Undaunted by rejection of their first effort to hijack 2016, Pennsylvania Republicans soldier on with a new scheme for awarding unearned electoral votes to Republican candidates and weakening their state's influence on Federal elections.

Will Bunch:

So comes now Pileggi with Plan B. The district scheme is out; instead, electoral votes would be awarded proportionally, guaranteeing the loser would pick up some free tallies that he or she would not have received under the systems used by every other state. In 2012, loser Romney would have received 8 of the 20 electoral votes. Last year, that would not have made a difference. In 2016, in a closer race....who knows?

Last night, a Democratic state lawmaker, Rep. Mike Sturia, told the website Think Progress that Pileggi, his legislative allies and Gov. Corbett could all but click their heels and make this thing the law of the land in just four days:

They could have it out of the House in three days and it could go over to the Senate and they could have it out of there in three days and it could go to the governor’s office and he could sign it. . . . The Senate can suspend the rules and have it passed in less than 24 hours. [The House] has to have a 2/3s majority to suspend the rules so usually we can at least make them do the three days.

Call me a crazy optimist, but I'm betting in the end this won't happen. I sure hope it doesn't. For one thing, Pennsylvania has way too many problems -- falling bridges and failing schools come to mind -- to waste valable hours on this election-stealing nonsense. In the bigger picture -- and I doubt this could happen -- I would love to see an amendment to ensure that federal elections are governed by one federal set of rules. That's just common sense -- imagine the fan outcry if the NFL used a different rulebook for games played in Louisiana than it did for contests in Maryland. If pro football can do it, why can't America.

As Susie has noted, Pileggi is a corrupt, greedy state politician who wants desperately to lock in Pennsylvania as a Republican stronghold. Even though his current plan is a watered-down version of Plan A, it still has the potential to actually negate the popular vote for president in favor of one that unreasonably grants one side or the other unearned electoral votes.

Enough of this. Clearly they can't win on their ideas, but that doesn't mean they should steal the election either.

This is what privatization looks like:

CCA took control of Lake Erie Correctional Facility on January 1, 2012, and the problems started almost immediately. Officials in Conneaut, Ohio – where the prison is located – were surprised to learn they may be on the hook for policing the facility because state law prohibited the highway patrol from so investigating crimes in this no-longer-state-owned building. Conneaut taxpayers were not keen on CCA and the state passing the financial burden onto them, and despite the community successfully lobbying the state to change this law last year, Conneaut is still saddled with increased responsibility for policing Lake Erie.

Unfortunately, this is not where the problems end.

In September 2012, the Ohio Department of Rehabilitation and Corrections (ODRC) released its first internal audit report. If this was CCA's first report card, let's just say they would need to repeat the semester. The compliance rating plummeted from the 97.3% compliance rating the prison achieved when publicly-owned to 66.7%. Auditors found outrageous violations like prisoners being forced to use plastic bags for defecation and cups for urination because they had no running water for toilets. Basic conditions were heinous, with black mold, standing water, and spoiled food found throughout the prison. Perhaps even more troubling were reports that the medical department is grossly understaffed and many prisoners go untreated.

CCA is a very, very large contributor to Republicans, particularly the Republican Governors' Association. In 2012, it contributed $225,000 to the RGA, because Republican governors like to give them business. In 2010, the year Kasich was elected, their own report shows that corporate contributions were $722,200. Of course, they were able to bury these in the state-by-state breakdown they published following the totals, because the RGA is a national committee and doesn't break down by state.

This is what happens when public duties are handed off to for-profit corporations. According to CCA's most recent quarterly report, their contract for the Ohio facility is an initial twenty-year term with unlimited options to renew.

As the ACLU report warns, if the CCA wants to manage prisons in your state, just shout NO, over and over and over. Also, it might be good not to elect Republican governors.

As Ghandi once said, "Life is sometimes like that."

Connecting.the.Dots welcomes us to the Thunderdome.

Jobsanger thinks maybe the GOP has watched too many John Wayne movies?

Goblin Books worries that the GOP packaging will be new, improved, and lemon-scented for 2016, but the policy inside will be the same.

Bonus track: The Far Left Side gives us some pillow-talk.

Round-up by Tengrain of Mock, Paper, Scissors who also blogs at Dependable Renegade. Send tips to: mbru AT crooksandliars DOT com

Open thread below....

No one will be surprised that Todd Kincannon, former Southern Carolina Republican Party chairman is tweeting racist nonsense. It's just that this racist nonsense is, even by conservative standards, pretty blatant and ugly.

What you may not know about Todd Kincannon, however, is that he's been on a tear over Twitter's policy of suspending abusive users. I wrote about it back in December, when I noted that he was abusing their algorithms to get people suspended on the left who he didn't care for. Of course, reality was something else entirely, because the algorithm didn't pay much attention to whether someone was liberal or conservative, and so people on all sides of the debate were suspended.

Since then, Kincannon has switched to claiming that liberals intentionally try to silence conservatives online by using the "Gulag" to silence them. Not only has he made this claim, but he is raising money online by making it. Here's a screenshot of part of the page he has created on Rally. It even has a logo that seems professionally designed, and yes, a clarion call to help defend conservatives.

That hashtag, #TGDN, stands for the "Twitter Gulag Defense Network." Please.

It's difficult to take this seriously until you look at the series of tweets he spewed out last night and then again this morning. I might be able to believe the first series was simply drunk tweets if they didn't continue on through morning and afternoon today.

No, what Kincannon seems to be doing is being intentionally inflammatory in order to get himself suspended so he can rally the Breitbots and Tea Partiers to his defense. Of course, sympathy is always nice but money is better, so he's got the convenient fundraising page ready for the hellraising to begin.

The better hashtag for Kincannon's project would be #TFD, or Trolling For Dollars.

UPDATE: Tagg has decided "the timing is not right" for him to run. So no, we won't have another Romney to kick around.

Tagg Romney was so angry at President Obama that he wanted to throw down on him to protect his father's honor or something.

Bill LuMaye, host, WTPF:

“What is it like for you to hear the president of the United States call your dad a liar? How do you react to that?”

Tagg Romney:

“Well, jump out of your seat and you want to rush down to the debate stage and take a swing at him. But you know you can’t do that because, well, first there’s a lot of secret service agents between you and him…”

The Romneys, keeping it classy. I think the Secret Service might be keeping a much closer eye on Tagg from here on in. They might even just pay him a little visit, as they take such talk very seriously.

Now Tagg is considering protecting the GOP by stepping in to sub for Scott Brown and try to take John Kerry's Senate seat in the upcoming special election.

Tagg Romney is considering a run in the special Senate election now that Scott Brown has opted out, the Truth Squad has learned.Related: Former Mass. Gov. Weld says no to Senate runCalls for Romney, 42, to join in the short campaign to replace Secretary of State John F. Kerry have increased since the Herald first reported heavyweight Republicans are urging both Romney and his mother, Ann, to get in. The eldest son of former governor and presidential candidate Mitt Romney already has statewide name recognition and could quickly ramp up the campaign infrastructure for a short, five-month race.

The father of six was a regular on the campaign trail in both of his father’s failed races for president in 2008 and 2012, which would give him some political know-how while working to win over Bay State voters. But the younger Romney is weighing joining the fray against remaining with his successful venture capital firm, Solamere. Many Democrats also have noted Mitt Romney’s dismal Bay State returns in the most recent presidential election, losing the state by 23 points.

I'd love to send him home, crying over his own loss at running for public office after he's witnessed his father getting pummeled for two consecutive presidential races. I do hope that if he is going to follow his father's footsteps, if he has a dog---please refrain from tying him on to the roof of the car.

Good Morning, Crooks and Liars. Yes, I'm back (by popular demand? Let's go with that), so let's have at it! Momma told me to never talk about politics, sex, or religion, but what else is there?

No More Mr. Nice Blog compares and contrasts two news stories on guns and spots a terrible thread.

Dead Wild Roses has something to say to forced-birthers and judgmental-choicers. Listen-up!

Pass the douchey's on the right-hand side notes that it is Black History Month.

Bonus track: William K. Wolfrum Chronicles presents Schrödinger's dog.

Round-up by Tengrain of Mock, Paper, Scissors who also blogs at Dependable Renegade. Send tips to: mbru AT crooksandliars DOT com

It's easy to forget, in light of his clownishness, that Herman "9-9-9" Cain was once leading the GOP presidential field, but he was. And what I love about this SRWT is that it undermines pretty much every single conservative argument against changing just about everything.

So Herman, here are a few answers to your question -- according to Republicans: the Constitution (especially, the 2nd Amendment), the institution of marriage, the use of fossil fuels, our national infrastructure, our immigration laws, the Bible, and so on.

Add your own in comments.

FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski discussing public broadband back in 2011.

Wow, this is a shocker. I was beginning to believe that the United States would never catch up with the rest of the world. Now it's up to us to let our elected officials know voters are behind this latest proposal:

The federal government wants to create super WiFi networks across the nation, so powerful and broad in reach that consumers could use them to make calls or surf the Internet without paying a cellphone bill every month.

The proposal from the Federal Communications Commission has rattled the $178 billion wireless industry, which has launched a fierce lobbying effort to persuade policymakers to reconsider the idea, analysts say. That has been countered by an equally intense campaign from Google, Microsoft and other tech giants who say a free-for-all WiFi service would spark an explosion of innovations and devices that would benefit most Americans, especially the poor.

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The other day, I talked to an old friend I hadn't spoken to in months -- mostly because she's a wingnut and I couldn't take her pre-election insanity. So one of the first things she does is start complaining that her 40-year-old daughter's Social Security taxes went up "$200 a week and that's a lot when she's paying $55,000 a year for her daughter in college." (Her daughter makes $250K a year.) Through clenched teeth, I said, "Your daughter makes ten times what I do, and I wish I made enough to pay those taxes. I really don't want to hear her whining." Which shut her up for a bit.

My world and that of the people I know is much more like this:

In the current listless economy, every generation has a claim to having been most injured. But the Labor Department’s latest jobs snapshot and other recent data reports present a strong case for crowning baby boomers as the greatest victims of the recession and its grim aftermath.

These Americans in their 50s and early 60s — those near retirement age who do not yet have access to Medicare and Social Security — have lost the most earnings power of any age group, with their household incomes 10 percent below what they made when the recovery began three years ago, according to Sentier Research, a data analysis company.

Their retirement savings and home values fell sharply at the worst possible time: just before they needed to cash out. They are supporting both aged parents and unemployed young-adult children, earning them the inauspicious nickname “Generation Squeeze.”

New research suggests that they may die sooner, because their health, income security and mental well-being were battered by recession at a crucial time in their lives. A recent study by economists at Wellesley College found that people who lost their jobs in the few years before becoming eligible for Social Security lost up to three years from their life expectancy, largely because they no longer had access to affordable health care.

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