This election cycle has definitely been quite unique. Candidates carefully omit any party affiliation on their yard signs and push cards, hoping to avoid “that” question when going door to door. Political ads paid for by DC insiders try to hit all of the candidates on one side of the political aisle, telling me that money is in short supply. Every candidate claims to be a conservative regardless of their philosophical views, banking that their constituents will remain as apathetic as they have in the past and just take them at their word without taking the time to research their record.

But there is one word that I keep hearing this cycle, not just from the candidates but also from our local and state media. That buzz word, if you will, is accountability. One of our most popular television stations has a new campaign playing over the airwaves touting their ability to keep individuals accountable. It goes something like, “We ask the tough questions, and keep those in power accountable to you….”.

For me, this was a pleasant surprise! Do you think that maybe, just maybe, the efforts made by the conservative movement to change the conversation and provide a spotlight on government affairs has actually had an effect on our local news reporters? At the very least, the media seems to have made an effort to listen to their viewers and to start speaking their language.

This points to something that we at American Majority encourage all of our trainees, and that is to know the facts and speak always with kindness. Over the last 20 something months, conservative tea partiers and 9-12 members and liberty groups have been battling the stereo-typical views of conservatives being uneducated hate-mongers. The conservative movement in Arkansas has been leading by example using positive and negative reinforcement when communicating with elected officials at city council, school board and town hall meetings. Now, after countless rallies, press releases, letters to the editor, and facebook postings, one of the state’s favorite television stations has embraced the conservative movements rallying cry! Coincidence? I think not…..now, let’s see if it resonates on November 2nd and most importantly, November 3rd.

Our esteemed colleagues at the Oklahoma Council for Public Affairs (think Heritage Foundation in Oklahoma), have pointed out what few on the left are willing to admit.  As with most things, education performs best in an environment where school choice is promoted (i.e. where the market and competition rule). This doesn’t come as a surprise to any of us, but it’s well worth repeating.

Late last month when the RNC announced that it would cut its get out the vote (GOTV) program, conservative groups around the country adjusted and decided to run their own GOTV programs. But what does the RNC’s decision really mean?

“The Republican National Committee has decided against sending Congressional staffers out on the campaign trail for traditional get-out-the-vote efforts, focusing its resources instead on mailings and other last-minute pre-election efforts, the committee confirmed Tuesday.”

Lately, it seems the RNC has gone the way of the Obama administration in ignoring the will of the people. With serious missteps in key races and a national morale problem, the RNC really doesn’t get it.

Dana Loesch reports that after a few posts on Twitter that the RNC responded:

“Shortly thereafter I got an email from RNC spokesman Doug Heye about the matter asking me to call him…

In light of the recent criticisms against the RNC, with the Hawaii conference, Steele’s cross-country tour, I can see why the RNC would want to rectify an ineffective and expensive program to ward off further accusations of wasteful spending – so long as the money saved stays with their GOTV efforts, which Heye explained that it would.

Heye discussed the RNC’s other GOTV efforts.

‘We have 352 victory offices funded by us throughout country. We’ve crossed the 20 million contact threshold – contact in messages left, door knocks, phone calls. We’re ahead of where we were in 2008 and in the next five weeks we’ll have a minimum of two million more contacts.’”

Does the RNC only read the New York Times? Have they paid attention to the countless articles by conservative journalists, bloggers and organizational leaders? GOTV is key the winning an election. A copy of the “proprietary and confidential” “After Action” report from the data company used by the DNC, ACORN, SEIU, Obama for America/Organizing for America contains startling facts and figures that need viral attention fast.

The Background

As previously reported:

“The Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now or ACORN spent a number of years perfecting an organizing model that resembled that of Catalist and the Obama Campaign. ACORN’s close ‘affiliate’ Project Vote detailed their efforts in a 2007 report:

‘The Pilot Technology Project carried out during the summer and fall of 2006 was a first attempt to integrate the potential of high quality enhanced data developed for voter participation programs with on-going grassroots community organizing programs. Building upon the work of Catalist (formerly Data Warehouse LLC), Project Vote deployed an updated version of our online voter management system (VBASE) to enable local community organizations to access a robust voter file with enhanced phone numbers, geographic and demographic information for use in voter mobilization, membership development and organizational capacity building.’”

In 2008, years of coordination between leftist groups like SEIU, ACORN, Emily’s List and Obama/Organizing for America, resulted in a turbo charged election cycle unlike any other.

“Get-out-the-vote operations mounted by the Obama campaign, the Democratic Party and progressive organizations mobilized more than one million dedicated volunteers on Election Day. But it was buttressed by a year-long, psychographic voter targeting and contact operation, the likes of which Democrats had never before participated in. In 2008, the principal repository of Democratic data was Catalist, a for-profit company that acted as the conductor for a data-driven symphony of more than 90 liberal groups, like the Service Employees Union — and the DNC — and the Obama campaign.”

While The Atlantic reported on the story, many on the Right may not understand the total impact of the body of work from these so-called progressives.

A look at the Numbers

According to the report:

Progressives completed over 127 million contacts to over 49 million unique individuals. Of these individuals, 28 million voted on Election Day, representing over 20% of all votes cast

Progressives attempted to contact over 106 million people, meaning that over 46% of the U.S. adult population were targets of communication from the progressive community.

82% of progressive activities occurred in 16 highly contested states. Individuals contacted by progressives accounted for 37%6 of all votes cast in these states.

The dialogue during the 2008 election cycle was one of change and blaming the outgoing administration for America’s troubles. This message was not only reinforced by the media, but also with a barrage of emails, calls, visits, etc. from progressive organizers in the weeks before the election. Obama’s margin of victory was born out of these contacts.

“The number of votes cast by new voters who were registered by progressives exceeded Obama’s margin of victory in four states: OH, FL, IN, and NC. “

Voter Registrations

The massive voter registration drives that many were made aware of in 2008 generated over 7 million new applications with the report stating that at least 76% from groups not directly affiliated with a candidate or campaign. The report also notes that only about 5.5 million made it onto the voter rolls. The left calls them “true registrations.” What about this other two million cards? Duplicates? Fraudulent registrations? Ineligible voters? While the left tends the downplay voter registration fraud, the type of activities that garner over two million bogus registrations should be investigated.

Get Out The Vote

Progressive groups have proven to be ahead of the curve in regards to voter contact and the numbers show that their efforts pay off at the polls. According to Catalist:

“ Among all sporadic voters (which include Democrats, Independents, and Republicans), progressive contact is correlated with a 10-point increase in turnout. Among just Democratic sporadic voters, progressive contact shows an 11-point difference.”

RNC are you listening? Face-to-face contact, not paid media or mailings resulted in at least a 10-point increase in turnout.

The Usual Suspects

Though Service Employees International Union (SEIU) is now under investigation regarding a pension scandal and the activities of former leader Andy Stern, they had a banner year in 2008.  By far, Stern earned the privilege of  frequent White House visits and the president’s ear by delivering big numbers for Obama in 2008. With tens of millions of dollars invested in Obama, the SEIU ground troops worked feverishly to turn voters out to the polls.

SEIU Activity Report

• Over 5.2 million direct contacts were made to almost 4.5 million voters.
• 2.5 million pieces of response data was collected from over 1.2 million voters.
• SEIU used high concentrations of live phone calls (64%) and in-person contact (24%) to target voters. In both cases, this is approximately 50% more then the average (as a percent) of all progressives.
• In Indiana, over 40% of all independent progressive contacts (not including federal) were unique to SEIU. In Virginia, over 35% of all independent progressive contacts were unique to SEIU. SEIU also had large shares of unique contacts in other highly contested states, including New Mexico (over 30%), New Hampshire (over 15%), and Oregon and Colorado (over 10%).

The stark reality is that the left is better organized and their leadership more motivated in getting boots on the ground. With their sophisticated micro-targeting, the left is able to identify individual voters in precincts that are more likely to vote for their cause/candidate. This means that folks on the right are rarely contacted and may not be aware of the scale of these operations. By flying under the radar, the left has a guaranteed tactic to sway elections their way. Don’t allow yourselves to be blindsided this November.

Who’s working in your community? Not the RNC, but this year, like 2008, you can bet that progressive groups are on the ground spreading their message of racial divisions, big government and more spending.

With less than thirty days left before the critical mid-term elections, Democrats may find themselves wishing that they had done a better job of controlling the media and deflecting attention from their desperate campaign tactics. With ACORN “dissolved” and no longer openly working as an unofficial arm of the Democrats, their candidates are left to do the dirty work.

Last month the New York Post broke a story about a local Brooklyn politician who had resorted to harassing voters directly in order to intimidate them.

“Assemblyman Vito Lopez bullied and cajoled eight little old ladies during an arm-twisting session aimed at getting them to back his candidate in a Brooklyn judicial race, a shocking audiotape obtained by The Post reveals.

‘I’m not a fool or stupid, all right?’ the Democrat railed at the elderly community leaders. ‘I can’t always give and get smacked, give and get smacked . . . I am the political leader.’

The May 2005 conversation, captured on a hidden recorder, not only exposes the 69-year-old Lopez’s heavy-handed tactics in dealing with his core elderly supporters but also offers a rare glimpse into the backrooms of bare-knuckle Brooklyn politics where Lopez reigns. “

According to Wikipedia:

“Voter intimidation involves putting undue pressure on a voter or group of voters so that they will vote a particular way, or not at all”

Wikipedia also defines voter intimidation as a form of electoral fraud or voter fraud. Though Democrats and a host of groups, including ACORN’s Project Vote, will insist that voter fraud does not exist, and is a product of an attempt to silence voters. However, as ACORN’s  “ground troops” are no longer available, it appears that desperate times have Democrats openly engaging in suspicious election activity.

Lopez plumbed the depths of corruption by hiring addicts (sound familiar?) to organize Get-Out-The-Vote for his campaign.

“Dozens of addicts living at a Brooklyn rehab facility funded by Assemblyman Vito Lopez clocked 16-hour shifts door-knocking, passing out fliers and singing songs of praise to help the embattled lawmaker get re-elected as district leader last month, sources told The Post.

‘They had them work from 5 a.m. until 9 p.m. passing out fliers and going door to door’ on Primary Day, Sept. 14, said Alejandro Hermida, recently discharged from the Williamsburg facility, El Regreso.

Diana Torres, who was campaigning outside PS 50 for her boyfriend — Lopez’s opponent Esteban Duran — said: ‘It was a spectacle. At one point, they had drums. They were singing. It was loud.’

‘We saw people from their campaign bringing them cigarettes, telling them to be loud and rowdy,’ Torres said. “They were chain-smoking, very jittery, aggressive people.’

Lopez and Pagan did not respond to requests for comment.

Lopez won by a landslide, 74 to 26 percent.”

Workers being paid in cigarettes? Recovering drug addicts given cash under the table? These are not just ACORN tactics, they are the tactics of what appears to be a party hijacked by radicals. Vote-buying is also considered a form of voter fraud. It is unclear if any of these “workers” were eligible to vote or  if they did. It is also unclear if they urged others to vote for Lopez with incentives like the ones they received. While such blatant actions should be denounced, the complicit media complex is still mourning the death of their beloved ACORN.

One such article pushes the idea of the “myth” of voter fraud :

“One of the tactics Republicans favor for deflecting attention from their voter suppression efforts is launching unmerited accusations of fraud on the part of pro-Democratic groups and individuals. For a glimpse of how this works, check out ‘Despite Dearth Of Evidence, Right Wing Voter Fraud Fear Machine Carries On’ by Ryan J. Reilly and Rachel Slajda at Talking Points Memo. The authors recount the smears against ACORN and the phony charge that the New Black Panthers were intimidating voters, and then explain how these incidents are being regurgitated in the latest fear-mongering campaign…

The fear-mongering about fraud and the attack against ACORN has worked depressingly well for Republicans. They succeeded in destroying one of the most successful organizations dedicated to registering poor and minority voters.”

Lopez, who has close ties to the ACORN backed Working Families Party, has also been engaged in suspicious ACORN-like housing fraud.

“A federal housing scandal that left thousands of New Yorkers living in ramshackle homes turned out to be a pot of gold for a not-for-profit group closely linked to powerful Assemblyman Vito Lopez, The Post has learned.”

Unfortunately for New York, Lopez is not only working to undermine the electoral system, but he has also silenced the voice of the people through judicial cronyism.

In a city brimming with talented lawyers with sterling résumés, the word is that Brooklyn Democratic boss Vito Lopez is set this week to deliver a Supreme Court judgeship to an attorney whose chief qualifications include being the brother of Lopez’s girlfriend. The fix, as they say, is in.

This gross exercise in cronyism is calendared for Friday at the party’s judicial nominating convention, a rigged affair that will blatantly violate the constitutional rights of the borough’s voters. The federal courts have so ruled, but Lopez is proceeding smarmily apace, party insiders say.

And the bosses will violate the constitutional rights of the voters with every judge they make, screened or not. And all those judges will knowingly take their seats in violation of the Constitution. And the worst of the bunch, Lopez and Battaglia, will long stand as symbols of shamelessness – if, that is, they hold to form.

Lopez is an example of the systemic corruption that has been allowed to run rampant on the local level. Instead of working to protect our electoral system, certain groups and media outlets would rather raise the tried and true racial issue. By working in poor minority communities, these groups hope that you will look the other way while granny is intimidated and those same poor people are used as political pawns.

So Wisconsinites, why spend an entire Saturday with American Majority this close to Election Day?  Well, the answer is simple, because it will make a difference.  Attending this workshop matters if you are serious about reshaping the political environmental for not only the short-term, but more importantly, for the long-term.

Yes, elections are immensely important, but if you are only focused on Election Day and not in a position to continue to capture the energy found within the conservative grassroots movement, than the results on November 2 will be all for naught.  Leaders and activists must think past November and be in a position hold newly elected leaders accountable and focus on upcoming elected positions in 2011 and 2012 that need a change in leadership.

If you haven’t already, please consider attending our Wisconsin Post Party Summit in Oconomowoc this Saturday, October 9.  The event will be at the Olympia Resort and Conference Center from 9:00 am – 5:00 pm, with registration starting at 8:15 pm.  Tickets are just $20/person, which includes lunch and training materials.  Topics covered include:  Holding Elected Officials Accountable, Building Coalitions, New Media, Micro-targeting and Get-Out-The-Vote (GOTV).

Sound interesting and worth your time?  We certainly think so as do the nearly 40 conservative organizations across Wisconsin that are cosponsoring the event.   So come, you will gain a wealth of knowledge and will definitely enjoy the time spent at our workshop.  For more information and to reserve a seat please simply click HERE.  If you prefer you can also contact Michael Yost at 651-343-5558 or michael@americanmajority.org.

We can’t wait to see everyone on Saturday!

In the middle of October, 2008, when I still had my own personal blog (never again) I predicted that Barack Obama would win the Presidential election.  Though the poll numbers were still pretty tight at that point, the writing was on the wall as far as I was concerned.  Thus I conceded a month early and wrote a post about what conservatives should do next after the November elections.

The purpose of the post (entitled “The Conservative Reaction: A Call to Action”) was to ask the question:

“What should we as Conservatives do after the election we face of an overwhelming Democratic House and Senate and a newly elected Democratic President?”

Now, two years later, I wanted to go back and see how conservatives have done.  Thus, here is what I wrote as the “Five Things I am Going to Try to do During LUPO – Life Under President Obama”.  Check them out along with my new comments underneath.

Number 1: As a conservative, Barack Obama’s election means I must stand firm in my convictions and be ready to defend my positions…

First off, I know of many folks who immediately started reading up on the free market system, the constitution, and the history of the founding fathers in order to begin educating themselves.  Additionally, conservatives have been challenged by prominent conservatives to know where they stand and why.  And overall, conservatives have started going on the offensive more and more as the country has been taken down the road to even more massive government and less individual freedom.

Because people have embraced this responsibility, it has truly been incredible to see how many folks are now openly touting their conservative beliefs and their love for liberty.  Well done, American public.

Number 2: As a conservative, Barack Obama’s election means I must be creative in how I get my message to the masses…

When I wrote this post two years ago I was really curious how this was going to play out.  But two years later, I see how conservatives are using tools like Twitter, Facebook, blogs, and conservative websites to truly spread the message of conservatism effectively and strategically.  Heck, even conservative candidates are (finally) eschewing traditional media sources and taking their message straight to the people.

It is truly amazing to know that our better ideas and principled positions are finally starting to reach the average citizen – and it is humbling to know that American Majority has been at the forefront of this movement through our trainings, outreach, and education of a new generation of concerned Americans.

Score another one for the good guys.

Number 3: As a conservative, Barack Obama’s election means I must unite with those around me who believe as I do…

The implications of this advice are obvious two years later – The Tea Party Movement.  Not only has the movement grown exponentially since the spring of 2009, but it has also become a political force in all parts of the country.  And while the MSM mocked it, misunderstood it, and tried its best to kill it, the Tea Party folks have continually gotten more and more excited about cleaning house in Washington.  Thanks for that, President Obama; in reality, we owe you big time.

Oh, and just to channel my inner Al Gore, since I wrote about the need to unite and come together about 6 months before the Tea Parties started, I will take full and complete credit for them.  Yea for me.

Number 4: As a conservative, Barack Obama’s election means I must not give into the lie that conservatism is dying…

Well, obviously this is not the case.  Even though the pundits declared a new era in politics and the death of the conservative movement, we’ll see just how dead we are on November 2.

However, as a side note, if the (hopefully) decisive election results don’t clearly state the case for the country’s desire for smaller government, less spending, more accountability, and decidedly more transparency, then maybe Chris Christie can get in someone’s face and explain it to them nice and plain-like.

Number 5: Lastly, as a conservative, Barack Obama’s election means I must embrace the hope that even though things look dark now, there is a light upon the dawn…

Ah, yes, hope.  Not a false hope or a government-built hope, but a genuine and authentic “clean-out-the-halls-of-Congress-kind-of-hope” is what I feel when I look around the country and see people working hard to change our country for the better.  It truly is a blessing to see that apathy is slowly being replaced once again by the American desire for freedom, liberty, and prosperity.

Thus, before we battle for the next 20+ days for the future of this country, take a second to enjoy the fact that the horizon is breaking forth through the morning dark.  Relish the thought that soon our anger, our disgust, and our weariness will soon be replaced by a steadfast resolve to hold a new batch of elected representatives responsible for their actions and their votes.

For it is nearing the time to go from educated and informed voter to become educated and informed constituents once again – this time with a new focus and a renewed strength to see the American Dream make its comeback.

And be sure that while our days have been dark for the past two years, the light of freedom will show itself very bright very soon.  For this reason, I am thankful and encouraged by what has transpired within this movement during the past two years and what will happen many years into the future.

Fight on, fellow Americans, fight on!

Washington, DC plans to move ahead with a system that they hope will make it easier for citizens overseas to voter. Last week the District announced a new pilot project.

“The Board of Elections and Ethics today announced that the public examination phase of the Digital Vote by Mail pilot project for overseas voters will begin on Friday, September 24.

Digital Vote by Mail is a first-in-the-nation use of open source technology to provide a secure means for overseas voters to obtain, print and mail their ballot – and, if the voter chooses, also digitally mark and return their ballot. After testing is completed, the service will be made available to overseas voters, who often do not have enough time to receive and return their ballot by mail in the few weeks between the September primary and the November general election. Prior to Digital Vote by Mail, the only option for these voters was to sacrifice the secrecy of their ballot by using e-mail or fax.

During the test period, which will continue through Thursday, September 30, individuals who wish test and comment on the technology and usability of the application will be granted access to the application, a complete system architectural diagram, and access to the underlying source code.”

Information about the project can be found here, and below is a sample invitation letter from the site (click to enlarge).

Testers are given access to the source code for the program and must answer a survey about the program. A review of the questions doesn’t inspire confidence in the overall security of the system, and one may find themselves wondering why the questions are so vague. Screen shot below (click to enlarge).

Apparently, some of the applicants for this pilot program had the same idea and were able to hack into the voting system in under 48 hours.

“I assembled a team from the University of Michigan, including my PhD students, Eric Wustrow and Scott Wolchok, and Dawn Isabel, a member of the University of Michigan technical staff.

Within 36 hours of the system going live, our team had found and exploited a vulnerability that gave us almost total control of the server software, including the ability to change votes and reveal voters’ secret ballots. In this post, I’ll describe what we did, how we did it, and what it means for Internet voting.”

The author of the post points out some well intentioned reasons for exploiting the voting system, and the most disturbing part of the article is that it took two days for DC to take down the program.  It was only after other testers noticed the University of Michigan fight song had been inserted. Who is overseeing this program? It appears that a lot of trust was placed with the testers and as previous elections have shown, there are a number of folks out there who would do terrible things with such access.

Here is a description of what the hackers were able to do:

Our demonstration attacks

D.C. launched the public testbed server on Tuesday, September 28. On Wednesday afternoon, we began to exploit the problem we found to demonstrate a number of attacks:

• We collected crucial secret data stored on the server, including the database username and password as well as the public key used to encrypt the ballots.
• We modified all the ballots that had already been cast to contain write-in votes for candidates we selected. (Although the system encrypts voted ballots, we simply discarded the encrypted files and replaced them with different ones that we encrypted using the same key.) We also rigged the system to replace future votes in the same way.
• We installed a back door that let us view any ballots that voters cast after our attack. This modification recorded the votes, in unencrypted form, together with the names of the voters who cast them, violating ballot secrecy.
• To show that we had control of the server, we left a “calling card” on the system’s confirmation screen, which voters see after voting. After 15 seconds, the page plays the University of Michigan fight song. Here’s a demonstration.

The testers plan to submit a paper based on their findings, but they do offer some conclusions based on their interactions with the online voting system.

“Based on this experience and other results from the public tests, the D.C. Board of Elections and Ethics has announced that they will not proceed with a live deployment of electronic ballot return at this time, though they plan to continue to develop the system. Voters will still be able to download and print ballots to return by mail, which seems a lot less risky.

D.C. officials brought the testbed server back up today (Tuesday) with the electronic ballot return mechanism disabled. The public test period will continue until Friday, October 8…

It may someday be possible to build a secure method for submitting ballots over the Internet, but in the meantime, such systems should be presumed to be vulnerable based on the limitations of today’s security technology.”

Here is the bland response from DC election officials:

“The program originally allowed voters to digitally return their ballot but that option has been removed and voters will have to either e-mail or fax their ballots.

‘The Board determined, with the assistance of the public examination community, that the current iteration of the ballot return feature did not meet our security and file integrity standards,’ the board said in a statement.”

Thank goodness this test was done now and the system was not allowed to compromise the November elections. As with all laws concerning voting or voter registration, citizens must be wary of such online voting systems, especially if one of the testers or designers is dishonest and chooses not to report found security lapses in the system. Such holes in the software security have the potential of allowing the integrity of the system to be compromised.

While our servicemen and women have trouble ensuring that their votes are counted, we must be diligent and not be fooled by alternatives that only sound safe and fair.

The vast majority of Arkansans (around 61 percent) are strongly dissatisfied with the direction of our nation and over 51 percent of Arkansans say their economic situation is fair or poor compared to 5 years ago.

Arkansas is ranked 10th worst place to retire . We have amazing people, a good climate and our cost of living is excellent but (and it is one big but) our tax loads are among the most burdensome in the nation. Arkansas’ State/Local Tax Burden is above national average estimated now at 10.0% of income; Arkansas’ state/local tax burden percentage stands at 14th nationally, above the national average of 9.7%. Arkansas taxpayers pay $3,351 per capita in state and local taxes.

Under our current Arkansas leadership- Congressman Mike Ross (D), who receives a 36% from  the Conservative American Union and 26% from Club for Growth and Senator Blanche Lincoln (D), a 19% and 20% (respectively) along with Governor Mike Beebe (D), who consequently receives a “D” on his report card from the Cato Institute in their“Fiscal Policy Report Card on America’s Governors: 2010” ,  here are some facts:

• The State of Arkansas has 2,000 of more than 8,000 state vehicles that are being used for personal use. The Arkansas Game and Fish Commission has 658 cars for 613 employees to which the commissioner responded “It’s something awfully hard to get rid of. People get used to it.”

• Arkansas has lost 17,300 jobs since the $814 Billion Stimulus was passed , raising unemployment more from 6.8 to 7.5 percent. .  It should be noted that 5 of the 6 Arkansas delegates voted for this bill. (Congressman John Boozman was the exception).

• Arkansas children rank third in the nation with 26.9 percent living in poverty in 2009, according to the U.S. Census Bureau’s American Community Survey. The percentage of Arkansas children living in poverty has risen steadily since 2006, when it was 23.8 percent.

• From 1998 to 2007 the state government grew by 17%, representing 28,800 new government positions over the past ten years, while population only grew by 8.9%.

• Although Arkansas has a balanced budget amendment our state is billions in debt. According to Sunshine Review~ Arkansas has a total state debt of $7,899,579,400 when calculated by adding the total of outstanding debt, pension, OPEB (Other Post-Employment Benefit) UAAL’s (Unfunded Actuarial Accrued Liability), unemployment trust funds and the 2010 budget gap. As of June 30, 2008 Arkansas Public School Districts and Education Service Cooperatives had outstanding loans and bonded indebtedness totaling $2,842,716,298 — an increase of $230,838,355 over the previous year.

• Arkansas’ individual income tax has a top rate of 7% that kicks in at $32,600 income.  The Tax Foundation lowered the state’s Business Tax Climate to 40th in the nation. The corporate tax rate has a top tier of 6.5% that applies when income levels reach $100,000 which placed Arkansas in 39th place among the 50 states. But Arkansas hits near the top of the charts as number 12 of states going into debt.

• While Arkansas families & businesses teeter on the precipice of uncertainty not knowing if our taxes will increase dramatically in January, Congressman Mike Ross (D) tours our state proclaiming his dedication to Arkansas citizens yet voted to keep us on the edge of economic strife & come home with no answer. As a result, the average middle class family in Arkansas will see a tax hike of $1,418. (“Affect of Expiration of Bush-Era Tax Cuts on Average Middle-Income Family, By State and Congressional District,” Tax Foundation, 8/1/10).

• Arkansas is the home of the Hogs but we don’t like PORK in our government. Mike Ross opposed the president’s pathetic half percent cut from $3.4 trillion in planned spending siding with the likes of Diane Feinstein, (D) from Ca. (a state that is beyond BANKRUPT). He also voted AGAINST 68 amendments in 2009 to strip outrageous pork projects from the 12 annual spending bills and voted against 49 of 50 in 2007.  While Sen. Lincoln helped defeat an amendment, offered by U.S. Senator Jim DeMint (R-SC), to the annual transportation appropriations bill that would end taxpayer subsidies for the John Murtha Airport, a little used 650-acre facility in Johnstown, Pennsylvania that has received at least $200 million in taxpayer funding.

• While Governor Beebe is in Arkansas working on a state his $86 million “comprehensive health-care program”,  Congressman Ross  cast a vital vote in committee to move Obama care forward and Senator Blanche Lincoln voted against the people of Arkansas when she  cast the deciding vote to pass the government takeover of healthcare.  Now Sixty-four percent (64%) of Arkansas voters favor repeal of the health care bill, including 51% who strongly favor it. Only 30% oppose repeal, with 20% who are Strongly Opposed.

• The Arkansas Legislature adjourned March 12, 2009 without passing HB 1053, titled the Open Checkbooks in Government Act, sponsored by Dan Greenberg (R-Little Rock). This bill calls for the creation of a searchable website cataloguing all state expenditures and bond proceeds. The website also will include electronic copies of all state grants, contracts, and subcontracts, as well as a listing of all public meetings.

Time, energy and sheer exhaustion are what prohibit me from going on and on and on… ARKANSAS WE CAN DO BETTER!

GET THE FACTS OUT AND VOTE! NOVEMBER 2^ND YOU CAN MAKE THE DIFFERENCE FOR OUR STATE, OUR NATION AND OUR FUTURES~

The 2010 primary season was, for the most part, a good one for limited government, freedom-loving conservatives. Most of the high profile challenges against the incumbent or establishment candidates, with Mike Lee, Ken Buck, Joe Miller, and Sharron Angle ended with the grassroots candidate winning. The American people clearly demonstrated that they are tired of long time incumbents, the ruling class, ignoring the will of the people and growing government spending and the role of government in people’s lives.

But we need to put things into perspective: the 2010 primary season must be seen as simply the opening salvo in the American people’s war against statism. It is the first battle in many to come in the war over whether the American people, or the ruling class, will control the American system of government.

Sure, there are reasons to celebrate, but let’s be honest: nothing has been won yet. The primary victories are just that: primary, not general election, victories. And while it’s humorous to see the befuddlement of the establishment as yet another one of its candidates goes down in defeat, think about this: of the 472 U.S. Representatives and Senators running this fall, it is almost guaranteed, in a supposed “anti-incumbent, anti-establishment” election that 80% or more of the incumbents will win this year.

Those statistics are just at the federal level, but they hold true even at the state level: roughly 80% of state house and state senate incumbents will win this fall. The good people over at Ballotpedia.org have even compiled a list of state legislators who will not even be challenged in the general election. The list is uncomfortably long, which is staggering given that this is a Congressional re-districting year due to the census.

All of this to say to the grassroots: there have been great victories, and progress in the right direction. But we must be honest: in 2010, with 80% of the incumbents winning, the ruling class will actually win the first battle in the war. What will be the true test is what the grassroots, and I would say the American people, will do in 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014; quite frankly for every election, every year, for the next 10-15 years.

What it comes to is this: If the American people are truly interested in winning the battle over who will run our form of government, if they truly believe that all power inheres in the people, not the ruling class, then they must break the power of the incumbents at all levels of government. If the American people can control the nomination process of a party, or parties, they will control the party, and quite frankly, the system of government.

What those of us who believe in free enterprise and limited government are confronting; an out-of-control bureaucracy, out-of-touch leaders, and fiscal irresponsibility, did not materialize overnight, and will not be changed overnight. It will take time to shift the massive ship of the American state and get it back on course.

I would say that until we see a losing percentage of 50% or more for incumbents at all levels of government we cannot truly say that there is an anti-incumbent wave and that the American people are winning the war against the ruling class. That percentage will not happen in the next election, or even the next after that, but I believe it should the conservative movement’s goal to increase by 5-10% every year the number of incumbents beaten. The starting point is to simply challenge incumbents in primaries (between 2000-2008, a GOP U.S. House member had a 98.3-99.5% chance of winning his or her primary).

I was asked by a reporter the other day if the “civil war” in the Republican Party was over. I told him I didn’t believe that there was a civil war: what’s taking place is people expecting Republican leaders to actually adhere to the principles of the party, and if they don’t, we can find leaders that do. He asked if I thought we’d see more of what took place in the 2010 primary season play out in the future. I told him we were just getting warmed up and to expect more of the same in 2012 and beyond. There are six Republican U.S. Senators that might need to be challenged in 2012. There are dozens of House members, and untold numbers of state legislators, county commissioners, city council and school board members who should also be primaried.

The process of breaking the incumbents’ hold over the American system of government will not be an easy one, but it will be well worth it. A farm team of conservative leaders at all levels of government needs to be identified and groomed, and American Majority is in the process of doing just that. But that is only part of the solution: the American people have to stay engaged and demand greater transparency and accountability from their leaders and government. Furthermore, we must have leaders sent to Washington, DC who believe that power should be devolved from DC and back to as local a level as possible-concentrated power was never what the Founders intended, and in fact, it is precisely what the Founders feared.

If the American people can beat the ruling class, and regain control of the government of “We the People,” they can renew the Founders’ vision for America. If we will renew the great principles of free enterprise and limited government, then we as a nation can rise to even greater heights of freedom and prosperity for all in the 21^st century.

Voters in Pennsylvania have not heard the last of ACORN. In 2009, ACORN workers were charged with several counts of voter registration fraud. Also, in Nevada last year ACORN employees  and senior staff were indicted amid charges of fostering an environment that led to voter registration fraud. When the news broke, ACORN officials at first denied use of a quota system, but after proof surfaced in the form of a Pittsburgh Tribune-Review article, ACORN decided to go on the offensive.

“Despite repeated denials of a quota system, a 2004 manual utilized by the activist community organization ACORN advises managers that workers who do not produce a set number of voter registrations per day should be fired.

‘If a person performs at less than standard have them come to another training, send them out with a team leader. If they still perform poorly then re-train once more, then fire,’ the 2004 management document states.

‘Anyone who performs at less than three voter registrations per hour SHOULD NOT BE ON THE STAFF,’ the directive states.

A quota system for voter registration drives is barred under state law and has been cited as a major factor in pending criminal cases in Pittsburgh. Seven people, all with ties to ACORN, have been charged by Allegheny County District Attorney Stephen A. Zappala Jr., with violating state election laws and submitting fraudulent voter registration applications. Those cases are pending.”

ACORN and its voter registration arm, Project Vote, operated massive incident filled voter registration and get-out-the-vote drives in a number of states. The 2004 map below gives voters an idea as to the scale of its operations.

ACORN’s denials of a quota system rang hollow especially with evidence like its own handbooks and the screen shot below, which is from ACORN’s Political Operations department:

Additionally, the unmodified documents shown below are from a 2005 Citizens Consulting Inc. presentation on payroll and accounting, and they reference incentives twice. Also referenced is payroll allocation forms for incentives. Below are screen shots of these documents.

ACORN has possibility committed felonies in several of the states where these drives were held. But in a bold move that illustrates the problems in the system, ACORN decided to file a federal lawsuit.

“The American Civil Liberties Union of Pennsylvania and ACORN’s get-out-the-dead-people-to-vote affiliate Project Vote filed a federal lawsuit today in an effort to snuff out the Keystone State’s anti-election fraud law.

According to the ACLU the law has been misapplied by Allegheny County’s Democratic District Attorney Stephen Zappala Jr., who filed seven charges against former ACORN workers for falsifying voter registration forms. After preliminary hearings, all seven have been ordered to stand trial.

In a press release, the ACLU said the law has been misapplied ‘to prohibit an organization from using flexible productivity standards and goals to manage paid canvassers.’

Translation: efforts to crack down on election fraud are bad because, well, they crack down on election fraud.”

Last week, a judge in Pennsylvania ruled that ACORN is allowed to proceed with their lawsuit.

“A federal judge rejected a motion by state Attorney General Tom Corbett to toss out a portion of a lawsuit filed by the community group ACORN challenging the constitutionality of a law barring the use of quotas to pay voter registration workers.”

While some may argue that ACORN no longer exists, lawsuits like the one progressing through the court system in Pennsylvania should remind all voters of the continuing threat to our electoral system.

The final stretch of a campaign encompasses countless elements that will often make or break efforts to push a candidate across the finish line: making closing arguments to potential voters, working last-minute media relations to garner positive publicity, and diligently using financial resources to squeeze the most efficiency out of every last penny are a few examples. However, a vital component – arguably the most significant to achieving victory – is the all-important Get Out The Vote, or GOTV: establishing a targeted ground game to pull last-minute support into your column on Election Day.

Campaigns traditionally go through an early period where they examine the electoral DNA that make up their district; going precinct-by-precinct and determining which ones historically vote along their party lines and which ones often go for the opposition. Targeting the swing areas, or 50/50 precincts, that could realistically go either way depending on turnout, customarily takes up a significant portion of work and time. It is here where campaigns employ micro-targeting and persuasion: learning as much as possible about voters – what issues are important and relevant to their lives – and then based on this information providing a sound and convincing argument why they should support their candidacy, persuading them to cast a ballot on their behalf. Ideally, a campaign wants to reach out to these voters at least three times whether by phone-banking or volunteers knocking on doors, the goal is to make these 50/50 precincts 49/51 or more in your favor.

As the calendar moves from summer, past Labor Day and into the fall, the final election-sprint takes place and effective campaigns carry out a targeted GOTV strategy. This is a period of days, maybe a week at the most, before Election Day, when you direct efforts to pull voters in precincts that traditionally support your type of candidacy or political party; here is when you direct attention to precincts that are closer to 70/30 in your favor and not so much towards swing areas, this is the time to push, pull, and drag voters to the polls and make sure your supporters are represented on Election Day.

A fundamental flaw for many campaigns that come up short and are unable to win has been the failure to reach out to these traditionally strong areas of support in the final stages of an election. An effective GOTV effort can sway results by four to six percentage points and is often the key to victory. Many voters, especially in off-year elections, need that final push and personal contact to remind them to turn out in November.

Election Day is looming closer and closer. Campaigns that have specific and detailed plans to devote the final days to a GOTV ground game in areas of traditional support have a much better chance for realizing victory, while those that fail to implement this strategy risk falling short and facing ultimate defeat.

There are just over 30 days before the election and whether you are just getting started or you’ve been Facebooking since the primaries, now is the time to kick that Facebook Page into overdrive. Here are my 5 no fail tips for campaigns of all sizes and fan counts whether you are just starting your Facebook Page or heading into the last month of the campaign 1,000 fans strong.

Remember that your Facebook Page is social. For many people, Facebook has become a natural place to find information, ask questions, and communicate with others. While many candidates have embraced the idea of Facebook, they have not quite grasped this communicative give and take nature of the platform. Put simply, you need to monitor your Facebook Page, addressing concerns and answering questions as quickly as possible. This will become more important as Election Day draws closer and supporters and potential voters turn to your page and not the phone, website, or email to get their questions about yard signs, campaign events, and polling places answered.

Commit your Facebook URL to memory. When you meet new voters, speak at events, or do interviews you should always mention your Facebook URL and website URL. You should end every speech with something to the effect of “join me online at nameforcongress.com and become a fan of mine on Facebook at Facebook.com/nameforcongress. This tells your supporters that you are committed to your online presence (because you remembered to tell them about it) and it increases the likelihood they will look for you online- maybe even right then on those fancy smartphones they have with them.

Reach Your Core Supporters First. With about 30 days to go if you are still looking at about 50 fans on your Facebook Page, don’t despair, but do create a plan and get to work right now. When you are creating Facebook ads to target voters, your first strategy should be to find those voters you know already support you. Your likely voters offline are also your likely fans online, so you want to find them first. These are the people who will be most likely to suggest your page to their friends and share your content and you will need their support and engagement on your Page when it comes time to broaden your target reach on Facebook. You can find these core supporters by asking conservative leaders in your community or district to promote your Page, by suggesting the Page to your group of friends and asking them to do the same, and by running targeted Facebook Ads. After you begin reaching these core supporters and engaging them on your Page, you can create a plan for finding unaffiliated and noncore supporters on Facebook.

Post Pictures from the Campaign Trail. Posting pictures of your offline activities online is a great way to gently remind your Facebook fans that there is a real-life campaign going on and you need their help offline. Post pictures of your candidate talking to volunteers, supporters going door to door, and folks busy working in your campaign headquarters. Post pictures of yard signs around your district and pictures from last week’s tea party rally where your candidate spoke. Post as many pictures as you can, but be sure to post pictures that include supporters, so your Facebook fans can see that your campaign has volunteers who are busy and engaged offline.

Stop Taking Yourself (And Your Page) So Seriously. Facebook is a powerful tool for finding voters and engaging supporters and I obviously think it’s an important platform for your campaign to invest both time and resources. However, at the end of the day, Facebook is still a place where folks log on to play games like Mob Wars and Farmville and spend countless hours looking at their friends’ vacation pictures. This is not a completely serious site and its fine – even preferable – to loosen up a bit on Facebook and have a little fun. Invite your fans to submit photos, answer trivia questions, or engage in some other contest you create. Publicly thank supporters for their time and efforts and mention interesting adventures you’ve had on the campaign trail traveling with your staff.

The bottom line? The more fun you’re having on Facebook, the more engaged your fans will be. And, who knows, maybe CNN will be writing about the correlation between your Facebook Page and big election night win on November 3^rd!

For more tips on engaging your supporters, check out “Door-Knocking with 3,000 of your closest friends: Moving your campaign’s supporters offline and into your precincts.”

This blog was originally posted at Majority Connections.

As we were pleased to do last year, American Majority is providing in-depth training at the Smart Girl Politics 2010 Summit in DC this weekend, and I wanted to share some notes from it with you.

Yesterday, we held five training sessions, with Anita MonCrief and Faulkner Strategies joining us at the Summit- we started off teaching attendees about the system, how the progressive movement has systematically implemented reforms that have created the flawed system we currently face- and perhaps most importantly, how to break it.  Do you want to the learn the same things?  You can view that presentation on our website.

Then we explained how precincts work, why they are important, and how to work your precinct for a candidate you believe in for this upcoming election- or how to target precincts within your district to lead to victory if you’re the candidate yourself.  This is one of the most important presentations for conservative activists to know and understand, as the key to governing is first winning politically.  You can also view this presentation online to better understand precincts yourself.

Anita MonCrief taught attendees how to identify voter fraud- and what to do once they find it.  I broke out some notes from Anita’s stellar presentation in my blog post a few weeks ago.  Understanding legal voter registration, voter fraud and what to do about these issues is going to be of supreme importance to liberty-minded citizens in every election from the very local level, all the way up.

Our good friends at Faulkner Strategies joined us for a session on running for office, titled “Deciding to Run.”  A strong presentation focusing on the different dynamics and decisions that women candidates will be faced with, I saw lots of ink pens flying across note pages during this training session.  I don’t have a copy of Faulkner Strategies’ specific presentation, but we do have one of our “running for office” training presentations online that you can check out.  I am loving the field of strong conservative women who are taking back their communities and running for office this year- let’s keep this momentum growing and keep turning out solid candidates next year as well.

Finally, we spent some time training on the importance of engaging hearts and minds online through Facebook, Twitter, blogging, wiki projects and more.  You can view one of our new media presentations online, where you’ll learn about the history of communication and persuasion that we inherited from our founding fathers, why engaging online is so important, and then step-by-step instruction on how to do so.  New to the process?  Want detailed instruction on how to take your online engagement to the next level?  Download our Twitter or Facebook guides on our website and we’ll walk you through it.

Whether you were able to join us for the Smart Girl Summit 2010 or whether you were at home working hard for a candidate you believe in, or maybe just welcoming in the start of the fall season, we believe that knowledge is power.  So arm yourself, equip yourself, and let’s keep pushing on.

Independent Women’s Voice and American Majority Action are combining forces on The Repeal Pledge, which is calling for the de-authorization, defunding and repealing of ObamaCare. The hope is to get as many incumbents and candidates to sign the pledge to get them on the record. Rush Limbaugh has begun talking up the pledge, saying that ObamaCare must be repealed, and you can see the clip of Rush talking about it here at American Majority Action’s site. The Wall Street Journal wrote an editorial about it on Monday, and the entire editorial is here.  Now people will say that pledges are meaningless, they accomplish nothing. But that’s if they don’t have any muscle behind them to enforce the pledge. I have a feeling that there will be some real “muscle” behind this pledge, and once incumbents and candidates are on the record, they can be, and will be, held accountable. I would strongly encourage those reading to sign the pledge themselves, but also to get the incumbents and candidates in their districts to sign it as well. There are specific pledges for both incumbents and candidates, with the incumbent one being here, and the candidate one here. I believe that ObamaCare is, and should be, a major campaign issue this fall, so get ahold of the candidates in your area today and get them to sign the pledge.

With less than five weeks to go until Election Day, the nightmare that conservatives have been living in for the past couple of years seems to be almost over, or at least, this is what some have been saying.  While certainly there will be great euphoria as conservatives are elected to all levels of government this November, there is a growing mentality among conservatives that threatens the long-term sustainability of the movement.

In Exodus 24 in the Bible God instructs Moses to ascend Mount Sinai so that he could provide the people of Israel with laws and commandments that would benefit and sustain the society through their journey to the Promised Land.  These laws and commandments are detailed in chapters 24 through 31.  In chapter 32, apparently the people of Israel had grown tired of waiting for they pressured Aaron to continue the journey.  Here is the relevant text:

When the people saw that Moses delayed to come down from the mountain, the people gathered themselves together to Aaron and said to him, “Up, make us gods who shall go before us. As for this Moses, the man who brought us up out of the land of Egypt, we do not know what has become of him.” ² So Aaron said to them, “Take off the rings of gold that are in the ears of your wives, your sons, and your daughters, and bring them to me.” ³ So all the people took off the rings of gold that were in their ears and brought them to Aaron. ⁴ And he received the gold from their hand and fashioned it with a graving tool and made a golden calf. And they said, “These are your gods, O Israel, who brought you up out of the land of Egypt!” (Exodus 32:1-5 ESV)

There are several interesting parallels between the situation described in Exodus and our current political climate.  First, when Moses left the camp, there was a vacuum of power.  Whether or not you believe that President Bush was a conservative, it is clear that, as President, he was dubbed as the standard-bearer of the conservative movement.  When President Obama was elected in 2008 and conservatives across all levels of government were booted to the curb, there was a similar vacuum of power.  Conservatives found themselves for the first time in over a decade out of power on the federal level and in many states.

Second, because of the power vacuum left by Moses, the people rallied together and approached Aaron to do something about their situation.  In the past two years, we have witnessed the incredible rise of the Tea Party movement, a movement not built or controlled by the establishment, power political figures or organizations, but a movement built of loosely organized grassroots coalitions.  Both the Israelites and today’s Tea Party movement understood the gravity of the times.

Third, the pressure of the Israelites forced Aaron to create a golden calf as a substitute for the presence of God.  Today, much of the Tea Party movement is placing their hopes in the changes that will be wrought in November of this year and in 2012.  I would never argue that elections do not matter, because they certainly do, and I would never say that short term political goals and results are meaningless, because they are not.  There is, however, a pervasive and seemingly irresistible mentality among conservatives right now that winning at the ballot box is going to erase all of the past few years and place us back onto some sort of path that will lead us back to some golden age that we have lost.  To this mentality I say, beware of the golden calf.

When progressives turned out en masse in 2008 for President Obama, there was a similar mentality that one man was going to be able to usher in a new era of politics with the expectation that the lives of all would economically and socially improve overnight.  I imagine the Israelites must have thought similarly of Moses and their own futures after their miraculous trek across the Red Sea.  Yet, like Jacob who woke up to discover the woman he had married was Leah (Genesis 29), those who had expectations of President Obama as a sort of political messiah have been sorely disappointed with the results.

November 2nd is an important date for conservatives, but regardless of the outcomes, it is not an end.  You may hear some pundits claim victory and tell the movement that “we have arrived,” but this is a mirage, a fashioned image that we must resist at all costs.  In politics, there is no final resting place; we must continue to be engaged, continue to refine our activism, continue to hold our elected officials accountable, and most importantly, continue to advocate for the freedom and prosperity of all Americans.