The Switcher List

The following Democratic state legislators have switched to the GOP since the midterm:

1. Representative Allan Boothe – Alabama House

2. Representative Steve Hurst – Alabama House

3. Representative Mike Millican –Alabama House

4. Representative Lesley Vance – Alabama House

5. Senator Tim Golden – Georgia Senate

6. Representative Ellis Black – Georgia House

7. Representative Amy Carter – Georgia House

8. Representative Mike Cheokas – Georgia House

9. Representative Bubber Epps – Georgia House

10. Representative Gerald Greene – Georgia House

11. Representative Bob Hanner – Georgia House

12. Representative Doug McKillip – Georgia House

13. Representative Alan Powell – Georgia House

14. Senator Chris Steineger – Kansas Senate

15. Senator John Alario – Louisiana Senate

16. Senator John Smith – Louisiana Senate

17. Representative Noble Ellington – Louisiana Senate

18. Representative Walker Hines – Louisiana House

19. Representative Fred Mills – Louisiana House

20. Representative Michael Willette – Maine House

21. Senator Cindy Hyde-Smith – Mississippi Senate

22. Representative Bobby Shows – Mississippi House

23. Senator Eldon Nygarrd – South Dakota Senate

24. Representative Allan Ritter – Texas House

25. Representative Aaron Pena – Texas House

A Strange Way to Protest Tax Cuts

Several professors have started a website to protest the recent tax bill because it deprives the government of revenue. Their proposal, however, will deprive the government of even more revenue. James Taranto writes at The Wall Street Journal:

We'd like to offer a last-minute nomination for the nitwittiest idea of the year:GiveItBackForJobs.com. This is the cognitive elite's version of a tax revolt, made all the more comical because it is the product of two of America's top universities. (They are Yale and Cornell, so that our Harvard readers have reason to feel even smugger than usual today.)

...

These profs--Yale political scientist Jacob Hacker and law scholars Robert Hockett of Cornell and Daniel Markovits of Yale--are obviously left-wing progressive Democrats. ...So, how do they propose that you protest the absence of a tax increase? The first step is to enter your filing status and your best guess as to your 2011 adjusted gross income into a calculator on the homepage, which will "calculate the magnitude of your tax cut." (By "tax cut," they mean the tax increase that was averted.) The number is calculated to the cent, a level of precision that is utterly false. You won't actually know your adjusted gross income until you've finished the first page of your 2011 tax return, in 2012; and your taxable income varies further depending on deductions and exemptions.

...

They don't want you to give your money to the government. Instead, they want you to "give back . . . by making donations to organizations that promote fairness, economic growth, and a vibrant middle class." They suggest Habitat for Humanity, the Salvation Army, the Children's Aid Society and the Nurse Family Partnership, but you can choose another charity if you like.

One advantage of this approach, as the professors note, is that "contributions to all of the selected charities are tax deductible." That means "donations made through this site draft the government as a partner in funding the projects that they support."

To translate that obfuscatory verbiage into plain English, if you follow the professors' method of protesting your low tax bill, you will lower your tax bill even further. Talk about a win-win!

...

Come to think of it, we're being too hard on these guys. They've made a profound discovery: Private, voluntary charity is far more effective than coercive federal bureaucracies at helping people in need.

Fundraising by Potential GOP Candidates

USA Today reports that potential GOP presidential candidates have gotten around FEC limits on presidential campaigns by setting up PACs and other fundraising accounts -- a practice that goes back decades.

	Haley Barbour	Mike Huckabee	Newt Gingrich	Sarah Palin	Tim Pawlenty	Mitt Romney
	Mississippi governor	Former Arkansas governor	Former House speaker	Former Alaska governor	Minnesota governor	Former Massachusetts governor
Federal PAC	Haley's PAC	Huck PAC	American Solutions PAC	SarahPAC	Freedom First PAC	Free and Strong America PAC
Total federal receipts	$1.1 million	$1.8 million	$705,279	$5.4 million	$3.3 million	$7.4 million
Donated to federal candidates and committees	$233,590	$137,500	$224,750	$516,500	$214,111	$827,708

Citizens United, American Crossroads, and the F-Word

The New York Observer reports:

In a wide-ranging interview before he prepares to leave the House of Representatives, Hudson Valley Congressman John Hall warned that the nation could quickly descend into Fascism if more is not done to curb the influence of corporate money in politics.

Speaking about the Citizen's United [sic] decision, which allowed unregulated flow of cash into campaign coffers, Hall said, "I learned when I was in social studies class in school that corporate ownership or corporate control of government is called Fascism. So that's really the question— is that the destination if this court decision goes unchecked?"

Hall said that the flow of corporate dollars is why he and the Democrats lost control of Congress.

"The country was bought," he said. "The extremist, most recent two appointees to the Supreme Court, who claimed in their confirmation hearings before the Senate that they would not be activist judges, made a very activist decision in that it overturned more than a century of precedent. And as a result there were millions of extra dollars thrown into this race."

The extra money floating around, he said, compounded the Democrats weaknesses on the economy, unemployment and the mortgage crisis. And he said that for of the accomplishments of the lame duck Congress, their failure to pass the Disclose Act—which would have at least forced corporations to reveal who they were donating to—stood out a black mark on the session.

"We are talking about supposedly wholesome names like Revere America, American Crossroads, Americans for Apple Pie and Motherhood—if somebody hasn't trademarked that one I probably should. The fact is you can call it anything and the money could be coming from BP or Aramco or any corporation domestic or foreign," Congressman Hall said.

Unpopular Health Insurance Mandate

The health insurance mandate is getting less popular. A CNN poll:

Requiring all Americans who do not have health insurance to get it;

................................................Favor...Oppose

December 17-19, 2010 .............38% .....60%

August 6-10, 2010................... 44% .....56%

February 12-15, 2010 ..............45% .....53%

Somebody's Doing Serious Oppo on Barbour

In October, ABC's Rick Klein reported:

The Democratic National Committee formally has asked the Pentagon for reams of correspondence between military agencies and nine potential Republican presidential candidates, a clear indication that Democrats are building opposition-research files on specific 2012 contenders even before the midterm elections ... The nine Republicans that Democrats are seeking information on are former Gov. Sarah Palin, R-Alaska; former Gov. Mitt Romney, R-Mass.; Gov. Haley Barbour, R-Miss.; Gov. Tim Pawlenty, R-Minn.; former Gov. Mike Huckabee, R-Ark.; former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, R-Ga.; Sen. John Thune, R-S.D.; Gov. Mitch Daniels, R-Ind.; Gov. Bobby Jindal, R-La.

Erick Erickson of RedState tells CNN's John King: "There is a dribble of negative oppo flowing out on Haley Barbour. People want to know who is doing it. I think we need to look at potential primary rivals, not Democrats."

Matthew Yglesias writes: "An opposition research professional sent me this Nexis clip from Haley Barbour’s first gubernatorial campaign."

Politico reports:

The Mississippi state plane, a zippy Cessna Citation with a capacity of 12, is a favorite of corporate executives and the wealthy, and its principal passenger, Gov. Haley Barbour, might easily be mistaken for one of them when he arrives with a small entourage at airports in Washington, Las Vegas or New York, a car and driver waiting there at their disposal.

Barbour has traveled extensively on the jet, brushing off suggestions from Mississippi Democrats that he give it up in favor of a more modest propeller plane for his travel. The trips, according to a POLITICO review of the Cessna’s flight manifest since 2007, have mixed state business with both pleasure and national politics.

AP reports:

Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour, a potential Republican presidential candidate, said Tuesday he was not trying to downplay the pain that many endured during the South's segregation era when he defended his home town's 1970 public school integration process.

Barbour spoke out a day after several liberal activists criticized his published comments about school desegregation in Yazoo City, which occurred when he was 20. Historical accounts confirm the schools integrated peacefully, as Barbour stated in a recent profile in the Weekly Standard magazine.

Some critics, however, said his comments skimmed over the segregationist role played by so-called Citizens Councils in the state.

TPMMuckraker reports:

Long before all this week's hoopla over Barbour's rose-tinted recollections of the segregationist Citizens' Councils, two major GOP donors who supported the controversial Swiftboat ads had already stopped their donations to the political action committee affiliated with Haley Barbour. The 527 organization known as Haley's PAC brought in $986,506 in 2008 -- but that number dropped to just $211,486 in 2009, according to recently disclosed IRS filings.

Though 2009 was an off-year in the election cycle, that remains a precipitous drop unmatched by other leadership PACs, including former Rep. Newt Gingrich's.

California Redistricting

At the Contra Costa Times, Lisa Vorderbrueggen writes about the job facing California's new Citizens Redistricting Commission:

Mappers must keep the population of each district equal almost to a person. They must factor county and city boundaries.

Districts must be contiguous. Topography such as mountains and bays count. They must consider the vaguely defined "communities of interest."

They cannot split ethnic or racial minority populations in the hopes it will dilute their voting clout. Place two Assembly districts within each Senate district to the extent practicable.

Mappers may not factor incumbents' home addresses or draw lines that favor or hinder a political party. And remember, voters want neatly drawn districts that don't scream gerrymander.

Don't be discouraged.

You, too, can draw maps and submit them to the commission, which must conduct an "open and transparent process enabling full public consideration of and comment" on the proposed lines.

The Statewide Database will open in the spring six redistricting centers around California, including one at its Berkeley office. Residents will have free access to computers and experts who will help navigate the software. (Go to http://swdb.berkeley.edu for updates.)

Patrick McGreevy writes at The Los Angeles Times:

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger refers to it as the "ribbon of shame,'' a congressional district that stretches in a reed-thin line 200 miles along the California coast from Oxnard to the Monterey County line. Voters there refer to it as "the district that disappears at high tide."

Democratic lawmakers drew it that way to make sure one of their own won every election. The party has held the seat throughout the decade — since the last redistricting gave it a big edge in voter registration there.

Critics of that 2001 remapping have cited the coastal ribbon as Exhibit A — the reason, they say, that Californians were right to strip elected officials of the power to choose their voters and give the task of determining political boundaries to more ordinary citizens.

As the new Citizens Redistricting Commission begins its work next month, members say, the 23rd Congressional District will be a good reminder of what not to do.

"It's been used as an example of how absurd the process is,'' said Peter Yao, the commission's chairman. "It does not allow people to choose the candidate. They are forced to go with the party's choice.''