Stephanie Mencimer

Reporter

Stephanie works in Mother Jones' Washington bureau. A Utah native and graduate of a crappy public university not worth mentioning, she has spent the last year hanging out with angry white people who occasionally don tricorne hats and come to lunch meetings heavily armed.

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Stephanie covers legal affairs and domestic policy in Mother Jones' Washington bureau. She is the author of Blocking the Courthouse Door: How the Republican Party and Its Corporate Allies Are Taking Away Your Right to Sue. A contributing editor of the Washington Monthly, a former investigative reporter at the Washington Post, and a senior writer at the Washington City Paper, she was nominated for a National Magazine Award in 2004 for a Washington Monthly article about myths surrounding the medical malpractice system. In 2000, she won the Harry Chapin Media award for reporting on poverty and hunger, and her 2010 story in Mother Jones of the collapse of the welfare system in Georgia and elsewhere won a Casey Medal for Meritorious Journalism.

Who's Paying for $6 Million of New Anti-Obamacare Ads?

—By Stephanie Mencimer

| Wed Jun. 27, 2012 7:00 AM PDT

Concerned Women for America, a conservative anti-feminist operation dedicated to "bring[ing] Biblical principals into all levels of public policy," announced late last week that it is spending $6 million to run ads that highlight "the consequences of President Obama's health care plan." But $6 million is an unusually large ad buy for the group, which hasn't explained (and doesn't have to disclose) where it got the money.

The ads claim that the bill is forcing doctors to drop many patients and that it will add billions of dollars to the deficit. Starting on June 20, the ads have been running in six key swing states: Iowa, Wisconsin, Minnesota, Virginia, New Mexico and New Hampshire, and CWA claims that the ad is the first presidential ad to run in the general election in Minnesota.

During a presidential election, it's not unusual for outside groups to run ads attacking either candidate, especially using money from donors whose names don't have to be disclosed, as is the case with the CWA ads. The media buy was sponsored by CWA's lobbying arm, the Concerned Women for America Legislative Action Committee, which is a nonprofit 501(c)4. Unlike CWA, the CWA Legislative Action Committee is allowed to get involved in politics.

The $6 million advertising blitz vastly exceeds the action committee's entire budget from the past several years. According to its most recent tax filings, filed in October last year, CWA's advocacy arm only brought in $2 million in 2010, and ended the year about $500,000 in the hole. The previous year, the group brought in less than a million dollars.

That makes a $6 million ad buy a pretty significant investment, and suggests that CWA has gotten a big donor to foot the bill during this year's campaign season. But CWA doesn't have to say who gave it all that money, and a spokeswoman from the group did not respond to emails requesting comment.

What's really curious about the CWA's ads, though, is the timing. They're airing just as the Supreme Court is expected to issue a ruling that could overturn the law at the heart of the commercials. CWA's move suggests that regardless of what the court does, health care is going to continue to be a major issue for the duration of the presidential campaign.

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The GOP's Dead-End Marriage Program

The research is in on a high-priced Bush-era initiative to promote marriage to poor people. It’s time for a divorce.

—By Stephanie Mencimer

| Mon Jun. 25, 2012 3:00 AM PDT

With congressional Republicans beating the drum about profligate and wasteful government spending, they may want to take a hard look at a federal program pushed by a host of top GOPers during the Bush-era and reauthorized in late 2010, as the Republican deficit craze took hold. Originally championed by Republican lawmakers including Iowa Sen. Chuck Grassley, former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum, and current Kansas Gov. Sam Brownback, a federal initiative to promote marriage as a cure for poverty dumped hundreds of millions of dollars into programs that either had no impact or a negative effect on the relationships of the couples who took part, according to recent research by the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS).

Launched during the Bush administration at the behest of evangelical Christian activists and with the aid of congressional Republicans, the federal Healthy Marriage Initiative was designed to help low-income couples put a little sizzle in their marriages and urge poor unmarried parents to tie the knot, in the hopes that marriage would enhance their finances and get them off the federal dole. Starting in 2006, millions of dollars were hastily distributed to grantees to further this poverty reduction strategy. The money went to such enterprises as "Laugh Your Way America," a program run by a non-Spanish speaking Wisconsin minister who used federal dollars to offer "Laugh Your Way to a Better Marriage" seminars to Latinos. It funded Rabbi Stephen Baars, a British rabbi who'd been giving his trademarked "Bliss" marriage seminars to upper-middle-class Jews in Montgomery County, Maryland, for years. With the help of the federal government, he brought his program to inner-city DC for the benefit of African American single moms.

[Read the full article]

GOP Congressional Candidate Admits Buying Sex-Themed Domain Names

—By Stephanie Mencimer

| Thu Jun. 14, 2012 2:04 PM PDT

On Thursday morning, Mother Jones reported that GOP congressional candidate Trey Radel, a former Fox radio talk show host in southwest Florida, had once owned a company that registered a number of smutty Internet domain names. Many of the sex-related web addresses were in Spanish. The list included such sites as www.casadelasputas (whore house), and www.sexguideonline.com. Radel did not respond to repeated requests for comment from Mother Jones. But after our story broke, Florida news outlets started hounding Radel for an explanation. This afternoon, he finally addressed the matter.

The News Press reports:

Radel said Thursday afternoon that he owned a business that bought and sold thousands of domain names, and he was not aware of every name purchased. When he became aware of such names, he said, they were disposed of immediately and he worked to ensure no content was posted.

He said the story is the work of a liberal publication that often attacks conservative Republican candidates.

Radel also sent a letter to supporters saying Mother Jones is an "ultra-liberal San Francisco rag... trying to personally smear" him—an "attack" he wears "as a badge of honor."

Still, Radel's opponents were quick to criticize his past business. Again from the News Press:

"It's shocking and it's disappointing," said state Rep. Paige Kreegel, R-Punta Gorda, who's running against Radel for the GOP congressional nomination. Even if there was no content under those names, he said, the names speak for themselves.

Radel's explanation may also not survive further media scrutiny. He registered some of the domain names in 2005, and www.casadelasputas.com, for example, was still listed under his name through the end of 2010. After that, the registrant's name was hidden through Domains By Proxy, a registration service. But this address remained registered anonymously until the end of May this year. It wasn't deleted until this week—after Mother Jones asked the Radel campaign about it.

EXCLUSIVE: Florida GOP Congressional Candidate Has History of Registering Sex-Themed Web Addresses

Trey Radel—Rep. Connie Mack IV’s pick to fill his vacated House seat—has bought up raunchy domains that may make many conservative voters blush.

—By Stephanie Mencimer

| Thu Jun. 14, 2012 3:00 AM PDT

In April, GOP congressional candidate Henry "Trey" Radel III landed in a cyberscandal dubbed "Domain-gate" when it was discovered that his campaign committee had purchased web addresses related to his GOP rivals and created sites slamming them. Radel's outraged opponents accused him of everything from cybersquatting to dirty tricks to possible Federal Election Commission violations. Radel—a tea party favorite who has received the endorsement of Rep. Connie Mack IV (R-Fla.) to fill the seat he's vacating—defended the move, saying he'd bought the domains because his "campaign believes in things like strategy, planning, and capitalism." And he explained: "I, as a business guy, as an entrepreneur, have bought all sorts of domain names."

And some of those names are not so family friendly.

[Read the full article]

Chart of the Day: God Is Dead—to Millennials, Anyway

—By Stephanie Mencimer

| Tue Jun. 12, 2012 4:26 AM PDT

Evangelical Christians have long been the foot soldiers of the Republican Party. In 2010, they made up about 36 percent of Republican voters.

But the GOP's reliance on religious voters isn't necessarily a formula for long-term success—especially since the next generation of Americans has serious reservations not just about organized religion, but about the very existence of God. For the past 25 years, the Pew Research Center has been asking voters whether they ever question the existence of God. The numbers have been pretty stable. Older voters are pretty set on God, with 86 percent of baby boomers saying they never question His existence.

But Millennials, defined as Americans born after 1981, are bending the curve. This year, only 68 percent of Millennials surveyed said they never questioned God's existence, the lowest number of any group in 25 years. That's down from 76 percent only five years ago. The numbers suggest Millennials are going to be a generation of skeptics. No other generation has seen such a dramatic crisis of faith in such a short time.

Pew Research Center

The trend lines join other bad polling news for evangelicals, namely that younger Christians are turned off by attacks on gays and lesbians. Such trends don't bode well for the Republican Party. By 2020, Millennials will make up the largest single voting bloc in the country, some 90 million strong, and they are already showing a distaste for GOP politics.

Evangelical political activists like Ralph Reed have contended that these sorts of numbers don't mean the movement is in a death spiral. Reed has scoffed at polling data showing younger people fleeing the religious right. "Young people may start out liberal, but once they start getting married, having babies, and paying taxes, we got 'em," he told me after the 2010 midterm election.