Last year, the Republican National Committee announced it was joining forces with the Koch brothers' operation to create a massive, nationwide voter database, allowing conservative candidates across the nation to tap into the database for their campaigns.
Under the deal, described as historic, any data collected by one group would be shared with the other, putting the party “orders of magnitude ahead of where we were two years ago,” as one official put it.
But as Yahoo reports, this "sharing" thing isn't going too well. The two organizations are now at war with each other, with the GOP fearing a Koch takeover of its operation.
“I think it’s very dangerous and wrong to allow a group of very strong, well-financed individuals who have no accountability to anyone to have control over who gets access to the data when, why and how,” Katie Walsh, RNC chief of staff, told Yahoo.
I would take that a step further. I think it’s very dangerous and wrong to allow a group of very strong, well-financed individuals who have no accountability to anyone to have control over candidates as well. But I'm old-fashioned that way.
----------------------
U.S. Sen. Ted "the Texas Show Pony" Cruz is under fire for his choice of Kevin Kookogey as his campaign chair for the state of Tennessee.
Kookegey, it seems, made a name for himself in Tennessee when he publicly protested GOP Gov. Bill Haslam's appointment of a woman named Samar Ali as international director of the state's Department of Economic and Community Development.
"To date, the Haslam administration has displayed an unfortunate ignorance to the threat of Shariah. They seem willing to accept the claims and defense of the Muslim Brotherhood at face value, refusing to even consider that, perhaps, those bent on destroying Western Civilization might just be infiltrating our institutions. ... It is not like this has never happened before. The Muslim Brotherhood is following the blueprint of the Communists, who infiltrated the highest levels of government and society in the 1950's. Shariah, however, is an even greater threat, because it has cloaked itself under the auspices of a religion, thus confusing the uninformed."
Ali, a native of Tennessee, is a former student body president at Vanderbilt, where she earned her law degree. She was a 4-H member growing up, and her father, a physician, served 25 years in the Tennessee National Guard, retiring as a brigadier general. She also served as a White House fellow, serving as an adviser to the Department of Homeland Security.
Cruz spokesman Rick Tyler rejected criticism of Kookegy's appointment. "It is absurd to suggest that being a defender of American law under the United States Constitution is somehow anti-Muslim," Tyler said.
---------------------------
The budget picture has improved this year amid higher tax revenue and stronger economic growth, even though government spending has also increased. Revenue for the fiscal year, which began in October, is running 9% ahead of the year-earlier levels, while government spending is up 6%.
In the past 12 months, the budget deficit has fallen to $412 billion, down from $460 billion in April and $491 billion a year earlier. That marks the lowest 12-month deficit since August 2008."
About the Author
