S. Constitution—which allows for the punishment, including expulsion, for "disorderly behavior" by a member—to argue that Schumer and McConnell have the authority to initiate such a process for Cruz.</div><div>
</div><div>On Saturday, Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.V.)—the most right-wing member of the Democratic caucus—said that the 14th Amendment "should be a consideration" for both Cruz and Hawley.</div><div>
</div><div>Section 3 of the 14th Amendment states that no U.S. lawmaker holding office "shall have engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same, or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof. But Congress may by a vote of two-thirds of each House, remove such disability."</div><div>
</div><div>While Manchin says, he gets "along fine" with Cruz, "what he did was totally outside the realm of our responsibilities or our privileges."</div><div>
</div><div>Progressives, meanwhile, have consistently called for both Hawley and Cruz to resign or be removed ever since last week's attack.</div><div>
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</div><div>They wore Auschwitz shirts, erected gallows, and tried to hang the Vice President. Your continued excusal and deni… https://t.co/ZWXmIQYoXk</div><div>— Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (@Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez)1610214533.0</div><div>
</div><div>
</div><div>"There can be no normalizing or looking away from what played out before our eyes," Sen. Patty Murray, the third-ranking Democrat in the Senate, said last week as she called on both Cruz and Hawley to resign.</div><div>
</div><div>"The violent mob that attacked the Capitol was made up of people who don't accept democracy, and want to take this country by use of force," she stated. "Any Senator who stands up and supports the power of force over the power of democracy has broken their oath of office."</div><div>
</div><div>FROM YOUR SITE ARTICLES</div><div>Resurfaced video exposes Ted Cruz's failed prediction as a ... ›</div><div>Ted Cruz Has Been Ridiculed for Years by His Former College ... ›</div><div>Ted Cruz spews disgust at 'waiters and waitresses' who he says don ... ›</div><div>=</div><div>
</div><div>https://www.alternet.org/2021/01/ted-cruz-2649854188/</div><div>
</div><div>no twet</div><div>
</div><div>no lnx few</div><div>
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</div><div>How Ted Cruz's attempt to overturn Biden' win ended in violence at the US Capitol: analysis</div><div>
</div><div>Alex Samuels , Patrick Svitek and The Texas Tribune January 10, 2021</div><div>
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</div><div>
</div><div>"After riot at the U.S. Capitol, Ted Cruz gets fierce blowback for his role in sowing doubts about Joe Biden's victory" was first published by The Texas Tribune, a nonprofit, nonpartisan media organization that informs Texans — and engages with them — about public policy, politics, government and statewide issues.</div><div>
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</div><div>Two nights before the Electoral College certification in Congress, Ted Cruz was in vintage form.</div><div>
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</div><div>The junior U.S. senator from Texas was calling in to a friendly conservative radio host — Mark Levin — and setting up Wednesday's vote to be the kind of intraparty line in the sand that has powered his political rise.</div><div>
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</div><div>By then, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell had made clear that he opposed objections to certifying Joe Biden's election as the next president. But Cruz and 10 other GOP senators announced they would still object unless Congress agreed to an “emergency audit" of the presidential election results.</div><div>
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</div><div>Cruz told Levin that there were some conservatives “who in good conscience" disagree with his view of Congress' role in certifying the presidential election results, and that he had talked to them and did not fault them. On the other hand, Cruz said, there were “some Republicans who are not conservatives but who are piously and self-righteously preening" when it comes to the issue.</div><div>
</div><div>In spearheading the group of objectors, Cruz arguably upstaged U.S. Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Missouri, who announced his plan to object three days earlier — and, like Cruz, is considered a potential 2024 presidential contender.</div><div>
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</div><div>But on Wednesday, what Cruz might have thought was a savvy political play took an alarming turn: Supporters of President Donald Trump stormed and ransacked the U.S. Capitol while lawmakers were considering Cruz's objection. Three people suffered medical emergencies during the siege and died; their deaths were in addition to another woman who was shot by a Capitol police officer.</div><div>
</div><div>Cruz denounced the violence but incurred a fierce backlash from critics in both parties, who said his drive to question the election results — and appease the president and his supporters ahead of a possible 2024 run — helped fan the flames of anger among Trump supporters. Prominent Texas Democrats called for him to resign. Many others suggested he'd played an inciting role in one of the darkest days in modern American history.</div><div>
</div><div>Politically, it was a high-stakes distillation of GOP tactics in the era of Trump.</div><div>
</div><div>“His challenge of the Electoral College votes helps him among core Trump supporters but risks further damaging his political standing among rank-and-file Republicans like moderates and suburban swing voters who have traditionally formed a stable winning coalition for Republicans in Texas and nationally," said Brandon Rottinghaus, a political science professor at the University of Houston, who added, “Siding with Trump is risky."</div><div>
</div><div>In recent months, Cruz has positioned himself as one of the most prominent and vocal Trump supporters casting doubt on the election. Two days after Election Day, Cruz charged that Philadelphia officials were not allowing election observers to watch the counting of votes in the swing state, even though Trump's lawyers conceded that they had been allowed in the room.</div><div>
</div><div>In December, Trump asked Cruz if he would be willing to argue a long shot case filed by Attorney General Ken Paxton seeking to invalidate the election results in states like Pennsylvania in the event that it reached the U.S. Supreme Court. (Cruz agreed, but the high court ultimately said Texas did not have standing to bring the case.)</div><div>
</div><div>And in the days ahead of Wednesday's certification, Cruz raised concerns about how many people believed fraud had occurred in the election, without acknowledging the role he had played in encouraging those beliefs.</div><div>
</div><div>“We've seen in the last two months unprecedented allegations of voter fraud," Cruz said in an early January interview on Fox News. “And that's produced a deep, deep distrust of our democratic process across the country. I think we in Congress have an obligation to do something about that."</div><div>
</div><div>But people in both parties have questioned his motives.</div><div>
</div><div>“Proposing a commission at this late date — which has zero chance of becoming reality — is not effectively fighting for President Trump," U.S. Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-South Carolina, tweeted. “It appears to be more of a political dodge than an effective remedy."</div><div>
</div><div>As people stormed the Capitol building, Cruz insisted on Twitter that violence “is ALWAYS wrong" and called the attack a “despicable act of terrorism and a shocking assault on our democratic system."</div><div>
</div><div>“Those engaged in violence are hurting the cause they say they support," he said.</div><div>
</div><div>He did not, however, withdraw his objections to the Election Day results.</div><div>
</div><div>It didn't help that Cruz on Wednesday was fundraising off his Electoral College challenge, with some money-seeking texts hitting phones as Trump supporters wreaked havoc at the Capitol. (An aide to Cruz said the messages were sent “from a firm" and not approved by Cruz to be sent.) To Cruz's critics, including those within his own party, it was emblematic of the kind of naked political ambition that they have long abhorred about him.</div><div>
</div><div>“The Cruz effort had nothing to do with making some determination of whether or not there was fraud to reverse the outcome of the election and only to do with 2024 and the presidential primary," said Jerry Patterson, a Republican former state land commissioner who is open about his unhappiness with Trump, but conceded that he's voted for Cruz in past elections.</div><div>
</div><div>“That's why I could never get back into politics anymore. I'm sick and tired of the bullshit. And that's what it was," he said.</div><div>
</div><div>The episode not only gave fodder to Cruz's longtime intraparty detractors but also fellow Republicans.</div><div>
</div><div>“You have some senators who, for political advantage, were giving false hope to their supporters [and] misleading them to believe somehow yesterday's actions in Congress could reverse the results of the election," U.S. Sen. Tom Cotton, a Republican from Arkansas who is also seen as a possible 2024 contender, said in a TV appearance on Fox without directly naming Cruz. “That was never going to happen yet these senators, as insurrectionists literally stormed the Capitol, were sending out fundraising emails."</div><div>
</div><div>U.S. Sen. Mitt Romney, the GOP's 2012 nominee for president, raised similar frustrations on the Senate floor Wednesday night, without mentioning Cruz or other objectors by name.</div><div>
</div><div>“I ask my colleagues: Do we weigh our own political fortunes more heavily than we weigh the strength of our Republic, the strength of our democracy and the cause of freedom? What is the weight of personal acclaim compared to the weight of conscience?"</div><div>
</div><div>To be clear, Cruz received backup from his own party. While his initial coalition did not hold, he was still joined by several colleagues in objecting to the certification of the results in Arizona and Pennsylvania. Dozens of House members, including many Texans, also objected in both cases.</div><div>
</div><div>The state's senior senator, John Cornyn, split decisively from Cruz, announcing he would not object in a lengthy letter to Texans on Tuesday, specifically pooh-poohing Cruz's emergency audit proposal. That contrast in particular heartened some Cruz supporters.</div><div>
</div><div>“Ted Cruz will be a stronger force in the Texas GOP than John Cornyn because of the way he has handled the last 30 days and because he doesn't answer to the same political elite that Cornyn does," said Luke Macias, a consultant for some of the Texas Legislature's farthest-right members. “Democrats' insane calls for Cruz to step down have only made him politically stronger."</div><div>
</div><div>Democrats, meanwhile, were apoplectic over his role. Two of the state's best-known Democrats, Joaquin and Julián Castro, called on Cruz to resign, as did the state Democratic Party. Cruz's old nemesis Beto O'Rourke emailed supporters calling for “accountability and consequence" against the Texas senator, who defeated O'Rourke in a Senate race in 2018.</div><div>
</div><div>“Sen. Cruz, you must accept responsibility for how your craven, self-serving actions contributed to the deaths of four people yesterday. And how you fundraised off this riot," tweeted U.S. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-New York. “Both you and Senator Hawley must resign. If you do not, the Senate should move for your expulsion."</div><div>
</div><div>In Cruz's Houston hometown, activists lined the streets on Thursday, calling for his resignation while standing outside of a downtown skyscraper that houses one of Cruz's offices.</div><div>
</div><div>But to detractors asking him to leave Congress, Cruz responded curtly Thursday afternoon, “Sorry, I ain't going anywhere."</div><div>
</div><div>While Cruz himself doesn't appear to have any regrets for his role in inciting an insurrection — on Thursday he said he would do it all over again if he had to — his colleagues might not easily forgive under a new presidential administration.</div><div>
</div><div>Patterson, for one, thinks Cruz's future political prospects hinge on where Republicans go in the next four years — and whether they remain loyal to Trump.</div><div>
</div><div>“There was a reset yesterday of politics in America — at least I hope and pray there was," Patterson said.</div><div>
</div><div>Disclosure: The University of Houston has been a financial supporter of The Texas Tribune, a nonprofit, nonpartisan news organization that is funded in part by donations from members, foundations and corporate sponsors. Financial supporters play no role in the Tribune's journalism. Find a complete list of them here.</div><div>
</div><div>This article originally appeared in The Texas Tribune at https://www.texastribune.org/2021/01/07/ted-cruz-riot-capitol/.</div><div>
</div><div>The Texas Tribune is a member-supported, nonpartisan newsroom informing and engaging Texans on state politics and policy. Learn more at texastribune.org.</div><div>
</div><div>
</div><div>
</div><div>FROM YOUR SITE ARTICLES</div><div>
</div><div>Ted Cruz and Josh Hawley are the US Constitution's 'most ... ›</div><div>
</div><div>Ted Cruz spews disgust at 'waiters and waitresses' who he says don ... ›</div><div>
</div><div>
</div><div>Texas newspaper calls for 'cynical' Ted Cruz's resignation in ... ›</div><div>
</div><div>=</div><div>
</div><div>he and josh h jostle for trump 2.0 prez gig:</div><div>
</div><div>https://www.alternet.org/2021/01/trump-enablers/</div><div>
</div><div>generic; 2 tx papers call for resignation?</div><div>
</div><div>geo will ~ https://www.alternet.org/2021/01/george-will/</div><div>
</div><div>https://www.alternet.org/2021/01/ted-cruz-2649809866/</div><div>
</div><div>~ 600$ for waitresses&nbsp;</div><div>
</div><div>=</div><div>
</div><div>re&nbsp; exxon RICO activ suppress, he clerked SCOTUS? knows BS? magna Harvard Law, then kraken stop the steal BS</div><div>
</div><div>=</div><div>
</div><div>https://www.alternet.org/2021/01/ted-cruz/</div><div>
</div><div>=</div><div>some defectors lindsey g and tom cotton but surpiring # still do elect college BS</div><div>
</div><div>121 kos</div><div>
</div><div>At this point, Republicans might as well just open fire on Fort Sumter and be done with it. That's the only way they could show more evidence of their "patriotism" and love for the Constitution. The only question is: Who's going to be first? The whole right-of-center portion of the American political spectrum has fallen into a system where the selective pressure is all about being the most outrageous, the most extreme, the most willing to trample all the meaning of the American system into the mud while waving the symbols of that system overhead. It's not a race to the bottom, because there is no bottom. But there is a point of no return, and Republicans have gone way, way past that point.</div><div>
</div><div>On Saturday, Texas Sen. Ted Cruz set out to prove just that when he arranged a whole legion of Republican senators who intend to "reject the electors" from certain states. "Certain," in this case, means those states that didn't vote for Donald Trump. But Cruz's play to regain some of that sweet Traitor Energy that's been going to Missouri Sen. Josh Hawley isn't even the slimiest play of the day.</div><div>
</div><div>Because after losing in court, Texas Rep. Louie Gohmert is flat out calling for people to commit violence to overthrow democracy.</div><div>
</div><div>No matter how it was painted in the media, when Sen. Hawley spoke out last week to say he would join 140 Republican members of the House in signing a statement against counting votes from Pennsylvania, it was very obviously a publicity stunt. Not only is there no real foundation behind any of the claims that Trump has made in court concerning the elections in states that had the sense to turn away his reelection, it wouldn't really matter if there was. Because the 1887 Electoral Count Act presents only a very narrow window for challenges to the electoral vote. With all 50 states certifying their elections and sending a single slate of electors to vote before the "safe harbor" date, there are no remaining grounds under the law for Hawley, Cruz, or anyone else to challenge the states. The 1887 law makes it clear that the power of the Congress is "limited to cases in which a state had failed to settle its own disputes and to questions beyond state competence."</div><div>
</div><div>The law was written that way to protect one of those things that Republicans claim to care so much about: state's rights. Not surprisingly, a senator from Missouri is not given the power to invalidate all the votes in Pennsylvania when that state's governor and legislature have already certified the outcome.</div><div>
</div><div>None of that stopped Cruz from jumping forward on Saturday with a whole coalition of Republican senators who say they will vote to "reject the electors," even though that's no more in their power than it is to determine how elections in other states will be conducted. This new mob of Republicans willing to go there issued a statement (deliberately not linked) saying that Trump's concerns about then election never got a hearing in court. Which is wrong at least … what, 60 times now?</div><div>
</div><div>Again, as much as Cruz wanted to prove that he was more radical than Hawley, and win back the "love" of Trump supporters, he didn't even score the most outrageous action of the day. That's because on Friday evening, Trump-appointed District judge Jeremy Kernodle tossed Gohmert's "breathtaking and preposterous" lawsuit—in which he tried to claim that the 12th Amendment gave outgoing Vice President Mike Pence the sole and unlimited power to name anyone president that he wants on Jan. 6. That ruling, unfortunately, was on the basis of standing and leaves the case open for appeal, which Gohmert is of course already planning.</div><div>
</div><div>Meanwhile, a little thing like the American legal system is not about to get in Gohmert's way. As Rolling Stone reports, the Texas representative appeared on the Trump-worshiping Newsmax Saturday morning to tell people not to wait on the courts. The district court's refusal to consider the case means, accourding to Gohmert, "that you gotta go the streets and be as violent as antifa and BLM."</div><div>
</div><div>Of course, BLM and anti-facists don't go around instigating violence. But considering Trump supporters have been fed one false claim after another, after another, there's little doubt about the kind of violence Gohmert is demanding. Just as there's no doubt about what Trump means when he summons his Proud Bois and militias, calling them to Washington on Jan. 6 for a "wild" time.</div><div>
</div><div>FROM YOUR SITE ARTICLES</div><div>Rep. Louie Gohmert is single-handedly holding up House ... ›</div><div>Rep. Louie Gohmert's history of spreading racist lies about ... ›</div><div>Fact checker busts GOP Rep. Louie Gohmert for hyping nonexistent ... ›</div><div>RELATED ARTICLES AROUND THE WEB</div><div>Rep. Louie Gohmert, who often went without a mask, tests positive ... ›</div><div>Pence asks judge to toss Gohmert's lawsuit seeking to change ... ›</div><div>GOP Rep. Louie Gohmert suggests street violence after judge ... ›</div><div>=</div><div>=</div><div>remember insulted wife? and said dad killed jfk</div><div>
</div><div>// trump claimed covid a hoax that wd disappear day after election</div><div>
</div><div>war on thxgiving BS</div><div>
</div><div>https://www.alternet.org/2020/11/ted-cruz-2649019031/</div><div>=</div><div>=</div><div>ust 27 out of 249 congressional Republicans acknowledge that Joe Biden defeated President Donald Trump in the 2020 election, according to a Washington Post survey, and Trump on Saturday demanded that they be identified.</div><div>
</div><div>More than a month after President-elect Biden claimed a decisive victory over the lame-duck president—winning the popular vote by more than 7 million and garnering 306 votes in the Electoral College—Reps. Mo Brooks (R-Ala.) and Paul Gosar (R-Ariz.) still insist Trump won the race, despite all evidence to the contrary.</div><div>
</div><div>Another 220 GOP members of the House and Senate—roughly 88 percent of congressional Republicans—refuse to say who won.</div><div>
</div><div>Those are the findings of a Washington Post survey conducted this week.</div><div>
</div><div>Beginning "the morning after Trump posted a 46-minute video Wednesday evening in which he wrongly claimed he had defeated Biden and leveled wild and unsubstantiated allegations of 'corrupt forces' who stole the outcome from the sitting president," a team of 25 reporters contacted aides for all 249 Republicans in the House and Senate by email and phone, the Post explained.</div><div>
</div><div>In addition to researching "public statements made by GOP lawmakers in recent weeks to determine their stance on Biden's win," the Post reporters asked three questions:</div><div>
</div><div>Who won the presidential contest?</div><div>Do you support or oppose Trump's continuing efforts to claim victory?</div><div>If Biden wins a majority in the Electoral College, will you accept him as the legitimately elected president?</div><div>According to the Post, only nine congressional Republicans oppose Trump's ongoing efforts to claim victory, nine others—including Sens. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) and Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.)—support his attempt to overturn the election results, and 231 declined to answer.</div><div>
</div><div>Brooks and Gosar said they will not accept Biden as the legitimately elected president of the U.S. regardless of what happens when electors meet on December 14.</div><div>
</div><div>"In my judgement, this is the worst election theft in the history of the United States," Brooks said, while Gosar claimed that there is "too much evidence of fraud."</div><div>
</div><div>The lawmakers' statements come just days after Attorney General William Barr, a key Trump ally, admitted that "we have not seen fraud on a scale that could have" affected the outcome of the election, as Common Dreams reported.</div><div>
</div><div>Thirty-two congressional Republicans said they will accept Biden's victory if he wins a majority in the Electoral College, and 215 did not respond.</div><div>
</div><div>The Post distilled the survey results into the following chart:...</div><div>
</div><div>=</div><div>=</div><div>
</div><div>https://www.mediamatters.org/fox-news/despicable-dangerous-right-wing-assault-2020-election</div><div>
</div><div>Right-wing media’s pro-Trump echo chamber is not letting President Donald Trump go down without a fight. And its members are more than willing to make faith in the democratic system a casualty of their disinformation campaign.</div><div>
</div><div>Election experts long predicted that Election Day would end with a “red mirage” showing Trump in the lead, only for there to be a “blue shift” afterward as key states counted mail-in ballots that heavily favored Democratic nominee Joe Biden. That is exactly what is happening now. Biden’s popular vote margin has soared since Tuesday, and tightening margins in key states are bringing into focus his potential electoral path to victory.</div><div>
</div><div>Trump’s response has been to carry out the strategy he has foreshadowed for months. He falsely claimed victory, baselessly declared himself the victim of massive voter fraud, and said that he would be vindicated in the courts. Notably, these fraud claims are absent from his campaign’s actual lawsuits, which “appear mostly designed to generate headlines that Trump is contesting the outcome, rather than cases that could determine the outcome of the race,” as Popular Information’s Judd Legum pointed out after reviewing the filings.&nbsp;</div><div>
</div><div>But Trumpist media figures are recklessly touting false and nonsensical fraud accusations to bolster the president’s position. From MAGA social media influencers to right-wing YouTube stars, prime-time Fox hosts to conservative radio giants, their mutually reinforcing web is bombarding audiences with a full-spectrum effort to undermine confidence in the election results, raising tensions and fomenting unrest.</div><div>
</div><div>Here’s Tucker Carlson, the most popular cable news host in the country, along with the president’s lawyer Jenna Ellis, touting the since-retracted viral falsehood that Biden mysteriously received 138,000 votes in Michigan.</div><div>
</div><div>Here’s Rush Limbaugh, the right-wing radio host who has been a Republican kingmaker for decades and received the Medal of Freedom from the president this year, pushing the easily debunked viral lie that “Wisconsin now has more votes than people who are registered to vote."[11/4 show]</div><div>
</div><div>here’s Newt Gingrich, a former Republican speaker of the House and longtime Fox contributor, telling the viewers of the president’s favorite morning news show that there need to be Senate investigations and lawsuits due to purported fraud.&nbsp;</div><div>
</div><div>The fever-swamp mentality has engulfed right-wing social media and conspiracy-minded Trumpist websites.</div><div>
</div><div>It’s also spreading among the president’s more “intellectual” supporters. Here’s Ted Cruz, a prominent Republican senator who has argued cases before the Supreme Court, promoting Fox host Maria Bartiromo touting The Federalist’s baseless claim that “Democrats Are Trying To Steal The Election In Michigan, Wisconsin, And Pennsylvania,” which relies in part on the 138,000-vote lie.</div><div>
</div><div>These baseless fraud claims are fueling extraordinarily overheated rhetoric, as leading members of the Trumpist media urge their audiences to be “angry,” “outraged,” “worried,” and “concerned,” and to prepare “to fight” the Democrats who are “stealing your nation from you,” perhaps by trying to “surround” ballot counting locations to exert a “demanding presence.”&nbsp;</div><div>
</div><div>As the frenzy builds, Trump supporters have already begun swarming those locations in Michigan and Arizona. In the latter state, election officials briefly stopped the count after being intimidated by the armed protesters, before sheriff’s deputies in tactical gear arrived on the scene. Some pro-Trump influencers appear to be getting ready to add to the scene in Michigan and generate a similar one in Philadelphia.</div><div>
</div><div>It’s unclear what impact, if any, all of this will have on the election’s result. But it seems overwhelmingly likely that a large portion of Trump supporters will come to believe that the election is illegitimate and has been stolen from him. His propagandists could try to forestall that, working to dampen tensions -- but instead they'd rather inflame them.</div><div>
</div><div>=</div><div>&nbsp;</div><div>
</div><div>https://www.mediamatters.org/facebook/latest-senate-hearing-social-media-bias-was-just-another-example-right-wingers-working</div><div>
</div><div>parker m</div><div>
</div><div>
</div><div>
</div><div>On Wednesday, the Senate commerce committee held a hearing about content moderation on social media platforms, and Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey, and Google CEO Sundar Pichai were called as witnesses. The hearing was ostensibly about possible reform to Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act of 1996, but the goal of the Republican senators who called it was clearly to influence how these platforms enforce their policies in the days leading up to and following next week’s elections.</div><div>
</div><div>Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) went so far as to promote the hearing like some type of boxing match between himself (“the free speech champion”) and Dorsey (“the czar of censorship”), and he used his speaking time to berate the CEO for their content moderation policies.</div><div>
</div><div>The hearing served as a public forum for conservatives to work the refs, accusing these platforms of having anti-conservative bias in an effort to spur more favorable treatment. Of course, there isn’t actually anti-conservative bias on social media platforms -- quite the opposite, actually.</div><div>
</div><div>A new nine-month Media Matters study of Facebook pages posting political content found that right-leaning pages outperformed left-leaning and politically neutral pages in the number of average weekly interactions they accrued. Studies published in August 2019, April 2019, and July 2018 found similar disparities or equal performance. Past studies of Facebook have found that conservative pages dominate liberal and neutral pages on topics including abortion, immigration, and transgender issues, as well. While Zuckerberg may deny that Facebook is a “right-wing echo chamber,” his belief isn’t supported by the facts.</div><div>
</div><div>In fact, Zuckerberg has made repeated overtures to the right when conservatives claim to be the victims of bias on the platform. Zuckerberg hired lifelong Republican operatives to head global policy and election policy initiatives, and earlier this year he hired a former Fox & Friends senior producer to head video strategy for Facebook News. A February Washington Post report outlined some of the many ways Zuckerberg has tried to appease conservatives, which included the torpedoing of a plan to address fake news websites, the politically motivated inclusion of Breitbart in its news tab program, and meetings with the likes of Corey Lewandowski, Tucker Carlson, Glenn Beck, and a bevy of conservative commentators in 2016.</div><div>
</div><div>According to The Wall Street Journal, Zuckerberg talks regularly with White House senior advisor Jared Kushner and has built a relationship with Daily Wire co-founder Ben Shapiro, whose content happens to be some of the most shared on the entire platform. That same Wall Street Journal report showed that Facebook’s actions to help conservatives had the effect of reducing traffic to left-leaning outlets like Mother Jones.</div><div>
</div><div>Even with all of this evidence showing how Facebook supports them, conservatives still play the role of victims. It will never, ever be good enough for them.</div><div>
</div><div>“What we are watching -- the militarization of social media on behalf of Democrats, and the overt suppression of material damaging to Democrats to the cheering of the press -- is one of the single most dangerous political moments I have ever seen,” Shapiro wrote on Twitter, seemingly oblivious to the way social media companies promote his content at the expense of liberal articles.</div><div>
</div><div>Evidence of anti-conservative bias is always thin, based on faulty comparisons, or just outright false. During the hearing, Sen. Marsha Blackburn (R-TN) brought up a recent Media Research Center report that claimed that Trump was “censored” 65 times on social media. This was a particularly weak and easily debunked point, and it goes to show just how much of a reach conservatives are making when they claim to be the victims of bias.</div><div>
</div><div>Conservatives have called tech CEOs in front of Congress over and over and over and over, usually under the guise of an anti-trust hearing or a chance to comment on reforming Section 230. But they’re clearly interested only in trying to coerce these companies into giving them an advantage.&nbsp;</div><div>
</div><div>related</div><div>
</div><div>sinclair national reporters have repeatedly pushed right-wing lies about supposed social media platform bias</div><div>
</div><div>10/27/20 4:47 PM EDT</div><div>
</div><div>A new study finds that Facebook is not censoring conservatives despite their repeated attacks</div><div>
</div><div>10/28/20 10:17 AM EDT</div><div>
</div><div>Some pro-gun Facebook pages are fearmongering about mass violence from the left after the election</div><div>
</div><div>
</div><div>10/26/20 11:44 AM EDT</div><div>
</div><div></div><div>=</div><div>
</div><div>https://insideclimatenews.org/news/04012017/exxon-climate-investigation-jeff-sessions-attorney-general-trump</div><div>
</div><div>
</div><div>
</div><div>over the past year, the battle lines formed along partisan lines on the question of whether the Justice Department should launch a probe into ExxonMobil's stance on climate change.</div><div>
</div><div>The designated referee in that battle was to have been U.S. Attorney General Loretta Lynch, who received the formal letters staking out each side's position on an investigation.</div><div>
</div><div>One of those letters, sent by five Republican senators sympathetic to Exxon, carried the signature of Alabama Sen. Jeff Sessions, who is Donald Trump's choice to succeed Lynch as the next attorney general.</div><div>
</div><div>That letter argued that a federal investigation of Exxon would suppress debate on the validity of climate change and amounted to prosecutorial misconduct. Any investigation of the oil giant must be stopped immediately and no future probes initiated, Sessions and the other senators told Lynch.</div><div>
</div><div>If he is confirmed by the Senate to replace Lynch, Sessions will become the nation's top law enforcement officer and would hold ultimate authority on the future of any federal investigations of Exxon, making it highly unlikely that any investigation underway would proceed any further. Sessions did not respond to an interview request.</div><div>
</div><div>Sessions would have a seat at Trump's cabinet table alongside like-minded climate denialists tapped to run the Environmental Protection Agency as well as the Departments of Commerce, Interior and Energy. And even if Rex Tillerson, Trump's choice for secretary of state, has acknowledged the scientific consensus that the risks of climate change are real and need to be dealt with, he has been the chief executive of Exxon for the past 10 years.</div><div>
</div><div>In other words, Sessions will fit comfortably into an administration loaded with supporters of the fossil fuel industry. That leaves little hope federal authorities will take action on Exxon, said Joel Schwartz, a former federal prosecutor who worked on the prosecution of the tobacco industry.</div><div>
</div><div>"If they don't see climate change as causing a problem then there is no crime to prevent; there is no wrong to right," Schwartz said.&nbsp; "Under their argument there can be no bad actors—just scientists with honest differences of opinion."</div><div>
</div><div>California Reps. Ted Lieu and Mark DeSaulnier were among the first to call for Lynch to open a probe of Exxon. The two Democrats asked the attorney general to determine whether Exxon had violated federal law by "organizing a sustained deception campaign disputing climate science" and "failing to disclose truthful information" about climate change.</div><div>
</div><div>The request came in the wake of an investigative series of stories published by InsideClimate News that reveals Exxon scientists were warning of potentially catastrophic effects of a buildup of atmospheric carbon dioxide from fossil fuels as early as 1977.&nbsp; (The Los Angeles Times later published stories researched by the Columbia School of Journalism.)</div><div>
</div><div>The Justice Department confirmed in January that it had referred the request to the FBI for an initial inquiry, but no details were ever disclosed.</div><div>
</div><div>In May, Sessions was one of five Republican senators who demanded Lynch halt that preliminary investigation.</div><div>
</div><div>"We write today to demand that the Department of Justice (DOJ) immediately cease its ongoing use of law enforcement resources to stifle private debate on one of the most controversial public issues of our time—climate change," according to the letter.</div><div>
</div><div>Sessions was joined by Sens. Mike Lee, Ted Cruz, David Perdue and David Vitter in signing the letter that suggested a prosecution of Exxon would amount to prosecutorial misconduct.</div><div>
</div><div>"As you well know, initiating criminal prosecution for a private entity's opinions on climate change is a blatant violation of the First Amendment and an abuse of power that rises to the level of prosecutorial misconduct," they told Lynch.</div><div>
</div><div>David Vladeck, a professor at the Georgetown University Law Center and former director of the Bureau of Consumer Protection of the Federal Trade Commission, said the position staked out by Sessions and the others in the letter to Lynch is a signal Exxon will get a free pass at the federal level.</div><div>
</div><div>"That means it will be left to the state attorneys general to pick up the cudgel if there is going to be any holding Exxon accountable," he said.</div><div>
</div><div>But given Exxon's resources, its powerful allies in Congress and the ferocity it has shown in attacking the investigations being undertaken by New York and Massachusetts, other attorneys general may be reluctant to engage in litigation.</div><div>
</div><div>"They may believe it's the right thing to do, but they know they can't sustain the fight they will surely encounter," Vladeck said. "So Exxon...will go on about its business without being held accountable for its conduct."</div><div>
</div><div>Lieu and DeSaulnier, both Democrats from Southern California, are grudgingly accepting what lies ahead.</div><div>
</div><div>"It's not looking very encouraging," DeSaulnier said.</div><div>
</div><div>Lieu said he hopes the FBI will turn up enough evidence that cannot be ignored, but said, "I am pessimistic about the attorney general's office."</div><div>
</div><div>Exxon may also find a more agreeable Securities and Exchange Commission under the Trump administration. The SEC reportedly launched an investigation into how Exxon accounts for climate change impacts when it values its assets. Exxon has confirmed the SEC investigation and pledged its cooperation.</div><div>
</div><div>In the wake of the probe, Exxon announced in October that it was revising the estimated value of its Canadian tar sands reserves to conform to SEC guidelines.</div><div>
</div><div>On Wednesday, Trump announced lawyer Jay Clayton as his choice to replace Mary Jo White as SEC chair.&nbsp; Clayton has represented a number of Wall Street giants and could be instrumental in helping implement Trump's promise to scale back on financial regulation.</div><div>
</div><div>In addition to designating a chair, the new president likely will be making three other appointments this year to the five-member commission.</div><div>
</div><div>The commission is designed as a non-partisan body, and no more than three commissioners may belong to the same political party. Appointees are subject to confirmation by the Senate.</div><div>
</div><div>Yet Trump will shape the commission with conservative appointees who will be industry-friendly and lenient enforcers of regulatory rules, according to experts.</div><div>
</div><div>It's unlikely Trump will appoint commissioners explicitly opposed to investigating Exxon, said Andrew Vollmer, a law professor at the University of Virginia and former deputy general counsel at the SEC. New Republican commissioners, however, are likely to share the president's ideological policy preferences, he said.</div><div>
</div><div>"The kind of people he will pick can influence and affect investigations," Vollmer said. "There is nothing improper about that as long as a commissioner does not have a conflict of interest."</div><div>
</div><div>Trump's appointee to head the SEC, for instance, could instruct the SEC's enforcement division to stop a particular investigation, he said. But that carries the risk of alienating staff and exposing the commission to public criticism, making the power more theoretical than real, he said.</div><div>
</div><div>Still, he said, "the chair has the power."</div><div>
</div><div>If allegations of wrongdoing came from a whistleblower, then the SEC would be mandated to conduct a summary investigation of Exxon, according to according to Bevis Longstreth, a former SEC commissioner who was appointed by Ronald Reagan. But even then, it need only be a cursory look to satisfy the statutory requirements that the credibility of whistleblower complaints be weighed, Longstreth said.</div><div>
</div><div>"I don't think you can look to the SEC—given what will be its be makeup—to do very much in the way of an Exxon investigation," he said.</div><div>
</div><div>=</div><div>https://www.alternet.org/2020/09/its-about-intimidation-trump-allies-suggest-using-federal-racketeering-laws-to-bully-anti-racism-activists/</div><div>
</div><div>no lnx&nbsp;</div><div>
</div><div>President Donald Trump and his supporters have been consistently disingenuous and misleading in their attacks on protesters, describing antifa as “terrorists” and glossing over the fact that thousands of Black Lives Matter activists all over the United States have been totally peaceful. Amplifying Trump’s message, Chad Wolf — acting secretary of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security — has suggested possibly using anti-racketeering laws to go after left-wing protesters. And reporter Kelly Weill examines that suggestion from a legal/civil rights standpoint in a Daily Beast article published on September 3.</div><div>
</div><div>“Can the United States government really use the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations (RICO) Act, mostly known as a weapon the feds use to target mob bosses, to successfully prosecute protesters, as Wolf implied?,” Weill writes. “It wouldn’t be easy, legal experts say. But the chatter signals a potent new effort — bolstered by extra-deranged conspiracy theories — to crack down on protesters, and may already be having its desired effect: freaking people out.”</div><div>
</div><div>When Wolf was interviewed by Fox News’ Tucker Carlson on Monday night, August 31, the far-right Carlson asked him, “Why haven’t we seen the leaders of antifa and BLM arrested and charged with conspiracy under, say, RICO, like the heads of mafia families were?” — to which the acting DHS secretary responded, “Well, this is something that I have talked to (Attorney General William Barr) personally about. I know that they are working on it.” And Wolf told Carlson that the U.S. Department of Justice was investigating “the heads of those organizations.”</div><div>
</div><div>Weill notes that in July, Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas wrote a letter to Barr and the FBI calling for an investigation of antifa “under the RICO Act.” But attorney Ken White, a former federal prosecutor, is dismissive of politicians who throw the word “RICO” around casually.</div><div>
</div><div>White told the Daily Beast that the RICO Act “was useful, and still is sometimes, at taking down genuine organized crime. The problem is that (RICO) sounds badass so people want to use it on everything. People basically use it like an angry emoji…. I think 98% of the time it’s invoked, it’s more emotional or performative than it is substantive.”</div><div>
</div><div>Chip Gibbons, policy director of Defending Rights And Dissent, stressed that antifa is not an actual organization. Gibbons told the Beast, “When (Wolf) says they’re looking at the leaders of Black Lives Matter for RICO charges, who do they mean? Do they mean the board of trustees on the actual 501(c)(3) (nonprofit) organization? Do they mean the three individuals who are credited with coming up with the hashtag? These are pretty decentralized movements…. How are we going to subpoena the hotel records of antifa? It’s a nonsensical proposition, like if I said I’m going to subpoena the hotel records of feminism.”</div><div>
</div><div>However, Faiza Patel, co-director of the Liberty and National Security Program at the Brennan Center for Justice, argued that even if RICO charges didn’t hold up in the courts, they could still have a chilling effect on protesters. Patel told the Beast, “One of the things this administration has tried to do is label protesters as part of some criminal organization, because once you have the idea of an organization, then that makes it a lot easier to go after people who are related. You might not necessarily have to get the individual person who might have committed a crime; you can actually treat the entire group as being dangerous or criminal. And that gives you a lot more leverage in going after its members.”</div><div>
</div><div>Gibbons said of threats to use the RICO Act against demonstrators, “It’s about intimidation. If you’re a normal person and you’re disgusted by police racism but you think, ‘If I go out and protest, is the FBI going to open a file on me?,’ you might think twice about doing so.”</div><div>
</div><div>=</div><div></div><div>https://theintercept.com/2020/08/20/facebook-bans-antifascist-pages/</div><div>
</div><div>oN WEDNESDAY, Facebook announced an expansion of its “Dangerous Individuals and Organizations policy,” removing or restricting hundreds of pages associated with groups that it claims promote violence. Nearly 800 QAnon groups, committed to pernicious disinformation and potentially deadly conspiracy theories, have been removed. Facebook also shut down the pages of far-right militias, like the New Mexico Civil Guard, an armed vigilante organization, whose leaders sport swastika tattoos.</div><div>
</div><div>Alongside groups openly committed to genocidal white supremacy, which constitute a very real threat to Black and Indigenous communities, as well as other people of color, Facebook also shut down the pages of numerous antifascist, anti-capitalist news, organizing, and information sites. The move follows a pattern now well-established by the Trump administration — and unchallenged by most every mainstream media outlet — that draws indefensible false equivalences between organized, racist fascists, and the antifascists who vigorously oppose them.</div><div>
</div><div>Among the pages removed were those of antifascist news and research site, It’s Going Down, a media platform that publishes news, analysis, and reports on social struggles, as well as investigative work to expose white supremacist and neo-Nazi networks. Crimethinc, a bastion of left-wing, anarchist publishing and thought since the 1990s, saw its Facebook page removed too. The pages of groups organizing around the ongoing and potent antiracist uprisings were also shut down, including the PNW Youth Liberation Front, a network of youth collectives in the Northwest committed to direct action protest.</div><div>
</div><div>"Lumping anarchists and anti-fascists together with far-right militias who explicitly support the current administration is a strategic move to muddy the issue,” said a statement from Crimethinc in response to the bans. “This is the same operation that William Barr” — the attorney general — “performed in creating a Department of Justice task force focused on ‘anti-government extremists’ that targets self-proclaimed fascists and anti-fascists alike. In the case of the Department of Justice, this enables them to point to far-right and militia attacks in order to demand resources with which to crack down on those who are on the front lines of defending communities against such attacks.”</div><div>
</div><div>Both rhetorically and through specific policies, the government has obfuscated and downplayed the threat of white supremacist extremism, while sensationalizing the risks posed by the far left.</div><div>
</div><div>With its latest bans, Facebook is following this same playbook.</div><div>
</div><div>
</div><div>The demonization of antifascists has become a centerpiece of President Donald Trump’s reelection propaganda, which functions both to criminalize dissent and delegitimize Black liberation struggle. Following the intolerable events of the Charlottesville, Virginia, “Unite the Right” rally in 2017, Trump famously praised “very fine” members of the white supremacist coalition and blamed “both sides” for the murderous far-right violence that occurred — a stance that’s since been crystallized in his policies.</div><div>
</div><div>Facebook’s decision to treat leftist social justice platforms as equivalent to racist militia groups is merely an extension of the government’s position. “For months, Donald Trump has demanded this crackdown in a series of social media posts explicitly blaming anarchists and anti-fascists for the countrywide wave of protests precipitated by persistent police violence in the United States,” said the Crimethinc statement.</div><div>
</div><div>EARLIER THIS MONTH, as I wrote, Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, chaired a farcical Senate Judiciary Subcommittee hearing on “stopping anarchist violence.” The senator repeatedly chastised Democrats for failing to condemn “antifa” for a murder that was in fact carried out by the far right — and refused to be corrected. Both It’s Going Down and Crimethinc were mentioned during the hearing, within baseless overtures on the threat of the far left.</div><div>
</div><div>In the three decades since Crimethinc’s founding, the Facebook ban is “the first thing like this that has occurred,” said a participant in the collective, who asked for anonymity out of concern for far-right retaliation and state scrutiny. Of course, none of the antifascist groups removed by Facebook expected any better from the social media leviathan. “We ultimately aren’t surprised by this move and personally all hate Facebook,” the It’s Going Down Twitter account said, noting that it was nonetheless a “vehicle to connect with people.”</div><div>
</div><div>At stake is not the moral standing of Mark Zuckerburg’s turpitudinous monopoly, but rather the further entrenching of a false equivalence, which stifles antifascist dissent at a time of emboldened state and movement fascism.</div><div>
</div><div>
</div><div>Related</div><div>Leaked Documents Show Police Knew Far-Right Extremists Were the Real Threat at Protests, Not “Antifa”</div><div>It bears repeating, ad nauseam, that the far right has carried out 329 murders in the last three decades; none have been attributed to antifa. Between 2009 and 2018, white supremacist and far-right extremists were responsible for 73 percent of extremist murders in the U.S. And that’s not even to mention the state-sanctioned, racist killings carried out by the police.</div><div>
</div><div>There’s no doubt that a number of the leftist platforms removed in the Facebook sweep advocate for disruptive dissent and protest. Antifa practice certainly involves a willingness to physically confront organized white supremacists in the streets. But Facebook’s bans, echoing Trump’s myths, equate the “violence” of disruptive antiracist protest with the violence of neo-Nazis murdering immigrants and people of color.</div><div>
</div><div>“This line of thinking continues to equate protest disruption and property destruction with far-right movements who fundamentally want to harm and kill large segments of the public,” It’s Going Down tweeted.</div><div>
</div><div>For Facebook to treat even militant, antiracist, antifascist organizing as a violence comparable to that of white supremacist militias is a statement, in no uncertain terms, about which lives it deems to matter.</div><div>
</div><div></div><div>=</div><div>
</div><div>nyt no lnx</div><div>
</div><div>https://www.nytimes.com/2019/07/20/us/politics/china-red-scare-washington.html</div><div>
</div><div>A New Red Scare Is Reshaping Washington</div><div>
</div><div>[pix Steve Bannon, former adviser to President Trump, restarted the Committee on the Present Danger to warn against China’s rise. Mr. Bannon, seen here with a traditional bindi during an event hosted by the committee and the National Indian American Public Policy Institute, says the fight with China is “the defining event of our time.”Credit...Alex Garcia for The New York Times</div><div>
</div><div>By Ana Swanson</div><div>
</div><div>July 20, 2019</div><div>
</div><div>
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</div><div>WASHINGTON — In a ballroom across from the Capitol building, an unlikely group of military hawks, populist crusaders, Chinese Muslim freedom fighters and followers of the Falun Gong has been meeting to warn anyone who will listen that China poses an existential threat to the United States that will not end until the Communist Party is overthrown.</div><div>
</div><div>If the warnings sound straight out of the Cold War, they are. The Committee on the Present Danger, a long-defunct group that campaigned against the dangers of the Soviet Union in the 1970s and 1980s, has recently been revived with the help of Stephen K. Bannon, the president’s former chief strategist, to warn against the dangers of China.</div><div>
</div><div>Once dismissed as xenophobes and fringe elements, the group’s members are finding their views increasingly embraced in President Trump’s Washington, where skepticism and mistrust of China have taken hold. Fear of China has spread across the government, from the White House to Congress to federal agencies, where Beijing’s rise is unquestioningly viewed as an economic and national security threat and the defining challenge of the 21st century.</div><div>
</div><div>“These are two systems that are incompatible,” Mr. Bannon said of the United States and China. “One side is going to win, and one side is going to lose.”</div><div>
</div><div>The United States and China have been locked in difficult trade negotiations for the past two years, with talks plagued by a series of missteps and misunderstandings. Mr. Trump has responded to the lack of progress by steadily ratcheting up American tariffs on Chinese goods and finding other ways to retaliate. China has responded in kind.</div><div>
</div><div>The two sides now appear far from any agreement that would resolve the administration’s concerns about China, including forcing American companies operating there to hand over valuable technology. Even if a deal is reached, the two sides are busy constructing broader economic barriers.</div><div>
</div><div>In addition to placing a 25 percent tariff on roughly half of the goods China exports, the United States has restricted the kinds of technologies that can be exported to China, tried to cut off some Chinese companies, like telecom giant Huawei, from purchasing American products and rolled out hurdles for Chinese investment in the United States.</div><div>
</div><div>American intelligence agencies have also ratcheted up efforts to combat Chinese espionage, particularly at universities and research institutions. Officials from the F.B.I. and the National Security Council have been dispatched to Ivy League universities to warn administrators to be vigilant against Chinese students who may be gathering technological secrets from their laboratories to pass to Beijing.</div><div>
</div><div>The administration paints the crackdown as necessary to protect the United States. But there are growing concerns that it is stoking a new red scare, fueling discrimination against students, scientists and companies with ties to China and risking the collapse of a fraught but deeply enmeshed trade relationship between the world’s two largest economies.</div><div>
</div><div>“I’m worried that some people are going to say, because of this fear, any policy is justifiable,” said Scott Kennedy, a China expert at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. “The climate of fear that is being created needs to help generate the conversation, not end the conversation.”</div><div>
</div><div>[Image Concern over China’s ambitions as an economic and military power has spread across Washington, fueling what some say could be a new Red Scare.</div><div>
</div><div>Anti-China sentiment has spread quickly, with Republicans and Democrats, labor union leaders, Fox News hosts and others warning that China’s efforts to build up its military and advanced industries threaten America’s global leadership, and that the United States should respond aggressively. Skepticism has seeped into nearly every aspect of China’s interaction with the United States, with officials questioning China’s presence on American stock markets, its construction of American subway cars and its purchase of social media networks.</div><div>
</div><div>Yet there is little agreement on what America can or should do. The United States has tried for decades to entice and cajole China to become a more open society, but the Communist Party has steadily tightened its grip over the Chinese people and the economy. American leaders now face a choice of whether to continue down a path of engagement that could leave the country vulnerable to economic and security threats — or embark on a path of disengagement that could weaken both economies and might one day even lead to war.</div><div>
</div><div>An increasing number of people in Washington now view the decoupling of the two economies as inevitable — including many of the members of the Committee on the Present Danger. At an inaugural meeting in April, Mr. Bannon, Senator Ted Cruz of Texas, Newt Gingrich, the former House speaker, and others issued paeans to Ronald Reagan — a former member of the group — and were met with standing ovations as they called for vigilance against China.</div><div>
</div><div>They praised Mr. Reagan’s Cold War victory over the Soviet Union and his doctrine of “peace through strength,” but there was also an air of inevitability that war might come, only this time with China.</div><div>
</div><div>Mr. Bannon was just off the plane from Rome, with a slight shadow of a mustache and his silver hair brushed back. Clad in a black button-down and long black suit jacket, he thumped the podium as he described China as a rising power and the United States as a declining power that would inevitably clash.</div><div>
</div><div>“This is the defining event of our time, and 100 years from now, this is what they’re going to remember us for,” he said.</div><div>
</div><div>The committee’s two earliest iterations, in the 1950s and again in the 1970s, called for an arms buildup to counter the Soviets. The second iteration, formed over a luncheon table at Washington’s Metropolitan Club in 1976, issued documents warning against Soviet expansionism, with titles like “Is America Becoming Number 2?”</div><div>
</div><div>The group reached the height of its influence during the Reagan administration, in which dozens of its members eventually held posts, including as the national security adviser and C.I.A. director. But as the Soviet threat faded, so did the committee.</div><div>
</div><div>The group was briefly active again starting in 2004, this time to warn against the threat of Islamic extremism. The committee’s vice chair, Frank Gaffney, is the founder of the Center for Security Policy, a think tank that argues that mosques and Muslims across America are engaged in a “stealth jihad” to “Islamize” the country by taking advantage of American pluralism and democracy....</div><div>
</div><div>=</div><div></div><div>
</div><div>activ meas?</div><div>
</div><div>ted cruz retweet: This is who they are.</div><div>
</div><div>Ian Miles Cheong</div><div>@stillgray</div><div>Left-wing activists bring a stack of Bibles to burn in front of the federal courthouse in Portland.&nbsp; https://twitter.com/Shelldrayk/status/1289481822414413827/video/1</div><div>---</div><div>don jr&nbsp;</div><div>Now we move to the book burning phase. I’m pretty sure ANTIFA doesn’t actually stand for what they say it stands for. Maybe just remove the anti part of them name and it’s perfect.</div><div>---</div><div>tpkirk</div><div>
</div><div>BLM inc arsonists just burned a stack of Bibles in Portland</div><div>
</div><div>The activist media won’t report on this because it’s likely they support it</div><div>
</div><div>Our faith is under attack.&nbsp;</div><div>
</div><div>If you vote for Biden—you vote for Bible burnings</div><div>---</div><div></div><div>
</div><div>an 820</div><div>
</div><div>&nbsp;Cruz slammed for saying ‘magic money tree’ isn’t available to struggling families — weeks after voting for $740 billion Pentagon budget</div><div>Julia Conley / Common DreamsAugust 11, 2020</div><div>Sen. Ed Markey led the charge on Monday against his colleague, Texas Sen. Ted Cruz, after the GOP lawmaker mocked the notion of providing robust financial assistance to Americans during the…</div><div>
</div><div></div><div>
</div><div>https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-04-08/republican-senators-want-to-help-coal-get-u-s-bailout-money</div><div>
</div><div>
</div><div>
</div><div>Politics</div><div>
</div><div>Republican Senators Want to Help Coal Get U.S. Bailout Money</div><div>
</div><div>A group of 17 lawmakers sent a letter calling on the Fed to be “broad and flexible” in its distribution of bailout funds.</div><div>
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</div><div>
</div><div>By Akshat Rathi</div><div>
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</div><div>
</div><div>Cooling towers belonging to the Tennessee Valley Authority Paradise Fossil Plant, a generating station that used to burn coal mined by Murray Energy Holdings Co., are seen in Paradise, Kentucky, U.S., on Wednesday, Oct. 30, 2019.&nbsp; Photographer: Luke Sharrett/Bloomberg</div><div>
</div><div>LISTEN TO ARTICLE</div><div>
</div><div>&nbsp;3:52</div><div>
</div><div>A group of powerful Republican senators wants to make sure the bailout program being administered by BlackRock Inc. on behalf of the federal government won’t leave fossil-fuel companies behind.</div><div>
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</div><div>The U.S. government tapped BlackRock, the world’s largest asset manager, to become the buyer of corporate bonds as part of a $454 billion effort to bail out companies hit by the coronavirus lockdown. That triggered a letter from Greenpeace, Sierra Club, 350.org and other environmental organizations on March 27 urging Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell to weigh climate risk in its guidelines for BlackRock as it decides what sectors of the economy get financial support.</div><div>
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</div><div>Now, in a letter sent Tuesday, a group of 17 Republican senators, including James Inhofe of Oklahoma and Ted Cruz of Texas, are asking Powell and U.S. Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin to ensure that fossil-fuel companies aren’t excluded from the bailout program being administered by BlackRock.</div><div>
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</div><div>The pandemic has created an unprecedented upheaval in the global economy. With governments around the world pouring huge sums of money into propping up struggling companies, climate advocates see an opportunity to speed up the transition to clean energy and make entire industries as green as possible. Republican lawmakers have opposed this encroachment from environmental groups, pushing back and largely succeeding so far in separating stimulus spending from climate concerns.</div><div>
</div><div>
</div><div>
</div><div>Senate Leaders Meet As Secretary Mnuchin Sees Emergency Package On Track For Monday Passage&nbsp;</div><div>
</div><div>Senator Kevin Cramer, a Republican from North Dakota]</div><div>
</div><div>Led by Kevin Cramer, Senator from North Dakota, the group of Republican lawmakers seeking to safeguard fossil-fuel companies in the bailout draws heavily from states with concentrations of coal, oil, and gas extraction. Wyoming Senator John Barrasso, who also signed the letter, heads the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee.</div><div>
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</div><div>
</div><div>More From</div><div>
</div><div>Bloomberg Green</div><div>
</div><div>
</div><div>
</div><div>The letter calls for the Fed to ensure the relief program is “broad and flexible” and asserts that companies in the “energy and transportation sectors” deserve support. But the message appears particularly concerned with the possible exclusion of coal companies, noting that BlackRock decided in January to exclude any company from its actively managed holdings if it derives more than 25% of its revenue selling coal used in power plants. BlackRock has more than $7 trillion under management, although much of that is in passive holdings. A representative for the company declined to comment on the senators’ letter.</div><div>
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</div><div>The flurry of exhortations are meant to influence the Fed’s planning, which has yet to be set in stone. Although the U.S. central bank is dedicated to buying newly issued corporate bonds, existing investment-grade bonds, and exchange-traded funds based on highly rated debt as part of its economic-relief efforts, it hasn’t laid out which specific sectors or companies will get the program’s attentions.</div><div>
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</div><div>BlackRock Chairman Larry Fink shook the finance establishment in January when he called for a “fundamental reshaping of finance” in response to global warming. Last month he used his letter to shareholders to argue that the pandemic should be used by investors as an “opportunity to accelerate into a more sustainable world.” Within the environmental community, however, BlackRock isn’t always seen as a steadfast ally. The move to exclude coal companies from some investments drew ire from those who didn’t think the world’s asset manager was going far enough.</div><div>
</div><div>
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</div><div>BlackRock was responsible for a similar, smaller bond-buying program on behalf of the Fed during the 2008 financial crisis. Even back then, some Republicans raised objections to selecting the asset manager. But it won out because Fed’s expertise is setting big-picture monetary policies, whereas firms like BlackRock are able to assess and manage different kinds of debts, such as corporate bonds.</div><div>
</div><div>
</div><div>
</div><div>On Tuesday, BlackRock also won a contract to develop strategies for including sustainability in the European Union’s banking system. The asset manager beat out eight other bids, and over the next year will help incorporate environmental, social, and governance (ESG) measures in the EU banks’ processes for managing risks and assessing investment policies.</div><div>
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</div><div>&nbsp;Ted Cruz and Paul Gosar voluntarily self-quarantine after coming in contact with coronavirus patient at CPAC 2020</div><div>
</div><div>&nbsp;</div><div>
</div><div>Worldwide, the coronavirus epidemic has killed more than 3,800 people,</div><div>
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</div><div>=</div><div>https://www.factcheck.org/2020/01/club-for-growth-action-5/</div><div>
</div><div>1/20</div><div>
</div><div>political leanings: Conservative</div><div>
</div><div>2018 total spending: $19.6 million</div><div>
</div><div>Club for Growth Action, the super PAC of the conservative Club for Growth, was launched in August 2010. On its website, the organization declares its mission is to “take on any Member of Congress on policy who fails to uphold basic economic conservative principles … regardless of party.”</div><div>
</div><div>The PAC targets some Republican incumbents in primary elections in order to replace them with “pro-growth, limited government conservatives.” Club for Growth Action states on its website that it has been “instrumental” in helping to elect conservatives such as Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas, Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida and Sen. Tim Scott of South Carolina.</div><div>
</div><div>As of Dec. 31, 2019, the group had raised $7.7 million in the 2020 election cycle.</div><div>
</div><div>Its independent expenditures — spending for or against identified candidates, without coordination with candidates or parties — totaled about $2.5 million as of Feb. 10. Club for Growth Action spent more than $550,000 against Democrat Dan McCready in North Carolina. McCready lost to Republican Dan Bishop in North Carolina’s 9th Congressional District special election in 2019. In the Democratic presidential primaries, the group has so far spent almost $67,000 against former Vice President Joe Biden, $59,000 against Sen. Bernie Sanders and a little more than $34,000 against former Rep. Beto O’Rourke of Texas. O’Rourke dropped out of the Democratic race on Nov. 1.</div><div>
</div><div>The bulk of Club for Growth Action’s money thus far in the 2020 cycle has come from three donors. Richard Uihlein, the chief executive officer of Uline, a shipping, packaging and industrial supplies company, gave the PAC $2.5 million in May. The two other major donors are Jeff Yass, cofounder of the financial firm Susquehanna International, and Virginia James, a conservative investor and former spouse of Club for Growth co-founder and stockbroker Richard Gilder. They have donated $2 million and $1 million to the PAC, respectively.</div><div>
</div><div>In the 2018 cycle, Club for Growth Action spent $19.6 million. The PAC spent $1.2 million in the Texas senatorial race against O’Rourke, who lost in his bid to unseat Cruz. The group also spent more than $1.1 million to defeat Republican candidate Russell “Russ” Fagg in the Montana Senate Republican primary.</div><div>
</div><div>The PAC also focused on special House elections in Georgia and Pennsylvania. During the last election cycle, the group found itself at odds in the Georgia House race with a pro-Trump group called 45Committee. Club for Growth Action endorsed Republican Bob Gray — one of 18 candidates, including 11 Republicans, running in what was known as a “jungle primary.”</div><div>
</div><div>45Committee ran TV ads opposing Gray, claiming voters could not “trust him” because he “stands with the Club for Growth.” Gray did not survive the primary. Karen Handel, a Republican, won the special election in a runoff against Democrat Jon Ossoff.</div><div>
</div><div>A large chunk of the PAC’s money in the 2018 election cycle came from Uihlein, who has donated to Club for Growth Action since 2010. Uihlein gave the PAC $6.7 million. Jeff Yass, co-founder of global trading firm Susquehanna International Group, gave the PAC a little over $3.8 million. Yass also serves on the board of directors at the Cato Institute, a libertarian think tank.</div><div>
</div><div>In the 2016 cycle, Club for Growth Action spent a little over $20 million. On the presidential election alone, the group spent nearly $8 million — including more than $7 million against Donald Trump during the Republican primary. The group, for example, accused Trump in TV ads of supporting higher taxes. Once in office, Trump signed the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, which reduced individual and corporate income tax rates, among other things. (See our story, “A Guide to the Tax Changes.”)</div><div>
</div><div>=</div><div>
</div><div></div><div>
</div><div>an 1219</div><div>
</div><div>Ted Cruz draws audible laughs on live TV after pushing debunked Ukraine conspiracy theory</div><div>
</div><div>Igor Derysh / Salon</div><div>=</div><div>https://www.alternet.org/2019/08/far-right-journalist-andy-ngo-exposed-as-right-wing-troll</div><div>
</div><div>no lnx</div><div>
</div><div>Far-right ‘journalist’ Andy Ngo exposed as right-wing troll</div><div>
</div><div>Written by Igor Derysh / Salon August 28, 2019</div><div>
</div><div>Andy Ngo, the right-wing journalist and provocateur who was embraced by mainstream Republicans and covered favorably in mainstream media after he was attacked by antifa activists during a street fight in Portland, Oregon, may suddenly be persona non grata among conservatives. Nearly all mentions of Ngo were scrubbed from the upscale right-wing publication Quillette after a newly-released video showed him acting friendly with members of Patriot Prayer, a far-right hate group that has repeatedly sought out fights with leftists.</div><div>
</div><div>Ngo, who has used selectively edited videos to paint antifa as a violent, criminal group was hit with punches and milkshakes during a clash between antifa activists and members of the Proud Boys, an organization labeled a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center. Many on the right rallied around Ngo after that altercation, and spread false rumors that the milkshakes thrown at him and others had contained quick-dry cement.</div><div>&nbsp;</div><div>Ngo used his newfound fame to boost his profile, appearing on Fox News and other cable news outlets and embracing his victimhood.</div><div>
</div><div>Just weeks later, however, a video surfaced on Twitter showing Ngo pal around with the Proud Boys-adjacent group Patriot Prayer.</div><div>
</div><div>The video shows Ngo laughing as the group plans a violent attack on antifa members at a Portland bar in May. The video surfaced as part of a lawsuit brought by the bar, accusing Patriot Prayer members of causing a riot.</div><div>
</div><div>The Portland Mercury reports that Patriot Prayer members targeted antifa while they were celebrating a day of peaceful May Day celebrations. The lawsuit brought by the bar owners alleges that Patriot Prayer leader Joey Gibson and six others trespassed onto the property with the aim of engaging in violence.</div><div>
</div><div>The video of Ngo laughing as the group plans their attack, wrote Portland Mercury news editor Alex Zielinski, “is the clearest evidence I’ve seen supporting the claim that [Patriot Prayer] & leader Joy Gibson were intent on instigating a fight that afternoon.”</div><div>
</div><div>Alex Zielinski</div><div>?</div><div>@alex_zee</div><div>&nbsp;This clip, shot right before Patriot Prayer arrived at Cider Riot on May Day, is the clearest evidence I've seen supporting the claim that PP & leader Joey Gibson were intent on instigating a fight that afternoon. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=awN9J88j4mA&feature=youtu.be …</div><div>
</div><div>&nbsp;YouTube ?@YouTube</div><div>&nbsp;</div><div>2,553</div><div>
</div><div>The video shows members discuss their weapons and making preparations for the attack. Ngo is present the entire time and can be seen laughing at certain points.</div><div>
</div><div>“There’s no way he couldn’t know the group was planning on instigating violence,” Zielinski wrote.</div><div>
</div><div>In Ngo’s coverage of the violence, however, videos of the attack were selectively edited to remove violence by Patriot Prayer members. His tweets entirely blamed antifa for the violence.</div><div>
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</div><div>Respectable Lawyer</div><div>@RespectableLaw</div><div>&nbsp;· Aug 23, 2019</div><div>Replying to @RespectableLaw</div><div>And of course, Andy also posted misleading footage after the attack. He shows a woman aggressively approaching Patriot Prayer members in hysterics, and then a Patriot Prayer member hits her with some kind of club.https://twitter.com/MrAndyNgo/status/1125811724932632576 …</div><div>
</div><div>Andy Ngo</div><div>?</div><div>@MrAndyNgo</div><div>Replying to @katemshepherd</div><div>Here is the moment that woman charged in to fight and got knocked out. Notice the masked person who went in the direction of the camera man with a blade or pick. I saw numerous patrons on the bar’s property with weapons ready. pic.twitter.com/exCiimM4cp</div><div>
</div><div>&nbsp;Embedded video</div><div>
</div><div>Respectable Lawyer</div><div>@RespectableLaw</div><div>But as @imminentbulb pointed out, a full video shows the woman was attacked immediately prior to the start of Andy’s clip. If you listen to Andy’s clip, you can even hear one Patriot Prayer member frantically apologizing for the attack on her.https://twitter.com/imminentbulb/status/1125818772793618432 …</div><div>
</div><div>^,,</div><div>@imminentbulb</div><div>Replying to @imminentbulb and 2 others</div><div>Here's what happened immediately before the footage Andy is pushing. Deme Cooper, thirsty to carry out further #PatriotPrayer violence, returned to blatantly assault that person. She responded briefly in self defense, then Ian Kramer struck her after she had turned around.</div><div>
</div><div>&nbsp;Embedded video</div><div>1,653</div><div>
</div><div>“As more people send me clips, it becomes clear that Andy’s work is plagued by these dishonest edits,” wrote a Twitter user who has posted numerous videos discrediting Ngo’s tweets. “For example, in this clip, he edited out some goons stomping a man’s head, and did it with a sloppy looking jump-cut in his own clip.”</div><div>
</div><div>Respectable Lawyer</div><div>@RespectableLaw</div><div>&nbsp;· Aug 23, 2019</div><div>Replying to @RespectableLaw</div><div>This is the same woman who Andy had filmed and identified to his followers. She was knocked unconscious and suffered a broken neck. Andy also published her name while she was in the hospital.</div><div>
</div><div>Respectable Lawyer</div><div>@RespectableLaw</div><div>As more people send me clips, it becomes clear that Andy’s work is plagued by these dishonest edits. For example, in this clip, he edited out some goons stomping a man’s head, and did it with a sloppy looking jump-cut in his own clip.https://twitter.com/leftkist/status/1163913780197113856 …</div><div>
</div><div>Grifts Gone Wild</div><div>@leftkist</div><div>For your Andy Ngo list @RespectableLaw&nbsp;</div><div>
</div><div>Andy crudely edited out footage of Patriot Prayer associates Tiny Toese and Igor Ponomarev pummeling someone on the ground on 10/13/18.</div><div>
</div><div>Footage from @itsmikebivins shows what he cut.</div><div>
</div><div>&nbsp;Embedded video</div><div>1,927</div><div>
</div><div>376 people are talking about this</div><div>Quillette, where Ngo worked as a photo editor until Monday, announced after the video surfaced that Ngo was leaving his job at the site. Ngo’s name was scrubbed from the site, The Daily Beast reported.</div><div>
</div><div>Quillette editor-in-chief Claire Lehmann told The Daily Beast that Ngo left the site weeks earlier but the move was not publicized until Monday.</div><div>
</div><div>“Andy actually moved on from Quillette a few weeks ago because he is undertaking bigger & better projects, we just hadn’t updated the website and he hadn’t updated his Twitter bio until today,” she told the Daily Beast. “I haven’t seen the video,” she added.</div><div>
</div><div>Lehmann also said that Ngo had been on a “break” from a “brain injury” he suffered at the Portland rally.</div><div>
</div><div>Ngo, however, did not remove Quillette from his Twitter bio until Monday, noted National Observer reporter Caroline Orr, the same day that the Patriot Prayer video was released.</div><div>
</div><div>Meanwhile, Ngo’s crowdfunding campaign has raised nearly $195,000 since the Portland attack, which was even cited in a letter sent by Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, to the Justice Department.</div><div>
</div><div>Cruz cited the Ngo incident to demand that the FBI investigate Portland Mayor Ted Wheeler and prosecute antifa members under the RICO statute. Cruz’s call was amplified by President Trump to his 63 million followers on Twitter.</div><div>
</div><div>“At least give Andy Ngo credit,” wrote HuffPost reporter Luke O’Brien, for “lifting $200k off some of the dumbest people alive. Right-wing writers staked their reputations on this guy. Ted Cruz based an anti-anti-fascist congressional resolution on Ngo.”</div><div>
</div><div>=</div><div>=</div><div>
</div><div>https://www.alternet.org/2019/07/ted-cruz-leads-group-of-gop-senators-calling-on-trump-to-bypass-congress-and-give-rich-americans-yet-another-tax-cut</div><div>
</div><div>no lnx</div><div>
</div><div>
</div><div>
</div><div>Ted Cruz leads group of GOP senators calling on Trump to bypass Congress and give rich Americans yet another tax cut</div><div>
</div><div>&nbsp;Fox News</div><div>
</div><div>Written by Jake Johnson / Common Dreams July 30, 2019</div><div>
</div><div>“This is the GOP long con in a nutshell. Trump blazes away with raw and hideous racism. Meanwhile, he and his party look for ways to ship yachtloads of cash to the super wealthy.”</div><div>
</div><div>
</div><div>
</div><div>A group of over 20 Republican senators on Monday urged President Donald Trump’s Treasury Department to bypass Congress to unilaterally hand the wealthiest Americans another massive tax cut.</div><div>
</div><div>
</div><div>
</div><div>In a letter (pdf) led by Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas), the GOP senators called on Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin to index capital gains to inflation, a move that would primarily reward rich investors.</div><div>
</div><div>
</div><div>
</div><div>According to Bloomberg, the Trump White House is “developing a plan” to cut taxes for the rich by indexing capital gains to inflation.</div><div>
</div><div>
</div><div>
</div><div>“Indexing capital gains would slash tax bills for investors when selling assets such as stock or real estate by adjusting the original purchase price so no tax is paid on appreciation tied to inflation,” Bloomberg reported last month.</div><div>
</div><div>
</div><div>
</div><div>The Republican senators called on Mnuchin to use his “authority to eliminate inflationary gains from the Department of the Treasury’s calculation of capital gains tax liability.”</div><div>
</div><div>benwikler</div><div>
</div><div>&nbsp;This is the GOP long con in a nutshell. Trump blazes away with raw and hideous racism. Meanwhile, he and his party look for ways to ship yachtloads of cash to the super wealthy. Don’t let them get away w it.</div><div>
</div><div>
</div><div>
</div><div>Ted Cruz Demands Emergency Tax Cut for the Rich https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2019/07/republicans-capital-gains-tax-cut …</div><div>
</div><div>
</div><div>
</div><div>Critics have questioned whether the White House has the authority to take such an action. As the New York Times reported last July—when the Trump administration first considered going around Congress to index capital gains to inflation—former President George W. Bush’s Treasury Department determined the move “would be illegal.”</div><div>
</div><div>
</div><div>
</div><div>Chye-Ching Huang, director of federal fiscal policy at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, said Monday that 86 percent of the benefits of indexing capital gains to inflation would go to the top one percent.</div><div>
</div><div>&nbsp;This would add ~$100-200 billion to deficits</div><div>
</div><div>86% would go to the top 1%, with new loopholes for the wealthy.</div><div>
</div><div>
</div><div>
</div><div>And the Administration lacks legal authority to do it: https://www.cbpp.org/research/federal-tax/indexing-capital-gains-for-inflation-would-worsen-fiscal-challenges-give … https://twitter.com/arappeport/status/1155941104065232896 …</div><div>
</div><div>Alan Rappeport</div><div>
</div><div>@arappeport</div><div>
</div><div>Republican senators send letter to Sec. Mnuchin asking him to unilaterally cut taxes for the rich https://www.atr.org/sites/default/files/assets/Senate_Letter_to_Mnuchin_Re_Capital_Gains_Indexing.pdf …</div><div>
</div><div>
</div><div>
</div><div>The GOP push for more tax cuts for the rich comes as the Trump administration is working to take food stamps from three million low-income Americans, Seth Hanlon, senior fellow at the Center for American Progress, noted on Twitter.</div><div>
</div><div>
</div><div>
</div><div>
</div><div>
</div><div>Seth Hanlon</div><div>
</div><div>@SethHanlon</div><div>
</div><div>&nbsp;It would truly be something if Trump cuts taxes for the rich by executive fiat right after cutting nutrition assistance for the poor by executive fiat.&nbsp; (See: https://twitter.com/rebeccavallas/status/1153642781761527816?s=20 …) https://twitter.com/arappeport/status/1155941104065232896 …</div><div>
</div><div>
</div><div>
</div><div>Alan Rappeport</div><div>
</div><div>?</div><div>
</div><div>@arappeport</div><div>
</div><div>Republican senators send letter to Sec. Mnuchin asking him to unilaterally cut taxes for the rich https://www.atr.org/sites/default/files/assets/Senate_Letter_to_Mnuchin_Re_Capital_Gains_Indexing.pdf …</div><div>
</div><div>The Republicans sent their letter as mounting data shows Trump’s $1.5 trillion tax cut legislation, which took effect last year, has done virtually nothing for workers while further enriching wealthy Americans and large corporations.</div><div>
</div><div>Earlier this month, a group of Democratic lawmakers led by Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio) sent their own letter (pdf) pressing Mnuchin to “reject reported plans to use questionable authority to—yet again—lavish tax cuts upon our country’s wealthiest, while middle class families and working people continue to see costs rise and wages stagnate.”</div><div>
</div><div>The letter was signed by Sens. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.), Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.), Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), and a dozen other senators.</div><div>
</div><div>“We remain concerned this administration’s relentless preoccupation with cutting taxes for our country’s wealthiest taxpayers while leaving behind middle class families and working people,” wrote the senators, “even to the extent that it would consider exceeding its legal authority to do so.”</div><div>
</div><div>=</div><div>
</div><div>explains crazy?</div><div>
</div><div>Much has been written about CUFI’s influence in the Republican Party, which began under the George W. Bush administration soon after its founding. As journalist Max Blumenthal noted in a 2006 article for The Nation: “Over the past months, the White House has convened a series of off-the-record meetings about its policies in the Middle East with leaders of Christians United for Israel (CUFI).”&nbsp;</div><div>
</div><div>As a result of these meetings, CUFI aligned itself tightly with the neoconservatives that were well represented in the Bush administration, even appointing neoconservative and Christian Zionist Gary Bauer to its board and naming Bauer the first director of its lobbying arm, the CUFI Action Fund. Bauer is a founding member of the highly controversial and now-defunct neoconservative group, Project for a New American Century (PNAC), and has also served on the executive board of the neoconservative group Foundation for the Defense of Democracies (FDD).&nbsp;</div><div>
</div><div>CUFI has since won powerful allies and counts neoconservative Elliott Abrams; former CIA director James Woosley; neoconservative archon Bill Kristol; former ArkansasGovernor Mike Huckabee; Senators Lindsey Graham (R-SC), Tom Cotton (R-AR) and Ted Cruz (R-TX); Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu; and U.S. Vice President Mike Pence among its staunchest supporters. At a CUFI summit last year, Netanyahu described CUFI as a “vital part of Israel’s national security.”</div><div>
</div><div></div><div>
</div><div>see father node [preacher]</div><div>
</div><div>Rafael Cruz - Wikipedia</div><div>https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rafael_Cruz</div><div>Rafael Bienvenido Cruz y Díaz (born March 22, 1939) is a Cuban-American Protestant preacher, public speaker, and father of Texas U.S. Senator and 2016 presidential candidate Ted Cruz. ... Cruz was born in Matanzas, Cuba, in 1939.</div><div>Born?: ?Rafael Bienvenido Cruz y Díaz; March 22, ...</div><div>Nationality?: ?Cuban (1939–present); Canadian ...</div><div>Political party?: ?</div><div>Republican<span style="white-space:pre"> </span>Residence?: ?Carrollton, Texas?, U.S</div><div>?Early life · ?Religious and political ... · ?Personal life</div><div>Ted Cruz - Wikipedia</div><div>https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ted_Cruz</div><div>Rafael Edward Cruz is an American politician and attorney serving as the junior United States ... Cruz's father was born and raised in Cuba. ... At the time of his birth, Ted Cruz's parents had lived in Calgary for three years and ...... Cruz has joked, "I'm Cuban, Irish, and Italian, and yet somehow I ended up Southern Baptist." ...</div><div>?</div><div>Rafael Cruz · ?Political positions of Ted Cruz · ?Ted Cruz presidential ... · ?Heidi Cruz</div><div>How Ted Cruz's Father Shaped His Views On Immigration : It's All ...</div><div>https://www.npr.org/sections/.../how-ted-cruzs-father-shaped-his-views-on-immigration</div><div>Jun 20, 2013 - ... Cruz. He portrays his dad as a kind of Cuban Horatio Alger. ... The views of that freshman senator — Texas Republican Ted Cruz — have been significantly colored by the saga of his own father, an immigrant from Cuba.</div><div></div><div>
</div><div>Arizona Governor Doug Ducey started early by injecting his absurdly excessive reactions, saying, “Words cannot express my disappointment at this terrible decision. I am embarrassed for Nike.” And Rep. Liz Cheney (R-WY), chimed in as well,&nbsp; saying the “decision to cancel Betsy Ross shoe is ridiculous.” Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) made a comment that I still haven’t entirely deciphered yet:</div><div>
</div><div></div><div>
</div><div>https://www.alternet.org/2019/07/ted-cruzs-lawyer-actually-compared-him-to-rosa-parks-in-the-fight-against-campaign-finance-law/</div><div>
</div><div>&nbsp;Ted Cruz is currently involved in a campaign finance battle, and attorneys for the far-right Texas senator are being lambasted for comparing their lawsuit to the actions of civil rights icon Rosa Parks.[same week hunter 5 affairs as legit biz expense]</div><div>
</div><div>At issue in Cruz’ lawsuit is a $260,000 contribution for his 2018 campaign. The day before he narrowly defeated Democrat Beto O’Rourke in Texas’ U.S. Senate race, Cruz contributed $260,000 of his own money to his campaign — which was a violation of the McCain-Feingold campaign finance law. Under that law, candidates can only reimburse themselves for up to $250,000 with funds raised after an election.</div><div>
</div><div>...</div><div>
</div><div></div><div>
</div><div>Cruz fined $35,000 for not properly disclosing campaign loans from Goldman Sachs and Citibank</div><div>The Texas Tribune</div><div>Ted Cruz‘s 2012 Senate Campaign was fined $35,000 last month by the Federal Elections Commission for improperly disclosing $1.1 million in loans from big banks.</div><div>
</div><div></div><div>
</div><div>gaffney</div><div>
</div><div>ctr sec pol:</div><div>
</div><div>splc</div><div>
</div><div>
</div><div>
</div><div>Following the attacks in Brussels on March 22, GOP Presidential candidate Sen. Ted Cruz issued a call for the United States to “immediately halt the flow of refugees from countries with a significant al-Qaida or ISIS presence.”&nbsp;</div><div>
</div><div>
</div><div>
</div><div>Surprisingly, he also called for a “need to empower law enforcement to patrol and secure Muslim neighborhoods before they become radicalized.” Such statements, coming from a leading presidential candidate, are only the latest examples of anti-Muslim rhetoric making the jump from the firing of hate groups to mainstream political discourse. But such jumps are not random and, in fact, have come after years of planning.</div><div>
</div><div>
</div><div>
</div><div>The Center for Security Policy, a hate group that serves as the anti-Muslim movement’s premier think tank, has worked hard to earn the ear of elected officials and has sadly succeeded in this strategy. Of the eight people appointed as advisors to 2016 candidates Donald Trump and Senator Ted Cruz, all have connections to CSP and half hold ranking positions within the group, including its founder, Frank Gaffney.</div><div>
</div><div>
</div><div>
</div><div>Listed below are detailed profiles of the eight anti-Muslim advisors Cruz and Trump have appointed to advisory roles in their campaigns.</div><div>
</div><div>
</div><div>
</div><div>Frank Gaffney, president of Center for Security Policy, appointed to Ted Cruz’s National Security Coalition on March 17</div><div>
</div><div>
</div><div>
</div><div>Frank Gaffney is the founder of the anti-Muslim movement’s preeminent think tank, the Center for Security Policy (CSP). He also is one of the most outspoken anti-Muslim activists in America today, propagating conspiracy theories about the Muslim Brotherhood infiltrating the White House and producing reports calling for a ban on all Muslim immigration to the U.S.</div><div>
</div><div>
</div><div>
</div><div>When asked at an event in 2015 about Somali refugees working at meat processing plants in the U.S., for example, Gaffney stated, “I don’t know about you, but it kind of creeps me out that they are getting jobs in the food supply of the United States.” Gaffney has also made efforts to associate with loud-and-proud racists. In September of 2015, Gaffney invited on his radio show Jared Taylor, one of the most prominent white nationalists in America, to discuss the Syrian refugee crisis. During the interview, Gaffney called Taylor’s openly racist American Renaissance website “wonderful.”</div><div>
</div><div>
</div><div>
</div><div>Despite such ties to known racists, Gaffney does not operate on the political fringe. In recent years, he and his organization have grown closer to Cruz, with whom he has frequently shared a stage at anti-Muslim events.</div><div>
</div><div>
</div><div>
</div><div>In February 2014, Gaffney spoke on a panel titled, “American Security and The Iranian Bomb: Analyzing Threats at Home and Abroad“ with Cruz. A month later, Cruz spoke at a “National Security Action Summit” organized by Breitbart News, which featured a host of anti-Muslim activists including Gaffney and three other members of Cruz’s National Security Coalition. In September 2014, Cruz spoke via video at another CSP co-sponsored Action Summit.</div><div>
</div><div>
</div><div>
</div><div>A year later, in February 2015, Cruz spoke at the CSP’s “Defeat Jihad Summit.” Gaffney also held four “National Security Action Summit” events last year in Nevada, South Carolina, New Hampshire and Iowa, all key primary states. Cruz attended the first, in South Carolina, and submitted a video speech for the other three. The CSP summits featured a number of GOP presidential hopefuls speaking alongside notorious anti-Muslim and anti-immigrant figures.</div><div>
</div><div>
</div><div>
</div><div>In September 2015, Cruz teamed up with his rival Donald Trump to organize a rally in opposition to the nuclear treaty signed with Iran. CSP co-sponsored the event in D.C.</div><div>
</div><div>
</div><div>
</div><div>
</div><div>Lt. Gen. Jerry Boykin (Ret.), Executive VP of the anti-LGBT Family Research Council, Appointed to Ted Cruz’s National Security Coalition on March 17...</div><div>
</div><div></div><div>
</div><div>https://www.alternet.org/news-amp-politics/ted-cruz-attacks-beto-orourke-echoing-conspiracy-theory-motivated-pittsburgh</div><div>
</div><div>secret fund caravan</div><div>
</div><div></div><div>
</div><div>AN</div><div>
</div><div>...</div><div>
</div><div>“You want to talk about an issue to mobilize the people, and I’m talking everybody,” Cruz said to appreciative laughter. “So I want to thank PETA and I do want to tell PETA you’re going to have to disclose to the FEC that by coming and protesting and giving away tofu, that you have given an in-kind contribution to my campaign by demonstrating just how bad things can get.”</div><div>
</div><div>This jab is childish, not to mention silly given that O'Rourke is, pretty visibly, an avid meat-eater. It is also a little strange for Cruz to be mocking tofu at a time when soybean farmers — who produced 5.25 million bushels in Texas alone last year — are gravely threatened due to President Donald Trump's tariff war.</div><div>
</div><div>But this is not a one-off attack. Cruz has largely been running a culture-war campaign, in which he is trying to argue that O'Rourke would be out of step with Texas values.</div><div>
</div><div>Cruz recently claimed that O'Rourke would bring "tofu, silicon, and dyed hair," to Texas, obviously implying he would make Texas more like California — again, a strange line of attack against someone whose family has lived in Texas for four generations. And he has also sought to attack O'Rourke for his impassioned viral video in which he supported NFL players' right to take a knee for civil rights.</div><div>
</div><div>Texas has not elected a Democrat to statewide office in 24 years, but polls have repeatedly found the Senate race within a few percentage points — due in part to O'Rourke's massive grassroots funding operation that has outraised the incumbent senator, and statewide tours that have brought him to all 254 counties in the Lone Star State. Cruz is one of the most infamous right-wing partisan firebrands in the Senate, and is broadly disliked by even his own GOP colleagues, which may well have fueled interest in the race further....</div><div>
</div><div></div><div>
</div><div>not 1st dirty tricks</div><div>
</div><div>https://www.alternet.org/ted-cruz-mailing-elderly-voters-contribution-spam-disguised-county-summons</div><div>
</div><div>no lnx twit</div><div>
</div><div>Ted Cruz is Mailing Elderly Voters Contribution Spam Disguised as County Summons</div><div>
</div><div>Well, this is despicable.</div><div>
</div><div>Daily Kos September 16, 2018, 7:05 AM GMT</div><div>
</div><div>
</div><div>
</div><div>What to do when the only Republican who will fund raise with you is a discredited, odious joke of a so called President?</div><div>
</div><div>Try to scam elderly voters of course…</div><div>
</div><div>Received this for my 88-year-old grandma. Says it's a summons from Travis County, but is actually asking for money for @tedcruz . Did your campaign authorize this? Is this even legal? Shame on you. That's one more @BetoORourke voter. pic.twitter.com/NcFoOCvjFj</div><div>
</div><div>— Sean Owen (@sean_r_owen) September 16, 2018</div><div>
</div><div>It’s not like Cruz hasn’t done anything like this before:</div><div>
</div><div>
</div><div>
</div><div>You're right , you did -https://t.co/tLh6455DUw</div><div>
</div><div>
</div><div>
</div><div>— Nalini Moorthy (@KnollMoor) September 16, 2018</div><div>
</div><div>From that New Yorker article:</div><div>
</div><div>
</div><div>
</div><div>“Given its obsession with political science, it’s no surprise that the Cruz campaign decided to adopt the “social pressure” techniques to turn out voters in Iowa for Monday night’s caucuses. On Saturday, Twitter came alive with pictures from voters in the state who received mailers from the Cruz campaign. At the top of the mailers, in a bold red box, are the words “VOTING VIOLATION.” Below that warning is an explanation:</div><div>
</div><div>
</div><div>
</div><div>“”You are receiving this election notice because of low expected voter turnout in your area. Your individual voting history as well as your neighbors’ are public record. Their scores are published below, and many of them will see your score as well. CAUCUS ON MONDAY TO IMPROVE YOUR SCORE and please encourage your neighbors to caucus as well. A follow-up notice may be issued following Monday’s caucuses.””</div><div>
</div><div>One Twitter user tells you what to do if you get one of the fake summons:</div><div>
</div><div>Sean Owen</div><div>
</div><div>@sean_r_owen</div><div>
</div><div>&nbsp;· Sep 15, 2018</div><div>
</div><div>&nbsp;Received this for my 88-year-old grandma. Says it's a summons from Travis County, but is actually asking for money for @tedcruz . Did your campaign authorize this? Is this even legal? Shame on you. That's one more @BetoORourke voter. pic.twitter.com/NcFoOCvjFj</div><div>
</div><div>
</div><div>
</div><div>View image on Twitter</div><div>
</div><div>
</div><div>
</div><div>ROB WHITEY</div><div>
</div><div>@jim_mullarkey</div><div>
</div><div>Bring it to the post office, tell the clerk the senders are trying to steal money by tricking people into thinking its a summons and thats "mail fraud" use those words. And just like that you launched a federal inquiry into the cruz campaign and youre not even in congress.</div><div>
</div><div>
</div><div>
</div><div>10:38 PM - Sep 15, 2018</div><div>
</div><div>2,924</div><div>
</div><div>460 people are talking about this</div><div>
</div><div>Twitter Ads info and privacy</div><div>
</div><div>Or, you could just send your pocket Change to Beto!</div><div>
</div><div></div><div>
</div><div>AN</div><div>
</div><div>https://www.alternet.org/ted-cruz-so-scared-beto-orourke-hes-released-nasty-and-false-attack-ad</div><div>
</div><div>flag burning bs ad</div><div>
</div><div></div><div>
</div><div>AN</div><div>
</div><div>
</div><div>
</div><div>Republicans no longer view Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) as a safe bet to win re-election in November.</div><div>
</div><div>As his Democratic challenger, El Paso Congressman Beto O'Rourke, continues to tour the state one county at a time and rake in small-donor contributions to a campaign that he proudly states takes no money from corporate PACs, polls have increasingly shown a tight race; although no poll so far has given O'Rourke the lead, several are within the margin of error, with a new Emerson College poll putting the race with 1 point.</div><div>
</div><div>And amid growing worry, at least one dark money group is stepping in to help him, Politico reports:</div><div>
</div><div>The Club for Growth, a Washington-based anti-tax group, is drawing up plans for a major TV ad campaign boosting Cruz — the first such intervention by a Republican outside group in this race. The move comes as Democratic Rep. Beto O’Rourke, an online fundraising behemoth who has attracted national support, continues to narrow the gap in polling.</div><div>
</div><div>David McIntosh, the Club for Growth’s president, said on Tuesday the organization is planning a seven-figure-plus offensive targeting O’Rourke. McIntosh was speaking from Texas, where he is meeting with pro-Cruz donors who could help fund the effort.</div><div>
</div><div>“In the last five weeks, it’s become clear that the race has tightened,” said McIntosh.</div><div>
</div><div>The Club for Growth's ad buy would be the first major GOP investment in the Texas race. The group had previously spent over $6 million to support his first run in 2012.</div><div>
</div><div>Democrats have not won any statewide race in Texas since 1994 — the longest dry spell of any state. While the Lone Star State has a huge minority population, it also has one of the poorest voter turnout rates in the country, and the voters who do turn up are consistently older, whiter, and more Republican than the state as a whole.</div><div>
</div><div>But Cruz, one of the most partisan and most polarizing figures in the Senate, finds himself uniquely vulnerable. In addition to tepid approval ratings, he has not run a sharply focused campaign. He falsely claimed O'Rourke wants to legalize heroin, mocked him for using his childhood nickname, and complained about his viral video defending NFL players' right to protest for black civil rights. Cruz's campaign spokeswoman at one point referred to O'Rourke as a "Triple Meat Whataburger Liberal," a bizarre and cryptic reference to a menu item at a popular Texas fast food chain. If polls are an indication, none of this seems to be budging the race in his favor.</div><div>
</div><div>It is little wonder that some Republicans fear it may be necessary to pull out the big guns to fight for Texas.</div><div>
</div><div></div><div>
</div><div>Texas Senate race is shaping up to be a much more interesting battlethan anyone could have predicted. Between Democratic El Paso Rep. Beto O'Rourke's prodigious grassroots fundraising and his relentless personal tours of all 254 counties in the Lone Star State, he has turned the race against infamous Texas Sen. Ted Cruz competitive, with a recent Texas Lyceum poll showing the race within 2 percentage points.</div><div>
</div><div>Cruz responded to news of the tight race with three separate ads attacking O'Rourke on Friday. One spot tells viewers that O'Rourke is "more extreme than he wants you to know," and that his immigration proposals are to the left of House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi and independent Sen. Bernie Sanders. Another falsely claims that O'Rourke said "we should consider legalizing all narcotics, including heroin."</div><div>
</div><div>But the result of Cruz's negative ad blitz is likely not what he was hoping for. Over the weekend after the ads were released, O'Rourke raised an astonishing $1.2 million from 39,000 grassroots contributions....</div><div>
</div><div></div><div>
</div><div>https://www.alternet.org/news-amp-politics/ted-cruz-dragged-using-famous-holocaust-poem-defend-alex-jones-youre-parody</div><div>
</div><div>1st came for jones</div><div>
</div><div>Ted Cruz (R-TX) is facing mounting criticism for defending Infowars' Alex Jones after the platform temporarily blocked the conspiracy theorist on Facebook.</div><div>
</div><div>Cruz first publicly supported Jones in a July 28th tweet, writing, "Am no fan of Jones — among other things he has a habit of repeatedly slandering my Dad by falsely and absurdly accusing him of killing JFK — but who the hell made Facebook the arbiter of political speech?"</div><div>
</div><div>A writer from the MyStateman political blog caught up with Cruz at an event where the senator used a quote about the Holocaust to defend Jones</div><div>
</div><div>
</div><div>
</div><div></div><div>voodoo tax cut --> austerity:</div><div>
</div><div>https://www.alternet.org/holy-grail-republican-tax-cuts-about-paul-ryans-parting-gift-rich</div><div>
</div><div>yet another Tax Day in America. Eager to deliver another so-called win ahead of the midterm elections, Republicans are using the occasion to roll out even more tax cuts for the rich.</div><div>
</div><div>With fewer than half of Americanscomplaining that their personal tax obligation is too high — the smallest percentage in more than five years — and the recently passed GOP tax bill still significantly underwater, Republican lawmakers somehow think the best way to fend off building Democratic momentum is to reward wealthy GOP donors all over again.</div><div>
</div><div>Standing next to anti-tax crusader Grover Norquist (he of "drown government in the bathtub" fame), Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, recently announced his plan to ease the tax burden paid by America’s wealthiest citizens. Mind you, those people have already been helped out tremendously by the GOP’s tax law, which made a 40 percent reduction in the top corporate tax rate permanent while setting a 2025 expiration date on cuts to individual taxes and rates.</div><div>
</div><div>“When you’re investing more capital in businesses it means you’re hiring more people, it means you’re buying more equipment, it means you’re raising wages and that you’re driving economic growth,” Cruz said of his new proposal to index capital gains for inflation. The Texas Republican's push for a second part of the GOP tax cuts is certain to exacerbate already growing concerns about budget deficits.</div><div>
</div><div>Just last week, the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office (CBO) found that the Republican tax cuts will fuel historic deficits. In March the federal deficit was $208 billion, an increase of $32 billion from last year. The Treasury Department had already said that the deficit increased 18.4 percent in February compared to 2017. GOP tax cuts are estimated to add $1 trillion or more to federal budget deficits over a decade, even after economic growth is taken into account.</div><div>
</div><div>Nevertheless, Republicans have stayed calm and carried on with tax cuts.</div><div>
</div><div>On Monday, President Donald Trump traveled to Florida where he praised the GOP tax law for driving one of the "greatest booms" to the U.S. economy. But job growth has actually slowed since Trump took office. Introducing his bill to discount capital gains taxes, in effect, to account for inflation, Ted Cruz claimed, “We’re seeing the economic benefits of this tax cut, even just a few months into it. Over four million Americans have already gotten pay raises or bonuses directly as a result of the tax cut.” But most Americans have not noticed a larger paycheck since the law was enacted, according to a CNBC poll released in March. A recent analysis from the pro-reform group Americans for Tax Fairness found that 433 corporations out of the Fortune 500 have not offered any bonuses or wage increase to employees since the passage of corporate tax cuts. Instead, the analysis found, companies spent 37 times as much on stock buybacks.</div><div>
</div><div>Even as GOP groups pour money into efforts to sell their tax cuts for the donor class to the voting base, the law remains massively unpopular. (A group linked to the Koch brothers has spent about $30 million in ads focusing on the tax law since August, and plans to run $400 million worth of ads in vulnerable GOP districts leading up to this year’s midterms.) Just 27 percent of Americans think the GOP tax cuts were a good idea, according to a new NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll released on Monday. In other words, the Republican tax plan has actually gotten less popular with voters over time.</div><div>
</div><div>ut popularity was never really the goal, was it? The point was to starve the federal government of tax revenue in order to justify slashing the social safety net — something Republicans in Congress and the White House began to address in earnest last week.</div><div>
</div><div>Just one day after the CBO released its forecast of a ballooning federal deficit, Trump ordered federal agenciesto conduct a broad review of so-called welfare programs to identify new work requirements to place on recipients. Right on time, House Republicans then introduced the 2018 Farm bill, featuring a stringent new proposal to mandate that adults between the ages of 18 and 59 work part-time jobs or be enrolled in at least 20 hours per week of job training in order to receive food stamps under the SNAP program.</div><div>
</div><div>Aside from the fact that SNAP spending is already down — from $79.8 billion in 2013 to about $70 billion in 2017 — the CBO estimates that as many as one million people could be kicked off the program as a result of Republicans’ proposed new rule. Most working-age SNAP recipients who don't receive disability benefits already work, especially those able-bodied, childless adults who House Republicans claim abuse the system.</div><div>
</div><div>Meanwhile, the Republican-controlled Congress followed up their corporate tax cuts with a massive omnibus budget that boosts spending past previous budget caps by $300 billion over two years....</div><div>
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</div><div>Pruitt has even started losing support from House Republicans. Florida Republican Carlos Curbelo posted a call for Pruitt's resignation or firing on Twitter Tuesday, writing: “Major policy differences aside, @EPAScottPruitt‘s corruption scandals are an embarrassment to the Administration, and his conduct is grossly disrespectful to American taxpayers.” Rep. Curbelo was seconded by Florida Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, who made her comments in an interview with CNN, and New York Republican Elise Stefanik, who announced her opposition Thursday.</div><div>
</div><div>In contrast, Senators Rand Paul and Ted Cruz emphasized their support for Pruitt on Twitter, tweeting out messages that were picked up by The Daily Caller, calling Pruitt “the bravest” (per Rand Paul) and claiming that Trump is “too cagey to be duped and bullied” while citing a pro-Pruitt blog (Ted Cruz). Adding another repetition to theecho chamber, FreedomWorks then promoted the Daily Caller piece to its more than quarter-million Twitter followers while pushing a #StandWithScottPruitt hashtag.</div><div>
</div><div>As of Thursday evening, Pruitt's supporters apparently still include not only professional climate science deniers and Senators Paul and Cruz, but also the President. “I think he’s done a fantastic job,” Trump told reporters aboard Air Force One on Thursday, Politico reported. “I think he’s done an incredible job.”</div><div>
</div><div>On Friday, Trump seemed to double down on that message, but muddied the waters by mixing in a reference to reports he was considering promoting Pruitt to Attorney General, a move that Pruitt, a former Republican Attorney Generals Association member, is said to be lobbying the president to make. “Do you believe that the Fake News Media is pushing hard on a story that I am going to replace A.G. Jeff Sessions with EPA Chief Scott Pruitt,” Trump tweeted, “who is doing a great job but is TOTALLY under siege?”&nbsp;</div><div>
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</div><div>Cruz Hires Neocon Loons, Gaffney, Ledeen, Abrams</div><div>
</div><div>Dubs Hawkish New Foreign Policy Team 'Trusted Friends'</div><div>
</div><div>by Jason Ditz, March 17, 2016</div><div>
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</div><div>Republican presidential candidate Ted Cruz, has unveiled his new foreign policy team, stacked with some of the most aggressive hawks imaginable, saying they are a group of his “trusted friends” who believe in a “strong America.”</div><div>
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</div><div>At the center of his team is neoconservative ultra-hawk Frank Gaffney, a loudly anti-Muslim figure who believes in a wild array of conspiracies, including that a number of top political figures from both parties of being part of a secret Muslim cabal plotting the conquest of America.</div><div>
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</div><div>Gaffney had previously been speculated to be a Trump adviser, as his dubious work has been cited by that candidate repeatedly in trying to back up his proposals to ban Muslim immigration. Gaffney’s overt hostility toward Muslims in general made him a virtual pariah during the 2012 campaign. Incredibly, a number of Republican hopefuls have courted him this time around, with Cruz declaring him “clear-eyed” and “a patriot.”</div><div>
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</div><div>Also featuring prominently in the Cruz team is Michael Ledeen, the man at the center of the yellowcake uranium forgeries, among the pretexts for the 2003 US invasion and occupation of Iraq. Ledeen has been involved in a litany of scandals, dating all the way back to Iran-Contra. He was also, notably, the man who got Israeli spy Jonathon Pollard his job at the US Navy.</div><div>
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</div><div>Of course speaking of Iran-Contra, one must inevitably discuss Elliott Abrams, who famously pled guilty to two charges of withholding information related to the scandal from Congress, and is likewise a central player in the new Cruz team. In addition to the Contra scandal, Abrams was involved in myriad ugly Reagan-era operations, and was a close ally of both former presidents Bush, receiving a pardon for his Reagan-era crimes by George H.W. Bush, and being appointed as a special adviser to George W.</div><div>
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</div><div>During his tenure with the later Bush, Abrams was accused by The Guardian of being at the center of a failed 2002 US-backed coup attempt against Venezuela, and was said to have personally given the go-ahead for the effort.</div><div>
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</div><div>Abram’s most recent media comments, interestingly enough, were railing against Cruz, accusing him of being anti-semitic for even using the term “neocon.” Now that Cruz is establishing himself as the neocon candidate of choice, that allegation has been quickly brushed aside.</div><div>
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</div><div>With this team and more, Cruz is surrounding himself with warmongers and criminals of the highest caliber. While the attempt appears to center on making him a more straightforward Republican insider, to serve as a counter to Trump, the jingoist and xenophobic policies these advisers portend also threatens to sabotage any hope he has of presenting himself as a safer alternative.</div><div>
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</div><div>omg data mining pvy:</div><div>
</div><div>The use of personal data collected without knowledge or permission to establish sophisticated models of user's personalities raises ethical and privacy issues.[6] CA operates out of the United States; its operations would be illegal in Europe with its stricter privacy laws.[7] While Cruz is outspoken about protecting personal information from the government, his data base of CA has been described as "political-voter surveillance".[7]</div><div>
</div><div>Regarding CA's use of Facebook users, a speaker for CA indicated that these users gave permission when signing up with the provider, while Facebook declared that "misleading people or misusing information" is in violation of Facebook's policies.[6] Facebook indicated that is investigating the matter.[6]</div><div>
</div><div>While Nix suggests that data collection and microtargetting benefits the voters as they receive messages about issues they care about, digital rights protection groups are concerned that private information is collected , stored, and shared while individuals are "left in the dark about (it)" and have no control.[19]</div><div>
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</div><div>... vogel politico</div><div>
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</div><div>Cambridge Analytica is connected to a British firm called SCL Group, which provides governments, political groups and companies around the world with services ranging from military disinformation campaigns to social media branding and voter targeting.</div><div>
</div><div>So far, SCL’s political work has been mostly in the developing world — where it has boasted of its ability to help foment coups. Cambridge Analytica entered the competitive U.S. political data market only last year.</div><div>
</div><div>Cambridge Analytica is owned at least in part by the family of the press-shy New York hedge fund manager Robert Mercer, multiple sources confirmed to POLITICO. The Mercers this year provided the lion’s share of the $37 million raised by a quartet of unlimited-money super PACs supporting Cruz’s campaign for the GOP presidential nomination. Cruz’s presidential campaign has contracted with Cambridge Analytica to provide data services, and the company has had talks with at least one of those super PACs, according to sources.</div><div>
</div><div>It’s not uncommon for political campaigns, parties and PACs to pay huge contractsfor data and other services to companies affiliated with their consultants. But it’s less common for such contracts to go to firms affiliated with the donors funding the whole enterprise.</div><div>
</div><div>Cruz spokesman Rick Tyler said Chris Wilson, the campaign’s director of research and analytics, is using Cambridge Analytica to build models that identify and sort persuadable voters in early primary states by six key personality types, which will be used to target the campaign’s outreach. [many spaces below</div>