Alan Grayson will be out of Congress in two weeks, but he’s not stopping. He just filed a bill that makes president’s tax returns releasable under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA). His bill is H.R. 6507 ands Paul Ryan will make sure it’s never voted on while he’s Speaker of the House, something we plan to end after the 2018 congressional elections.
A “political nightmare for the GOP.”
The above is certainly one of Grayson's last floor speeches-- at least until 2019-- and he made the best of it with a proposal I've been waiting for. In fact, I think it's a proposal many people outside of the professional political class, regardless of party, will be excited about: NONE OF THE ABOVE as a ballot designation in federal elections. I talked with Grayson several times while he was writing the bill and I know he didn't just have presidential elections in mind-- let alone this particular one-- although I suspect many people will interpret it that way.
There are 5 Senate races that are really close and that will determine which party controls that body for the next two years-- but neither swingy Ohio nor Florida, where Chuck Schumer picked his own candidates, Ted Strickland and Patrick Murphy, and rammed them through the primary process-- are among them.
Blue America spends most of its time and energy on House races. As far as the 2016 Senate races go, after Donna Edwards (MD), PG Sittenfeld (OH) and Alan Grayson (FL) were defeated in their primaries by establishment candidates the only Senate endorsements we have left are for Russ Feingold (WI), who looks like he'll probably win a week from tomorrow, and two long-shots who beat their more conservative opponents, Ray Metcalfe (AK) and Misty Kathrine Snow (UT).
A few years ago, Alan Grayson suggested we use a mobile billboard-- a truck with billboards mounted on them like the ones on this page-- in a campaign we were doing to help defeat Buck McKeon. Grayson was right about the efficacy of the mobile billboards compared to far more expensive TV advertising... and Blue America has been doing it ever since.
You can't imagine how hard Chuck Schumer pushed to win the Florida Senate nomination for not-Grayson. It helped that the hapless boob he put up has rich, ruthlessly corrupt parents willing to spend whatever, and that he had already proven himself an unquestioningly devoted Wall Street shill, voting with the GOP on the House Financial Services Committee to do whatever it took to disarm Wall Street oversight and reform.
Yesterday, Hillary had an OpEd in Policy.Mic, Here's What Millennials Have Taught Me.
