From Think Progress - October 20, 2010:
MEMO: Health Insurance, Banking, Oil Industries Met With Koch, Chamber, Glenn Beck To Plot 2010 Election
by Lee Fang
In 2006, Koch Industries owner Charles Koch revealed to the Wall Street Journal’s Stephen Moore that he coordinates the funding of the conservative infrastructure of front groups, political campaigns, think tanks, media outlets and other anti-government efforts through a twice annual meeting of wealthy right-wing donors. He also confided to Moore, who is funded through several of Koch’s ventures, that his true goal is to strengthen the “culture of prosperity” by eliminating “90%” of all laws and government regulations. Although it is difficult to quantify the exact amount Koch alone has funneled to right-wing fronts, some studies have pointed toward $50 million he has given alone to anti-environmental groups. Recently, fronts funded by Charles and his brother David have received scrutiny because they have played a pivotal role in the organizing of the anti-Obama Tea Parties and the promotion of virulent far right lawmakers like Sen. Jim DeMint (R-SC). (David Koch praised DeMint and gave him a “Washington Award” shortly after the senator promised to “break” Obama by making health reform his “Waterloo.”)
While the Koch brothers — each worth over $21.5 billion — have certainly underwritten much of the right, their hidden coordination with other big business money has gone largely unnoticed. ThinkProgress has obtained a memo outlining the details of the last Koch gathering held in June of this year. The memo, along with an attendee list of about 210 people, shows the titans of industry — from health insurance companies, oil executives, Wall Street investors, and real estate tycoons — working together with conservative journalists and Republican operatives to plan the 2010 election, as well as ongoing conservative efforts through 2012. According to the memo, David Chavern, the number two at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and Fox News hate-talker Glenn Beck also met with these representatives of the corporate elite. In an election season with the most undisclosed secret corporate giving since the Watergate-era, the memo sheds light on the symbiotic relationship between extremely profitable, multi-billion dollar corporations and much of the conservative infrastructure. The memo describes the prospective corporate donors as “investors,” and it makes clear that many of the Republican operatives managing shadowy, undisclosed fronts running attack ads against Democrats were involved in the Koch’s election-planning event:
– Corporate “investors” at the Koch meeting included businesses with a strong profit motive in rolling back President Obama’s enacted reforms. Several companies impacted by health reform, including Allan Hubbard of A & E Industries, a manufacturer of medical devices and Judson Green, a board member of health insurance conglomerate Aon, were present at the meeting. Other businessmen at the meeting, like Omaha Burger King franchiser Mike Simmonds, are owners of fast food stores which have fought efforts to provide health insurance to their employees. Many corporate attendees of the meeting represent the financial industry impacted by Wall Street reform. For instance, attendee Bill Cooper is the CEO of TCF Financial, a corporation involved in the mortgage banking industry. Cooper recently filed a lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of Wall Street reform. Other financial industry players in the meeting hail from firms ranging from Bank of America, JLM Investment, Allied Capital Corp, AMG National Trust, the Blackstone Group and Citadel Investment. Annie Dickerson, a representative of Paul Singer, a powerful hedge fund manager who also gives tens of millions to Republican causes, was present. In addition, Koch Industries itself has a hedge fund and other financial derivative products in its portfolio of interests, which include oil pipelines, coal shipping, asphalt, refineries, consumer goods, timber, ranching, and chemicals.
– Corporate “investors” at the Koch meeting included businesses with a strong profit motive in preventing progressive reforms promised by President Obama. Several executives at the meeting have an incentive to stop Democrats and President Obama from addressing climate change and enacting clean energy reform. The meeting included oil executives from Aspect Energy, Murfin Drilling, Anschutz Company, GeoPark Holdings, Smoky Oil, and several members of Koch’s various subsidiaries. The meeting documents explicitly state that funding efforts to curb “climate change alarmism” were discussed.
– Fred Malek, Karl Rove’s top fundraiser for his $56 million attack ad campaign against Democrats, attended the meeting, along with leaders of other secret attack groups. Heather Higgins, who leads the Independent Women’s Forum, a shadowy group that has spent millions of dollars in attack ads on health reform, attended the meeting. So did Gretchen Hamel, a former Bush flak who now runs an attack ad group called “Public Notice” that runs ad which denounce spending programs.
– Participants collaborated with infamous consultants who specialize in generating fake grassroots movements, as well as experts on how corporations should take advantage of Citizens United. One session, about how to “mobilize citizens for November,” involved a discussion with Republican strategists Tim Phillips and Sean Noble, anti-union leader Mark Mix, and longtime Koch operative Karl Crow. Phillips — a veteran astroturf lobbyist who previously managed a deceptive grassroots lobbying campaign to help the Hong Kong-based Tan family maintain their forced abortion sweatshops in the Mariana Islands — now leads the day-to-day operations of Americans for Prosperity, the group ThinkProgress first reported to have helped organize many of the initial Tea Party rallies against Obama. Americans for Prosperity, founded and financed by David Koch, has a field team of over 80 campaign staffers spread out around the country, and additionally plans to spend $45 million dollars worth of attack ads against Democrats. Shortly before the planning meeting, Crow authored a campaign finance memo explaining that because of the Citizens United Supreme Court ruling, he advised specifically that the U.S. Chamber of Commerce’s 501(c)(6) and Americans for Prosperity’s 501(c)(4) can “now use general treasury funds to produce communications materials opposing or supporting specific candidates” and corporations can aggressively pressure their employees to vote a certain way.
The memo notes that participants in the 2010 election planning meeting “committed to an unprecedented level of support.”
Interestingly, the Koch meetings are managed by Kevin Gentry, an executive who doubles as a staffer in the Koch Industries lobbying office in Washington and as the key point person who helps deliver Koch charitable foundation grants. As ThinkProgress has documented, Koch Industries has dramatically boosted its own profits by using conservative front groups to manipulate public policy. The fusion between the “intellectual” conservative movement and big businesses opposed to regulations and accountability has a history in America dating back to the New Deal. During the thirties, the Du Pont family and other wealthy interests organized an assortment of “Liberty League” front groups to try to defeat New Deal agenda items and repeal President Roosevelt’s Social Security program. Now, corporations fund groups like the Heritage Foundation and the American Enterprise Institute — both had representatives at the Koch meeting — to further their lobbying agenda. The American Enterprise Institute even changed its name from the New Deal-era American Enterprise Association to try to dispel the notion that they were nothing more than a glorified business trade association.
As the memo states, Beck has addressed this regular gathering of conservative corporate executives in previous years. Past Koch meetings have included various Republican lawmakers, including DeMint, and Supreme Court Justices Clarence Thomas and Antonin Scalia as speakers.
After ThinkProgess published its exclusive investigation of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce revealing that the Chamber has been actively fundraising from foreign corporations for its 501(c)(6) account used to run a $75 million attack ad campaign, Chamber lobbyists found common cause with Beck and many of the conservative talking heads. Shortly after our investigation, Beck hosted an on-air fundraiser, asking his audience to give to the Chamber. Casual observers might have been surprised by the Chamber’s swift alliance with Beck (Chamber executives appeared on the Beck radio program and sung Beck’s praises on the Chamber blog), who has compared Obama to Adolf Hitler and called the President a “racist” who has a “deep-seated hatred for white people.” By telling his listeners to give money to the Chamber, Beck, who owns a media company worth more than $32 million dollars and an experimental Mercedes Benz, essentially told his working class viewers to give their wages back to their employers. However, Beck never disclosed his long working history of discussing political strategy with America’s largest corporations. The Koch memo clearly shows that Beck has been collaborating with the Chamber, as well as other titans of industry, for years. In his latest appeal for support to the Chamber’s foreign-funded trade association, which already counts JP Morgan and ExxonMobil as dues-paying members, Beck yesterday told his audience that the Chamber simply “defends the little guy.”
Wednesday, October 20, 2010
The Tea Parties Ride to the Rescue of the Rich
From Common Dreams -- October 20, 2010:
10 Reasons Not to Tax the Rich. And Why They're All Bad
by Paul Buchheit
We hear them all the time, the reasons for unrestricted capitalism, minimal government, lower taxes for the rich. So often that many Americans start to believe them. But the facts and common sense reveal good reasons NOT to NOT tax the rich.
(1) The rich deserve what they earn because of hard work and initiative.
They use other people's money to create assets that don't exist and then bet on them to fail. It seems like twisted humor, but it's real, all part of the murky world of derivatives and credit default swaps. Those who make the most money avoid taxes by calling their income "carried interest" instead of income.
Others not directly involved in financial chicanery still make out well. The stock market has grown 7 times faster than America's GDP since 1981, and two-thirds of the country's stocks are owned by the wealthiest 1% of Americans. That's not enough for some CEOs, though. For many of them it's 'legal' to backdate their stock options to a time in the past when the price was higher.
(2) It's not fair to "soak the rich."
It's been just the opposite for the past 30 years.
Based on Internal Revenue Service figures, if the average middle-income family had just maintained its share of America's productivity held in 1980, it would be making $10,000 more per year ($45,000 instead of $35,000). Some estimates are much higher, up to $30,000 more per year based on Bureau of Labor statistics.
In 1980 the richest 1% got one out of every fifteen income dollars. Thanks to tax cuts and deregulation, they now get THREE out of every fifteen dollars. They already had a big slice of pie, then they cut a second piece, and then a THIRD piece.
Meanwhile, every U.S. taxpayer contributes about $600 a year to pay for the tax cuts that give $34,000 a year to each of the wealthiest 1% of Americans. And now a trillion dollars of public money is used to bail out the failing banking system
(3) "Spreading the wealth" and "redistribution" are other names for socialism.
Not socialism, but social responsibility. Taxes support public infrastructure, including roads, bridges, water treatment systems, railroads. Public money is used to invest in research and development for science and technology.
Much of the tax burden disproportionately benefits the rich: property laws protect private property and capital investment; trade pacts and national defense policies are designed to protect wealth. Bill Gates, Sr. explains, "The government that protects their business activities...that's what creates capital and enables net worth to increase."
(4) The great wealth of the rich stimulates the economy.
Low-income earners have a higher "Marginal Propensity to Consume," which means that they spend a greater percentage of their overall income on consumption. High-income earners, on the other hand, will save more. The very rich in our country have put much of their money into mansions, yachts, jewels, and art.
An analysis by the Congressional Budget Service ranked 11 strategies to create jobs and stimulate the economy. Cutting taxes for the rich was ranked lowest.
The top 500 non-financial companies are currently holding $2 trillion in cash that could be used to create jobs and stimulate new business.
(5) Large incomes provide incentive for success.
Some hedge fund managers 'earned' enough money in one year to pay the salaries of every police officer, firefighter, and public school teacher in Chicago. A system that allows one man to divert the salaries of 50,000 public workers to his own pockets has gone well beyond "incentive-based."
Reputable studies show that life expectancy and 'happiness' increase very little after a certain threshold is reached. That threshold is about $75,000 per family.
(6) The very rich pay it back through taxes.
They pay less than 23% of their incomes in federal income tax. If state and local taxes, social security tax, and excise taxes are included, the lowest-earning half of America pays 24% of their incomes in taxes, almost as much as the richest 1%.
The top tax rate has gone from 90% in 1960, to 70% in 1972, to 50% in 1984 50, to 40% in 1996, to 35% in 2008. But much of billionaires' earnings is subject to only a 15% tax because of a loophole that allows hedge fund income not to be called income.
Furthermore, about 500 people a year renounce their U.S. citizenship and repatriate themselves to countries such as Belize and the Cayman Islands to avoid taxes entirely.
(7) The very rich lost massive parts of their fortunes in the recession.
They lost money, but no more, percentage-wise, than average mid-level earners. Wealth data from the Census Bureau and the Federal Reserve show that the richest households have INCREASED their median incomes relative to other earners since 2006.
(8) "Income mobility" shows that the poor can get rich, and vice versa.
This argument relies on a 2007 U.S. Treasury Department report about income mobility that states "Among those with the very highest incomes in 1996 - the top 1/100 of 1 percent - only 25 percent remained in this group in 2005." But nearly 9 out of 10 of those in the top 1% remained in the top quintile of earners over those ten years. They may have dropped out of the most elite 1% group, but they remained close. The apple doesn't fall far from the tree.
(9) The rich support worthwhile causes.
According to the Chronicle of Philanthropy, the wealthy "give their biggest donations" to colleges, hospitals, and cultural organizations and "rarely make large gifts to social-service groups, grass-roots organizations, or nonprofit groups that focus on the poor or minorities."
And as noted by former Secretary of Labor Robert Reich, hundreds of millions of dollars are being contributed to congressional and state election races. Especially since the Supreme Court ruled against limits on corporate contributions.
(10) Inequality is necessary to sustain a healthy and productive society.
This may be the worst reason of them all. Not only is it not necessary, but it's dangerous: Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett have documented the numerous studies that correlate inequality with shorter life expectancies, increased disease and health problems, and even higher murder rates.
The statistics clearly indicate that rates of illness in an unequal society are higher at all levels of income, even for the very wealthy.
10 Reasons Not to Tax the Rich. And Why They're All Bad
by Paul Buchheit
We hear them all the time, the reasons for unrestricted capitalism, minimal government, lower taxes for the rich. So often that many Americans start to believe them. But the facts and common sense reveal good reasons NOT to NOT tax the rich.
(1) The rich deserve what they earn because of hard work and initiative.
They use other people's money to create assets that don't exist and then bet on them to fail. It seems like twisted humor, but it's real, all part of the murky world of derivatives and credit default swaps. Those who make the most money avoid taxes by calling their income "carried interest" instead of income.
Others not directly involved in financial chicanery still make out well. The stock market has grown 7 times faster than America's GDP since 1981, and two-thirds of the country's stocks are owned by the wealthiest 1% of Americans. That's not enough for some CEOs, though. For many of them it's 'legal' to backdate their stock options to a time in the past when the price was higher.
(2) It's not fair to "soak the rich."
It's been just the opposite for the past 30 years.
Based on Internal Revenue Service figures, if the average middle-income family had just maintained its share of America's productivity held in 1980, it would be making $10,000 more per year ($45,000 instead of $35,000). Some estimates are much higher, up to $30,000 more per year based on Bureau of Labor statistics.
In 1980 the richest 1% got one out of every fifteen income dollars. Thanks to tax cuts and deregulation, they now get THREE out of every fifteen dollars. They already had a big slice of pie, then they cut a second piece, and then a THIRD piece.
Meanwhile, every U.S. taxpayer contributes about $600 a year to pay for the tax cuts that give $34,000 a year to each of the wealthiest 1% of Americans. And now a trillion dollars of public money is used to bail out the failing banking system
(3) "Spreading the wealth" and "redistribution" are other names for socialism.
Not socialism, but social responsibility. Taxes support public infrastructure, including roads, bridges, water treatment systems, railroads. Public money is used to invest in research and development for science and technology.
Much of the tax burden disproportionately benefits the rich: property laws protect private property and capital investment; trade pacts and national defense policies are designed to protect wealth. Bill Gates, Sr. explains, "The government that protects their business activities...that's what creates capital and enables net worth to increase."
(4) The great wealth of the rich stimulates the economy.
Low-income earners have a higher "Marginal Propensity to Consume," which means that they spend a greater percentage of their overall income on consumption. High-income earners, on the other hand, will save more. The very rich in our country have put much of their money into mansions, yachts, jewels, and art.
An analysis by the Congressional Budget Service ranked 11 strategies to create jobs and stimulate the economy. Cutting taxes for the rich was ranked lowest.
The top 500 non-financial companies are currently holding $2 trillion in cash that could be used to create jobs and stimulate new business.
(5) Large incomes provide incentive for success.
Some hedge fund managers 'earned' enough money in one year to pay the salaries of every police officer, firefighter, and public school teacher in Chicago. A system that allows one man to divert the salaries of 50,000 public workers to his own pockets has gone well beyond "incentive-based."
Reputable studies show that life expectancy and 'happiness' increase very little after a certain threshold is reached. That threshold is about $75,000 per family.
(6) The very rich pay it back through taxes.
They pay less than 23% of their incomes in federal income tax. If state and local taxes, social security tax, and excise taxes are included, the lowest-earning half of America pays 24% of their incomes in taxes, almost as much as the richest 1%.
The top tax rate has gone from 90% in 1960, to 70% in 1972, to 50% in 1984 50, to 40% in 1996, to 35% in 2008. But much of billionaires' earnings is subject to only a 15% tax because of a loophole that allows hedge fund income not to be called income.
Furthermore, about 500 people a year renounce their U.S. citizenship and repatriate themselves to countries such as Belize and the Cayman Islands to avoid taxes entirely.
(7) The very rich lost massive parts of their fortunes in the recession.
They lost money, but no more, percentage-wise, than average mid-level earners. Wealth data from the Census Bureau and the Federal Reserve show that the richest households have INCREASED their median incomes relative to other earners since 2006.
(8) "Income mobility" shows that the poor can get rich, and vice versa.
This argument relies on a 2007 U.S. Treasury Department report about income mobility that states "Among those with the very highest incomes in 1996 - the top 1/100 of 1 percent - only 25 percent remained in this group in 2005." But nearly 9 out of 10 of those in the top 1% remained in the top quintile of earners over those ten years. They may have dropped out of the most elite 1% group, but they remained close. The apple doesn't fall far from the tree.
(9) The rich support worthwhile causes.
According to the Chronicle of Philanthropy, the wealthy "give their biggest donations" to colleges, hospitals, and cultural organizations and "rarely make large gifts to social-service groups, grass-roots organizations, or nonprofit groups that focus on the poor or minorities."
And as noted by former Secretary of Labor Robert Reich, hundreds of millions of dollars are being contributed to congressional and state election races. Especially since the Supreme Court ruled against limits on corporate contributions.
(10) Inequality is necessary to sustain a healthy and productive society.
This may be the worst reason of them all. Not only is it not necessary, but it's dangerous: Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett have documented the numerous studies that correlate inequality with shorter life expectancies, increased disease and health problems, and even higher murder rates.
The statistics clearly indicate that rates of illness in an unequal society are higher at all levels of income, even for the very wealthy.
Republican Conservative Millionaires Aim a Dagger at Democracy as They Try to Buy America
From The Washington Post -- Octiber 20, 2010:
Predator's Ball
By Katrina Vanden Heuvel
"Apres nous, le deluge." Surely the reactionary Gang of Five on the Supreme Court should have cited Louis XV in their Citizens United decision overturning precedent to open the floodgates to corporate campaign spending. For all the fixation on Tea Partyers, what is most notable about this election is the rising tide of money that is lifting many Republican candidates -- and how it ultimately contradicts the message that GOP contenders are delivering to voters.
Only two months ago, Democratic Party operatives were boasting that the war chests of Democratic incumbents would repel Republican challengers. That was then. In the last quarter, Republican challengers surpassed Democratic incumbents in fundraising.
More important, the campaigns have been aided by an unprecedented wave of independent expenditures -- over $150 million and rising, the vast bulk spent on attack ads against besieged Democrats. Many of these contributions are anonymous, made to nonprofit institutions that don't have to reveal their donors. Karl Rove, infamous as George Bush's political "brain," has essentially displaced the Republican National Committee with his American Crossroads and Crossroads GPS organizations, claiming that they will dispense over $50 million into the elections.
This flood of conservative money isn't an accident. As a clarifying article by Eric Lichtblau in the New York Times detailed, conservatives -- led by Senate Minority leader Mitch McConnell, the "Darth Vader of campaign finance" -- have systematically sought to dismantle the post-Watergate efforts to limit the impact of money in politics, and to curb secret donations.
They've linked legislative obstruction with litigation, placed conservative zealots on regulatory agencies to block enforcement of the laws, and propagated the ideological distortion that money is speech. Aided by the reactionary majority on the Supreme Court, the conservative drive has effectively shredded much of the financial arms control of the post-Watergate period. As Lichtblau reported, conservatives acknowledge their purpose: the more money in politics, the better the party of the monied class -- the Republicans -- is likely to fare.
The barrage of attack ads, however, comes not simply from the absence of legal restraint, but from the decision of conservative corporate wealth to open fire. Some of this surely is ideological, the financial side of Tea Party revolt against Democrats in power. But much of it isn't about ideology, it's about interest. Faced with the cumulative calamities besetting this nation, President Obama had little choice but to challenge entrenched corporate interests. He sought to cut subsidies to Big Oil and King Coal. He pushed health-care reform to the dismay of the insurance companies. Financial reform, however limited, angered Wall Street's barons. He even had the gall to suggest that private equity billionaires should pay income taxes like the rest of us.
The response, as The Post reported, has been a corporate-financed "frenzy fueled in part by a relatively small number of rich donors -- oil and gas industry chief executives, construction magnates and other tycoons."
That reality mocks the Republican pieties about being born-again conservatives. The money flooding into Republican coffers isn't for small government or balanced budgets. It's for retaining profitable subsidies, rolling back consumer or worker protections, sustaining anti-trust exemptions, reopening the financial casino, thwarting efforts to tax the wealthy. The respected economist Jamie Galbraith described this as the "predator state," where powerful corporate interests profit by creating and defending lavish government benefits. The Tea Party protest has been sparked in part by the widespread sense that government serves the powerful, not the middle class -- that it bailed out Wall Street, not Main Street. But the Republican campaign is bankrolled in no small measure by money from those intent on maintaining their government privileges and subsidies.
This tidal wave of corporate cash -- which could run up a $5 billion price tag on the most expensive midterm election in history -- is, "the dagger directed at the heart of democracy," as Bill Moyers said in a speech at Common Cause's 40th anniversary gala. It is increasingly possible, he added, for "oligarchs and plutocrats to secretly buy our elections and consolidate their hold on the corporate state."
This, in the end, is the current front of a historic struggle. Who governs America -- the powerful few or the many, money or citizens?
Predator's Ball
By Katrina Vanden Heuvel
"Apres nous, le deluge." Surely the reactionary Gang of Five on the Supreme Court should have cited Louis XV in their Citizens United decision overturning precedent to open the floodgates to corporate campaign spending. For all the fixation on Tea Partyers, what is most notable about this election is the rising tide of money that is lifting many Republican candidates -- and how it ultimately contradicts the message that GOP contenders are delivering to voters.
Only two months ago, Democratic Party operatives were boasting that the war chests of Democratic incumbents would repel Republican challengers. That was then. In the last quarter, Republican challengers surpassed Democratic incumbents in fundraising.
More important, the campaigns have been aided by an unprecedented wave of independent expenditures -- over $150 million and rising, the vast bulk spent on attack ads against besieged Democrats. Many of these contributions are anonymous, made to nonprofit institutions that don't have to reveal their donors. Karl Rove, infamous as George Bush's political "brain," has essentially displaced the Republican National Committee with his American Crossroads and Crossroads GPS organizations, claiming that they will dispense over $50 million into the elections.
This flood of conservative money isn't an accident. As a clarifying article by Eric Lichtblau in the New York Times detailed, conservatives -- led by Senate Minority leader Mitch McConnell, the "Darth Vader of campaign finance" -- have systematically sought to dismantle the post-Watergate efforts to limit the impact of money in politics, and to curb secret donations.
They've linked legislative obstruction with litigation, placed conservative zealots on regulatory agencies to block enforcement of the laws, and propagated the ideological distortion that money is speech. Aided by the reactionary majority on the Supreme Court, the conservative drive has effectively shredded much of the financial arms control of the post-Watergate period. As Lichtblau reported, conservatives acknowledge their purpose: the more money in politics, the better the party of the monied class -- the Republicans -- is likely to fare.
The barrage of attack ads, however, comes not simply from the absence of legal restraint, but from the decision of conservative corporate wealth to open fire. Some of this surely is ideological, the financial side of Tea Party revolt against Democrats in power. But much of it isn't about ideology, it's about interest. Faced with the cumulative calamities besetting this nation, President Obama had little choice but to challenge entrenched corporate interests. He sought to cut subsidies to Big Oil and King Coal. He pushed health-care reform to the dismay of the insurance companies. Financial reform, however limited, angered Wall Street's barons. He even had the gall to suggest that private equity billionaires should pay income taxes like the rest of us.
The response, as The Post reported, has been a corporate-financed "frenzy fueled in part by a relatively small number of rich donors -- oil and gas industry chief executives, construction magnates and other tycoons."
That reality mocks the Republican pieties about being born-again conservatives. The money flooding into Republican coffers isn't for small government or balanced budgets. It's for retaining profitable subsidies, rolling back consumer or worker protections, sustaining anti-trust exemptions, reopening the financial casino, thwarting efforts to tax the wealthy. The respected economist Jamie Galbraith described this as the "predator state," where powerful corporate interests profit by creating and defending lavish government benefits. The Tea Party protest has been sparked in part by the widespread sense that government serves the powerful, not the middle class -- that it bailed out Wall Street, not Main Street. But the Republican campaign is bankrolled in no small measure by money from those intent on maintaining their government privileges and subsidies.
This tidal wave of corporate cash -- which could run up a $5 billion price tag on the most expensive midterm election in history -- is, "the dagger directed at the heart of democracy," as Bill Moyers said in a speech at Common Cause's 40th anniversary gala. It is increasingly possible, he added, for "oligarchs and plutocrats to secretly buy our elections and consolidate their hold on the corporate state."
This, in the end, is the current front of a historic struggle. Who governs America -- the powerful few or the many, money or citizens?
Republican Conservative Millionaires Deceive Their Tea Party Supoporters
From The Washington Post -- October 20, 2010:
A Tea Party of Populist Posers
By Dana Milbank
On the morning of Oct. 14, a cyber-insurgency caused servers to crash at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.
The culprits, however, weren't attacking the chamber; they were well-meaning citizens who overwhelmed the big-business lobbying group with a sudden wave of online contributions. It was one of the more extraordinary events in the annals of American populism: the common man voluntarily giving money to make the rich richer.
These donors to the cause of the Fortune 500 were motivated by a radio appeal from the de facto leader of the Tea Party movement, Glenn Beck, who told them: "Put your money where your mouth is. If you have a dollar, please go to . . . the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and donate today." Chamber members, he said, "are our parents. They're our grandparents. They are us."
They are? Listed as members of the chamber's board are representatives from Pfizer, ConocoPhillips, Lockheed Martin, JPMorgan Chase, Dow Chemical, Ken Starr's old law and lobbying firm, and Rolls-Royce North America. Nothing says grass-roots insurgency quite like Rolls-Royce -- and nothing says populist revolt quite like the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. In describing the big-business group as "us," Beck (annual revenue: $32 million) provided an unintended moment of clarity into the power behind the Tea Party movement. These aren't peasants with pitchforks; these are plutocrats with payrolls.
There is genuine populist anger out there. But the angry have been deceived and exploited by posers who belong to the same class of "elites" and "insiders" that the Tea Party movement supposedly deplores. Americans who want to stick it to the man are instead sending money to the man.
Consider the candidates on the ballot next month who are getting Tea Party support. In the Connecticut Senate race, there's Linda McMahon, who with her husband has a billion-dollar pro-wrestling empire. The challenger to Democratic Sen. Russ Feingold in Wisconsin, Ron Johnson, is a millionaire manufacturing executive. The former head of Gateway computers, Rick Snyder, is spending generously from his fortune to win the Michigan governor's race.
In New York, the Republican gubernatorial candidate is developer Carl Paladino, with a net worth put at $150 million. And Rick Scott, running for governor in Florida, has a net worth of $219 million from his career as a health-care executive. Then there's California, where the Republican Senate nominee is former Hewlett-Packard chief executive Carly Fiorina and the gubernatorial candidate is former e-Bay boss Meg Whitman.
Democrats have their phony populists, too. Billionaire Jeff Greene, who cashed in on subprime mortgages, made an unsuccessful attempt at the U.S. Senate nomination in Florida. But more often this year, it's the Democrats who are defending themselves against the "elite" allegation.
"The elite's fear and loathing of the tea party movement is rooted in the recognition that the real change is only now coming," writes Tony Blankley, the conservative commentator who exempts himself from the elite label even though he worked for the speaker of the House and now toils for a prominent PR firm. The Tea Party, he wrote, will "constrain the elite's economic and cultural hegemony."
Oh? Who will do this constraining of the elite's hegemony? Why, people such as the Tea Party's Senate candidate from Alaska, Joe Miller (Yale Law School); and from Kentucky, Rand Paul (Duke Medical School), and from Colorado, Ken Buck (Princeton University).
And who will be helping these anti-elite elites get into office? Well, there's FreedomWorks, a Tea Party outfit run by Dick Armey, the former Republican lawmaker whose last job was with a big lobbying firm. His deputy at FreedomWorks is Matt Kibbe, who worked for none other than the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.
There's also the Tea Party Express, the creation of longtime Republican consultant Sal Russo. A colleague at Russo's consulting firm pitched the Tea Party Express idea as a way to boost the company's bottom line. According to an internal e-mail intercepted by the New York Times, it came from a "desire to give a boost to our PAC and position us as a growing force/leading force."
The guy who put together the Tea Party "Contract From America" previously worked on Rudy Giuliani's presidential campaign. Another Tea Party group, Americans for Prosperity, has been lavishly funded by the billionaire Koch brothers.
A movement of the plutocrats, by the political professionals and for the powerful: Now that's something Tea Partyers should be mad about.
A Tea Party of Populist Posers
By Dana Milbank
On the morning of Oct. 14, a cyber-insurgency caused servers to crash at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.
The culprits, however, weren't attacking the chamber; they were well-meaning citizens who overwhelmed the big-business lobbying group with a sudden wave of online contributions. It was one of the more extraordinary events in the annals of American populism: the common man voluntarily giving money to make the rich richer.
These donors to the cause of the Fortune 500 were motivated by a radio appeal from the de facto leader of the Tea Party movement, Glenn Beck, who told them: "Put your money where your mouth is. If you have a dollar, please go to . . . the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and donate today." Chamber members, he said, "are our parents. They're our grandparents. They are us."
They are? Listed as members of the chamber's board are representatives from Pfizer, ConocoPhillips, Lockheed Martin, JPMorgan Chase, Dow Chemical, Ken Starr's old law and lobbying firm, and Rolls-Royce North America. Nothing says grass-roots insurgency quite like Rolls-Royce -- and nothing says populist revolt quite like the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. In describing the big-business group as "us," Beck (annual revenue: $32 million) provided an unintended moment of clarity into the power behind the Tea Party movement. These aren't peasants with pitchforks; these are plutocrats with payrolls.
There is genuine populist anger out there. But the angry have been deceived and exploited by posers who belong to the same class of "elites" and "insiders" that the Tea Party movement supposedly deplores. Americans who want to stick it to the man are instead sending money to the man.
Consider the candidates on the ballot next month who are getting Tea Party support. In the Connecticut Senate race, there's Linda McMahon, who with her husband has a billion-dollar pro-wrestling empire. The challenger to Democratic Sen. Russ Feingold in Wisconsin, Ron Johnson, is a millionaire manufacturing executive. The former head of Gateway computers, Rick Snyder, is spending generously from his fortune to win the Michigan governor's race.
In New York, the Republican gubernatorial candidate is developer Carl Paladino, with a net worth put at $150 million. And Rick Scott, running for governor in Florida, has a net worth of $219 million from his career as a health-care executive. Then there's California, where the Republican Senate nominee is former Hewlett-Packard chief executive Carly Fiorina and the gubernatorial candidate is former e-Bay boss Meg Whitman.
Democrats have their phony populists, too. Billionaire Jeff Greene, who cashed in on subprime mortgages, made an unsuccessful attempt at the U.S. Senate nomination in Florida. But more often this year, it's the Democrats who are defending themselves against the "elite" allegation.
"The elite's fear and loathing of the tea party movement is rooted in the recognition that the real change is only now coming," writes Tony Blankley, the conservative commentator who exempts himself from the elite label even though he worked for the speaker of the House and now toils for a prominent PR firm. The Tea Party, he wrote, will "constrain the elite's economic and cultural hegemony."
Oh? Who will do this constraining of the elite's hegemony? Why, people such as the Tea Party's Senate candidate from Alaska, Joe Miller (Yale Law School); and from Kentucky, Rand Paul (Duke Medical School), and from Colorado, Ken Buck (Princeton University).
And who will be helping these anti-elite elites get into office? Well, there's FreedomWorks, a Tea Party outfit run by Dick Armey, the former Republican lawmaker whose last job was with a big lobbying firm. His deputy at FreedomWorks is Matt Kibbe, who worked for none other than the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.
There's also the Tea Party Express, the creation of longtime Republican consultant Sal Russo. A colleague at Russo's consulting firm pitched the Tea Party Express idea as a way to boost the company's bottom line. According to an internal e-mail intercepted by the New York Times, it came from a "desire to give a boost to our PAC and position us as a growing force/leading force."
The guy who put together the Tea Party "Contract From America" previously worked on Rudy Giuliani's presidential campaign. Another Tea Party group, Americans for Prosperity, has been lavishly funded by the billionaire Koch brothers.
A movement of the plutocrats, by the political professionals and for the powerful: Now that's something Tea Partyers should be mad about.
Republican Conservative Millionaires Secretly Expand Their Class War on America
From The New York Times -- October 19, 2010:
(Excerpts from two-page article)
Secretive Republican Donors Are Planning Ahead
"A secretive network of Republican donors is heading to the Palm Springs area for a long weekend in January, but it will not be to relax after a hard-fought election — it will be to plan for the next one.
Koch Industries, the longtime underwriter of libertarian causes from the Cato Institute in Washington to the ballot initiative that would suspend California’s landmark law capping greenhouse gases, is planning a confidential meeting at the Rancho Las Palmas Resort and Spa to, as an invitation says, “develop strategies to counter the most severe threats facing our free society and outline a vision of how we can foster a renewal of American free enterprise and prosperity.”
The invitation, sent to potential new participants, offers a rare peek at the Koch network of the ultrawealthy and the politically well-connected, its far-reaching agenda to enlist ordinary Americans to its cause, and its desire for the utmost secrecy.
Charles Koch, whose wealth Forbes magazine calculates at about $21.5 billion, argues in his letter that “prosperity is under attack by the current administration and many of our elected officials.” He repeatedly warns about the “internal assault” and “unrelenting attacks” on freedom and prosperity. A brochure with the invitation underscores that to the Koch network, “freedom” means freedom from taxes and government regulation. Mr. Koch warns of policies that “threaten to erode our economic freedom and transfer vast sums of money to the state.”
"....and is helping Tea Party groups set up get-out-the-vote operations"
"To encourage new participants, Mr. Koch offers to waive the $1,500 registration fee. And he notes that previous guests have included Justices Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas of the Supreme Court, Gov. Haley Barbour and Gov. Bobby Jindal, Senators Jim DeMint and Tom Coburn, and Representatives Mike Pence, Tom Price and Paul D. Ryan."
(Excerpts from two-page article)
Secretive Republican Donors Are Planning Ahead
"A secretive network of Republican donors is heading to the Palm Springs area for a long weekend in January, but it will not be to relax after a hard-fought election — it will be to plan for the next one.
Koch Industries, the longtime underwriter of libertarian causes from the Cato Institute in Washington to the ballot initiative that would suspend California’s landmark law capping greenhouse gases, is planning a confidential meeting at the Rancho Las Palmas Resort and Spa to, as an invitation says, “develop strategies to counter the most severe threats facing our free society and outline a vision of how we can foster a renewal of American free enterprise and prosperity.”
The invitation, sent to potential new participants, offers a rare peek at the Koch network of the ultrawealthy and the politically well-connected, its far-reaching agenda to enlist ordinary Americans to its cause, and its desire for the utmost secrecy.
Charles Koch, whose wealth Forbes magazine calculates at about $21.5 billion, argues in his letter that “prosperity is under attack by the current administration and many of our elected officials.” He repeatedly warns about the “internal assault” and “unrelenting attacks” on freedom and prosperity. A brochure with the invitation underscores that to the Koch network, “freedom” means freedom from taxes and government regulation. Mr. Koch warns of policies that “threaten to erode our economic freedom and transfer vast sums of money to the state.”
"....and is helping Tea Party groups set up get-out-the-vote operations"
"To encourage new participants, Mr. Koch offers to waive the $1,500 registration fee. And he notes that previous guests have included Justices Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas of the Supreme Court, Gov. Haley Barbour and Gov. Bobby Jindal, Senators Jim DeMint and Tom Coburn, and Representatives Mike Pence, Tom Price and Paul D. Ryan."
Saturday, October 16, 2010
The Republican Tea Party Hero of Homophobia
From The New York Daily News -- October 12, 2010:
Tea Party hero Carl Paladino rages against 'disgusting' gay pride parades
BY ADAM LISBERG, EDGAR SANDOVAL AND KENNETH LOVETT
DAILY NEWS STAFF WRITERS
Buffalo bomb-thrower Carl Paladino branded gay pride parades "disgusting" on Monday - and took a shot at rival Andrew Cuomo for bringing his daughters to one.
The Tea Party blowhard insisted he has nothing against homosexuals, he just doesn't want himself or children exposed to their culture.
He said he was appalled by having seen Toronto gay pride parade marchers wearing "little Speedos and they grind against each other."
"I think it's disgusting," he told NBC's "Today" show.
He hammered Cuomo for bringing his teenage daughters to a gay pride parade earlier this year.
"Is that normal?" he asked on ABC's "Good Morning America." "I don't think it's proper for them to go there.
"Any father who would take his children to such things is not really thinking of the fatherly perspective and is more interested in politics."
Cuomo, marching well ahead of Paladino in the Columbus Day Parade, dismissed the comments as "reckless," "divisive" and "cynical."
"He's probably the last person I'll take advice from on how to raise my daughters," said Cuomo, who last week hired Erik Botcher from City Council Speaker Christine Quinn's staff to handle outreach to the gay community.
Cuomo is pushing to enact gay marriage in New York, while Paladino staunchly opposes it.
Paladino was still stinging from the scorching he took after telling a group of rabbis in Borough Park Sunday that being gay is "not the example that we should be showing our children."
In rejecting gay marriage, he told the rabbis he doesn't want children "brainwashed into thinking homosexuality is an equally valid and successful option - it isn't."
To tamp down claims of homophobia, Paladino made the rounds on morning TV talk shows to plead his case.
"I have, unequivocally, have absolutely no reservations whatsoever about homosexuality," he told Fox News. "I know the difficulties that homosexuals suffer."
He called "absolutely despicable" the recent attacks in the Bronx by nine gang members on a gay man and two gay 17-year-olds.
The millionaire businessman said his nephew is gay - and that he'd actively hire gays for his administration if elected governor.
Asked if he believes being gay is a choice, Paladino admitted, "I've had difficulty with that . . . . My nephew tells me he didn't have that choice."
Paladino's nephew, campaign aide Jeff Hannon, did not respond to requests for comment from the Daily News.
As he marched in the Columbus Day Parade, Paladino waved at supporters - and endured some boos.
He handed lollipops to kids and stopped to greet Archbishop Timothy Dolan.
Paladino was smacked around for his homosexual tirade by gay rights groups and Democrats participating in the parade - and he later took a few shots from fellow Republicans.
Former Mayor Rudy Giuliani, speaking in California, called Paladino's rants "highly offensive" and called on him to apologize, Politico.com reported.
The GOP's attorney general candidate, Dan Donovan, and controller hopeful, Harry Wilson, sharply criticized Paladino's statements on homosexuality.
Apprised of their broadsides, Paladino huffed, "So what?"
State Sen. Tom Duane, a Manhattan Democrat and the only openly gay senator, said Paladino - who has a 10-year-old love child from an extramarital affair - is the last person who should be lecturing on morals.
"I don't think someone who is living a polygamist lifestyle should be the arbiter of what makes a family," Duane said.
Tea Party hero Carl Paladino rages against 'disgusting' gay pride parades
BY ADAM LISBERG, EDGAR SANDOVAL AND KENNETH LOVETT
DAILY NEWS STAFF WRITERS
Buffalo bomb-thrower Carl Paladino branded gay pride parades "disgusting" on Monday - and took a shot at rival Andrew Cuomo for bringing his daughters to one.
The Tea Party blowhard insisted he has nothing against homosexuals, he just doesn't want himself or children exposed to their culture.
He said he was appalled by having seen Toronto gay pride parade marchers wearing "little Speedos and they grind against each other."
"I think it's disgusting," he told NBC's "Today" show.
He hammered Cuomo for bringing his teenage daughters to a gay pride parade earlier this year.
"Is that normal?" he asked on ABC's "Good Morning America." "I don't think it's proper for them to go there.
"Any father who would take his children to such things is not really thinking of the fatherly perspective and is more interested in politics."
Cuomo, marching well ahead of Paladino in the Columbus Day Parade, dismissed the comments as "reckless," "divisive" and "cynical."
"He's probably the last person I'll take advice from on how to raise my daughters," said Cuomo, who last week hired Erik Botcher from City Council Speaker Christine Quinn's staff to handle outreach to the gay community.
Cuomo is pushing to enact gay marriage in New York, while Paladino staunchly opposes it.
Paladino was still stinging from the scorching he took after telling a group of rabbis in Borough Park Sunday that being gay is "not the example that we should be showing our children."
In rejecting gay marriage, he told the rabbis he doesn't want children "brainwashed into thinking homosexuality is an equally valid and successful option - it isn't."
To tamp down claims of homophobia, Paladino made the rounds on morning TV talk shows to plead his case.
"I have, unequivocally, have absolutely no reservations whatsoever about homosexuality," he told Fox News. "I know the difficulties that homosexuals suffer."
He called "absolutely despicable" the recent attacks in the Bronx by nine gang members on a gay man and two gay 17-year-olds.
The millionaire businessman said his nephew is gay - and that he'd actively hire gays for his administration if elected governor.
Asked if he believes being gay is a choice, Paladino admitted, "I've had difficulty with that . . . . My nephew tells me he didn't have that choice."
Paladino's nephew, campaign aide Jeff Hannon, did not respond to requests for comment from the Daily News.
As he marched in the Columbus Day Parade, Paladino waved at supporters - and endured some boos.
He handed lollipops to kids and stopped to greet Archbishop Timothy Dolan.
Paladino was smacked around for his homosexual tirade by gay rights groups and Democrats participating in the parade - and he later took a few shots from fellow Republicans.
Former Mayor Rudy Giuliani, speaking in California, called Paladino's rants "highly offensive" and called on him to apologize, Politico.com reported.
The GOP's attorney general candidate, Dan Donovan, and controller hopeful, Harry Wilson, sharply criticized Paladino's statements on homosexuality.
Apprised of their broadsides, Paladino huffed, "So what?"
State Sen. Tom Duane, a Manhattan Democrat and the only openly gay senator, said Paladino - who has a 10-year-old love child from an extramarital affair - is the last person who should be lecturing on morals.
"I don't think someone who is living a polygamist lifestyle should be the arbiter of what makes a family," Duane said.
Friday, October 15, 2010
USA: The Land of the Scum and the Home of the Dumb
Let's Start with the Scum -- Glenn Beck and Fox News.
From Media Matters For America -- October 15, 2010:
"Progressive Hunter" redux: Beck devotes entire hour to demonizing Tides
Less than a week after revelations that conspiracy theories pushed by Glenn Beck and the right-wing media drove a California man to plot the assassination of Tides Foundation employees, Beck devoted an hour-long show to demonizing Tides. Beck's latest attacks come just hours after Tides released a letter calling on advertisers to stop financing the extremist rhetoric and conspiracy theories broadcast on Fox News.
Tides calls for advertisers to boycott Fox over Beck's dangerous discourse
Progressive Hunter: CA cop shooter said Beck "exposed" things that "blew my mind." Alleged California highway shooter Byron Williams reportedly told investigators that "his intention was to start a revolution by traveling to San Francisco and killing people of importance at the Tides Foundation and the ACLU." Beck, like Williams, has repeatedly obsessed over Soros and the Tides Foundation.
As John Hamilton reported, Williams described Beck as "a schoolteacher" and said that "it was the things [Beck] exposed that blew my mind." Williams repeatedly cited specific Beck broadcasts when discussing a conspiracy theory involving George Soros, President Obama, and a Brazilian oil company -- a theory that Williams said informed his alleged plot. Williams said that "Beck would never say anything about a conspiracy, would never advocate violence. He'll never do anything ... of this nature. But he'll give you every ounce of evidence that you could possibly need."
Just hours before Beck's show, Tides CEO and founder called for Fox News ad boycott. Earlier on October 15, Tides CEO and founder Drummond Pike released a letter in which he noted that Williams relied heavily on conspiracy theories advanced on Beck's show and called on advertisers to stop supporting Fox News. Pike noted that "businesses that pay to broadcast commercials on Fox News are subsidizing Glenn Beck's television show by continuing to pump money into the network," adding, "It has become clear that the only way to stop supporting Beck is to stop supporting Fox News."
Beck repeatedly attacks Tides and Soros on October 15
"Let There Be ... Stuff?" curriculum guides teens to "explore the relationship between their consumption, their health, and the faith of the planet." Beck dedicated the October 15 edition of his Fox News program to attacking a project sponsored by the Tides Foundation and GreenFaith. The "Let There Be ... Stuff?" curriculum has been available since April for churches and other houses of worship to download at no cost and is designed to lead teenagers to "explore the relationship between their consumption, their faith, and the health of the planet." Beck previewed the October 15 episode on October 14 by stating:
BECK: Tomorrow night, oh, we're going to expose manipulation of the word of God by radical green movement and "Let There Be Stuff" and provide ways for you and your kids to respond to this propaganda.
Do not miss tomorrow, a full episode you must have on DVD. Tomorrow night.
Tomorrow, a very special episode. Boy, that's usually when I bring in the little neighbor kid. A very special episode -- indoctrination for your kids. Don't miss it. This time the indoctrination is happening in your churches and synagogues.
During his October 15 broadcast, Beck acknowledged the Tides curriculum contains "some truth," but continued to attack it with outrageous rhetoric.
Beck: Tides curriculum smells like "sulfur." Beck said of the Tides-sponsored curriculum: "They are going right into our churches and our synagogues. It's for the planet, you know. They want you to join a group. That's the best thing our teens can do is join a group." Beck then linked Tides to the devil by holding up the curriculum and stating, "Is that sulfur I smell? Yes, I think so."
Beck: Tides is "coming for your church and your faith." During the show, Beck stated that the Tides Foundation is now "coming for your church and your faith":
BECK: This is the latest from the Tides Foundation, and this is for kids in synagogues and this will now be found in your churches. Warning -- I warned you about a year ago they are coming for your church and your faith. They are doing it now, "Let there be Stuff."
Beck compared Soros to emperor villain from Star Wars. Throughout the show, Beck equated George Soros and the Tides Foundation, when in fact, the conspiracy theory that Soros controls Tides is false. During the show, Beck said: "This is the latest from George Soros -- spooky dude George Soros. I swear to you -- you've got to watch I think it's episode six of the Star Wars movies where the emperor is like -- remember he's sitting in that big spooky chair and he turns around -- It's George Soros." According to starwars.com, Emperor Palpatine "was the supreme ruler of the most powerful tyrannical regime the galaxy had ever witnessed."
Beck told viewers to "run for your life" if their church uses the Tides curriculum. Beck said of the Tides curriculum: "If you see anything like this going to your kids, run for your life. You are in the wrong church. I mean, unless you're an environmentalist that worships Gaia or whoever it is now."
Beck asked: "Any doubt in your mind that the progressive left is coming for the kill on religion?" While discussing the Tides curriculum, Beck asked his guests, "Any doubt in your mind that the progressive left is coming for the kill on religion?" Guest Calvin Beisner replied, "Absolutely. And part of the reason is because traditional Christian faith, Biblical faith in America has been the most resistant to the whole progressive agenda."
Beck: Soros "is the head of the snake." During the show, Beck said that Soros "is the head of the snake":
BECK: Jim Wallis today -- he's an amazing individual.
BEISNER: Who also takes money from George Soros.
BECK: No. It's almost like George Soros -- he is the head of the snake. Anyway, I want to go back to now some things that you have seen in the paper.
Beck asserted that the curriculum contains "evil stuff." Beck said, "This is the Story of Stuff, GreenFaith project and it's going into your churches, and your synagogues. Watch for it carefully. Some of it sounds great. Some of it -- you know, it's truth mixed with evil stuff, to be real frank with you."
Beck accused Tides of bringing "paganism" and "American native" thinking into churches. During the show, Beck responded to the statement in the curriculum that "When we drink, we owe a debt to the earth's great waters," by stating, "That's American native -- I guess you could go there. It's paganism." Beisner later stated that the curriculum was presenting "not Judeo-Christian thought," but "new age pantheistic," "Hindu" and "Buddhist" ideas.
Beck claimed Tides curriculum "manipulates" the Bible and is the "indoctrination of youth." The following on-screen text aired during the show:
Beck hosted David Barton, Calvin Beisner to discuss Tides curriculum, science and religion
Beisner has previously called AIDS "a disease that is almost 100 percent self-inflicted by people intent on immoral and irrational behavior?" As reported by DeSmog Blog, in 1990, Beisner wrote an article arguing against the "militant homosexuals" that were calling for an increase in federal spending on AIDS research, treatment and education. Beisner asked if it was "rational" to increase funding to "fight a disease that is almost 100 percent self-inflicted by people intent on immoral and irrational behavior? Not when there are more pressing matters that ought to take priority."
Beisner wrote in 2005 that public schools are "the enemy" to Christians after court rejected teaching Intelligent Design in biology class. DeSmog Blog also noted that Beisner wrote a 2005 article criticizing a U.S. district court ruling that prohibited a school district in Pennsylvania from teaching "intelligent design" in science classes. According to NewScientist, supporters of intelligent design "believe that some things in nature are simply too complex to have evolved by natural selection, and therefore must be the work of an intelligent designer." Beisner wrote:
The aggressive, extreme secularism that would reject all reference in biology studies to intelligent design of irreducibly complex structures is more patently unscientific and more obviously religious than what most people have encountered in discussing evolution and creation. Perhaps a few more will waken now to the fact that the public schools are the enemy, not the friend, and not even a neutral party, to Christians, and therefore (a) remove their kids from them and (b) stop working in them.
Barton cited 18th century views on homosexuality to argue that we should continue banning gays from the military. Barton wrote on the WallBuilders site that George Washington "was the first not only to forbid, but even to punish, homosexuals in the military"; that Thomas Jefferson "authored a bill penalizing sodomy by castration"; and that the idea of allowing gays to serve in the military "would have brought disbelief, disdain, and condemnation from those who established our Armed Forces." Barton concluded, "In view of the arguments listed by historical and legal sources, there is substantial merit for maintaining the ban on homosexuals in the military. The Founders instituted this ban with a clear understanding of the damaging effects of this behavior on the military."
Barton delivered speeches to anti-Semitic groups. According to the Anti-Defamation League, Beck historian and frequent Glenn Beck guest David Barton has spoken at events hosted by the Christian Identity movement, which "asserts that Jews are 'the synagogue of Satan'; that Blacks and other people of color are subhuman; and that northern European whites and their American descendants are the 'chosen people' of scriptural prophesy." From the Anti-Defamation League's 1994 book The Religious Right: The Assault on Tolerance & Pluralism in America:
On at least two occasions, Barton has delivered his revisionist presentation in the meeting halls of the racist and anti-Semitic extreme right. In July 1991, Barton addressed the Colorado summer retreat of Scriptures for America, the Identity Church group headed by firebrand Pete Peters. He was advertised as "a new and special speaker" who would "bring the following messages: America's Godly Heritage -- Was it the plan of our forefathers that America be the melting pot home of various religions and philosophies? ..." Barton's fellow-speakers at the retreat included the virulently anti-Semitic Virginia stockbroker-polemicist Richard Kelly Hoskins; "Bo" Gritz, the 1992 presidential nominee of the far-right Populist Party and a self-described "white separatist"; and Canadian Holocaust-denier Malcolm Ross.
On November 24, 1991, Barton appeared at another Identity gathering, presenting the second annual Thanksgiving message to Identity preacher Mike Watson's Kingdom Covenant College in Grants Pass, Oregon. In a subsequent edition of The Centinel [sic], Watson's publication, Barton was described as a "nationally acclaimed speaker" who "has introduced many Americans to their godly Christian heritage." [Pages 55-56]
Barton later said he was not aware that the events were hosted by groups with a racist ideology and said "that with as many as 400 speaking engagements a year, he cannot do background checks on each of the invitations he receives," according to an April 10, 1996, Seattle Times article (retrieved via Nexis).
Beck and guest attack climate change science
Beisner falsely claimed "Climate-gate" has "thoroughly trashed" the "unproven hypothesis" of climate change. During the show, Beisner, who founded a Christian coalition of climate skeptics, said that climate change "is an unproven hypothesis. In fact, if anything, in the last year it has been just thoroughly trashed by Climate-gate and other things of that sort. But they're bringing this forward, giving it to kids as if it were proven and that it should scare kids to death." In fact, climate experts and fact-checkers reject the notion that the "Climate-gate" emails undermine the scientific consensus that humans are contributing to global warming, and an independent British inquiry found "no evidence of dishonesty or corruption," as reported by the Associated Press in July. An earlier investigation by the House of Commons also found "no evidence" to support the claim that the scientists "had tampered with data."
Beck falsely suggested that past climate change shows humans are not driving current warming. While discussing climate change, Beck said: "The only thing constant in life is change. Where were the dinosaur and the wooly mammoth's giant SUVs that they were driving. How is it that we've had -- we've had ice ages and yet there were no SUVs. This is ridiculous." In fact, as climate scientists have repeatedly explained, "The fact that natural factors caused climate changes in the past does not mean that the current climate change is natural. By analogy, the fact that forest fires have long been caused naturally by lightning strikes does not mean that fires cannot also be caused by a careless camper. " The U.S. Climate Change Resource Center states that climate models "have successfully simulated the Earth's climate over the past 1,000 years. However, they cannot capture the rapid increase in global temperature of the past half century without including greenhouse gas forcing."
Now, how many Americans believe the rantings of this Fox-Beck Scum?
Has America in fact become the land of the Dumb, Dumber and Dumbest?
From Media Matters For America -- October 15, 2010:
"Progressive Hunter" redux: Beck devotes entire hour to demonizing Tides
Less than a week after revelations that conspiracy theories pushed by Glenn Beck and the right-wing media drove a California man to plot the assassination of Tides Foundation employees, Beck devoted an hour-long show to demonizing Tides. Beck's latest attacks come just hours after Tides released a letter calling on advertisers to stop financing the extremist rhetoric and conspiracy theories broadcast on Fox News.
Tides calls for advertisers to boycott Fox over Beck's dangerous discourse
Progressive Hunter: CA cop shooter said Beck "exposed" things that "blew my mind." Alleged California highway shooter Byron Williams reportedly told investigators that "his intention was to start a revolution by traveling to San Francisco and killing people of importance at the Tides Foundation and the ACLU." Beck, like Williams, has repeatedly obsessed over Soros and the Tides Foundation.
As John Hamilton reported, Williams described Beck as "a schoolteacher" and said that "it was the things [Beck] exposed that blew my mind." Williams repeatedly cited specific Beck broadcasts when discussing a conspiracy theory involving George Soros, President Obama, and a Brazilian oil company -- a theory that Williams said informed his alleged plot. Williams said that "Beck would never say anything about a conspiracy, would never advocate violence. He'll never do anything ... of this nature. But he'll give you every ounce of evidence that you could possibly need."
Just hours before Beck's show, Tides CEO and founder called for Fox News ad boycott. Earlier on October 15, Tides CEO and founder Drummond Pike released a letter in which he noted that Williams relied heavily on conspiracy theories advanced on Beck's show and called on advertisers to stop supporting Fox News. Pike noted that "businesses that pay to broadcast commercials on Fox News are subsidizing Glenn Beck's television show by continuing to pump money into the network," adding, "It has become clear that the only way to stop supporting Beck is to stop supporting Fox News."
Beck repeatedly attacks Tides and Soros on October 15
"Let There Be ... Stuff?" curriculum guides teens to "explore the relationship between their consumption, their health, and the faith of the planet." Beck dedicated the October 15 edition of his Fox News program to attacking a project sponsored by the Tides Foundation and GreenFaith. The "Let There Be ... Stuff?" curriculum has been available since April for churches and other houses of worship to download at no cost and is designed to lead teenagers to "explore the relationship between their consumption, their faith, and the health of the planet." Beck previewed the October 15 episode on October 14 by stating:
BECK: Tomorrow night, oh, we're going to expose manipulation of the word of God by radical green movement and "Let There Be Stuff" and provide ways for you and your kids to respond to this propaganda.
Do not miss tomorrow, a full episode you must have on DVD. Tomorrow night.
Tomorrow, a very special episode. Boy, that's usually when I bring in the little neighbor kid. A very special episode -- indoctrination for your kids. Don't miss it. This time the indoctrination is happening in your churches and synagogues.
During his October 15 broadcast, Beck acknowledged the Tides curriculum contains "some truth," but continued to attack it with outrageous rhetoric.
Beck: Tides curriculum smells like "sulfur." Beck said of the Tides-sponsored curriculum: "They are going right into our churches and our synagogues. It's for the planet, you know. They want you to join a group. That's the best thing our teens can do is join a group." Beck then linked Tides to the devil by holding up the curriculum and stating, "Is that sulfur I smell? Yes, I think so."
Beck: Tides is "coming for your church and your faith." During the show, Beck stated that the Tides Foundation is now "coming for your church and your faith":
BECK: This is the latest from the Tides Foundation, and this is for kids in synagogues and this will now be found in your churches. Warning -- I warned you about a year ago they are coming for your church and your faith. They are doing it now, "Let there be Stuff."
Beck compared Soros to emperor villain from Star Wars. Throughout the show, Beck equated George Soros and the Tides Foundation, when in fact, the conspiracy theory that Soros controls Tides is false. During the show, Beck said: "This is the latest from George Soros -- spooky dude George Soros. I swear to you -- you've got to watch I think it's episode six of the Star Wars movies where the emperor is like -- remember he's sitting in that big spooky chair and he turns around -- It's George Soros." According to starwars.com, Emperor Palpatine "was the supreme ruler of the most powerful tyrannical regime the galaxy had ever witnessed."
Beck told viewers to "run for your life" if their church uses the Tides curriculum. Beck said of the Tides curriculum: "If you see anything like this going to your kids, run for your life. You are in the wrong church. I mean, unless you're an environmentalist that worships Gaia or whoever it is now."
Beck asked: "Any doubt in your mind that the progressive left is coming for the kill on religion?" While discussing the Tides curriculum, Beck asked his guests, "Any doubt in your mind that the progressive left is coming for the kill on religion?" Guest Calvin Beisner replied, "Absolutely. And part of the reason is because traditional Christian faith, Biblical faith in America has been the most resistant to the whole progressive agenda."
Beck: Soros "is the head of the snake." During the show, Beck said that Soros "is the head of the snake":
BECK: Jim Wallis today -- he's an amazing individual.
BEISNER: Who also takes money from George Soros.
BECK: No. It's almost like George Soros -- he is the head of the snake. Anyway, I want to go back to now some things that you have seen in the paper.
Beck asserted that the curriculum contains "evil stuff." Beck said, "This is the Story of Stuff, GreenFaith project and it's going into your churches, and your synagogues. Watch for it carefully. Some of it sounds great. Some of it -- you know, it's truth mixed with evil stuff, to be real frank with you."
Beck accused Tides of bringing "paganism" and "American native" thinking into churches. During the show, Beck responded to the statement in the curriculum that "When we drink, we owe a debt to the earth's great waters," by stating, "That's American native -- I guess you could go there. It's paganism." Beisner later stated that the curriculum was presenting "not Judeo-Christian thought," but "new age pantheistic," "Hindu" and "Buddhist" ideas.
Beck claimed Tides curriculum "manipulates" the Bible and is the "indoctrination of youth." The following on-screen text aired during the show:
Beck hosted David Barton, Calvin Beisner to discuss Tides curriculum, science and religion
Beisner has previously called AIDS "a disease that is almost 100 percent self-inflicted by people intent on immoral and irrational behavior?" As reported by DeSmog Blog, in 1990, Beisner wrote an article arguing against the "militant homosexuals" that were calling for an increase in federal spending on AIDS research, treatment and education. Beisner asked if it was "rational" to increase funding to "fight a disease that is almost 100 percent self-inflicted by people intent on immoral and irrational behavior? Not when there are more pressing matters that ought to take priority."
Beisner wrote in 2005 that public schools are "the enemy" to Christians after court rejected teaching Intelligent Design in biology class. DeSmog Blog also noted that Beisner wrote a 2005 article criticizing a U.S. district court ruling that prohibited a school district in Pennsylvania from teaching "intelligent design" in science classes. According to NewScientist, supporters of intelligent design "believe that some things in nature are simply too complex to have evolved by natural selection, and therefore must be the work of an intelligent designer." Beisner wrote:
The aggressive, extreme secularism that would reject all reference in biology studies to intelligent design of irreducibly complex structures is more patently unscientific and more obviously religious than what most people have encountered in discussing evolution and creation. Perhaps a few more will waken now to the fact that the public schools are the enemy, not the friend, and not even a neutral party, to Christians, and therefore (a) remove their kids from them and (b) stop working in them.
Barton cited 18th century views on homosexuality to argue that we should continue banning gays from the military. Barton wrote on the WallBuilders site that George Washington "was the first not only to forbid, but even to punish, homosexuals in the military"; that Thomas Jefferson "authored a bill penalizing sodomy by castration"; and that the idea of allowing gays to serve in the military "would have brought disbelief, disdain, and condemnation from those who established our Armed Forces." Barton concluded, "In view of the arguments listed by historical and legal sources, there is substantial merit for maintaining the ban on homosexuals in the military. The Founders instituted this ban with a clear understanding of the damaging effects of this behavior on the military."
Barton delivered speeches to anti-Semitic groups. According to the Anti-Defamation League, Beck historian and frequent Glenn Beck guest David Barton has spoken at events hosted by the Christian Identity movement, which "asserts that Jews are 'the synagogue of Satan'; that Blacks and other people of color are subhuman; and that northern European whites and their American descendants are the 'chosen people' of scriptural prophesy." From the Anti-Defamation League's 1994 book The Religious Right: The Assault on Tolerance & Pluralism in America:
On at least two occasions, Barton has delivered his revisionist presentation in the meeting halls of the racist and anti-Semitic extreme right. In July 1991, Barton addressed the Colorado summer retreat of Scriptures for America, the Identity Church group headed by firebrand Pete Peters. He was advertised as "a new and special speaker" who would "bring the following messages: America's Godly Heritage -- Was it the plan of our forefathers that America be the melting pot home of various religions and philosophies? ..." Barton's fellow-speakers at the retreat included the virulently anti-Semitic Virginia stockbroker-polemicist Richard Kelly Hoskins; "Bo" Gritz, the 1992 presidential nominee of the far-right Populist Party and a self-described "white separatist"; and Canadian Holocaust-denier Malcolm Ross.
On November 24, 1991, Barton appeared at another Identity gathering, presenting the second annual Thanksgiving message to Identity preacher Mike Watson's Kingdom Covenant College in Grants Pass, Oregon. In a subsequent edition of The Centinel [sic], Watson's publication, Barton was described as a "nationally acclaimed speaker" who "has introduced many Americans to their godly Christian heritage." [Pages 55-56]
Barton later said he was not aware that the events were hosted by groups with a racist ideology and said "that with as many as 400 speaking engagements a year, he cannot do background checks on each of the invitations he receives," according to an April 10, 1996, Seattle Times article (retrieved via Nexis).
Beck and guest attack climate change science
Beisner falsely claimed "Climate-gate" has "thoroughly trashed" the "unproven hypothesis" of climate change. During the show, Beisner, who founded a Christian coalition of climate skeptics, said that climate change "is an unproven hypothesis. In fact, if anything, in the last year it has been just thoroughly trashed by Climate-gate and other things of that sort. But they're bringing this forward, giving it to kids as if it were proven and that it should scare kids to death." In fact, climate experts and fact-checkers reject the notion that the "Climate-gate" emails undermine the scientific consensus that humans are contributing to global warming, and an independent British inquiry found "no evidence of dishonesty or corruption," as reported by the Associated Press in July. An earlier investigation by the House of Commons also found "no evidence" to support the claim that the scientists "had tampered with data."
Beck falsely suggested that past climate change shows humans are not driving current warming. While discussing climate change, Beck said: "The only thing constant in life is change. Where were the dinosaur and the wooly mammoth's giant SUVs that they were driving. How is it that we've had -- we've had ice ages and yet there were no SUVs. This is ridiculous." In fact, as climate scientists have repeatedly explained, "The fact that natural factors caused climate changes in the past does not mean that the current climate change is natural. By analogy, the fact that forest fires have long been caused naturally by lightning strikes does not mean that fires cannot also be caused by a careless camper. " The U.S. Climate Change Resource Center states that climate models "have successfully simulated the Earth's climate over the past 1,000 years. However, they cannot capture the rapid increase in global temperature of the past half century without including greenhouse gas forcing."
Now, how many Americans believe the rantings of this Fox-Beck Scum?
Has America in fact become the land of the Dumb, Dumber and Dumbest?
Wednesday, October 13, 2010
"Immoral and Unnatural" Republican Homophobic Politicians
From The Washington Post -- Editorial -- October 12, 2010:
Politicians' Intolerance Help Fuel Climate of Hate Against Gays and Lesbians
THE NEWS out of New York City this past weekend was horrifying. In what is being called the worst anti-gay violence in recent memory, two 17-year-old boys and a 30-year-old man were kidnapped and sexually tortured in the Bronx because they are gay. The nine thugs allegedly responsible for this atrocity are in custody.
According to Police Commissioner Raymond W. Kelly, the alleged perpetrators have not expressed remorse. They deserve to be punished to the fullest extent of the law. Mayor Michael Bloomberg said he "was sickened by the brutal nature of these crimes and saddened by the anti-gay bias that contributed to them." Mr. Bloomberg was joined in his unequivocal outrage and condemnation by Gov. David Paterson, City Council Speaker Christine Quinn and Archbishop Timothy Dolan of the New York Archdiocese.
And then there's Carl Paladino. In a stunning display of tone-deafness and bigotry, the Republican candidate for governor said this about homosexuality during a speech on Sunday: "That's not how God created us. . . . I just think my children and your children would be much better off and much more successful getting married and raising a family, and I don't want them brainwashed into thinking that homosexuality is an equally valid and successful option -- it isn't."
The last two weeks have been ugly for gay men and lesbians -- and for America. In addition to the violence in the Bronx, there have been attacks on homosexuals in other parts of New York City and suicides of gay teenagers across the country who were literally bullied to death.
Where do bullies get their ammunition, the hurtful slurs that eat away at the self-esteem of those who are gay or lesbian? What makes someone feel it's okay to verbally and physically harass, maim or even kill?
One source is politicians such as Mr. Paladino who continue to espouse their belief that being gay is an immoral or unnatural "lifestyle" choice that can be changed at will. As long as such dehumanizing ignorance and intolerance go unchallenged, the horrors and suicides will continue.
Is Mr. Paladino saying that God created Straights but not Gays?
Then who did create Gays, Mr Paladino?
Politicians' Intolerance Help Fuel Climate of Hate Against Gays and Lesbians
THE NEWS out of New York City this past weekend was horrifying. In what is being called the worst anti-gay violence in recent memory, two 17-year-old boys and a 30-year-old man were kidnapped and sexually tortured in the Bronx because they are gay. The nine thugs allegedly responsible for this atrocity are in custody.
According to Police Commissioner Raymond W. Kelly, the alleged perpetrators have not expressed remorse. They deserve to be punished to the fullest extent of the law. Mayor Michael Bloomberg said he "was sickened by the brutal nature of these crimes and saddened by the anti-gay bias that contributed to them." Mr. Bloomberg was joined in his unequivocal outrage and condemnation by Gov. David Paterson, City Council Speaker Christine Quinn and Archbishop Timothy Dolan of the New York Archdiocese.
And then there's Carl Paladino. In a stunning display of tone-deafness and bigotry, the Republican candidate for governor said this about homosexuality during a speech on Sunday: "That's not how God created us. . . . I just think my children and your children would be much better off and much more successful getting married and raising a family, and I don't want them brainwashed into thinking that homosexuality is an equally valid and successful option -- it isn't."
The last two weeks have been ugly for gay men and lesbians -- and for America. In addition to the violence in the Bronx, there have been attacks on homosexuals in other parts of New York City and suicides of gay teenagers across the country who were literally bullied to death.
Where do bullies get their ammunition, the hurtful slurs that eat away at the self-esteem of those who are gay or lesbian? What makes someone feel it's okay to verbally and physically harass, maim or even kill?
One source is politicians such as Mr. Paladino who continue to espouse their belief that being gay is an immoral or unnatural "lifestyle" choice that can be changed at will. As long as such dehumanizing ignorance and intolerance go unchallenged, the horrors and suicides will continue.
Is Mr. Paladino saying that God created Straights but not Gays?
Then who did create Gays, Mr Paladino?
Monday, October 11, 2010
Republicans Are Pandering to and Selling Homophobia To Get Elected
From The Huffington Post --- October 10, 2010:
Carl Paladino: Don't Be 'Brainwashed' Into Thinking Homosexuality Is 'Equally Valid' (VIDEO)
New York Republican gubernatorial candidate Carl Paladino spoke on gay rights to a group of orthodox Jewish leaders in Brooklyn today, promising to veto marriage equality legislation and touting the fact that he didn't march in this year's gay pride parade.
In his remarks, Paldadino said:
"We must stop pandering to the pornographers and the perverts, who seek to target our children and destroy their lives. I didn't march in the gay parade parade this year -- the gay pride parade this year. My opponent did. And that's not the example that we should be showing our children, certainly not in our schools. (APPLAUSE) And don't misquote me as wanting to hurt homosexual people in any way; that would be a dastardly lie. My approach is live and let live. I just think my children, and your children, will be much better off, and much more successful getting married and raising a family. And I don't want them to be brainwashed into thinking that homosexuality is an equally valid or successful option. It isn't." (APPLAUSE)
According to Newsday's Reid Epstein, the line, "There is nothing to be proud of in being a dysfunctional homosexual. that is not how G-d created us" was in Paladino's prepared text but left out of his actual speech.
In response to Paladino's remarks, Cuomo spokesman Josh Vlasto put out a statement reading, "Mr. Paladino's statement displays a stunning homophobia and a glaring disregard for basic equality. These comments along with other views he has espoused make it clear that he is way out of the mainstream and is unfit to represent New York."
Paladino's campaign manager Michael Caputo also responded, drawing a contrast between the two candidates: "There's a very clear difference between Andrew Cuomo and Carl Paladino. One of them is that Andrew Cuomo promises gay marriage will be legal in the first year of his administration. Carl Paladino has promised he would veto any such legislation. We believe that when the people of New York understand exactly where both candidates stand on this particular issue they will make their choices accordingly."
Paladino's comments come as police are investigating a series of brutal hate crimes against gay men in the Bronx. The suspects reportedly beat, tortured and sodomized three men because of their sexuality. The suicides by several gay students across the nation have also been in the
Carl Paladino: Don't Be 'Brainwashed' Into Thinking Homosexuality Is 'Equally Valid' (VIDEO)
New York Republican gubernatorial candidate Carl Paladino spoke on gay rights to a group of orthodox Jewish leaders in Brooklyn today, promising to veto marriage equality legislation and touting the fact that he didn't march in this year's gay pride parade.
In his remarks, Paldadino said:
"We must stop pandering to the pornographers and the perverts, who seek to target our children and destroy their lives. I didn't march in the gay parade parade this year -- the gay pride parade this year. My opponent did. And that's not the example that we should be showing our children, certainly not in our schools. (APPLAUSE) And don't misquote me as wanting to hurt homosexual people in any way; that would be a dastardly lie. My approach is live and let live. I just think my children, and your children, will be much better off, and much more successful getting married and raising a family. And I don't want them to be brainwashed into thinking that homosexuality is an equally valid or successful option. It isn't." (APPLAUSE)
According to Newsday's Reid Epstein, the line, "There is nothing to be proud of in being a dysfunctional homosexual. that is not how G-d created us" was in Paladino's prepared text but left out of his actual speech.
In response to Paladino's remarks, Cuomo spokesman Josh Vlasto put out a statement reading, "Mr. Paladino's statement displays a stunning homophobia and a glaring disregard for basic equality. These comments along with other views he has espoused make it clear that he is way out of the mainstream and is unfit to represent New York."
Paladino's campaign manager Michael Caputo also responded, drawing a contrast between the two candidates: "There's a very clear difference between Andrew Cuomo and Carl Paladino. One of them is that Andrew Cuomo promises gay marriage will be legal in the first year of his administration. Carl Paladino has promised he would veto any such legislation. We believe that when the people of New York understand exactly where both candidates stand on this particular issue they will make their choices accordingly."
Paladino's comments come as police are investigating a series of brutal hate crimes against gay men in the Bronx. The suspects reportedly beat, tortured and sodomized three men because of their sexuality. The suicides by several gay students across the nation have also been in the
Republican Conservative Millionaires Declare Class War on America
Shadowy Players in a New Class War
From The Washington Post --- October 11, 2010:
By E.J. Dionne, Jr.
The 2010 election is turning into a class war. The wealthy and the powerful started it.
This is a strange development. President Obama, after all, has been working overtime to save capitalism. Wall Street is doing just fine, and the rich are getting richer again. The financial reform bill passed by Congress was moderate, not radical.
Nonetheless, corporations and affluent individuals are pouring tens of millions of dollars into attack ads aimed almost exclusively at Democrats. One of the biggest political players, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, accepts money from foreign sources.
The chamber piously insists that none of the cash from abroad is going into its ad campaigns. But without full disclosure, there's no way of knowing if that's true or simply an accounting trick. And the chamber is just one of many groups engaged in an election-year spending spree.
This extraordinary state of affairs was facilitated by the U.S. Supreme Court's scandalous Citizens United decision, which swept away decades of restrictions on corporate spending to influence elections. The Republicans' success in blocking legislation that would at least have required the big spenders to disclose the sources of their money means voters have to operate in the dark.
(To hear Harvard Law School professor Lawrence Lessig's position on potential changes in campaign finance, watch his video interview with The Post's Fred Hiatt. )
The "logic" behind Citizens United is that third-party spending can't possibly be corrupting. The five-justice majority declared that "this Court now concludes that independent expenditures, including those made by corporations, do not give rise to corruption or the appearance of corruption. That speakers may have influence over or access to elected officials does not mean that those officials are corrupt. And the appearance of influence or access will not cause the electorate to lose faith in this democracy."
You can decide what's more stunning about this statement, its naivete or its arrogance.
(For more insight on campaign finance by E.J. Dionne Jr., read "Repairing Citizens United becomes a test for three GOP senators" and "A bipartisan push to clean up the Supreme Court's mess.")
If one side in the debate can overwhelm the political system with clandestine cash, which is what's happening, is there any doubt that the side in question will buy itself a lot of influence? If that's not corruption, what exactly is it?
And how can five justices, who purport not to be political, sweep aside what elected officials themselves long ago concluded on the subject and claim to know what will or will not "cause the electorate to lose faith in this democracy"? Could anything undermine trust in the system more than secret contributions to shadowy groups spending the money on nasty ads? The good news is that the class war is bringing a certain clarity to politics. It is also another piece of evidence for the radicalism of the current brand of conservatism. This, in turn, is forcing Democrats to defend a proposition they have been committed to since the days of Franklin Roosevelt but are often too timid to proclaim: that government has a legitimate and necessary role in making economic rules to protect individuals from abuse.
It has thus been both entertaining and educational to watch Republican Senate candidates in Connecticut, West Virginia, Alaska and Kentucky grapple with the impact of their bad-mouthing minimum-wage laws.
Conservative academics have warred against the minimum wage ever since FDR declared the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938 perhaps "the most far-reaching program, the most far-sighted program for the benefit of workers that has ever been adopted here or in any other country."
These critics have never gained traction because most people think it's simple justice that those who work for a living be treated with a modicum of respect. Many voters who express skepticism about government in the abstract nonetheless favor laws that give a fighting chance to individuals with weaker bargaining positions in the marketplace.
The minimum-wage battle underscores the difference between 2010-style conservatism and the conservatism of Dwight Eisenhower or even Ronald Reagan. The 2010 right actually imagines a return to the times prior to the New Deal and Teddy Roosevelt's Square Deal, the heady days before there were laws on wages and hours, environmental concerns and undue economic concentration.
The country doesn't need this class war, and it is irrational in any case. Practically no one, least of all Obama, is questioning the basics of the market system or proposing anything more than somewhat tighter economic regulations -- after the biggest financial collapse since the Great Depression -- and rather modest tax increases on the wealthy.
But even these steps are apparently too much for those financing all the television ads, which should lead voters to ask themselves: Who is paying for this? What do they really want? And who gave them the right to buy an election?
From The Washington Post --- October 11, 2010:
By E.J. Dionne, Jr.
The 2010 election is turning into a class war. The wealthy and the powerful started it.
This is a strange development. President Obama, after all, has been working overtime to save capitalism. Wall Street is doing just fine, and the rich are getting richer again. The financial reform bill passed by Congress was moderate, not radical.
Nonetheless, corporations and affluent individuals are pouring tens of millions of dollars into attack ads aimed almost exclusively at Democrats. One of the biggest political players, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, accepts money from foreign sources.
The chamber piously insists that none of the cash from abroad is going into its ad campaigns. But without full disclosure, there's no way of knowing if that's true or simply an accounting trick. And the chamber is just one of many groups engaged in an election-year spending spree.
This extraordinary state of affairs was facilitated by the U.S. Supreme Court's scandalous Citizens United decision, which swept away decades of restrictions on corporate spending to influence elections. The Republicans' success in blocking legislation that would at least have required the big spenders to disclose the sources of their money means voters have to operate in the dark.
(To hear Harvard Law School professor Lawrence Lessig's position on potential changes in campaign finance, watch his video interview with The Post's Fred Hiatt. )
The "logic" behind Citizens United is that third-party spending can't possibly be corrupting. The five-justice majority declared that "this Court now concludes that independent expenditures, including those made by corporations, do not give rise to corruption or the appearance of corruption. That speakers may have influence over or access to elected officials does not mean that those officials are corrupt. And the appearance of influence or access will not cause the electorate to lose faith in this democracy."
You can decide what's more stunning about this statement, its naivete or its arrogance.
(For more insight on campaign finance by E.J. Dionne Jr., read "Repairing Citizens United becomes a test for three GOP senators" and "A bipartisan push to clean up the Supreme Court's mess.")
If one side in the debate can overwhelm the political system with clandestine cash, which is what's happening, is there any doubt that the side in question will buy itself a lot of influence? If that's not corruption, what exactly is it?
And how can five justices, who purport not to be political, sweep aside what elected officials themselves long ago concluded on the subject and claim to know what will or will not "cause the electorate to lose faith in this democracy"? Could anything undermine trust in the system more than secret contributions to shadowy groups spending the money on nasty ads? The good news is that the class war is bringing a certain clarity to politics. It is also another piece of evidence for the radicalism of the current brand of conservatism. This, in turn, is forcing Democrats to defend a proposition they have been committed to since the days of Franklin Roosevelt but are often too timid to proclaim: that government has a legitimate and necessary role in making economic rules to protect individuals from abuse.
It has thus been both entertaining and educational to watch Republican Senate candidates in Connecticut, West Virginia, Alaska and Kentucky grapple with the impact of their bad-mouthing minimum-wage laws.
Conservative academics have warred against the minimum wage ever since FDR declared the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938 perhaps "the most far-reaching program, the most far-sighted program for the benefit of workers that has ever been adopted here or in any other country."
These critics have never gained traction because most people think it's simple justice that those who work for a living be treated with a modicum of respect. Many voters who express skepticism about government in the abstract nonetheless favor laws that give a fighting chance to individuals with weaker bargaining positions in the marketplace.
The minimum-wage battle underscores the difference between 2010-style conservatism and the conservatism of Dwight Eisenhower or even Ronald Reagan. The 2010 right actually imagines a return to the times prior to the New Deal and Teddy Roosevelt's Square Deal, the heady days before there were laws on wages and hours, environmental concerns and undue economic concentration.
The country doesn't need this class war, and it is irrational in any case. Practically no one, least of all Obama, is questioning the basics of the market system or proposing anything more than somewhat tighter economic regulations -- after the biggest financial collapse since the Great Depression -- and rather modest tax increases on the wealthy.
But even these steps are apparently too much for those financing all the television ads, which should lead voters to ask themselves: Who is paying for this? What do they really want? And who gave them the right to buy an election?
Sunday, October 10, 2010
US Chamber of Commerce Is Breaking US Election Laws By Using Millions of Dollars from Foreign Corporations to Buy This Year's Elections
From Moveon.org -- September 9, 2010:
News just broke that the U.S. Chamber of Commerce—one of the biggest sources of corporate cash backing Republicans this year—has been using money from foreign corporations in India, Bahrain, and elsewhere to fund its attack ads, in apparent violation of the law.1
This explosive news could shift the course of the election if the Chamber is forced to scale back and all the right-wing candidates they're helping have to answer for this.
The Chamber knows that. Their strategy is to give no quarter and hope this blows over. In the last week they've actually spent millions more on ads targeted against progressive heroes including Russ Feingold.
The Chamber claims that it has internal systems to keep the money separate, but the new report shows that the foreign corporations donate directly to the Chamber's general fund, which is where the funding for their political attacks comes from. This would represent a shocking disregard for longstanding American campaign finance laws, all to advance a corporate, right-wing agenda of outsourcing jobs and giving huge tax breaks to multi-national corporations.3
According to the report, the Chamber is allegedly raising money from firms in "China, India, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Brazil, Russia, and many other places." Even Russian banks and state-owned oil companies in Abu Dhabi may have contributed.
The Chamber is spending more than any other group to back right-wing Republicans and attack progressives in the election.
Sources:
1. "Exclusive: Foreign-Funded 'U.S.' Chamber Of Commerce Running Partisan Attack Ads," ThinkProgress, October 5, 2010
http://www.moveon.org/r?r=91772&id=24039-10297020-FZuSTox&t=5
2. "US Chamber spends more than $10 million on ads," Associated Press, October 7, 2010
http://www.moveon.org/r?r=91872&id=24039-10297020-FZuSTox&t=6
3. "U.S. Chamber comes out against Senate outsourcing bill," The Hill, September 23, 2010
http://www.moveon.org/r?r=91786&id=24039-10297020-FZuSTox&t=7
News just broke that the U.S. Chamber of Commerce—one of the biggest sources of corporate cash backing Republicans this year—has been using money from foreign corporations in India, Bahrain, and elsewhere to fund its attack ads, in apparent violation of the law.1
This explosive news could shift the course of the election if the Chamber is forced to scale back and all the right-wing candidates they're helping have to answer for this.
The Chamber knows that. Their strategy is to give no quarter and hope this blows over. In the last week they've actually spent millions more on ads targeted against progressive heroes including Russ Feingold.
The Chamber claims that it has internal systems to keep the money separate, but the new report shows that the foreign corporations donate directly to the Chamber's general fund, which is where the funding for their political attacks comes from. This would represent a shocking disregard for longstanding American campaign finance laws, all to advance a corporate, right-wing agenda of outsourcing jobs and giving huge tax breaks to multi-national corporations.3
According to the report, the Chamber is allegedly raising money from firms in "China, India, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Brazil, Russia, and many other places." Even Russian banks and state-owned oil companies in Abu Dhabi may have contributed.
The Chamber is spending more than any other group to back right-wing Republicans and attack progressives in the election.
Sources:
1. "Exclusive: Foreign-Funded 'U.S.' Chamber Of Commerce Running Partisan Attack Ads," ThinkProgress, October 5, 2010
http://www.moveon.org/r?r=91772&id=24039-10297020-FZuSTox&t=5
2. "US Chamber spends more than $10 million on ads," Associated Press, October 7, 2010
http://www.moveon.org/r?r=91872&id=24039-10297020-FZuSTox&t=6
3. "U.S. Chamber comes out against Senate outsourcing bill," The Hill, September 23, 2010
http://www.moveon.org/r?r=91786&id=24039-10297020-FZuSTox&t=7
A Tea-Bagger's "Christian" Prayer
A Tea-Bagger's "Christian" Prayer:
Our Feudalists who art in mansions,
hallowed be thy name.
Thy racism come,
Thy will be done,
in trailer parks as it is in Washington.
Give us this Beck our daily bread,
and punish our trespasses,
as we punish those who trespass against us,
lead us not into debt,
but deliver us from socialism.
For thine is the FOX kingdom,
and the power, and the glory,
for ever and ever.
Amen."
Our Feudalists who art in mansions,
hallowed be thy name.
Thy racism come,
Thy will be done,
in trailer parks as it is in Washington.
Give us this Beck our daily bread,
and punish our trespasses,
as we punish those who trespass against us,
lead us not into debt,
but deliver us from socialism.
For thine is the FOX kingdom,
and the power, and the glory,
for ever and ever.
Amen."
Conservatives: Let America Burn Down -- Burn, Baby, Burn!
From The Progress Report -- October 7, 2010:
RADICAL RIGHT
Conservatism's Trial By Fire
Last week, an accident inside Gene Cranick's Obion, TN home started a fire. As the fire quickly spread throughout the house, the Cranicks escaped from their home and called their fire department. Yet the local firefighters, operating under the auspices of the South Fulton Fire Department (SFFD), refused to respond to the call, noting that their service was available to the rural residents of Obion County only by subscription, and the Cranicks had not paid the annual $75 fee. When the fire spread to the surrounding properties, the neighbors -- who had paid the fee -- called the firefighters. And so, the firefighters arrived on the scene, but they stood by and watched as the Cranick residence burned to the ground, refusing to assist the pleading family -- which offered to pay them anything on the spot to help.
Even though most of the country was outraged by the case of the Cranicks, leading conservatives in the media immediately jumped at the chance to defend the actions of the SFFD and condemn the family in question. The story of Gene Cranick's home illustrates the ascendancy of a compassion-less conservative philosophy that believes in the on-your-own society and has virtually abandoned the common-good creed that we are our brother's keepers. Only by rededicating ourselves to rebuilding an American Dream that works for all Americans can progressives repudiate this merciless philosophy.
A MORALLY DEPRAVED POLICY: As firefighters stood by idly watching, the fire that consumed the Cranick's family home also took the lives of their four pets. The Obion County policy of using subscription-only firefighting originated in 1990, but it has a parallel to the 19th century, when it was common for Americans to have to purchase private firefighter insurance or risk their homes being burned down without any hope of preventing it. In 2008, the county's fire department along with the conservativecounty commission reviewed the policy and determined that it would continue to offer fire services to rural parts of the county via subscription to the SFFD, rejecting a paltry 0.13 percent increase in property taxes on households to fund a proper fire service that would respond to all calls.
When a local news station asked Mayor David Crocker how he could justify the firefighters' refusal to help the Cranicks, he told them that the policy was just like buying auto insurance from a private insurance company, and that they wouldn't "expect an insurance company to pay for an unprotected vehicle after it wrecked." Despite widespread outrage over the event, the county commission's budget committee met Monday night and decided to expand the subscription-only fire service to even more towns. Union City Fire Department Chief Kelly Edmison objected to the new expansion, saying that "the best option is a true fire tax. It eliminates this having 911 or whatever check to say, 'Are they covered or not covered?' The last thing a firefighter wants to do is to not be able to help when they'd like to."
DEFENDING THE INDEFENSIBLE: It didn't take long for leading conservatives to leap to the defense of Obion County and the SFFD. After the National Review's Daniel Foster wrote that he saw "no moral theory" that would justify the actions of the firefighters, his fellow writers immediately attacked him. "Dan, you are 100 percent wrong," wrote Kevin Williamson. "The world is full of jerks, freeloaders, and ingrates -- and the problems they create for themselves are their own. These free-riders [referring to the Cranicks] have no more right to South Fulton's firefighting services than people in Muleshoe, Texas, have to those of NYPD detectives." Next, Jonah Goldberg, while admitting that the story is "sad," said it would probably "save more houses over the long haul" because it would incentivize homeowners to subscribe to the fire service in the future. Conservative writer John Derbyshire joined in by saying he was "entirely with the South Fulton fire department," explaining that the policy was fostering personal responsibility.
One of the country's most famous right-wingers, Glenn Beck, along with his producer Pat Gray, mocked and condemned the Cranick family on his radio show. Gray adopted a thick southern drawl to mock Gene Cranick's accent, while Beck explained that people who look at things "just on raw feeling are not going to understand" that the SFFD was justified in not helping the family. He then went on to say that if the fire department had helped, they'd just be allowing the Cranicks to sponge "off [their] neighbor's resources." He concluded, "this is the kind of stuff that's going to have to happen, we are going to have to have these kinds of things." The American Family Association's Brian Fischer even went as far as to say that the "fire department did the right and Christian thing. ... Critics of the fire department are confused both about right and wrong and about Christianity. And it is because they have fallen prey to a weakened, feminized version of Christianity that is only about softer virtues such as compassion and not in any part about the muscular Christian values of individual responsibility and accountability."
Leading conservative blog Hot Air, one of the few conservative voices to condemn the actions of the SFFD firefighters, wrote that "95 percent" of the commenters on their blog will likely respond to the story by saying, "Right on, let it burn. A contract's a contract!" MSNBC host Keith Olbermann asked Gene Cranick to respond to conservatives attacking his family and siding with Obion County. Cranick answered, "I respond to those people like this: wait until the shoe is on the other foot."
NOT AN ISOLATED INCIDENT: Unfortunately, the responses by these leading conservatives are far from an aberration. Rather, they are emblematic of a conservative movement that believes in the on-your-own society and has declared war on empathy. During the debate over the confirmation of Supreme Court Justice Sonya Sotomayor, numerous conservatives attacked Sotomayor and progressives who backed her for their belief that a justice should possess empathy. A poll released that summer showed that 56 percent of self-identified Republicans believe that empathy was not an "important characteristic" for a Supreme Court Justice to possess, while 73 percent of self-identified Democrats did. Indeed, conservatives have taken to attacking people who are down on their luck, rather than giving them a hand up.
Two days ago, FreedomWorks chairman Dick Armey advocated for completely eliminating federal funding for higher education, which would deprive 19 million Americans who applied for college assistance this year of the ability to get federally subsidized loans and grants. Senate conservatives have repeatedly come together to filibuster the extension of unemployment benefits for jobless Americans who can't find work in the poor economy. Leading conservative and former Nixon speechwriter Ben Stein wrote at the right-wing American Spectator that Americans "who have been laid off and cannot find work are generally people with poor work habits and poor personalities....who do not know how to do a day's work." Rep. Dean Heller (R-NV) warned that extending unemployment insurance was "creating hobos." The Associated Press discovered last month that Sen. Tom Coburn (R-OK) is holding up hundreds of millions of dollars in reconstruction aid for Haiti earthquake survivors over an obscure objection about bureaucratic redundancy.
Yet it isn't enough for progressives to simply rebuke conservatives for their lack of empathy. They must proudly embrace an alternative vision: one of an America that is just and fair in its actions at home and abroad, in the renewed spirit of the American Dream.
RADICAL RIGHT
Conservatism's Trial By Fire
Last week, an accident inside Gene Cranick's Obion, TN home started a fire. As the fire quickly spread throughout the house, the Cranicks escaped from their home and called their fire department. Yet the local firefighters, operating under the auspices of the South Fulton Fire Department (SFFD), refused to respond to the call, noting that their service was available to the rural residents of Obion County only by subscription, and the Cranicks had not paid the annual $75 fee. When the fire spread to the surrounding properties, the neighbors -- who had paid the fee -- called the firefighters. And so, the firefighters arrived on the scene, but they stood by and watched as the Cranick residence burned to the ground, refusing to assist the pleading family -- which offered to pay them anything on the spot to help.
Even though most of the country was outraged by the case of the Cranicks, leading conservatives in the media immediately jumped at the chance to defend the actions of the SFFD and condemn the family in question. The story of Gene Cranick's home illustrates the ascendancy of a compassion-less conservative philosophy that believes in the on-your-own society and has virtually abandoned the common-good creed that we are our brother's keepers. Only by rededicating ourselves to rebuilding an American Dream that works for all Americans can progressives repudiate this merciless philosophy.
A MORALLY DEPRAVED POLICY: As firefighters stood by idly watching, the fire that consumed the Cranick's family home also took the lives of their four pets. The Obion County policy of using subscription-only firefighting originated in 1990, but it has a parallel to the 19th century, when it was common for Americans to have to purchase private firefighter insurance or risk their homes being burned down without any hope of preventing it. In 2008, the county's fire department along with the conservativecounty commission reviewed the policy and determined that it would continue to offer fire services to rural parts of the county via subscription to the SFFD, rejecting a paltry 0.13 percent increase in property taxes on households to fund a proper fire service that would respond to all calls.
When a local news station asked Mayor David Crocker how he could justify the firefighters' refusal to help the Cranicks, he told them that the policy was just like buying auto insurance from a private insurance company, and that they wouldn't "expect an insurance company to pay for an unprotected vehicle after it wrecked." Despite widespread outrage over the event, the county commission's budget committee met Monday night and decided to expand the subscription-only fire service to even more towns. Union City Fire Department Chief Kelly Edmison objected to the new expansion, saying that "the best option is a true fire tax. It eliminates this having 911 or whatever check to say, 'Are they covered or not covered?' The last thing a firefighter wants to do is to not be able to help when they'd like to."
DEFENDING THE INDEFENSIBLE: It didn't take long for leading conservatives to leap to the defense of Obion County and the SFFD. After the National Review's Daniel Foster wrote that he saw "no moral theory" that would justify the actions of the firefighters, his fellow writers immediately attacked him. "Dan, you are 100 percent wrong," wrote Kevin Williamson. "The world is full of jerks, freeloaders, and ingrates -- and the problems they create for themselves are their own. These free-riders [referring to the Cranicks] have no more right to South Fulton's firefighting services than people in Muleshoe, Texas, have to those of NYPD detectives." Next, Jonah Goldberg, while admitting that the story is "sad," said it would probably "save more houses over the long haul" because it would incentivize homeowners to subscribe to the fire service in the future. Conservative writer John Derbyshire joined in by saying he was "entirely with the South Fulton fire department," explaining that the policy was fostering personal responsibility.
One of the country's most famous right-wingers, Glenn Beck, along with his producer Pat Gray, mocked and condemned the Cranick family on his radio show. Gray adopted a thick southern drawl to mock Gene Cranick's accent, while Beck explained that people who look at things "just on raw feeling are not going to understand" that the SFFD was justified in not helping the family. He then went on to say that if the fire department had helped, they'd just be allowing the Cranicks to sponge "off [their] neighbor's resources." He concluded, "this is the kind of stuff that's going to have to happen, we are going to have to have these kinds of things." The American Family Association's Brian Fischer even went as far as to say that the "fire department did the right and Christian thing. ... Critics of the fire department are confused both about right and wrong and about Christianity. And it is because they have fallen prey to a weakened, feminized version of Christianity that is only about softer virtues such as compassion and not in any part about the muscular Christian values of individual responsibility and accountability."
Leading conservative blog Hot Air, one of the few conservative voices to condemn the actions of the SFFD firefighters, wrote that "95 percent" of the commenters on their blog will likely respond to the story by saying, "Right on, let it burn. A contract's a contract!" MSNBC host Keith Olbermann asked Gene Cranick to respond to conservatives attacking his family and siding with Obion County. Cranick answered, "I respond to those people like this: wait until the shoe is on the other foot."
NOT AN ISOLATED INCIDENT: Unfortunately, the responses by these leading conservatives are far from an aberration. Rather, they are emblematic of a conservative movement that believes in the on-your-own society and has declared war on empathy. During the debate over the confirmation of Supreme Court Justice Sonya Sotomayor, numerous conservatives attacked Sotomayor and progressives who backed her for their belief that a justice should possess empathy. A poll released that summer showed that 56 percent of self-identified Republicans believe that empathy was not an "important characteristic" for a Supreme Court Justice to possess, while 73 percent of self-identified Democrats did. Indeed, conservatives have taken to attacking people who are down on their luck, rather than giving them a hand up.
Two days ago, FreedomWorks chairman Dick Armey advocated for completely eliminating federal funding for higher education, which would deprive 19 million Americans who applied for college assistance this year of the ability to get federally subsidized loans and grants. Senate conservatives have repeatedly come together to filibuster the extension of unemployment benefits for jobless Americans who can't find work in the poor economy. Leading conservative and former Nixon speechwriter Ben Stein wrote at the right-wing American Spectator that Americans "who have been laid off and cannot find work are generally people with poor work habits and poor personalities....who do not know how to do a day's work." Rep. Dean Heller (R-NV) warned that extending unemployment insurance was "creating hobos." The Associated Press discovered last month that Sen. Tom Coburn (R-OK) is holding up hundreds of millions of dollars in reconstruction aid for Haiti earthquake survivors over an obscure objection about bureaucratic redundancy.
Yet it isn't enough for progressives to simply rebuke conservatives for their lack of empathy. They must proudly embrace an alternative vision: one of an America that is just and fair in its actions at home and abroad, in the renewed spirit of the American Dream.
Friday, October 8, 2010
Americans Are About to be the Only People Ever to Freely Vote Themselves Into Slavery
From Common Dreams --- October 8, 2010:
The Secret Big-Money Takeover of America
by Robert Reich
Not only is income and wealth in America more concentrated in fewer hands than it’s been in 80 years, but those hands are buying our democracy as never before – and they’re doing it behind closed doors.
Hundreds of millions of secret dollars are pouring into congressional and state races in this election cycle. The Koch brothers (whose personal fortunes grew by $5 billion last year) appear to be behind some of it, Karl Rove has rounded up other multi-millionaires to fund right-wing candidates, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce is funneling corporate dollars from around the world into congressional races, and Rupert Murdoch is evidently spending heavily.
No one knows for sure where this flood of money is coming from because it’s all secret.
But you can safely assume its purpose is not to help America’s stranded middle class, working class, and poor. It’s to pad the nests of the rich, stop all reform, and deregulate big corporations and Wall Street – already more powerful than since the late 19th century when the lackeys of robber barons literally deposited sacks of cash on the desks of friendly legislators.
Credit the Supreme Court’s grotesque decision in Citizens United vs. the Federal Election Commission, which opened the floodgates. (Even though 8 of 9 members of the Court also held disclosure laws constitutional, the decision invited the creation of shadowy “nonprofits” that don’t have to reveal anything.)
According to FEC data, only 32 percent of groups paying for election ads are disclosing the names of their donors. By comparison, in the 2006 midterm, 97 percent disclosed; in 2008, almost half disclosed.
Last week, when the Senate considered a bill to force such disclosure, every single Republican voted against it – thereby revealing the GOP’s true colors, and presumed benefactors. (To understand how far the GOP has come, nearly ten years ago campaign disclosure was supported by 48 of 54 Republican senators.)
Maybe the Disclose Bill can get passed in lame-duck session. Maybe the IRS will make sure Karl Rove’s and other supposed nonprofits aren’t sham political units. Maybe pigs will learn to fly.
In the meantime we face an election that marks an even sharper turn toward plutocratic capitalism than before – a government by and for the rich and big corporations — and away from democratic capitalism.
As income and wealth has moved to the top, so has political power. That’s why, for example, it’s been impossible to close the absurd tax loophole that allows hedge-fund and private-equity managers to treat much of their income as capital gains, subject to a 15 percent tax (even though they’re earning tens or hundreds of millions a year, and the top 15 hedge-fund managers earned an average of $1 billion last year). Why it proved impossible to fund expanded health care by limiting the tax deductions of the very rich. Why it’s so difficult even to extend George Bush’s tax cuts for the bottom 98 percent of Americans without also extending them for the top 2 percent – even though the top won’t spend the money and create jobs, but will blow a $36 billion hole in the federal budget next year.
The good news is average Americans are beginning to understand that when the rich secretly flood our democracy with money, the rest of us drown. Wall Street executives and top CEOs get bailed out while under-water homeowners and jobless workers sink.
A Quinnipiac poll earlier this year found overwhelming support for a millionaire tax.
But what the public wants means nothing if our democracy is secretly corrupted by big money.
Right now we’re headed for a perfect storm: An unprecedented concentration of income and wealth at the top, a record amount of secret money flooding our democracy, and a public in the aftershock of the Great Recession becoming increasingly angry and cynical about government. The three are obviously related.
We must act. We need a movement to take back our democracy. (If tea partiers were true to their principles, they’d join it.) As Martin Luther King once said, the greatest tragedy is “not the strident clamor of the bad people, but the appalling silence of the good people.”
What can you do?
1. Read Justice Steven’s dissent in the Citizens United case, so you’re fully informed about the majority’s pernicious illogic.
2. Use every opportunity to speak out against this decision, and embarrass and condemn the right-wing Justices who supported it.
3. In this and subsequent elections, back candidates for congress and president who vow to put Justices on the Court who will reverse it.
4. Demand that the IRS enforce the law and pull the plug on Karl Rove and other sham nonprofits.
5. If you have a Republican senator, insist that he or she support the Disclose Act. If they won’t, campaign against them.
6. Support public financing of elections.
7. Join an organization like Common Cause, that’s committed to doing all this and getting big money out of politics. (Personal note: I’m so outraged at what’s happening that I just became chairman of Common Cause.)
8. Send this post to your friends (including any tea partiers you may know)
The Secret Big-Money Takeover of America
by Robert Reich
Not only is income and wealth in America more concentrated in fewer hands than it’s been in 80 years, but those hands are buying our democracy as never before – and they’re doing it behind closed doors.
Hundreds of millions of secret dollars are pouring into congressional and state races in this election cycle. The Koch brothers (whose personal fortunes grew by $5 billion last year) appear to be behind some of it, Karl Rove has rounded up other multi-millionaires to fund right-wing candidates, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce is funneling corporate dollars from around the world into congressional races, and Rupert Murdoch is evidently spending heavily.
No one knows for sure where this flood of money is coming from because it’s all secret.
But you can safely assume its purpose is not to help America’s stranded middle class, working class, and poor. It’s to pad the nests of the rich, stop all reform, and deregulate big corporations and Wall Street – already more powerful than since the late 19th century when the lackeys of robber barons literally deposited sacks of cash on the desks of friendly legislators.
Credit the Supreme Court’s grotesque decision in Citizens United vs. the Federal Election Commission, which opened the floodgates. (Even though 8 of 9 members of the Court also held disclosure laws constitutional, the decision invited the creation of shadowy “nonprofits” that don’t have to reveal anything.)
According to FEC data, only 32 percent of groups paying for election ads are disclosing the names of their donors. By comparison, in the 2006 midterm, 97 percent disclosed; in 2008, almost half disclosed.
Last week, when the Senate considered a bill to force such disclosure, every single Republican voted against it – thereby revealing the GOP’s true colors, and presumed benefactors. (To understand how far the GOP has come, nearly ten years ago campaign disclosure was supported by 48 of 54 Republican senators.)
Maybe the Disclose Bill can get passed in lame-duck session. Maybe the IRS will make sure Karl Rove’s and other supposed nonprofits aren’t sham political units. Maybe pigs will learn to fly.
In the meantime we face an election that marks an even sharper turn toward plutocratic capitalism than before – a government by and for the rich and big corporations — and away from democratic capitalism.
As income and wealth has moved to the top, so has political power. That’s why, for example, it’s been impossible to close the absurd tax loophole that allows hedge-fund and private-equity managers to treat much of their income as capital gains, subject to a 15 percent tax (even though they’re earning tens or hundreds of millions a year, and the top 15 hedge-fund managers earned an average of $1 billion last year). Why it proved impossible to fund expanded health care by limiting the tax deductions of the very rich. Why it’s so difficult even to extend George Bush’s tax cuts for the bottom 98 percent of Americans without also extending them for the top 2 percent – even though the top won’t spend the money and create jobs, but will blow a $36 billion hole in the federal budget next year.
The good news is average Americans are beginning to understand that when the rich secretly flood our democracy with money, the rest of us drown. Wall Street executives and top CEOs get bailed out while under-water homeowners and jobless workers sink.
A Quinnipiac poll earlier this year found overwhelming support for a millionaire tax.
But what the public wants means nothing if our democracy is secretly corrupted by big money.
Right now we’re headed for a perfect storm: An unprecedented concentration of income and wealth at the top, a record amount of secret money flooding our democracy, and a public in the aftershock of the Great Recession becoming increasingly angry and cynical about government. The three are obviously related.
We must act. We need a movement to take back our democracy. (If tea partiers were true to their principles, they’d join it.) As Martin Luther King once said, the greatest tragedy is “not the strident clamor of the bad people, but the appalling silence of the good people.”
What can you do?
1. Read Justice Steven’s dissent in the Citizens United case, so you’re fully informed about the majority’s pernicious illogic.
2. Use every opportunity to speak out against this decision, and embarrass and condemn the right-wing Justices who supported it.
3. In this and subsequent elections, back candidates for congress and president who vow to put Justices on the Court who will reverse it.
4. Demand that the IRS enforce the law and pull the plug on Karl Rove and other sham nonprofits.
5. If you have a Republican senator, insist that he or she support the Disclose Act. If they won’t, campaign against them.
6. Support public financing of elections.
7. Join an organization like Common Cause, that’s committed to doing all this and getting big money out of politics. (Personal note: I’m so outraged at what’s happening that I just became chairman of Common Cause.)
8. Send this post to your friends (including any tea partiers you may know)
Conservatives and Dinesh D'Souza Have Turned America Into a 2,500 Mile Garbage Dump
From Media Matters For America -- October 8, 2010:
Shine on you, Crazy D'Souza
There's no real reason anyone should be talking about Dinesh D'Souza's latest book, The Roots of Obama's Rage. All things being equal, the book shouldn't even exist; one would like to think that no publisher worth their salt would consider for a moment publishing such a virulently nativist collection of lies.
But, of course, all things aren't equal. In fact, things have become pretty absurd, and as a consequence D'Souza's book is a hot topic of conversation. The reason that this ridiculous person was able to publish such a ridiculous book is that there's an entire ridiculous publishing house committed to cranking out right-wing garbage of this stripe. The reason that ridiculous book sells is because there's an entire ridiculous right-wing infrastructure of book clubs and magazines that buy copies in bulk and resell them at drastically reduced rates. The ridiculous author of this ridiculous book is able to communicate with broad swaths of America because there's an entire ridiculous cable network that will put him on TV without so much as a hint of criticism.
It's tempting to look at this and brush it off. After all, it's just another example of the right-wing subculture telling each other what they want to hear and reveling in epistemic closure's comforting, suffocating embrace.
But then D'Souza popped up in The Washington Post.
The Post cleared space on their op-ed page for a guy who argues, in all seriousness, that the first black president of the United States is on a quest to drain the country's economic and military power in order to fulfill the ambitions of the "anti-colonial" father he met only once as a young child. This was after Forbes had to publish corrections to the article D'Souza wrote for them and dispatch a post-publication fact-checker.
So why did they run it? Here's editorial page editor Fred Hiatt defending the move: "D'Souza's theory has sparked a great deal of commentary, from potential presidential candidates as well as from commentators on our own pages." The "potential presidential candidate" is Newt Gingrich, who loved D'Souza's theory; and the Post commentators are Eugene Robinson, Richard Cohen, and Jonathan Capehart, all of whom called Gingrich a lunatic for promoting D'Souza. Hiatt's argument is essentially: "People are talking about it -- who cares if it's right?"
It's this sort of passive attitude towards factual accuracy that allows fringe hacks like D'Souza to break into the mainstream. The Post has an obligation to keep their readers informed, not to reprint the intellectually fraudulent trash Newt Gingrich finds interesting.
Shine on you, Crazy D'Souza
There's no real reason anyone should be talking about Dinesh D'Souza's latest book, The Roots of Obama's Rage. All things being equal, the book shouldn't even exist; one would like to think that no publisher worth their salt would consider for a moment publishing such a virulently nativist collection of lies.
But, of course, all things aren't equal. In fact, things have become pretty absurd, and as a consequence D'Souza's book is a hot topic of conversation. The reason that this ridiculous person was able to publish such a ridiculous book is that there's an entire ridiculous publishing house committed to cranking out right-wing garbage of this stripe. The reason that ridiculous book sells is because there's an entire ridiculous right-wing infrastructure of book clubs and magazines that buy copies in bulk and resell them at drastically reduced rates. The ridiculous author of this ridiculous book is able to communicate with broad swaths of America because there's an entire ridiculous cable network that will put him on TV without so much as a hint of criticism.
It's tempting to look at this and brush it off. After all, it's just another example of the right-wing subculture telling each other what they want to hear and reveling in epistemic closure's comforting, suffocating embrace.
But then D'Souza popped up in The Washington Post.
The Post cleared space on their op-ed page for a guy who argues, in all seriousness, that the first black president of the United States is on a quest to drain the country's economic and military power in order to fulfill the ambitions of the "anti-colonial" father he met only once as a young child. This was after Forbes had to publish corrections to the article D'Souza wrote for them and dispatch a post-publication fact-checker.
So why did they run it? Here's editorial page editor Fred Hiatt defending the move: "D'Souza's theory has sparked a great deal of commentary, from potential presidential candidates as well as from commentators on our own pages." The "potential presidential candidate" is Newt Gingrich, who loved D'Souza's theory; and the Post commentators are Eugene Robinson, Richard Cohen, and Jonathan Capehart, all of whom called Gingrich a lunatic for promoting D'Souza. Hiatt's argument is essentially: "People are talking about it -- who cares if it's right?"
It's this sort of passive attitude towards factual accuracy that allows fringe hacks like D'Souza to break into the mainstream. The Post has an obligation to keep their readers informed, not to reprint the intellectually fraudulent trash Newt Gingrich finds interesting.
Anti-Sharia Groups Are The Latest Conservative Far Right Insanity
From Care 2 Causes -- October 8, 2010:
Veterans Against Jihad the Latest Anti-Sharia Group to Emerge
Posted by: Jessica Pieklo
A bubbling theme from the far-reaches of the paranoid right has made its way into mainstream political discourse and, according to the Southern Poverty Law Center, the ranks of our nation's military. The idea is that the United States legal system is threatened by the ever-encroaching menace of Sharia law. Sharron Angle has mentioned it, Oklahoma is considering a constitutional amendment to ban it, and some states use it as a basis of denying the legitimacy of Islam all together.
It doesn't matter that even in Muslim-majority nations strict Islamic legal codes are the exception. The threat of Sharia law has now become a talking point of the right and appears to be inspiring organizations to rise up against this imagined enemy.
Of the latest is the group Veterans Against Jihad (VAJ). Founded last spring by two retired Marine Corps veterans, the goal of VAJ is to "encourage Veterans to more actively respond to challenges threatening our Constitution [and] awaken American Citizens to Islam's Jihadist religious mandate." To that end VAJ is asking all veterans to renew their Oath of Enlistment and reaffirm their loyalty to the Constitution.
But like all groups, VAJ's understanding of constitutional fidelity is selective, as is their opposition to religiously inspired law. The group is not shy that it's mission is to "reclaim America for Christ" and has aligned itself with other far-right groups that have a decidedly intolerant view of religious diversity.
The concern about the increasing presence of Sharia law is quickly joining anti-immigration memes as a popular way to spread nativist fear and ideology. It should come as no surprise then that the mainstream politicians that embrace and even campaign on this rhetoric have been embraced by the far right elements of the tea party movement. Nativism and populism have a long history together in our political culture and this latest groundswell represents just another chapter of fear in response to cultural, economic and political change. Let's hope it's a short one.
Veterans Against Jihad the Latest Anti-Sharia Group to Emerge
Posted by: Jessica Pieklo
A bubbling theme from the far-reaches of the paranoid right has made its way into mainstream political discourse and, according to the Southern Poverty Law Center, the ranks of our nation's military. The idea is that the United States legal system is threatened by the ever-encroaching menace of Sharia law. Sharron Angle has mentioned it, Oklahoma is considering a constitutional amendment to ban it, and some states use it as a basis of denying the legitimacy of Islam all together.
It doesn't matter that even in Muslim-majority nations strict Islamic legal codes are the exception. The threat of Sharia law has now become a talking point of the right and appears to be inspiring organizations to rise up against this imagined enemy.
Of the latest is the group Veterans Against Jihad (VAJ). Founded last spring by two retired Marine Corps veterans, the goal of VAJ is to "encourage Veterans to more actively respond to challenges threatening our Constitution [and] awaken American Citizens to Islam's Jihadist religious mandate." To that end VAJ is asking all veterans to renew their Oath of Enlistment and reaffirm their loyalty to the Constitution.
But like all groups, VAJ's understanding of constitutional fidelity is selective, as is their opposition to religiously inspired law. The group is not shy that it's mission is to "reclaim America for Christ" and has aligned itself with other far-right groups that have a decidedly intolerant view of religious diversity.
The concern about the increasing presence of Sharia law is quickly joining anti-immigration memes as a popular way to spread nativist fear and ideology. It should come as no surprise then that the mainstream politicians that embrace and even campaign on this rhetoric have been embraced by the far right elements of the tea party movement. Nativism and populism have a long history together in our political culture and this latest groundswell represents just another chapter of fear in response to cultural, economic and political change. Let's hope it's a short one.
Thursday, October 7, 2010
John McCain: Why is John's favorite animal The Rat?
From The Huffington Post --- October 7, 2010:
The Real McCain, A Shape-Shifter And Self-Preservationist: Vanity Fair
With Sen. John McCain securely closing the door on his presidential ambitions, Todd Purdum of Vanity Fair is out with a profile of the man whose 2008 presidential loss has come to define him as bitter and obstinate.
According to Purdum, however, it wasn't defeat that drove McCain away from the respected position of moderate and unpredictable maverick -- he has long been shrewd and calculating. Driven by an intense drive for self-preservation and an adaptable set of political principles, Purdum says that McCain has always been a brazen, albeit successful, shape-shifter.
Below are a few excerpts from Purdum's piece that help to outline the history of McCain's mercurial and inconsistent political career.
It's quite possible that nothing at all has changed about John McCain, a ruthless and self-centered survivor who endured five and a half years in captivity in North Vietnam, and who once told Torie Clarke that his favorite animal was the rat, because it is cunning and eats well. It's possible to see McCain's entire career as the story of a man who has lived in the moment, who has never stood for any overriding philosophy in any consistent way, and who has been willing to do all that it takes to get whatever it is he wants. He himself said, in the thick of his battle with Hayworth, "I've always done whatever's necessary to win." Maybe the rest of us just misunderstood.
Amid his 2000 political campaign, McCain displayed perhaps his most abrupt flip-flop in order to correct a politically damaging position that he had taken about the flying of the Confederate flag:
McCain infamously shifted his position to suit the political moment, retreating from his declaration that the flag was "a symbol of racism and slavery" to say instead that he understood both sides in the debate. "The beginning of the end for John McCain was the Confederate flag," Torie Clarke says. "That did more harm to him with the broader electorate than anything else."
Purdum says that McCain's decision to put Sarah Palin on the ticket in 2008 was indicative of his reckless desire to lean on his "maverick" reputation, which had been lagging at that point in his campaign.
His choice of Sarah Palin as his running mate was, of course, the apogee of his hotheaded, cold-blooded self-protectiveness. Denied his own first choice, his friend Joe Lieberman, the Independent-Democrat from Connecticut, he opted instead for the only candidate his advisers thought stood a chance of reinforcing his much-dimmed reputation as a maverick. But in doing so he chose a person so manifestly unqualified for the presidency as to make him look like little more than a hack. "He picked a running mate to prove what an outsider he was," one former adviser said, "and by comparison he wound up looking like the most conventional person around."
With Obama's job approval numbers at their current levels, another term for McCain could well provide the Senator a chance to fan the flames of a 2008 rivalry and continue his politically expedient, ideological march rightwards.
If the voters of Arizona return him to Washington, McCain's immediate future will continue to be defined by one overriding reality: dealing with (or, as the case more often may be, working against) the man who defeated him, Barack Obama. They hold each other in what legislators used to describe with faux courtesy as "minimum high regard."
But Purdum notes that McCain hasn't always been so resentful of young, political rivals, and relays some information showing that his contempt for Obama might now be personal:
In 1993, the newly elected Clinton faced a firestorm of criticism for proposing to speak at the Vietnam Veterans Memorial, in Washington, in light of his own well-chronicled efforts to avoid the draft. McCain wrote the White House and volunteered to go with Clinton if it would help. McCain's distaste for Obama is deeply personal. "I think he thinks he's full of shit," one former McCain aide says of his boss's opinion of the president..."You can tell he can barely fucking stand the fact that he was beaten by Barack Obama," says one senior White House aide who was present. "Throughout the whole meeting, he would not look at the president, even when he was talking to him."
The Real McCain, A Shape-Shifter And Self-Preservationist: Vanity Fair
With Sen. John McCain securely closing the door on his presidential ambitions, Todd Purdum of Vanity Fair is out with a profile of the man whose 2008 presidential loss has come to define him as bitter and obstinate.
According to Purdum, however, it wasn't defeat that drove McCain away from the respected position of moderate and unpredictable maverick -- he has long been shrewd and calculating. Driven by an intense drive for self-preservation and an adaptable set of political principles, Purdum says that McCain has always been a brazen, albeit successful, shape-shifter.
Below are a few excerpts from Purdum's piece that help to outline the history of McCain's mercurial and inconsistent political career.
It's quite possible that nothing at all has changed about John McCain, a ruthless and self-centered survivor who endured five and a half years in captivity in North Vietnam, and who once told Torie Clarke that his favorite animal was the rat, because it is cunning and eats well. It's possible to see McCain's entire career as the story of a man who has lived in the moment, who has never stood for any overriding philosophy in any consistent way, and who has been willing to do all that it takes to get whatever it is he wants. He himself said, in the thick of his battle with Hayworth, "I've always done whatever's necessary to win." Maybe the rest of us just misunderstood.
Amid his 2000 political campaign, McCain displayed perhaps his most abrupt flip-flop in order to correct a politically damaging position that he had taken about the flying of the Confederate flag:
McCain infamously shifted his position to suit the political moment, retreating from his declaration that the flag was "a symbol of racism and slavery" to say instead that he understood both sides in the debate. "The beginning of the end for John McCain was the Confederate flag," Torie Clarke says. "That did more harm to him with the broader electorate than anything else."
Purdum says that McCain's decision to put Sarah Palin on the ticket in 2008 was indicative of his reckless desire to lean on his "maverick" reputation, which had been lagging at that point in his campaign.
His choice of Sarah Palin as his running mate was, of course, the apogee of his hotheaded, cold-blooded self-protectiveness. Denied his own first choice, his friend Joe Lieberman, the Independent-Democrat from Connecticut, he opted instead for the only candidate his advisers thought stood a chance of reinforcing his much-dimmed reputation as a maverick. But in doing so he chose a person so manifestly unqualified for the presidency as to make him look like little more than a hack. "He picked a running mate to prove what an outsider he was," one former adviser said, "and by comparison he wound up looking like the most conventional person around."
With Obama's job approval numbers at their current levels, another term for McCain could well provide the Senator a chance to fan the flames of a 2008 rivalry and continue his politically expedient, ideological march rightwards.
If the voters of Arizona return him to Washington, McCain's immediate future will continue to be defined by one overriding reality: dealing with (or, as the case more often may be, working against) the man who defeated him, Barack Obama. They hold each other in what legislators used to describe with faux courtesy as "minimum high regard."
But Purdum notes that McCain hasn't always been so resentful of young, political rivals, and relays some information showing that his contempt for Obama might now be personal:
In 1993, the newly elected Clinton faced a firestorm of criticism for proposing to speak at the Vietnam Veterans Memorial, in Washington, in light of his own well-chronicled efforts to avoid the draft. McCain wrote the White House and volunteered to go with Clinton if it would help. McCain's distaste for Obama is deeply personal. "I think he thinks he's full of shit," one former McCain aide says of his boss's opinion of the president..."You can tell he can barely fucking stand the fact that he was beaten by Barack Obama," says one senior White House aide who was present. "Throughout the whole meeting, he would not look at the president, even when he was talking to him."
Wednesday, October 6, 2010
Conservative Republicans are Turning the United States Into a Banana Republic
From The Washington Post -- October 6, 2010:
The costs of rising economic inequality
House Republicans released their "Pledge to America" on Thurs., Sept. 23. The release of the 21-page plan came with far less fanfare than the 1994 announcement of the party's "Contract with America."
Although much of the Republicans'"Pledge to America" is given over to a discussion of economic issues, there is one topic that is never mentioned: the dramatic rise in income inequality. As with global warming, Republicans seem to have decided that the best way to deal with this fundamental challenge is to deny it exists.
If you asked Americans how much of the nation's pretax income goes to the top 10 percent of households, it is unlikely they would come anywhere close to 50 percent, which is where it was just before the bubble burst in 2007. That's according to groundbreaking research by economists Thomas Piketty, of the Paris School of Economics, and Emmanuel Saez, of the University of California at Berkeley, who last week won one of this year's MacArthur Foundation "genius" grants.
It wasn't always that way. From World War II until 1976, considered by many as the "golden years" for the U.S. economy, the top 10 percent of the population took home less than a third of the income generated by the private economy. But since then, according to Saez and Piketty, virtually all of the benefits of economic growth have gone to households that, in today's terms, earn more than $110,000 a year.
Even within that top "decile," the distribution is remarkably skewed. By 2007, the top 1 percent of households took home 23 percent of the national income after a 15-year run in which they captured more than half - yes, you read that right, more than half - of the country's economic growth. As Tim Noah noted recently in a wonderful series of articles in Slate, that's the kind of income distribution you'd associate with a banana republic or a sub-Saharan kleptocracy, not the world's oldest democracy and wealthiest market economy.
In trying to figuring out who or what is responsible for rising inequality, there are lots of suspects. Globalization is certainly one, in the form of increased flows of people, goods and capital across borders. So is technological change, which has skewed the demand for labor in favor of workers with higher education without a corresponding increase in the supply of such workers. There are a number of other culprits that come under the heading of what economists call "institutional" changes - the decline of unions, industry deregulation and the increased power of financial markets over corporate behavior. Over time, more industries have developed the kind of superstar pay structures that were long associated with Hollywood and professional sports.
And then there is my favorite culprit: changing social norms around the issue of how much inequality is socially acceptable.
Economists spend a lot of time trying to quantify precisely how much responsibility to assign to each of these, but in truth the death of equality is much like Agatha Christie's "Murder on the Orient Express": They all did it.
There are moral and political reasons for caring about this dramatic skewing of income, which in the real world leads to a similar skewing of opportunity, social standing and political power. But there is also an important economic reason: Too much inequality, just like too little, appears to reduce global competitiveness and long-term growth, at least in developed countries like ours.
We know from recent experience, for example, that financial bubbles reduce equality by siphoning off a disproportionate share of national income to Wall Street's highly-paid bankers and traders. What may be less obvious, but not less important, is that the causality also works the other way: Too much inequality can lead to financial bubbles.
The liberal version of this argument comes from former Labor secretary Robert Reich in his new book, "Aftershock." Because so much of the nation's income is siphoned off to the super-rich, Reich says, a struggling middle class trying to maintain its standard of living had no choice but to take on more and more debt. I have some problem with the argument that the middle class had no choice, but it's certainly true that the middle class and the economy as a whole would be in better shape today if households weren't burdened with so much debt.
The more conservative version of this argument comes from University of Chicago economist Raghuram Rajan. In his new book, "Fault Lines," Rajan argues that in order to respond to the stagnant incomes of their constituents, politicians took a number of steps to keep the "American Dream" within reach, including subsidization of home mortgages and college loans. He might have added that politicians also were quick to cut taxes for the middle class even when it meant running up the national debt to pay for popular entitlement programs and government services.
Concentrating so much income in a relatively small number of households has also led to trillions of dollars being spent and invested in ways that were spectacularly unproductive. In recent decades, the rich have used their winnings to bid up the prices of artwork and fancy cars, the tuition at prestigious private schools and universities, the services of celebrity hairdressers and interior decorators, and real estate in fashionable enclaves from Park City to Park Avenue. And what wasn't misspent was largely misinvested in hedge funds and private equity vehicles that played a pivotal role in inflating a series of speculative financial bubbles, from the junk bond bubble of the '80s to the tech and telecom bubble of the '90s to the credit bubble of the past decade.
The biggest problem with runaway inequality, however, is that it undermines the unity of purpose necessary for any firm, or any nation, to thrive. People don't work hard, take risks and make sacrifices if they think the rewards will all flow to others. Conservative Republicans use this argument all the time in trying to justify lower tax rates for wealthy earners and investors, but they chose to ignore it when it comes to the incomes of everyone else.
It's no coincidence that polarization of income distribution in the United States coincides with a polarization of the political process. Just as income inequality has eroded any sense that we are all in this together, it has also eroded the political consensus necessary for effective government. There can be no better proof of that proposition than the current election cycle, in which the last of the moderates are being driven from the political process and the most likely prospect is for years of ideological warfare and political gridlock.
Political candidates may not be talking about income inequality during this election, but it is the unspoken issue that underlies all the others. Without a sense of shared prosperity, there can be no prosperity. And given the realities of global capitalism, with its booms and busts and winner-take-all dynamic, that will require more government involvement in the economy, not less.
The costs of rising economic inequality
House Republicans released their "Pledge to America" on Thurs., Sept. 23. The release of the 21-page plan came with far less fanfare than the 1994 announcement of the party's "Contract with America."
Although much of the Republicans'"Pledge to America" is given over to a discussion of economic issues, there is one topic that is never mentioned: the dramatic rise in income inequality. As with global warming, Republicans seem to have decided that the best way to deal with this fundamental challenge is to deny it exists.
If you asked Americans how much of the nation's pretax income goes to the top 10 percent of households, it is unlikely they would come anywhere close to 50 percent, which is where it was just before the bubble burst in 2007. That's according to groundbreaking research by economists Thomas Piketty, of the Paris School of Economics, and Emmanuel Saez, of the University of California at Berkeley, who last week won one of this year's MacArthur Foundation "genius" grants.
It wasn't always that way. From World War II until 1976, considered by many as the "golden years" for the U.S. economy, the top 10 percent of the population took home less than a third of the income generated by the private economy. But since then, according to Saez and Piketty, virtually all of the benefits of economic growth have gone to households that, in today's terms, earn more than $110,000 a year.
Even within that top "decile," the distribution is remarkably skewed. By 2007, the top 1 percent of households took home 23 percent of the national income after a 15-year run in which they captured more than half - yes, you read that right, more than half - of the country's economic growth. As Tim Noah noted recently in a wonderful series of articles in Slate, that's the kind of income distribution you'd associate with a banana republic or a sub-Saharan kleptocracy, not the world's oldest democracy and wealthiest market economy.
In trying to figuring out who or what is responsible for rising inequality, there are lots of suspects. Globalization is certainly one, in the form of increased flows of people, goods and capital across borders. So is technological change, which has skewed the demand for labor in favor of workers with higher education without a corresponding increase in the supply of such workers. There are a number of other culprits that come under the heading of what economists call "institutional" changes - the decline of unions, industry deregulation and the increased power of financial markets over corporate behavior. Over time, more industries have developed the kind of superstar pay structures that were long associated with Hollywood and professional sports.
And then there is my favorite culprit: changing social norms around the issue of how much inequality is socially acceptable.
Economists spend a lot of time trying to quantify precisely how much responsibility to assign to each of these, but in truth the death of equality is much like Agatha Christie's "Murder on the Orient Express": They all did it.
There are moral and political reasons for caring about this dramatic skewing of income, which in the real world leads to a similar skewing of opportunity, social standing and political power. But there is also an important economic reason: Too much inequality, just like too little, appears to reduce global competitiveness and long-term growth, at least in developed countries like ours.
We know from recent experience, for example, that financial bubbles reduce equality by siphoning off a disproportionate share of national income to Wall Street's highly-paid bankers and traders. What may be less obvious, but not less important, is that the causality also works the other way: Too much inequality can lead to financial bubbles.
The liberal version of this argument comes from former Labor secretary Robert Reich in his new book, "Aftershock." Because so much of the nation's income is siphoned off to the super-rich, Reich says, a struggling middle class trying to maintain its standard of living had no choice but to take on more and more debt. I have some problem with the argument that the middle class had no choice, but it's certainly true that the middle class and the economy as a whole would be in better shape today if households weren't burdened with so much debt.
The more conservative version of this argument comes from University of Chicago economist Raghuram Rajan. In his new book, "Fault Lines," Rajan argues that in order to respond to the stagnant incomes of their constituents, politicians took a number of steps to keep the "American Dream" within reach, including subsidization of home mortgages and college loans. He might have added that politicians also were quick to cut taxes for the middle class even when it meant running up the national debt to pay for popular entitlement programs and government services.
Concentrating so much income in a relatively small number of households has also led to trillions of dollars being spent and invested in ways that were spectacularly unproductive. In recent decades, the rich have used their winnings to bid up the prices of artwork and fancy cars, the tuition at prestigious private schools and universities, the services of celebrity hairdressers and interior decorators, and real estate in fashionable enclaves from Park City to Park Avenue. And what wasn't misspent was largely misinvested in hedge funds and private equity vehicles that played a pivotal role in inflating a series of speculative financial bubbles, from the junk bond bubble of the '80s to the tech and telecom bubble of the '90s to the credit bubble of the past decade.
The biggest problem with runaway inequality, however, is that it undermines the unity of purpose necessary for any firm, or any nation, to thrive. People don't work hard, take risks and make sacrifices if they think the rewards will all flow to others. Conservative Republicans use this argument all the time in trying to justify lower tax rates for wealthy earners and investors, but they chose to ignore it when it comes to the incomes of everyone else.
It's no coincidence that polarization of income distribution in the United States coincides with a polarization of the political process. Just as income inequality has eroded any sense that we are all in this together, it has also eroded the political consensus necessary for effective government. There can be no better proof of that proposition than the current election cycle, in which the last of the moderates are being driven from the political process and the most likely prospect is for years of ideological warfare and political gridlock.
Political candidates may not be talking about income inequality during this election, but it is the unspoken issue that underlies all the others. Without a sense of shared prosperity, there can be no prosperity. And given the realities of global capitalism, with its booms and busts and winner-take-all dynamic, that will require more government involvement in the economy, not less.
Tuesday, October 5, 2010
Newt Gingrich Is a Big Fat Idiot -- No Wonder Republicans Love Him
From The Washington Post -- September 21, 2010:
Sharia as the new red menace?
By Eugene Robinson
Boy, I really hate it when American judges try to impose harsh Islamic sharia law. You know, with all those grisly lashings, stonings and beheadings. What's that you say? No such thing is happening, and you wonder where I got such a crazy idea? Why, Newt Gingrich told me.
On Saturday, speaking at the conservative Values Voter Summit, Gingrich issued a thunderous call for action against an imminent threat that exists only in his fevered imagination -- or, perhaps, in his political machinations.
"We should have a federal law that says sharia law cannot be recognized by any court in the United States," Gingrich declared, to a standing ovation.
Okay, but would this include Judge Judy? Because I've always suspected that when she gets really mad, and she snaps the heads off both the plaintiff and the defendant, she might be slipping a little sharia into the American subconscious -- you know, preparing an unsuspecting nation for the real deal. Maybe we need another law that covers fake judges on daytime television, with punishments that begin with flogging.
But seriously, folks, Newt says we have to halt the insidious encroachment of sharia law, and we have to halt it here and now. In July, speaking at the American Enterprise Institute, he went on at great length about the supposed sharia menace, which he sees as part of a "stealth" campaign to impose Islam on all of us.
"Stealth jihadis use political, cultural, societal, religious, intellectual tools; violent jihadis use violence," Gingrich said at AEI. "But in fact they're both engaged in jihad, and they're both seeking to impose the same end state, which is to replace Western civilization with a radical imposition of sharia."
He threw in a perfunctory disclaimer -- that there is "a sharp distinction between those Muslims who live in the modern world and those Muslims who would radically change the modern world" -- and then proceeded with a speech that essentially paints Islam as the new Red Menace. The "stealth jihadis," I suppose, must be like the "known communists" on the list in Sen. Joseph McCarthy's hand.
Along the way, in the July speech, Gingrich painted liberals as a bunch of fellow travelers. "How we don't have some kind of movement in this country on the left that understands that sharia is a direct mortal threat to virtually every value that the left has is really one of the most interesting historical questions," he said.
Where to begin? First, I guess, by stating the obvious: There is no left-of-center movement dedicated to fighting the steady, stealthy insinuation of sharia into America's legal system because no such thing is happening. Gingrich invents an enemy and then demands to know why others haven't sallied forth to slay it.
Gingrich and the Islamophobes have found one solitary case to bolster their "sharia is here" theory. In June 2009, a family court judge in Hudson County, N.J., denied a restraining order to a woman who testified that her husband, a Muslim, had forced her to have non-consensual sex. Judge Joseph Charles Jr. said he did not believe the man "had a criminal desire to or intent to sexually assault" his wife because he was acting in a way that was "consistent with his practices."
The judge was clearly in error, as a state appeals court two months ago reversed his decision. The man's religious beliefs, the court ruled, do not exempt him from state laws. Thus ended the one and only instance of stealth sharia that anyone has been able to find.
Andrew Silow-Carroll, the editor in chief of the New Jersey Jewish News, cited that case in a column last month blasting Gingrich's "sharia-phobia." Silow-Carroll pointed out two things: First, the system worked -- the judge made a boneheaded call, and he was overturned. Second, our system already allows some civil matters -- but not crimes -- to be settled through other means of arbitration. "Among those alternative mechanisms is the beit din, or rabbinic law court," Silow-Carroll wrote. "Every day, Jews go before batei din to arbitrate real estate deals, nasty divorces and business disputes."
If Newt were aware of this, would he blow a gasket? Somehow, I doubt it. His objection seems to be faith-specific.
And his purpose seems to be political. If Muslim-bashing draws a rise -- and apparently it does -- then he's not going to be outdone. Watch out, Judge Judy. He may be coming for you next.
Sharia as the new red menace?
By Eugene Robinson
Boy, I really hate it when American judges try to impose harsh Islamic sharia law. You know, with all those grisly lashings, stonings and beheadings. What's that you say? No such thing is happening, and you wonder where I got such a crazy idea? Why, Newt Gingrich told me.
On Saturday, speaking at the conservative Values Voter Summit, Gingrich issued a thunderous call for action against an imminent threat that exists only in his fevered imagination -- or, perhaps, in his political machinations.
"We should have a federal law that says sharia law cannot be recognized by any court in the United States," Gingrich declared, to a standing ovation.
Okay, but would this include Judge Judy? Because I've always suspected that when she gets really mad, and she snaps the heads off both the plaintiff and the defendant, she might be slipping a little sharia into the American subconscious -- you know, preparing an unsuspecting nation for the real deal. Maybe we need another law that covers fake judges on daytime television, with punishments that begin with flogging.
But seriously, folks, Newt says we have to halt the insidious encroachment of sharia law, and we have to halt it here and now. In July, speaking at the American Enterprise Institute, he went on at great length about the supposed sharia menace, which he sees as part of a "stealth" campaign to impose Islam on all of us.
"Stealth jihadis use political, cultural, societal, religious, intellectual tools; violent jihadis use violence," Gingrich said at AEI. "But in fact they're both engaged in jihad, and they're both seeking to impose the same end state, which is to replace Western civilization with a radical imposition of sharia."
He threw in a perfunctory disclaimer -- that there is "a sharp distinction between those Muslims who live in the modern world and those Muslims who would radically change the modern world" -- and then proceeded with a speech that essentially paints Islam as the new Red Menace. The "stealth jihadis," I suppose, must be like the "known communists" on the list in Sen. Joseph McCarthy's hand.
Along the way, in the July speech, Gingrich painted liberals as a bunch of fellow travelers. "How we don't have some kind of movement in this country on the left that understands that sharia is a direct mortal threat to virtually every value that the left has is really one of the most interesting historical questions," he said.
Where to begin? First, I guess, by stating the obvious: There is no left-of-center movement dedicated to fighting the steady, stealthy insinuation of sharia into America's legal system because no such thing is happening. Gingrich invents an enemy and then demands to know why others haven't sallied forth to slay it.
Gingrich and the Islamophobes have found one solitary case to bolster their "sharia is here" theory. In June 2009, a family court judge in Hudson County, N.J., denied a restraining order to a woman who testified that her husband, a Muslim, had forced her to have non-consensual sex. Judge Joseph Charles Jr. said he did not believe the man "had a criminal desire to or intent to sexually assault" his wife because he was acting in a way that was "consistent with his practices."
The judge was clearly in error, as a state appeals court two months ago reversed his decision. The man's religious beliefs, the court ruled, do not exempt him from state laws. Thus ended the one and only instance of stealth sharia that anyone has been able to find.
Andrew Silow-Carroll, the editor in chief of the New Jersey Jewish News, cited that case in a column last month blasting Gingrich's "sharia-phobia." Silow-Carroll pointed out two things: First, the system worked -- the judge made a boneheaded call, and he was overturned. Second, our system already allows some civil matters -- but not crimes -- to be settled through other means of arbitration. "Among those alternative mechanisms is the beit din, or rabbinic law court," Silow-Carroll wrote. "Every day, Jews go before batei din to arbitrate real estate deals, nasty divorces and business disputes."
If Newt were aware of this, would he blow a gasket? Somehow, I doubt it. His objection seems to be faith-specific.
And his purpose seems to be political. If Muslim-bashing draws a rise -- and apparently it does -- then he's not going to be outdone. Watch out, Judge Judy. He may be coming for you next.
The Republican Fire Sale of America
From The Washington Post -- October 5, 2010:
Midterm campaigns, brought to you by . . . ?
By Eugene Robinson
The Republican grab for Congress is being funded by a pack of wolves masquerading as a herd of sheep.
How sweet and innocent they seem, these mysterious organizations with names like Americans for Job Security. Who could argue with that? Who wants job insecurity?
It turns out, according to The Post, that an entity called Americans for Job Security has made nearly $7.5 million in "independent" campaign expenditures this year, with 88 percent going to support Republican candidates. Who's putting up all that money? You'll never know, because Americans for Job Security -- which calls itself a "business association" -- doesn't have to disclose the source of its funding.
Likewise, the American Future Fund has spent $6.8 million on campaigns this year, with every penny of that money benefiting Republicans. The patriotically named group -- and, really, who doesn't want America to have a future? -- is based in Iowa and has never before been a big player in the Great Game of campaign finance. Now, suddenly, it has a king's ransom to throw around.
Whose money is it? The American Future Fund won't tell you.
And then there's American Crossroads, which at least is being "advised" by some people you've heard of -- Republican strategists Karl Rove and Ed Gillespie. This group has spent $5.6 million so far but is just getting started: American Crossroads says it will spend an astounding $50 million in this election cycle.
You will not be surprised to hear that all of this money is being used to try to oust Democrats and replace them with Republicans. And where is the money coming from? Silly of you to ask. There is no limit to the amount that an individual, corporation or trade association can give to American Crossroads -- but the group is not required to tell you who those deep-pockets donors might be.
Democrats are doing the same sort of thing, or trying to. But Republicans are outspending Democrats by 7 to 1 in this kind of "independent" campaign spending. So while Democratic candidates enjoy a big advantage in official campaign funding -- the kind that has limits and disclosure requirements -- this edge is blunted by the wave of "independent" GOP cash.
According to The Post, $80 million has been spent on midterm election campaigns by these shadowy "independent" groups -- as opposed to just $16 million at this point in the 2006 midterm cycle.
I put "independent" in quotes because this spending is anything but. Officially, groups such as Americans for Job Security and American Crossroads are not allowed to spend on behalf of specific candidates; rather, they are supposed to confine themselves to such anodyne activities as highlighting issues and advocating policy positions. In practice, however, this gives them the latitude to attack one candidate -- a Democrat, say -- for his or her position on health care, financial reform or whatever.
There can be no overt coordination between these groups and any specific candidates, but there doesn't have to be. The political operatives in charge of the American Future Fund, for example, can read a map of congressional districts as well as anybody else. All they have to do is identify a potentially vulnerable Democrat and start pouring in the cash, mostly to buy television ads accusing the incumbent of being an enemy of all that America holds dear -- and, gasp, a friend of Nancy Pelosi.
The Supreme Court made all this possible with its ruling early this year, in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, which legalized unlimited campaign spending by corporations, unions, trade associations and other such entities. And the independent-expenditure groups with the patriotic names are often structured as nonprofits, which means they are not required to disclose their donors publicly.
The result is a system in which oil companies opposed to an energy bill that would begin to steer the country away from fossil fuels, or Wall Street firms that want to undo financial regulatory reform and return to the days of the Big Casino, or gazillionaires who want to keep George W. Bush's tax breaks, can all spend as much as they like to try to buy Congress for the Republican Party.
And they can do it secretly, in the dark, without anyone knowing. It's bad enough that public offices can be purchased. It's unconscionable that we can't even know who the buyers are.
Midterm campaigns, brought to you by . . . ?
By Eugene Robinson
The Republican grab for Congress is being funded by a pack of wolves masquerading as a herd of sheep.
How sweet and innocent they seem, these mysterious organizations with names like Americans for Job Security. Who could argue with that? Who wants job insecurity?
It turns out, according to The Post, that an entity called Americans for Job Security has made nearly $7.5 million in "independent" campaign expenditures this year, with 88 percent going to support Republican candidates. Who's putting up all that money? You'll never know, because Americans for Job Security -- which calls itself a "business association" -- doesn't have to disclose the source of its funding.
Likewise, the American Future Fund has spent $6.8 million on campaigns this year, with every penny of that money benefiting Republicans. The patriotically named group -- and, really, who doesn't want America to have a future? -- is based in Iowa and has never before been a big player in the Great Game of campaign finance. Now, suddenly, it has a king's ransom to throw around.
Whose money is it? The American Future Fund won't tell you.
And then there's American Crossroads, which at least is being "advised" by some people you've heard of -- Republican strategists Karl Rove and Ed Gillespie. This group has spent $5.6 million so far but is just getting started: American Crossroads says it will spend an astounding $50 million in this election cycle.
You will not be surprised to hear that all of this money is being used to try to oust Democrats and replace them with Republicans. And where is the money coming from? Silly of you to ask. There is no limit to the amount that an individual, corporation or trade association can give to American Crossroads -- but the group is not required to tell you who those deep-pockets donors might be.
Democrats are doing the same sort of thing, or trying to. But Republicans are outspending Democrats by 7 to 1 in this kind of "independent" campaign spending. So while Democratic candidates enjoy a big advantage in official campaign funding -- the kind that has limits and disclosure requirements -- this edge is blunted by the wave of "independent" GOP cash.
According to The Post, $80 million has been spent on midterm election campaigns by these shadowy "independent" groups -- as opposed to just $16 million at this point in the 2006 midterm cycle.
I put "independent" in quotes because this spending is anything but. Officially, groups such as Americans for Job Security and American Crossroads are not allowed to spend on behalf of specific candidates; rather, they are supposed to confine themselves to such anodyne activities as highlighting issues and advocating policy positions. In practice, however, this gives them the latitude to attack one candidate -- a Democrat, say -- for his or her position on health care, financial reform or whatever.
There can be no overt coordination between these groups and any specific candidates, but there doesn't have to be. The political operatives in charge of the American Future Fund, for example, can read a map of congressional districts as well as anybody else. All they have to do is identify a potentially vulnerable Democrat and start pouring in the cash, mostly to buy television ads accusing the incumbent of being an enemy of all that America holds dear -- and, gasp, a friend of Nancy Pelosi.
The Supreme Court made all this possible with its ruling early this year, in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, which legalized unlimited campaign spending by corporations, unions, trade associations and other such entities. And the independent-expenditure groups with the patriotic names are often structured as nonprofits, which means they are not required to disclose their donors publicly.
The result is a system in which oil companies opposed to an energy bill that would begin to steer the country away from fossil fuels, or Wall Street firms that want to undo financial regulatory reform and return to the days of the Big Casino, or gazillionaires who want to keep George W. Bush's tax breaks, can all spend as much as they like to try to buy Congress for the Republican Party.
And they can do it secretly, in the dark, without anyone knowing. It's bad enough that public offices can be purchased. It's unconscionable that we can't even know who the buyers are.
Sunday, October 3, 2010
Republican Tea Parties: Camouflaging a Billionaires' Coup D'Etat as a "Populist Surge"
From The New York Times --- October 2, 2010
The Very Useful Idiocy of Christine O’Donnell
By FRANK RICH
ALL it took was some 30,000 Republican primary voters in a tiny state to turn Christine O’Donnell into the brightest all-American media meteor since Balloon Boy. For embattled liberals, not to mention the axis of Comedy Central, “Saturday Night Live” and Bill Maher, she’s been pure comic gold for weeks: a bottomless trove of baldfaced lies, radical views and sheer wackiness. True, other American politicians have dismissed evolution as a myth. Some may even have denied joining a coven. But history will always remember her for taking a fearless stand against masturbation, the one national pastime with more fans than baseball.
Yet those laughing now may not have the last laugh in November. O’Donnell’s timely ascent in the election season’s final lap may well prove a godsend for the G.O.P.
At first some Republicans had trouble figuring this out. On primary eve, a spokesman for the National Republican Senatorial Committee badmouthed O’Donnell’s “disturbing pattern of dishonest behavior.” On election night, Karl Rove belittled her “nutty” pronouncements and “checkered background” on Fox News. But by the morning after, bygones were bygones. The senatorial committee’s chairman, John Cornyn, rewarded O’Donnell’s “dishonest behavior” with an enthusiastic endorsement and a big check. A sweaty Rove reversed himself so fast you’d think he’d been forced to stay up all night listening to Glenn Beck’s greatest hits at top volume in a Roger Ailes re-education camp.
Rove’s flip-flop was no doubt hastened by his own cohort’s assaults on both his ideological purity and masculinity. The blogger Michelle Malkin labeled him an “effete sore loser,” and Sarah Palin publicly instructed him to “buck up.” But surely the larger motive for his retreat was the dawning recognition of just how valuable O’Donnell is to the G.O.P.’s national aspirations in November — even should she ultimately lose her own race in blue Delaware. Whatever her other talents, she’s more than willing to play the role of useful idiot for her party. She gives populist cover to the billionaires and corporate interests that have been steadily annexing the Tea Party movement and busily plotting to cash in their chips if the G.O.P. prevails.
While O’Donnell’s résumé has proved largely fictional, one crucial biographical plotline is true: She has had trouble finding a job, holding on to a home and paying her taxes. In this, at least, she is like many Americans in the Great Recession, including the angry claque that found its voice in the Tea Party. For a G.O.P. that is even more in thrall to big money than the Democrats, she couldn’t be a more perfect decoy.
By latching on to O’Donnell’s growing presence, the Rove-Boehner-McConnell establishment can claim it represents struggling middle-class Tea Partiers rather than Wall Street potentates and corporate titans. O’Donnell’s value is the same as that other useful idiot, Michael Steele, who remains at the Republican National Committee only because he can wave the banner of “diversity” over a virtually all-white party that alternately demonizes African-Americans, Latinos, gays and Muslims.
O’Donnell is particularly needed now because most of the other Republican Tea Party standard-bearers lack genuine antigovernment or proletarian cred. Joe Miller and Ken Buck, the Senate candidates in Alaska and Colorado, actually are graduates of elite universities like those O’Donnell lied about attending. Rick Scott, the populist running for governor in Florida, was chief executive of a health care corporation that scooped up so many Medicare and Medicaid payments it had to settle charges for defrauding taxpayers. Rand Paul, the scion of a congressman, is an ophthalmologist whose calls for spending restraint don’t extend to his own Medicare income. Carl Paladino, the truculent man of the people in New York, grew his fortune as a developer with government handouts and favors. His California bookend, Carly Fiorina, received a golden parachute worth as much as $42 million from Hewlett-Packard, where she liquidated some 20,000 jobs.
The O’Donnell template, by sharp contrast, is Palin. It was Palin’s endorsement that put O’Donnell on the map, and it’s Palin’s script that O’Donnell is assiduously following. The once obscure governor of Alaska was also tripped up by lies and gaffes when she emerged on the national stage, starting with her misrepresentation of her supposed opposition to “the bridge to nowhere.” But she quickly wove the attacks into a brilliant cloak of martyrdom that positioned her as a fierce small-town opponent of the coasts’ pointy-head elites. O’Donnell, like Palin, knows that attacks by those elites, including conservative grandees, only backfire and enhance her image as a feisty defender of the aggrieved and resentful Joe Plumbers in “real America.”
The more O’Donnell is vilified, the bigger the star she becomes, and the more she can reinforce the Tea Party’s preferred narrative as “a spontaneous and quite anarchic movement” (in the recent words of the pundit Charles Krauthammer) populated only by everyday folk upset by big government and the deficit. This airbrushed take has had a surprisingly long life even in some of the nonpartisan press. In a typical example just three weeks ago, the influential publication National Journal delivered a breathless report on how the Tea Party functions as a “headless” movement where “no one gives orders.” To prove the point, a head of the headless Tea Party Patriots vouched that “75 percent of the group’s funding comes from small donations, $20 or less.”
In fact, local chapters of Tea Party Patriots routinely received early training and support from FreedomWorks, the moneyed libertarian outfit run by the former Republican House majority leader and corporate lobbyist Dick Armey. FreedomWorks is itself a spinoff from Citizens for a Sound Economy, a pseudo-grassroots group whose links to the billionaire Koch brothers were traced by Jane Mayer in her blockbuster August exposé in The New Yorker. Last week the same Tea Party Patriots leader who bragged to the National Journal about all those small donations announced a $1 million gift from a man she would identify only as an entrepreneur. The donor’s hidden identity speaks even louder than the size of the check. As long as we don’t know who he is, we won’t know what orders he’s giving either.
Such deep-pocketed mystery benefactors — not O’Donnell, whose reported income for this year and last is $5,800 — are the real indicators of what’s going on under the broad Tea Party rubric. Big money rains down on the “bottom up” Tea Party insurgency through phantom front organizations (Americans for Prosperity, Americans for Job Security) that exploit legal loopholes to keep their sugar daddies’ names secret. Reporters at The Times and The Washington Post, among others, have lately made real strides in explaining how the game works. But we still don’t know the identities of most of those anonymous donors.
From what we do know, it’s clear that some Tea Party groups and candidates like Sharron Angle, Paul and O’Donnell are being financed directly or indirectly not just by the Kochs (who share the No. 5 spot on the new Forbes 400) but by a remarkable coterie of fellow billionaires, led by oil barons like Robert Rowling (Forbes No. 69) and Trevor Rees-Jones (No. 110). Even their largess may be dwarfed by Rupert Murdoch (No. 38) and his News Corporation, whose known cash contributions ($2 million to Republican and Republican-tilting campaign groups) are dwarfed by the avalanche of free promotion they provide Tea Party causes and personalities daily at Fox and The Wall Street Journal.
However much these corporate contributors may share the Tea Party minions’ antipathy toward President Obama, their economic interests hardly overlap. The rank and file Tea Partiers say they oppose government spending and deficits. The billionaires have no problem with federal spending as long as the pork is corporate pork. They, like most Republican leaders in 2008, supported the Bush administration’s Wall Street bailout. They also don’t mind deficits as long as they get their outsize cut of the red ink — $3.8 trillion worth if all the Bush tax cuts are made permanent.
But while these billionaires’ selfish interests are in conflict with the Tea Party’s agenda, they are in complete sync with the G.O.P.’s Washington leadership. The Republicans’ new “Pledge to America” promises the $3.8 trillion addition to the deficit and says nothing about serious budget cuts or governmental reforms that might remotely offset it. Surfing the Beltway talk shows last Sunday, you couldn’t find one without a G.O.P. politician adamantly refusing to specify a single program he might cut at, say, the Department of Education (Pell grants?) or the National Institutes of Health (cancer research?). And that’s just the small change. Everyone knows that tax cuts for the G.O.P.’s wealthiest patrons must come out of Social Security and Medicare payments for everybody else.
They are acing it, these guys. Election Day is now only a month away. The demoralized Democrats are held hostage by the unemployment numbers. And along comes this marvelous gift out of nowhere, Christine O’Donnell, Tea Party everywoman, who just may be the final ingredient needed to camouflage a billionaires’ coup as a populist surge. By the time her fans discover that any post-election cuts in government spending will be billed to them, and not the Tea Party’s shadowy backers, she’ll surely be settling her own debts with fat paychecks from “Fox & Friends.”
The Very Useful Idiocy of Christine O’Donnell
By FRANK RICH
ALL it took was some 30,000 Republican primary voters in a tiny state to turn Christine O’Donnell into the brightest all-American media meteor since Balloon Boy. For embattled liberals, not to mention the axis of Comedy Central, “Saturday Night Live” and Bill Maher, she’s been pure comic gold for weeks: a bottomless trove of baldfaced lies, radical views and sheer wackiness. True, other American politicians have dismissed evolution as a myth. Some may even have denied joining a coven. But history will always remember her for taking a fearless stand against masturbation, the one national pastime with more fans than baseball.
Yet those laughing now may not have the last laugh in November. O’Donnell’s timely ascent in the election season’s final lap may well prove a godsend for the G.O.P.
At first some Republicans had trouble figuring this out. On primary eve, a spokesman for the National Republican Senatorial Committee badmouthed O’Donnell’s “disturbing pattern of dishonest behavior.” On election night, Karl Rove belittled her “nutty” pronouncements and “checkered background” on Fox News. But by the morning after, bygones were bygones. The senatorial committee’s chairman, John Cornyn, rewarded O’Donnell’s “dishonest behavior” with an enthusiastic endorsement and a big check. A sweaty Rove reversed himself so fast you’d think he’d been forced to stay up all night listening to Glenn Beck’s greatest hits at top volume in a Roger Ailes re-education camp.
Rove’s flip-flop was no doubt hastened by his own cohort’s assaults on both his ideological purity and masculinity. The blogger Michelle Malkin labeled him an “effete sore loser,” and Sarah Palin publicly instructed him to “buck up.” But surely the larger motive for his retreat was the dawning recognition of just how valuable O’Donnell is to the G.O.P.’s national aspirations in November — even should she ultimately lose her own race in blue Delaware. Whatever her other talents, she’s more than willing to play the role of useful idiot for her party. She gives populist cover to the billionaires and corporate interests that have been steadily annexing the Tea Party movement and busily plotting to cash in their chips if the G.O.P. prevails.
While O’Donnell’s résumé has proved largely fictional, one crucial biographical plotline is true: She has had trouble finding a job, holding on to a home and paying her taxes. In this, at least, she is like many Americans in the Great Recession, including the angry claque that found its voice in the Tea Party. For a G.O.P. that is even more in thrall to big money than the Democrats, she couldn’t be a more perfect decoy.
By latching on to O’Donnell’s growing presence, the Rove-Boehner-McConnell establishment can claim it represents struggling middle-class Tea Partiers rather than Wall Street potentates and corporate titans. O’Donnell’s value is the same as that other useful idiot, Michael Steele, who remains at the Republican National Committee only because he can wave the banner of “diversity” over a virtually all-white party that alternately demonizes African-Americans, Latinos, gays and Muslims.
O’Donnell is particularly needed now because most of the other Republican Tea Party standard-bearers lack genuine antigovernment or proletarian cred. Joe Miller and Ken Buck, the Senate candidates in Alaska and Colorado, actually are graduates of elite universities like those O’Donnell lied about attending. Rick Scott, the populist running for governor in Florida, was chief executive of a health care corporation that scooped up so many Medicare and Medicaid payments it had to settle charges for defrauding taxpayers. Rand Paul, the scion of a congressman, is an ophthalmologist whose calls for spending restraint don’t extend to his own Medicare income. Carl Paladino, the truculent man of the people in New York, grew his fortune as a developer with government handouts and favors. His California bookend, Carly Fiorina, received a golden parachute worth as much as $42 million from Hewlett-Packard, where she liquidated some 20,000 jobs.
The O’Donnell template, by sharp contrast, is Palin. It was Palin’s endorsement that put O’Donnell on the map, and it’s Palin’s script that O’Donnell is assiduously following. The once obscure governor of Alaska was also tripped up by lies and gaffes when she emerged on the national stage, starting with her misrepresentation of her supposed opposition to “the bridge to nowhere.” But she quickly wove the attacks into a brilliant cloak of martyrdom that positioned her as a fierce small-town opponent of the coasts’ pointy-head elites. O’Donnell, like Palin, knows that attacks by those elites, including conservative grandees, only backfire and enhance her image as a feisty defender of the aggrieved and resentful Joe Plumbers in “real America.”
The more O’Donnell is vilified, the bigger the star she becomes, and the more she can reinforce the Tea Party’s preferred narrative as “a spontaneous and quite anarchic movement” (in the recent words of the pundit Charles Krauthammer) populated only by everyday folk upset by big government and the deficit. This airbrushed take has had a surprisingly long life even in some of the nonpartisan press. In a typical example just three weeks ago, the influential publication National Journal delivered a breathless report on how the Tea Party functions as a “headless” movement where “no one gives orders.” To prove the point, a head of the headless Tea Party Patriots vouched that “75 percent of the group’s funding comes from small donations, $20 or less.”
In fact, local chapters of Tea Party Patriots routinely received early training and support from FreedomWorks, the moneyed libertarian outfit run by the former Republican House majority leader and corporate lobbyist Dick Armey. FreedomWorks is itself a spinoff from Citizens for a Sound Economy, a pseudo-grassroots group whose links to the billionaire Koch brothers were traced by Jane Mayer in her blockbuster August exposé in The New Yorker. Last week the same Tea Party Patriots leader who bragged to the National Journal about all those small donations announced a $1 million gift from a man she would identify only as an entrepreneur. The donor’s hidden identity speaks even louder than the size of the check. As long as we don’t know who he is, we won’t know what orders he’s giving either.
Such deep-pocketed mystery benefactors — not O’Donnell, whose reported income for this year and last is $5,800 — are the real indicators of what’s going on under the broad Tea Party rubric. Big money rains down on the “bottom up” Tea Party insurgency through phantom front organizations (Americans for Prosperity, Americans for Job Security) that exploit legal loopholes to keep their sugar daddies’ names secret. Reporters at The Times and The Washington Post, among others, have lately made real strides in explaining how the game works. But we still don’t know the identities of most of those anonymous donors.
From what we do know, it’s clear that some Tea Party groups and candidates like Sharron Angle, Paul and O’Donnell are being financed directly or indirectly not just by the Kochs (who share the No. 5 spot on the new Forbes 400) but by a remarkable coterie of fellow billionaires, led by oil barons like Robert Rowling (Forbes No. 69) and Trevor Rees-Jones (No. 110). Even their largess may be dwarfed by Rupert Murdoch (No. 38) and his News Corporation, whose known cash contributions ($2 million to Republican and Republican-tilting campaign groups) are dwarfed by the avalanche of free promotion they provide Tea Party causes and personalities daily at Fox and The Wall Street Journal.
However much these corporate contributors may share the Tea Party minions’ antipathy toward President Obama, their economic interests hardly overlap. The rank and file Tea Partiers say they oppose government spending and deficits. The billionaires have no problem with federal spending as long as the pork is corporate pork. They, like most Republican leaders in 2008, supported the Bush administration’s Wall Street bailout. They also don’t mind deficits as long as they get their outsize cut of the red ink — $3.8 trillion worth if all the Bush tax cuts are made permanent.
But while these billionaires’ selfish interests are in conflict with the Tea Party’s agenda, they are in complete sync with the G.O.P.’s Washington leadership. The Republicans’ new “Pledge to America” promises the $3.8 trillion addition to the deficit and says nothing about serious budget cuts or governmental reforms that might remotely offset it. Surfing the Beltway talk shows last Sunday, you couldn’t find one without a G.O.P. politician adamantly refusing to specify a single program he might cut at, say, the Department of Education (Pell grants?) or the National Institutes of Health (cancer research?). And that’s just the small change. Everyone knows that tax cuts for the G.O.P.’s wealthiest patrons must come out of Social Security and Medicare payments for everybody else.
They are acing it, these guys. Election Day is now only a month away. The demoralized Democrats are held hostage by the unemployment numbers. And along comes this marvelous gift out of nowhere, Christine O’Donnell, Tea Party everywoman, who just may be the final ingredient needed to camouflage a billionaires’ coup as a populist surge. By the time her fans discover that any post-election cuts in government spending will be billed to them, and not the Tea Party’s shadowy backers, she’ll surely be settling her own debts with fat paychecks from “Fox & Friends.”
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