Stinging Greens: James O’Keefe, conservative guerrilla journalist is at it again, this time with a undercover recording that shows prominent Hollywood film makers negotiating a $9 million payout to make an anti-fracking video on behalf of a Middle Eastern oil tycoon. Hydraulic fracturing – known as fracking – is the process through which natural gas is harvested from underground shale formations. In the movie, an actor posing as “Muhammad” promises to pay Josh and Rebecca Tickell, two well-known producers of environmental documentaries, $9 million to make the anti-fracking movie with the explicit purpose of keeping America dependent on foreign oil. As John Hinderaker at the Power Line blog writes, “The alacrity with which the filmmakers sign on with “Muhammad’s” goal of preventing America from becoming more energy independent is discomfiting.” Check out the video here.
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Democratic Dark Money: Another billionaire hedge-fund manager is using his largess to finance a campaign against Republican Gov. Paul LePage. Tom Steyer, who made his money, in part, on investments in fossil fuels, is rapidly becoming an important financier of progressive and environmentalist causes, and the Washington Post reports that LePage will be among his targets this fall. Maine Democrats have been obsessed with the prospect of Charles and David Koch spending money to help conservatives, but when liberal billionaires from away want to play in Maine politics: crickets.
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Veteran Death Panels: The emerging scandal with the Department of Veterans Affairs, in which the negligence of VA employees allegedly proved fatal to some U.S. military veterans, threatens to dog Democratic U.S. Rep. Michael Michaud in his quest to become governor of Maine. Maine veterans could hold Michaud, who has made veterans issues a hallmark of his more than a decade in Congress, accountable for the failure of the VA. Michaud has joined other Democrats in speaking out against the bureaucratic malpractice that has put American soldiers lives at risk. Additionally, he has followed Republicans’ lead in sponsoring a bill to ease the firing of culpable employees, but he has yet to propose any solution of his own.
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War on Women: Imagine if a Republican said he wanted to punch MSNBC host Rachel Maddow in the face. How outraged would the liberal media be? In yet another stunning display of the media’s double-standard, almost no attention has been given to North Carolina Democrat Clay Aiken’s tweet in which the former American Idol star said he wants to “punch Ann Coulter in the face.” Aiken deleted the politically incorrect tweet, but you can still see it here.
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Communism Works: Florida Rep. Joe Garcia, who was recently caught on C-SPAN eating his own earwax, told voters last week that U.S. immigration policy has proved that “communism works.” “If you give everybody a good government job, there’s no crime,” said Garcia.
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Unhappy Meal: Roughly 2,000 protesters, including more than 300 McDonald’s workers, stormed the company’s Oak Brook, Illinois headquarters to protest for $15-an-hour pay and the right to form a union. No organic movement here; the Service Employees International Union is reportedly coordinating these protests and others. Unionization of McDonald’s workers would strengthen the SEIU and increase its revenues, but it would also increase pay for some current union members whose wages are based on prevailing and/or minimum wages.
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Bounty: True the Vote, one of the many groups targeted in the IRS’ ideological attacks on opponents of President Barack Obama, has offered a $1 million crowd-funded bounty for “smoking gun” evidence that the White House was involved in the targeting. To qualify for the bounty, a person needs to provide “relevant evidence including emails, eye-witness accounts, or testimony of political targeting of Americans by the IRS or the Obama administration that has not previously been reported,” according to a press release quoted by TheBlaze.
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Bullet Dodged: Less than a month after Gov. Paul LePage and GOP lawmakers successfully staved off an expansion of Maine’s medical welfare program, other states that did accept the Obamacare Medicaid expansion scheme are feeling the pain. Rhode Island is facing ballooning costs for their expanded Medicaid program as enrollment has far exceeded predictions. California is facing a $1.2 billion shortfall from its program and Arkansas’s Medicaid director as resigned as the state seeks a federal bailout for its vaunted “private option” plan. In related news, states that decided, unlike Maine, to implement their own Obamacare exchanges are also having buyers remorse. In Oregon, Nevada and Massachusetts, problems with state-based exchanges have caused policymakers to consider switching to the federal healthcare.gov exchange — but only after wasting hundreds of millions of tax dollars on their own failed websites.
