GOP Platform Calls for Nuking What's Left of McCain-Feingold Law
By Andy Kroll
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At this time during the last presidential campaign, the Republican Party's campaign finance law opponents were in something of a pickle. Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) was their nominee; the tough law banning so-called soft money bore his name; and so, during the 2008 election, the GOP platform couldn't take a rhetorical buzzsaw to the laws curbing the flow of campaign cash into elections.
There's no such problem for Republicans at the 2012 GOP convention. James Bopp, Jr., an influential lawyer who's made a career out of demolishing campaign finance laws, said in a recent interview with the Indianapolis Star that the GOP's 2012 platform will call for gutting what's left of the McCain-Feingold law—namely, the ban on unlimited, unregulated, soft money given to political parties.
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Josh Orton, political director at Progressives United, the nonprofit founded by former Sen. Russ Feingold (D-Wisc.) to fight the influence of corporations in politics, blasted the GOP's campaign finance plank. "McCain-Feingold closed the door on a corrupting system of unlimited money," Orton says. "By advocating its repeal, Republicans are proving that they don't just tolerate corruption in politics, they actually embrace it."
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"Fuck You, Tyrants!": Ron Paul Supporters Rebel On Convention Floor
By Andy Kroll and David Corn
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A minor revolt broke out on the floor of the Republican Party's presidential convention Tuesday afternoon and evening. Ron Paul delegates from several states erupted into protest over a controversial change to the party's rules to block future insurgencies mounted by outside candidates like their hero. Paul supporters also freaked out over the convention's refusal to recognize about two dozen Paul delegates and for refusing to treat Paul like a serious candidate for the nomination.
During the roll call of the states, the Paulites were irate, screaming at the podium, as convention secretary Kim Reynolds declined to read out the delegate votes for any candidate other than Romney. "The Republican Party is so afraid of Ron Paul that they won't repeat his name," shouted Jim Ayala, a Nevada delegate and Paul supporter wearing an Oath Keepers t-shirt.
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Following the dust-up, Yelena Vorobyov (pictured below), a 30-year-old Paul delegate from Apple Valley, Minnesota, was eager to vent. Barely taking a breath, she said: "This is just evidence of the manipulation of the Republican Party. They're not even allowing us to bring signs in, but they brought in their own [pro-Romney] signs. We couldn't nominate Ron Paul. The 'no' for not passing the rules was louder than the 'aye' and they ruled in favor of the rules. They're cheating. The Republican National Committee is not transparent and does not have integrity. They stole votes. They stole delegates. They refused to send busses for our delegates. It's a totalitarian process. This is not democracy. It's a really sad day for us. I've worked for Republican candidates since I was 16. We believed the Republican Party had more integrity. Boy, did they prove us wrong."
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Seven years after Katrina, Gulf Coast rail could return bigger than before
By Alex Goldmark
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On Aug. 29, 2005, Hurricane Katrina washed away swaths of rail along the Gulf Coast owned by CSX. Amtrak used those tracks for the last stretch of the Sunset Limited service mostly for passengers going to, or coming from, as far off as Los Angeles. After the storm, Amtrak suspended — though it did not officially cancel — the Gulf Coast portion of the route. Seven years later, Mayors from New Orleans to the Florida panhandle are plotting how to bring back the trains, and add new ones.
At present, communities along the Gulf are bracing for Hurricane Issac, expected to make landfall this evening, but earlier this month, More than 40 mayors gathered in Mobile, Alabama to hear from Amtrak what they need to do to get trains rolling.
According to a review of a 2009 report [PDF] by Transportation Nation, restoring train service would not be cheap, and the old Sunset route did not turn a profit. Bringing it back requires federal or state support to build it, and then almost certainly a subsidy to run it. So, the coalition of mayors and local leaders is strategizing how to lobby its representatives in Congress to get the federal funding process going.
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Still, mayors want the service back, and the primary goal of their big meeting on Aug. 16 was to gather facts they can use to convince Congress to pony up funding. The Pensacola News Journal reported support from the mayors of New Orleans, Pensacola, Fla., and Mobile, Ala., and others want to take economic arguments to their congressional representatives. Daily daytime service would make it possible for someone to live in Biloxi, Miss., or nearby and work in New Orleans, or for New Orleanians to take short vacations along the Gulf Coast. That’s the kind of story a member of Congress would need to hear to devote taxpayer money to an unprofitable line.
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GOP platform bans abortions, gay marriage
By Priyanka Boghani
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Republicans approved a party platform on Tuesday at the GOP's national convention in Tampa, which would ban all abortions and gay marriages and cut taxes to stimulate the economy and create jobs, the Associated Press reported.
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The Washington Post noted that the GOP, as viewed through its platform documents, "has morphed over the past half-century from a socially moderate, environmentally progressive and fiscally cautious perspective to a conservative party that is suspicious of government, allied against abortion and driven by faith."
Not all Republicans back the platform, as The International Business Times noted, with former governor of Florida Jeb Bush saying, "Our demographics are changing, and we have to change not necessarily our core beliefs, but how we -- the tone of our message and the message and the intensity of it, for sure."
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