The Big D is for Dubya: Bush bundlers reprise role for presidential library

Sunday, April 21, 2013 by:Neil.Vigdor@scni.com (Neil Vigdor)
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The exterior of the George W. Bush Presidential Center is seen Friday, April, 5, 2013, in Dallas. The roughly 227,000-square-foot center built on the campus of Southern Methodist University houses Bush’s presidential library, a museum and a policy institute. The dedication of the center will be on April 25. (AP Photo/Kim Johnson Flodin) Photo: Kim Johnson Flodin, Associated Press

The exterior of the George W. Bush Presidential Center is seen Friday, April, 5, 2013, in Dallas. The roughly 227,000-square-foot center built on the campus of Southern Methodist University houses Bush’s presidential library, a museum and a policy institute. The dedication of the center will be on April 25. (AP Photo/Kim Johnson Flodin) Photo: Kim Johnson Flodin, Associated Press

There is an afterlife for Bush Pioneers and Rangers, the monikers given to the top bundlers of campaign contributions for George W. Bush.

It can be found on 5.2 acres of Dallas real estate on the campus of Southern Methodist University, home of the George W. Bush Presidential Center.

A library, museum and think tank, the homage to the 43rd president will be dedicated Thursday, April 25, marking a Texas-sized reunion for Bush loyalists and political patronage appointees.

It coincides with a bipartisan push in Congress — backed by watchdog groups such as the Sunlight Foundation — to require presidential libraries to disclose donor information.

The Bush Center is pledging to release the names of most, but not all, of its donors. The kicker is they won’t be available online.

Many of them are Pioneers and Rangers, meaning they bundled $100,000+ and $200,000+ for Bush’s election and re-election campaigns, respectively.

Note: There is a poll embedded within this post, please visit the site to participate in this post’s poll.

Categories: General

Bipartisan gun bill ready in House should Senate act

Tuesday, April 16, 2013 by:Carolyn Lochhead
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Rep. Mike Thompson, D-St. Helena

Rep. Mike Thompson, D-St. Helena

Rep. Mike Thompson, a gun-owning Vietnam veteran hand-picked by House minority leader Nancy Pelosi to forge a bipartisan agreement on gun legislation in the House, unveiled a companion background check bill Tuesday that has bipartisan support.

That puts pressure on House Republican leaders to bring up gun legislation if it can pass the Senate.The Thompson bill is identical to legislation by conservative Pennsylvania Republican Pat Toomey and conservative West Virginia Democrat Joe Manchin that would expand background checks for gun buyers. That legislation still doesn’t have the 60 votes needed to break a Senate filibuster. But the compromise is about all that’s left of gun control legislation in the Senate, aside from a bill by Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif., that would expand a $40 million security grant program for school districts. Schools could NOT use the grants to install armed guards, Boxer spokesman Zac Coile clarifies. It can be used for “reinforced doors, classroom locks, lighting, fencing, security assessments and safety training for school personnel and students.”
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Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., plans to propose her ban on assault weapons and limits on high-capacity magazines as an amendment to any gun legislation that gets to the Senate floor, but these face significant opposition and are not expected to pass.

Thompson teamed with New York Republican Peter King on the bill, also with two other Pennsylvania Republicans,Mike Fitzpatrick and Pat Meehan. Their support illustrates the split between rural and suburban Republicans on guns.

“Background checks are the first line of defense against criminals and the dangerously mentally ill getting guns,” Thompson and King said in a statement. “This bill is comprehensive, it is enforceable, it will save lives, and it will protect the rights of law abiding Americans to own guns.”

The bill would “expand the existing background check system to cover all commercial firearm sales, including those at gun shows, over the internet or in classified ads. It provides reasonable exceptions for family and friend transfers….background checks would be conducted though a federally licensed dealer. Licensed dealers will run background checks on potential buyers and keep records of sales in the same manner as they have for more than 40 years. Failure to conduct a background check on is punishable by up to five years in prison.”

It also provides incentives to states to improve reporting of criminals and the “dangerous mentally ill” to the National Instant Criminal Background Check System and would cut funding for states that do not comply.

Supporters picked up a key ally last week from the Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms, which bills itself as the second-largest gun rights organization in the country after the National Rifle Association.

Categories: Barbara Boxer, Dianne Feinstein, General, gun laws, guns

Gun-control foe Cruz has ‘cordial’ phone conversation with daughter of slain Sandy Hook principal, agrees to disagree on gun control

Wednesday, April 10, 2013 by:Richard Dunham
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Erica Lafferty will be heard.

The 27-year-daughter of slain Sandy Hook Elementary School principal Dawn Lafferty Hochsprung may not have the money to come to Washington to lobby for gun-control legislation. So she’s using a less-expensive way to reach Republican senators who are threatening to filibuster any efforts to change the nation’s gun laws: Twitter.

Lafferty’s Twitter barrage — her Twitter handle is @E_Laffs2 — has targeted the 14 Republicans who have pledged to join a filibuster, including Texas Sen. Ted Cruz. She attached poignant photos of her mom and her family, trying to appeal to the human side of the lawmakers.

The young woman, who lives near Newtown, also tried to reach the senators the old-fashioned way, by telephone.

Joining her effort was Connecticut’s governor, Dan Malloy, who tried to shame the senators to take her calls.

Getting nowhere fast, Lafferty kept up the tweet barrage.

After a day of desperate tweets yesterday, only one Republican had responded.

Cruz.

The first-term senator who is pledging to lead a filibuster to block Senate consideration of a gun-control package, which includes expanded background checks of firearms purchasers.

“She called his office yesterday morning,” Cruz spokeswoman Catherine Frazier said today. “He immediately said, ‘Let’s call her back.’”

Frazier said the two spoke for “10 to 15 minutes” on Tuesday afternoon. While describing the discussion as “a personal conversation,” Frazier said “it was a cordial conversation. She was able to ask him some questions.”

Lafferty told the New York Times that she asked Cruz pointed questions, including these: “What would have happened if my mom chose not to do her job? How many more people would have died if my mom had chosen to hide?”

Cruz did not back down an inch from his filibuster threat against any proposal he sees as a threat to the Second Amendment.

“They agreed to disagree,” said Frazier.

Still, she added, “he was glad he could do it. He was happy to.”

Lafferty responded to the conversation, naturally, on Twitter. “At least he called (me) back,” she wrote, followed by the hashtag #ThanksButNoThanksCruz.

Sympathetic Texans sent Twitter messages of support to Lafferty, many of them blasting their Republican senator.

The Connecticut woman is showing no signs of slowing down. Today, she tweeted to unpersuaded senators with a defiant message.

Categories: gun laws, guns, Sandy Hook elementary school, Second Amendment

Cuomo: Senate gun bill ‘only better than nothing’

Wednesday, April 10, 2013 by:jvielkind@timesunion.com (Jimmy Vielkind, Capitol bureau)
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ALBANY — New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo blasted a compromise that will move a gun control bill through the U.S. Senate, saying Congress will “fundamentally fail to act on a societal scourge” by expanding background checks without reinstating an expired ban on semi-automatic “assault weapons.”

(Spencer Platt/Getty Images)

“This is a Congress that is captive of the extremists, and there is no clearer proof than this,” said Cuomo, a Democrat. “They’re talking about a bill that might improve the background checks, which is better than nothing, but it’s only better than nothing.”

Wednesday morning, West Virginia Sen. Joe Manchin, a Democrat, and Pennsylvania Sen. Pat Toomey, a Republican, announced an agreement to extend background checks to firearms sold at gun shows and by Internet retailers. Private sales between individuals would still not require a background check.

The Democrat-controlled Senate will vote to start debate on gun control Thursday. The Washington Post reports that senators are expected to reject proposals from Barack Obama to limit high capacity magazines and restrict some types of semi-automatic, military assault rifles. A ban on such firearms — including the AK-47 — expired in 2004.

Cuomo said a gun control bill he pushed, dubbed the SAFE Act, goes much further.

“Our gun package goes well beyond what they’re talking about in Washington. … We’re not talking about a significant package anymore. We lost that along the way,” Cuomo said during a radio interview. “I think it points out the intelligence of what we did in New York State, and thank God we did.”

New York’s SAFE Act broadened the definition of banned assault weapons, banned the sale or possession of magazines capable of holding more than 10 rounds and places a seven round cap on the amount of bullets they can lawfully contain. The law also increased penalties for illegal gun possession, reduced public access to gun permit information, and required mental health professionals to report concerns about a gun-owning patient who poses a risk to himself or others.

New York’s bill was unveiled on Jan. 14, and passed quickly through a “message of necessity” that waived the legally required three-day waiting period. The New York State Senate, led by a Republican-dominated coalition, passed the measure by a 43-18 vote less than two hours after the bill’s text became public. The Democrat-dominated Assembly passed the bill the next day, and Cuomo signed it. He has since faced criticism and legal challenges to the bill, and his poll standing notched down.

During his first two years as governor, Cuomo would often decline to comment on federal proposals. But during the Wednesday morning radio interview, conducted by WCNY’s “The Capitol Pressroom,” the governor spent 10 minutes on the subject.

Cuomo was careful not to criticize Barack Obama, but contrasted his own efforts in New York — passing bills through a split Legislature where Republicans effectively control one house — with what he described as “paralysis”in Washington.

There has been chatter about Cuomo as a possible 2016 presidential contender, and New York’s Democratic State Committee — under de facto Cuomo control — has started airing ads in the Empire State that weigh in on federal policy.

Still, Cuomo last week told the Buffalo News editorial board: “I don’t think about 2016. … I’m working as hard as I can this year.”

Categories: 2016 Democratic Primary, 2016 Presidential Election, Andrew Cuomo, guns

Is Obama’s popularity at a tipping point?

Monday, April 8, 2013 by:richard.dunham@chron.com (Richard Dunham)
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Here’s a bit of political trivia from a proud history major:

The first April of a second presidential term has proven to be a tipping point in the popularity of re-elected presidents.

For George W. Bush and Richard M. Nixon, it was all downhill from there. For Bill Clinton (despite impeachment) and Ronald Reagan (despite the Iran-Contra scandal), it was a pathway to historically high job approval ratings.

The new CNN/ORC poll released today placed Obama at 51 percent, very close to the April approval ratings of each of the four other second-term presidents.

What comes next? That’s for the history books.

>>> Explore Gallup’s historical polling data and come up with your own comparisons.

Categories: Bush family, Polls

Kamala Harris has competition

Saturday, April 6, 2013 by:richard.dunham@chron.com (Richard Dunham)
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We want to say this in a non-sexist way: Kamala Harris has competition.

She has competition in the battle for smartest, toughest, fairest, most effective Attorney General in the USA.

She also has competition in the “best looking” category that got President Obama in such hot water this week.

This photo gallery doesn’t in any way imply that better-looking politicians make better public servants. Nor does it suggest that voters should — or do — make choices based on the looks of the candidates. (Take that, Rick Perry and Mitt Romney.)

Text by Rick Dunham
Photo Gallery by Annika Toernqvist

Categories: crime and punishment, Greg Abbott

The ten most popular political conspiracy theories (PHOTO GALLERY)

Friday, April 5, 2013 by:richard.dunham@chron.com (Richard Dunham)
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Public Policy Polling likes to throw us a curve ball occasionally, with a survey that isn’t the usual Democrat vs. Republican election match-up.

The newest is some offbeat polling on public opinion on various political conspiracy theories. Here are PPP’s top ten — and then a few that are way, way out there.

1. 51 percent of voters believe that John F. Kennedy’s assassination was a conspiracy.

2. 44 percent of voters believe that George W. Bush intentionally lied about Iraq possessing weapons of mass destruction in order to lead the nation to war against Saddam Hussein.

3. 37 percent of voters believe global warming is a hoax.

4. 29 percent of voters believe aliens exist and that governments around the world are covering up evidence of it.

5. 28 percent of voters believe secretive power elite with a globalist agenda is conspiring to eventually rule the world through an authoritarian one-world government, the New World Order (as enunciated by the first President George Bush).

6. 28 percent of voters believe Saddam Hussein was involved in the 9/11 terrorist attacks.

7. 21 percent of voters say the U.S. government for more than six decades has covered up a UFO crash in Roswell, N.M.

8. 20 percent of voters believe the government is hiding a link between childhood vaccines and autism.

9. 15 percent of voters say the government (or the corporate media) has added mind-controlling technology to TV signals.

10. 14 percent of voters believe the CIA was instrumental in creating the crack cocaine epidemic of the 1980s in America’s cities.

How many of these conspiracies do you subscribe to?

Here are a few others that didn’t quite make the list:

– 13 percent of voters think Barack Obama is the anti-Christ

– 7% of voters think the moon landing was faked

– 6 percent of voters believe Osama bin Laden is still alive

– 4 percent of voters say they believe “lizard people” control our societies by gaining political power.

And for a reality check: 2 percent of Texas Republicans think that Rick Perry should be their party’s presidential nominee in 2016. Gotta give it to the lizard people.

Categories: Bush family

GOP slams Obama Bay Area trip as a jaunt to “billionaire’s row” (VIDEO)

Wednesday, April 3, 2013 by:cmarinucci@sfchronicle.com (Carla Marinucci)
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Republicans are slamming President Obama’s first post-election trip to the Bay Area — a fundraising swing around the political ATM that includes San Francisco — as a jaunt to “billionaire’s row.”

The Republican response to Obama’s trip comes as the President Wednesday begins a two day trip to the Bay Area, including San Francisco and Silicon Valley.

Air Force One touches down here at around 5 p.m., and he’s scheduled to depart from SFO Thursday afternoon.

First, check out this new video from the Republican National Committee, which makes a target of the trip as the President’s hypocritical effort to cozy up to the wealthy — while he attempts to raise taxes on them:

The National Republican Congressional Committee has also noted there will be a lot of socializing with the rich in the next 48 hours here.

On Wednesday night, Obama will attend two San Francisco fundraisers for the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee — a $5,000 a head reception at the home of billionaire environmental advocate Tom Steyer and his wife Kat Taylor, and then a $32,500 per person dinner at the home of Ann and Gordon Getty. It’s one of 14 fundraisers for House Dems that the president has committed to this year, sources say.

On Thursday, he goes to tony Atherton, where he will star at two fundraisers for the Democratic National Committee. One, with tickets at $32,400 per person is at the home of investment guru Mark Heising and Liz Simons, and another is at the home of Levi-Strauss heir John Goldman and his wife Marcia, where tickets are $1,000 and up.

The GOP is gleefully noting that his trip to San Francisco tonight will be “near” the same neighborhood in which he made his famed remark about some “bitter” voters who cling to guns or religion.”

Stay tuned for more coverage throughout the day — and our live pool reports from inside the fundraisers tonight.
And follow us on Twitter: @cmarinucci

Categories: Uncategorized
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