I'm the editor of Progressive Congress News Transit & Urban Development feed. This is the first in a weekly series of topical posts on cities and the roads & rails that connect them.

Trains are a highly-developed, widely-used, and very popular form of transportation -- a strange choice of culture war for the right. Yet hatred of trains, especially ones that run on time, is a pronounced theme of Mrs. Rand's Bible of selfish economic wisdom. After decades of gestation in Hollywood development hell, Atlas Shrugged Part I will soon star star Vice President Joe Biden as Dagny Taggart, Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood as Hank Rearden, and Florida Governor Rick Scott as Wesley Mouch.

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Four hundred million dollars. Wow. Think Progress has an eye-opener of a report about the organizations behind the big bucks. Clearly the Republican strategy was to fragment and spread out the money across many different facets, so they could sweep in the most people/interests at once.

The Big Spenders

The US Chamber of Commerce - $75 million: Still, they've lost most of their big lobbying battles this year. In the candidate arena, they backed Scott Brown, who won. On the other hand, they backed Bill McCollum in Florida, who lost to Rick Scott last week.

On the other hand, it looks as though much of their money is going toward issue ads for the duration of the midterms.

American Crossroads - $52 million: American Crossroads is the new Karl Rove/Ed Gillespie organization, and they're using their funds to target specific Senate races. They've run ads against Harry Reid, Jack Conway and Michael Bennet, and ads in support of Rob Portman, among others. Think of them as the advance team for the NRSC.

Americans for Prosperity - $45 million: Americans for Prosperity is the Koch arm of the conservatives, and has already launched a wave of attack ads targeting House candidates. Since the ad buys went through the Americans for Prosperity foundation (ostensibly to conceal the donor source), there are some big questions about whether it violated its tax-exempt status, despite AFP's claim that they're "issue ads". Democrats have asked the IRS to investigate whether they've crossed the line into active electioneering. And of course, they stoke the fire under the teabaggers.

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Seeing The Forest

Tim Roemer is one of the candidates for DNC Chair. Here's something I came across, Roemer's bio at the Mercatus Center: Tim Roemer is a distinguished scholar at the Mercatus Center at George Mason University and president of the Center for National Policy.

Is that THIS Mercatus Center and George Mason University? (Also, see this and this.)

Explanation, please!

At Seeing the Forest I write about the Right's network of organizations, and how they influence our politics by influencing public attitudes as well as setting up channels to influence politicians themselves. Some of these organizations are set up to "educate" opinion leaders and public officials on why they think right-wing ideology offers better solutions to public policy problems. (I'm trying to paraphrase typical right-wing wording...) Without going into detail, let me just say that their solutions are not always what you and I would consider to be in the best interest of the public-at-large. For example, their "market solutions" often translate to "one-dollar-one-vote" corporate-oriented policies -- as compared with boring, old-fashioned, democratic "one-person-one-vote" solutions that require such pesky oversight provisions as transparency, accountability, public consensus, equal opportunity, serving all citizens equally, etc. -- all those things the Right calls "inefficient" and "bureaucratic..."

The Mercatus Center, for example, at George Mason University describes itself as promoting the

"use of market-based tools and analysis to discover workable solutions to pressing economic and governmental problems"

And just look at who is funding them, as well as the amounts! (Click here, and see the reports linked at the end of this post, for some background on who these funders are and what they stand for. Carthage Foundation is a Richard Mellon Scaife (more here) foundation, for example.) Here are some things that this humble blogger would like to know. What will be going on at this "retreat?" What kind of "sound economic thinking" is a right-wing-funded organization going to be promoting at the retreat? What sort of "Social Security, tax and pension reform" is a right-wing-funded organization going to be promoting to Democratic Chiefs of Staff? Who is funding this retreat (and why?)? And, most important to me, what is a candidate for head of the Democratic Party doing working for this crowd? Anyone interested in the race to become head of the Democratic National Committee deserves answers to these questions, and a full explanation.

I would also be interested in knowing if any Democratic Chiefs of Staff have accepted the invitation!

For those interested in more infomation about the right-wing organizational infrastructure see the tables of contents of reports here and here. While these reports are written for trial lawyers and teacher unions, their intent is to describe the Right's infrastructure of advocacy/communication organizations, who is funding it, what their goals are, and looking at what we might do to counter this effort and recover our democracy.

Brigham explains the situation. You can donate here.

Atrios has a funding update.

Hackett on CBS Evening News -Jean Schmidt says Hackett isn't pro-family.

Video-WMP

The Raw Story is reporting another scandal in Ohio.

Hackett has a diary up on Daily Kos

[UPDATE: Links fixed now.]

Remember when I wrote about the Darby Free Library, the oldest free library in the country?

They finally have Paypal on their website. It took them a while (small non-profits tend to move at a glacial pace) but you can click and give now.

In the meantime, the local ABC affiliate and USA Today have since covered the story of the library's struggle to stay open in a very poor community.

They're getting donations, but still not enough.

If you're still employed and you love books, go donate!

Balloon Juice: The White House has declared a "major victory," thanks to 105 sellout Dems and...(cough) 'leaders' Hoyer, Pelosi...and Barack Obama. This is "change you can believe in?" Reprehensible. Oh, and they caved on the War Funding bill, too.

The Hill: Darth Cheney gets the last laugh as congress concedes another defeat to the Bush Crime Family. And they also stiffed 'em on this one.

Liberty Street: All religious conservatives want is a total explanation for everything. Kinda like my children when they were four.

The Existentialist Cowboy: How Bush helped establish a corporate "New World Order."

Vagabond Scholar: Right-Wing Cartoon Watch

The Daily Banter: A wide-ranging interview with Rolling Stone's Matt Taibbi.

Today is World Refugee Day. Yesterday the House passed an Iraq Supplemental with no deadlines for withdrawal and with funding for the occupation into next year.

Every day in Iraq, the Iraqi Red Crescent workers put their lives on the line to bring food, water, and medical care to their fellow Iraqis. Scores of these humanitarian workers have been kidnapped, murdered and harassed by death squads. Reports of raids on Red Crescent offices by our forces are frequent. Yet they keep on working – doing all they can to bring relief to internally displaced Iraqis and to their neighbors across Iraq. IRC is the only organization still bringing such aid to every region of Iraq and across all sectarian lines.

A number of us thought today was a very good day to flood the IRC with donations – and even if you can only donate a little, they will put every bit to work. This is one small way we can show our opposition to the occupation and our concern for the devastation our country is causing the Iraqi people.

To send a donation, click here and select “Iraq Humanitarian Response” in the “I want my contribution to go here” box. 100% of your donation will go directly to assisting Iraq Red Crescent’s work. Here's what your donation will buy:

Every 15 days, Iraqi Red Crescent networks deliver food rations that include flour, rice, sugar, vegetable oil, tomato paste, salt, jam, spaghetti, lentils, tea, sardines, and cheese. The $33.50 USD cost per family ration covers the expense of the food, distribution, transport and security. (These rations are delivered to 200,000 families.)

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Download | play Download | play (h/t Heather)

Host Bill Maher speaks to Jeffrey Sachs, author of Common Wealth, about the very critical need that we must acknowledge to find alternative fuel resources and focus on sustainable energy. That need is made more critical because with the priorities for funding placed by the Bush/Cheney White House, we're now eight years behind in terms of research.

Let me tell you, you know, if we put a little bit of thought to it, a small part of the Mohave Desert could provide more than half of the electricity needs of the United States without emitting any carbon dioxide, just using the solar power that’s available. Africa could be powering itself with the tremendous amount of solar power. But how much are we investing in this, Bill? We’re investing basically an hour or two of what we spend on the Pentagon for the whole year of our federal research budget right now. The total research budget of the Bush administration on sustainable energy resources has been between 2 and 3 billion dollars, which is 1 and 1 ½ days of what we spend on the Pentagon. So it’s been all war, no sustainability. And look where we are right now, right back into a corner and that’s the problem.

Altercation:

The Federici family and the E Street family have requested that, in lieu of flowers, donations be made to the Danny Federici Melanoma Fund. The fund's website is now up and running, where it is described as "dedicated to the research and development of new and effective treatments for melanoma through funding for additional clinical trials based upon Danny's melanoma treatments and other methods headed by Dr. Paul Chapman [at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center]. Our other objective is to raise awareness for this aggressive disease."

I met Danny before he got back together with Springsteen's band in the 90's and he was a very kind and gentle man who really loved his music and his family.

Today is the anniversary of my mom's passing away. She suffered with Diabetes (a terrible disease) for many, many years which left her legally blind for a while and in April of 2003---she was diagnosed with a form of bone cancer that quickly spread throughout her body.

I was fortunate enough to talk with her on the phone for a few minutes the day before she died and I was able to tell her how much I loved her. She was barely lucid yet somehow knew I was on the phone. "I can hear you, Johnny. I'm not in pain," she said. " I'm proud of you." " I love you mom," was all I could say. "Johnny, I have to go," and then she drifted off.

She was like many Italian moms in New York, marrying a guy named Rocky and raising two kids in the early fifties. She valued family above all, was semi-religious and was one of the many working class moms that handled the checkbook and worked a second job whenever possible to help make ends meet.

She had an inner strength about her that I never really understood or appreciated until I started to have my own physical problems and made the rounds through our health care system. She had to take insulin twice a day just to stay alive and endured many experimental eye surgery's in Manhattan and Johns Hopkins in the early eighties just to try and stave off blindness---which in the end was the one thing that scared her the most. But she always fought through it and lived many years beyond the conventional medical predictions.

She died comfortably with my sister and father (they were married for over 50 years) at her side as I traveled to Florida to see her. I don't usually write these type of posts, but I just wanted to say, "I miss you, Mom."

03/12/1930--04/23/2004

Josephine Amato RIP

Huckabee's big lead in Iowa is certainly stirring things up on the GOP side. Looks like Murdock's gang has their guns pointed at Huckabee. Not that his postion on AIDS is excusable at all.

- Mike Huckabee once advocated isolating AIDS patients from the general public, opposed increased federal funding in the search for a cure and said homosexuality could "pose a dangerous public health risk."

When asked about AIDS research in 1992, Huckabee complained that AIDS research received an unfair share of federal dollars when compared to cancer, diabetes and heart disease....read on