Friday 29th of March 2024

god, guns, greed, grumpy, grease pole, gifts from the tobacco industry, gripes, filibuster, black lung disease, war...

mitch

Kentucky Senate candidate Amy McGrath released an ad Friday attacking Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell for having "left our coal miners behind years ago."

The ad, currently running in McConnell's home state, features a group of coal miners living with black lung disease. Pike County miner Jimmy Moore goes on to describe a 10-hour bus ride the 120-person group took last month to appeal to the senator for a restoration of their disability benefits. The objective of the meeting was to request that lawmakers collect additional taxes from coal companies to offset the miners' medical costs.

"Ten hours on a bus, and we got to see him for all of one minute," Moore says in the video.

McGrath took to Twitter with the campaign ad, writing "Our coal miners risked their lives to fuel our country—but Mitch McConnell would only give a group of them with black lung disease a scant minute when they rode 10 hours to visit him in Washington. My question for McConnell: Which side are you on?"

The former Marine fighter pilot quickly followed up, tweeting "Mitch McConnell has all the time in the world to cut taxes for rich people and corporations. But with time running out to protect coal miners with black lung disease, he's doing nothing."

Previously, coal companies were required to pay a $1.10 per ton excise tax in order to financially support the federal Black Lung Disability Trust Fund. Now, according to the U.S. Treasury Department, the trust fund has had to borrow more than $6 million to sustain itself.

McConnell spokesperson Stephanie Penn told Reuters in a statement last month, the senator is "working closely with interested parties regarding future funding for the program and will continue to ensure these important benefits are maintained."

In addition to air time across the state of Kentucky, Mcgrath's ad calling attention the coal miners' plight received a wide number of views within a few hours of being posted across social media platforms like Twitter and YouTube.

Democratic strategist and consultant Adam Parkhomenko expressed his admiration for the McGrath campaign, tweeting "Y'all are monsters. 664,000 views of 877,000 total views from you sharing this tweet in a matter of hours."

McGrath's ad has also garnered support from politically outspoken actor Sophia Bush, who reacted to the original Twitter by post by writing "THIS. I am so impressed by @AmyMcGrathKY and her fight for KY."

 

Read more:

https://www.newsweek.com/mitch-mcconnell-challenger-amy-mcgrath-release-...

 

mitch is not a scientist, but he won't listen to them..


Mitch McConnell is the Republican senior Senator for Kentucky, having first been elected in 1984. McConnell has been the Senate Majority Leader since 2015, having served as Minority Leader from 2007. [2][3]

After graduating from the University of Kentucky College of Law, McConnell worked as an intern for John Sherman Cooper and as chief legislative assistant to Marlow Cook, both Republican Senators for Kentucky. He later served as a Deputy Assistant Attorney General during the administration of President Gerald Ford. Before his election as Senator, McConnell was judge-executive of Jefferson County, Kentucky. [2]

McConnell currently sits on the following Senate Committees: Agriculture, Nutrition And Forestry; Appropriations; Rules & Administration.

He is married to Elaine L. Chao, U.S. Secretary of Transportation and former Secretary of Labor under President George W. Bush. [4][2]

McConnell has consistently cast doubt on climate science and opposed action to reduce emissions.

In 2017, he was one of 22 Republican Senators who signed a letter, coordinated by James Inhofe, to President Trump urging him to withdraw from the Paris Agreement on climate change. Analysis by The Guardian and the Center for Responsive Politics found that the group had collectively received over $10m from the fossil fuel industry over the previous three election cycles, with McConnell receiving more than $1.5m. In the 2018 election cycle, McConnell received $100,150 in donations from Alliance Resource Partners, an Oklahoma-based coal company. [5][6][7]

During the Obama administration, McConnell withheld Republican support for major presidential initiatives, making extensive use of the filibuster and blocking the majority of Obama's judicial nominees[14][15]

Koch Ties

McConnell has close ties to the billionaire Koch brothers, having spoken at conferences organised by their political network. In a leaked audio recording from 2014, McConnell revealed plans to a meeting of Koch-allied donors, saying that if the Republicans gained control of Congress, they could use the budget process to force the president to roll back his priorities.

McConnell said: “We’re going to go after them on health care, on financial services, on the Environmental Protection Agency, across the board.” He told the Kochs: “I don’t know where we’d be without you.”  Other Republican figures including Tom Cotton, Cory Gardner and Joni Ernst were also present and praised the Kochs for their funding of Republican candidates' campaigns. [8][9]

According to data obtained by the Center for Responsive Politics, McConnell has received $86,350 directly from Koch Industries since 2008. [10]

Positions

On his Senate-hosted website, McConnell states: “We need to both find more energy and use less. Every source of energy should be considered, especially coal, which remains a vital source of energy for Kentucky.” [11]

In 2014, McConnell said that approving the controversial Keystone XL oil pipeline would be Republican Senators' top priority and in 2016 claimed that Obama had “sat on the Keystone pipeline throughout his entire eight years, even though his own State Department said it had no measurable impact on climate.” [12]

McConnell has played a leading role in opposing stricter campaign finance laws in the U.S. political system, challenging the McCain-Feingold Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act in the Supreme Court in 2003 on the basis that it allegedly infringed on First Amendment rights. [13]

In the 2016 Republican primaries, McConnell initially backed fellow Kentucky Senator Rand Paul, before switching his support for Donald Trump[16][17]

Stance on Climate Change

October 2, 2014

In an interview with the Cincinnati Enquirer, McConnell said[5]

“We can debate this forever. George Will had a column in the last year or so pointing out that in the 70s, we were concerned the ice age was coming. I'm not a scientist. I’m interested in protecting Kentucky’s economy.” [5]

 

Read more:

https://www.desmogblog.com/mitch-mcconnell

 

Without paying attention to global warming, Kentucky’s economy is likely to go down the drain...

his crocodile tears are more like smoking-snake piss...

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., says one of his "highest priorities" is to take on the leading cause of preventable death in the United States: smoking.

McConnell has sponsored a bill, along with Virginia Democratic Sen. Tim Kaine, that would increase the tobacco purchase age from 18 to 21.

In a speech on the Senate floor last month, McConnell said, "The sad reality is that Kentucky has been the home to the highest rates of cancer in the country. We lead the entire nation in the percentage of cancer cases tied directly to smoking."

Indeed, nearly 9,000 Kentuckians die every year from smoking — roughly 24 people every day. Kentucky also spends $1.9 billion on smoking-related health problems like lung cancer, strokes and premature birth.

"Our state once grew tobacco like none other," said McConnell. "And now we're being hit by the health consequences of tobacco use like none other."

Still, McConnell noted, "I might seem like an unusual candidate to lead this charge."

For many public health advocates, that was a vast understatement.

Following the industry's lead

An NPR review of McConnell's relationship with the tobacco industry over the decades has found that McConnell repeatedly cast doubt on the health consequences of smoking, repeated industry talking points word-for-word, attacked federal regulators at the industry's request and opposed bipartisan tobacco regulations going back decades.

The industry, in turn, has provided McConnell with millions of dollars in speaking fees, personal gifts, campaign contributions and charitable donations to the McConnell Center, which is home to his personal and professional archives.

 

Read more:

 

https://www.npr.org/2019/06/17/730496066/tobaccos-special-friend-what-in...

 

 

how many more names will be added to the list?...

..McConnell doesn't like "Moscow Mitch"...would "Mass Murder Mitch" be more appropriate? 

The Washington Post, 9-3-2019 

" How many more names will be added to the list before Mitch McConnell acts on guns? " 
…………. 

" What if there was a mass shooting in the United States not once or twice or four or six times monthly, but every single day, a big one, the kind that electrifies social media and squats for days on Page 1 — would that be enough to move Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell from his insistent inertia on gun safety? Would any volume of bloodshed convince the Kentucky Republican that Congress faces a moral imperative to act? Thirty-eight people were slain in three such shootings in August — in Dayton, Ohio, and El Paso, as well as West Texas — and still Senate Republicans and President Trump refuse to act. " 


https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/how-many-more-names-will-be-added-to-the-list-before-mitch-mcconnell-acts-on-guns/2019/09/03/5c111634-ba07-11e9-b3b4-2bb69e8c4e39_story.html 
………………………………. 

...people are crying out, lamenting 

 

Red more:

https://www.democraticunderground.com/100212435958

 

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