nytimes: A Federal Budget Crisis Months in the Planning= ed meese!!!
WASHINGTON — Shortly after President Obama started his second term, a loose-knit coalition of conservative activists led by former Attorney General Edwin Meese III gathered in the capital to plot strategy. Their push to repeal Mr. Obama’s health care law was going nowhere, and they desperately needed a new plan.
Out of that session, held one morning in a location the members insist on keeping secret, came a little-noticed “blueprint to defunding Obamacare,” signed by Mr. Meese and leaders of more than three dozen conservative groups.
It articulated a take-no-prisoners legislative strategy that had long percolated in conservative circles: that Republicans could derail the health care overhaul if conservative lawmakers were willing to push fellow Republicans — including their cautious leaders — into cutting off financing for the entire federal government.
“We felt very strongly at the start of this year that the House needed to use the power of the purse,” said one coalition member, Michael A. Needham, who runs Heritage Action for America, the political arm of the Heritage Foundation. “At least at Heritage Action, we felt very strongly from the start that this was a fight that we were going to pick.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/10/06/us/a-federal-budget-crisis-months-in-the-planning.html?hp&_r=0&pagewanted=print
= new reply since forum marked as read
Googling on Meese and Sproul Hall produces a lot of results from Google Books, but not much that can be copy-and-pasted. The Nation article below, which is undated but appears to be contemporaneous with the events, shows how deeply involved Meese was in the bust, it doesn't give the full picture. There also an account at http://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=2506&dat=19840219&id=86BJAAAAIBAJ&sjid=wgwNAAAAIBAJ&pg=1322,5432067 which notes that Meese "was not simply an advocate of law and order. He was deeply involved in the surveillance and control of campus unrest. ... Meese devised the logistics for mass arrests of demonstrators."
Meese has been chiefly visible as a conservative eminence grise since he left the Reagan administration, but his real legacy may be as the man who originated the pattern of brutal suppression of peaceful dissent that we've suffered from for nearly 50 years.
http://www.thenation.com/article/free-speech-movement
The Free Speech Movement (FSM) at the University of California burst into headlines across the country with the sit-in by 1,000 students in Sproul Hall on Wednesday afternoon, December 2, and with the arrest, on Thursday, of 800 of them. ...
University President Clark Kerr and Gov. Edmund C. Brown were both, a it happened, in Los Angeles. As the sit-in continued in what all witnesses agree was an orderly manner, Edwin Meese, deputy district attorney of Alameda County, phoned Governor Brown that the situation was out of hand and that enforcement action was imperative. Brown consulted with Kerr and with the president of the university's Board of Regents, department-store magnate Edward V. Carter. The three agreed that intervention by the police was necessary, and Brown gave the order.
Meese and the army of policemen moved onto the campus. FSM leaders, who had set up a public-address system inside the building, advised all demonstrators under 18, all foreign students, and one who might be on probation to leave. Meese then pointed out the first arrestee: the attorney, Robert Truehaft. ...
After about forty arrests had been made, the police saw that the process was taking too long. They withdrew temporarily (the students now call this "the coffee break"
, and when they returned had apparently decided to get rough. The new plan was to bring women down in the elevator, and men by the narrow marble stairs, although a few unfortunate women also made it down the stairs. Some were brought down by arms or shoulders, but reporters present say that most were hauled by their feet. One conscientious reporter counted the marble steps as he followed a girl whose head jarred sickeningly as she was dragged down. There were ninety.
I was just about to post this article.
I'm also using the hashtag #GOPshutdown as frequently as possible, in titles and body, so it trends more, combined with images that then move up in rank in searches.
TWITTER: United States Trends ... Number One = #GOPshutdown
http://www.democraticunderground.com/10023789772
#GOPshutdown
#GOPshutdown
