Showing posts with label Keith Plunkett. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Keith Plunkett. Show all posts

Wednesday, August 12, 2015

Y'all Politics' Frank Corder's Claim that MSGOP sought neutrality in 2014 Race is False

Republican Ideologue and Self Proclaimed Mississippi Republican Party Apologist, Frank Corder,  posted a rebuttal to an article written by Keith Plunkett at Mississippi PEP which addressed the MSGOP's purposed ignoring of Republican Senator Ted Cruz'x visit to the state.


 Among the many bullet points, Corder wrote:
  • Sen. John McCain was in state in 2014 to support Thad Cochran's reelection campaign. Similarly, Sen. Rick Santorum (who is running for president again as well and actually endorsed McDaniel unlike Cruz), Sarah Palin and others stumped for Chris McDaniel. The party sought neutrality in the race as best as possible, not inserting themselves. 
I don't think that has been so, since Joe Nosef is the chairman of the MSGOP:
A couple examples, among others:

http://znotesmississippi.blogspot.com/2014/10/joe-nosef-conservatives-should-support.html

http://znotesmississippi.blogspot.com/2014/06/one-note-about-one-quote-mississippi.html
Note that Nosef's comments were BEFORE the Primary Runoff. There were other issues which included the racist robo-calls, which were admitted to having been done by Henry Barbour, to which the party just suggested that all is fair in elections and war. 


Corder also noted that

  • The state party posted a message on Facebook Tuesday evening noting Cruz's visit and the importance of Mississippi's role on the national stage.
But, as a note. Plunkett wrote his article on Aug 10. Sam R Hall at the Clarion ledger wrote his article on Aug 11.  THEN, the MSGOP posted to Facebook later that afternoon. So it's a little hard to believe the MSGOP would have shown any support or even mention the Cruz visit had Plunkett not written his article and then Sam R Hall's article mentioning it. At least not in light of their very active presence in pushing Thad Cochran over McDaniels in 2014.

It will be interesting to see how the MSGOP acts and reacts should Ted Cruz get the nomination over their own darlings, Jeb Bush or Scott Walker.

http://www.picayune.us/ms-frank-corder.html

Tuesday, June 23, 2015

Keith Plunkett: The state flag isn’t the problem. Forgetting our humanity is.

Excerpt from an article by Keith Plunkett.

A young mentally unstable young man in South Carolina, easily susceptible to a message of hatred and violence, and apparently without any parental supervision to help steer him in a different direction or get him the help he needed, walked into an African American church in Charleston and gunned down 9 people because of the color of their skin.

Within hours pictures surfaced of the young man waving a Confederate Battle Flag. President Obama’s lack of compassion for the dead in an attempt to use the tragic incident as a political means to reboot a discussion about gun control are quickly overshadowed when former presidential candidate Mitt Romney– with an equal lack of compassion for the dead–calls for the Confederate Battle Flag to be removed from flying at the state capitol in South Carolina. The outrage mob on Twitter and in the media picks up on the comments to begin focusing on Mississippi’s official state flag and the “need” to change it, too.

9 people are dead in South Carolina and their families and community are devastated. The remainder of a young mans life is ruined by the lack of a social network that could have and should have intervened. And all we can talk about now is a damn flag?

What the hell happened to our society that causes us to search for blame in an object, and ignore the real causes of social degradation?

We cannot change what happened in years past, but we can learn from it and change next year and the year after. Those who can’t take their experiences nor their time nor their place and honor it through action that puts the health of society and our people first will be easily manipulated by symbols and symbolic gestures that are meaningless when it comes to facing shared challenges.The problem doesn’t lie in the facade we paint, the problem lies in the hearts of each of us. We can’t create new packaging and expect the underlying issues to disappear into the wind.

Fortunately, if we have the courage to take our individual little pieces of knowledge, our own places in time and history, and join it together with others experience, then that is where the solutions can be found.
That starts with losing our newfound national pastime of constantly being offended and making politically selfish points out of every human tragedy.

The state flag isn’t the problem. Forgetting our humanity is.

Complete article is HERE

http://www.picayune.us/ms-keith-plunkett.html

Thursday, May 14, 2015

United Conservatives Fund fires back @MSyallpolitics for false reports.

Report from Mississippi PEP:
  • Mississippi PEP: The United Conservatives Fund (UCF) today released the following statement regarding a false report on the website YallPolitics.com.The post headline claimed UCF was “backing” a candidate for Lt. Governor in the upcoming statewide elections, and the article claimed the race was “widely expected to be a litmus test for tea party/liberty groups including the United Conservatives Fund.”
 UCF Press Release
 
“Once again we see how Alan Lange and his cohorts at Y’all Politics are fond of broad misrepresentations without respect to facts,” said UCF spokesperson Keith Plunkett. “UCF has a system in place for candidates to submit their information, and our executive committee is looking at many who have done so. The United Conservatives Fund has had no contact with Mrs. McEllhenney or her campaign. Should she decide to reach out we will take a look at her information just like we have all the others.”

“Our 9-member committee from across the state is working on evaluations of the candidates,” Plunkett said. “We will request additional information from them in the next few days to begin finalizing who we may support and in what form that support will be. But, no such announcements of support have been confirmed or scheduled at this time. For Y’all Politics to claim otherwise is just more evidence of how untrustworthy they have become as a source of information, and of the politically charged negative drivel they now promote.”

Plunkett said Y’all Politics “descent into tabloid hatefulness has sometimes been excruciating to watch.”
“Many writers try to be colorful and creative in how they present information,” said Plunkett. “I certainly have. But, when the information itself is untrue, well that’s at best dishonest – at worst it’s defamation.”
This is not the first time Lange has faced such questions. A twenty-year veteran FBI agent sued Lange along with co-author Tom Dawson and publisher Pediment Publishing in 2010 for defamation following the publication of the book, Kings of Tort.

“Y’all Politics was once a valued source of information,” said Plunkett. “It appears Alan’s willingness to put things in a false light to build his brand of negative politics and as a means to hold on to an audience has changed that. Mississippians deserve better. I hope he will do the right thing and issue a retraction.”

Wednesday, May 6, 2015

Wilson: Term limits could have unintended consequences for Mississippi Legislature

By Steve Wilson | Mississippi Watchdog

Mississippi legislators and other officer holders could be limited to two consecutive four-year terms, like the governor and lieutenant governor.

Problem is, good legislators — as well as the bad — would be cast out by the ballot initiative, filed with the Mississippi Secretary of State’s office by Keith Plunkett, the policy and communications director for state Sen. Chris McDaniel’s United Conservatives Fund.

The initiative is proposed to stem the power of incumbency and end the corruption instituted by career politicians. To summarize — throw the bums out and their waste, fraud and abuse with it.
Plunkett told Mississippi Watchdog the biggest reason for filing for a ballot initiative was to get the public more involved in the political process. Incumbents are able to raise huge war chests with ease, and it often has a chilling effect on potential challengers by ending the battle before it begins.

“It’s about getting the public to re-engage and actually have access to the machine of government as it functions in the Legislature,” Plunkett said. “Elections will become more about policy rather than personality or the guy with the coolest logo. It becomes much, much more about policy.”

Nathan Shrader is an assistant professor of political science at Millsaps College who served as a legislative aide in both the Pennsylvania Senate and the Virginia General Assembly.
Term limits can have serious, unintended consequences, he says.
“I don’t think this is the panacea that a lot of reformers think that it would be,” Shrader said. He cited the book “Term Limits and The Dismantling of State Legislature Professionalism,” from 2005 by Thad Kousser.

Shrader said some of those consequences in three states — California, Colorado and Maine — studied by Kousser included a power shift to the executive branch, a big gain of strength of party leadership in the legislatures over their caucuses and the need for legislatures to hire more staff to deal with inexperienced lawmakers.