California Free Press

Off the Top of My Head

Toxic Masculinity

by John Lawrence

Traditional masculine traits are dominance, aggression, emotional repression, violence. These traits have been historically mostly expressed in terms of the military. In the First World War, many of the participants were more than eager to cover themselves in glory by proving their manhood in combat. Instead many of them ended up dying miserable deaths in muddy trenches or hung from barbed wire. The persistence of war in the human experience can be laid squarely at the feet of men and their interpretation of what is manly in my opinion. In fact peace or even world peace is seen as a feminine idea. Most traditional men would not consider peace in the form of world wide understanding and compassion even possible because it would be based on feminine values. The only peace even possible in the traditional male mind is "peace through strength." Traditional male values prevent even an acknowledgment of what peace would really consist of because it would consist of emotional values that are traditionally feminine. The predominant attitude is that joining the military will "make a man out of you." A real man is only supposed to express a limited and actually stunted set of emotions and certainly is not supposed to express any vulnerabilities. Physical force or the threat of force is acceptable in a man's world. Understanding, cooperation and diplomacy are not.

Traditional male activities are beer drinking (a man can hold his liquor), fast car racing or pickup driving (showing dominance by means of a powerful machine), participation in or spectating at competitive sports, participation in or admiration of the military. Dominance, competitiveness, the use or threat of violence, pugnaciousness, toughness, looking down on men who don't conform to this stereotype - these are all traditional male traits. None of these traits are physically or mentally healthy. For instance, holding your liquor can lead to cirrhosis of the liver. Emotional repressiveness can lead to an inability to relate to women even though some women are attracted to the traditional male type. In fact it can be argued that Trump's popularity is a result of his expression of traditional male values. In an article in FiveThirtyEight entitled With His Version of Masculinity, we find this:

But the quest to seem masculine is particularly complicated in this year’s GOP primary because Trump has been so successful at projecting a macho image that Republican voters have responded to. This masculine identity isn’t about demonstrations of physical prowess — nobody talks about how far Trump can run or whether he can bench-press a certain weight. His version of manliness is fueled by other kinds of behavior — including his belittling of other candidates, aggression toward women, “tell it like it is and don’t apologize” affect — that are associated with traditional ideas about how a man should behave. The other GOP candidates largely aren’t trying to imitate those aspects of Trump’s macho identity — but experts told us that without Trump’s signature belligerence, his version of masculinity might not resonate as much. And that means his rivals may have an especially difficult time convincing the GOP primary electorate that they’re as strong a leader as Trump.

“In this view of masculinity, men are supposed to be dominant, powerful, aggressive,” said Theresa Vescio, a professor of psychology at Penn State University who studies masculinity. “And the more that people — both men and women — think that good men should be high in power, status, dominance and toughness, the more they say that’s what a man is, the more they support Trump.”

It might seem strange to some that a man who is not particularly physically fit or athletic, never served in the military and eats junk food is an exemplary manifestation of manhood. It seems ridiculous that Trump's penchant for belittling his opponents is seen by some as "manly." That his getting away with stiffing contractors, creditors and not paying taxes are manly traits. But somehow Trump's unwillingness to apologize about anything or ever admit he did anything wrong is seen by some Republicans as the counter to "liberal values" like having compassion and respect for people who disagree with you. Instead Trump calls his detractors and competitors names, assails them as weaklings and asserts his macho masculinity while he hides behind a bevy of lawyers and uses his money to shield himself from any negative consequences. His seeming ability to get away with stuff is seen as quintessentially masculine. The article continues:

These are the voters who are especially likely to find Trump’s version of masculinity appealing. Trump is particularly effective at drawing on his supporters’ fears about threats to traditional masculinity, while simultaneously building himself up as a paragon of that version of manliness, according to the experts we spoke with. His image as president was aggressively militant, threatening other world leaders and avoiding compromise. And his refusal to apologize for a well-documented track record of sexual harassment and assault makes him seem authentically masculine and powerful to some voters, according to Dan Cassino, a political scientist at Fairleigh Dickinson University who studies male gender identity. “It’s as much about tearing others down as it is about building others up,” Cassino says. “The insults, the misogynistic behavior — these are very negative masculine traits but he’s willing to assert them in a way others aren’t, and that means nobody thinks he’s lying about who he is.”

By projecting an image of himself as a powerful, strong, dominant man who’s willing to shrug away modern conventions around how men and women should behave, Trump has reached people who support traditional gender hierarchies. “There are a lot of conservatives — men but some women too — in this country who increasingly feel like they’re on the outside looking in, while liberals run things,” said Paul Elliott Johnson, a professor of communication at the University of Pittsburgh who studies gender and politics. “Trump invites those people to feel victimized and then says, ‘I will fix the problem.’”

As detrimental to society in general as these toxic traditional masculine values are, they will even probably contribute to the annihilation of the human race altogether either through war or the ignoring of climate change. There is not even any talk of world peace any more. It's not even on anyone's radar. The militarization of the American psyche is complete. The Peace Corps is never even mentioned in the media. Most people would not even know that it exists. The Peace Corps represents the feminine values of help and caring for those less fortunate. The traditional male simply looks upon them as losers in the game of life, probably because of their inferiority to white males. As traditional white males, they believe that they have simply outcompeted those who come from as Trump has termed them, "shithole countries."  Let people with feminine values agonize over them and their claims that rich white men should help them out with their situations due to climate change. Macho men would scoff at their suggestions that the rich nations should bear the cost of ameliorating the effects of global warming or as U.N. chief António Guterres declared, "global boiling." As Trump and other macho men might say, "suck it up." There will probably never be world peace until women run the world. And where would that leave the traditional man and his toxic values? Healthy manhood, in my humble opinion, should be nothing more nor less than loving, supporting and cherishing the girls and women in our lives whether they be girlfriends, lovers, wives, daughters, mothers or grandmothers. All the rest of the positive values a man can manifest are simply personhood values which can be exemplified by both sexes.

Off the Top of My Head

3 Generals: US Military Could Aid and Abet Next Insurrection

by John Lawrence

A large number of the January 6 insurrectionists were active or former members of the military. Fox News is ubiquitous on military bases and VA hospitals. Now even Generals are worried about the next insurrection fueled by right wing extremist media. The chickens are coming home to roost. The US' bloated military and military-industrial complex budgets have turned the lemmings into potential insurrectionists. Fox News is not only ubiquitous on military bases. It is playing on almost every public TV. Places like airports, car dealerships, bars - you name it. Everywhere a public TV is on, it's usually tuned to Fox News. What - is CNN too intellectual for public display? You'd lose too many customers? Are real Americans consumers of Fox News? What kind of person is a patriot? What's the definition of patriotism? Were the January 6 insurrectionists true American patriots? They thought so. Maybe a jail sentence will disabuse them of that notion.

I wrote on November 5, 2021:

"It seems that about half the American people want rational, competent government which advances the interests of the American people and plays a constructive role on the world stage. The other half wants a government based on their pet peeves. They are amenable to being swayed by conspiracy theories and misinformation. The former are mainly Democrats; the latter, Republicans. This is nowhere better exemplified than the 2016 election in which competence and experience in the form of Hillary Clinton was defeated by resentment and lies in the form of Donald Trump. In contrast to China which promotes the best and brightest to high positions in its government, the US form of democracy allows for politicians to appeal to the lowest common denominator which has no knowledge or information about anything beyond the worship of symbols like the American flag. This is clear from the visuals of the January 6 insurrection in which the American flag was displayed ad infinitum as if that is what made these people true patriots who could demand that their hero, Donald Trump, should be President in defiance of every provision of American constitutional democracy."

About half the American people have a military related consciousness about patriotism. A patriot is someone who doesn't let other people mess with him. A patriot is a dominant person and demands that the US dominates the rest of the world because we know better, we are stronger and we are better. Some others might think that a patriot is someone who tries to make the US and the world a better place, someone who seeks to alleviate sickness and poverty, someone who has compassion for others, not someone who thinks we're number 1. A true patriot might be someone like Dr. Fauci who has spent his life trying to heal the sick and end the pandemic. There are true patriots and false patriots just like there are true gods and false gods. It all depends on your values.

The 3 Generals wrote in the Washington Post:

"As we approach the first anniversary of the deadly insurrection at the U.S. Capitol, we — all of us former senior military officials — are increasingly concerned about the aftermath of the 2024 presidential election and the potential for lethal chaos inside our military, which would put all Americans at severe risk.

"In short: We are chilled to our bones at the thought of a coup succeeding next time."

The Biden administration and the January 6 committee has been moving in the right direction. A further move might be to require a rotation of TV channels on military bases so that military personnel weren't fed a steady diet of Fox News. Right wing propaganda in news and social media is fueling chauvinistic and jjngoistic values. The values of healing, supporting, teaching, charity and compassion for others should be emphasized instead. If these are feminine as opposed to masculine values, so be it. Maybe the world won't ever be at peace until women run it. These are the values of peace and love and true patriotism. If we want a world at peace and not at war, we need to inculcate these values in the American people, not the values of Fox News.

Off the Top of My Head

American Troops Have Left Afghanistan. So Has American Money - $300 Million Per Day

by John Lawrence

Afghanistan's economy must be in freefall. The US was spending $300 million a day each and every day there for 20 years! Now the US is spending nothing. American troops have left and, more importantly, American money has left. So can we now cut the defense budget? It would have been better if, instead of sending in American troops 20 years ago, we had sent in the Peace Corps for a fraction of the money the American military presence has cost. By now much could have been accomplished like roads, bridges, schools, hospitals, water and sewage systems and other critical infrastructure. Instead we spent $300 million a day for 20 years blowing things up and getting blown up ourselves. It's a testament to the folly of warfare. Now, hopefully, diplomacy and resettlement of refugees and building infrastructure will take place both there and here at home where efforts in the domain of Peace are badly in need as well. The US has infrastructure needs, resettlement of refugee needs (think the growing homeless population), both hard and human infrastructure needs, building things up instead of blowing things up.

All the generals who were shuffled in and out of Afghanistan couldn't think of what we could have done better there because all they could think was in military terms. They couldn't conceive of the possibility that the reason they were all so unsuccessful was precisely because any and all military solutions were not the right ones. They could not conceive of building peace there, only fighting an enemy. Well, it got them substantial pay raises, and it made money for the military-industrial complex. Now we need a peace-industrial complex. If we want to save the planet and not just indulge the present American inhabitants of planet earth to the max, we need to build green infrastructure all over the world. But even before we do that, we need to solve the worldwide pandemic which we can not seem to solve even here at home because there are so many people who won't believe in the obvious solution until one of their family members dies.

Forever wars have stunted the mindsets of the American people leading them to embracing far right jingoistic and chauvinistic militarism. The mindset would be considerably different if the US had put as much energy as it has put into militarism into peace activities, if peace had even been given due consideration as an alternative to war. In fact it's not too much of a stretch to say War is Us. This mindset came to fruition on January 6 with the insurrection. Biden is trying to turn the corner but he can only do so much per unit time. He has done considerable so far ending the war in Afghanistan and doing everything humanly possible to end the pandemic. His human and hard infrastructure agenda is still pending, but I believe it will eventually pass because it has been set up in such a way that either everybody wins if it passes or everybody loses if it doesn't. The way the twin bills were constructed, one that will pass by budget reconciliation and one bipartisan, represents political ingenuity. It's making the most of the slim Democratic majorities in both Houses of Congress. Even after those twin bills pass and get made into law, there is much to be done, voting rights reform in particular. I think Biden will get the major part of his agenda accomplished - probably in 2 years. After that who knows what will happen if Republicans win one or both Houses in the midterm elections.

Off the Top of My Head

What Will Happen to All Those Vaccines That Have Passed Their Use-By Date?

by John Lawrence

Joe Biden, with the help of various corporations, produced enough vaccine to give every American 2 shots. Only problem is that over half of Americans have refused to get them. So are those vaccines not taken going to spoil? After all they do have a finite shelf life. Some Americans' refusal to get vaccinated is putting more Americans at risk - vaccinated and unvaccinated, particularly children who aren't even eligible to get vaccinated. The Delta variant is causing many more "breakthrough" cases of COVID, which demonstrates that, even though you may be fully vaccinated, you're still at risk. As time passes with COVID still not under control, the virus has increased chances to mutate to an even more virulent strain, one which can escape the vaccine completely.

COVID is spreading like wildfire among the unvaccinated. Yet the US is incapable of imposing a mandate that everyone get vaccinated for fear that it would infringe on Americans' "freedom." Yes, Americans have the freedom to die and also to cause others to die. The unvaccinated will say that they are free to take their chances without even mentioning or considering that they're not only putting their own lives at risk, they are putting other lives at risk as well. They will say that they are young and healthy and think that their immune system is strong enough to fight off the virus. Meanwhile, they are transmitting it to others even if they are asymptomatic. What if the World War II generation took the same attitude about sacrificing for the war effort. Chances are we would be speaking German today.

CNN reported on July 20:

The surge in Covid-19 cases fueled by the Delta variant and vaccine hesitancy has now led to increasing rates of hospitalizations and deaths.

Data from Johns Hopkins University shows:

 

-- The average number of new Covid-19 cases each day the past week was 32,278. That's a 66% jump from the average daily rate the previous week, and 145% higher than the rate from two weeks ago.

 

-- An average of 258 Americans died from Covid-19 each day this past week -- up 13% from the rate of daily deaths the previous week.

 

The US has a glut of life saving vacciines while at the same time a majority of Americans who refuse to avail themselves of them. Most of these are in red states, states controlled by Republicans and states that voted for Donald Trump. Fox News and other right wing media is responsible for the dumbing down of the already dumbed downed. They see their job being to make stupid Americans even stupider in return for sending them money. They're missing the "entertainment" that Trump provided for them. Marjorie Taylor-Greene is doing her best to pick up Trump's dropped mantle. Facebook is not being aggressive enough in suspending the accounts of the worst offenders of bogus information providing. The whole free speech conundrum is causing big problems. A benign dictator wouldn't allow free speech which amounts to misinformation and disinformation, but the US is in a quandary about what free speech actually is and relies too heavily on the court system to settle all disputes. Instead of outright outlawing certain things, the attitude is "Let them fight it out in court."

Off the Top of My Head

Billionaires in Space and One on the Ground

by John Lawrence

We have been treated to media coverage of billionaires in space squandering their fortunes to have a "wonderful experience" while one has not gone to space. Instead he has spent billions eradicating disease and poverty in the world, furnishing children with computers and contributing to the effort to control the pandemic. In fact he warned us a pandemic was coming in 2015 in a Ted talk. Bill Gates is a true hero while Richard Branson and Jeff Bezos are spoiled brats relishing their "experiences" and astronaut wings. Of course it's Bill Gates who is denigrated on right wing media and those peddling conspiracy theories. Anyone who tries to do good in the world usually ends up with a similar fate. Such are human beings. For rich billionaires their rocket ships represent nothing more than "boys with their toys."

Bill Gates latest book, "How to Avoid a Climate Disaster," should be read by everyone and touted by the media. He didn't need to go to space and look back at the earth to have a mind altering experience. I'm so tired of these billionaires like Branson saying things like, "Well after I saw the curvature of the earth, it made me feel a common bond with all humanity." Yeah. Blah. Blah. Blah. Now he wants to do something about climate change? Well, let's see what. He is a mental and philanthropic lightweight compared to Gates. Where's his book about climate change and his Ted talk about the pandemic? He's all show and no action. It's all about showmanship and "wonderful experiences", and maybe you too will win a raffle and be able to go into space, or maybe some day when the price comes down, then you'll be able to go. Hooray and Hallelujah! It's just the way it is, you see. First the rich people get to go, and then some day it'll be cheap enough even for the middle class just like it was with air travel.

Google the Gates Foundation and these words come up: "We are a nonprofit fighting poverty, disease, and inequity around the world." This is what the other billionaires should be about as well as other rich nations of the world. I think the US, temporarily at least during the Biden administration, is about that. But that could change quicker than an augenblick if another Trump like government comes along. For the year ending in 2019, the Gates Foundation spent more than $5 billion on 1869 grants helping people all over the world. The US government by contrast spent $1 trillion on its military-industrial complex, something even Joe Biden has not had the nerve to change at least so far. He gets massive kudos, however, for ending the war in Afghanistan despite all the military-think Generals who want us to stay there in perpetuity just in case another bin Laden might be born some day.

Some good verbiage from the Gates website: "From poverty to health, to education, our areas of focus offer the opportunity to dramatically improve the quality of life for billions of people. So we build partnerships that bring together resources, expertise, and vision—working with the best organizations around the globe to identify issues, find answers, and drive change. Our work depends on grantees and partners across the United States and in more than 130 countries who have on-the-ground expertise, a deep understanding of the issues we care about, and strong ties with the communities in which we aim to make a difference. At the same time, we have learned the value of having foundation representatives based in key regions—to help us build relationships with partner organizations and governments, better understand the policy environment, and remain culturally sensitive. We focus on issues we think are the biggest barriers that prevent people from making the most of their lives. For each issue we work on, we fund innovative ideas that could help remove barriers. Some of the projects we fund will fail. We not only accept that, we expect it—because we think an essential role of philanthropy is to make bets on promising solutions that governments and businesses can’t afford to make. As we learn which bets pay off, we adjust our strategies and share the results so everyone can benefit."

Going into space is like getting a sugar high. The self indulgent billionaires who do it are wasting their money on frivolities. The Bill and Melinda Gates foundation, despite the fact that the Gates's are getting divorced, are doing the work that needs to be done to bring the planet into alignment with our best natures. At the same time others are peddling bullshit misinformation to make as much money as possible even if it kills people. Expect the Republican base to be decimated because of right wing talk hosts like Tucker Carlson who are discouraging people from getting vaccinated. His watchers are the ones who will die from COVID. Democrats can stand by and watch while their competitors in the Republican party losing their constituents. It is a war by other means that Democrats are winning by default. Less people voting Republican is not an entirely bad thing even though health care workers will be working overtime to do their best to save them. Oh what tangled webs we weave.

Off the Top of My Head

Radicalized Veterans Supporting Trump in the Vanguard of January 6 Insurrection

by John Lawrence

Time magazine has an excellent article by Vera Bergengruen/Arab, Ala. and W.J. Hennigan/Washington, "From Combat to Conspiracy" detailing how radicalized veterans led the insurrection on January 6. I wrote about this previously in an article The Militarization of the American Mind. The fact of the matter is that the US military-industrial complex is composed not only of active military and corporations profiting from military hardware, but also a large number of civilians who are ex-military. The whole meme about honoring veterans - "Thank you for your service" - presupposes that these people are loyal Americans, not an out of control mob attempting to overthrow the government. Veterans are routinely honored at least in lip service and discounts, but the truth is far more disconcerting. These men and women have been processed through a system that has taught them not to think critically but to follow orders. They are more or less taught to espouse conservative politics.The Times article continues: "Of the more than 500 people arrested in connection with the Jan. 6 riot, at least 1 in 10 was a current or former member of the U.S. military, according to a George Washington University analysis. Many had served in the protracted post-9/11 conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan, returning home to a country that paid them lip service but moved on without much notice to the wars they had fought."

The insurrectionists' attitude is a reflection of the fact that the US is a militarized nation with over 800 bases in almost every country of the world. Defense contractors like Lockheed Martin, Boeing, Northrop Grumman and others form the economic backbone of the nation. Is it any wonder then that at least a sizable minority of the nation's people favor an autocrat like Donald Trump to an experienced public servant like either Hilary Clinton or Joe Biden? When I worked in the military-industrial complex for General Dynamics and the Naval Electronics Laboratory, we were encouraged to vote Republican for fear our funding would decline under a Democratic administration and we would be RIFed (Reduction in Force-ed). This is how insidious the militarization of the American mind actually is. The Times article continues: "[One veteran] became involved with local chapters of the Oath Keepers in central Florida, whose recruiting materials reminded members that their oath was forever. “America’s veterans truly are like a sleeping giant. It is time to awaken them and fill them with a terrible resolve to defeat the domestic enemies of our Constitution,” says one chapter’s mission statement, according to documents reviewed by TIME. “If we can’t get the veterans to step up … to save our Republic, then how can we expect to get the rest of our people to do what must be done?”"

"As with other veterans whose involvement in right-wing groups like the Oath Keepers led them to the Capitol on Jan. 6, James’ descent into alleged extremism seemed less an expression of long-held political fervor than the desire to be part of a larger patriotic cause.

"Little data is kept on how often and why veterans get involved with extremist groups, but there are plenty of high-profile examples throughout American history. Nathan Bedford Forrest, a Confederate army general, was the first Grand Wizard of the Ku Klux Klan. George Lincoln Rockwell, a Navy veteran, founded the American Nazi Party. Timothy McVeigh and Terry Nichols, both Army veterans, were convicted of the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing.

"Founded by a former Army paratrooper in 2009, the Oath Keepers has quickly become one of America’s largest antigovernment extremist groups. It heavily recruits current and former military and law-enforcement members, encouraging them to see themselves as “the last line of defense against tyranny,” according to Oath Keepers websites. The group’s name refers to the oath sworn by members of the military and law enforcement “to defend the Constitution from all enemies, foreign and domestic.” Some members falsely believe that the federal government has been taken over by “a cabal of elites actively trying to strip American citizens of their rights,” according to the FBI."

The military had become for many veterans a way of life that they missed after returning to civilian life. "“Militia groups have really familiar structures of command,” [author] Belew says. “They have structures of fraternal bonding, they have the organizational social elements that are very similar to the armed forces—and they’re built that way deliberately.

"Only now are federal authorities formally drawing up a strategy to handle the problem of military veterans’ joining extremist groups. The Biden Administration’s strategy to combat domestic terrorism includes plans to prevent veterans from being recruited by extremists. Currently, there are no efforts that focus on veterans once they have left service, despite evidence that they are increasingly the targets of online misinformation and extremist recruitment.

"Security analysts, veterans’ groups and experts say it will be vital to combat both the isolation and the fear-mongering that lead former service members to think of their fellow Americans as the enemy or, worse, take the law into their own hands. “It’s important not to fixate too much on the Oath Keepers as an organization but to think of them as a concrete example of a broader phenomenon in America,” says Sam Jackson, a homeland-security expert at the University of Albany who wrote a book on the group. The alleged radicalization of James, the growth of local chapters and the national organization should be “seen as a Russian nesting doll” that shows a much larger movement, he says, “of people who view America as being hijacked by internal and external enemies.” But little is likely to change unless more Americans come to agree on what it means to be an extremist and what it means to be a patriot."

Wake up, America, and smell the coffee. The militarization of the American mind reflects the militarization of America's purported purpose in the world which is to exert military force projected over the whole world. A person like exPresident George W Bush, who lied us into the war in Iraq, has the nerve to criticize Joe Biden for withdrawing American forces from Afghanistan after a 20 year futile war which accomplished nothing. We got Bin Laden in an operation which had nothing to do with boots on the ground in Afghanistan. He was in Pakistan. Afghanistan had nothing to do with 9/11. The attitude of both civilian and military leaders from the top down legitimizes the US' continued military presence throughout the world and thoroughly indoctrinates American veterans and civilians in the military mindset. Until the US becomes a nation which is more interested in promoting development throughout the world and contributing to the betterment of peoples' lives throughout the world, a large number of Americans will favor right wing causes and conservative politics.

Off the Top of My Head

The Militarization of the American Mind

by John Lawrence

From seemingly rational thought processes that would make it impossible to end the war in Afghanistan to the insurrection at the Capitol to the "American movie" chock full of violence to the "well regulated militia" justification of gun proliferation, there is no end of rationalizations for the American military-industrial complex and gun culture on every level. Why does it come as a surprise to some journalists that many participants in the January 6 insurrection were current or ex military or police officers? They are exactly the ones with the mind set that believes Trump won the election, and that it was OK to do what their leader commanded them to do - invade the Capitol. The Generals who say that Biden shouldn't end the Afghanistan war on the grounds that the Kabul government will collapse are exactly the ones that argued we shouldn't end the Vietnam war because the South Vietnam government would collapse. Sure when the US sets up a puppet government and then props it up with money and a military presence, it probably will collapse when the US leaves that country which it never should have invaded in the first place. Afghanistan is Vietnam all over again or as Yogi Berra would say deja vu all over again.

The division among Americans into two tribes can be understood in terms of the two paths Americans take after high school graduation. There are those who go to college and there are those who go into the military. Those are basically the two choices high school graduates have. Those who go to college are taught to think critically to some extent, while those who go into the military are taught to obey orders. Unfortunately, Trump, as their Commander-in-Chief gave them the order to invade the Capitol, and they felt justified in following it because that is what their training led them to do. The choice to go into the Peace Corps or AmeriCorp is not really viable for most high school graduates because the perks of going into the military greatly exceed the perks of going into more peaceful pursuits, and they are less glorious. This is also a characteristic of the militarization of the American civilian mind. The military-industrial complex including, Lockheed Martin, Raytheon and Northrop Grumman, profits greatly from ongoing militarization and military thought processes, employs most of the college graduates and provides debate ending rationalizations for American military preparedness despite the fact that their extremely expensive hardware doesn't work half the time, and the threats to America are primarily cyber in nature as well as domestic terrorism.

The divide and contrast between high school graduates who go into the military and are taught to follow orders and those who go to college is reflected in the political divide between those on the right and those on the left.The military is all about symbolism including snappy uniforms, medals for valor in combat, saluting the flag and honoring themselves for their patriotism. On the left results in the improvement of the lives of the American people - and not just the elite civilian Officer's Corps - are more important than symbols of glory. They are more likely to question authority rather than unquestionably following orders. The January 6 insurrectionists were following Trump's orders at least that's what they were thinking in their own minds and by their own admission. I would like to see the FBI release to the public the number of insurrectionists who were military or former military. I bet that would be most of them, especially the males. A lot of ex military go into police work because of the familiarity with weaponry which they gained in the military. Since guns are a familiar way of life for them, naturally they become arch supporters of the Second Amendment, "well regulated" or not. They are used to classifying groups of people as either friendly or the enemy, and this mind set lends itself to police work.

In the final analysis, America is so used to being the world's policeman and profiting in various ways therefrom, that it is unthinkable that we should cooperate with our supposed adversaries to forestall global warming or to thwart future pandemics let alone the current one. We must always have an enemy or at least an adversary to justify our existence. A peaceful world in which everyone gets along and cooperates to solve the problems we earthlings face and have to deal with is unthinkable. Even though the US has a glut of vaccines while the rest of the world is begging for them, Americans feel free not to have their arms jabbed because after all they are free - free to be stupid, free to ignore the safety of other Americans and free to get infected with the virus and die taking others with them.. They just want to get back to normal entertaining themselves to death and ignoring totally any responsibility to their fellow citizens not to mention fellow citizens of the world, many of which they would like to maintain in their necessary roles as the enemy.

Dr. Fauci wondered why we couldn't all unite to fight the common enemy  - COVID - instead of fighting among ourselves about taking the vaccine. Uniting to fight a common enemy like COVID or climate change just isn't the way Americans and maybe humanity in general do things. We need to disagree even about things that are crucial for our continued existence as a species. As a nation we need an enemy whether it be Russia or China seemingly to justify our existence.

Off the Top of My Head

The Left/Right Political Spectrum Is Irrelevant at This Point

by John Lawrence

The Extreme Right position on the pandemic is just to let it rip. This would mean ongoing disaster for the whole world into the indefinite future. The Extreme Left would advocate government spending as much money as necessary to defeat the pandemic and get the economy back to normal. The middle of the road would advocate doing half as much as necessary to sort of but not really get the pandemic under control. Result: the coronavirus would be mutating and popping back up for years just as SARS COVID-9 is a mutation of the original SARS virus and is related to the MERS virus. Whether the mutations occur in animals or in humans, it doesn't matter. Viruses mutate and doing a half ass job in getting rid of this pandemic which is the political "middle" insures that there will be more pandemics in the future. Not allocating increased funding for the study and research of viruses insures that there will be more threats to human lives and economies.

The Extreme Right position on global warming is to do nothing about it. That includes encouraging consumption of fossil fuels and not caring how many greenhouse gasses are emitted into the atmosphere. This virtually guarantees that the earth will become uninhabitable in 50 years or less. The Extreme Left position would be to do as much government spending as necessary to reduce greenhouse gas emissions to zero in about 10 years. This would prevent global temperatures from rising more than the amount that would destroy the habitability of the earth. The middle position would be to spend a piddling amount to combat global warming. The result would be that the earth would become uninhabitable in a slightly longer time frame.

Republicans want to limit Federal government expenditures to solve problems while maximizing the private sector in the economy. Problem is that dealing with the pandemic and climate change are problems private enterprise is not capable of solving or even leading the way. Is there a role for private enterprise? Certainly, but government must play the leading role or these major problems as well as a number of others will not be solved. Private enterprise won't engage in any activity for which there are no profits to be made. Some problems like the pandemic and global warming are not likely to yield much in the way of profits. Ergo, private enterprise will not be interested in dealing with them.

The COVID relief package that Biden has put forward is totally dependent on Democrats controlling both Houses of Congress. That in turn was totally dependent on the Georgia runoff elections for two Senators which produced two Democrats. Otherwise, there would be no COVID relief package or follow on projects to deal with global warming because not enough Republicans will be voting for any of Biden's projected spending to solve these problems. So the Extreme Left position of these issues which are totally necessary if they are to be dealt with successfully would not have been possible. Even successfully dealing with these two existential problems was hanging by a thread because the election of two Democratic Senators from the state of Georgia was heretofore unheard of. But now there is a chance.

What really needs to happen with regard to government spending is that the public, and that includes Senators and Representatives, need to be educated on how the economy really works. Deficit spending is not really a problem. Read The Deficit Myth by Stephanie Kelton. Republicans rely on the ignorance of the public while suggesting that adequately dealing with global warming or the pandemic will raise their taxes. It does not have to increase taxes which is the conventional understanding about it. The Federal government does not need to pay back Federal deficits because the US dollar is a sovereign currency. The Federal Reserve can just "print" the money - although it doesn't actually print it - it creates it by a few keystrokes on a computer. A household or private firm must pay back its loans. Even US states must pay back loans usually by raising taxes. Th Federal government does not have to raise taxes nor does it have to pay back loans. Treasury bonds can just end up on the Fed's balance sheet where in fact most of them do end up. So a government, any government, which has a sovereign currency can create as much money as necessary to solve any problem. The only caveat is that money creation under certain conditions can induce inflation.

Too much money sloshing around in any sector can produce inflation in that sector. What the US economy has created recently is asset inflation but not inflation in the real economy. Tax breaks for the rich has resulted in the bidding up of assets. Take the stock market, for example. Major corporations have used their tax breaks not to build production facilities but to buy back their own stock. This raises the stock price: ergo, asset inflation. The same holds for the real estate market. People, with more money than they are willing to put to productive use, use it to bid up the value of real estate. Ergo, inflation. This makes housing less affordable. The real economy has under utilized capacity in terms of all the unemployed and underemployed labor. Government spending which soaks up this capacity and puts it to productive use in converting to a reusable energy economy and upgrading to green infrastructure should not produce inflation. Neither will more government money spent on research on viruses produce inflation. What else produces asset inflation is money spent on the military-industrial complex. Think $600 toilet seats.

The US public needs to be enlightened on how the economy really works at the macro level. That being understood would take all the wind out of the sails of Republican objections to government spending. It does not have to raise your taxes because the US government can never run out of money. An understanding of Modern Monetary Theory leads to that understanding.

Off the Top of My Head

Problems of American Democracy

by John Lawrence, January 16, 2021

My Dad taught a course once with the above name. The major problem now is social media. Social media allows like minded folks to find each other, and, if they are the type that wants to overthrow the government, social media allows them to organize. In addition the First and Second Amendments enable them. Free Speech must be limited and those limitations need to be made clear and evident. As for the Second Amendment, it has to be made clear that this doesn't give gun owners carte blanche. It's ridiculous that they should be able to open carry inside a state Capitol. As for social media, their algorithms encourage the gathering of like minded domestic terrorists in the same way it allowed ISIS to conspire and attract disaffected Muslims.

Facebook in particular has allowed white supremacist and domestic terrorist groups to find each other, conspire and flourish. They encourage like minded people to "friend" as many people as possible. Then if one of them makes a cleverly hateful or conspiratorial poster, they can "share" it with everyone in their group of friends. Even a Russian hacker could put up a hateful poster and share it among hundreds or thousands of people. The more people it's shared among, the more Facebook brings eyeballs to their app, and the more money they make. Facebook's profits are predicated on an advertising model in which they get paid every time a person clicks on their app. People are routinely notified by email and other means that one of their "friends" has posted something even though their friend may only have "shared" it. Empty headed sympathizers of domestic terrorists or white supremacists have only to share someone else's original creations. Meanwhile, Facebook doesn't want to diminish their profits by either changing their highly profitable algorithms or hiring more people to police their site and take down hate speech, untruthful conspiracy theories or the organizing of domestic terrorists. That would diminish their profits.

Time magazine reported:

"At a hearing of the House Committee on Homeland Security in September 2019, Soufan urged lawmakers to take the threat more seriously. The following month, 40 members of Congress signed a letter calling—unsuccessfully—for the U.S. State Department to designate Azov [ a right wing group based in Ukraine] a foreign terrorist organization. “Azov has been recruiting, radicalizing, and training American citizens for years,” the letter said. Christopher Wray, the director of the FBI, later confirmed in testimony to the U.S. Senate that American white supremacists are “actually traveling overseas to train.”

"The hearings on Capitol Hill glossed over a crucial question: How did Azov, an obscure militia started in 2014 with only a few dozen members, become so influential in the global web of far-right extremism? TIME, in more than a dozen interviews with Azov’s leaders and recruits, found that the key to its international growth has been its pervasive use of social media, especially Facebook, which has struggled to keep the group off its platform. “Facebook is the main channel,” says Furholm, the recruiter.

"In a statement to TIME, Facebook defended its recent attempts to deal with the proliferation of right-wing extremists, saying it has banned more than 250 white-supremacist groups, including Azov. “As they evolve their efforts to return to the platform, we update our enforcement methods with technology and human expertise to keep them off,” the statement said."

Well, I guess Facebook isn't trying hard enough. It doesn't want to change its lucrative model and the lucrative and profitable algorithms that have made them billions of dollars. What was purportedly supposed to be a platform for sharing family pictures among real actual friends and perhaps original free speech has become a model that's used by groups seeking to organize to overthrow governments. Facebook and YouTube played a role in creating, aiding and abetting ISIS. As the story continues:

"[Azov adherents] were not the only extremists to embrace social media in 2014. When the Islamic State declared a caliphate in the Middle East that year, it began posting propaganda on social networks—mashing together memes, religious verses and scenes of gratuitous violence. The approach took the platforms by surprise, and for a time the caliphate was able to lure a class of disaffected young Muslims to fight. But by 2017, both Facebook and YouTube had developed algorithms to detect Islamic extremist material, after facing significant pressure from Western governments to act.

"No government, least of all that of the U.S., put similar pressure on social media platforms to stamp out white supremacy. One legacy of the 9/11 attacks was that many counter-terrorism agencies equated terrorism with Islamic extremism, allowing white supremacy to fly under the radar just as social media platforms like Facebook were giving the movement access to a bigger audience than ever before. “In a way, Facebook tracked the failed counter-terrorism policies of the Western world,” says Heidi Beirich, the director of an advocacy group called the Global Project Against Hate and Extremism.

"In its statement to TIME, Facebook said it began using its algorithms to detect Azov content after designating it a dangerous organization in 2016. But well after that date, members of white-supremacist groups, including Azov, were still able to evangelize on the platform.

"In some cases, Facebook’s algorithms actually nudged users into joining these groups. In an internal presentation in 2016, its analysts looked at the German political groups on the platform where racist content was thriving. They found that within this segment of Facebook, 64% of the people joining extremist groups were finding them through the platform’s own recommendation tools. “Our recommendation systems grow the problem,” the analysis states, according to a report in the Wall Street Journal that cited the internal document. In its statement to TIME, Facebook said the report was limited in scope and suggested the findings were misleading. It said it had adjusted its algorithms to stop pushing people toward known extremist groups."

Facebook has allowed right wing hate groups to proliferate on its platforms while doing too little, too late to eliminate their presence. It and other social media giants need to be regulated by government in order to rid the world of the threats to domestic order and constitutional government that they represent. “Because this material was allowed to proliferate so long, in particular on Facebook, we now have thousands, millions of people who have been sucked into the world of white supremacy and other forms of extremism,” says Beirich. “That problem now exists. That’s the fallout from not having acted originally.” Meanwhile, social media allows "friends" to schedule "events" that may or may not be gathering places for domestic terrorists and white supremacists. Friends, indeed!

Off the Top of My Head

Congressional Republicans That Supported Insurrection Should Be Censured

by John Lawrence, January 10, 2021

Although it takes a two thirds majority to expel someone from the House or Senate, it only takes a majority to censure. Therefore, Ted Cruz, Josh Hawley and Kevin McCarthy at the very least should be censured. They will lose their committee chairs and be publicly shamed because the politician must stand before his peers to listen to the censure resolution. Meanwhile, Trump should be impeached in the House, but there should be no trial in the Senate because that would be a media circus of which Trump would be the star, and this would steal Joe Biden's thunder just as he assumes the office of President of the United States. The page needs to be turned and Trump should be blacklisted from every form of media exposure. Twitter, Facebook and others have already banned him for life which is the best thing that could have happened. Right wing app Parler has been deplatformed. Rudy Giuliani and Don Junior need to be prosecuted for inciting to riot for the words they spoke at Trump's Save America rally that preceded the insurrection. "Trial by combat"? Indeed. Long story short, Trump should be denied any media exposure whatsoever. The focus should be on Joe Biden's Presidency and the reckonings of those that have committed prosecutorial crimes needs to be done offstage, so to speak.

We need a breath of fresh air come January 20 while in the background those who have committed crimes connected with the insurrection need to be brought to justice. Every one of the rioters need to serve jail time or be fined - even those who crossed the barriers but did not go inside the Capitol. Those who went inside the Capitol need to be dealt more severe penalties. None of these rioters should be left off the hook. The myth that these assholes are Patriots needs to be dispelled. The only ones who are innocent in my opinion are those who didn't cross the line that the barriers represented. I'm sure that over time they all will be penalized in one form or other because there is so much video and social media evidence including their own bragging on social media. The FBI has their work cut out for them. In the meantime security needs to be ramped up at state Capitals all across the country, and gun laws need to be augmented and strengthened. Probably the only thing that saved the Capitol from an armed insurrection was the fact that so many of them flew to Trump's event and weren't allowed to bring guns on the plane. You can't have people with machine guns threatening state Capitals or office holders of a party they disagree with. We've seen too much of that already. Security around Joe Biden and Kamala Harris needs to be extremely tight. We don't want what happened to Abraham Lincoln happening to either of them.

At the same time Joe Biden and his Democratic allies in Congress have to get a humungus aid package passed and into the hands of the American people - all of them - so that there are tangible benefits for all to see and benefit from including Trump, hopefully former, supporters. The coronavirus must be brought under control. The ineffective US intelligence agencies have a budget of about $75 billion and yet they had no intelligence relating to what an average American could plainly size up: a Trump rally attracting tens of thousands on the same day that Congress certified the election results. I wrote previously how like James Bond's arch villains, Trump would show up January 6 for one last stand even when we all thought the election was finally, after repeated certifications at multiple levels, over. Bond's villains do not give up and neither did Trump after he had tried every other trick in the book to overturn the election. I'm sure he had plans for the inauguration on January 20 as well. That's why security at the inauguration needs to be extremely tight.

Social media by and large has finally done the right thing banning Trump and right wing wack jobs and conspiracy theorists. But it is obviously too late. They should have done this long ago. There are much needed reforms that need to be undertaken regarding social media. They have in fact aided and abetted the worst impulses of American society as their algorithms favored conspiracy theories and other fantastic falsehoods as they brought more eyeballs to the platforms than did the plain unvarnished truth. We have to reckon with a model in the media that is basically centered on entertainment including the news. Bringing eyeballs to the media - all media - is what advertising is all about. Advertisers won't pay and media corporations won't make any money from sober analysis because it's not entertaining enough and people demand to be entertained. Although Trump's lies are being finally called out all over the media, let us not forget that lies perpetrated via the media are nothing new. The Willie Horton ads promulgated for George H W Bush's 1988 Presidential campaign typify the lying that political candidates have always partaken of with Trump just being the latest purveyor.

"Horton, an African-American man, was a convicted murderer who raped a white woman and stabbed her partner while furloughed from prison under a Massachusetts program in place when Dukakis, the Democratic nominee, was governor. The TV ad is now considered one of the most racially divisive in modern political history because it played into white fear and African-American stereotypes. In it, an off-screen narrator tells the story of Horton’s crimes while pictures of Bush and Dukakis and a menacing mug shot of Horton flash across the screen. The narrator notes that Bush supports the death penalty for murderers."

Clearly, there should be thought given to bringing about truth in media and what can be done to insure that the American people aren't sold a pack of lies by politicians or in any other kind of advertising. American culture has also been brutalized and vulgarized because this has been shown by advertisers to attract the most eyeballs. Violence in media runs rampant. It's almost like you have to watch movies from Europe to see something which doesn't contain violence and usually gun violence of the most graphic sort which pervades US entertainment. This is the stuff that media corporations produce because they think it's the most lucrative. Politicians supported Trump's lies because they thought it was the best way to get elected or reelected. Other societies have not put up with this crap. Violence and lies, although they may be entertaining, need to be restrained if America is ever to attain some degree of collective mental health. I for one will send up a cheer for sober analysis.

Off the Top of My Head

The Toxicity of True Believers

by John Lawrence, December6, 2015

People believe things for a variety of reasons. If there are no facts, people will believe whatever they want probably with no or few consequences. But people will also believe the opposite thing even when facts are available. Sometimes this is harmless, and sometimes it's dangerous. For instance, Hitler spread the conspiracy theory that in fact Germans had not lost the First World War. Instead they were sold out by Jews and Social Democrats. Germans could be losers in contradistinction to the facts. Likewise, Donald Trump could not have lost the election despite the facts. What is scary is that a lot of Germans believed Hitler, and a lot of Americans believe Trump. There are also similarities with the Spanish Civil War which happened because Franco didn't accept the outcome of a democratic election, and a lot of Spaniards went along with him.

The problem is that Americans have not been taught by their educational system to think critically, to not accept something that isn't fact based as the truth. Instead, many people, especially those that are religious, are taught that it is more important to believe things which are unknown rather than take the attitude of skepticism until all the facts are in. How many times do the votes in Georgia need to be recounted before Georgians will accept the fact that Trump lost the election in Georgia? It's not hard to understand why the right wing of the Republican party is willing to believe Trump's lies in contradistinction of the facts. They are by and large the true believers of evangelical Christianity which maintains the belief that the essence of the Gospel consists of the doctrine of salvation by faith or correct belief. Evangelicals believe in the centrality of the conversion or "born again" experience in receiving salvation, in the authority of the Bible as God's revelation to humanity, and in spreading the Christian message. In other words right wing religious Christians who are mainly Protestants, have firmly rooted belief systems. They have been taught that believing in something is more important than a rational consideration of the facts.

Max Weber's book The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism is a study of the relationship between the ethics of ascetic Protestantism and the emergence of the spirit of modern capitalism. Protestantism represented a shift from the social Gospel of Catholicism which maintained that doing good for others was the pathway to salvation to an ethic that believing was the way. Thus, if you believed correctly, you were more likely to get into heaven than if you believed incorrectly. Your salvation had nothing to do with helping other people. Therefore, you were free to profit financially without responsibility to anyone else. This is the essence of capitalism. But also it inculcates the belief that beliefs in and of themselves are more important than a rational assessment of facts.Some people would call this brainwashing. Brainwashing is the concept that the human mind can be altered or controlled by certain psychological techniques and is said to reduce its subjects' ability to think critically or independently, to allow the introduction of new, unwanted thoughts and ideas into their minds, as well as to change their attitudes, values and beliefs.

People that are subject to brainwashing in the religious sense are also vulnerable to being brainwashed in the political sense. There have been true believers in communism, for example, as well as true believers in capitalism. When people haven't been taught how to think critically, they are vulnerable to becoming true believers in whatever some charismatic leader tells them whether it's a charismatic evangelist or a charismatic political figure such as Hitler, Mussolini, Franco or Donald Trump. The fact that many of Trump's true believers numbering perhaps in the tens of millions believe him when he says that the election was rigged and that he really won the election and that the election results should be overturned represents a dangerous retreat from democratic values in the same way that Hitler's rise overturned the democratic values of the Weimar Republic. It is important to remember that Hitler came to power within the constitutional framework of the democratic Weimar Republic.

Hitler stood for Germany first just as Trump stands for America first. In Hitler's framework only true Germans, meaning non-Jews and non-immigrants should be allowed to exist in Germany. Similarly, Trump represents white Americans who are against immigrants and non-Americans who in their mind are everybody who is not a descendant of white Europeans. Trump is not giving up. His true believers have a profound belief that the election was rigged and that Trump really won despite the factual reality that he lost. Trump and his followers cannot accept defeat and losing. He has always disparaged losers of which, arguably, he is now one of them. Trump's strategy was to get his case considered by the Supreme Court of which he has appointed three of the Justices in the belief that they would remain loyal to him and overturn the results of the election. He has even broached the idea of declaring military law while appointing Trump loyalists in critical positions within the Pentagon. He is attempting in every way possible to create a coup d'etat which would result effectively in a Trump dictatorship and the end of democratic constitutionalism in the United States.

Off the Top of My Head

Conservatives Argue That Phasing Out Fossil Fuels is Socialism. They Argue That Saving the Planet from Global Warming is Socialism. They Argue That Universal Health Coverage is Socialism. I Say Bring It On!

by John Lawrence, October 27, 2020

So anything that would benefit the people as a whole or the planet is socialism. Creating jobs by a government sponsored infrastructure program is socialism. Yet private enterprise has not built any infrastructure. It won't do so unless the money is provided by the government. Rebuilding roads and bridges is not something private enterprise is equipped to do. If it was, they'd build roads and bridges and then charge tolls to recoup their investment. Private enterprise is good at inventing things and starting entrepreneurial enterprises, but not large picture enterprises which are properly the domain of government or require government cooperation with the private sector. A government that makes sure that everyone has health care complements private enterprise. They want healthy workers after all. Private enterprise benefits from safe roads, tunnels and bridges more so than does the average citizen. They use infrastructure in the conduct of their business.

President Reagan declared that “government is not the solution to our problem, government is the problem.” Yeah, it's the problem when it doesn't do its proper job. It's the problem when President Trump doesn't take any responsibility for the pandemic or attempts to do anything about it. Reagan also said that the nine most terrifying words in the English language were, "I'm from the government, and I'm here to help." Really? We could use a little help from the government in the midst of a pandemic. The private enterprise system is doing its part inventing a vaccine, but they're doing it with the help of government money. Pfizer got $1.95 Billion to produce a coronavirus vaccine by the end of the year. Johnson & Johnson got a billion dollars. Without government being "here to help" there would be no vaccine on the horizon. Private enterprise would not take that money out of its own research budget especially if it didn't figure to make a profit selling the vaccine.

So socialism will be responsible for developing a coronavirus vaccine and eventually ending the pandemic. It will be done with the "government help" that Ronald Reagan thought was so terrifying. The problem is that we have socialism for the rich and capitalism for the poor. The rich spend tons of money lobbying Congress to pass legislation in their favor. In a truly free market they wouldn't be spending money making sure government was doing their bidding in their interests. They would be spending money on research, development and promoting their products. Rich people don't want government so small that they can "drown it in the bathtub" as Republican lobbyist Grover Norquist said. No, they are manipulating government everyday to get government just the right size to suit their financial interests. Defense contractors lobby to get the government to spend more money on the military-industrial complex. Pharmaceutical corporations lobby to get government not to allow Medicare to negotiate with them for lower drug prices. This is something Joe Biden said he would do: allow Medicare to negotiate drug prices with Big Pharma.

Most civilized nations have universal health care. The US is the only outlier. Most civilized countries want to do something about global warming. The US under Trump is the outlier. Most civilized countries have a social safety net so that people don't suffer needlessly. At the same time most countries facilitate a partnership between government and private enterprise that works for entrepreneurs and business people and the citizenry as a whole, in partnership and cooperation. There is a balance between capitalism and socialism that works for the benefit of all the people. That's what makes for a successful nation. Right now this is very out of whack in the US. A bloated military has wasted trillions of dollars on disastrous wars that have made the nation less safe. And yet the military was absolutely impotent to do anything about COVID-19. The money would have been better spent strengthening our knowledge and preparations for a pandemic and for better health among Americans so that they don't have so many underlying conditions that have led to more deaths from the coronavirus.

As jobs are being destroyed by automation, robotization and AI, it's imperative that jobs be created addressing the needs of infrastructure and the need for renewable energy. This endeavor can be in part a joint mission for both government and private enterprise, but without government's input the nation will keep on spewing fossil fuel emissions into the atmosphere because that's what's in the interests of existing corporations. That dynamic needs to change and government has to be instrumental in bringing about that change. That's why it's important to elect Joe Biden and Kamala Harris. Many vested interests will continue making money by polluting and emitting greenhouse gasses unless government changes the dynamics of energy production. This means countering the demand of lobbyists and putting government in a direction that benefits the people as a whole and not just special interests.

VOTE!

 

 

Trump, Tax Cuts and Terrorism

Why do Republicans enable right-wing extremism?

by Paul Krugman, New York Times, August 5, 2019

President Trump, flanked by Vice President Mike Pence, spoke Monday about the weekend’s mass shootings.CreditCreditDoug Mills/The New York Times

Why has the Republican Party become a systematic enabler of terrorism?

Don’t pretend to be shocked. Just look at G.O.P. responses to the massacre in El Paso. They have ranged from the ludicrous (blame video games!) to the almost honest (who would have expected Ted Cruz, of all people, to speak out against white supremacy?). But as far as I can tell, not one prominent Republican has even hinted at the obvious link between Donald Trump’s repeated incitements to violence and the upsurge in hate crimes.

So the party remains in lock step behind a man who has arguably done more to promote racial violence than any American since Nathan Bedford Forrest, who helped found the Ku Klux Klan, a terrorist organization if there ever was one — and who was recently honored by the Republican governor of Tennessee.

Anyway, the party’s complicity started long before Trump came on the scene. More than a decade ago, the Department of Homeland Security issued a report warning about a surge of right-wing extremism. The report was prescient, to say the least. But when congressional Republicans learned about it, they went on a rampage, demanding the resignation of Janet Napolitano, who headed the agency, and insisted that even using the term “right-wing extremism” was unacceptable.

This backlash was effective: Homeland Security drastically scaled back its efforts to monitor and head off what was already becoming a major threat. In effect, Republicans bullied law enforcement into creating a safe space for potential terrorists, as long as their violent impulses were motivated by the right kind of hatred.

But why did they do that? Is the G.O.P. now a party of white nationalists?

No, not exactly. No doubt some members of Congress, and a significant number of Trump administration officials, very much including the tweeter in chief, really are white supremacists. And a much larger fraction — almost surely bigger than anyone wants to admit — are racists. (Recently released tapes of conversations between Ronald Reagan and Richard Nixon reveal that the modern G.O.P.’s patron saint was, in fact, a crude racist who called Africans “monkeys.”)

But racism isn’t what drives the Republican establishment, and my guess is that a majority of the party’s elected officials find it a little bit repugnant — just not repugnant enough to induce them to repudiate its political exploitation. And their exploitation of racism has led them inexorably to where they are today: de facto enablers of a wave of white supremacist terrorism.

The central story of U.S. politics since the 1970s is the takeover of the Republican Party by economic radicals, determined to slash taxes for the wealthy while undermining the social safety net.

With the arguable exception of George H.W. Bush, every Republican president since 1980 has pushed through tax cuts that disproportionately benefited the 1 percent while trying to defund and/or privatize key social programs like Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid and the Affordable Care Act.

This agenda is, however, unpopular. Most voters believe that the rich should pay more, not less, in taxes, and want spending on social programs to rise, not fall.

So how do Republicans win elections? By appealing to racial animus. This is such an obvious fact of American political life that you have to be willfully blind not to see it.

For a long time, the G.O.P. establishment was able to keep this game under control. It would campaign using implicit appeals to racial hostility (welfare queens! Willie Horton!) but turn postelection to privatization and tax cuts.

But for some reason this bait-and-switch started getting less effective in the 2000s. Maybe it was the reality of America’s growing racial diversity; maybe it was the fact that American society as a whole was becoming less racist, leaving the hard-core racists feeling isolated and frustrated. And the election of our first black president really kicked hatred into overdrive.

The result is that there are more and more angry white people out there willing to commit mayhem — and able to do so because those same Republicans have blocked any effective control over sales of assault weapons.

A different, better G.O.P. might have been willing to acknowledge the growing threat and supported a crackdown on violent right-wing extremism, comparable to the F.B.I.’s successful campaign against the modern K.K.K. in the 1960s. A lot of innocent victims would be alive today if Republicans had done so.

But they didn’t, because admitting that right-wing extremism was a threat, or even a phrase law enforcement should be allowed to use, might have threatened the party’s exploitation of racial hostility to achieve its economic goals.

In effect, then, the Republican Party decided that a few massacres were an acceptable price to pay in return for tax cuts. I wish that were hyperbole, but the continuing refusal of G.O.P. figures to criticize Trump even after El Paso shows that it’s the literal truth.

So as I said at the beginning, the G.O.P. has become a systematic enabler of terrorism. Why? Follow the money.

 

Off the Top of My Head

El Salvador Has a Problem: Gangs Started in the US Are Running the Country

by John Lawrence, March 12, 2019

Two gangs run El Salvbador: MS-13 and the 18th Street gang. Both gangs were spawned in the US, in Los Angeles to be precise and took root in El Salvador when gang members were deported having been caught as criminals. National Geographics reported: "El Salvador’s government says that criminal gangs command an estimated 60,000 active members, and their battle for supremacy has fractured this tiny country of 6.4 million people along an expanding web of invisible fault lines that run red. In 2017 the homicide rate was 61 per 100,000 people, making El Salvador the second deadliest of any country not at war, after Venezuela."

El Salvador is locked in the latest phase of a social conflict that exploded during the 1980-1992 civil war, in which leftist guerrillas rose up against a wealthy elite and the military state that had long dispossessed the rural underclass of land. With the stated aim of stopping communism in its backyard, the U.S. supported El Salvador’s right-wing dictatorships with billions of dollars of economic and military aid that prolonged the bloodshed. By the time the war ended, in a stalemate, 75,000 people were dead and more than a million were displaced, hundreds of thousands of whom fled to the U.S. From Los Angeles to Washington, D.C., Salvadoran refugees found employment and community, and they sent money home.

The same old story. The US wants to stop communism which in this case would have helped poor peasants so it "prolonged the bloodshed" which led directly to the creation of the gangs here in the US that then took root back in El Salvador. The US' hands are dirty in this whole situation and should take responsibility for the immigration crisis instead of building a wall to keep immigrants out.

The children who came with them, displaced youths craving identity in a foreign land, created MS-13 on the streets of Los Angeles and swelled the ranks of a rival, 18th Street—a Hispanic gang that formed around 18th Street in the Pico-Union neighborhood of Los Angeles and absorbed wayward refugees from Central America. As gang wars, and the war on gangs, intensified, laws were enacted that made it easier to deport immigrants with criminal records. In the late 1990s the U.S. began exporting thousands of convicts back to Central America each year. In the vacuum of weak governance and poverty in their home country, gang members reproduced their social structures and tactics and multiplied exponentially.

The US created the crisis by meddling in El Salvador's civil war as it has done many times before in Central and South America. "At the margins of the mainstream discursive stalemate over immigration lies over a century of historical U.S. intervention that politicians and pundits on both sides of the aisle seem determined to silence. Since Theodore Roosevelt in 1904 declared the U.S.’s right to exercise an “international police power” in Latin America, the U.S. has cut deep wounds throughout the region, leaving scars that will last for generations to come. This history of intervention is inextricable from the contemporary Central American crisis of internal and international displacement and migration."

The liberal rhetoric of inclusion and common humanity is insufficient: we must also acknowledge the role that a century of U.S.-backed military coups, corporate plundering, and neoliberal sapping of resources has played in the poverty, instability, and violence that now drives people from Guatemala, El Salvador, and Honduras toward Mexico and the United States. For decades, U.S. policies of military intervention and economic neoliberalism have undermined democracy and stability in the region, creating vacuums of power in which drug cartels and paramilitary alliances have risen.

The US has made a mess out of Central and South America and is now ironically reaping the whirlwind: They all want to come here to escape the violence and poverty. Here are some more examples.

1) Brazil experienced several decades of right-wing authoritarian governments, especially after the US-backed 1964 Brazilian coup d'état against center-left social democrat João Goulart undertaken, according to then President John F. Kennedy, to "prevent Brazil from becoming another Cuba". Brazil's return to democracy saw several consecutive right-wing neoliberal governments following the Washington Consensus ending in endemic inequality and extreme poverty, one of the worst in the Continent.

2) After the democratic election of President Salvador Allende in 1970, an economic war ordered by President Richard Nixon. Then the CIA backed the 1973 Chilean coup d'état due to Allende’s democratic socialist leanings and installed the murderous military dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet.

3) After several peasant and workers uprisings in the country against oligarchic and anti-democratic governments, often under the control of powerful American corporate interests like the United Fruit Company, efforts by democratically elected governments were often thwarted by US intervention. Civil war spread with US-endorsed far-right governments in El Salvador facing far-left guerrillas.

4) Peasants and workers (mostly of indigenous descent) revolts during the first half of the Guatemalan 20th century due to harsh conditions and abuse from landlords and the government-supported American United Fruit Company were brutally repressed. This led to the democratic election of left-leaning Jacobo Arbenz. Arbenz was overthrown during the US-backed 1954 Guatemalan coup d'état leading to right-wing US-endorsed authoritarian governments and nearly 40 years of civil war in the Central American country.

There are many more examples of US intervention in Central and South America always on the side of right wing dictatorships and corporations like United Fruit and against the interests of the common people. The US is ever eager to destroy regimes which claim to have the interests of the people at heart and to install regimes favorable to the US model of unbridled capitalism at any cost, the cost usually being born by people suffering from extreme inequality and poverty. The US has tried again and again to make little " USes" out of every country in what it considers its sphere of influence which includes in particular Central and South America but in general the whole world.

Today some 200,000 Salvadorans in the U.S. have temporary protected status (TPS), a designation that allows undocumented migrants deemed at risk because of armed conflict or environmental disasters in their home countries to stay in the U.S. In January 2018, President Donald Trump’s administration ordered an end to TPS for Salvadorans. It was set to expire in September 2019, but a U.S. district court halted that plan, allowing Salvadorans to continue to live and work in the U.S. until a final decision is made.

Off the Top of My Head

Collusion: Trump Tower Moscow and Putin Penthouse New York?

by John Lawrence, January 11, 2019

Trump never meant it literally when he said Mexico would pay for the wall. You can call it a wall or you can call it a barrier. Either way folks, it's got to be done. "But wait I have an even better idea. Instead of a wall we will build a beautiful moat all along the southern border of the US. A beautiful 50 foot moat and we will stock it with beautiful Florida alligators. We are going to drain the swamps in Florida, folks, and put those beautiful alligators in the moat. Then I suppose there will be some hue and cry when some baby gets eaten by one, but it's gotta be done, folks. The 30 foot walls have all been breached. The steel slats were cut through by a saw you can buy at Home Depot. We can't have that."

"As far as collusion, yes I colluded with Vladimir Putin to build a beautiful Trump Tower in Moscow. Putin and I would occupy the penthouse suite where we would work on the INF treaty if you know what I mean." "Yes, Donald, Russia will buy stock in Boeing so both nations can prosper as you drive up defense expenditures. But tell me Donald, how do you 'grab pussy.' I've tried but it always slips out of my hand." "Oh that's easy Vlad. Let me demonstrate." "Hey, you RT journalist Natasha Sweatte, come over here. Donald will demonstrate proper way to grab pussy so next time I meet with Angela Merkel instead of shaking hand, I will grab her by pussy and shake that."

"Meanwhile, after we build this beautiful moat stocked with our beautiful Florida alligators, I will be working on a deal with Kim Jong Un to build a Trump Tower Pyong Yang. Then after that Trump Tower Beijing. Yes, I will be colluding with Xi Jing Ping or Xi Ping Pong or whatever the hell his name is. He said that as long as I gave him the second biggest penthouse, he would get the Communist Party to OK the deal. Pretty soon the world will be a safer place because there will be a Trump Tower Tehran and a Trump Tower Kabul. There will be a Trump Tower in every hot spot. Billionaires from all over the world will come to visit paying off the Taliban with 'uge sums of money, Big, beautiful 'uge sums of money. It will be great, folks."

"But Trump, did you mean it literally when you chanted 'Lock her up. Lock her up' meaning, of course, Hillary? "Yes, Vladimir, we are going to put Hillary in a big, beautiful dungeon, the most beautiful dungeon in the world. The American people deserve nothing less. It will be designed by some of our most famous architects - Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity." "I can't wait to see that. We will report on RT America. I do a stock trade with you. You sell me stock in Boeing and Raytheon and I sell you stock in Russian oil fields in Siberia." "Yes, Vlad, we're going to frack the hell out of the United States, but if we can't compete with your Russian gas and oil, I will on behalf of American taxpayers invest in your Gazprom and Lukoil. We already have Lukoil service stations in the US where I think most of your Russian spies and supermodels hang out."

"Now, Donald, you're being foolish. Just stick to knitting and build big, beautiful Trump Tower Moscow, then Trump Tower St. Petersburg, eh?"

Off the Top of My Head

Is Facebook the Culprit in Skewing Democracy?

by John Lawrence, November 2, 2018

A Frontline special examines the role of Facebook in spreading fake news, thereby stoking voters' anger and fears about the 2016 election in the US. Moreover, Facebook has been implicated in the genocide in Myanmar. Reuters reported:

Marzuki Darusman, chairman of the U.N. Independent International Fact-Finding Mission on Myanmar, told reporters that social media had played a “determining role” in Myanmar.

“It has ... substantively contributed to the level of acrimony and dissension and conflict, if you will, within the public. Hate speech is certainly of course a part of that. As far as the Myanmar situation is concerned, social media is Facebook, and Facebook is social media,” he said.

Now this is serious business. If Facebook is sowing dissension not only in the US, but all over the world, something is extremely bothersome about Facebook. But it gets right down to Facebook's business model and advertising scheme. The more that a Facebook page inflames a political situation, the more popular it becomes. It gets more likes and shares. The more times it is viewed, the more money Facebook makes according to its advertising model. This has allowed Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook founder and CEO, to become a billionaire.

This phenomenon, if you want to call it that, where the more incendiary and inflammatory Facebook pages get the most attention and have the most impact is wreaking havoc all over the world, not just in the US. It is plausibly responsible for giving Trump the 2016 election. The extreme "Lock Her Up" rhetoric and accusations regarding Hillary drove Trump's Republican and white nationalist supporters into a frenzy, which, according to reputable testimony in the Frontline special, increased voter turnout in support of Trump.

The problem is that anything that was put on Facebook whether a truth, an untruth or an outright lie was judged only in terms of its popularity and ability to draw eyeballs to that particular page. Facebook did no editing whatsoever to examine articles as to their veracity so outright lies became Facebook's stock in trade as far as news items were concerned. The inescapable conclusion is that Facebook, inadvertently or not, made its money off of promoting lies which cost many people their lives if not in the US then elsewhere in the world.

But not only Facebook made money off of promoting lies and fake news. The originator of the Facebook page made money off the ads that appeared there as well, and, if the page went viral, they made lots of money. They made money every time that page was viewed by a set of eyeballs. Therefore, you had people from all over the world, who didn't give a shit about American politics, contributing Facebook pages that would stoke the flames of partisan politics. They themselves were totally apolitical; they were just in it for the money. Many of the Facebook pages that egged on Trump supporters were designed in Macedonia according to the Frontline special. They all came from a town which had a population size of 200 people. One guy interviewed there said he had made 200,000 euro one year.

Finally, Zuckerberg was put on the hot seat. Facebook had been able to trace some (but not all) of these trolls to Russia. Therefore, the meme became that "Russia had interfered with our election." That became the Democratic response to why Hillary had lost. Maybe some Russian trolls had participated in the process of making money by designing inflammatory pages on Facebook, but so had some from Macedonia and God knows where else. They were impartial in the pages they put up. They were neither for or against Trump or Hillary. They just designed outrageous and inflammatory pages that were more likely to go viral and earn them some money.

Zuckerberg attempted, however, to put all the blame on Russia. This was in order to get himself and Facebook off the hook. In fact many of these pages were designed by the Trump campaign itself or other American trolls and bots. Right wing fake news machines not only made money for right wing sympathizers, they promoted the candidates that they favored.

Zuckerberg has said he has no responsibility for whatever is put on Facebook because "we are a technology company, not a news company." But that belies the fact that many people all over the world get their news from Facebook and the fake news phenomenon driving extremism whether of the left or right is coming primarily from Facebook.

Off the Top of My Head

President Trump Threatens US Interests Because Peace with Russia Threatens US Interests

by John Lawrence, July 17, 2018

The US better get off its high horse about Russian meddling in our elections. The fact that Russia spies on the US and the US spies on Russia and every other nation it wants to is nothing new. The USA has not only meddled in other countries' elections, it has meddled in the results of those election by overthrowing democratically elected leaders. The US establishment is terribly threatened if peace breaks out because the military-industrial complex has invested heavily in creating enemies in order to protect its investments and its investments are the huge defense and national intelligence budgets. If there is peace with Russia, it follows that peace with China and Iran, Russia's allies, can't be too far behind that. And that wouldn't sit well with Saudi Arabia, Iran's arch enemy and provider of 15 of the 19 9/11 hijackers. But the authorities weren't too worried about that. It provided the rationales for ever increased defense, intelligence and Homeland Security budgets. As it turned out, Osama bin Laden did the military-industrial complex a huge favor.

The US accuses Russia of meddling in our elections by using social media like Facebook and Instagram to denigrate Hillary Clinton. Seriously? Seriously? Whatever damage Russia could have done, far, far more damage was done to Hillary by the hate talkers like Rush Limbaugh and Alex Jones. Right wing and alt-right media has accused Hillary of everything from killing Vincent Foster to killing our diplomats in Bengazi. They go on and on making up dirt on Hillary and publishing it with impunity. Is that because of their right to free speech? Really? Really? These guys and think tanks and groups fueled by right wing billionaire money don't need any help from Russia. They have been vilifying and demonizing Hillary Clinton for years. Is it that these hate talkers and right wingers have freedom of speech but Russia does not? Give me a break. If they want to set up a Facebook account saying "Lock her up" for all her imagined sins and transgressions, they are doing no damage compared to what Americans have already done to the Clintons. Yet our media and politicians are outraged that Russia would parrot the same stuff on social media. After all they don't have the right of free speech because they are not American citizens.

These same politicians and media types think that the US needs to talk down to everyone in the world like Vladimir Putin and Kim Jong Un. If they don't bully other leaders, they are not acting in US interests. That's because peace is not in US interests. Trump at least is challenging that narrative. He's challenging the whole idea that the US needs to be the dominant superpower in the world and bully all the other countries as underlings. They want to delay the day that the chickens come home to roost over the US national debt. They want to cash in on the money they can make from defense lobbyists and defense contractors now.

Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky was one of the few politicians who were not outraged by Trump's comments at the summit. Business Insider reported:

"I think engagement with our adversaries, conversations with our adversaries, is a good idea," Republican Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky said during an interview with CNN anchor Wolf Blitzer. "Even in the height of the Cold War, I think it was a good thing that [President John F. Kennedy] had a direct line to [Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev]."

Paul then went beyond backing Trump's comments and blamed partisan leanings for the ongoing outrage.

"I think there is a bit of Trump-derangement syndrome," Paul said. "I think there are people who hate the president so much that this could've easily been President Obama early in his first administration setting the reset button and trying to have better relations with Russia."

Paul added that Russia was a valuable intelligence asset and could be helpful in establishing diplomatic relations with other adversaries, such as North Korea.

"All those things are good," Paul said. "But because people hate Trump so much, all of that's being lost."

Paul's interview with Blitzer became testy at times, as the CNN anchor interjected with a few follow-up questions.

Yes, it seems like quite an overreaction that the US mainstream media and political establishment are so outraged over Russians, Russians mind you, setting up Facebook accounts to parrot "Lock her up" campaign slogans about Hillary Clinton. Maybe if these guys got as upset over right wing hate talk and TV media, they'd be onto something. Oh, but that's protected free speech. Who do these Russians think they are engaging in free speech as if they were American citizens?

 

Off the Top of My Head

Sympathy for the Devil?

by John Lawrence

Trump has gotten himself in a lot of trouble for not condemning and excoriated the alt right, neo-Nazis and Ku Kux Klanners after the Charlottesville debacle. But what if he had said something like this:

"Most of the issues we are dealing with now are related to poverty. But we still want to put everything in a racial context. The problem with the ... and the reason I feel uncomfortable condemning the Klan types is they're almost the poorest of the poor. They're the forgotten Americans. They have been used, abused and neglected. Instead of giving them affordable health care, they give them black lung jobs. ... And it just doesn't make sense in today's world. And they see progress in the black community and on television and everywhere else and they don't share it."

Would Trump have been universally censured if he had said it? The person who I have exactly quoted above is Andrew Young, former civil rights leader, Ambassador to the United Nations, Congressman and Mayor of Atlanta. He said it on Meet the Press on Sunday, August 20, 2017. So he and Trump have something in common. They didn't universally declare their hatred for the "Klan types," but afforded them a measure of sympathy. Trump said "there were good people on both sides." Perhaps he didn't say it as eloquently as Andrew Young, but nobody in the media or elsewhere as far as I know condemned Andrew Young for not condemning the "Klan types."

Perhaps it boils down to poverty. Perhaps it boils down to economics. Donald Trump in a backhand sort of manner promised them jobs - redoing NAFTA, an infrastructure program, full steam ahead with oil, gas and coal production. As misguided a jobs program as Trump promised, where was the promise of jobs from Hillary Clinton. Hillary Clinton promised the status quo. The Democratic Party needs to get with Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren and lay out a jobs program, not just a free college education and Medicare for all. Those two issues are very important but what the poorest of the poor want is good paying jobs and not minimum wage jobs at WalMart and Carls Jr.

Poor whites are the "forgotten Americans"? Trump could never have said it without being condemned. Andrew Young just did.

The Triumph of the Right

by Robert Reich

Tuesday, October 22, 2013

Conservative Republicans have lost their fight over the shutdown and debt ceiling, and they probably won’t get major spending cuts in upcoming negotiations over the budget.

But they’re winning the big one: How the nation understands our biggest domestic problem.

They say the biggest problem is the size of government and the budget deficit.

In fact our biggest problem is the decline of the middle class and increasing ranks of the poor, while almost all the economic gains go to the top.  

The Labor Department reported Tuesday that only 148,000 jobs were created in September — way down from the average of 207,000 new jobs a month in the first quarter of the year.

Many Americans have stopped looking for work. The official unemployment rate of 7.2 percent reflects only those who are still looking. If the same percentage of Americans were in the workforce today as when Barack Obama took office, today’s unemployment rate would be 10.8 percent. 

Meanwhile, 95 percent of the economic gains since the recovery began in 2009 have gone to the top 1 percent. The real median household income continues to drop, and the number of Americans in poverty continues to rise.

So what’s Washington doing about this? Nothing. Instead, it’s back to debating how to cut the federal budget deficit.

The deficit shouldn’t even be an issue because it’s now almost down to the same share of the economy as it’s averaged over the last thirty years.

The triumph of right-wing Republicanism extends further. Failure to reach a budget agreement will restart the so-called “sequester” — automatic, across-the-board spending cuts that were passed in 2011 as a result of Congress’s last failure to agree on a budget.

These automatic cuts get tighter and tighter, year by year — squeezing almost everything the federal government does except for Social Security and Medicare. While about half the cuts come out of the defense budget, much of the rest come out of programs designed to help Americans in need: extended unemployment benefits; supplemental nutrition for women, infants and children; educational funding for schools in poor communities; Head Start; special education for students with learning disabilities; child-care subsidies for working families; heating assistance for poor families. The list goes on.

The biggest debate in Washington over the next few months will be whether to whack the federal budget deficit by cutting future entitlement spending and closing some tax loopholes, or go back to the sequester. Some choice.

The real triumph of the right has come in shaping the national conversation around the size of government and the budget deficit – thereby diverting attention from what’s really going on:  the increasing concentration of the nation’s income and wealth at the very top, while most Americans fall further and further behind.

Continuing cuts in the budget deficit – through the sequester or a deficit agreement — will only worsen this by reducing total demand for goods and services and by eliminating programs that hard-pressed Americans depend on.

The President and Democrats should re-frame the national conversation around widening inequality. They could start by demanding an increase in the minimum wage and a larger Earned Income Tax Credit. (The President doesn’t’ even have to wait for Congress to act. He can raise the minimum wage for government contractors through an executive order.)

Framing the central issue around jobs and inequality would make clear why it’s necessary to raise taxes on the wealthy and close tax loopholes (such as “carried interest,” which enables hedge-fund and private-equity managers to treat their taxable income as capital gains).

It would explain why we need to invest more in education – including early-childhood as well as affordable higher education.

This framework would even make the Affordable Care Act more understandable – as a means for helping working families whose jobs are paying less or disappearing altogether, and therefore in constant danger of losing health insurance.

The central issue of our time is the reality of widening inequality of income and wealth. Everything else — the government shutdown, the fight over the debt ceiling, the continuing negotiations over the budget deficit — is a dangerous distraction. The Right’s success in generating this distraction is its greatest, and most insidious, triumph.

ALEC - Centralized Conservative Legislative Clearinghouse

by John Lawrence from San Diego Free Press

Why hire individual lobbyists and send them out in search of Congressmen when you can set up a lobbying clearinghouse and have them come to you? ALEC, the American Legislative Exchange Council, does just that. Funded by the likes of the Koch brothers, Exxon Mobil and PhRMA, a trade association for the pharmaceutical industry, legislators are paid  to come to ALEC meetings, where they are wined, dined, and handed "model" legislation to make into law in their state. Through ALEC, corporations vote on "model" legislation alongside politicians behind closed doors. So instead of the lobbyists fanning out on Capitol Hill to meet with Congressmen individually, public officials are invited en masse to an ALEC meeting off Capitol Hill at a fancy resort, and they had better be there or be square if they want a campaign contribution or a great job when their "public service" career comes to an end.

Foundations controlled by the billionaire Koch brothers gave ALEC over $200,000 in 2009. And that's in addition to the undisclosed amount paid in membership dues by Koch Industries. The Koch foundations have given ALEC at least $600,000 in the past decade or so, and Koch Industries has donated an untold amount. There are also a number of other right wing moneybags contributing to ALEC. The Castle Rock Foundation, which is run by right wing beer heir Peter Coors and the right wing John M. Olin Foundation have also been donors to ALEC. Another of the big right wing foundations, the Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation, has been a funder as well as right winger Richard Scaife. 

ALEC brings legislators and their families, rich indivduals and corporations together at luxury resorts. For a few hours of work on a task force and a couple of indoctrination sessions by ALEC experts, part-time legislators can bring the whole family to ALEC’s annual convention, work for a few hours, then stay in swank hotels, attend cool parties and raise funds for the campaign coffer, all heavily subsidized by the corporate till. In 2009, ALEC spent $251,873 on childcare so Mom and Dad could have fun. The legislators from all levels - local, state and national - are then handed model legislation which the legislators then take back home to their districts where they present it as having been crafted by themselves instead of by corporate lawyers. ALEC makes old-fashioned lobbying obsolete. Once legislators return to their state with corporate-sponsored ALEC legislation in hand, the legislators themselves become “super-lobbyists” for ALEC’s corporate agenda, cutting out the middleman. The fusion of politician and lobbyist is complete.

A lot of this legislation then gets passed in states that are controlled by Republican governors and legislators. For instance, in Michigan the legislature just passed a so-called right-to-work law which basically defunds unions. Right to work laws ban mandatory union dues. Unions are one of the biggest funders of Democrats so taking money away from union coffers essentially helps more Republicans get elected.

In Wisconsin Republican Governor Scott Walker tried to strip unions of their collective bargaining rights. After much ballyhoo and a recall election, Walker was able to retain his position although much of his union busting efforts were struck down by a state judge. To give you some idea of the influence that ALEC has in Wisconsin read the following:

• 32 bills or budget provisions reflecting ALEC model legislation were introduced in Wisconsin’s 2011-2012 legislative session;
• 21 of these bills or budget provisions have passed, and two were vetoed;
• More than $276,000 in campaign contributions were made to ALEC legislators in Wisconsin from ALEC corporations since 2008;
• More than $406,000 in campaign contributions were made to ALEC alumnus Governor Walker from ALEC corporations over the same time period for his state campaign account;
• At least 49 current Wisconsin legislators are known ALEC members, including the leaders of both the House and Senate as well as other legislators holding key posts in the state. Additionally, the Governor, the Secretary of the Department of Administration, and the Chairman of the Public Service Commission are ALEC alumni; and
• At least 17 current legislators have received thousands of dollars of gifts cumulatively from ALEC corporations in the past few years, in the form of flights and hotel rooms filtered through the ALEC “scholarship fund” (complete “scholarship” information is not available).

ALEC’s 2010 annual meeting was held in San Diego at the Manchester Grand Hyatt resort. In California the main ALEC affiliate is the State Policy Network of which the San Diego Institute for Policy Research founded by Steve Francis is a member. Francis unsuccessfully ran for mayor in 2005 as a fiscal conservative against former San Diego Chief of Police Jerry Sanders and Councilwoman Donna Frye. Francis ran again in 2008 against incumbent Jerry Sanders. The San Diego Institute for Policy Research (which now resides at National University) is an ALEC affiliate, according to Daily Kos and generates economic and policy research with regard to the San Diego region. Francis serves on the Board of Advisors for the Institute.

San Diego just escaped an ALEC invasion when Bob Filner beat Carl DeMaio for mayor. According to Jim Miller:

"[The Center on Policy Initiatives report, 'Target San Diego: The Right Wing Assault on Urban Democracy and Smart Government' by Lee Cokorinos] carefully documents the intricate web of connections between the corporate-funded think tanks at the national, state and local level. Some of the key organizations include the aforementioned Americans for Tax Reform, Freedom Works and the American Legislative Exchange Council at the national level; the Project for California's Future, the Pacific Research Institute, the Claremont Institute and the Reason Foundation at the state level; and the Performance Institute [founded by Carl DeMaio] here in San Diego."

Miller goes on:

"In California, privatization advocates at think tanks like the Pacific Research Institute and the Claremont Institute argue that, according to Cokorinos, "a key political objective for the right wing is to compel states and localities to compete with one another in a frenzy of deregulation and privatization that will supposedly attract investment…. Taken to its extreme, this would involve a race to the bottom, where perfect efficiency equals no regulation, and the perfect state is a minimal government that simply secures the sanctity of contracts and provides for the common defense."

"In addition to the work being done at the Pacific Research and Claremont institutes, the Reason Foundation cranks out an endless flow of pro-privatization propaganda aimed at lambasting the incurably wasteful inefficiency of government in contrast to the flawless productivity of market forces. Through the use of "performance reviews," which inevitably show how government just doesn't work like the business world, the idea of "performance-based government" is promoted as the final solution for the hapless public sector, which just needs to be put to sleep.

"As Cokorinos observes, "the performance review, while long a part of organizational culture public and private, is used [in Reason Foundation reports] as a non-threatening entry point to achieve an ideological purpose" to identify inefficiencies that require the expertise of right-wing think-tank experts to be solved. DeMaio, in his time at Reason, and others after him have promoted a radical privatization agenda by releasing annual "privatization reports" that have advocated the privatization of military housing, education, transportation systems, public roads and highways, housing, major infrastructure projects and much more.

"DeMaio founded the Performance Institute in 2001 and set about bringing to San Diego the skills he learned at Reason and while working to starve the beast in the Beltway with Newt Gingrich at the Congressional Institute. The conservative old guard in San Diego seemed to be in peril, with labor, environmental activists and other progressives gaining new political clout. Democrats controlled the City Council for the first time in the history of the city, and a significant political realignment seemed possible."

It's clear San Diego barely escaped an extreme right wing radical who would have privatized city government and made San Diego a model of what ALEC is trying to accomplish throughout the US.

For some time legislation has not been written by elected officials but by lobbyists and presented to elected officials who then get it enacted into law if they have the votes on their side. In the election of 2010 Republicans swept into power at the state level particularly in states like Michigan, Ohio, Wisconsin and Florida. In all Republicans control 27 state legislatures and Democrats control 19. A lot of the right wing action, therefore, is at the state level. High on their agenda is privatization. Publicly owned assets are put up for sale. Government provided services are outsourced to private corporations. Public schools are replaced by charter schools. In the last few years, the Michigan state government has engaged in several privatization efforts. In 1992 the governor issued an executive order creating the Michigan Public-Private Partnership Commission and charged it with analyzing ways in which state services can be provided more efficiently by "introducing competition into the public sector." The commission encouraged the various departments to review each activity and every program in state government to find candidates for potential privatization.

ALEC members represent a who's who of right wing politicians and major corporations. The organization has 2000 legislative members and over 300 corporate members. Corporations not legislators fund almost all of ALEC's activities. Corporations sit on all nine ALEC task forces and vote with legislators to approve “model” bills. The long-term representation of Koch Industries on the governing board means that Koch has had influence over an untold number of ALEC bills.

ALEC has given awards to: Ronald Reagan, Margaret Thatcher, George H.W. Bush, Charles and David Koch, Richard de Vos, Tommy Thompson, Gov. John Kasich, Gov. Rick Perry, Congressman Mark Foley (intern sex scandal), and Congressman Billy Tauzin. ALEC alumni include: Speaker of the House John Boehner, House Majority Leader Eric Cantor, Congressman Joe Wilson, (who called President Obama a “liar” during the State of the Union address), former House Speaker Dennis Hastert, former House Speaker Tom DeLay, Andrew Card, Donald Rumsfeld (1985 Chair of ALEC’s Business Policy Board), Governor Scott Walker, Governor Jan Brewer, and more. Featured speakers have included: Milton Friedman, Newt Gingrich, Dick Cheney, Dan Quayle, George Allen, Jessie Helms, Pete Coors, Governor Mitch Daniels among others.

We the People, and the New American Civil War

by Robert Reich

Monday, November 5, 2012

The vitriol is worse than I ever recall. Worse than the Palin-induced smarm pf 2008. Worse than the swift-boat lies of 2004. Worse, even, than the anything-goes craziness of 2000 and its ensuing bitterness.

It’s almost a civil war. I know families in which close relatives are no longer speaking. A dating service says Democrats won’t even consider going out with Republicans, and vice-versa. My email and twitter feeds contain messages from strangers I wouldn’t share with my granddaughter.

What’s going on? Yes, we’re divided over issues like the size of government and whether women should have control over their bodies. But these aren’t exactly new debates. We’ve been disagreeing over the size and role of government since Thomas Jefferson squared off with Alexander Hamilton, and over abortion rights since before Roe v. Wade, almost forty years ago.

And we’ve had bigger disagreements in the past – over the Vietnam War, civil rights, communist witch hunts – that didn’t rip us apart like this.

Maybe it’s that we’re more separated now, geographically and online.

The town where I grew up in the 1950s was a GOP stronghold, but Henry Wallace, FDR’s left-wing vice president, had retired there quite happily. Our political disagreements then and there didn’t get in the way of our friendships. Or even our families — my father voted Republican and my mother was a Democrat. And we all watched Edward R. Murrow deliver the news, and then, later, Walter Cronkite. Both men were the ultimate arbiters of truth.

But now most of us exist in our own political bubbles, left and right. I live in Berkeley, California – a blue city in a blue state – and rarely stumble across anyone who isn’t a liberal Democrat (the biggest battles here are between the moderate left and the far-left). The TV has hundreds of channels so I can pick what I want to watch and who I want to hear. And everything I read online confirms everything I believe, thanks in part to Google’s convenient algorithms.

So when Americans get upset about politics these days we tend to stew in our own juices, without benefit of anyone we know well and with whom we disagree — and this makes it almost impossible for us to understand the other side.

That geographic split also means more Americans are represented in Congress by people whose political competition comes from primary challengers – right-wing Republicans in red states and districts, left-wing Democrats in blue states and districts. And this drives those who represent us even further apart.

But I think the degree of venom we’re experiencing has deeper roots.

The nation is becoming browner and blacker. Most children born in California are now minorities. In a few years America as a whole will be a majority of minorities. Meanwhile, women have been gaining economic power. Their median wage hasn’t yet caught up with men, but it’s getting close. And with more women getting college degrees than men, their pay will surely exceed male pay in a few years. At the same time, men without college degrees continue to lose economic ground. Adjusted for inflation, their median wage is lower than it was three decades ago.

In other words, white working-class men have been on the losing end of a huge demographic and economic shift. That’s made them a tinder-box of frustration and anger – eagerly ignited by Fox News, Rush Limbaugh, and other pedlars of petulance, including an increasing number of Republicans who have gained political power by fanning the flames.

That hate-mongering and attendant scapegoating – of immigrants, blacks, gays, women seeking abortions, our government itself – has legitimized some vitriol and scapegoating on the left as well. I detest what the Koch Brothers, Karl Rove, Grover Norquist, Rupert Murdoch, and Paul Ryan are doing, and I hate their politics. But in this heated environment I sometimes have to remind myself I don’t hate them personally.

Not even this degree of divisiveness would have taken root had America preserved the social solidarity we had two generations ago. The Great Depression and World War II reminded us we were all in it together. We had to depend on each other in order to survive. That sense of mutual dependence transcended our disagreements. My father, a “Rockefeller” Republican, strongly supported civil rights and voting rights, Medicare and Medicaid. I remember him saying “we’re all Americans, aren’t we?”

To be sure, we endured 9/11, we’ve gone to war in Iraq and Afghanistan, and we suffered the Great Recession. But these did not not bind us as we were bound together in the Great Depression and World War II. The horror of 9/11 did not touch all of us, and the only sacrifice George W. Bush asked was that we kept shopping. Today’s wars are fought by hired guns – young people who are paid to do the work most of the rest of us don’t want our own children to do. And the Great Recession split us rather than connected us; the rich grew richer, the rest of us, poorer and less secure.

So we come to the end of a bitter election feeling as if we’re two nations rather than one. The challenge – not only for our president and representatives in Washington but for all of us – is to rediscover the public good.

What the World Needs Now? - More Cooperation or More Competition?

by John Lawrence

When I was a graduate student at UCSD in the midst of the anti-war movement, protesting the war in Vietnam, I went to the library and pondered what would make the world a better place, what could I do to contribute something that might make war less likely and peace time activity more likely. I concluded that more cooperation was needed. More ways to resolve conflicts big and small. For example, democratic voting systems resolve conflicts in such a way that solutions are found that are acceptable to all parties for the most part. I took it for granted that institutions that provided for more cooperation and less competition were more desirable. I thought that this was what the Enlightenment was all about. My heroes were the Enlightenment superstars: Jeremy Bentham, John Stuart Mill, Rousseau, Diderot, Voltaire, John Locke.

As I sat there and went through the stacks, I discovered another field and another set of superstars. Social choice has a long history going back to the French Enlightenment philosophers, the Marquis de Condorcet and Jean-Charles de Borda, and even further back than that. One of the 19th century superstars in this field was none other than the Rev. C. L. Dodgson otherwise known as Lewis Carroll, the author of Alice in Wonderland. These guys came up with voting systems which are essential to democracy and are essential to the whole notion of cooperation and conflict resolution. The most recent work in this field was by Kenneth Arrow who published a book Social Choice and Individual Values in the 1950s which attempted to generalize conflict resolution in society in both the political and economic spheres. Arrow concluded that this was impossible and came up with his famous Impossibility Theorem which was a generalization using sophisticated mathematics of the paradox of voting that was known to Condorcet hundreds of years ago. Therefore, Arrow concluded democracy was impossible and any economic system other than capitalism was impossible too. Hmmm, I thought, this is obviously a cop-out because some political and economic systems are more desirable than others and Arrow has done nothing except to throw cold water on any framework that could consider these. I took it as my self-assigned task to prove that Arrow was wrong, that social choice is possible. My work can be found on the website Social Choice and Beyond.

My latest work is "Politonomics: A Meta-Theory Encompassing Political and Economic Decision Making." This is from the Abstract:

In “Social Choice and Individual Values,” Kenneth Arrow said , “In a capitalist democracy there are essentially two methods by which social choices can be made: voting, typically used to make ‘political’ decisions, and the market mechanism, typically used to make ‘economic’ decisions.” This paper resolves that dichotomy by developing a meta-theory from which can be derived methods for both political and economic decision making. This theory overcomes Arrow’s Impossibility Theorem in which he postulates that social choice is impossible and compensates for strategic voting, an undesirable aspect of decision making according to Gibbard and Satterthwaite. Thus the politonomics meta-theory spawns both political and economic systems which are indeed possible and which cannot be gamed. In a typical voting system the outcome of an election among several candidates results in one realized outcome – the winner of the election - which applies to all voters. In a typical economic system, a consumer may choose among a variety of possible baskets of consumer items and work programs with the result that multiple realized outcomes are possible with a unique or quasi-unique outcome for each worker/consumer. As the number of possible realized outcomes of a political-economic decision making process increases, the process becomes more economic and less political in nature and vice versa. We show that as the number of possible realized outcomes increases, voter/consumer/worker satisfaction or utility increases both individually and collectively.

I never considered, as I sat there pondering, that there would be people who would argue that what the world needed was not more cooperation but more competition, but, as I sit here today, I realize that the whole conservative right wing is in favor of just that. They want not more cooperation in either the political or economic realm but more competition believing that only winners should prevail and human progress is only possible when you give free reign to those among us who are the most talented, intelligent and ambitious. They believe that competition will result in the strongest among us winning just as Nietzsche believed that a good war hallows every cause. Their ethic is that the naturally gifted elite should prevail, and they are not concerned about what happens to the rest of us or of who is trampled in the process. This is also the philosophy of Ayn Rand as espoused in her novels Atlas Shrugged and The Fountainhead.

The debate today about increasing inequality in the world has to do with the prevalent conservative belief that only the strong should survive and be promoted and that freedom should preclude equality as a value. The rich should get more tax breaks because they are the true instigators of human progress and should be catered to at every turn. Perhaps a few crumbs will trickle down to the rest of us. This kind of thinking is counter to the Enlightenment and is fast returning us to a neo-Dark Age. No more is human progress to be measured in reduction of poverty and extension of basic services like health care to everyone. It is to be measured in terms of the great advances to human civilization like iPads, iPods and iPhones. People who are capable of coming up with these advances should be cut every break and none of the billions of dollars they make should be transferred by government to the least of these among us like the homeless, the poverty-stricken and the destitute because, well, they are the least among us, not the best among us who should be given every break.

Nevertheless, I remain in the camp of those who think that more cooperation in the political and economic spheres will do more for human progress than more competititon. I also have spent about 40 years in my spare time trying to prove that Arrow was wrong, that social choice is not impossible and that democracy in both the political and economic spheres is not only possible but desirable. This has a lot to do with voting systems, democratic institutions and constitutions but also with cooperative economic systems in which freedom is seen not as the freedom to make money at other people's expense (the losers in the competitive struggle) but the freedom to work as much or as little as one chooses and in accordance with one's preferences as much as possible. Freedom from work is for many people just as desirable a goal as the freedom to make billions of dollars, and wealthy people who don't have to work would be the first to tell you that. Economic democracy in my view is more desirable than cutthroat capitalism, and can be practiced not only at the national level, but at the enterprise level in the form of co-ops like the Mondragon Corporation.

Marx's famous definition of the "good society" was "from each according to his ability, to each according to his needs." This of course was perverted in defining communism as a society where all the wealth created by those who had a lot of talent and ability as well as a strong work ethic combined with those who had not so much in those categories would be thrown into a pot and then divided up in equal portions and handed out by the government. Such need not be the case in achieving the "good society." The "needs" part is pretty basic and could probably be accomplished with abouit 10% of the wealth that exists in the world today. Most people can provide for their own needs - no transfer necessary. There are some who cannot and to transfer a small part of the wealth of the wealthy to provide for their basic needs seems to me to be no more than humane. That still leaves the vast amount of wealth in the hands of the wealthy. In other words if you total up how much it would cost to provide for all the basic needs of everyone in the world and tote up how much wealth there exists in the world, it would take a fraction of all that wealth to provide the basic needs for everyone who cannot provide for their basic needs themselves who turn out to be mainly children, seniors and handicapped (whether physically or mentally) people.

A recent documentary by German TV station Deutsche Welle pointed out that half the world's production of food is wasted because super markets only want perfect vegetables and ones with slight blemishes are thrown out even though they are perfectly edible. Shelves need to be fully stocked with bread right up till closing hours even though any bread left over at the end of day will be thrown out as "day old." All the food that is thrown out by advanced nations is enough to feed all the world's hungry three times over although no governments or other institutions, much less the supermarkets themselves, seem to be interested in organizing that effort. This is what I mean by the fact that the basic needs of all the world's people could be satisfied without subtracting much if anything from the world's wealthy although a lot of them would admit they do not need incomes of millions of dollars a day like the Fortune 400 billionaires have.

Another documentary noted that Finnish school children have the highest test scores in the world despite the fact that they have one of the world's shortest school days with 15 minutes intermissions between classes during which time they are encouraged to go outdoors and play. All grades have large amounts of music, art and self-defined projects. They don't teach to the test. They are concerned with the development of each student as an overall human being not just as some super competitive cog in a nationally competitive machine. The Chinese on the other hand have the opposite approach demanding that children learn by rote methods and extra hours in school and at study. The Finnish schools are all public and everyone is accepted into every class. There are no advanced classes or tracking of students into lesser classes if they are not among the elite intellectually. Everyone is thrown in together; yet they have the best outcomes of any country in the world on standardized international tests. Egalitariansim seems to gain the best results.

An egalitarian ethic in which the concern is for the development of the whole human being rather than a promotion of just those who have superior abilities in accordance with a competitive ethic seems to me to be the most humanitarian way to treat both children and adults. The 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights already provides for most of the "from each according to their abilities, to each according to their needs" ethic. It calls for free health care which most advanced socierties, with the exception of the United States, already provide. It calls for free education and other public institutions and covers most basic human needs including food and shelter.

Here are Articles 25 and 26:

Article 25.

• (1) Everyone has the right to a standard of living adequate for the health and well-being of himself and of his family, including food, clothing, housing and medical care and necessary social services, and the right to security in the event of unemployment, sickness, disability, widowhood, old age or other lack of livelihood in circumstances beyond his control.
• (2) Motherhood and childhood are entitled to special care and assistance. All children, whether born in or out of wedlock, shall enjoy the same social protection.

Article 26.

• (1) Everyone has the right to education. Education shall be free, at least in the elementary and fundamental stages. Elementary education shall be compulsory. Technical and professional education shall be made generally available and higher education shall be equally accessible to all on the basis of merit.
• (2) Education shall be directed to the full development of the human personality and to the strengthening of respect for human rights and fundamental freedoms. It shall promote understanding, tolerance and friendship among all nations, racial or religious groups, and shall further the activities of the United Nations for the maintenance of peace.
• (3) Parents have a prior right to choose the kind of education that shall be given to their children.

All the basic needs of everyone on the planet could be provided for without subtracting much of the wealth of the rich since most people can provide for at least their basic needs without any transfer of wealth whatsover being necessary. Interestingly, the US among other nations does provide food security for the poor through its food stamps program. And of course seniors are provided for through Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security, programs which conservative free marketers are anxious to change or eliminate.

I am with the Enlightenment thinkers especially the English utilitarians like Jeremy Bentham and John Stuart Mill who thought about the happiness of society as a whole and concluded that everyone counted, not only the ones with exceptional talent, ability and other admirable qualities. A society should be judged by how it treats "the least of these my brethren" which is the core and essence of Jesus' teachings but, sad to say, not the core and essence of Christianity as it exists in the world today. Perhaps we should start thinking about an alternative constitution for the US which has the world's oldest constitution (236 years old!) while being the world's youngest advanced nation. Other societies including most European societies while being older than the US have newer constitutions. As far-sighted as the Founding Fathers were, a new and updated constitution incorporating not only political but also economic rights along the lines of the UN Declaration of Human Rights would do much to right the wrongs and shortcomings of present day America and the world.

As Santorum and Romney Battle for the Loony Right, the Rest of Us Should Not Gloat

by Robert Reich

Monday, February 27, 2012

My father was a Republican for the first 78 years of his life. For the last twenty, he’s been a Democrat (he just celebrated his 98th.) What happened? “They lost me,” he says.

They’re losing even more Americans now, as the four remaining GOP candidates seek to out-do one another in their race for the votes of the loony right that’s taken over the Grand Old Party.

But the rest of us have reason to worry.

A party of birthers, creationists, theocrats, climate-change deniers, nativists, gay-bashers, anti-abortionists, media paranoids, anti-intellectuals, and out-of-touch country clubbers cannot govern America.

Yet even if they lose the presidency on Election Day they’re still likely to be in charge of at least one house of Congress as well as several state legislators and governorships. That’s a problem for the nation.

The GOP’s drift toward loopyness started in 1993 when Bill Clinton became the first Democrat in the White House in a dozen years – and promptly allowed gays in the military, pushed through the Brady handgun act, had the audacity to staff his administration with strong women and African-Americans, and gave Hillary the task of crafting a national health bill. Bill and Hillary were secular boomers with Ivy League credentials who thought government had a positive role to play in peoples’ lives.

This was enough to stir right-wing evangelicals in the South, social conservatives in the Midwest and on the Great Plains, and stop-at-nothing extremists in Washington and the media who hounded Bill Clinton for eight years, then stole the 2000 election from Al Gore, and Swift-boated John Kerry in 2004.

They were not pleased to have a Democrat back in the White House in 2008, let alone a black one. They rose up in the 2010 election cycle as “tea partiers” and have by now pushed the GOP further right than it has been in more than eighty years. Even formerly sensible senators like Olympia Snowe, Orrin Hatch, and Dick Lugar are moving to the extreme right in order to keep their seats.

At this rate the GOP will end up on the dust heap of history. Young Americans are more tolerant, cosmopolitan, better educated, and more socially liberal than their parents. And relative to the typical middle-aged America, they are also more Hispanic and more shades of brown. Today’s Republican Party is as relevant to what America is becoming as an ice pick in New Orleans.

In the meantime, though, we are in trouble. America is a winner-take-all election system in which a party needs only 51 percent (or, in a three-way race, a plurality) in order to gain control.

In parliamentary systems of government, small groups representing loony fringes can be absorbed relatively harmlessly into adult governing coalitions.

But here, as we’re seeing, a loony fringe can take over an entire party — and that party will inevitably take over some part of our federal, state, and local governments.

As such, the loony right is a clear and present danger.

The Rise of the Regressive Right and the Reawakening of America

 by Robert Reich

 Sunday, October 16, 2011

A fundamental war has been waged in this nation since its founding, between progressive forces pushing us forward and regressive forces pulling us backward. 

We are going to battle once again. 

Progressives believe in openness, equal opportunity, and tolerance. Progressives assume we’re all in it together: We all benefit from public investments in schools and health care and infrastructure. And we all do better with strong safety nets, reasonable constraints on Wall Street and big business, and a truly progressive tax system. Progressives worry when the rich and privileged become powerful enough to undermine democracy. 

Regressives take the opposite positions.

Eric Cantor, Paul Ryan, Rick Perry, Michele Bachmann and the other tribunes of today’s Republican right aren’t really conservatives. Their goal isn’t to conserve what we have. It’s to take us backwards. 

They’d like to return to the 1920s — before Social Security, unemployment insurance, labor laws, the minimum wage, Medicare and Medicaid, worker safety laws, the Environmental Protection Act, the Glass-Steagall Act, the Securities and Exchange Act, and the Voting Rights Act. 

In the 1920s Wall Street was unfettered, the rich grew far richer and everyone else went deep into debt, and the nation closed its doors to immigrants.

Rather than conserve the economy, these regressives want to resurrect the classical economics of the 1920s — the view that economic downturns are best addressed by doing nothing until the “rot” is purged out of the system (as Andrew Mellon, Herbert Hoover’s Treasury Secretary, so decorously put it). 

In truth, if they had their way we’d be back in the late nineteenth century — before the federal income tax, antitrust laws, the pure food and drug act, and the Federal Reserve. A time when robber barons — railroad, financial, and oil titans — ran the country. A time of wrenching squalor for the many and mind-numbing wealth for the few. 

Listen carefully to today’s Republican right and you hear the same Social Darwinism Americans were fed more than a century ago to justify the brazen inequality of the Gilded Age:  Survival of the fittest. Don’t help the poor or unemployed or anyone who’s fallen on bad times, they say, because this only encourages laziness. America will be strong only if we reward the rich and punish the needy. 

The regressive right has slowly consolidated power over the last three decades as income and wealth have concentrated at the top. In the late 1970s the richest 1 percent of Americans received 9 percent of total income and held 18 percent of the nation’s wealth; by 2007, they had more than 23 percent of total income and 35 percent of America’s wealth. CEOs of the 1970s were paid 40 times the average worker’s wage; now CEOs receive 300 times the typical workers’ wage.

This concentration of income and wealth has generated the political heft to deregulate Wall Street and halve top tax rates. It has bankrolled the so-called Tea Party movement, and captured the House of Representatives and many state governments. Through a sequence of presidential appointments it has also overtaken the Supreme Court. 

Scalia, Alito, Thomas, and Roberts (and, all too often, Kennedy) claim they’re conservative jurists. But they’re judicial activists bent on overturning seventy-five years of jurisprudence by resurrecting states’ rights, treating the 2nd Amendment as if America still relied on  local militias, narrowing the Commerce Clause, and calling money speech and corporations people. 

Yet the great arc of American history reveals an unmistakable pattern. Whenever privilege and power conspire to pull us backward, the nation eventually rallies and moves forward. Sometimes it takes an economic shock like the bursting of a giant speculative bubble; sometimes we just reach a tipping point where the frustrations of average Americans turn into action. 

Look at the Progressive reforms between 1900 and 1916; the New Deal of the 1930s; the Civil Rights struggle of the 1950s and 1960s; the widening opportunities for women, minorities, people with disabilities, and gays; and the environmental reforms of the 1970s.  

In each of these eras, regressive forces reignited the progressive ideals on which America is built. The result was fundamental reform. 

Perhaps this is what’s beginning to happen again across America.

RIGHT WING BILLI0NAIRE KOCH BROTHERS NOW WORTH $50 BILLION

NEWSFLASH

From ThinkProgress, September 21, 2011

Forbes: Koch Brothers Now Worth $50 Billion | Forbes estimates that Tea Party petrochemical scions Charles and David Koch have a fortune of $25 billion each, making them the fourth richest Americans, behind only Bill Gates, Warren Buffet, and Larry Ellison. Their combined wealth of $50 billion is exceeded only by the Microsoft founder’s $59 billion fortune. Buoyed by aggressive speculative trading on volatile energy markets, the Koch brothers accumulated $15 billion in wealth since March 2010, a 43 percent increase.

 

 

 

By Brad Johnson on Sep 21, 2011 at 2:10 pm

Get Corporations off Government's Back

by John Lawrence

The Tea Party wants to get "government off 'our' back." But is government really on our back or is the case really that corporations and wealthy interests are on government's back? There are 40,000 or more lobbyists in Washiongton, DC. They are there for the purposes of extracting taxpayer money for their corporate sponsors' benefits and for no other reason. The notion that taxpayer money goes to provide benefits for taxpayers, especially middle class taxpayers, is rather nieve. Taxpayer money goes to provide benefits for large corporations and the wealthy because the poor can't afford lobbyists. And the union movement is practically dead so union money is not influencing legislators to any great extent. Republican Governors like Scott Walker are doing their level best to kill off the remaining unions so that corporate sponsored lobbyists will have full sway in Washington. They aren't there to help the middle class; that's for sure. They are there to write legislation favorable to their own interests whether they be defense contractors lobbying for more money for military hardware or corporate flacks trying to drill holes in the tax code or lower the corporate tax rate. The notion that a lower corporate tax rate combined with closing the loopholes is preferable is nieve since lobbyists will only then proceed to drill new loopholes into the tax code at the lower rate.

Republicans argue that any expiration of a "temporary" tax cut such as the Bush tax cuts is actually a tax increase, but Michelle Bachman said on Meet the Press that she wouldn't be in favor of extending the "temporary" reduction in the payroll tax rate because "we can't afford it." Yet we can afford, according to her, to continue the temporary Bush tax cuts which amount to a whole hellava lot more. Why won't Bachman apply the same logic to the temporary payroll tax cuts? I'll tell you why. Because the payroll tax affects mainly the poor and middle class. It's a regressive tax that's used to pay social security recipients and for many years the excess was just combined with income tax revenues and spent in the General Fund. So General Fund expenditures were partially funded by a regressive tax on the poor. Right wingers love to point out that the poor and lower middle class pay hardly any income tax. What they don't point out is that they pay excessive payroll taxes, taxes that allow for no deductions or exemptions. For instance, if you're a poor self-employed worker earning $10,000 a year, you will pay over $1500. in payroll taxes no matter how many children you have or how many medical expenses or anything else. You will pay at a tax rate of 15.3% (except for this year for which there is a 2% reduction for employees), more than a hedge fund manager pays. Capital gains are taxed at only 15%. Is that fair? Of course not. As long as the money is being spent in the General Fund and treated as income tax revenue, deductions and exemptions should be allowed for payroll taxes which affect mainly the poor just as they are for income taxes which affect mainly the rich. When right wingers point out that the poor don't pay any income tax, they fail to point out that the poor, especially the poor self-employed, pay a higher rate, when you consider payroll taxes, than rich hedge fund managers including Warren Buffet. Please note that the rich pay hardly any payroll taxes and have voluminous deductions and exemptions on their income taxes.

So instead of getting government off our back which is the movie right wingers want you to see, instead we should be trying to get corporations off government's back, which is the reality they want you to ignore, so that government can better serve the interests and needs of the poor and middle class. The right wing makes no bones about this being class warfare. They flat out come out and say that they are in power for one reason and one reason only: to serve the needs of the rich corporate class. That is their purpose in life. They don't even try to hide it. Michelle Bachman is not in favor of extending unemployment benefits for the long term unemployed because "we simply can't afford it." Yeah, but we can still afford more tax breaks for the rich because they are the "job creators." Really? REALLY?? If they are the job creators, then where are the friggin jobs? They've had 30 years of supply side economics (or voodoo economics as the first George Bush christened it) and the job situation is worse than it was in the Great Depression in absolute numbers of people out of work and on the verge of desperation. We "can't afford" to allow them to subsist which would cost a paltry amount, but we can afford to give gargantuan tax breaks to the corporate class because - hint, hint - they might create a job or two somewhere down the line. Give me a break. The only jobs they are creating are overseas. Cheap labor combined with automation produces all the goods and most of the services that the US needs. Free trade has allowed the global labor force to be concentrated in the country where labor is cheapest and the finished product shipped to wherever it can be sold. Increasingly, this is not in the US where consumers have cut back on their spending finally realizing that their houses can no longer be used as ATMs.

We don't need small government, weak government, a government that corporate lobbyists can ride roughshod over; we need smart government, strong government, "right sized" government, a government which has the audacity to kick lobbyists out of Washington and get money out of politics. Most Republican Senators and Congressmen are merely front men for corporations. They are merely "political personalities" able to garner votes and get themselves elected. They are not legislators. Lobbyists write the laws. As front men for corporations, Republican Congressmen's paychecks are provided by the corporations they represent. They need big money to get elected. When their time in Congress is finished, they can look forward to a cushy job working for the corporations they represent and making use of their inside contacts in Washington to funnel more taxpayer money and taxpayer funded contracts to the corporations they first represented and later worked for. Small government simply means government dominated by large corporations which exists to extract taxpayer money, mainly from the poor and middle class, and transfer it to the wealthy in terms of tax breaks and government contracts. It's not the poor who are feeding off the government trough; it's the rich. They want you to watch this movie over here about welfare queens and ignore that reality over there about the transfer of wealth to the already wealthy. They want you to abhor the redistribution of wealth from the government to the poor and middle class in terms of entitlements and unemployment insurance while ignoring the transfer of wealth from the middle class to the rich.

And why should unelected political underworld figures like Grover Norquist be in the position of extracting a pledge from every elected Republican Congressman that they won't raise taxes? They were elected to do the public's bidding not Grover Norquist's. Unelected rogues like Karl Rove, Dick Army, the Koch brothers and Grover Norquist are trying to control the American political system just as unelected lobbyists swarm the Capitol. And as for getting money out of politics, who benefits the most from keeping money in politics? The TV and cable channels who receive huge sums of money in the form of political TV ads. That's where most of the money is spent. Consequently, you will never hear anything about getting money out of politics on Meet the Press, Face the Nation or on any cable news infotainment show. There are vested interests which want to keep money in politics, the more the better. The Citizens United Supreme Court decision was a windfall for media news channels. No wonder they give as much air as possible to charlatins like Sarah Palin and Christene O'Donnell; their paychecks could just as well be endorsed by big right wing money. Instead of getting people on their shows who are really intelligent and insightful, they get airheads and then look forward to another infusion of right wing cash. The exception is CNN's Fareed Zakaria who always books intelligent and articulate experts.

Getting government off corporations' backs implies a rational world in which corporations want nothing more than to compete freely in the free enterprise system without being interfered with by government. They just want to go merrily along competing with their competitors, providing jobs, serving the public interest and providing value to their shareholders. In reality this hands off approach is a total lie. Corporations are totally hands on when it comes to government. They spend big bucks on lobbyists to make sure that government cash and legislation is funneled their way. They are not simply competing with other corporations in the free marketplace. They are using government to their advantage, and they are making sure that the middle class does not get to use government to its advantage. They don't simply want to get government off their backs. They want to climb on the back of government. They want to make sure that government does not tell them what to do, whether or not they can destroy the environment or cheat consumers. They want to tell government what it can do which is to say remove any regulations which might protect the public or the environment and lower their profit margins. They want to get government out of their way so they can exploit foreign labor and American consumers because this will maximize their profits, and that, my friend, is their bottom line. They are here to serve themselves not the public and they will use every lever of government in order to do so.

The Rise of the Wrecking-Ball Right

by Robert Reich

Friday, July 15, 2011

Recently I debated a conservative Republican who insisted the best way to revive the American economy was to shrink the size of government. When I asked him to explain his logic he said, simply, “government is the source of all our problems.” When I noted government spending had brought the economy out of the previous eight economic downturns, including the Great Depression, he disagreed. “The Depression ended because of World War Two,” he pronounced, as if government had played no part in it.

A few days later I was confronted by another conservative Republican who blamed the nation’s high unemployment rate on the availability of unemployment benefits. “If you pay someone not to work, they won’t,” he said. When I pointed out unemployment benefits couldn’t possibly be the cause of joblessness because there are now about five job seekers for every job opening, he scoffed. “Government always makes things worse.”

Government-haters seem to be everywhere.
 
Congressional Republicans, now led by House Majority Leader Eric Cantor, hate government so much they’re ready to sacrifice the full faith and credit of the United States in order to shrink it.

Taming the deficit isn’t their aim. They rejected Obama’s offer to cut $3 trillion of spending over the decade – including major reductions in entitlement programs – because his plan would also entail $1 trillion of tax increases. Their ultimate goal, in the words of their guru Grover Norquist, is to take government down to “the size where we can drown it in the bathtub.”
 
Where did this wrecking crew come from? And why do so many Americans seem to support them? To answer “the tea party” begs the question because the tea party itself is a product of this rage.
 
Credit the economic fears and insecurities now felt by a broad swathe of the public who want to find a villain for what they’re going through. Wall Street is too abstract and the financial games that brought on the Great Recession almost impossible for most Americans to grasp. But the government bailout of the Street was a specific act almost everyone could instinctively understand – and to most Americans it seemed perversely wrong.

It’s no coincidence that the emergence of the tea party coincided with the Wall Street bailout. An acquaintance who has embraced the tea party explained to me she hates government “because it’s always captured by the powerful, who take our taxes and eat our lunch.”
 
At the same time most of what government does that helps average people is now so deeply woven into the thread of daily life that it’s no longer recognizable as government. Think of the indignant voters who showed up at congressional town meetings to protest Obama’s health care bill shouting “don’t take away my Medicare!”

A recent paper by Cornell political scientist Suzanne Mettler surveyed how many recipients of government benefits don’t really believe they have received any benefits. She found that over 44 percent of Social Security recipients say they “have not used a government social program.” More than half of families receiving government-backed student loans said the same thing, as did 60 percent of those who get the home mortgage interest deduction, 43 percent of unemployment insurance beneficiaries, and almost 30 percent of recipients of Social Security Disability.
 
Add in the relentlessly snide government-hating and baiting of Fox News and Rush Limbaugh and his imitators on rage radio; include more than thirty years of Ronald Reagan’s repeated refrain that government is the problem; pile on hundreds of millions of dollars from the likes of oil tycoons Charles and David Koch intent on convincing the public that government is evil, and you have all the ingredients for the emergence of a wrecking-ball right that’s intent on destroying government as we know it.
 
The final critical ingredient has been the abject failure of the Democratic Party – from the President on down – to make the case for why government is necessary.

One would have thought the last few years of mine disasters, exploding oil rigs, nuclear meltdowns, malfeasance on Wall Street, wildly-escalating costs of health insurance, rip-roaring CEO pay, and mass layoffs would have offered a singular opportunity to explain why the nation’s collective well-being requires a strong and effective government representing the interests of average people.

Yet the case has not been made. Perhaps that’s because, even under the Democrats, the interests of average people have not been sufficiently attended to.

Shock Doctrine: 'Emergency Finance Managers' and the Right-Wing's Power Grab

by Sarah Jaffe, Alternet

Emergency financial managers are being put in place by democratically elected governors throughout the country.

June 26, 2011   The onslaught of radical policies from the wave of Tea Party-supported right-wing state politicians swept in in the 2010 elections has been nearly overwhelming. Nearly every state that saw a Republican takeover of the statehouse or legislature has faced attacks on collective bargaining, immigration, reproductive freedoms, or health care. New power grabs have popped up constantly, and copycat bills have sprung up in their wake as if an official playbook has been passed around the country.

But one of the nastiest moves has been the institution, by Michigan governor Rick Snyder, of an “emergency manager” over several cities in his state, as well as the Detroit public school system. This manager has the unilateral authority to fire officials, close schools, void union contracts, and assume total control over areas declared to be in a financial state of emergency by the state.

And it looks like the idea is spreading.

****
In March, the Michigan legislature passed an update to state law that gave emergency financial managers expanded powers over cities and school districts facing financial distress. The provision drew protests immediately, with thousands converging on the capitol on March 16, the day the law was signed. Unions and community organizations recognized the law as a threat, not just in the cities where emergency financial managers were imposed, but around the state, where unions would be pressured to make concessions in order to keep a financial manager from being imposed on them. Since financial managers have the power to wipe away a union contract with a pen stroke, the unions are left with an impossible choice—concede great chunks of hard-won benefits and wages, or risk losing it all.

Ed Brayton at the Michigan Messenger wrote:

“While opponents of the law were organizing their efforts, the Emergency Managers already in place wasted no time in putting their newly gained powers to use. Robert Bobb, who was at the time the Emergency Manager for the Detroit Public Schools, announced on April 15 that he would use his authority to void union contracts and his office immediately sent layoff notices to all 5,466 members of the teachers union. The very same day Joseph Harris, the emergency manager in charge of the city of Benton Harbor, issued an order stripping all authority from elected boards in that city, including the city council. That order would provoke massive opposition and bring the attention of the national media to the realities of the new law.”

Benton Harbor is 92 percent African American and 42 percent of its population lives below the poverty line. Helping those people doesn't seem to be in the job description of the financial manager, who has cut off support for an innovative local gardening program that helped the city's food-insecure residents sustain themselves. Apparently food isn't one of the “core services” that Snyder's spokeswoman told the Lansing State Journal were being preserved by the emergency managers.

As for the schools, the claim is that “failing” schools will be fixed by allowing for-profit charter companies to take them over. But that claim doesn't hold up under scrutiny. Recently, the Rachel Maddow show highlighted one Detroit school that was far from failing. Young mothers were not only graduating, but graduating with honors and going on to college from the Catherine Ferguson Academy, yet the emergency manager targeted the school for closure anyway. News that it would remain open as a charter school was bittersweet at best, since the for-profit company taking over the school specializes in "strict discipline academies" for students with legal problems. Teachers have already been informed that their wages will be cut.

Innovative public education programs like the Ferguson Academy aren't profitable, but they are an example of the good that public education can do. And the local food program, which promoted community self-sufficiency and entrepreneurship, was far less costly than tax breaks for big business. That these programs help people do exactly what conservatives want them to do—pull themselves up by their bootstraps and make a better life for themselves and their families—is further evidence that the ideals of "success” and “efficiency” touted by the new radical right are actually just cover for their real agenda: consolidating their own power.

A lawsuit filed Wednesday, June 22 challenges the emergency manager law. Again, from the Michigan Messenger:

“This is an infringement on basic democracy,” said plaintiffs attorney John Philo of the Sugar Law Center for Economic and Social Justice. “It really is an experiment in a new form of government — one person rule.”

The complaint alleges that the law, “violates the rights of local voters by attempting to delegate law-making power and the power to adopt local acts to unelected emergency mangers, by suspending the rights of local electors to establish charters and to elect local officials, and by imposing substantial new costs and expenses upon local municipalities without providing new revenue.”

The law is so extreme, the plaintiffs say, that it “establishes a new form of local government, previously unknown within the United States or the State of Michigan, where the people within local municipalities may be governed by an unelected official who establishes local law by decree.”

Even if the people did vote on an official, it should be noted, there's a difference between voting for a mayor, say, and an official with near-unlimited powers. Even Snyder's office realized that it would be unseemly to make Detroit Mayor Steve Bing the emergency manager of his city or even its school system. That might be too much power for one individual.

One Michigan blogger grimly joked:

“I see in Michigan’s future: EFMs declaring war on other EFMs. And the citizenry of one city being told to fight the citizenry of other cities. to protect the turf and honor of our noble EFMs.”

****
Pennsylvania has been a quieter front in the war on working people, overshadowed by Wisconsin, Ohio, Michigan, and even its neighbor New Jersey. But it has its own bill working its way through the legislature that would update existing legislation and consolidate state control over a city, in this case the capital city of Harrisburg.

Act 47, the Financially Distressed Municipalities Act, has been on the books for a while in the state, and was developed to help Pennsylvania's cities recover from financial stress. But the plan put forth under the act for Harrisburg is quite different from earlier plans for other cities in the state (including Pittsburgh, Scranton, Reading and Johnstown).

Michael Wood, of the Pennsylvania Budget and Policy Center, explained that the plan for Harrisburg would dictate the sale of particular city assets and eliminate much of the separation of powers between elected leadership, requiring staff to be shared between city council, mayor, controller and treasurer. This is a change from the usual recommendations, which Wood said include taxing commuters as well as making changes to union contracts and city services.

But on top of the existing powers under Act 47, a group of state senators have put forward bill 1151, which would allow the state to appoint a three-person board to run Harrisburg if the plan isn't enacted, stripping power from the elected city council. The bill also gives the state the power to renegotiate union contracts for the city's public employees, including police and firefighters. Wood wrote in an email:

“A 'doomsday' proposal like the one put forth by Senator Piccola, where the state takes over management of the city if the Act 47 plan is not adopted, has not been considered before -- and reflects a distinct departure from previous state policy regarding helping out distressed communities. The plan seems likely to be restricted to only the City of Harrisburg, due to some of the specifics in the bill."

Piccola is the senator who represents Harrisburg, and, Wood noted, is a main supporter of school voucher programs. Pennsylvania's public education is already suffering budget cuts of roughly $1 billion—around $8 million in Harrisburg alone.

Wood, who grew up not far from Benton Harbor, Michigan, noted that the push for emergency control over Harrisburg looks much like what's happening there, particularly in demographics. “The cuts of state aid for schools is felt most directly by the state's poor urban and some rural schools,” he said, “State aid is based on district wealth (or lack of wealth), so the poorest schools get the most state aid. When the cuts are handed down, these same districts take the biggest share.”

As in Michigan, it's notable as well that the budget cuts handed down by the governor actually increase the likelihood that Harrisburg, and other cities around the state, will require further financial help, thus pushing them further into dependence on the state government and whatever requirements it—and the conservatives at the helm—dish out.

***** 
A story about right-wing power grabs just wouldn't be complete without an appearance by Wisconsin governor Scott Walker. Walker's become the poster boy for conservative overreach, and rumors have been swirling that he's planning his own emergency financial manager plan.

Walker denied it, but Rick Ungar at Forbes wrote in April that Wisconsin progressive activists were reporting a plan to be introduced in the legislature that would give the governor the ability to appoint a financial manager if a municipality failed a financial stress test. The bill, they said, would be very similar to Snyder's in Michigan.

Ungar wrote:

“Walker’s plans give further credence to the notion that the efforts of the GOP governors with Republican majorities in their state legislative bodies are part of a coordinated plan to enforce a right-wing agenda designed to not only destroy state, county and municipal employee unions, but to take control of local governments by replacing elected officials with appointees, both corporate and individual, of the state’s highest executive officer.”

*****
Naomi Klein, in her book The Shock Doctrine, explained the way radical right-wing economists have used the shock created by an emergency, natural disaster, or coup d'etat to impose their preferred policies of privatization, deregulation, and slashing social services on countries around the world. Those economists, of course, came from right here in the USA—starting with the University of Chicago's Milton Friedman.

She opens the book with New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina, where a natural disaster somehow became an excuse to privatize the schools and bulldoze public housing.

The hurricane that's hit Michigan, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania and Florida is the same hurricane that's hit the world—financial crisis, ongoing recession, debt and a lack of tax revenue. The response, of course, has differed in different places, but Klein's point is that the Friedmanites were ideologues in search of a crisis they could exploit to put in their preferred policies—and if that required working with dictators, so be it.

We shouldn't be surprised, then, to see those policies being imposed here at home in the name of financial emergency. Klein notes that it's not always war or natural disaster that creates crisis:

"...if an economic crisis hits and is severe enough--a currency meltdown, a market crash, a major recession--it blows everything else out of the water, and leaders are liberated to do whatever is necessary (or said to be necessary) in the name of responding to a national emergency.”
Klein made the link between that radical economic policy and dictatorships, usually violent ones, where a single person or small group used power consolidated by that same shock technique to control the population. Obviously, the same type of violence is not being used in the states that are considering emergency manager legislation, but there's no question that the “shock” of the ongoing recession is being used to push through policies that were quite different from the campaign-trail promises of the Republicans in power.

While the emergency financial managers are being put in place by democratically elected governors with the blessing of democratically elected legislatures, they represent a consolidation of power that may be unprecedented in this country and is certainly undemocratic.

Local groups are organizing against these measures on the ground, particularly in Michigan, but the real problem is figuring out just where the next copycat bill will arise.

 

San Diego Right-Wing and Tea Parties Mobilize to Counter Teachers’ Rally, Friday the 13th

from the OB Rag

by Staff on May 12, 2011

in: Civil Rights, Economy, Education, Organizing, San Diego

Importance of Progressives Rallying in Support of Teachers Is Heightened

This Friday the 13th of May, over 2000 teachers, students, parents and local labor activists are rallying down at the Embarcadero from 4 to 6, in what’s being called a State of Emergency Rally.

Now, it turns out the San Diego’s right-wing, in the form of the Koch brothers’ sponsored Americans for Prosperity, conservative activists from the Republican right and local tea parties will be counter-demonstrating at the same place and roughly the same time.

In a declaration they call “Stop The Teachers Union and Tax Increases This Friday“, they declare:

The California Teachers Association and their Union friends are ONCE AGAIN using “the children” in their plot to raise taxes before reforming pensions and government waste. At a rally this week in Sacramento their rally cry is for more income and gas taxes with the mantra of the spending problem is “California isn’t spending enough”.

Tell the Teacher’s Unions Enough is Enough!

Lorena Gonzalez, head of the San Diego Labor Council says:

I want to encourage everyone to come out and show our support for our union brothers and sisters who work in the schools, and the need for a budget with revenues. Please keep it classy and peaceful.

So, it’s more important than ever to show up for this event.  Support the teachers and all public and private union members.

Dick "Deficits Don't Matter" Cheney and Donald "Known and Unknown" Rumsfeld Proven to be Liars and Fools by John McCain

by John Lawrence

Wow, am I perspicacious or what? Three days ago I blogged that, despite Cheney's and Rumsfeld's assertions to the contrary, torture played no role in the capture of bin Laden. Since President Obama and his spokemen initially left the door open by not categorically stating that torture played no role, Cheney and Rumsfeld were all over the TV last weekend claiming that torture played a major role thus giving themselves and the Bush administration some backdoor credit. Here's what I said:

Cheney and Rumsfeld were all over last Sunday's TV talk shows trying to eke out an iota of credit for the Bush administration in the capture and killing of bin Laden by way of talking about how the torture they espoused played a role in locating him. It was a pathetic attempt to exonerate themselves and at the same time claim a share of the credit. The fact of the matter is that waterboarding played no role in the killing of bin Laden whatsoever and all the credit should go to the Obama administration. However, Obama administration spokesmen will not come flat out and say that. Instead, they want to  leave the door open to give Bush some kind of credit by saying that bits and pieces of the puzzle were gleaned from a variety of sources. Obama has bent over backward not to criticize Bush and his henchmen. What he should have done in my opinion was to come right out and say, "Torture played no role in the capture of bin Laden." But he is too nice a guy so he leaves the door open for Cheney and Rumsfeld to grasp at straws in an effort to vindicate their lack of competence.

I actually had no proof that torture "played no role in the killing of bin Laden whatsoever." It was just a hunch. But wonder of wonders, yesterday none other than one of Cheney's and Rumsfeld's REPUBLICAN colleagues, Senator John McCain, came on the TV and stated categorically that "torture played no role in the capture of bin Laden," thus making fools out of Cheney, Rumsfeld and Bush. I blame Obama to some extent for not stating that categorically at the outset. Instead, Obama, hesitant to criticze Bush and his henchmen, left the door open for them to create a false impression in the American public. Obama and his administration should have taken full credit for the killing of bin Laden while at the same time slamming the door shut on the efficacy of torture and denouncing it. Instead he gave the Bushies and the righties an opening which they were overeager to take him up on. This, evidently, was just too much for the maverick, John McCain, who was tortured himself in Vietnam. Even though he ran against Obama in the last election, McCain came forward to essentially denounce Cheney and Rumsfeld for being the fools that they are and for trying to give themselves a modicum of credit for bin Laden's capture.

This is an unprecedented blow to the right wing who will grasp at straws to denounce or to not give credit to Obama and instead will lie in order to credit Bush and other Republican incompetents and clap traps. How good it feels to have the record set straight in this instance! And let this be a lesson to Obama. Don't not tell the whole truth in order to give your ideological opponents a little credit when they deserve none. Obama is too nice a guy, and he's up against a bunch of cutthroats. When he's totally and completely in the right and they're totally in the wrong, he need not go out of his way to give them some of the credit. One of his spokemen on last Sunday's talk shows repeatedly danced around the question, "Did torture play any role in the killing of bin Laden?" He repeatedly refused to give a "yes" or "no" answer and instead implied that it might have. So when Cheney and Rumsfeld jumped at the opportunity to state that torture did play a role thereby giving themselves and Bush a heapin' helpin' of credit, I guess this was too much for McCain, CIA Director Leon Panetta and perhaps even Obama himself. To my total amazement it was a fellow Republican who called them out and made total liars and fools out of them.

Cheney and Rumsfeld, apologists for Bush, were trying to rewrite history. Instead they only served to make Bush look like a bigger fool than he already appears to be. This is one for the history books. The information about the courier which led to bin Laden's capture and killing was gleaned from a foreign source, McCain stated, and was obtained by conventional interrogation methods not "enhanced interrogation techniques," a pseudonym for torture.

This article from the Washington Post is worth quoting in its entirety:

“

John McCain to Bush apologists: Stop lying about Bin Laden and torture

By Greg Sargent, June 12, 2011

This is getting really good. As noted below, John McCain in an Op ed this morning skewered the claim that the killing of Bin Laden vindicates torture. But just now, on the Senate floor, he uncorked a new broadside that is quite remarkable, taking direct aim at Bush apologists who are reviving this debate in order to claim Bin Laden’s death as part of the Bush legacy.

McCain amplified his case, and called on former Bush attorney general Michael Mukasey — whose recent op ed claiming torture led to Bin Laden has been widely cited by the right — to retract his claims. McCain’s speech is worth quoting at length:

“With so much misinformation being fed into such an essential public debate as this one, I asked the Director of Central Intelligence, Leon Panetta, for the facts. And I received the following information:

“The trail to bin Laden did not begin with a disclosure from Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, who was waterboarded 183 times. We did not first learn from Khalid Sheikh Mohammed the real name of bin Laden’s courier, or his alias, Abu Ahmed al-Kuwaiti — the man who ultimately enabled us to find bin Laden. The first mention of the name Abu Ahmed al-Kuwaiti, as well as a description of him as an important member of Al-Qaeda, came from a detainee held in another country. The United States did not conduct this detainee’s interrogation, nor did we render him to that country for the purpose of interrogation. We did not learn Abu Ahmed’s real name or alias as a result of waterboarding or any ‘enhanced interrogation technique’ used on a detainee in U.S. custody. None of the three detainees who were waterboarded provided Abu Ahmed’s real name, his whereabouts, or an accurate description of his role in Al-Qaeda.

“In fact, not only did the use of ‘enhanced interrogation techniques’ on Khalid Sheikh Mohammed not provide us with key leads on bin Laden’s courier, Abu Ahmed; it actually produced false and misleading information. Khalid Sheikh Mohammed specifically told his interrogators that Abu Ahmed had moved to Peshawar, got married, and ceased his role as an Al-Qaeda facilitator — which was not true, as we now know. All we learned about Abu Ahmed al-Kuwaiti through the use of waterboarding and other ‘enhanced interrogation techniques’ against Khalid Sheik Mohammed was the confirmation of the already known fact that the courier existed and used an alias.

“I have sought further information from the staff of the Senate Intelligence Committee, and they confirm for me that, in fact, the best intelligence gained from a CIA detainee — information describing Abu Ahmed al-Kuwaiti’s real role in Al-Qaeda and his true relationship to Osama bin Laden — was obtained through standard, non-coercive means, not through any ‘enhanced interrogation technique.’

“In short, it was not torture or cruel, inhuman, and degrading treatment of detainees that got us the major leads that ultimately enabled our intelligence community to find Osama bin Laden. I hope former Attorney General Mukasey will correct his misstatement. It’s important that he do so because we are again engaged in this important debate, with much at stake for America’s security and reputation. Each side should make its own case, but do so without making up its own facts.

This is taking on the makings of an old-fashioned, barn-burning senatorial crusade, and it’s unclear if anyone of McCain’s stature is going to step up and make the pro-torture case. For all his flaws, McCain carries great authority on this issue because of his own past experiences.

It’s becoming clearer that despite the Obama administration’s desire to avoid relitigating the torture debate, this is precisely the time to do it. The emerging evidence is on the side of torture opponents: A careful and extensive New York Times investigation concluded that torture “played a small role at most” in tracking down Bin Laden. Beyond this, the larger dynamic is perfect: The president that has been widely derided by the right as weak for ending torture tracked down and killed the world’s most wanted terrorist. That’s a pretty strong starting point for this argument.

Republican Senators are apparently set to grill David Petraeus and Leon Panetta at their confirmation hearings over torture’s role in getting Bin Laden. So in addition to McCain’s increasingly high profile on the issue, we may soon see the popular Petraeus reiterating his opposition to torture in a high-visibility setting — after the Obama administration killed America’s number one terrorist foe. Gettin’ mighty interesting.

”

Ayn Rand and The Ideological Basis of Republicanism Circa 2011

by John Lawrence

Paul Ryan is just the latest Ayn Rand aficionado to try to use government to benefit the rich and to denigrate the poor. Former Secretary of the Treasury under Reagan, Alan Greenspan, was a huge Ayn Rand aficionado who took a flower arrangement in the shape of a dollar bill to her funeral. But who is Ayn Rand and why is she so influential? Ayn Rand was Russian born. She moved to the US in 1926. Her father's pharmacy was confiscated during the Russian Revolution. Ayn Rand's biggest successes were her novels, the Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged. Her philosophy of extreme egosim and selfishness is solipsistic to the max, bordering on sociopathic. Rand and German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche both shared a fondness for "the Superman," the Ubermensch, and eschewed the ordinary Joe Blow. Her philosophy elevated the rich, the powerful, the brilliant, the talented above people who were only average or below average in their capabilities. The merely average she called parasites turning on its head Marx' philosophy which considered the wealthy class the parasites and the middle class the productive workers. To Rand the poor in all aspects were the parasites.

Is it any wonder then that Ayn Rand acolyte Paul Ryan's budget attempts to balance the Federal budget on the backs of the poor while giving tax breaks to the wealthy? Certainly Alan Greenspan attempted the same thing in his advice to President Reagan. A handy device was raising social security taxes which had the effect of balancing the budget on the backs of the poor. Reagan's 1984 tax reform act raised social security taxes by 50% on the self-employed. Rather than putting the $2.5 trillion raised by such a move in a "lock box" for future generations of retirees, it was just spent in the general fund with the result that the Social Security Trust Fund now containes $2.5 trillion of worthless IOUs, which now Republicans don't want to honor. As it turns out, surprise, surprise, it was merely a device to partially balance the budget on the backs of the working class poor without raising taxes on the wealthy. And remember it was Greenspan who got real concerned about inflation if working class wages started going up faster than he thought they should.

Ayn Rand based her main protagonist, Howard Roark, on a notorious serial killer by the name of William Hickman. Hickman kidnapped and killed a 12 year old girl and then extorted a ransom from her father who thought she was still alive. Rand admired Hickman's complete defiance of societal norms and complete disregard for anyone but himself. Rand considered Hickman a "Superman" because he lived only for himslf and had no empathy for anyone else. In other words he was a complete sociopath.

From Alternet:

One reason most countries don't find the time to embrace Ayn Rand's thinking is that she is a textbook sociopath. In her notebooks Ayn Rand worshiped a notorious serial murderer-dismemberer, and used this killer as an early model for the type of "ideal man" she promoted in her more famous books. These ideas were later picked up on and put into play by major right-wing figures of the past half decade, including the key architects of America's most recent economic catastrophe -- former Fed Chair Alan Greenspan and SEC Commissioner Chris Cox -- along with other notable right-wing Republicans such as Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, Rush Limbaugh and South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford. The loudest of all the Republicans, right-wing attack-dog pundits and the Teabagger mobs fighting to kill health care reform and eviscerate "entitlement programs" increasingly hold up Ayn Rand as their guru. Sales of her books have soared in the past couple of years; one poll ranked Atlas Shrugged as the second most influential book of the 20th century, after the Bible.

Ayn Rand's philosophy represented a sort of bastardized Nietzscheism. Rand's philosophy mirrors Nietzsche's adoration of the "Superman" and his amorality as presented in his book, Beyond Good and Evil. Nietzsche's rejection of Judeo-Christian morality mirrors Rand's atheism. Republican budget whiz Paul Ryan is just a latter day reincarnation of Ayn Rand. He requires his staff to read her books. The lineage goes back to Nietzsche who also inspired Hitler in his rejection of conventional morality and admiration for the Superman whose "will to power" takes matters into its own hands without any consideration for the lives of others.

From Wikipedia:

Nietzsche's growing prominence suffered a severe setback when his works became closely associated with Adolf Hitler and the German Reich. Many political leaders of the twentieth century were at least superficially familiar with Nietzsche's ideas, although it is not always possible to determine whether or not they actually read his work. Hitler, for example, probably never read Nietzsche, and if he did, his reading was not extensive, although he was a frequent visitor to the Nietzsche museum in Weimar and did use expressions of Nietzsche's, such as "lords of the earth" in Mein Kampf. The Nazis made selective use of Nietzsche's philosophy.

What Ayn Rand admired about her heroes was that they were sociopaths who had no regard for the feelings of others:

What did Rand admire so much about Hickman? His sociopathic qualities: "Other people do not exist for him, and he does not see why they should," she wrote, gushing that Hickman had "no regard whatsoever for all that society holds sacred, and, with a consciousness all his own, he has the true, innate psychology of a Superman. He can never realize and feel 'other people.'"

In this she shared the philosophy of Neitzsche and Hitler. The Tea Baggers and Libertarians of today such as Alan Greenspan, Paul Ryan and Clarence Thomas share the same philosophy. It gets translated into a disdain for the poor and the middle class and an admiration of the powerful and the wealthy. This is the ideological basis of Republicanism circa 2011. They have no regard for the unemployed, the homeless, those struggling to make a living. They only admire those who have a "will to power" and are willing to cut corners and take ethical shortcuts to get there, no matter whom they trample in the process. These are the kinds of people Republicans seek to use government to protect and promote. This is at the heart of their efforts to destroy Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security and turn them over to private interests, the interests of the ubermensch, and take them out of the domain of the pedestrian government bureaucrats.

Ayn Rand wrote in her notebook that Hickman represented "the amazing picture of a man with no regard whatsoever for all that a society holds sacred, and with a consciousness all his own. A man who really stands alone, in action and in soul. Other people do not exist for him, and he does not see why they should." So her hero was a man lacking the slightest degree of human compassion or empathy, who used people to the maximum extent, and had absolutely no qualms about the suffering he caused others. Hitlerism exemplified exactly the same philosophy, which was mainly directed at the Jews, although Hitler also killed Germans who were mentally defective or homosexual. Ayn Rand, nominally a Jew herself, was just an equal opportunity persecutor to those at the bottom of the social pyramid, those she considered parasites. Instead of directing her philosophy against one ethnic group or another, her victims were all those who had some degree of human compassion and were not supermen willing to defy all social norms in order to promote their own solipsistic self-interest.

For Rand, Nietzsche and Hitler selfishness is a moral good, altruism a moral weakness. It's all basically the same philosophy. Who are the weak, the parasites? Those on welfare, basically. "What's really unsettling is that even former Central Bank chief Alan Greenspan, whose relationship with Rand dated back to the 1950s, did some parasite-bashing of his own. In response to a 1958 New York Times book review slamming Atlas Shrugged, Greenspan, defending his mentor, published a letter to the editor that ends: 'Parasites who persistently avoid either purpose or reason perish as they should.'" So let there be no doubt where Alan Greenspan, Paul Ryan and other Republicans are coming from. They are out to screw the "parasites" whom they consider to be the lower classes and are out to reward the "supermen," who in today's world are the CEOs, hedge fund managers and the super wealthy. Their common ideological basis is Ayn Rand by way of Nietzsche and cousin to Hitler. By the way when Ayn Rand was dying of lung cancer she went on Social Security and Medicare, a concession of the ubermensch to the fact that we're all finally at the mercy of forces greater than the "will to power."

Why the Right-Wing Bullies Will Hold The Nation Hostage Again and Again

by Robert Reich

Saturday, April 9, 2011

When I was a small boy I was bullied more than most, mainly because I was a foot shorter than everyone else. They demanded the cupcake my mother had packed in my lunchbox, or, they said, they’d beat me up. After a close call in the boy’s room, I paid up. Weeks later, they demanded half my sandwich as well. I gave in to that one, too. But I could see what was coming next. They’d demand everything else. Somewhere along the line I decided I’d have a take a stand. The fight wasn’t pleasant. But the bullies stopped their bullying.

I hope the President decides he has to take a stand, and the sooner the better. Last December he caved in to Republican demands that the Bush tax cut be extended to wealthier Americans for two more years, at a cost of more than $60 billion. That was only the beginning — the equivalent of my cupcake.

Last night he gave away more than half the sandwich — $39 billion less than was budgeted for 2010, $79 billion less than he originally requested. Non-defense discretionary spending — basically, everything from roads and bridges to schools and innumerable programs for the poor — has been slashed.

The right-wing bullies are emboldened. They will hold the nation hostage again and again.

In a few weeks the debt ceiling has to be raised. After that, next year’s budget has to be decided on. House Budget Chair Paul Ryan has already put forward proposals to turn Medicare into vouchers that funnel money to private insurance companies, turn Medicaid and Food Stamps into block grants that give states discretion to shift them to the non-poor, and give even more big tax cuts to the rich.

There will also be Republican votes to de-fund the new health care law.

“Americans of different beliefs came together,” he announced late last night. It was the “largest spending cut in our history.” He sounded triumphant. In fact, he’s encouraging the bullies onward.

All the while, he and the Democratic leadership in Congress refuse to refute the Republicans’ big lie — that spending cuts will lead to more jobs. In fact, spending cuts now will lead to fewer jobs. They’ll slow down an already-anemic recovery. That will cause immense and unnecessary suffering for millions of Americans.

The President continues to legitimize the Republican claim that too much government spending caused the economy to tank, and that by cutting back spending we’ll get the economy going again.

Even before the bullies began hammering him his deficit commission already recommended $3 of spending cuts for every dollar of tax increase. Then the President froze non-defense domestic spending and froze federal pay. And he continues to draw the false analogy between a family’s budget and the national budget.

He is losing the war of ideas because he won’t tell the American public the truth: That we need more government spending now — not less — in order to get out of the gravitational pull of the Great Recession.

That we got into the Great Recession because Wall Street went bonkers and government failed to do its job at regulating financial markets. And that much of the current deficit comes from the necessary response to that financial crisis.

That the only ways to deal with the long-term budget problem is to demand that the rich pay their fair share of taxes, and to slow down soaring health-care costs.

And that, at a deeper level, the increasingly lopsided distribution of income and wealth has robbed the vast working middle class of the purchasing power they need to keep the economy going at full capacity.

“We preserved the investments we need to win the future,” he said last night. That’s not true. The budget he just approved will cut Pell grants to poor kids, while states continue massive cutbacks in school spending — firing tens of thousands of teachers and raising fees at public universities. The budget he approved is cruel to the nation’s working class and poor.

It is impossible to fight bullies merely by saying they’re going too far.

You Thought the Koch Brothers Were Bad? Turns Out They're Even Worse Than You Thought

TEA PARTY AND THE RIGHT  

from AlterNet / By Adele M. Stan

119 COMMENTS

 

Charles and David Koch's reach into virtually every aspect of political, economic and physical life on the planet is probably greater than you thought possible.

April 5, 2011  |  

 

You knew they were big. You knew they were evil. From the union-busting actions of their minions in Wisconsin and Ohio to their war on health-care reform, to their assault on the environment and their attacks on the science of climatology, Charles and David Koch have earned their place as the focus of progressives' scrutiny in the age of the Tea Party -- the destructive and regressive movement they bankroll. But a new report from the Center for American Progress Action Fund shows that, as bad as you thought the Kochs were, they're actually worse. And their reach into virtually every aspect of political, economic and physical life on the planet is probably greater than you thought possible.

In The Koch Brothers: What You Need to Know About the Financiers of the Radical Right, author Tony Carrk, policy director of the CAP Action War Room, lays out a case that is breathtaking in its scope, showing how the Koch brothers are using their billions with the aim of reshaping the global economic system in such a way as to enrich themselves and their heirs at the expense of most other inhabitants of the planet.

While much of the report will have a familiar ring (especially to readers of AlterNet, and CAP Action's own ThinkProgress), The Koch Brothers also addresses elements of the Koch agenda far beyond the well-trodden turf of Americans for Prosperity's organizing against health-care reform or the pollution rap against Koch Industries, the second-largest privately held corporation in the United States, which the billionaire brothers command.

The Kochs and the Global Economy

Consider, for instance, the Kochs' role in the financial business. You thought Koch Industries was just a high-polluting oil-and-gas-based conglomerate? Add in the part played on Wall Street by Koch Supply & Trading, and the depth of the Koch imprint on the economy is revealed. From Carrk's report:

First, the Koch brothers fought efforts to give the Commodity Futures Trading Commission more oversight over speculative trading, whereby companies can artificially inflate prices on things such as oil, during the Wall Street reform debate. One of the Koch companies—Koch Supply & Trading—takes part in oil and derivatives trading. We should point out that oil speculation has reached an all-time high at the same time gas prices continue to skyrocket.

Then look at a recent position pushed by Americans for Prosperity, the Tea Party-allied astroturf group founded and funded by David Koch (and whose sibling organization, the Americans for Prosperity Foundation, he chairs):

Similarly, Americans for Prosperity supports the House continuing resolution that cuts spending by $61 billion. Those cuts would reduce the budget for the CFTC by one-third. Make no mistake: Gutting the CFTC or limiting its authority would be a boon to Wall Street businesses that use complex financial instruments. But while the result is more profits for oil companies, it means everyone else pays more at the pump.

Okay, now have a look at the Kochs' recent direct contributions to political candidates:

The Kochs donated directly to 62 of the 87 members of the House GOP freshman class...and to 12 of the new members of the U.S. Senate.

No wonder, then, how that continuing resolution -- the means for funding the government when a budget has not been passed into law -- managed to get through the House. (It was subsequently rejected by the Senate, setting the stage for a possible shutdown of the government at the end of this week.) Those 62 Koch-backed freshmen are essentially driving the agenda of the House Republicans, because together they form a large enough bloc to prevent House Speaker John Boehner from amassing a majority on any piece of legislation, should they choose to, despite the 2010 Republican victories that handed control of the House to the GOP.

It should be noted that such "complex financial instruments" as those mentioned above had much to do with the 2008 Bush crash of Wall Street. The report reminds us that "from September 2007 to May 2009, American 401(k) and individual retirement accounts lost a total of $2.7 trillion." But if the Kochs had their way, Social Security would no longer be financed by the federal government, and would instead be invested on Wall Street -- a boon for financiers such as they. Too bad if your account takes a hit that lands you on the curb.

And while we think of Wall Street as an American institution, when Wall Street sneezes, the world gets a cold. The Bush crash set in motion a global recession. Less oversight of the financial shenanigans known as derivatives (or "complex financial instruments") all but guarantees further crashes.

The Brothers Koch and the Body Politic

If you read the whole of the CAP Action report, you'll see how the Koch influence on the nation's politics is compounded and leveraged through a combination of the brothers' direct contributions to candidates, their investment in astroturf groups such as Americans for Prosperity and FreedomWorks (which do political organizing), and their funding of right-wing think tanks, which send policy position papers daily to the in-boxes of senators, representatives and their aides. Carrk identified some 85 right-leaning think tanks that received a collective $85 million from the Kochs over the course of the last 15 years. These include the Cato Institute, of which David Koch was a founder, and other well-known outfits, such as the Federalist Society and the Heritage Foundation.

But that's not all:

Charles and David Koch and their company, Koch Industries, do not limit their political donations to right-wing think tanks and advocacy groups. They also donate millions directly to candidates. Since 1990, the Koch network has donated $11 million to federal candidates, $9.8 million, or 89 percent, of which went to Republicans.

In Congress, the donations are well-targeted. Take, for example, the House Commerce and Energy Committee, whose imprint on legislation has a direct effect on Koch Industries' core businesses. (Koch's Flint Hill Resources, LLC, according to the report, "has a combined crude oil processing capacity of more than 800,000 barrels of oil per day.") From the report:

The Kochs have contributed significantly to the House Energy and Commerce Committee. In fact, they are the single-largest oil and gas donor to members of the committee, contributing $279,500 to 22 of the committee’s 31 Republicans and $32,000 to five Democrats. Tim Phillips, the head of Americans for Prosperity, even co-authored an op-ed with chairman Fred Upton (R-MI), detailing how Congress could stop the EPA from ensuring a cleaner environment.

At the state level, the Koch influence is every bit as corrosive as it is at the national level, Carrk tells us.

The Koch network donated $1.2 million to help elect conservative Republican governors last year, including Wisconsin’s Scott Walker and Ohio’s John Kasich, both of whom are trying to take away collective bargaining rights. During the fight in Wisconsin, Americans for Prosperity ran an ad and orchestrated protests to support Gov. Walker’s union busting and orchestrated pro-Walker demonstrations. Americans for Prosperity also started a Web site urging people to “Stand with Governor Kasich.”

And that's not even counting the money the brothers donate to candidates for state legislatures, or to support ballot measures designed to enrich them and their heirs. Carrk reports:

Data from the National Institute for Money in State Politics show that from 2003 to 2010, the Koch brothers, as well as their companies, employees, and affiliates, have donated $5.2 million to state candidates and ballot measures in 34 states. $3.4 million of those donations, or 65 percent, went to Republican candidates. Another $1 million, or 20 percent, went to one ballot initiative: the effort to overturn California’s clean energy law, AB 32.

Heck, as AlterNet reported, Americans for Prosperity was celebrating Scott Walker, the union-busting governor of Wisconsin, back when he was a mere county commissioner. In 2008, Walker served as the emcee for a ceremony by the Wisconsin chapter of the AFP Foundation -- at which the organization's "Defender of the American Dream" award was conferred upon Rep. Paul Ryan, R-Wis., who now chairs the House Budget Committee. Ryan this week proposed a budget plan for 2012 that would privatize Medicare and slash Medicaid.

Much, Much More

In addition to a narrative on the duo's activities in the political sphere, The Koch Brothers: What You Need to Know About the Financiers of the Radical Right serves up a bevy of lists and graphics that offer a range of facts and figures in an easy-to-grok form. There's a list of all the freshman congressional representatives who have received Koch campaign dollars, and the dollar amounts they received. Those 85 Koch-funded think tanks are listed, with total-donations-per-tank noted next to their names. A map of the U.S. shows the states in which Koch Industries has facilities (nearly all 50). Another highlights the 32 states in which Americans for Prosperity has a state chapter.

There's also a comprehensive listing of all the Koch Industries subsidiaries and what they make or sell, as well as a detailed section on the pollution and environmental infractions for which the conglomerate is responsible.

If you're one of those people who like to be scared out of your wits, you'll find the CAP Action report better than Wes Craven's latest offering. Just consider this:

The significant victories the billionaire Koch brothers chalked up for their ideological and business interests in the 2010 elections is only a precursor of what is to come. The Koch brothers have already pledged to raise $88 million through their considerable network for policy and political projects for the 2012 election cycle.

The report can be downloaded here (PDF), for free.

Michigan Moves Against Governor’s “Financial Martial Law” Bill

from OB Rag, March 18, 2011

 
A crowd armed with signs gathers at a rally in Lansing on Wednesday, March 16, 2011, to protest Gov. Rick Snyder's budget. / SUSAN TUSA/ Detroit Free Press

After Thousands March in Michigan, Recall of Governor Floated

By Ian Millhiser /

ThinkProgress / March 17, 2011

Yesterday, thousands of Main Street Movement protesters marched on the Michigan Capitol to protest Gov. Rick Snyder’s (R) constitutionally flawed assault on Michigan workers. Michigan’s voters, however, can do far more than simply make their displeasure known to Snyder and his allies in the state legislature. Michigan’s constitution is unusually easy to amend, and Snyder and his allies become eligible for a recall in just over three months.

For the remainder of this article, please go here.

Thousands of Michigan Workers Protest Snyder’s Power Grab

by Mike Hall /aflcionowblog /Mar 16, 2011

More than 5,000—and the crowd is growing—Michigan union, community, education and other activists are on the Lansing Capitol grounds and inside the state House this afternoon to protest Gov. Rick Snyder’s (R) new “financial martial law.”

The Detroit Free Press reports that the crowd chanted “Take Michigan Back” as UAW President Bob King told the crowd, “This is one day in a long battle.”

For the remainder of this article, please go here.

Michigan Governor’s Anti-Union Power Grab Is Unconstitutional

By Ian Millhiser / ThinkProgress / March 16, 2011

Michigan Main Street Movement Protesters March Against Gov. Snyder’s “Financial Martial Law” Bill

Although Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker’s (R) anti-union crusade has received the biggest headlines, Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder (R) is poised to sign an even more drastic assault on working Americans into law. Last week, the Michigan legislature passed a “financial martial law” bill that allows Snyder to appoint “emergency financial managers” with the power to terminate collective bargaining agreements:

Contracts & Collective Bargaining Agreements. The bill would authorize the emergency manager to reject, modify, or terminate one or more terms and conditions 0f an existing contract.

After meeting and conferring with the appropriate bargaining representative and, if in the emergency manager’s sole discretion, a prompt and satisfactory resolution were unlikely to be obtained, the emergency manager could reject, modify, or terminate one or more terms and conditions of an existing collective bargaining agreement.

There’s a pretty serious problem with this power grab, however — invoking it would violate the Constitution. The Constitution forbids state laws “impairing the Obligation of Contracts.” This provision provides a robust limit on a state’s ability to dissolve contracts between the government and a private party. As the Supreme Court explained in United States Trust Co. v. New Jersey, state laws impairing such contracts must be “reasonable and necessary to serve an important public purpose.”

The bill does contain some language requiring the emergency manager and the state treasurer to determine that they are not violating this constitutional limit before a collective bargaining agreement can be blown up, but Snyder’s own budget gives the lie to any claim that an assault on working Americans is “necessary” to ensure that Michigan governments can pay their bills. Snyder proposed a massive $1.73 billion business tax cut even as he was arguing that his anti-union power grab was necessary to restore the state’s fiscal balance.

The consequences of Snyder’s actions could be stark. If a state is free to break contracts whenever they feel like it, than no one will agree to do business with the state. Investors will refuse to buy the state’s bonds, and state contractors will demand all payments upfront out of fear that the state will accept their work and then tear up the contract requiring the workers to be paid. Creditors will charge the state enormous interest rates to secure against the risk that the state will just waive its hand and make its obligation to repay go away.

In other words, Snyder is so determined to chip away at collective bargaining, he’s demanded a power that he cannot constitutionally use and that would drive his state into an even deeper financial hole if he ever tried.

The Republican Assault on America

by Andy Cohen on March 18, 2011, from the OB Rag

in: American Empire, Civil Rights, Culture, Economy

An interesting thing is happening in American politics and policy these days.  Almost two months ago, protesters in Wisconsin stood up to have their voices heard in opposition to their newly elected governor’s budget plan that would strip public employee unions of any power whatsoever, a move Governor Scott Walker (R-Koch Industries) has repeatedly called necessary to help solve the state’s looming budget crisis.  It was the first salvo in a national movement by Republicans to promote their corporate agenda and eliminate individual rights and protections.

If you’ve picked up a newspaper or perused the internet in the last two months, you are surely aware of the protests that raged in the capital city of Madison.  Walker insisted it was about the state’s budget, but it wasn’t.  Setting the desire to strip collective bargaining rights aside, the governor’s bill includes a measure empowering his office to sell off any state owned asset to private interests without requiring the approval of the legislature, and without requiring interested parties to bid on the property.  The governor can simply pick his favorite corporate interest and seal the deal with a handshake.

Through Walker’s actions we have gotten a pretty good look at the real motives behind the drastic moves Republicans want to take.  And it has become abundantly clear that what Republicans are trying to force through across the country at the state and federal levels alike have nothing to do with budgetary concerns–as they insist–but everything to do with Republican and Conservative ideology and the desire to effectively neuter the Democratic Party and decimate government in general.

What we’re seeing Republicans attempt under the guise of fiscal responsibility is something far more sinister than we could possibly have imagined.

The so called budget repair bill requires that public employees contribute five percent more toward their pension, and 12% more toward their healthcare, which the unions had readily agreed to.  But at the same time Governor Walker wrote in $160 million in corporate tax breaks into the bill.

In difficult fiscal times it is reasonable to ask EVERYONE to tighten their belts and contribute their fair share.  Republicans are DEMANDING that workers ante up—which they’ve done—but exempting their corporate benefactors from any responsibility whatsoever.  The unions in Wisconsin gave Scott Walker EVERYTHING he was asking for that was directly related to budgetary matters, yet he refused to take ‘yes’ for an answer.

This was not about the budget, and Walker proved it during his 20 minute phone call with “David Koch,” the Buffalo Beast editor who impersonated the billionaire Tea Party patron.  The goal was clearly to enforce Tea Party/Conservative ideology on the entire state of Wisconsin, and worse.

It all started in Wisconsin, but it hardly ends there.  Nearly identical efforts at destroying unions were pushed through the legislatures of Indiana (without success) and Ohio (successfully).

But it gets worse.  Much worse.  In Michigan, newly elected Governor Rick Snyder (R-Bechtel Corp.) is looking to take his power grab even further.  Snyder has forwarded a bill to the senate that gives him the power to unilaterally determine whether a municipality is in dire financial straits, and to assign an “emergency financial manager” to take over and eliminate the duly elected government.  The emergency financial manager would have the authority to break contracts, fire elected officials…..basically this appointed individual would become the Czar of the town, city, county, school board, etc., with virtually no accountability to anyone but the governor.  The administrator could only be removed by a majority vote in Michigan’s House of Representatives and a two thirds vote in the Senate.

The Senate even removed wording put in by the House of Representatives that would have prevented control to be handed over to corporations.  This means that a private company could (and likely would) become the government authority of a municipality, with zero accountability to the people who live there.

The bill has been described even by Republican supporters as “financial Martial Law.”

In Pennsylvania, newly elected Governor Tom Corbett (R-Coal Mining Industry) has done two things that have raised eyebrows:  First, he appointed C. Alan Walker, a major campaign contributor, the CEO and owner of Bradford Energy and Bradford Coal, to head the Department of Community and Economic Development.  According to a story by Pro Publica, Corbett’s budget gives Walker the authority to “expedite any permit or action pending in any agency where the creation of jobs may be impacted.”  That means Walker can bypass any existing environmental regulations and expedite permits for any project that he determines will create jobs, which is very good news for energy companies who can’t afford to be bothered by environmental safety……you know, things such as clean air to breathe, and clean water to drink.

Corbett also eliminated the state’s adultBasic health plan, which provided medical coverage to 41,000 of the state’s low-income workers, with another 500,000 people waiting in line to qualify.  The program was funded by Pennsylvania’s allotment of a $200 billion settlement with Big Tobacco in 2000.  The money–by law–was to be used to “make Pennsylvanians healthier and to fund the health of future generations of Pennsylvanians.”  Corbett decided that the program was not financially sustainable, so he did away with it.

In Florida, newly elected governor Rick Scott (R-Medicare Fraud) has put forward a budget that cuts public education funding by $1.75 billion, while simultaneously instituting $1.6 billion in corporate tax breaks.

And it’s all being fueled by the billionaire Koch brothers, the creators of the astro-turf Tea Party movement; the money behind Americans for Prosperity; the anti-government financial warriors and owners of the largest privately held oil company in the country.  Koch industries, you see, would benefit HUGELY if their anti-government efforts succeed:  It would mean fewer environmental regulations, allowing their oil and chemical interests to pollute as much as they want, saving them millions of dollars in profits.

But even more poignant is the effort by Republican lawmakers to turn the responsibility of governing over to private industry.  Republicans hate government, and it seems that they would like to make it disappear altogether.  Government is supposed to be there to serve its people; those who cannot stand up for themselves in the face of overwhelming corporate power and greed.  Government is supposed to protect its constituency from corporate overreach.  It is supposed to be on the side of the people.  But this latest breed of newly elected Republican lawmaker sees as its duty to promote the welfare of Big Business over the welfare of society and individual rights.  And they are literally looking to put corporate interests in charge of our social welfare.

This is the world where people vote against their own best interests, where corporate greed trumps the will and welfare of the people.  This is the world we now live in.

The Republicans Creed: “To Hell With The Common Folk”

by Frank Thomas

Did I hear correctly that Wisconsin passed legislation aimed at eliminating the bargaining rights of workers? If true, it’s clear the ultra-right is determined to turn America into a governing autocratic anachy with the common folk being common servants at slave wages to serve the viscious avarice of the Kochs and like company. If this isn’t symptomatic of the war being declared on working class Americans, then I don’t know what is. It’s the Republican game plan of shifting the blame, shame, and pain onto the middle-class for systemic economic breakdowns caused by the upper class. I’m very sad for my country!

That the money-influenced bought Gov. Scott Walker and his  promotion of ending the basic rights of unions to represent workers as a way to reduce a state deficit he helped create is disgusting beyond words. The situation  we have now of other crony Republican Governors humping this solution to structural deficit problems – whose  primary origin lies in other directions – reminds me of the film, “Saving Private Ryan” in WWII. George Marshall initiated the assignment of an Army Ranger team to rescue Private Ryan since his three brothers had already been killed in battle actions. The code name given this very dangerous mission by the rescue team was “FUBAR.”

FUBAR meant, “F****d Up Beyond All Recognition.” This is exactly how I would describe the state of our governmental affairs today in handling deficits and a steady trend – that has been accelerating the last three decades (see my study of historical job growth) – of destroying and minimum-wage Wall-Marting of middle class jobs.

Wisconsin is setting a destabilizing societal divisive precedent of entrenching the upper 10% class that owns +85% of all wealth while placing all other blue-collar Americans in a fight to simply economically survive, and this struggle is only made worse without fair, effective union  representation. Is this what thousands of Private Ryan common folk soldiers nobly fought and died for in WWII? An expanding Have and Have Not Divide making us all ultimately the LOSERS ?

People, including the President, will get just what they deserve if they cannot muster the courage to stand up to the monied-interests’ rape  of our democracy by, among other ways, eliminating the average working man´s collective bargaining rights for obtaining a decent standard of living and job growth prospects. Until people unite and say, “Enough is Enough,” cannibalizing middle-class social nets such as Social Security and Medicare/Medicaid will be next on the ultra-right’s hit list. Gov. Scott Walker´s trampling on worker-bargaining rights in concert with job and benefit cut threats is just more nails in the coffin on America’s already sad state of social-cultural cohesion and equity for ALL citizens.

Yes, the right word for our current chaotic, brain-dead approach to  “Saving Our Nation’’  and solving in a banking, fiscally and economically balanced, creative fashion (like North Dakota) the nation’s short and long-term structural deficits can also best be described as  “FUBAR:  F****d Up Beyond All Recognition.”

Benjamin Disraeli (British Prime Minister and Novelist, 1804-1881) long ago principally captured admirably our race to institutionlizing an increasingly morally corrupt, massively class divided society based on money and survival of the fittest:

"Two nations; between whom there is no intercourse and no sympathy; who are as ignorant of each other's habits, thoughts, and feelings, as if they were dwellers in different zones, or inhabitants of different planets; who are formed by a different breeding, are fed by a different food, are ordered by different manners, and are not governed by the same laws." "You speak of -- " said Egremont, hesitatingly, "THE RICH AND THE POOR." 

Frank Thomas
The Netherlands
March 15,2011

Wisconsin Continues Right-Wing Structural Reforms That Have Decimated the United States

Published on Thursday, March 10, 2011 by The Guardian/UK

The real story of Wisconsin is the Republican right's long war to refashion American society without unions

by Mark Weisbrot

With the latest turn of events in Wisconsin, Republican state senators have circumvented the need for a quorum vote on Scott Walker's budget bill by leaving out the fiscal clauses and passing the new laws curbing collective bargaining rights for state and public employees. This dubious tactical manoeuvre strips away the pretence that Walker and his GOP allies have hitherto maintained that the legislative package was necessary to close the state's budget deficit: Walker's objective is, as protesters in Madison have argued all along, to break the last vestige of organised labour strength in the US – the power of public sector workers to organise and negotiate collectively. Stated or not, Walker's ambition is to complete what Ronald Reaganbegan 30 years ago.

 Like Margaret Thatcher in the UK, Ronald Reagan broke the power of trade unions and set the US on a rightward path that has lasted decades. (Photograph: AP)

But the legislative chicanery in Madison's Capitol smacks of desperation. It may yet prove that the right in the US has overreached in its attack on public sector unions, provoking the left/liberal base of the Democratic party, a popular uprising in Wisconsin and elsewhere, and a backlash among the public. The latest Rasmussen poll shows Wisconsin voters disapproving of Governor Scott Walker by a margin of 57% to 43%, with 48% saying they "strongly disapprove". But there are also some positive lessons that American progressives and liberals could learn from the right's political strategy.

It is not just that these rightwing governors like Scott Walker and John Kasich (Ohio), and other Republican leaders, are willing to take risks and fight for what they want. It is also that they fight for structural reforms – reforms that change the political terrain so that it will be more favourable for the next battle and for the "long war" to which they are committed.

Undermining and destroying collective bargaining rights is one of the most important structural reforms that any rightwing government in a developed country can win. And it is not just because, as has been widely noted, that unions contribute money to the campaigns of Democratic candidates. It is much deeper than that. Organised labour is relatively weak now, but for more than a century, it has been the most important force for positive economic reforms in the United States, from the eight-hour work day, to health insurance and Medicare, social security, pensions and minimum wages. The labour slogan, "Unions: the folks who brought you the weekend", is a true but vastly understated historical reality in America.

Ronald Reagan understood this very clearly when he fired 12,000 air traffic controllers soon after taking office in 1981 to break their strike and begin a new era of labour suppression, in which private sector workers all but lost their rights to organise unions. His agenda was so radical that it scared many conservatives – which was one reason he lost the 1976 Republican nomination. Even after he won the presidency in 1980, much of the business class was not convinced that it was possible to revert to 19th-century labour relations – until Reagan did it. Unions were 20% of the private sector labour force when Reagan was elected; they are 6.9% today.

Crushing organised labour was essential to a number of Reagan's other historic achievements, including launching the most massive upward redistribution of income and wealth in US history. During the 25 years after he took office, the after-tax real (inflation-adjusted) income of the richest 1% would more than triple, while the average American's income would barely grow at all. But there was so much more that he accomplished in the world of rightwing ideas – on foreign policy, tax reform and more. Without much of a mandate from voters, Reagan was nonetheless a president who transformed the world, perhaps more than any single person in the second half of the 20th century. Unfortunately for the world, the changes that he led made most people worse-off – and in places like Central America, tens of thousands were killed by the dictators, death squad governments and "freedom fighters" that he championed.

Contrast the leadership of Reagan and even today's far less skilled Republicans to their counterparts on the Democratic side. Bill Clinton also fought for structural reforms. His top legislative priority during his first year in office was fighting for Nafta, which helped to further undermine labour in the United States. By creating the World Trade Organisation and implementing welfare reform and financial deregulation, Clinton continued the rightwing structural changes of the Reagan era – so much so that there wasn't much left for George W Bush to do when he took office. Bush tried to go after social security, but was defeated. (Clinton had a very similar plan for partial privatisation and cuts to social security, but had also backed off under political pressure.)

Now we come to President Obama, who really did have a mandate for change, as the majority of the electorate finally rebelled against nearly four decades of rightwing reforms and the pain and anxiety caused by the Great Recession. One structural reform that Obama had promised in his campaign to support was the Employee Free Choice Act, which would have gone a long way towards restoring the collective bargaining rights that Reagan had destroyed. President Obama quickly backtracked on this promise.

On healthcare, Obama also retreated from his pledge to support a public option – which was not so much a structural reform in itself as merely an opening to the structural healthcare reform that this country needs. Real healthcare reform would be a vital progressive structural change, not least because it would eliminate the long-term deficit problem in the United States and thereby remove the main pillar of the rightwing budget cuts agenda.

The list could go on, but my point is not to attack Obama. He is simply representative of Democratic political leadership after nearly four decades of rightward drift, which has been helped along by conservative structural reforms. This is something that the pundits get wrong every day: it is not because this is an inherently conservative country that liberal leadership is so weak. Although polling results fluctuate widely with media coverage and the framing of the polling questions, for decades there have been polls showing majorities in favour of real healthcare reform (Medicare for all), deep cuts in military spending, an end to US military intervention abroad, increased taxes for the rich, government spending to increase employment (as needed now) and most of the progressive agenda.

The problem lies not in the people but in the corridors of power, in the media and the Congress and the many institutions – including liberal ones – that have been shifted rightwards by strategic efforts over the last 40 years. That is why progressives find themselves fighting defensive battles, as in Wisconsin – while the right, which has neither the presidency nor the Senate – plays offence. It will take some time to get to the point where progressive structural reforms are on the agenda.

But that time will come, and the mass uprisings in support of collective bargaining are a great and inspiring start where new leadership and organising will emerge. Inshallah (God willing), as they say in Egypt.

© 2011 Guardian News and Media Limited

Mark Weisbrot is Co-Director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research (CEPR), in Washington, DC. He is also co-author, with Dean Baker, of Social Security: The Phony Crisis. E-mail Mark: [email protected]

more Mark Weisbrot

How Republicans Are Using Budget Crisis to Impose Privatization

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Koch Family Foundations

From SourceWatch

Koch Family Foundations consist of the David H. Koch Foundation, the Charles G. Koch Charitable Foundation, and the Claude R. Lambe Charitable Foundation. ^[1]

Billionaire brothers Charles (L) and David Koch

Funding for the foundations comes from the conglomerate Koch Industries, the "nation's largest privately held energy company, with annual revenues of more than $25 billion. ... Koch Industries is now the second largest family-owned business in the U.S., with annual sales of over $20 billion."

"The company is owned by two of the richest men in America," David H. Koch and Charles G. Koch, who are described as "reclusive billionaires", who have a combined personal fortune estimated at more than $3 billion and who have emerged as major Republican contributors in recent years. ... Both David and Charles Koch are ranked among the 50 richest people in the country by 'Forbes'."

The Koch brothers control the three family foundations that have "lavished tens of millions of dollars in the past decade on 'free market' advocacy institutions in and around Washington."^[2][3]

The foundations are financed via the oil and gas fortunes of Fred C. Koch, a founding member of the John Birch Society. David is a libertarian who "provides a significant amount of funding for the Cato Institute's $4 million annual budget."

Curtis Moore's Rethinking the Think Tanks (subtitled How industry-funded 'experts' twist the environmental debate) appeared in the September/October 2002 issue of Sierra magazine. Moore states that, "The views will seem to be coming from an independent think tank -- the Cato Institute or Citizens for a Sound Economy (CSE), for example ... behind these groups stands the [Koch] brother's vast fortune."

In fact, Charles Koch is a co-founder of Cato in 1977 and David helped to launch Citizens for a Sound Economy in 1986. This, says Moore, is the brothers simply following in "dad's footsteps: Fred Koch was a charter member of the ultraconservative John Birch Society in 1958."

Contents [hide] 1 Finances 2 Funding libertarian organizations 3 Organizations funded 4 Contact 5 Related SourceWatch articles 6 External links 7 References

Finances

According to their filings with the Internal Revenue Service (available at guidestar.org), the Koch Family Foundations owned combined assets of more than $60 million in 2001 and gave away $9,071,793, almost all of it to libertarian causes:

• The Charles G. Koch Charitable Foundation had assets of $31,403,724 and gave away $4,589,825.
• The David H. Koch Charitable Foundation had assets of $23,204 and gave away $2,821,022.
• The Claude R. Lambe Charitable Foundation had assets of $29,237,598 and gave away $1,660,946.

Funding libertarian organizations

The Claude R. Lambe Charitable Foundation is one of Koch Family Foundations. Several of the organizations in the list below were founded by one of two Koch brothers, Charles G. Koch or David H. Koch to pursue their ideological agenda.

Organizations funded

Below is a list of recipients listing the cumulative amount, unadjusted for inflation, granted by the Claude R. Lambe Charitable Foundation[1]

1) Cato Institute $8,450,000
2) Citizens for a Sound Economy Foundation $6,025,375
3) George Mason University $2,311,149
4) George Mason University Foundation, Inc. $2,074,893
6) Heritage Foundation, The $1,004,000
7) Institute for Justice $1,000,000
8) Foundation for Research on Economics and the Environment $810,000
9) Reason Foundation, The $642,000
10) Federalist Society for Law and Public Policy Studies, The $504,000
12) Institute for Humane Studies $455,000
13) Pacific Research Institute for Public Policy $385,000
14) Washington Legal Foundation $350,000
15) Capital Research Center $340,000
16) Competitive Enterprise Institute $254,460
20) Ethics and Public Policy Center, Inc. $190,000
22) National Center for Policy Analysis $175,000
23) Citizens for Congressional Reform Foundation $175,000
24) Manhattan Institute for Policy Research, Inc. $125,000
25) American Legislative Exchange Council $120,000
26) Acton Institute for the Study of Religion and Liberty $115,000
28) Political Economy Research Center, Inc. $80,000
29) Media Institute $60,000
30) National Foundation for Teaching Entrepreneurship $60,000
31) University of Chicago $59,000
32) Defenders of Property Rights $55,000
33) University of Kansas Endowment Assocation $50,000
36) Texas Public Policy Foundation $44,500
37) Center for Individual Rights, The $40,000
38) Heartland Institute $40,000
39) Texas Justice Foundation $40,000
40) Institute for Policy Innovation $35,000
42) Center of the American Experiment $31,500
43) Atlas Economic Research Foundation $28,500
44) Young America's Foundation $25,000
45) Henry Hazlitt Foundation $25,000
47) Atlantic Legal Foundation $20,000
48) National Taxpayers Union Foundation $20,000
49) Families Against Mandatory Minimums $20,000
50) Philanthropy Roundtable $19,200
51) Free Enterprise Institute $15,000
52) John Locke Foundation $15,000
53) Hudson Institute, Inc. $12,650
54) Alexis de Tocqueville Institution $12,500
55) National Environmental Policy Institute $12,500
56) Washington University $11,500
57) Pacific Legal Foundation $10,000
58) American Council for Capital Formation $10,000
60) Institute for Political Economy $8,000
62) State Policy Network $6,500
64) Fraser Institute, The $5,000
65) Mackinac Center, The $5,000
66) Institute for Research on the Economics of Taxation $5,000
68) Institute for Objectivist Studies $5,000
69) Americans for Prosperity

Some additional recipients by amount granted by the Charles G. Koch Foundation http://www.mediatransparency.org/recipientsoffunder.php?funderID=9

David H. Koch Charitable Foundation $2,000,000
Fred C. & Mary R. Koch Foundation $1,097,000
Bill of Rights Institute $992,000
Mercatus Center $400,000

Contact

URL: http://www.kochind.com

Related SourceWatch articles

• Conservative foundations
• Foundations and Funders
• Koch Industries
• Oil industry
• Americans for Prosperity (Koch-funded conservative political advocacy group)
• Charles G. Koch
• David H. Koch

External links

• Koch Industries and the Pollution of the Bush White House, Parts I & II; on-line article includes source links.
• "Ari & I; White House Press Briefing with Ari Fleischer related by Russell Mokhiber regarding relationship between White House and Koch Industries, May 3, 2001.
• http://www.mediatransparency.org/funderprofile.php?funderID=9
• Koch Family Foundations, Buying a Movement section of People For the American Way website, accessed April 2004.

References

1. ↑ Media Matters Action Network Who's Funding the Conservative Movement?, accessed March 1, 2011
2. ↑ Media Matters Action Network Who's Funding the Conservative Movement?, accessed March 1, 2011
3. ↑ Robert Parry [htp://www.questia.com/PM.qst?a=o&d=5002269834 What Wouldn't Bob Dole Do for Koch Oil?], The Nation, Vol. 263, August 26, 1996

It’s Time to Support Our Employees

By Rocky Neptun

The greatest threat of the 21^st Century is not terrorism or religious fanaticism or nationalism….. it is concentrated power – both political and economic – within the corporate state. That very power, concentrated in an elite, an oligarchy, whether national or local, is an interlocking system of wealth, politics, media, and corporations whose major purpose is to destroy the ability of individual citizens to organize together for the common good through the mechanism of government.

   Their goal is unregulated greed, poverty wages, the right to pollute, the ability to sell dangerous drugs and unsafe products, the isolation and powerlessness of each citizen to vote or bargain or even plead in the media for a better life for their children. Theirs is a feudal world, where the rich and CEO’s are the new Barons and Earls, and people are trapped in stratified classes, almost castes, without access to education or economic opportunity.

    They seek hierarchy, where they and their children will always be on top of the pyramid. A return to the social tyranny of Dickens’ day, when to be poor was a moral sin, a personal failure and a crime against society. They pretend to favor a “market” system, knowing full-well there is no more competition in monopoly capitalism, where large corporations have bought off most politicians and judges and, like Wal-Mart, have the power to overrule city councils.

   God bless the rich, is their motto; no one should have enough to eat, a warm place to sleep, medical aid, a good education, unless they have the money to pay for it. They see virtue in selfishness, weakness in sharing.  They would fight social responsibility, whether it’s feeding a child or saving our human species from extinction because of global warming.

   From Washington, D.C to Madison, Wisconsin to San Diego, the goal of the corporate state is to destroy community government and its regulatory power for the common good. Martin Luther King, Jr. is long gone, the Civil Rights movement tamed, the national unions defanged and almost irrelevant with over 40 years of corporate bought anti-union legislation and managerial intimidation, the Democratic Party, run by opportunists and political whores has drummed its left-wing into submission or flight, people of faith who once fought systemic injustice, what St. Paul called “social sin” as opposed to individual sin, now hide, writing an occasional check for charity and what was once the “liberal class,” as Chris Hedges calls it, has become a useless hodge-podge of designer causes, identity ghouls and mouse warriors fighting injustice in their underwear with e-mails.

   The last bulwark against the corporate state, the last vestige of an organized group of people of conscience, who see value in the public commons – whether it is libraries, free recreational facilities, public schools, health clinics, public transportation, unadulterated food, safe working conditions, clean air and water, or a safe haven for those to fragile, mentally or physically, to survive in dog-eat-dog corporatism – are the public employee unions. That is why they are under attack in Madison and San Diego.

   The newly elected Governor of Wisconsin, elected with millions of corporate dollars, taking a playbook from the oligarchy in San Diego, has blamed that state’s budget deficit on public employee unions. But unlike our city, where the unions were tamed at the turn of the Twentieth Century, when organizing Wobblies (Industrial Workers of the World) were murdered by police, tarred and feathered by vigilantes and run out of town by the hysteria of the wealth based media, both the city of Madison and the state of Wisconsin have a grand history of struggling for workers. Most of the rights we enjoy today as employees were first secured in Wisconsin.

   For the right-wing governor to propose that public employee unions lose the right of collective bargaining guts the whole purpose of a union - an alliance of employees to secure safe and just working conditions by uniting for a common purpose. This very notion of individuals alone, isolated, powerless in the workplace is what the corporate state has in store for us all – it is their fundamental neo-liberal dogma. To organize for the common good, whether employees for decent wages or citizens fighting pollution in a nearby stream, is bad for business and the mechanism which allows for a social consciousness must be crushed. The very thought of communal responsibility or action for anything that threatens the corporate state, whether it is safe medicine or protection for our neighborhood mom and pop stores, must be made to seem not only impossible, but radical and outside the parameters of the personal capability of any individual.

   San Diego’s Attack on Unions

   San Diego’s oligarchic assault on its public employee unions was by stealth. The Republican game plan, helped by a few self-serving Democratic city council members, was to slowly squeeze every dime into corporate welfare over the years, subsidizing ball parks, hotels, golf courses, infrastructure projects for hundreds of corporations and call it “redevelopment” while under-funding their legal, contractual obligations to pay into the pension accounts of their employees and then, when the whole bait and switch game was discovered blame it on “greedy” city employees.

   It was a win-win situation for the radical right. Bankrupt the city with corporate welfare; then, proclaim the only solution is to turn the services and assets of the city over to the very snake oil salesman and corporate crooks who benefited from the shell game (privatization or outsourcing, they call it) and crush the public employee unions under an Orwellian campaign of media lies and distortions.

   Over and over, like an unattended car alarm, loud, viciously intrusive, repeat the lie. The talking heads parroting the politicians parroting the lobbyists parroting the journalists parroting the accountants parroting the attorneys and back again. An endless chain of articles, sound bites at 10, political speeches, official pronouncements, all designed to inculcate the citizen, like a drill sergeant, to penetrate his or her very psyche: then, in military cadence, repeat the chant …."sound off…who’s at fault..1-2-3….sound off…the unions…1-2-3….” until it reverberates through the consciousness rhythmically and ceaselessly. 

    The real problem with our city, unlike Wisconsin, is that there is no real solidarity between people who work, unionized employees and the struggle against pitiful wages in the San Diego labor market – the worst cost of living to wages ratio of any major city in the nation. Where were the public employee unions when the grocery workers went on strike in 2003? Where has the AFL-CIO Labor Council been all these years as the average San Diegan’s wages have stagnated and lost ground due to inflationary pressures? Jerry Burkiewicz, head of the Council for many years, can take a flush job with Sempra Corporation, which exploits its monopoly energy position, lies to government regulators and bribes Mexicans politicians so they can pollute without penalty, but he has never agitated or called for a living wage for all who work in San Diego.

   The problem with unions in San Diego is that unlike the Wobblies, who say an injury to one employee is an injury to all employees, most unions follow the corporate model of bottom line economics and “what’s in it for me” advocacy. First, the union officials take care of themselves, then their members, and then political allies. And the rest of us who work for a living; well, we’re on our own, isolated, without any bargaining power – just like the governor of Wisconsin wants for his employees.

   But in spite of the limitations and often myopic view taken by union leaders, the rank and file members of the public employee unions are our teachers, librarians, nurses, trash collectors, lifeguards and hundreds of other taskers whose collective responsibility is to build our common capital, the life blood of society which cannot be commodified. It is neighborhood spirit, history, culture, attitude, a shared narrative of belonging and apportionment as members of a community, compassion and empathy, fairness and justice, and, ultimately, a sense of subjective purpose, personhood which cannot be bought and sold in a corporate state.

   Public employees work for us, not Wal-Mart. As their employers, we should follow the Golden Rule, not the corporate rule, and treat them as we would want to be treated. In San Diego, we have been silent far too long in defense of these wonderful, vital community members.

      *****

Rocky Neptun is director of the San Diego Renters Union.

Sharron Angle Preached "Second Amendment Solutions": Now the Chickens Have Come Home to Roost

by John Lawrence

Right wing politicians like Sharron Angle openly talk about "second amendment solutions." They advocate using guns if the ballot box doesn't work for you. Today the chickens came home to roost as Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords and several other innocent victims including a 9 year old girl were gunned down at a Tucson, AZ shopping center. This is the result of incendiary hate mongering by right wing politicians, hate talk show radio and other hate filled blowhards who don't give a damn what kind of hate filled crap comes out of their mouth.

Sarah Palin had Congresswoman Giffords in her crosshairs with her irresponsible gun related rhetoric:

Back in March 2010, Sarah Palin created a campaign push through her Facebook page against Democrats from conservative districts who had voted for the health care bill -- among them, Rep. Gabrielle Giffords (D-AZ), who was shot today. The page used a picture of a map of the United States, with crosshair targets located over 20 districts that were carried by the McCain-Palin ticket in 2008, and whose representatives voted for the health care bill. The picture did not use photos of the members themselves, but instead placed the crosshairs over their geographic districts and included a list of their names below. The page was promoted through Palin's Twitter account with the slogans, "Take Back the 20!" and, "Don't Retreat, Instead - RELOAD!"

Now will Sarah Palin, Sharron Angle, assorted right wing hate filled talk show hosts please stop with their violent rhetoric? I wouldn't count on it. They will continue and point out that this was an act by a random nut that couldn't have been foreseen. But there is an extra dose of poison in the atmosphere in Arizona whether it's the illegal immigration situation, the down and dirty campaign between Harry Reid and Sharron Angle, the Governor's one woman death panel for transplant recipients and on and on. This is not to mention the unemployment and foreclosure situation. The toxicity of this potent brew of hatred will eventually stir some hate filled nut to action. This is Timothy McVeigh all over again.

Here is Palin's "Giffords in the crosshairs" graphic:

Palin and Angle and their Tea Party compatriots need to apologize to the American public and take responsibility for their dastardly hate filled rhetoric which has inevitably caused the tragedy we have witnessed today. These people are selling hate for political advantage, and they need to stop.

And not everybody needs to have access to a gun. Guns need to be taken away from nuts. Homeland security? Public officials are being gunned down by died in the wool Americans. Forget the terrorists. These right wing gun nuts will wreak more havoc in the long run than any so called "terrorists." Because they are the terrorists - domestic terrorists. While we're obssessing about al Quaeda and the Taliban, right wing nuts are wreaking havoc right under our very noses. Where was the FBI on this one? I guess Loughner slipped under their radar. Let's have a sane gun control policy, and damn the National Rifle Association. Six people dead and eighteen wounded. And the idiots at Homeland Security are worried about a "Mumbai style" attack?

Eight Lies the Right Wing Noise Machine Perpetrates About Obama

by John Lawrence

There are viral emails going around containing lies about Obama that the right wing is continually making up. We've all heard the obvious ones: that Obama is a Muslim, that Obama is a socialist, that Obama wasn't born in the US. Yada yada yada. There are, however, a special group of lies about the economy, and these are the ones that are really more serious. These lies are amplified by the right wing noise machine consisting of talk radio (Rush Limpballs, Glenn Beck) and Fox News (Sean Hannity, Bill O'Reilly). Right wing talk radio is all that most people are exposed to since it represents 90% of all talk radio and 100% in many media markets. They are really in the business of making up and transmitting a bunch of lies about the Obama administration. And they get paid really well for doing so. Between them Rush Limpballs and Glenn Beck make some $80 million a year. Hannity and O'Reilly make somewhat less but still in the tens of millions. Right wing billionaires like the Koch brothers make sure that plenty of money is available for right wing bloggers, think tanks and other activities. There is no lack of money to saturate the airwaves and the internet with right wing lies and propaganda. I am indebted to Thom Hartmann for pointing out these eight lies about Obamanomics.

Here are eight lies about the economy.

1) Obama bailed out the banks. No, it was George Bush who started the TARP program. His Treasury Secretary, Hank Paulson, came to Congress and demanded $700. billion, no strings attached, to bail out the banks. On Oct. 3, 2008, The House of Representatives, after rejecting it the week before, approved Treasury's "Troubled Asset Relief Plan." The Senate had already approved the bill, so President Bush signed it into law pronto. On Oct. 14, 2008 Treasury announced that it was putting $250 billion into nine big banks. Lots more capital injections (to smaller banks and some other financial institutions) followed. On Nov. 4, 2008, The Wall Street Journal reported that Treasury was likely to scrap the whole toxic-asset-buying plan. All this happened under President Bush.

2)  Obama raised taxes. No, Obama passed the largest tax cut in the history of country. 40% of the stimulus was in tax cuts.

President Barack Obama talked a lot about economic recovery during his State of the Union address on Jan. 27, 2010, including the benefits of the economic stimulus bill passed last year. The stimulus, formally known as the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, included tax cuts for many Americans, Obama said.

"We cut taxes. We cut taxes for 95 percent of working families. We cut taxes for small businesses," Obama said. "We cut taxes for first-time homebuyers. We cut taxes for parents trying to care for their children. We cut taxes for 8 million Americans paying for college." Democrats applauded, while Republicans were silent for the most part. In one of the unscripted moments of the night, Obama looked at the Republican side of the room, smiled and said, "I thought I'd get some applause on that one."

While Obama gave working families tax cuts, he didn't give them to those who made more than $200 K for a single or $250 K for a couple. Republicans, who are now in the process of demanding extending the Bush tax cuts for those making more than $250 K, were not too happy that Obama's largest tax cut in American history did not include the rich but went mostly to middle class families.

3) Obama tripled the deficit. Bush's last budget included a $1.4 trillion deficit while Obama's first budget included a $1.29 billion deficit so Obama actually reduced the deficit. $9 trillion of the national debt was run up by 3 Republicans: Reagan and the first President Bush who ran up the debt by $4 trillion and George W Bush who ran up the debt by $5 trillion. Obama inherited Bush's built-in deficits attributable to the two wars Bush started, the Bush tax cuts which the Republicans seek to extend not only for the middle class but for the rich as well and the drug benefit for seniors which was unpaid for. In addition Obama was faced with a financial catastrophe second only to the Great Depression which required additionl government spending to get the economy going again.

Only Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton proposed balanced budgets in recent history. When George W Bush came to power, he had a surplus left over from the Clinton administration and proceeded to piss it away post haste. Republicans are enamored by Jude Wanniski's Two Santa Claus Theory which is that Republicans should spend like drunken sailors when Republicans are in power and then scream about the deficit once Democrats are elected. This is exactly what they have done and what they are doing today.

4) The stimulus didn't work.  According to the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office the  stimulus created between 1.4 million and 3.3 million jobs. Republicans ran on bringing jobs into their districts which were created by the stimulus and then lost no time denouncing the stimulus. The stimulus saved many jobs at the local level including teachers, police and firemen. Now that Republicans hold the purse strings, expect massive layoffs at the local level as the Federal government will no longer come to their aid. Also expect a reduction in unemployment benefits. Under Obama and the Democratic controlled House, unemployment benefits were increased fom 26 to 99 weeks. You can kiss that extension bye bye.

5) Businesses will only hire if they get tax cuts. Business really hires to meet demand. They won't hire if there's no demand for their products. They will sit on their cash or buy back stock or invest in speculative investments which is what is happening today. Working people having money creates demand. They can only create demand if they have jobs. When there is more demand, businesses will hire although they might hire more Chinese, Koreans and Indians than Americans. So even if demand should increase, there is no guarantee that that will create more American jobs or put more money into American pockets. American companies today are just as likely to repond to increased demand by using technology or offshoring jobs. They will simply put tax cuts in their pockets. Most "American" corporations' only interest in America is selling into the American market. They are not interested in paying American taxes or providing American jobs. Major "American" corporations sell 50% or more of their products overseas, and most of their production facilities are now located overseas. They are "American" corporations only in the sense they they originated here and are registered here. But that registration can easily and quickly change as we saw when Halliburton moved to Dubai.

6) Obamacare, the health care reform bill, cost $1 trillion. Actually, the health care reform bill cut the projected budget deficit by $138 billion largely by cuts to Medicare Advantage which is the privatized form of Medicare. Medicare Advantage, created by Republicans, represents the stealth privatization of Medicare. The government pays private health care corporations to provide services equivalent to traditional Medicare. Under Bush they were also paying doctors more to see an Advantage patient than they were paying for a doctor to see a traditional Medicare patient. Private health care corporations are spending millions on advertising to lure away seniors from traditional Medicare. Eliminating that "advantage" to the private health care corporations saves the government $138 billion. Although the Medicare Advantage programs seem at first sight to be better than traditional Medicare, they require a gatekeeper doctor to approve a patient's seeing a specialist. This approval is often denied which is a distinct disadvantage over traditional Medicare in which the patient is free to see any doctor or specialist without a gatekeeper's approval. So the private health care corporations are still in the business of denying treatment so they can pay their CEOs hundreds of millions of dollars.

7) Government spending takes money out of the economy.

“Government spending does NOT take money out of the economy, unless it ships it off to fight wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. The vast majority of government spending stays in America. Be it for roads, bridges, technological advances -- like the computer and the Internet -- schools, disaster relief, Medicare, Social Security, etc. That money stays in this economy. It flows through this economy just as well, if not better, than any private sector transfer.

Do you think it disappears? Do you think that sending your tax dollars to DC somehow means the money disappears? It doesn't. It works its way through the economy every bit as well as a private sector purchase.

It also goes to pay salaries of government workers who spend the money here, in this economy.

If you send your money to the CEO of Apple to buy an Ipad, that money goes for his multi-million dollar salary, which he may spend overseas or hide it in offshore accounts. And Steve Jobs outsources 9 in 10 jobs making that Ipad. That money leaves the United States.

Citizens sending their tax dollars to DC creates at least as much economic activity as sending their dollars to CEOs in the private sector. There is no fundamental difference between the two kinds of exchanges. Both are payments for goods and services.

The key is what the money is spent on, who benefits, and if the purchase results in something that will last. The money flow is virtually the same.”

Actually, Obama has done a lot of good things regarding the economy. The one thing that he hasn't been able to accomplish is to bring down the unemployment rate. His failure to create jobs while saving the banks has not played well in middle America. He expected the economy to recove in a reasonable time from the Great Recession without realizing that there have been structural changes in the economy that prevent this from happening. The main structural change is globalization which makes it preferable for many corporations to outsource jobs to wherever in the world labor is cheapest. As consumers in those countries have more jobs and, therefore, more money to spend, corporate profits are increasingly derived from selling into those economies. From the corporation's point of view they will locate their production and marketing facilities wherever they can make the most profit. At this point in time that happens not to be in the US. Without American jobs, American demand for profucts and services will wither. This is what Obama and his economic team have failed to fully comprehend. They seemingly have a greater concern for Wall Street than they have for Main Street.

And the solution to the jobs conundrum may have more to do with increased rather than decreased government spending. This increased spending, however, does not have to be paid for with borrowed money. Corporations who used to pay 40% of government taxes now pay less than 10% putting the tax burden more on American workers. Perhaps, corporations should be taxed just for the privilege of selling into the American market which they are still very eager to do. One way of doing this is to tax the portion of value created by non-American labor. Since corporations have no allegiance to the US in terms of taxes or provision of jobs, they should be taxed on sales of products produced overseas. This will tend to bring jobs back home. 

Macchiavellian Bipartisanship: How the Right Plays Obama's Outstretched Hand

by John Lawrence

Now bipartisanship has been all the rage in Washington especially as espoused by Barack Obama. He came to Washington to bring people together especially Republicans and Democrats. Only problem is the Republicans don't want to play ball. Nevertheless, President Obama persists in an endeavor reminiscent of the labors of Sisyphus. He keeps pushing the ball of bipartisanship up the hill, extending his hand to Republicans, only to have the ball knocked out of his hands and sent bounding back down the hill. Then the Republicans point to it and say, "If only you would consider bipartisanship..."

What is the purpose of bipartisanship when Mitch McConnell, the Senate minority leader, has said repeatedly that his goal is to see that Obama gets defeated in 2012? Is Obama a masochist? Despite enormous and unfruitful efforts at bipartisanship, Obama got his health bill passed in Congress only to hear Republicans complain that they would have supported it if only it had been more bipartisan. This is where Macchiavelli comes in. The Republicans will work to defeat Obama and any legislation which has his stamp on it and then complain bitterly that the only reason they were against it is that it wasn't bipartisan enough. Proof of this is that no Republican voted for it. Surely if it really was a bipartisan bill at least some Republicans would have voted for it, according to their logic. So they aim to profit from defeating Obama and then use his own prodigious efforts at bipartisanship against him by claiming that the reason for their non-support is that Obama was not bipartisan enough as attested to by the fact that Democrats rammed the bill through without Republican support. Hmmm.

This is a Macchiavellian use of logic. Take your opponents rationale and use it against him. Then let the right wing echo chamber, namely millionaires Rush Limpballs, Glenn Beck, Sean Hannity and Bill O'Reilly amplify the falsehood that Obama is not bipartisan despite his claims of being so. Their anticipated result: that a new poll will show that the public believes that despite Republicans' best efforts to be bipartisan, Obama and his lieutenants, Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid, are the most non-bipartisan SOBs the US has ever produced. So they take Obama's vaunted and sincere efforts at bipartisanship and turn them against him. Macchiavelli would have been bowled over in amazement at how clever these Republicans are.

The only problem is that this doesn't solve any problems for the American people. America's elected representatives are completely engaged in a game of political one upsmanship especially the Republicans. They could care less about the American people. Their goal is to win and to win big. Their motivation: money. There is lots of money involved in catering to corporations and right wing billionaires like the Koch brothers. Lucrative lobbying jobs await the winners of the political game when they leave Congress to "spend more time with their family." Their Congressional salaries are only catnip; the real deal is cashing in by pleasing their corporate sponsors. They are for all intents and purposes corporate shills. And it is not only Republicans that go this route. Former House Democratic leader Dick Gephardt lobbies for Goldman Sachs, Visa and the coal industry. Former Senate Democratic leader Tom Daschle - Obama's first choice to head Health and Human Services - is an adviser for a lobbying firm that represents Charles Schwab, Comcast, Lockheed Martin, Verizon and a host of other corporate interests.

Progressive Democrats who aren't shills for corporate interests are few and far between, but they do exist: Dennis Kucinich, Barney Frank and Bernie Sanders (actually a democratic socialist who caucuses with the Democrats), to name a few. Here is the complete list. Alan Grayson and Russ Feingold were defeated in the recent election. They will be missed by the Progressive Caucus. With a Democratic party, many of whom are Republican lites and with greed as a motivating factor for Republicans and at least some Democrats, is it any wonder that Macchiavellianism is the order of the day?

So why does Obama persist in his quixotic quest of "helping the American people" when the other side has stated repeatedly that their only interest is in defeating him in 2012 and the American public be damned? They are playing hardball and Obama is lobbing softballs. I think Obama is most interested in maintaining the decorum he seems to think is befitting the President of the United States. He should channel his inner "Give 'em Hell" Harry Truman. Truman had no problem calling Republicans his "enemies." FDR had no problem railing against the "economic royalists." Obama needs to get tough with Republicans or they will completely marginalize him by 2012. Obama can then join the heroic efforts of Democratic ex-Presidents like Bill Clinton and Jimmy Carter who have done great things after leaving office unlike Republican Presidents who have mostly sat on their hands and made weekly trips to the bank to deposit their dividend checks when they weren't playing golf. Obama must look forward to the day when he's out of office and can do good while doing well. After all Clinton makes a princely sum every year giving speeches while having the satisfaction of saving the world with his Clinton Global Initiative.

Obama has shown a certain timidity when it comes to pushing the envelope of the status quo even though that seems to be what's called for at the present time. He made a miscalculation that the economy would recover by election time 2010, and he was proved wrong. He took Larry Summers' advice which was to bail out the banks and the economy would recover on its own and in the process the American people would get bailed out with only slight direct efforts by the government to do so. This turned out clearly not to be the case and Obama's Republican lite-ism clearly did not work. The stimulus program got watered down by the Republicans who insisted on making it mostly about tax cuts which did absolutely no good in creating jobs. So where does he go from here? Obama could, by executive order, create jobs if he should choose to do so. He could delineate a clear Democratic position instead of letting Republican ideology hold sway and then adopting a lite version of it. He could undertake efforts to mute the effects of the right wing media machine which day after day denigrates his efforts. He could continuously point out the folly of trickle down economics. He could take a stand against tax breaks for the rich. There are many things Obama could do. The question is, will he?

 

America Is Now Officially for Sale

Published on Friday, November 5, 2010 by The Independent/UK

It's the Tea Party spirit distilled: pose as the champion of Joe America, while actually ripping him off

by Johann Hari

The laws and policies of the legislature of the United States of America are now effectively on e-Bay, for sale to the highest bidder. Are you a Wall Street boss who wants to party like it's 2007? Are you a Big Coal baron who wants to burn, baby, burn? Are you an insurance company that wants to be able to kick sick people off your rolls? Meet John Boehner, the most powerful Republican and soon-to-be Speaker of the House. But - of course! - you already have.

Here's an example of how you have worked together. In 1995, the House was going to finally repeal subsidies for growing tobacco, because an addictive cancer-causing drug didn't seem like the most deserving recipient of tax-payers' cash - until Boehner walked the floor of the House handing out checks from tobacco lobbyists to his fellow elected representatives. They changed their minds. The subsidy stayed. Explaining his check-dispensing, Boehner says: "It's gone on here for a long time." So get your bids in: the House is open for business.

To understand what has happened in the mid-term elections, the best guide lies in an unexpected place - the dusty vaults of Hollywood. In 1957, Elia Kazan directed a film called ‘A Face In The Crowd' that read the tea-leaves of the Tea Party back when Sarah Palin was merely a frosty zygote. One morning a poor wandering Arkansas chancer named Larry ‘Lonesome' Rhodes is lying passed out on a jail cell where the local sheriff has detained him overnight. A pretty young radio producer arrives and asks if he'd like to tell her a story to be played on her show where ordinary folks speak to ordinary folks. He sings and rambles and offers corn-poke homilies. The clip is a huge hit - and he is soon given his own show, filled with country music and country wisdom which then shoots off into the stratosphere.

When Lonesome Rhodes becomes one of the biggest stars on US television, he starts receiving offers. Advertisers say that if he endorses their lousy products, they'll shower him with millions. He knows how to sell to ordinary people - and he is pushed to go further. They ask him to sell the political causes that will make them richer too. He starts railing against social security and the old age pension and anything that taxes the rich to help the rest. He uses the tunes and slanguage of working class Americans to get them to emotionally identify with the people who are screwing them over. He's brilliant at it - a gurning hyperactive huckster, saying that support and security for ordinary Americans is a betrayal of America. He makes himself rich by lying to the people he came from.

Fast-forward to 2010. John Boehner came from a poor family of twelve children, and heroically worked three jobs (including as a janitor) to put himself through business school. But when he got to elected office, it turned out that there was alot more money to be reaped from serving the interests of rich people than serving the people he came from. He took money from the insurance companies, and voted to deny healthcare coverage to sick children and to the people who hurried to the World Trade Centre on 9/11 to try to dig people from the wreckage, exposing them to deadly toxins. He took money from defense contractors, and supported every war going. He tirelessly champions the overdog, while hoovering up their cash and flying on their private jets to some of the most luxury resorts in the world.

In the campaign, Boehner said his priority was to "stand up for ordinary Americans" against "the elite", and to "cut the deficit as a matter of urgency." So what has been his first priority as Speaker? To fight furiously to keep the gigantic Bush tax cuts for the elite richest two percent of Americans, even though this alone will add two trillion dollars to the deficit over the next decade. It's very revealing. He immediately dumps on his propaganda causes - ordinary Americans, and the deficit - while slavishly serving his one true cause: serving the interests of rich people like the ones who happen to pay for his campaigns and his jaunts.

This is the story of the modern Republican Party. They use the cultural signifiers of the good people of Middle America to get their emotional identification, meanwhile they pillage Middle America and redistribute its wealth to the rich. Sarah Palin is the queen of this cause. She presents herself as a warrior for hockey moms and Momma Grizzlies, while spreading fictions to stop those very people supporting social programs that could save their lives: remember her claim that Obama's healthcare plan involved setting up "death panels" to execute the old and disabled? Her true slogan is Shill, Baby, Shill.

This is all made easy for Republicans by the fact that most of the Democratic Party slithers in the same trough of corruption, begging from the same billionaires and corporations, and so can deliver only a tiny notch more for ordinary Americans. This makes left-liberal ideas look discredited, when in truth they are largely discarded. To name just one: the very high unemployment in the US has been presented by Republicans as proof that economic stimulus doesn't work. But in reality, Obama's stimulus was appallingly small, and was counter-balanced by the fact that the individual states were slashing spending and laying people off. Once you add the two together, there has been no net stimulus in the US economy at all.

The essence of the Tea Party - and the relevance of ‘A Face In The Crowd' - can be seen most plainly in Glenn Beck. Just over a decade ago, he was a drug-taking, pro-abortion, perpetually drunk DJ on morning radio. One of his famous "pranks" was to ring up the wife of a radio-show rival a few days after she had a miscarriage and taunt her about her loss. But then he stumbled into political commentary. After 9/11, Beck began to articulate a blubbery, blubbering hysteria, calling for the shooting of Michael Moore and the poisoning of Nancy Pelosi. He announced that any government program helping ordinary Americans was a step towards "communism", and prophesied: "The country may not survive Barack Obama? If he does fundamentally transform America, we're done. You don't have to worry about a 2012." He shot up to be the second highest rated show in cable news, and assembled hundreds of thousands to a rally on the Mall. At times seems quite conscious of the manipulation: "They're getting so tired of me saying there's a Marxist in the White House, I gotta take it up a notch," he reportedly said to one private audience.

But a few years ago, he began to do something stranger still. He announced that the US was going to experience hyperinflation and savings would be rendered worthless - so his viewers should transfer their cash into gold. But not just any gold. No: Obama was probably going to seize gold bullion and nationalize it, he warned, so they should buy gold coins. "I think people are running out of options on what, you know, could be worth something at all. You have to think like a German Jew, 1934," he said.

Meanwhile, Beck's program on Fox News is sponsored by a company called Goldline that sells gold coins. As it turned out there is no hyperinflation and no Obama plan to seize bullion. Yet Beck's claims - and constant praise for Goldline - have made him and the company considerably richer. The only people who are worse off are Beck's viewers: the investigative journalist Dana Milbank looked at 2008 and calculated that they would have seen a higher return if they had kept their money in cash than in golden coins. A court in Missouri ruled a few years ago that Goldline pressured a woman in her eighties to invest $230,000 in gold coins actually worth half that sum. The Securities and Exchanges Commission are investigating the company, and Senator Anthony Weiner says Beck and other on-air promoters "are either the worst financial advisors around or knowingly lying to their loyal viewers." It's the Tea Party spirit distilled: pose as the champion of Joe America, while ripping him off.

There is, however, one significant difference from ‘A Face In The Crowd'. At the end of the film - spoiler alert - Lonesome Rhodes is finishing a show and, as the end credits roll and the music swells, he rants against his viewers, believing they can't hear him. But in the control box, a producer deliberately flips a switch. Suddenly millions hear him say: "Those morons out there. I'd give ‘em dog food and make ‘em think it's steak. Good night you stupid idiots. Good night you miserable slobs. They're like a bunch of trained seals - I toss ‘em a fish and they lap it up." John Boehner and Sarah Palin and Glenn Beck are ridiculing their followers just as crudely. Can't somebody at Fox flip the switch?

© 2010 The Independent

Johann Hari is a columnist for the London Independent. He has reported from Iraq, Israel/Palestine, the Congo, the Central African Republic, Venezuela, Peru and the US, and his journalism has appeared in publications all over the world. 

What Obama Should Not Do: Wimp Out to Republicans

by John Lawrence

Obama's demeanor subsequent to the midterm elections has been a disappointment. Does he really have to be so honest as to describe the results as a "shellacking," a quote which was widely reported in the press. The Republicans, meanwhile, are gleefully reporting the election results as a repudiation of Obama's policies and an endoresement of theirs, a pronouncement that is hardly supported by the polls which show that the voters disapparove of Republicans even more than they disapprove of Democrats. What the election results truly show is that the voters are angry and upset about the state of the economy and expressed this by throwing incumbents out. What the results also show is that the electorate is extremely volatile having overwhelmingly voted for Obama and the Democrats two years ago and then overwhelmingly voted against them a few days ago. They could do the same thing in 2012 throwing the bums out again only this time the bums would be Republicans. The lesson is that there should not be too much Democratic handwringing over the election results. They are transitory and ephemeral.

Contrasted with Obama's demeanor and remarks we have Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell who goes on television (repeatedly since the news networks aired portions of his speech over and over) to say that he was not going to compromise in any way with Obama, that the "American People" (McConnell's euphemism for right wing Republicans who are the only legitimate American people as far as he's concerned) want the Republican agenda and that unless Obama kowtows to him and the Republicans and does what he says, there will be no cooperation or compromise. So what does Obama do? He calls a meeting of top ranking politicians in an effort towards bipartisanship. You've already tried that, Mr. President - over and over - and the only result is that the Republicans have kicked sand in your face. You've let the bullies run you over. Finally, will you stop with that? You are not gaining the favor of the American public by wimping out to Republicans. At least 50% of the American public doesn't want anything to do with Republican policies. Why don't you finally stand up for that constituency instead of trying to appease people that don't like you. No one is impressed by a wimp. You'll get even more unpopular unless you stand up to Republicans.

When Mitch McConnell has the unmitigated gall to demand that the President of the United States do as he demands or else, you've got to put that turtle faced bastard in his place or at least have your surrogates do it and forcefully. You seem weak if your only response is to appeal for bipartisanship. The Republicans are playing you. They think they've got your number. They think that you're going to turn the other cheek and only look even weaker to the American people. You've got to stand up to McConnell and the rest and say, "You know, I've talked to a lot of the American people and McConnell is dead wrong if he thinks the American people want the health care legislation repealed. McConnell is dead wrong if he thinks the American people want tax breaks for the rich. What the American people want is more jobs and a better economy and Republicans have blocked every attempt by Democrats to make the economy better. And all they want is tax breaks for the rich even though that will add to the deficit, something they say hypocritically they want to bring down. So pipe down McConnell and you too Boehner. You've blocked and obstructed every attempt by Democrats to improve the economy and to create jobs and despite that, in the first two years of my administration, we've still been able to accomplish historical things for the American people and in particular for the American middle class whose side we firmly are on. You Republicans on the other hand have never met a lobbyist for a major corporation that you didn't hasten to do the bidding of." Put them on the defensive. Let them react to you!

And go on like that, Mr. President. If the Republicans want a fight, let them bring it on. What have you got to lose? The American public is not going to reelect you because you've appeased Republicans. That's at least partly what the enthusiasm gap is all about. Nobody can get too enthusiastic about supporting a wimp. Now is the time to stand up for your core constituencies - black people, Hispanics and young people. If you want to have a chance of being reelected you have to start giving them something and not just campaign rhetoric or at least trying to and then daring the Republicans to vote it down. If they do, it's your job to point this out - that it's the Republicans who are standing in the way of helping the American people and you are doing your darnedest to help them. So you have to show some tangible results. Use executive orders, damn it! And you can unilaterally end the war in Afghanistan. Do it without any further screwing around!

In your first two years in office you didn't do a damn thing to help black people directly. I understand that you wanted to be President of all Americans and not show favoritism towards one group. But the time for that is over. Black unemployment is at twice the levels of white unemployment and Hispanic unemployment isn't much better. Now is the time to end wishy washy rhetoric and do your best to help those most in need. No one has ever been better situated to help black people than you are if you should choose to do it and not feel that you have to not offend the Mitch McConnells and John Boehners of the world. And put some teeth into helping out those who are being foreclosed on; stop worrying about the damn banks! Let judges adjust mortgage terms in bankruptcy for chrissake.

Now is the time to diminish the right wing propaganda machine and rev up the left wing talk machine. Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck and others have practically turned the US into a fascist nation with their extremist rhetoric. This is exactly the course that Hitler followed; only he was just one man. The right wing talk machine in America is a multi-headed hydra, all of whom are well paid for their efforts. According to Newsweek, Rush Limbaugh makes $58.7 million a year for spewing hate and demonizing you! Glenn Beck makes $33 million. Sean Hannity makes $22 million. Bill O'Reilly makes $20 million. What do you make - $400,000? Something is wrong with America when right wing rhetoricians make millions more than the President, and they see their job as destroying the President. I'm not asking you to abandon your reasonable and truthful approach and become a nut case like they are, but attention has to be paid to counteracting this right wing politico-entertainment media machine based on hateful and inflammatory rhetoric. Don't let their sallies go unresponded to, if not by you, then by your surrogates. And don't think that they aren't drawing millions of Americans into what amounts to a right wing cult, the latest manifestation of which is the Tea Party. You need to have an attack dog of a Press Secretary not the mealy mouthed Robert Gibbs.

Finally, Mr. President, don't let Republicans set the rhetorical agenda and then have you react to it. You should set the agenda, rhetorical and otherwise, and then let the Republicans react to you. You should be proactive and put the Republicans in the position of being reactive, not the other way around. You should take the lead. It should be obvious by now that the Republican agenda is to enfeeble you, to demonize you, to emasculate you and to turn you into a whimpering simpering fool. Don't let them do it, for your sake and for ours. If nothing else, go out fighting. Your approach of being conciliatory and compromising is not winning hearts and minds. When the Republicans like McConnell say it's their way or the highway and that their goal is to defeat you in 2012 so they can repeal all the legislation you worked so hard to enact, you can't just sit there and appeal for bipartisanship! Like Harry Truman, you've got to go out there and give 'em hell!

 

Keith Olberman Exposes Republican 'Small Business' Scam

by John Lawrence

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

When Republicans talk about how Obama's proposal to let the Bush tax cuts expire on incomes over $250,000. would hurt small business, they are talking about some really, really huge businesses which are classified as 'small business' for tax purposes only. They are talking about any S  corporation, partnership or sole proprietorship, some of which have incomes of billions of dollars. For example, the Bechtel Corporation, the largest construction company in the world with 2009 revenues of $30.8 billion is classified as a 'small business' for tax purposes. Price Waterhouse Coopers, an accounting firm with $26 billion in revenue in 2009, is classified as a 'small business.' It seems that any business with less than 100 owners can be classified as a small business no matter how many employees or how much revenue they have. Some small businesses are owned by billionaires. Koch Industries, a conglomerate of partnerships with 70,000 employees, owned by the billionaire Koch brothers Charles and David, is classified as a 'small business.'

Last Sunday on Face the Nation Bob Schieffer questioned John Boehner about the fact that Obama's proposed expiration of Bush tax cuts for individual incomes above $250,000. would affect only 3% of small business. Boehner replied yes, but that 3% produced over half the revenues of 'small business.' So in effect what he was saying is that 97% of small businesses would not be affected by the expiration of the Bush tax cuts, and that the 3% that would be affected includes 'small businesses' like the Bechtel Corporation, Price Waterhouse Coopers and the Koch brothers whose revenues are in the tens of billions of dollars. Last year the top 25 hedge funds had average revenues of $1 billion each. No doubt they were all classified as small businesses. And they paid about 17% in Federal taxes because of a tax scam known as 'carried interest.' This was in a year that was one of the worst for most people since the Great Depression. So when Republicans talk about how not extending tax cuts to those with over $250,000. would hurt small business, they are including businesses with revenues in the billions.

Keith Olberman in a special report blew the lid off this Republican scam. Small businesses are not just Mom and Pop stores. In fact most Mom and Pop stores do not have revenues in the billions or even more than the $250,000. limit. Republicans for years have protected 'small businesses' which are owned by billionaires who in return give them generous campaign donations. The Koch brothers, who founded the conservative think tank known as the Cato Institute, contribute mightily to right wing causes. The Republican mantra about small business is just that - a mantra which is as hollow and fake and as much a lie and distortion as most of their other talking points. In fact 'small business,' the supposed jobs generator of the economy has not really created that many jobs. That is another lie and distortion so there is no real need to make 'small business' sancrosanct and to give them generous tax cuts.

This is from the Olberman report:

Fewer than 750,000 people, less than 0.25 percent of the country, would be affected by the top rate, according to Joint Committee on Taxation figures quoted by Olbermann. Owners of such businesses would benefit from continuation of Bush era tax cuts due to expire at the end of this year. Rather than paying corporate taxes, the firms operate as S Corporations, sole proprietorships or partnerships, including limited liability companies that put LLC instead of Inc. at the end of their names. All are considered pass-through structures, in which company profits are passed directly to individual owners, who then pay taxes. Traditional corporations pay taxes on profits and pass along dividends to individuals, who pay taxes on the dividends. Olbermann explained the rules for classification as a small business. “It’s not the income that’s small, it’s not the number of employees that’s small, it’s just the total number of owners that’s small,” Olbermann said. In the case of S corporations, the total number of owners can be 100, he said.

Besides that the individuals who receive the "pass through profits" have many ways of avoiding paying taxes. That's why the tax code is so thick. Their lobbyists have been hard at work making sure that wealthy people pay as little in taxes as possible.

It is time for Obama and the Democrats to take a stand against tax breaks for the very wealthy. Conservatives are never concerned about the deficit when it comes to tax cuts. Letting the Bush tax cuts expire for those making over $250,000. would bring down the deficit by $700 billion over 10 years. Letting the tax cuts continue would give an average of $100,000. to households with an income greater than $1 million. Filers with taxable income of $500,000 to $1 million would still get on average a tax cut of $6,700 compared with pre-2001 rates because their first $250,000. would still qualify for the Bush tax cuts. So even though the wealthy would still get a larger tax cut than most other Americans, they still are not satisfied because it would not be a tax cut on their entire income, only on the first $250,000. of it. Certainly the wealthy, who received most of the benefits from the Bush tax cuts, should be forced to pay their fair share to reduce the deficit. But their whole goal is to avoid paying taxes and to only talk about their concern for deficits in the same breath as ending social programs which help the needy.

Certainly tax cuts should not be given to businesses, small or otherwise, in a blanket fashion a priori in the hopes that they will create jobs. They should only be givern to businesses a posteriori which have actually created jobs, and those tax cuts should be rescinded if the jobs don't last at least five years. Any tax cuts for small business should be fine tuned enough to exclude businesses like Bechtel, Price Waterhouse Coopers and the Koch brothers each of which had 2009 revenues in the tens of billions of dollars.

 

 

 

Right Wing Billionaire and Tea Party Funder David Koch Feels Persecuted

Jonathan Chait

The Sorrow Of The Oligarch

by Jonathan Chait

Senior Editor, from the New Republic

August 27, 2010 | 4:46 pm

 

Right-wing billionaire David Koch feels persecuted:

David Koch, a billionaire whose funding has helped support grassroots organi- zations tied to the tea parties, slammed the “liberal media” today at the Americans for Prosperity (AFP) summit in Washington, D.C. “Over the last year, my brother Charles Koch and I have been attacked non-stop in the liberal media,” he said.

Particular attention was reserved for Jane Mayer’s New Yorker piece, which argued that the Kochs funded groups like AFP for personal gain. Speaking to conference attendees, David Koch said that “the New Yorker article that’s running right now is an absolute slander and a highly inaccurate and dishonest attack on the two of us and our great company, Koch Industries.”

First of all, the most salient fact about Koch is how little media attention he's attracted, given the enormous influence he's wielded upon American politics. I follow politics all day long, and don't think I could have told you a thing about him before I read Mayer's article.

Second, his comment must set some kind of record for unjustified self-pity. Here's a man who inherited a massive business empire. He has been able to spend a gigantic fortune to help bend the political system so as to become more congenial to his own economic interests. And he has, in general succeeded, in the sense that the last thirty years have seen an explosion in income inequality and a reduction in tax rates for people like him.

And yet he feels aggrieved because -- there's an article about him! He feels entitled not only to wield massively disproportionate political influence but to face no scrutiny for it at all.

Conservative Economic Hysteria In 1993 And Today

by Jonathan Chait

Senior Editor

August 18, 2010 | 2:07 pm, from the New Republic

One aspect of the current bout of right-wing economic hysteria that nobody seems to mention is that the exact same thing happened in 1993 when Bill Clinton passed a deficit reduction bill that raised the top tax rate. It was class warfare, socialism or worse. Publications like Forbes and Fortune wrote stories urging rich people to give up their citizenship or flee the country in order to spare themselves Clinton's punitive anti-rich policies. There were bumper stickers depicting the "C" in "Clinton" as a hammer and sickle.

Las Vegas Review-Journal columnist John L. Smith (h/t Eric Kleefeld) digs up a letter from Sharron Angle from that period that reflects the tenor of the conservative worldview:

I and the majority of my fellow Nevadans are sickened by the passage of the recent huge tax increase bill. With YOUR help the quality of life in America has taken another step into the pit of economic collapse. Clinton's mother-of-all tax packages is the world's biggest tax increase ever. It increases government spending by $300 billion, increases the national debt by $1 trillion, it is retroactive to January 1, and probably the most offensive, it schedules 80 percent of the promised spending cuts to take place after the next Presidential election. ...

"Please take the following words of Professor Alexander Tyler to heart. He said, 'A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the voters discover that they can vote themselves a largess from the treasury. From that moment on, the majority will always vote for the candidates promising the most benefits from the public treasury, with the result that a democracy always collapses over loose fiscal policy.'

A couple points. Obviously, none of these predictions came true -- the ballooning of the deficit, the collapse of the economy, the end of democracy. As I've noted before, the climate of opinion around Clinton's economic program is strikingly similar to the climate of opinion around the Affordable Care Act. In both cases, liberals were disappointed at what they considered a watered-down compromise, moderates were very cautious in their praise, and conservatives utterly hysterical in their opposition. The utter failure of the conservative doomsaying to come to pass -- any element of it at all, from the recession to the ballooning deficit and spending to economic collapse and dictatorship -- prompted no rethinking whatsoever on the right. It's just on to the next bout of hysteria with the old one forgotten.

Second, the quotation from "Alexander Tyler" appears to be fictitious. The quote seems to have originated sometime around the middle twentieth century on the American right, with the author's name and exact predictions undergoing numerous changes along the way. The durability of the line suggests a deep fear of economic democracy on the right. After all, in a democracy, people can vote to raise taxes on others and spend money on themselves. The most fundamental element of modern conservative belief is an abhorrence of economic redistribution, and the need to concoct an 18th century prophet to give voice to this fear is a reflection of the centrality of that fear.

San Diego Philanthropist Irwin Jacobs Takes the Pledge But Conservative Philanthropists Charles and David Koch Take the Day

by John Lawrence

The San Diego Union has been reporting a lot on San Diego billionaire Irwin M Jacobs lately starting on August 14. He and wife Joan have singlehandedly saved a number of San Diego institutions like the Symphony and the new Central Library which, if not for their recent $20 million donation, might not even be built. Four days later he was back in the paper again celebrating the 25th anniversary of Qualcomm, the company he founded which is the source of his good fortune. Then the next day he was in the paper again unveiling a $30 million dollar parking plan for Balboa Park that would free up the park's central square and build a parking garage.

The Jacobs' have been major benefactors and philanthropists in San Diego and elsewhere donating to education at UCSD, providing funds for hospitals, radio station KSDS, the Museum of Contemporary Art, the La Jolla Playhouse, the La Jolla library, the Adenoid Cystic Carcinoma Research Foundation, the ACLU and many other arts and cultural charities too numerous to mention. The Jacobs tend to give when and where it can make a significant difference.

Recently they joined Bill Gates and Warren Buffet who have formed a group of billionaires dedicated to giving away half their fortunes. This is from the Telegraph.co.uk:

Mr Buffett is an extremely successful investor and one of the world's richest men, as well as one of its biggest givers to charity. Having pledged to give away 99 per cent of his estimated $47 billion fortune, much of it to the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the so-called Sage of Omaha had wanted to get together a small group of like-minded billionaires to encourage their peers to join the ranks of what he dubbed the "Great Givers". Mr Gates, who has taken on an almost messianic role in advancing philanthropy since relinquishing the reins of Microsoft, needed no persuading to get involved.

Irwin Jacobs was present at that meeting. Probably not present at that dinner were libertarian billionaires Charles and David Koch. Their company Koch Industries makes $100 billion a year and they give mainly to right wing causes. They have become the major thorn in the side of President Obama's administration spending millions on lobbyists and funding think tanks like the Cato Institute (which they founded) and the Heritage Foundation and groups like Americans for Prosperity which funds the Tea Partiers. They give tons of money to academics to deny climate science and global warming while being named one of the top ten corporate polluters by University of Massachusetts at Amherst's Political Economy Research Institute. An exhaustive article in the August 23 edition of the New Yorker magazine details in depth all their activities which have set much of the conservative and anti-intellectual tone that the Obama administration is having to deal with including outright lies and distortions about Obama hinself such as that he's a Muslim (believed by 20% of Americans).

Now it's all well and good that humanitarian philanthropists donate to educational institutions, hospitals, arts and cultural institutions and the like, but, if they want to have a society worth preserving, they might want to think about setting up a think tank to advocate for sane public policy. It's not even a matter of the left-right political divide so much as it's a matter of the smart-dumb cultural divide. The Koch brothers are on a crusade to dumb down America. Their theory is that, if a lie is repeated often enough and enough people come to believe it, then they have effectively created the Truth. And I'm sure that smart guys like Irwin Jacobs, Bill Gates and Warren Buffett don't want to see American society become convinced of such lies as global warming doesn't exist when all reputable scientists have declared that it does.

Ralph Nader has written a book, Only the Super-Rich Can Save Us which is somewhat tongue-in-cheek, but the message is clear. If right wing billionaires are funding think tanks, academics, lobbyists and even mass movements like the Tea Party while liberal billionaires are out doing good deeds like funding educational institutions, hospitals and museums, the field is left open to the hate mongers and spin artists who are gradually moving the American people in a rightward direction. When a larger percentage of the population believes that global warming is not real today than believed it five years ago, something is wrong. We're going in the wrong direction. People are being uneducated, made dumber, despite the best efforts of educational institutions. An untruth is winning out over the truth. Science is being denigrated and think tanks are generating falsehoods.

Interestingly, enough both Irwin Jacobs and the Koch brothers graduated from MIT. They both narrowly escaped death in a plane accident, Jacobs by not going on a trade mission to Croatia with Ron Brown at the last minute and Koch being the only first class survivor of an actual plane wreck in LA. Other than that they don't have much in common. Jacobs is a Democrat who had a fundraiser for Barack Obama and supported Clinton and John F Kennedy.

Warren Buffett has made the public comment that he doesn't think it's fair that he pays taxes at a 15% rate while his secretary pays at a 30% rate. Obviously, these men have good intentions. So why aren't they publicly advocating in a billion dollar way the facts that global warming is real and that billionaires should pay more taxes?

This is from the New Yorker article:

The anti-government fervor infusing the 2010 elections represents a political triumph for the Kochs. By giving money to “educate,” fund, and organize Tea Party protesters, they have helped turn their private agenda into a mass movement. Bruce Bartlett, a conservative economist and a historian, who once worked at the National Center for Policy Analysis, a Dallas-based think tank that the Kochs fund, said, “The problem with the whole libertarian movement is that it’s been all chiefs and no Indians. There haven’t been any actual people, like voters, who give a crap about it. So the problem for the Kochs has been trying to create a movement.” With the emergence of the Tea Party, he said, “everyone suddenly sees that for the first time there are Indians out there—people who can provide real ideological power.” The Kochs, he said, are “trying to shape and control and channel the populist uprising into their own policies.”

So there are billionaires who want to do good and there are the Koch brothers who are building a popular movement based on lies and distortions whose agenda includes undermining true educational and liberal values in the interests, well, of Koch Industries and their $100 billion a year in revenues. It's a natural to be a climate science denier if part of your corporate empire is oil. While philanthropists like Jacobs, Gates and Buffett give for the benefit of humanity, the Koch brothers' charitable interests are completely self-serving:

Some critics have suggested that the Kochs’ approach has subverted the purpose of tax-exempt giving. By law, charitable foundations must conduct exclusively nonpartisan activities that promote the public welfare. A 2004 report by the National Committee for Responsive Philanthropy, a watchdog group, described the Kochs’ foundations as being self-serving, concluding, “These foundations give money to nonprofit organizations that do research and advocacy on issues that impact the profit margin of Koch Industries.”

The Kochs have gone well beyond their immediate self-interest, however, funding organizations that aim to push the country in a libertarian direction. Among the institutions that they have subsidized are the Institute for Justice, which files lawsuits opposing state and federal regulations; the Institute for Humane Studies, which underwrites libertarian academics; and the Bill of Rights Institute, which promotes a conservative slant on the Constitution. Many of the organizations funded by the Kochs employ specialists who write position papers that are subsequently quoted by politicians and pundits. David Koch has acknowledged that the family exerts tight ideological control. “If we’re going to give a lot of money, we’ll make darn sure they spend it in a way that goes along with our intent,” he told Doherty. “And if they make a wrong turn and start doing things we don’t agree with, we withdraw funding.”

... 

Naomi Oreskes, a professor of history and science studies at the University of California, San Diego, is the co-author of “Merchants of Doubt,” a new book that chronicles various attempts by American industry to manipulate public opinion on science. She noted that the Kochs, as the heads of “a company with refineries and pipelines,” have “a lot at stake.” She added, “If the answer is to phase out fossil fuels, a different group of people are going to be making money, so we shouldn’t be surprised that they’re fighting tooth and nail.”

In 2008 President Obama described the science on global warming as "beyond dispute." The Cato Institute, however, took out a full page ad in the New York Times to contradict him. They have parried Obama at every turn using their "scientists" and academics to dispute him. This has created the climate where Obama has been called every name in the book, accused of every crime, attacked at every turn no matter which way he turned. If Hillary had won, they would have done the same to her. In fact they used the same play book on Bill Clinton.

So high minded billionaires beware! While you are out there doing good deeds, your counterpart billionaires like the Koch brothers are doing their level best to move the electorate to the right, spread intolerance, denial of science and outright hatred for the values you gentlemen and ladies represent. Perhaps you should reconsider your giving, start a THINK TANK with liberal values, heed Ralph Nader's call for public advocacy and consider 'the pledge' in a new light.

Please read the New Yorker article.

The Kochs have long depended on the public’s not knowing all the details about them. They have been content to operate what David Koch has called “the largest company that you’ve never heard of.” But with the growing prominence of the Tea Party, and with increased awareness of the Kochs’ ties to the movement, the brothers may find it harder to deflect scrutiny. Recently, President Obama took aim at the Kochs’ political network. Speaking at a Democratic National Committee fund-raiser, in Austin, he warned supporters that the Supreme Court’s recent ruling in the Citizens United case—which struck down laws prohibiting direct corporate spending on campaigns—had made it even easier for big companies to hide behind “groups with harmless-sounding names like Americans for Prosperity.” Obama said, “They don’t have to say who, exactly, Americans for Prosperity are. You don’t know if it’s a foreign-controlled corporation”—or even, he added, “a big oil company.”

The Economic Crunch We're in: Corporations Want Fewer Workers, But They Still Need Everyone to Be Consumers

Consortium News / By Robert Parry

 

From Alternet

 

The recession has been a way for employers to cull payrolls -- and to discover that many jobs don't have to be filled again.

 

July 15, 2010  |  

 

The hard truth about the U.S. economy is that corporations don’t need as many of us as workers but still need us as consumers. That dilemma helps explain why unemployment is stuck near 10 percent and why the economic recovery is stumbling toward a double dip.

 

The Washington Post reported Thursday that nonfinancial companies are sitting on $1.8 trillion - about one-fourth more than at the start of the recession - but won't add personnel in part because they're waiting for consumer demand to pick up, which isn't happening because many Americans don't have jobs or are afraid of losing theirs.

Yet, even if that vicious cycle could be broken, there's another reason for the lack of hiring: companies have found they can make do with a lot fewer American workers. The recession has been a way to cull payrolls - and to discover that many jobs don't have to be filled again, either because of new technologies or because the jobs have been shifted overseas.

Both these trends predated the recession but the rapid shedding of jobs since the Wall Street financial crash in 2008 - some eight million jobs lost - has spotlighted this structural change. Further, corporate determination to remain "lean" has turned the worker-surplus issue from a personal crisis for many American families into a systemic one for the country's economy.

Predictably, the free-marketers at CNBC and the Wall Street Journal have echoed the political message of the Chamber of Commerce and other right-wingers who blame the sluggish rehiring on the Obama administration's health-care reform and the likelihood that President George W. Bush's tax cuts for the rich will lapse.

That view fits with Ronald Reagan's economic orthodoxy which has dominated the United States for the past three decades. It holds that the answer to the nation's economic woes is always to cut taxes especially for the rich, to trust in corporate self-regulation, and to crack down on unions.

Yet, the realistic answer to America's sorry economic state would seem to be the opposite: to raise taxes on the rich so investments can be made in the national infrastructure of education, transportation and technology; to impose reasonable regulations on corporations to prevent dangerous excesses and risks; and to ensure that workers (and consumers) get a fair shake.

Through the federal taxing power, Washington could put Americans to work preparing the nation for the future, building high-speed rail, developing clean energy, improving education for all, advancing medical technologies, repairing the environment, and addressing a host of other national priorities.

The Media Imbalance

But a second hard truth about today's America is that the political/media structure is such that these steps are almost unimaginable. In the power centers of New York and Washington, in particular, Corporate America and its right-wing allies have built a propaganda apparatus that makes any serious discussion of these options political suicide.

This propaganda machinery, which reaches across the United States through right-wing talk radio, Fox News and a variety of other outlets, guarantees that any politician (or media personality) who pushes too hard or too effectively for questioning the Reagan orthodoxy will be demonized.

President Barack Obama is only the latest politician to learn this lesson. Though many on the American Left denounce Obama as a weak-kneed centrist too eager to compromise, he is portrayed to the rest of America as a radical socialist, sometimes even likened to Hitler and Stalin.

It doesn't matter that these comparisons are as absurd as they are offensive. The point about propaganda is that if ugly attacks are repeated enough about some individual, many in the public will be influenced, consciously or subconsciously, to think of the person in a negative light.

And as that trend gains momentum - as the politician's polls sink - the mainstream media will go with the flow, endlessly reprising stories about the person's slipping popularity and thus hastening the political decline.

This pattern is almost inevitable unless there is a counterforce within the media that challenges the lies and distortions. But today's America has almost no Left media to speak of, at least nothing that compares with what the Right has built, and what Left media does exist tends to resent the political compromises that Obama and other Democrats have made.

Thus, the media asymmetry causes Democratic politicians to make more compromises, hoping to limit the Right's ability to demonize them but further alienating and demoralizing the Democratic base.

So, the outcome of Election 2010 seems likely to follow the same course as Election 1994, the last time a new Democratic president was in office and tried to enact some watered-down reforms. Again, Republicans are expected to win - and win big - which would then put them in position to block whatever is left of Obama's agenda and thus turn him into an actual (or virtual) lame duck.

Though Bill Clinton did win reelection in 1996 against a weak Republican opponent (Bob Dole) with the help of a third-party candidate (Ross Perot), Clinton had to confine his second-term ambitions to "micro-programs" and to changes favored by the Republicans, such as the removal of Great Depression-era regulations of the banking system (a "modernization" that set the stage for the 2008 financial collapse).

Investigating Obama

If Republicans gain control of at least one house of Congress, they would surely launch a wave of investigations against Obama, much as the GOP did against Clinton.

Unlike the Democrats who shy away from investigative controversies - turning their backs even on historic scandals such as Iran-Contra, Iraq-gate and contra-cocaine trafficking in the 1980s as well as George W. Bush's torture abuses and illegal wars last decade - the Republicans have no such qualms.

They pounced all over trivial Clinton "scandals" like Whitewater and Travel-gate and impeached Clinton for lying about sex (though they could not muster a super-majority in the Senate for conviction). And Rep. Darrell Issa, R-California, has vowed to be similarly aggressive now if he gains control of the House oversight committee next year. [Washington Post, July 4, 2010]

So, with Obama embattled and the Democratic congressional majorities likely to shrink or disappear, the chances for the United States to confront its structural problems will only worsen.

With unemployment staying high, many middle-class Americans will sink into a growing under-class. The rich will fight to keep as much of their oversized salaries and bonuses as possible, with the Republicans ensuring that the one political sure-thing will be that legislated tax increases won't happen.

Indeed, the simplest way to address the nation's myriad of problems - by restoring the marginal tax rates for the rich back to the historical levels of, say, the Kennedy era (around 60 percent on their top income) - is the one thing that is almost impossible to contemplate.

Since Reagan's presidency, the Republicans have been determined to "starve" the government of resources so it can't address problems like climate change, renewable energy, education, transportation, health care, housing, etc. The only big expenditure that the GOP won't cut is military spending, especially for overseas wars.

Though the Republican vision of the future appears to guarantee a continued decline in the quality of American life, the Right's propaganda machinery makes any suggestion about the need to tax the rich more heavily akin to socialism. The Revolutionary War slogan, "no taxation without representation," has been transformed to something close to "no taxation, period."

Remember the famous encounter between candidate Obama and "Joe the Plumber," who decried Obama's idea about the need to redistribute wealth from the upper-income levels to middle- and working-class Americans so the economy would work better.

That debate remains at the center of America's economic struggles, as it has been since the Great Depression when income inequality and financial speculation were two key factors in the mass unemployment that followed the Crash of 1929. Two lessons learned were that a strong middle class and reasonable government regulations were necessary for a healthy economy.

New Consensus

That New Deal consensus held until 1980 when a new Reagan-era consensus took hold, claiming that tax cuts tilted toward the wealthy and reduced regulation of corporations were the route to prosperity. A corollary was that the wealthy deserved the lion's share because of their intelligence and hard work.

Reagan and the Right sold many Americans, including large numbers of people from the lower economic strata, on the idea that it was unfair for the government to use the tax system to reverse the consolidation of wealth and the political power that went with it.

However, the counter-argument is that virtually every rich person in the United States has benefited from the investment of taxpayers' money in creating the conditions for business success, from public education of workers, to the transportation infrastructure for shipping goods, to the research and development that opened opportunities in computer technology, medicines and the Internet.

Indeed, to ensure that the benefits from these government investments are shared with some equity would require that the excess income at the top be recycled into other improvements of the nation's infrastructure and the quality of life for all Americans.

In other words, by raising taxes on the rich, Washington could help create the jobs needed for addressing national problems and simultaneously break the vicious cycle that has left nearly 10 percent of Americans unemployed, the key fact that has depressed consumer demand.

However, to change the dominant Reagan-era ideology - and thus to change America - would require smart investments from progressives in the information battles for the hearts and minds of the American voters.

Only with the Right's orthodoxy challenged and the American people understanding their real choices might politicians gain the confidence and courage to do what's needed to get the United States back on the path of a healthy economy - and toward a revived democracy.

Robert Parry's new book is Secrecy & Privilege: Rise of the Bush Dynasty from Watergate to Iraq."