Erick Erickson, who boosted Gov. Pete Ricketts's candidacy, once called Supreme Court Justice David Souter a "goatfucking child molester," which is kind of a contradiction, unless the alleged goat really was a kid.
Ricketts paid tribute to Erickson by appearing at his Red State confab and taking a selfie.
Now Erickson has tweeted his little celebration of GOP Mayor Stothert's Omaha reelection win yesterday with an Instagram celebrating the arrival at his house of a shipment of Omaha Steaks.
In 2012, Consumer Research looked at a number of reviews of Omaha Steaks (sadly, none reviewed the company's dry ice) and found the other contents of the company's shipping boxes to be sorely lacking:
Omaha meats do not earn the highest ratings in any of the reviews we read. Paul Lukas' review in Money magazine gets right to the point: "While Omaha pioneered the category, it's not a premium vendor." Cook's Illustrated, meanwhile, pans Omaha meat's regular boneless strip as "thin" and "grainy," and the company's Private Reserve strip fares even worse, earning comments like "tough," "stringy" and "chewy." No reviewer rates Omaha beef as the best mail-order steak.
Every committee is now chaired by a Republican, except Laura Ebke, the new Judiciary Committe Chair, who left the GOP after Gov. Ricketts attacked her in a speech for voting to abolish the death penalty in Nebraska.
Following the 2016 legislative session, Ricketts addressed a state
Republican convention, criticizing several Republican state legislators
for failing to support his position on various issues, and calling for
the election of more "platform Republicans" to the legislature. Ebke was
one of thirteen legislators who signed a letter criticizing Ricketts
for conduct that they described as placing partisanship ahead of
principle. Shortly thereafter, Ebke changed her registration from the
Republican to the Libertarian Party. She was thought to be the first Libertarian member of the Nebraska legislature.
Donald Trump's never-ending river of bullshit nearly overflowed its banks with his statement about picking the scion of billionaire TD Ameritrade founder Joe Ricketts as his #2 pick at Commerce. The Ricketts family, you will recall, is the one Trump savaged in a tweet, warning them to heel as they "have a lot to hide." Here's what Trump released:
“Todd Ricketts is an immensely
successful businessman with unparalleled knowledge of the finance
industry." Also: Ricketts has “years of
hands-on experience in the finance industry,” and
“like President-elect Trump, Mr. Ricketts will use this knowledge to fix
the broken Washington D.C. system.”
The Huffington Post looked into this specious praise:
According to his professional biography,
Ricketts spent his “career as an entrepreneur and investor in the
securities industry working at the New York City-based NASDAQ start-up,
Knight Securities.” But Ricketts only worked there for 14
months, a spokeswoman for the company told The Huffington Post, from
September 1997 to November 1998. And as for Ricketts’ career as “an
immensely successful businessman,” it appears to consist of a defunct
eco-tourism venture and a local bike shop that Ricketts bought a few
years ago to save it from going out of business.
As Nebraska's wealthy TD Ameritrade scion, Gov. Pete Ricketts, partied with fellow owners of the Cubs in Chicago (the new headquarters of formerly Omaha-based ConAgra), we noted that his family-funded Future45 PAC is dumping millions into new anti-Hillary attack ads on the Internet and airwaves in at least five closely contested states in order to bolster Donald Trump's campaign. One is a bizarre rap:
One is pitched at Hispanics:
Another one pretends to be worried about the plight of LGBTs — in other countries. As governor, Pete Ricketts has adamantly opposed marriage equality in Nebraska, though not in Illinois, where he attended his sister Laura's gay wedding in Chicago.
Here's the press release, from the ACLU of Nebraska's website. written after Nebraska Attorney General Doug Peterson announced he was going to make a federal case out of the Obama Justice Department's new guidelines to protect transgender students, because the first multi-state challenge apparently did not allow him to grandstand sufficiently with you tax dollars. You can read the suit, filed today, in its entirety, right here at AKSARBENT. Lincoln, Neb – On Friday, May 13 the Departments of Education and Justice announced comprehensive guidance
that requires schools to treat transgender students in accordance with
their gender identity. Today the Nebraska Attorney General’s Office
announced it was suing the federal government related to this guidance. Danielle Conrad, Executive Director of the ACLU of Nebraska, has this reaction: “It is time for our state leaders to stop playing politics with
the lives and wellbeing of young transgender Nebraskans and fully live
up to our state's motto of 'Equality Before the Law'. As a state, we
all do better when every student has the opportunity to succeed, and
that includes ensuring our transgender students are treated with dignity
and respect according to their gender identity. Title IX has long
prohibited discrimination on the basis of sex, including in single-sex
spaces and activities. The recent federal guidance being challenged by
the Attorney General does not create any new obligations for Nebraska
schools and in fact is consistent with past practice of providing
important clarity to schools that receive federal funding about best
practices to protect all students from gender discrimination. The ACLU
of Nebraska has successfully resolved these very issues without fanfare
or costly litigation with various Nebraska school districts on behalf of
transgender students and their families. “While there is increased attention on transgender students and
legal protections for them, the reality is transgender students have
been attending our schools and going to the gender-appropriate
facilities for decades without incident. We commend the educational
professionals on the front lines of these issues in Nebraska that are
doing the right thing to ensure transgender students are being treated
with dignity and respect. The Nebraska State Board of Education recently
rejected an attempt to circumvent the guidance; the National Education
Association recently adopted a resolution as America's teachers to
support transgender students. It would be far more productive, and a
better use of taxpayer funds, for the Attorney General to open a
dialogue with transgender students in Nebraska and their families about
how we can work together to support equal opportunity for all Nebraska
kids.” For more: https://aclunebraska.org/transvoices https://www.aclunebraska.org/en/press-releases/aclu-governor-ricketts-stop-playing-politics-wellbeing-nebraska-students-taxpayer
The Omaha World-Herald reports that the "vendor" producing the ugly Ricketts administration sesquicentennial Nebraska license plates will halt production until a new image of the Sower sculpture can be produced. The current image is a composite of the sculpture atop the state capitol in Lincoln (left, at the bottom of this post) and a bas relief sower image at Michigan State (right, at the bottom of this post. Both were created by Lee Lawrie, who also made the bronze Atlas installed in 1937 in Rockefeller Center in New York City.
This rendering of the Nebraska State
Capitol, one of the world's most
phallic government buildings, used to
grace the wall at P.O. Pears, a Lincoln bar.
The real reason for the reversal, we'd bet, is that Nebraskans largely hate it and that it has been ridiculed as outrageously phallic on Comedy Central, although to be fair, having a sculpture of a sower flinging seed atop a dome atop a 400-foot shaft is pretty phallic to begin with and was probably the reason that Ernest Hemingway once referred to the Nebraska State Capitol as the "penis of the plains" in a visit to UNL.
Mosaic on floor inside NE capitol
@Midnight host Chris Hardwick snarked: “They chose Myriad Pro Black for the font!? Real
original.” He also didn't like that it drew attention from "the muscular Quaker jerking off on the cupcake."
(Obviously, Hardwick has never seen the inside of the state's Art Deco capitol.) In respect of fonts, few people know that Bertram Goodhue, who designed the capitol building, also designed an enduringly popular typeface, Cheltenham,which for years served as the headline font of the Omaha World-Herald.
This marks the latest embarrassment for Nebraska's rookie GOP Governor Pete Rickets, scion of the TD Ameritrade fortune. It follows publication of him posing for a smiling selfie with the right-wing radical who called SCOTUS Justice David Souter a goat fucking child molester, of him flying to Chicago to attend his sister's gay wedding after opposing same-sex marriage in Nebraska, of his administration trying to list gay spouses as "friend" on birth certificates, of him blowing in excess of $50,000 of tax dollars attempting to import illegal drugs into the state, of him pronouncing it "fitting and proper" for "all" Nebraskans, (presumably including Atheists and Agnostics) to acknowledge their gratitude for god's blessings and of him and his staff employing private emails to do public work.
Marlene Ricketts, who lives in Nebraska, is the wife of TD Ameritrade founder and billionaire Joe Ricketts, who lives in Wyoming. She has contributed millions to a SuperPac which excoriated Trump in Iowa and probably contributed to his loss. After Trump found out, he tweeted this, misspelling the family's name:
The Ricketts family is, except for lawyer and gay activist daughter Laura, solidly and actively Republican. A son, Pete, is the governor of Nebraska and has been brazenly trying to illegally import death penalty drugs into the state. He and his father are the principle backers of a referendum to bring back the death penalty following the Unicameral's override of Ricketts' veto of its abolition of capital punishment.
ALSO: Homophobic NE AG Don Peterson is denied an en banc hearing he requested in order to deprive a dying woman legal fees after she was forced to sue the state to recognize her legal same sex marriage.
Last summer, Nebraska Gov. and death penalty aficionado Pete Ricketts, who attended his sister's
gay wedding in Chicago but opposed gay marriage in Nebraska, told two
apparent lies in a press release following the landmark Supreme Court
ruling declaring gay marriage bans unconstitutional:
“The U.S. Supreme Court has spoken and ruled state same-sex marriage
bans to be unconstitutional. While 70 percent of Nebraskans approved our
amendment to our state constitution that defined marriage as only
between a man and a woman, the highest court in the land has ruled
states cannot place limits on marriage between same-sex couples. We will
follow the law and respect the ruling outlined by the court.”
The first lie was the assertion that 70% of Nebraskans disapproved of gay marriage. The actual figure, of course, was 70% of the people who went to the polls in 2000 to vote on the issue. Ricketts' second lie was his pledge to follow the law and respect the ruling.
From today's Omaha World-Herald:
The Nebraska chapter of the American Civil Liberties
Union asked a Nebraska federal judge on Thursday to issue an injunction
ordering the state to list both same-sex spouses as parents on birth
certificates of children born to same-sex couples.
The Nebraska Department of Health
and Human Services has refused to “provide married same-sex couples
birth certificates for their children on the same terms and conditions
as married different-sex couples,” the ACLU wrote in court records.
Since the U.S. Supreme Court
ruled in late June that same-sex couples could marry, at least two
same-sex couples in Nebraska — including the Wagners — have been unable
to list both of their names on the birth certificates of their newborns.
In the high court’s ruling, the
ACLU said, birth certificates were listed as one of the many marital
protections that must be provided equally to married same-sex couples.
On Thursday, the Nebraska Office
of Vital Records and Statistics confirmed the birth certificate form is
still the same as it was before the same-sex marriage opinion.
“We continue to evaluate the
impact of the Supreme Court decision on programs within our agency,”
Leah Bucco-White, a spokeswoman for DHHS, wrote in an email.
The request is being reviewed by the Nebraska Attorney General's office.
TD Ameritrade scion Pete Ricketts, now Nebraska's GOP governor, didn't like the fact that the Nebraska Unicameral overrode his veto of its removal of the state's death penalty, so he spent $200,000 (and his father kicked in another $100,000) to a paid petition drive to put the law on hold and reinstate Nebraska's death penalty on the next election's ballot as a constitutional amendment.
Now his organization, Nebraskans for the Death Penalty, faces a lawsuit seeking to negate the signature drive because the organization played fast and loose with requirements of Nebraska's initiative statute, which requires that there be a sworn list of every sponsor.
Nebraskans for the Death Penalty calls the just-filed lawsuit by Nebraskans for Public Safety (a opposing group) over the violation "frivolous" and a "technicality," despite the fact that in 2003 the Nebraska Supreme Court quashed an initiative which would have legalized video keno games for exactly such "frivolous" reasons.
The World-Heraldnotes that Ricketts is also alleged in the lawsuit to have violated his oath of office by seeking to
overturn a state law, rather than working to uphold it.
“The governor’s sponsorship of
the referendum would show formally that rather than prepare to support,
enforce and execute this duly passed law, he has instead aligned
himself, his political allies and persons directly controlled and
organized by him and sponsored this referendum,” stated the lawsuit,
filed in Lancaster County District Court. “He has with his personal and family fortune largely financed the attempt to do away with a law he disfavors.” The lawsuit said the governor
told state lawmakers that if they didn’t uphold his veto of the death
penalty repeal, a referendum would be launched.
Ricketts was unavailable for comment as he is absent from the state again on a "trade mission" to China and Japan, shortly after returning from a similar jaunt through Europe.
Here's the press release from Nebraskans For Public Safety:
Nebraskans for Public Safety files lawsuit challenging death penalty referendum
September 17, 2015 - For Immediate Release Contact: Alan Peterson, General Counsel, Nebraskans for Public Safety, 402-416-3633 alanepeterson@gmail.comNEBRASKANS FOR PUBLIC SAFETY FILES LAWSUIT CHALLENGING DEATH PENALTY REFERENDUM LINCOLN, Neb – Nebraskans for Public Safety filed suit in Lancaster
County District Court today challenging the legal sufficiency of the
death penalty referendum petition. The suit was filed on behalf of
Lincoln residents and longtime death penalty opponents Christy and
Richard Hargesheimer who are taxpayers concerned about the petition
process. The named defendants are Secretary of State John Gale in his
official capacity, Aimee Melton, Bob Evnen, Judy Glasburner, and
Nebraskans for the Death Penalty, Inc. Click here to view a copy of the
initial filing: http://nebraskansforpublicsafety.org/uploads/Complaint_FILE_STAMPED.pdf The legal team representing the Hargesheimers include some of
Nebraska’s leading and experienced attorneys: Alan Peterson, Jerry
Soucie, Amy Miller, and Christopher Eickholt. “All Nebraskans support our robust tradition of direct
democracy-including referendum campaigns. However, all Nebraskans also
want a fair process where everyone plays by the rules. In the case of
the death penalty referendum it is clear that Governor Ricketts and his
supporters failed to do their due diligence and appeared to have cut
corners. That undermines the integrity of the referendum process and
that has legal consequences,” said Alan Peterson, lead counsel. “We look forward to having our day in court and defending a fair
process for everyone. Nebraskans know the death penalty is broken beyond
repair and belongs in our past. Powerful interests like the Governor
are not entitled to their own set of rules to pursue their own political
objectives. We are looking forward to having these issues decided
outside of the political arena and before an impartial judiciary,” said
Christy Hargesheimer. Nebraskans for Public Safety is a campaign committee organized to
oppose the death penalty referendum. It is a statewide coalition
conducting public education on smart alternatives to the death penalty
-- such as life in prison without parole -- that put public safety
first. Members include fiscal conservatives, faith leaders, victims’
families, and traditional death penalty opponents. Visit our website or
follow us on Facebook and Twitter.
Couples who sued in many states are now pursuing further orders,
including an award of lawyers’ fees. In response, Nebraska’s lawyers
have now gone further than other states have, seeking en banc review of
the dispute by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit. A three-judge panel of the Eighth Circuit on August 11 rejected Nebraska’s argument that the Nebraska case, Waters v. Ricketts,
was now moot and should be dismissed without a final order in the
couples’ favor. The panel said that the Supreme Court had only struck
down four states’ bans specifically — not including Nebraska’s — and did
not rule on any couples’ right to state benefits that go with marriage.
Like other couples, the seven couples in that state had sued not only
to get the chance to marry, but to gain its benefits.
While noting that state officials had assured the Eighth Circuit that
they stopped enforcing that state’s ban as soon as the Supreme Court
had ruled, the panel said the state had not yet “repealed or amended”
its ban. “Nebraska’s assurances of compliance…do not moot the case,” it
declared...
Nevertheless, Peterson now wants an en banc review of the three-judge, Eighth Circuit panel's rejection of his arguments, meaning that he wants to waste the time of eight judges, not just three. And you'll be footing part of the bill for Peterson's never-say-die, money-is-no-object, radical right wing agenda, Nebraska taxpayers.
UPDATE: Peterson's en banc request has been denied. Courtesy of Equality Case Files
Here's a photo of Nebraska Governor Pete Ricketts, out of the state again after his tour of Europe, in Georgia with Erick Erickson who runs the Red State blog and who apparently wants to be a kingmaker of ruthlessly ambitious politicians eager to make a name for themselves nationally among the most reactionary of the country's teabaggers.
Below the picture, some revolting golden oldies from the quote bank of the newest pal of Nebraska's radical right wing governor:
Wonder if Governor Ricketts attended Erickson's confab on his own or the state's dime?
Nebraska's GOP Governor, Pete Ricketts, who John Oliver called a 'dollar store Lex Luther,' has engineered draconian new unemployment requirements that would cut off benefits to those jobless who don't make five employment contacts a week — the strictest requirements in the nation, despite the fact that Nebraska has the country's lowest unemployment rate, about 2.7%.
Under the proposed rules, unemployment recipients would have to verify their job search on a state website — even, apparently, if they're among the rural poor without Internet access or transportation to whatever facilities might offer free Internet access.
James Goddard of Nebraska Appleseed, the only person to testify at Monday's public hearing besides Ricketts administration employees, noted the following, according to Paul Hammel's excellent coverage in the Omaha World-Herald:
Goddard, in his testimony, called
the requirements “out of touch” with current Internet- based job
searches. Under the proposed rule, someone who packed 10 job contacts
into only one day would lose jobless benefits, while someone who made
five contacts over three or four days would not, he said. ...Goddard said the online reporting requirements are also problematic. He
cited a report by the National Employment Law Project about a similar
reporting requirement in Florida that quadrupled the number of denials
based on procedural problems.
Nebraskans for the Death Penaltyreports it has raised $244,866 so far from 12 donors, including $25,000 from Michael Cassling, an Omaha CEO, $10,000 from the Omaha Police Union, and $100,000 each from Joe Ricketts (reputedly worth $1.6 billion), the founder of TD Ameritrade and his son Peter, Nebraska's current governor.
Last month the Nebraska Unicameral repealed Nebraska's death penalty, Ricketts vetoed the bill, but the Legislature overrode his veto Twoappalling miscarriages of justiceinvolving eight innocent Nebraskans charged with murder persuaded even many Republican's to abandon GOP death penalty support.
Nebraskans
for the Death Penalty said it paid roughly $192,000 to Lincoln Strategy
Group, an Arizona-based consultant that is using paid circulators to
gather signatures. Peterson estimated that the petition drive could cost
his group $900,000, roughly the same amount spent by a petition group
that sought last year to raise the minimum wage.
LeavenworthSt.,the leading exemplar of GOP hypocrisy in Nebraska, just threw a blog fit about efforts to ensure that the Unicameral's revocation of Gov. Pete Ricketts's license to kill stays revoked. Such efforts are in the form of a persuasion campaign to keep people from signing petitions to allow voters to reinstate the death penalty, this time ensconcing it into Nebraska's constitution.
The tantrum ran under the headline "Organized Voter Suppression."
Yeah, we know: GOP cheerleaders complaining about voter suppression is like germs complaining about disease. LeavenworthSt's schtick is that it is terribly troubled that an Alliance of the Nebraska ACLU and Nebraskans for Alternatives to the Death Penalty got a $400,0000 grant to run Decline to Sign TV ads. AND THE $400,000 GRANT WAS GIVEN BY A GROUP FUNDED BY GEORGE SOROS!!! (How much Soros funding was involved, LeavenworthSt. does not say.)
Pro-death penalty Gov. Pete Ricketts, called a "dollar store
Lex Luther" by HBO's John Oliver. Is the TD Ameritrade
fortune funding efforts to reinstate Nebraska's death penalty?
Why is advertising on this issue voter suppression? Because Democrats are doing it! Persuading the body politic not to overrule the actions of a legislature it directly elected is not only voter suppression, it's Organized Voter Suppression!
Never mind the GOP creation in various states of sloppy computer databases that suspiciously disenfranchise voters with ethnic names and GOP-engineered termination of early voting and the cutting back of voting hours and the hiring of corrupt voter registration firms which deposit Democratic voter registrations not to election commissioners but to dumpsters and requiring IDs of people who vote in elections but allowing anonymity to billionaires who buy elections via 501 (c) (4) "social welfare" organizations. None of that sort of genuine GOP voter suppression is anything LeavenworthSt would be caught dead talking about.
LeavenworthSt. is far more perturbed by $400,000 in anti-death penalty ads than the $900,000 that death penalty proponents will spend in a paid petition drive, and the $600,000 more they expect to spend in an ad campaign should the question reach the ballot.
Or, more importantly, where that 1.5 million bucks is coming from.
We have our suspicions of where the money trail ends and we bet they could be confirmed by Gov. Pete Ricketts's privately-paid staffer advisor, Jessica Moenning, who is coordinating the campaign to restore the death penalty after the Unicameral overrode Ricketts's veto of death penalty reform. Ricketts is a wealthy former TD Ameritrade executive and a son of the $1.6 billlionaire founder of same.
Below are both of the Decline To Sign Ads on YouTube, which weren't easy for us to find because apparently $400,000 doesn't buy a staffer who is willing to code a few obvious search keywords to make his or her YouTube video more discoverable. Bother.
Decline to sign ad 1:
Decline to sign ad 2:
Below, a Death Penalty petition circulator plays peek-a-boo with AKSARBENT's video camera:
College World Series 2015 fans are offered referendum petitions to reinstate death penalty after the Nebraska Unicameral repealed it over the veto of Gov. Pete Ricketts, former chief of family-founded business, Ameritrade. No one seems to know who is actually funding the cost of paid petitioners seeking to place a reinstatement of the death penalty on the ballot and, possibly, in Nebraska's constitution.
Today, attorney Laura Ricketts, daughter of Joe Ricketts, the billionaire GOP founder of Omaha's TD Ameritrade, is marrying Brooke Skinner, a Twitter brand strategist.
In attendance will be her anti-gay marriage brother, Nebraska Gov. Pete Ricketts, before he leaves for Europe for 10 days.
Laura Ricketts actively pushed for marriage equality in Illinois, is a leader of LPAC, a lesbian-backed PAC, and is on the National Leadership Council of Lambda Legal. In a family of Republicans she was a top Obama bundler. She's also a co-owner of the Chicago Cubs.
Last month, she was profiled in New York Magazine. Best wishes, Laura and Brooke!
More on the backstory of the two in the Minnesota Tourism ad...
The following, sadly, is the featured video on Nebraska Tourism's YouTube channel, because remember: Nebraska's 3rd largest industry exists to bring Gov. Pete Ricketts more media exposure.
As you can see, the dynamic tourism video featuring Ricketts has attracted SIX HUNDRED TEN views in only one month of exposure on YouTube.
Boy — your GOP governor and mine really knows how to market the state, doesn't he? Good thing we have a savvy businessman at the helm, huh?
Pete Ricketts evidently cannot grasp the meaning of "illegally importing drugs" as he continues his quest to score unapproved, embargoed execution drugs from India (cost: $54,000) even after the state's Unicameral outlawed the death penalty over his dead veto and even after the DEA confiscated execution drugs four years ago when Dave Heineman and Jon Bruning tried the same ploy.
Ricketts is making himself — and the state — the laughingstock of two national television networks: first HBO and now MSNBC, whose Rachel Maddow sarcastically asked last night: "Nebraska, have you hired a [drug] mule?"
Also: Rachel Maddow covered Ricketts's continued shenanigans on her show, too.
Last week, the Unicameral revoked Pete Ricketts's license to kill when it overrode his veto of the legislature's death penalty repeal.
Ricketts's stubbornly arrogant refusal to accept the second of two anti-death-penalty votes is now taking the form of the continuation of his expensive, doomed quest to score illegal execution drugs that the FDA says can't be imported into this country.
Apparently Ricketts learned nothing from the fact that the DEA confiscated execution drugs four years ago when Gov. Dave Heineman and Attorney General Jon Bruning team tried the same trick — from the same shady Indian supplier. From John Oliver:
So he's essentially saying: "Hey guys, great news! I found the murder drugs that I've been looking for! Good News! I found a way to get the murder drugs!" How is that good news, you unpeeled hard-boiled egg with teeth?
...That is pathetic. Because saying that you have access to high-quality drugs from India and then not being able to deliver is embarrasing enough when you're a high school junior trying to get into your prom date's pants. It is downright humiliating when you are the adult governor of a state trying to desperately kill people, you dollar-store Lex Luther."
Other HBO synonyms for Pete Ricketts:
"Their governor, an enormous Human Thumb, Pete Ricketts"
