From Wisconsin to Indiana to right here in New York—the state capitol in Albany Wednesday night echoed as well with chants of “This is what democracy looks like” as protesters occupied the halls to protest budget cuts to education.
This time, it’s a Democratic governor, Andrew Cuomo, in the driver’s seat, and while he’s not threatening to take away union negotiating rights, the budget pushed through at 1AM contains steep cuts to primary education spending, the State University of New York, and job creation. It also allows the millionaires’ tax to expire — that’s a surtax on incomes over $1 million.
In other words, it’s not just Republicans cutting taxes on the rich and taking the funding from students and the unemployed.
Just like in Wisconsin, protesters in New York, chanted “Whose house? Our house!” ate pizza, made s’mores and were joined by State Senators Adams and Diaz, who carried pillows to sleep on as they announced their votes against the budget.
A sign on a door announced that it was for “Senators, Staff & Lobbyists Only” but Twitter later announced that the group Community Voices Heard had taken over that spot.
Despite the protests, though, the budget passed and the politicians celebrated but the battle’s not over yet. New Yorkers and working people around the country are gearing up for “We Are One” rallies on Monday – foreshadowed in New Haven yesterday by a march that brought union workers from public and private sectors together with non-union folks from the community.
What can people do against massive power? Who knows. But from what we’re hearing, a whole lot of Americans are planning to come together Monday—and find out.
The F Word is a regular commentary by Laura Flanders, the host of GRITtv and editor of At The Tea Party, out now from OR Books. GRITtv broadcasts weekdays on DISH Network and DIRECTv, on cable, and online at GRITtv.org and TheNation.com. Follow GRITtv or GRITlaura on Twitter and be our friend on In college one of my sociology professors observed that the real divides between red and blue state America weren’t necessarily ideological. He joked that you can look at the rise of Meth use and rates of church attendance on a state by state level and that will predict voting patterns just as well as party identification. Funny, it seems that he may have been onto something. Gallup has released some new polling data which suggests that America is become more and more “conservative.” Political scientists and others have long discussed how the electorate is polarized and that voters are “sorting out” by party affiliation and ideology. The results of this are plain: the noxious tone of our political discourse; the naked appeals to eliminationism by the Right; and a sense that the other side isn’t just wrong, no, instead they are evil. Using Gallup’s information, The Atlantic’s Richard Florida generated some great graphs which showed that the march of Conservatism across America is correlated with a number of variables including religiosity, poverty, education, and the income level of a given state. All in all the data is compelling. But it is not surprising. Moreover, there are also a few qualifiers to Gallup’s findings that America is becoming a more “conservative” that need to be highlighted. 1. Primarily, it has long been noted that Americans are not very ideological–here meaning a coherent schema of political values and beliefs that is internally consistent. While the American electorate is certainly passionate (the ear damaging shrill tones of the White populist Tea Party being people’s evidence number one), they do not necessarily hold beliefs that are stable across issue positions. 2. The survey asks respondents if they self-identify as “Conservatives.” Again, this is open to slippage as many people for a variety of reasons may label themselves as such. But, these same individuals may vote for the Democrats or identify on issue positions as being more Left/Progressive. And on specific issues (a set of data points that give a better sense of the real lay of the political land) the positions and personalities of the New Right Tea Party GOP are increasingly unpopular. 3. While the media is fascinated by the frame of “Red State versus Blue State”, the real action is occurring on the county and regional level where the central cities are becoming more blue and the suburbs and rural parts of many states are becoming more red. Hence the notion of a “purple America.” Quite simply, Americans are living in communities where their values are reinforced. Thus the irony that in an increasingly globalized world, with instantaneous information available at one’s fingertips, a good number of people are seeking similarity and confirmation, as opposed to a richness of diversity in ideas, values, and beliefs. However, the Atlantic’s analysis is spot on and frighteningly prescient in the following observation. Conservatism, at least at the state level, appears to be growing stronger. Ironically, this trend is most pronounced in America’s least well-off, least educated, most blue collar, most economically hard-hit states. Conservatism, more and more, is the ideology of the economically left behind. The current economic crisis only appears to have deepened conservatism’s hold on America’s states… Liberalism, which is stronger in richer, better-educated, more-diverse, and, especially, more prosperous places, is shrinking across the board and has fallen behind conservatism even in its biggest strongholds. This obviously poses big challenges for liberals, the Obama administration, and the Democratic Party moving forward. But the much bigger, long-term danger is economic rather than political. This ideological state of affairs advantages the policy preferences of poorer, less innovative states over wealthier, more innovative, and productive ones. American politics is increasingly disconnected from its economic engine. And this deepening political divide has become perhaps the biggest bottleneck on the road to long-run prosperity. This is the formula for a reactionary politics that does not serve the collective good. Here, the tail wags the dog and the most frightened, least resourced, and most backward voices rise out of the polity. Elites who have long been disconnected from the masses manipulate this anxiety into a politics that serves to gut the social safety net and chase down the chosen bugaboos of the Right–the “evil” unions, “liberals,” “intellectuals,” teachers, Muslims, immigrants, racial minorities, gays and lesbians, “overpaid” public employees, and/or anyone who is not a “real American.” In the end game, the authoritarianism infused White reactionary Tea Party AstroTurf politics of the New Right are the road to inverted totalitarianism–an order that rises out of a failure of democratic politics, a collapsed and exhausted economy, a triumphant corporatism, and the false promises of popular Conservatism. Conservatives and the Right-wing echo chamber will be crowing about their success in light of Gallup’s findings. They will scream that Conservatism is on the march and that Gallup’s polling data is a vindication of their ideas. Those who live in the reality based world can easily foil those claims. But, the cries of victory will appeal to the true devotees nonetheless. Sadly, the foot soldiers of Conservatism do not understand that they are winning a Pyrrhic victory, one which indicates a deep and systemic rot in this country, as opposed to a triumph of ideas and values that can lead us through the decline of empire and towards a brave new future.
Crossposted on Tikkun Daily
by Dave Belden
I had a curious conversation with a conservative lately in which he claimed the US Constitution as a conservative document, while I objected that in the 1780s conservatives opposed it, since conservatives then were believers in monarchy and tradition. Yes, he conceded, but today it’s a conservative document. I suggested that this is what happens time and again, that the gains made by progressives of one era against the vehement opposition of conservatives, become the core items that conservatives defend in a later era. So perhaps it would behoove him as a conservative to get ahead of the curve by helping the progressives today!
He wasn’t buying it, of course. And it makes some sense that he wasn’t, because in many ways these labels of progressive and conservative are about contrary emotional responses to the world. We need both responses.
The conservative has a less sunny view of human nature, less confidence that the people — the “great unwashed,” the mob, the hoi polloi — will act sensibly. So he or she prefers the devil we know — the “powers that be” that St. Paul considered “ordained by God” — to the devil we don’t. (Whether conservatives are temperamentally cautious about any kind of innovation is a whole further discussion; in our time conservatives are split between those who place enormous trust in market-blessed innovations by the powers they like, the commercial powers, and those who mourn what commercial values and innovations have done to traditional values, customs and ecosystems.)
The temperamentally more utopian or hopeful people, those who have more trust in the ordinary person, the progressives, forge ahead claiming freedoms, rights and power for said ordinary folk, washed or not.
When they are successful, and the new order has been running along fairly well for long enough for people of conservative temperament to see that it works better than the old one, the conservatives start to defend it. They do so especially if in the end it turns out that the progressive advances didn’t actually prevent the dominance of an established (and therefore, to a conservative temperament, more trustworthy) elite, but merely provided safety valves for popular discontent, or cleaned up unnecessary abuses: why flog the sailors/workers/fieldhands/wives when, surprise, surprise, they can be inspired to responsibility better by more civilized methods pioneered by progressives? Conservatives have bleeding hearts too!
Meanwhile the progressives are pushing on with new schemes for even more popular power, to the conservatives’ dismay.
Their dismay would only be unreasonable if every progressive idea did in fact work for human betterment, when implemented. But in fact the 20th century was replete with progressive ideas that didn’t work very well, even by progressive criteria, most notably Communism as practiced. We can all see that was not half as successful as, say, slavery abolition, a classic 19th century progressive cause. Conservatives are still scared of Communism, but I haven’t seen one talk of bringing back slavery lately. A true temperamental conservative doesn’t want power for the powerful at all costs, and doesn’t enjoy seeing poor people starve and die (there are other words for that kind of temperament, or pathology), any more than true temperamental progressives welcomed Stalin and the Gulag (though both sides can get blinded by ideology for a while and support horrors they later regret). Decent conservatives would certainly prefer a world where everyone has enough, no one has to be tortured, and everyone acts responsibly and works to the limit of their ability. Conservatives saw that various progressive advances, like the US Constitution, slavery abolition and universal suffrage worked, so they now support those fully, but they saw that some others didn’t, and they oppose them.
What is totally mind-boggling for us progressives, and what has prompted this overly long musing, is when something they struggled for against massive conservative opposition becomes a central plank of conservatism in our own lifetime. This is what I feel reading Christina Hoff Summers, of the super-conservative (in the pro-commercial-power sense, not the pro-tradition sense) American Enterprise Institute writing sentences like this about a recent women’s conference:
An irresistible force of self-directed and valiant women from across the world is colliding with the so-far immovable object of patriarchal tyranny.
This is now conservatism?!! The article covers the second annual “Women in the World” conference organized by Tina Brown, editor of Newsweek and The Daily Beast. Hoff Summers reports that prominent women of all political persuasions attended,
But the stars of the summit were activists from the poorest regions of the world…. One after another, women from Bangladesh, Cambodia, the Congo, and Egypt spoke about how they were organizing against honor killings, mass rapes, genital mutilation, child marriage, and gender apartheid – and getting results.
Apparently this is now a good conservative stance, as long as progressive whining is ruled out:
… the spirit was not self-pitying and anti-male but self-confident and serious.
… Liberals and conservatives made common cause. Bill and Hillary Clinton were honored guests, but so were Rupert Murdoch and his wife, Wendi Deng Murdoch. With few exceptions, there were none of the standard feminist denunciations of men, capitalism, Western colonialism, or even the Bush administration. In fact, two prominent members of the Bush administration were speakers: Condoleezza Rice and Dina Habib Powell. Empowering women through entrepreneurship was a central theme of the conference.
Putting a sentence I already quoted in context, here is the article’s final graf:
Brown and her colleagues now plan to make Women in the World an annual affair. Next year there will be more women, more stories, more funders, more leaders, and more solutions. An irresistible force of self-directed and valiant women from across the world is colliding with the so-far immovable object of patriarchal tyranny. The political and cultural consequences will go far beyond the next stage of women’s liberation. In the meantime, Brown has given Western feminism something it has lacked since the 1970s: a contemporary purpose worthy of its illustrious past.
You understand how mind-boggling this is. Suddenly, to a modern conservative, 1970s feminism is good. At the time, conservatives called it crazy bad, just as Hoff Summers calls today’s anti-capitalist feminists crazy bad. Doesn’t she realize that these suddenly good 1970s feminists (I know it’s 40 years since 1970 but it feels sudden to those of us who lived through it) were actually just as wildly anti-capitalist as the crazy bad ones she doesn’t like today? It was the hugeness of their goals, to shift the world from domination to partnership at every level, starting with the most basic level of male domination of women, that fueled their zeal. They opposed the Vietnam War then and they and their daughters and granddaughters oppose American oil wars in the Middle East today. If they opposed Marxism then it was for being insufficiently radical, not getting to the root of oppression in patriarchal power.
Of course I am delighted, thrilled, that capitalism has embraced major elements of women’s liberation. Basically the commercial powers have discovered in this forty years not just that they can live with various forms of equal rights, but that capitalism actually works better with those rights. Great! Lots of people’s lives will be better as a result.
Said commercial powers are happy as long as the people don’t start messing with basic elements of the power structure by demanding things like workplace democracy and legally mandated social purpose for corporations.
One far future day some progressive will be having a conversation with a conservative who will say that the ESRA, the Environmental and Social Responsibility Amendment to the US Constitution of the early 21st Century, is a conservative document. After all, this conservative will say, the ESRA preserved commercial civilization, which in the 2000-2030 era was threatening its own survival by promoting rampant material growth leading to global climate change. The ESRA prompted huge debates about what the social purpose of corporations should be; it stimulated an industrial revolution that re-engineered human production on a biological model where there was no waste, and where ecosystem diversity was built not decimated; it brought support for children, families of all kinds and communities to the fore, so that partnership became the model for social organization; it stimulated the growth of the many small companies that dominate the marketplace today. The associated drive to end global poverty and feed the world entirely on organic food was critical in reducing population growth and ecocollapse. Without the ESRA, overpopulation and ecosystem damage would have led to revolutions, wars, economic collapse and likely the end of democratic commercial civilization. As it is markets, trade and profits survived. Happy conservative.
Yes, says the progressive, but don’t you remember how conservatives opposed the ESRA and called it crazy bad at the time? And don’t you think that now you could get ahead of the curve and support this progressive initiative we are developing for a gift economy, instead of a commercial economy? “What do you think I am, crazy?” says the conservative. To be continued, forever.
Dave Belden is the managing editor of Tikkun.
For more pieces like this, sign up for Tikkun Daily’s email digest or visit us online.
Here’s a quiz:
Embattled Libyan leader Muammar Qaddafi: Good or bad? How about GE Chairman and CEO Jeffrey Immelt?
Here are your answers, straight from the top: Qaddafi, way bad. And Immelt? Good guy, business and civic leader. Should be a key adviser to the president.
On Qaddafi, we already knew he was a bad guy. But now we find out what he’s been up to that really distresses business leaders. The very same business leaders who profoundly influence the American political process and the foreign policy decisions this country makes. According to a report in the New York Times,
In 2009, top aides to Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi called together 15 executives from global energy companies operating in Libya’s oil fields and issued an extraordinary demand: Shell out the money for his country’s $1.5 billion bill for its role in the downing of Pan Am Flight 103 and other terrorist attacks.
If the companies did not comply, the Libyan officials warned, there would be “serious consequences” for their oil leases, according to a State Department summary of the meeting.
…The episode and others like it, the officials said, reflect a Libyan culture rife with corruption, kickbacks, strong-arm tactics and political patronage since the United States reopened trade with Colonel Qaddafi’s government in 2004. As American and international oil companies, telecommunications firms and contractors moved into the Libyan market, they discovered that Colonel Qaddafi or his loyalists often sought to extract millions of dollars in “signing bonuses” and “consultancy contracts” — or insisted that the strongman’s sons get a piece of the action through shotgun partnerships.
Who wants to pay such bribes? Get rid of the guy.
Now, let’s turn to Immelt. First, you need to know that he’s a darling of the political and media establishment. The president is extremely high on him. President Obama has chosen Immelt for a super-crucial position for him and his re-election fundraising apparatus, as the White House’s “business community liaison.” That’s shorthand for the kind of people who intercede with big companies that might or might not help fund the campaign. A bit like those Qaddafi “signing bonuses” cited above.
Even more importantly, Obama has named him chairman of the President’s Council on Jobs and Competitiveness. Keep this in mind when you consider the following….
How is Immelt helping this country out? For one thing, he is a king of the job exporters, a pillar of the Indian economy. But that’s not all. As the New York Times noted the other day, Immelt’s company pays no U.S. taxes. That’s right. No taxes.
General Electric, the nation’s largest corporation, had a very good year in 2010.
The company reported worldwide profits of $14.2 billion, and said $5.1 billion of the total came from its operations in the United States.
Its American tax bill? None. In fact, G.E. claimed a tax benefit of $3.2 billion.
That may be hard to fathom for the millions of American business owners and households now preparing their own returns, but low taxes are nothing new for G.E. The company has been cutting the percentage of its American profits paid to the Internal Revenue Service for years, resulting in a far lower rate than at most multinational companies.
Its extraordinary success is based on an aggressive strategy that mixes fierce lobbying for tax breaks and innovative accounting that enables it to concentrate its profits offshore. G.E.’s giant tax department, led by a bow-tied former Treasury official named John Samuels, is often referred to as the world’s best tax law firm. Indeed, the company’s slogan “Imagination at Work” fits this department well. The team includes former officials not just from the Treasury, but also from the I.R.S. and virtually all the tax-writing committees in Congress.
Immelt’s got the situation wired from top to bottom, all of his options hedged. That’s why he’s a “good guy”, unlike Qaddafi, whose brutality was never enough of a problem until he began shaking down American and other oil companies.
Why is Immelt Obama’s guy? Good question. He was a political donor to George W. Bush. In July, 2004, during Bush’s re-election campaign, Immelt was quoted by the Bush campaign saying that “this is the best economy we’ve seen in years.”
Then he started getting the group hug from the Dems and the liberal media. Pretty soon, the hagiographies were pouring out. In 2005, Bill Clinton rolled out his “Clinton Global Initiative,” with Immelt as one of the attending big names. In February, 2006, while touting his book “Take It Back: Our Party, Our Country, Our Future” on Meet the Press, former Clinton operative Paul Begala described Immelt as “the greenest guy…that is to say, environmentally correct and profit-making.”
Here’s Immelt on Charlie Rose in 2007: [Bold added for emphasis]
JEFFREY IMMELT: We`ve got to compete. We`ve got to be smart, we`ve got to use our entrepreneurial ability. We`ve got to get more kids studying engineering….
CHARLIE ROSE: … you know all these candidates. Are they talking about it? Are they aware of it? Is it part of their conscious as they think about leading this country?
JEFFREY IMMELT: I think in varying degrees, it is. You know, I think Senator Clinton understands it. I`ve talked to her. I think Governor Romney clearly gets it.
JEFFREY IMMELT: I think Rudy has always gotten it. I think he`s been able to do that. But it`s.
CHARLIE ROSE: Senator Obama get it?
JEFFREY IMMELT: I think they all do. But.
CHARLIE ROSE: They get the idea that the U.S. has to be competitive around the world?
CHARLIE ROSE: Not only competitive, though, in terms of..
JEFFREY IMMELT: Hard work.
CHARLIE ROSE: Hard work, yes. And also competitive — where do you think we have to be competitive in terms of values and what we stand for and who we are? Or does that matter?
JEFFREY IMMELT: I think as an American, it clearly matters, right? I mean, values are a part of the bedrock of a successful country….I think values count, Charlie. I don`t want to pass judgment on anybody here tonight, but values are important for this country, values are important.
There you have it. Values count.
And politicians can count, too. Somehow, guys like Immelt count for more than millions of us. Strange, strange math in this country.
———————————————————————————-
WhoWhatWhy is a nonprofit, nonpartisan investigative news site founded by Russ Baker. Follow it on Facebook and Twitter or visit WhoWhatWhy.com
On the eve of Arizona’s most famous native son’s celebrated birthday, Phoenix-area Sheriff Joe Arpaio unveiled his latest media stunt, the war-time invoking Operation Desert Sky--a 30-plane air posse of armed volunteers to track Mexican smugglers. Only days before, Arpaio rolled his department’s private tank into a quiet west Phoenix neighborhood to apprehend a flock of chickens and their unarmed cock-fighting enthusiast.
It’s not enough to question the logic of Arpaio’s extremist follies, or the cost to taxpayers while Arizona continues to witness the deaths of denied transplant patients and deal with draconian cuts to education. Or the fact that the Tea Party-controlled state legislature openly refused to fund enforcement efforts for the level-headed Sheriff Clarence Dupnik, whose Pima County actually runs along the Mexican border (unlike Arpaio’s Maricopa County).
Makes you wonder: Who represents Arizona today? The reality TV show of the anti-immigrant antics of the Massachusetts-transplanted sheriff, the son of Italian immigrants, or the towering legacy of Arizona native and labor leader Cesar Chavez for environmental justice and democratic reform?
Arpaio, along with the witch hunt of the Mexican American Studies program in Tucson, and the radical state legislature “Arizona Gone Wild” agenda–are the very reasons that many Arizonans and advocates across the nation are redoubling their efforts to establish a Cesar Chavez Holiday.
Cesar Chavez is Arizona’s and our country’s most important forgotten civil rights champion.
Hailed by Robert Kennedy Jr. as “one of the heroic figures of our times,” Chavez’s non-violent United Farm Worker campaigns for clean water and clean air, workplace safety and union bargaining rights could not be more timely today.
President Obama would agree–or rather, presidential candidate Obama, who declared during the 2008 campaign:
“As farmworkers and laborers across America continue to struggle for fair treatment and fair wages, we find strength in what Cesar Chavez accomplished so many years ago,” Obama said in a statement from his campaign. “And we should honor him for what he’s taught us about making America a stronger, more just, and more prosperous nation.
“That’s why I support the call to make Cesar Chavez’s birthday a national holiday. It’s time to recognize the contributions of this American icon to the ongoing efforts to perfect our union.”
Feliz cumpleaños, Cesar Chavez.
The billionaire Koch brothers have spent hundreds of millions of dollars to gain political influence and change America. Their work and spending is driven by the goal of increasing their own profit through decreasing regulations. The expansive and diverse nature of their efforts makes it overwhelming to keep tabs of all they’ve done that has caused harm. And that’s why Brave New Foundation is going to keep connecting the dots and telling the full story of what they’ve done to our country.
Our work at Brave New Films has always focused on the best way to tell the full story, to connect all the moving pieces and to highlight how one example of a problem in our democracy is always representative of a larger problem. Our producers did this with Outfoxed, where they exposed the unbalanced propaganda that is Fox News. And they did this with Wal-Mart, where they uncovered the damage done to our country by the high cost of low prices. In Iraq For Sale, they exposed the war profiteering and they were on the frontline of questioning the reasons for war in Rethink Afghanistan. With Sick for Profit, they fought against insurance company greed in the battle for health care. And they worked to stop the History Channel from hosting fiction and smearing President Kennedy.
And now we aim our focus at the Koch brothers. With a net worth of $43 billion the Kochs have already spent decades of their lives and over $324 million of their wealth exerting their influence.
The Kochs accomplish their goals by funding a massive array of right wing front groups, think tanks and tea party efforts. They largely operate outside of the public eye, and target their funding to infiltrate public opinion, the media, judicial decisions and legislation. Over three dozen organizations are funded by the brothers, and they spend additional money lobbying and backing political candidates.
Everything the Kochs do is to fight for a country free from protections and any degree of a social safety net for working Americans. The Kochs are not the only uber-wealthy in America who are using their money to buy political power that will increase their profits, but they are a key example through which to tell this story.
As a starting place of exposing the Kochs, we thought it would be useful to compile a video outlining the top five worst things the Koch brothers have done.
As the video outlines, there are a lot of “worst of” moments the Koch brothers have already created. Here is a rundown of the top five covered within the video.
Oil Spills
Koch Industries have made much of their money in the oil business. In 2000 they were fined the largest amount yet imposed upon a company under federal law. The $30 million fine was paid to resolve claims related to more than 300 oil spills in over six states, and an additional $5 million was ordered to be spent on environmental projects.
As the EPA reports, most of the spills occurred in Oklahoma, Texas and Kansas. One incident involved 100,000 gallons of oil spilled in Texas, which caused a 12-mile oil slick on Nueces Bay and Corpus Christi Bay.
Anti-Worker
The Koch brothers have spent more that $34 million on groups and organizations that work against workers rights. Koch organizations have targeted key union efforts, such as fighting against public sector union pay raises, and arguing against unions having any political or organizing power.
The Koch brothers also gave money to political candidates to achieve their goals. Mother Jones’s summarizes this diverse giving well:
According to Wisconsin campaign finance filings, Walker’s gubernatorial campaign received $43,000 from the Koch Industries PAC during the 2010 election. That donation was his campaign’s second-highest, behind $43,125 in contributions from housing and realtor groups in Wisconsin. The Koch’s PAC also helped Walker via a familiar and much-used political maneuver designed to allow donors to skirt campaign finance limits. The PAC gave $1 million to the Republican Governors Association, which in turn spent $65,000 on independent expenditures to support Walker. The RGA also spent a whopping $3.4 million on TV ads and mailers attacking Walker’s opponent, Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett. Walker ended up beating Barrett by 5 points. The Koch money, no doubt, helped greatly.
Additionally, the Koch-funded Americans for Prosperity, a tea party group, led the Stand With Walker campaign, which led support of the Governor’s efforts to bust unions and fight against workers rights.
Anti-Healthcare
The Kochs financed the tea party’s fight against health care reform through their tea party group, Americans for Prosperity.
Anti-Immigration
The Koch Brothers have funded anti-immigration legislation through the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC). ALEC is a conservative group that writes policies and offers them to state legislatures throughout the country for use. ALEC has been involved in a wide range of anti-immigration work, including Arizona’s SB1070, which requires anyone thought to be an immigrant to produce paperwork.
Foreclosures
The Kochs fund think tanks that push for foreclosures on working people’s houses. The Koch funded Reason Foundation has produced numerous reports saying that foreclosures should not be stopped. And the Koch funded Mercatus Center also presented congressional testimony stating that the foreclosures should not be stopped, and that there is no harm done to homeowners when their houses are foreclosed on.
Untold Millions
The Koch brothers’ spending is structured, such that it is difficult for the public to know the full range of their political influence. With the Koch-supported Citizens United, and other attempts to fight against campaign finance reform, this trend of lack of transparency is only to get worse. The spending numbers that we do know are only the tip of the iceberg.
As if that list isn’t frightening and offensive enough, there’s even more that could be added to it! Visit our Koch Brothers Exposed site and Koch Brothers Exposed Facebook page to vote on the options and suggestion you own thoughts on what the worst thing is that the Koch brothers have done.
Brave New Foundation is just getting started on our work to expose the Koch Brothers. Please join us to follow our upcoming videos. You can also donate to become a producer and receive a limited edition Shepard Fairey Koch Brothers Exposed t-shirt.
Congressman Barney Frank (D-MA) will be introducing the Employment Non-Discrimination Act (ENDA) in Congress this week. There is probably no way in hell with this rabid tea party Republican Congress that this will pass.
However, according to blogger Joe Jervis, the Family Research Council has chosen to take advantage of the situation anyway by relaunching their Stop ENDA campaign complete with a webpage of lies and fear stories.
I say I can do them one better by digging up past posts about how FRC has lied about ENDA:
Family Research Council deliberately misinterpret words of Obama official to discredit ENDA – The Family Research Council deliberately distorts the words of John Berry is President Obama’s director of the U.S. Office of Personnel Management to claim that the passage of ENDA will lead to an overturning of DOMA.
Family Research Council head misrepresents credible information to hurt ENDA – In testimony against ENDA, FRC head Tony Perkins uses anecdotes and distorts a study on lgbt health.
Family Research Council exploiting Amanda Simpson’s appointment to stop ENDA – The Family Research Council exploits the presidential appointment of transgender Amanda Simpson to call ENDA a “Crossdresser Protection Bill.”
Family Research Council getting extremely ’scary’ about ENDA – FRC channels the image of the Grim Reaper to assist in its lies about ENDA.
Religious right groups can’t make up their minds when lying about ENDA – FRC falsely calls ENDA the Discrimination Against Christian Workers Act and uses one-sided anecdotes of people fired supposedly for their Christian beliefs.
FRC: Gays and lesbians shouldn’t be employed in ’some’ jobs – When FRC says “ENDA would mandate the employment of homosexuals in inappropriate occupations,” are they implying the homosexuality = pedophilia lie?
Family Research Council gearing up to fight ENDA with distortions - blah, blah, blah, the “crossdressers” and liberals are trying to silence Christians.
Related posts:
Bathrooms, Church Exemptions, and Lies: Five ways the religious right misrepresents ENDA
Did Mike Huckabee just flush his presidential aspirations down the proverbial toilet? Well, if American mainstream media has an ounce of journalistic gumption remaining the answer most certainly would be “yes”. Huckabee has just been caught on video, at a Christian supremacist conference, stating that Americans should be forcibly indoctrinated at gunpoint. The organization which hosted the “Rediscover God In America” conference, United in Purpose, has edited Huckabee’s comment from footage of his speech, but not before People For The American Way’s Kyle Mantyla captured the unedited footage, in which Mike Huckabee states, “I almost wish that there would be, like, a simultaneous telecast, and all Americans would be forced–forced at gunpoint no less–to listen to every David Barton message, and I think our country would be better for it. I wish it’d happen.”
David Barton is the leading promoter of a brand of falsified American history altered to support the claim that America was founded as a Christian, rather than a secular, nation. As Chris Rodda, who has authored an entire book debunking Barton’s brand of pseudo-history, writes,
I was quite surprised… to come across a video clip from this conference on the People for the American Way (PFAW) Right Wing Watch blog with the headline “Huckabee: Americans Should Be Forced, At Gunpoint, To Learn From David Barton.” I had watched Huckabee’s speech. How on earth could I have missed a statement like that? Well, I didn’t. It had been edited out of the webcast that I had watched.
Kyle Mantyla over at PFAW’s Right Wing Watch had recorded Huckabee’s speech when it was streamed live on Thursday, and posted the ‘forced at gunpoint’ clip on Friday. By Saturday, when I watched the webcast on the United in Purpose website, that part of Huckabee’s speech had been edited out.
The webcast that I saw showed Barton leaving the stage as he ended his presentation, then the screen going black for a moment, and then what appeared to be the beginning of Huckabee’s speech. What was edited out was Barton returning to the stage to introduce Huckabee, and the first two minutes and forty-five seconds of Huckabee’s speech, during which Huckabee made his ‘gunpoint’ comment and praised David Lane, the man behind all of the American “Renewal” and “Restoration” projects that have popped up across the country during the past few elections.
[below: the unedited footage from Huckabee's speech, with the "joke" about indoctrinating Americans at gunpoint to be found at at 1:06. Footage courtesy of Kyle Mantyla of Rightwing Watch, who might have almost single-handedly consigned Huckabee's presidential hopes to the dustbin of history.]
I should also note that what Chris Rodda has to say about this has especial weight given that she’s arguably been the most indefatigable author to challenge David Barton’s sprawling falsified American history oeuvre, as a Talk To Action site search on Rodda’s extensive posts debunking Barton would suggest. Chris Rodda is author of the book Liars For Jesus: The Religious Right’s Alternate Version of American History which prominently features David Barton, head of Wallbuilders and arguably king of the “liars for Jesus”. Rodda is also Head Researcher for the Military Religious Freedom Foundation.
Could Obama and his supporters take a break from celebrating so-called no-fly zones — and take a look at what’s happening in Arizona?
Qaddafi, after all, isn’t the only one using military technology against his own people. Sheriff Joe Arpaio of Maricopa County, Arizona, has launched “Operation Desert Sky” to round up “illegal drugs and human cargo”–read, men, women, human, immigrants.
If that name sounds familiar, perhaps you’re remembering Operations Desert Shield and Desert Storm in Iraq under the first President Bush. That’s right, the sheriff of a U.S. county is deliberately evoking the names of military operations in his war on migrants.
THIRTY aircraft will be used in the operation, and, according to the Cypress Times, will be furnished and flown largely by the sheriff’s armed volunteer posse—in other words, vigilantes. They’ll be armed with M-16s and a 50 caliber machine gun.
Isn’t it time for a no-fly zone in Arizona? The state senate failed to pass Russell Pearce’s anti-immigrant bills, but Arpaio, who just recently performed a tank raid on suspected cockfighters for A&E’s TV cameras and Steven Seagal, is clearly escalating.
Former GRITtv guest Salvador Reza, an Arizona immigration activist, says it’s unconscionable for Obama and the Justice Department to be part of Arpaio’s coalition of the willing. But beyond that, isn’t it time for us to put a stop to Arpaio’s violence once and for all?
I mean, even progressives are arguing that intervention in Libya was justified on humanitarian grounds. How big a humanitarian disaster must we see on our own soil before we act?
The F Word is a regular commentary by Laura Flanders, the host of GRITtv and editor of At The Tea Party, out now from OR Books. GRITtv broadcasts weekdays on DISH Network and DIRECTv, on cable, and online at GRITtv.org and TheNation.com. Follow GRITtv or GRITlaura on Twitter and be our friend on
Jonathan Rowe was, by inclination, an unobtrusive man. He moved through this world quietly, and he left quietly.
He did not promote himself. He was not comfortable seeking recognition. He concentrated instead on substance.
Jon died the other day, abruptly, with no warning of any kind, and left behind a wife, Mary Jean, and an 8-year-old son, Josh.
In part because of his modesty, and in part because celebrity and valor are not the same, you very likely did not know of him. Or, if you did, not nearly enough.
There are so many things that could and should be said about Jon, but I will not attempt to say them all. Jon’s friend David Bollier has already beautifully summed up Jon’s work, achievements and writing interests on his blog. I encourage you to read what he has to say, at http://www.bollier.org/my-friend-jonathan-rowe-1946-2011-appreciation. In fact, I’d suggest you read David’s piece first, as it will give you the “biography” and so you will have some context for my personal observations.
I’m going to focus here on what it was like to have the pleasure of knowing Jon as friend, mentor, and confidant.
Jon was my “intellectual partner.” I ran almost every idea by him. His mind and his hands touched my book, and he was integral to shaping our nonpartisan, nonprofit, news site, WhoWhatWhy. A mutual friend tells me Jon was excited by what we were doing and looked forward to his deepening involvement.
I met Jon more than two decades ago, when we both wrote for the Christian Science Monitor. We were introduced by a colleague, who for some reason thought we would hit it off. Boy, was she right. Jon was reticent around new people, almost profoundly shy. But first tentatively and then with growing comfort, he would engage on a level one rarely finds with more gregarious individuals.
He was, in short, a great friend if you were open to his laconically loving manner. And he always had something surprising to say—he was always musing in a slightly off-center way, practical but a bit more wide-ranging in his cerebral wanderings than most.
In the following years, Jon and I remained in close touch, though we seldom saw each other in person. In fact, during our long friendship, we were probably together no more than a few dozen times. That was principally because we were usually in different cities. I was in New York most of the time. He lived for years in Washington, where among other things, he had served on Capitol Hill, then settled in the bucolic coastal town of Point Reyes, north of San Francisco. He wrote, he had a radio show, he edited, he consulted, he lived the life of the writer-thinker-advocate.
Although we occasionally spoke by phone, we mostly communicated electronically, exchanging literally thousands of emails.
Soon, he began advising me as a kind of informal editor-at-large, very useful to a freelance writer whose work covered a lot of bases. I would send him story ideas, proposals, drafts. And he would send back thoughtful, succinct advisories. Like this, from 1998:
Russ: There’s the seed of a really good idea here. We don’t have to legally ban provocative speech to establish a cultural norm that discourages it. And that norm begins with our own politicians and media, who set the tone for the entire country.
I would get to this point much more quickly, and develop it more. Most of what you have now should be compressed into a lead-in for the point that rings the bell.
And this from 2002:
Russ: This is interesting, and I think cutting won’t be a problem. The first few pages in particular have a somewhat puffy and — to use the deadly newsroom expression — thumb sucking quality. Frame the question and get down to business.
And this from 2007:
Russ: This is a lot closer but not quite there. The frame is not quite right at the end. I think you are calling on the violin section a bit too much…
Jon worked hard to get me to say things in a simpler way. He cut long, meandering sentences. He expunged unnecessary adjectives.
Nothing ever seemed to matter beyond getting the concept exactly right. We’d go back to the drawing board again and again and again. Some stories that could have been out in days took the better part of a year until he would sign off on it. More so with my five-year book project. He was there for the ride, indispensable, both prodding and encouraging.
Unlike so many editors in a hurry to be done with a manuscript, Jon’s deepest interest lay in trying to precisely understand the heart of the matter at hand. He wanted to sort out all of the questions—moral, philosophical, practical, stylistic—and then make the case.
While I was writing my book and coming upon shocking and profoundly disturbing material, Jon was always there to calmly share the burden. He would digest new information, and often come back with thoughts, hours or days later. These discussions unfolded sometimes long after I had already moved on, as he tried to figure out how he felt about an issue.
I have been thinking about your piece today and something occurred to me that I couldn’t quite formulate last night.
There is an internal pull in the piece that gets it just a little bit off track. You are sending signals to the reader that illegality lurks just off stage. But you can’t deliver on that, and so it sets the bar too high, and unnecessarily so.
He had the capacity to say what he had to say bluntly and boldly without provoking the person being edited to take offense. We never had a fight, an argument, never exchanged sharp words, not in conversation, not in an email. I literally do not recall any unpleasantry of any kind…
Jon wrote a short essay at the height of the post-9/11 security panic:
I was in Washington this week and Capitol Hill feels like a state of siege. The place is saturated with police – not friendly cops walking the beat, but police cars, often two or three at an intersection, faceless and grim. Fences and concrete barricades are everywhere. You used to be able to walk through the tunnels under the Capital to get from the House to the Senate office buildings. Now a staffer has to escort you.
You feel like an intruder in your own government, and in the buildings you yourself pay for. The lobbyists still are there. They exit from cabs in their tailored gaggles, crowd the couches in reception areas. What’s missing is a sense that anyone else belongs.
Yes, security concerns are real. But like the invasion of Iraq, the start of a security state in Washington has happened with an alacrity that suggests a prior wish. There is no hint of regret. When Richard Nixon was elected President in 1968, a fence went up around Lafayette Park across from the White House, which was a frequent venue for protests against the Vietnam War. President Bush, in a meeting with Republican Senators, called the Constitution a “goddam piece of paper.” The security lock-down is a proclivity as much as a response to an actual threat.
The sense of enclosure – of space for democracy shrinking—is of a piece with other changes around town. In Dupont Circle and other neighborhoods, the quirky shops and budget restaurants are just about gone. Schwartz’s Pharmacy, where once you might have run into a young Ralph Nader at the magazine rack, or I.F. Stone, or Carl Bernstein having Sunday breakfast, his bike locked outside, is now a Starbucks – one of three that monopolize the coffee trade at the Circle. On Capitol Hill, the old places like Sherrill’s Bakery are gone as well, replaced by establishments more in line with the tastes of the less democratically inclined.
In this at least the nation’s capital really is a mirror of the nation. The same thing is going on from coast to coast. There is a connection, I think, between the police state on the Hill and the corporatizing of the neighborhoods. A retail chain that demands conformity in its thousands of outlets is of a piece with a government that demands conformity from its citizens. A chain that seeks to claim every block in a city (in parts of San Francisco this is no exaggeration) is related to a government that seeks to claim, in one way or another, most of the world.
It has to do with control, and with grabbing everything. They call it “freedom,” which I guess it is for those that do it. But for the rest of us it is a vise tightening, and less room to breathe. The House of Representatives moves to sell off National Parks and turn the rest into corporate billboards. State legislatures, at the behest of telecom corporations, ban localities from establishing municipal WiFi networks and thereby claim the air as a democratic commons. Corporations claim school classrooms as advertising venues. Wal-Mart decimates our Main Streets. On and on.
Their space expands, and ours shrinks. It is a syllogism that is larger than any of the people doing it. The crew in the White House is cheerleader and enabler for something it did not invent. We can be grateful in a way. For decades these tendencies have been working quietly and in disguise. Now they are out in the open, with an aggressive bravado. We can name them, and maybe start to deal with them.
What’s the form of government that joins authoritarian government with corporate convenience? The word is not awfully useful today, associated as it is with the racial politics of the Nazis. But the thing is upon us. The clock is ticking; and if we don’t start building boundaries now – more, if we don’t start to construct a shrewd politics of boundaries – there is no telling where it will end…
To read more on the life and works of Jon Rowe including a 2006 essay Jon wrote for the Christian Science Monitor about a small town in Texas that changed its name to DISH after the satellite television network click here.
————————————————————————————-
WhoWhatWhy is a nonprofit, nonpartisan investigative news site founded by Russ Baker. Follow it on Facebook and Twitter or visit WhoWhatWhy.com
-
- Advertisement
