Argh. I screwed up a tag and left bold on instead of just for a phrase, and I misspelled a couple of words. Can I fix it? Can you? I don’t mean to scream. I’m just a moron.

Thanks!

But there are a lot of commenters who are frustrated with special/public interest groups. I\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\’d like to try to defend some of them in general, if not HRC in specific.

First, on the scorecard itself. Writing a scorecard in the current Congress is one of the hardest things to do. Bills are not brought to the floor, and decent amendments are killed in committee. The rules do not allow the minority to challenge that. So, as a public interest lobbyist who sits on a few boards, I\’m open to suggestion as to better votes that will delineate those who truly agree with us from those who don\’t, but i haven\’t found many.

However , using confirmation instead of cloture is unconscionable on the part of HRC. It is precisely because of issues like this that most groups actually seek out the procedural votes where we\’re being sold down the river, rather than final vote, which is meaningless most of the time. If you are going to include Alito on your scorecard, that\’s just terrible.

Now, the fact is that the wrong hack called you back. Im a hack, too. I\’m a political hack, and if I worked there, i would be able to explain every vote on our sheet, why we chose that one, and why we rejected another. But this hack was obviously some drone who knew how to write a press release, so got hired for media work. Media hacks are the bane of existence of political hacks. They tend not to know anything. For all this moron knew, they *did* use the cloture vote.

I think there is a good argument that, in a situation like the current one, in which the majority has frozen out the Democrats, it makes little sense to even have a voting record at all. Perhaps we should just give all of the buttheads on Capital Hill an F. But it would seem a bizarre decision, to stop doing a voting record after so many years, so I do understand the impetus.

And one of the problems is the Catch-22 that interest groups are in regarding elections. Because I\’m must more familiar with environmental legislation that LGBT issues, I\’ll use that to make a point that applies to both.

Let\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\’s use the example of Lincoln Chafee for the environmental lobbyist. Lincoln Chafee is not my idea of a progressive Senator. But, to the extent we are going to have Republicans in office, I would prefer to have Lincoln Chafee, who is good on greenhouse gas emissions, CAFE standards, and a host of other things, than, say, Texas\’\’Smoky\’ Joe Barton. So, does the hypothetical group support Chafee, even though it knows that, a few times during his term, he\’s going to sell them down the river? Or do they support the better Democratic opponent? Even if Chafee loses, so you don\’t have to worry about his vote anymore, you\’ve convinced every other Republican that there is no good reason to listen to you ever again, since, even if they carry water for you, you\’ll screw them over in the end.

Now, I agree that, in this particular case, HRC is being shortsighted, since the seat is safely Democratic and it\’s not like Lieberman ever carries water for them, anyway. But it\’s not so simple.

(And, as an aside, it is the inability to get anything done as long as the GOP has a hammerlock on power that makes the HRCF\’s 2004 decision to work more than anything else on Kerry-Bush seem reasonable. Look, I\’m no John Kerry fan, but it does seem obvious to me that, under a President Kerry, there would have been no Alito cloture to screw us over on.)

And, believe it or not, the staffers that many commenters cavalierly trash (and this isn\’t me, I don\’t work for HRC, and I\’m not a public person to begin with) frequently took significant cuts in pay from the \’real\’ world to do work they care about. For them, this isn\’t about getting invited to snooty parties. They don\’t get invited to those parties, and can\’t afford to go if they do. They are doing their best to try to win in an environment stacked against them. I know it doesn\’t look like we care. After all, all we do is put in routine 60 hour weeks for substandard pay so that we can work for the things we believe in.

I am NOT complaining about that. I am the luckiest man alive. I have a job I love, working on issues about which I care deeply. If it means that I get paid half of what i got when I worked in the private sector, hell, I make half of what I used to make, but wake up every morning excited to be doing my job, to be serving the interests of my contributors to the best of my ability, and to be trying to convince those contributors to be more radical whenever I can! I\’m thrilled with what I do, and when I get contacted by people who want me to be more radical, I love it. I always try to help them take an action that my board won\’t let me take, and I always ask them to help me push my board. As I say, this is the greatest job on earth.

But it\’s a hard job, and it takes a ton of experience to do well. And it takes insane dedication. And it is NEVER done with hopes of glory. The most effective anti-nuclear arms advocate in DC is someone you\’ll never know or meet. That doesn\’t make him unhappy. He just wants to rack up some wins and hold down the losses. And I don\’t think it even marginally rational to say that he\’s ineffective because we still have nuclear weapons.

in short, while I can believe that HRC is poorly run, and while I am not unsympathetic to the frustration of people who feel that HRC is not pushing hard enough, please don\’t act like you think all they have to do is march into Tom Coburn\’s office, say, \’Senator, you\’re a bigot and a danger to freedom\’ (which he unquestioningly is) and emerge with an agreement from him that he\’s been wrong. HRC has done a great deal to get LGBT issues on the freaking table in an environment in which most, who have to answer to many of the 40% of Americans who claim to have attended Church this week or the 34% who think that the Bible is the literal, word for word, word of God.

There are a lot of bastards out there. And while I, like you, want to take aim at all of them as often as possible, I don\’t want to confuse those who I think could do better for those who don\’t care. And I certainly don\’t want to start by shooting my allies.

PS – The HRC didn\’t build that monstrosity on 17th. It belonged to B\’nai Brith, who built the monstrosity. But to the extent that the point of the poster who spoke of it was that they raised and spent the money to buy it, I have no idea what it costs compared to DC office space rental, but it may have been worth it. Or not. I\’d certainly want to actually see a budget before commenting on it, though.

=====I tried to fix this I really did. But when I tried to turn off the tags ///// got inserted. I went back and deleted all of them, but 20% still show up and I can’t fix. I will bill you ;) ;) ~MOderator

Officially, the HRC represents the transgender community. However, it has previously been the target of protests due to its refusal to demand the inclusion of the transgendered in the Employment Non-Discrimination Act (ENDA) bill. These objections changed in 2004 when the organization announced support for an ENDA bill that was inclusive of gender identity, however sparking charges of “trans-jacking” from the far right.

Sometimes referred to as “Headed by Rich Caucasians” or the “Human Rights Champagne Fund”, the HRC has often been the target of critics who claim that the HRC and HRCF do not produce any significant policy advocacy, and only serve the interests of a select minority of wealthy, white gay men. In the same vein, it is heavily criticized for its national, top-down structure instead of a local, grassroots focus.

The HRC is considered by some to be too cozy with the Democratic Party establishment. For example, during the 2004 elections, the bulk of the organization’s time and funding was focused on the unsuccessful effort to elect John Kerry (”George W. Bush, You’re Fired!” became the group’s heavily merchandized signature line). As a result resources were not spent to defeat state ballot initiatives that sought to ban same-sex marriage — all 11 of which passed overwhelmingly on November 2, 2004. Given that Kerry was a supporter of such state ballot initiatives [2], many questioned why he had received a “free ride” from HRC, and why more effort wasn’t made to defeat the marriage initiatives..

It is now clear that, with its change of heart with the ENDA bill, the HRC is now embracing the LGBT community’s diversity while still keeping the community’s public image mainstream.

MYOB’
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