It is MY seat, goddammit!
Newest Member of the Anti-Voter ID Movement is Alaska Senator Lisa Murkowski, the only Republican co-sponsor of S. 1659, the Voting Rights Advancement Act. Recently, Sen. Murkowski signed her name to an even more radical bill, which specifically targets voter ID laws. Why would anyone object to photo ID for voting? It is a requirement all over the world but not in some places in the US. The only reason I can think of is to have proxies vote for others, like dead people, f’rinstance. You know, as in Chicago.
Since government employee unions were “legalized” in 1962 by President Kennedy’s Executive Order the Democrat party secured its main source of funding and support. This has resulted in unionized government employees being paid about double comparable private sector jobs. This collusion has resulted in serious financial problems for FedGov and states and cities that are strapped with underfunded defined benefit pension plans that the professional pols have given to their union supporters. Some Republicans have fought to prevent the situation from getting worse; Sen Murkowski a nominal Republican deserted the cause. That’s why she lost her primary bid for reelection. She lost the primary fair and square but did not honor the decision of the Republican voters. With the help of Democrats and some in the Republican establishment –you know the ones who supported Arlen Specter against Pat Toomey in PA and Charlie Crist against Marco Rubio in FL—she managed to slip by the primary winner, Joe Miller.
Daddy Frank was in the Senate from 1980 to 2002 when he ran for governor and appointed his daughter to complete the term. After one failed term (he left with a 19% approval rating) as governor he was thoroughly defeated by Sarah Palin in his reelection bid. We count Lisa’s years in the Senate as an extension of her father’s tenure in office hence we consider the more than 30 years between them give her eligibility for a term limit poster.
As with almost all of our poster children, she never had a productive job in the private sector. She became a lawyer and spent some time in the lower house of the Alaska legislature before being appointed to the Senate where she has been ever since.
Lisa Murkowski was the only GOP Senate sponsor of Big Labor’s Police/Fire Monopoly-Bargaining Bill to seek reelection in 2010. She never had any grounding in the principles of her party or for any discernible philosophy other than keeping the Senate seat she was given by her daddy. She grew up in political household and came to believe the Senate seat was her birthright. Her father Frank Murkowski was elected to the Senate in 1980, the same year she was graduated from Georgetown University with a degree in economics. She got a law degree in 1985 but then failed the bar exam four times.
With earmarks such a hot button issue as spending and debt are at unsustainable levels it is noteworthy that both father and daughter were/are huge “porkers” as scored by Citizens Against Government Waste. She even voted against the McCain Amendment which would have prevented earmarks in years in which there was a deficit! She was named Porker of the Month for her unflinching support of using federal tax dollars to build the dead-end “Road to Nowhere.” Read more about the Porker of the Month.
The Club for Growth gave Sen. Murkowski the lowest score of any Republican Senator –just 27%! She voted AGAINST many pro-growth bills and FOR many anti-growth bills such as the additional $350 billion for TARP, the expansion of FedGov health care, cash for clunkers and FOR Cap and Trade. All economy and jobs killers. That’s how she helped build the national debt to over $18 trillion. Heritage Action scores her voting record as down with the Democrats at 35%
Murkowski helped pass the first bill that Obama signed into law: the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act, a law named for an Alabama woman who after a 19-year career as a supervisor in a tire factory complained that she had been paid less than men. Even after the Supreme Court ruled against her, she jumped at the chance to hand a major victory to trial lawyers. A Heritage Foundation analysis of the economic effects of this law shows how costly it is and how it would actually hurt those it was purported to help.
Professional politicians do not consider the long term implications of laws they pass –only the short term benefits to themselves by pleasing the lobbyists who support them.
Please support the Vitter Amendment to the constitution –go to www.termlimits.org and sign on to the petition. We’ll have another vote in the next session and a million or so names on the petition will help a lot. We’ve been working for years to get congressional candidates to pledge to co-sponsor the term limits amendment if elected. Most do and there is a growing number of them but it is tough climb to get the number needed to submit the Amendment to the states for ratification. So, U.S. Term Limits is taking a page from the Balanced Budget Amendment Task Force’s progress –it has 27 States approving it so far with 34 needed. The Article V process was proposed by Mark Levin in his book The Liberty Amendments and has been endorsed by, among many others, Sen. Ted Cruz, Gov. Bobby Jindal, Ron DeSantis, Sean Hannity, Glenn Beck, Sen. Tom Coburn and Colonel Allen West.
Close to 80% including Repubs, Dems and Indies approve of term limits on congress –let’s give it to them!
2 Republicans (In Name Only) Who Voted with the Dems Against DeVos for Education Sec'y: Collins and Murkowski –two of "the worst of a bad lot."
Murkowski voted AGAINST Sen. Pat Toomey's earmark ban, continuing the corrupt practice of stuffing legislation with pork.
Earmarks are part of our nation's spending problem—part of a culture of corruption that greases the wheels of bad legislation.