Wisconsin Dems file complaint over ‘Koch brothers-funded scheme to suppress votes’

By Eric W. Dolan/Raw Story

The Democratic Party of Wisconsin filed a complaint on Tuesday seeking to stop what it called a Koch brothers-funded scheme to suppress Democratic votes in upcoming Republican recall elections.

Politico reported that Americans for Prosperity sent absentee ballots to Democrats in two Wisconsin state Senate recall districts with instructions that could render the votes ineligible.

Ballots must be received by August 9 to be counted, but the instructions say to return the paperwork two days later, by August 11.

The complaint (PDF) alleged that Americans for Prosperity "displayed a continued pattern of tampering with the electoral process in Wisconsin with elaborate, illegal and fraudulent schemes designed to suppress Democratic votes."

Americans for Prosperity was started by oil billionaires Charles and David Koch, and has been associated with the tea party movement. The Koch brothers' political action committee gave Republican Gov. Scott Walker roughly $100,000 in campaign contributions during the 2010 election.

"Scott Walker has sought the help of the corporate front group 'Americans For Prosperity,' and here they come with dirty tricks clearly meant to meddle in our elections and suppress votes against the Koch Brothers' agenda," Democratic Party of Wisconsin Chair Mike Tate said Monday in a statement.

"Wisconsin's election authorities must stop the black hand of the corporate special interests and their front groups who are trying to strangle democracy in our state and support the six Republican senators now facing recall," he added.

Matt Seaholm, the State Director for Americans for Prosperity, told TMJ4 that the misinformation was "just a typo."

Under Wisconsin law, preventing the delivery of absentee ballots carries a fine up to $1,000 and up to six months in prison per violation

Disgraced Former Tea Party Leader Calls On Right-Wing Activists To Pose As SEIU Organizers

By Alex Seitz-Wald

National tea party groups like Americans for Prosperity have been bussing conservative activiststo Madison, WI to confront protesters there standing up to Gov. Scott Walker’s (R) union busting. But Tea Party Nation and Mark Williams, the disgraced former chairman of Tea Party Express, who was forced to resign after making offensiveracial comments, are calling for a more radical approach. In an email alert to supporters sent last night, Tea Party Nation promotes Williams’ “great idea” to impersonate SEIU organizers at upcoming labor rallies in an attempt to embarrass and discredit the union.

Williams lays out a highly dishonest and fairly involved scheme to have “plants” sign up on the SEIU website to be organizers for an upcoming rally, dress up in SEIU shirts, and to then make outrageous comments to reporters covering the events in order to “make the gathering look as greedy and goonish as we know that it is”:

That link will take you to an SEIU page where you can sign up as an “organizer” for one of their upcoming major rallies to support the union goons in Wisconsin. Here is what I am doing in Sacramento, where they are holding a 5:30 PM event this coming Tuesday: (1) I signed up as an organizer (2) with any luck they will contact me and I will have an “in” (3) in or not I will be there and am asking as many other people as can get there to come with, all of us in SEIU shirts (those who don’t have them we can possibly buy some from vendors likely to be there) (4) we are going to target the many TV cameras and reporters looking for comments from the members there (5) we will approach the cameras to make good pictures… signs under our shirts that say things like “screw the taxpayer!” and “you OWE me!” to be pulled out for the camera (timing is important because the signs will be taken away from us. [...]

Our goal is to make the gathering look as greedy and goonish as we know that it is, ding their credibility with the media and exploit the lazy reporters who just want dramatic shots and outrageous quotes for headlines. Even if it becomes known that we are plants the quotes and pictures will linger as defacto truth.

Williams is even hoping to make a few bucks off the idea, asking readers to “Please contribute!!!” as “I need to travel beyond Sacramento to the other SEIU rally cities and then Madison, and in short order!”

And Williams has no qualms about employing this treachery, telling his “plants”: “Chances are that because I am publishing this they’ll catch wind, but it is worth the chance if you take it upon yourself to act.” In an update, Williams say activists in Iowa, Colorado, Massachusetts, “and several other states” were already on board, and he said “Tea Party Patriot groups and individuals are flooding me with emails vowing to participate and come up with their own creative ruses!”

Williams’ plan appears to have been taken down from both Tea Party Nation and Williams’ own site, suggesting they perhaps realize this plan is entirely in the wrong, but view a cached version here, and screen grabs here and here.

UPDATEIn a statement to ThinkProgress, SEIU spokeswoman Michelle Ringuette condemned Williams' plot, saying: "At a time when Americans are standing up and courageously speaking out, these guys are playing the same old dirty tricks. Last week we learned about the Chamber trying to create phony research to debunk and hack into our computers, this week the Tea Party dons purple. It's like the emperor has no clothes: they have to rely on subterfuge because they do not really represent the majority of people."

Beck And FreedomWorks Campaign Against Fred Upton: ‘Light Bulbs Are Just The Beginning’

By Brad Johnson A war is brewing among the right wing over the chairmanship of the House Committee on Energy and Commerce, which has jurisdiction over health care, climate policy, and energy policy. Rep. Fred Upton (R-MI) is the leading contender, but Rep. Joe Barton (R-TX) is seeking a waiver from Republican leadership to retake the gavel, while Reps. John Shimkus (R-IN) and Cliff Stearns (R-FL) are also in the hunt. Although the candidates are lockstep in opposition to the Obama agenda and in their intention to launch witch hunts against climate science, Upton is a relative moderate, having admitted in the past that greenhouse emissions should be reduced. In contrast, Barton — who famously apologized to BP this summer — is fully aligned with the

oil and gas industry, with $1,482,630 in lifetime contributions.

Now this internal fight has exploded into a Tea Party battle royale. FreedomWorks, run by veteran GOP lobbyist Dick Armey, has launched Down With Upton, a website attacking “Big Government Republican Fred Upton” for a record “full of votes for more regulation, more spending, and more taxes.” In an email announcing the campaign, FreedomWorks cited Glenn Beck’s warning that “light bulbs are just the beginning”:

Fred Upton, currently considered the front-runner for chairmanship of the critical House Energy and Commerce committee, is far out of step with the Tea Party movement, the GOP and the American people as a whole. You may have heard Glenn Beck talking about Fred Upton introducing a bill to ban incandescent light bulbs in favor of so-called “environmentally-friendly” alternatives. The truth is, Fred Upton has a Big Government record a mile long, and light bulbs are just the beginning.

Upton has already reneged his position on light-bulb efficiency, telling Politico “he’s not afraid to go back after an issue he once supported but that has come under withering assault on the conservative airwaves, including on Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck’s talk shows.”

There was, in fact, no bill to ban incandescent light bulbs. Because of the advanced light-bulb standards Upton helped pass in 2007, “the incandescent bulb is turning into a case study of the way government mandates can spur innovation,” the New York Times reported last year. “There have been more incandescent innovations in the last three years than in the last two decades.”

The Tea Party movement is increasingly attacking American innovation and 21st-century jobs on all fronts: Rush Limbaugh is leading the charge against the breakthrough Chevy Volt, Republican governors are killing high-speed rail, Glenn Beck is cooking up conspiracy theories about smart grid technology, Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-TN) is trying to kill the wind industry, and the entire right-wing movement is convinced green jobs are going to destroy the United States economy.

Billionaire Astroturf Group Claims Tea Partiers Voted To Give Billionaires Tax Cuts

By Brad Johnson

Americans for Prosperity, the Astroturf group run by pollution billionaire David Koch, claims that voters rejected “tax-the-rich ideas” in the midterm elections. On NovemberSpeaks.com — a website launched the day after the election — AFP rallies its supporters to oppose any action by Congress during the lame-duck session that begins November 15, while Democrats still control the House of Representatives. Not only does AFP falsely claim that Democrats intend to pass “enormous Social Security tax hikes,” it also makes the absurd claim that the midterm elections were driven by popular support for the Bush tax cuts for millionaires and billionaires:

1. These are the first votes of the 2012 cycle and public anger is not going away. 2. You have no right to raise taxes on any American while the economy remains weak and after class-warfare, tax-the-rich ideas were decisively rejected in a national election. 3. It’s wrong to cheat the American people by voting to fund ObamaCare before a new Congress elected not to fund it can be seated.

In fact, voters from Wisconsin to New York, from California to Indiana, were overwhelmingly concerned about the state of the economy, much as they have been since 2008. They are worried because of the millions of people who lost jobs and homes during the Bush recession — not because David Koch, a 70-year-old with a net worth of twenty billion dollars, might see his taxes return to levels during the Clinton era. They believe that Congress isn’t doing enough to fix the economy — not that that Congress needs more vacations.

During the lame-duck session of the 111th Congress, elected officials still have the opportunity to get the United States working again with the enactment of progressive pro-jobs policies. However, the billionaire-driven tea party front groups — like FreedomWorks, which warns Democrats will use the lame duck session to “Pile on More Tax Hikes to Fund their Socialist Agenda!”, the Traditional Values Coalition, which says the lame duck agenda is “more spending, blanket amnesty for illegal immigrants, new taxes, and anti-Christian laws,” or American Solutions For Winning the Future, which calls the lame duck “the worst kind of political corruption” — want the corporate takeover of Congress to begin now, instead of next year.

Update Huffington Post's Sam Stein reports on the right-wing mobilization against the lame duck session:

"We do not feel it was right that a Congress defeated would come back and basically try and nullify the election. This lame duck session is a payback to various constituencies and a down payment for 2012," said Andrea Lafferty, executive director of the Traditional Values Coalition. "If Democrats begin pushing items, I think people are going to freak... We are also looking at this in long term, if there are people who go along with this charade, this scam, people will remember in two years. People are going to remember. This is not going away... You might even see pitchforks at the capital, who knows."

Extreme Tea Parties now making AFP nervous; group distances itself from Oklahoma militia effort.

By Amanda Terkel Last week, the AP reported that Oklahoma Tea Party leaders — part of an umbrella group called the Oklahoma Constitutional Alliance — are working with right-wing Republicans in the Oklahoma legislature to create a new “volunteer militia to help defend against what they believe are improper federal infringements on state sovereignty.” A couple of GOP state senators have even met with Tea Partiers to plan legislation for a state-authorized militia. Now Americans for Prosperity, one of the astroturf groups driving the Tea Parties nationwide, has realized that the movement it promoted is now getting out of hand. The Oklahoma Watchdog reports that the group is withdrawing from the Constitutional Alliance:

[Stuart Jolly, director of the Oklahoma chapter of Americans for Prosperity] told this website that Gerhart was “dragging us down with him” and that the reputation of AFP, with over 20,000 members statewide and over 1 million nationwide, was being tarnished by the connection to OCA and the Sooner Tea Party. He also said in a story on April 18 in The Oklahoman that “It seems like the guys on the far right are really starting to take us down a road that they really shouldn’t. It should be more of an educational thing and how things works and how you actually get things accomplished. I’m not sure discussing militias and saying we’re going to take over the GOP is any way to accomplish any goal.”