This post first appeared on Open Left.

If the past is any guide, there’s going to be a wave of protestations, followed by grudging, modest, but real actions to reduce the influence of overt, outspoken racists in the Tea Party movement. That’s what happened after the NAACP passed a resolution last July condemning outspoken racist elements in the Tea Party and calling on Tea Party leaders to repudiate such  elements.  Now, the NAACP has gone further.  It has just released a report–“Tea Party Nationalism: A Critical Examination of the Tea Party Movement and the Size, Scope, and Focus of Its National Factions”–documenting racist influences in the Tea Party movement from a variety of angles.   The report was conducted for the NAACP by the Institute for Research & Education on Human Rights, and written by Devin Burghart and Leonard Zeskind, Vice President and President, respectively of IREHR. It focuses attention on six national Tea Party organizations–FreedomWorks Tea Party, 1776 Tea Party, ResistNet Tea Party, Tea Party Nation, Tea Party Patriots, and Tea Party Express-each of which is the subject of a separate chapter.  And, as David Neiwert writes at Crooks and Liars:

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This post first appeared on Open Left.

The GOP has a long history of nurturing ties with Nazi sympathizers and allies from countries occupied by Germany, who betrayed their countries to support the Nazi oppressors. These people were allowed to play prominent roles in the National Republican Heritage Groups (Nationalities) Council (NRHG[N]C).  In 1988, eight such persons were forced to resign from GHW Bush’s presidential campaign. Rich Iott’s fascination with the Nazis lead him to join a re-enactors unit composed of just these sorts of people during WWII.  However his actions might be explained away, the GOP has long embraced the original perpetrators.

Rich Iott, second from right, in a Nazi SS Waffen uniform
is the GOP candidate for OH-9

While a great deal of effort may be expended in simply trying to avoid the whole subject, we can also expect significant effort at minimization when anything is said. That’s pretty much par for the course. But there’s one reason for this reticence that deserves special attention:  There’s a long history of GOP involvement with Nazi sympathizers and allies particularly from Eastern European nations–who played significant roles in the National Republican Heritage Groups (Nationalities) Council (NRHG[N]C)–and it would not do to ruffle the feathers of those associated with them unnecessarily.  During  George HW Bush’s 1988 presidential campaign, eight figures were forced to “resign” (at least half actually did not) when their Nazi-related pasts were exposed.

One such figure was NRHG[N]C Executive Director Radi Slavoff. The final published version of the report issued on him at the time by researcher Russ Belant–published as the book  Old Nazis, The New Right & The Republican Party and excerpted here–stated:

Slavoff, the Republican Heritage Group’s executive director, is a member of the Bulgarian GOP unit of the Group Council. [He was also the national co-chairman of Bulgarians for Bush.] Slavoff is active with the Nazilinked National Confederation of American Ethnic Groups (NCAEG), which becomes active about a year before presidential elections. NCAEG leaders have included Austin App and Josef Mikus (see below). NCAEG’s Executive Vice President, Michael Szaz, is an official of the Virginia Republican Heritage Groups Council. He is also an associate of prominent racist Roger Pearson [associated with the Nazi Northern League of northern Europe, the Heritage Foundation, the World Anti-Communist League and other fascist organizations.]

In short, these were important figures in building an ethnic support network for the GOP, and there’s no desire to reopen these old wounds and the stories surrounding them once again.

Which is, of course, exactly what I’m going to do on the flip.

But first, I’ll begin by squaring away a few basics regarding the current case, so that it’s connection with the older story is “perfectly clear”: Paul Rosenberg :: Nazi re-enactor is just the tip of the iceberg: The GOP’s long history with Nazi allies The original story by From Joshua Green at The Atlantic contained this passage about the sanitized image the group presents:

Iott says the group chose the Wiking division in part because it fought on the Eastern Front, mainly against the Russian Army, and not U.S. or British soldiers. The group’s website includes a lengthy history of the Wiking unit, a recruitment video, and footage of goose-stepping German soldiers marching in the Warsaw victory parade after Poland fell in 1939. The website makes scant mention of the atrocities committed by the Waffen SS, and includes only a glancing reference to the “twisted” nature of Nazism. Instead, it emphasizes how the Wiking unit fought Bolshevist Communism:

Nazi Germany had no problem in recruiting the multitudes of volunteers willing to lay down their lives to ensure a “New and Free Europe”, free of the threat of Communism. National Socialism was seen by many in Holland, Denmark, Norway, Finland, and other eastern European and Balkan countries as the protector of personal freedom and their very way of life, despite the true underlying totalitarian (and quite twisted, in most cases) nature of the movement. Regardless, thousands upon thousands of valiant men died defending their respective countries in the name of a better tomorrow. We salute these idealists; no matter how unsavory the Nazi government was, the front-line soldiers of the Waffen-SS (in particular the foreign volunteers) gave their lives for their loved ones and a basic desire to be free.

But in comments, Bruce Webb made some particularly devastating points about what was really going on, to wit, good old-fashioned authoritarian brutalitiy in the name of “freedom”.

First this:

“This unit, originally organized as the Nordische Division (Nr.5), was to be made up of Nordic volunteers mixed with ethnic German Waffen SS veterans. To this end, the SS Infantry Regiment Germania in the SS Verfügungstruppe Division was transferred in late 1940 and used as the cadre for a new division .”You think they just stumbled on the ‘Nordic’ division by accident? And as to the claim this was all about fighting the Commies, Germany was not yet at war with Russia at the time and in fact had cut a deal to divide Eastern Europe between them. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M…

The whole thing shouts White Power and StormFront.

Then this:

Wiking Division recruited in 1940At a time that Germany and Russia were still at peace under the terms of Molotov-Ribbentrop. And the nations from which these troops were recruited were mostly under assault or occupation by Germany. These were not patriotic Danes, Norwegians and Dutch guys defending their countries from communism, they were instead just fascist traitors helping oppress their own people.

These people want to re-enact and revise history all at the same time. Dressing as a Nazi is bad enough, dressing as a Nazi in the uniform of a division expressly recruited on racial lines ‘the Nordische’ takes twisted to new contortions.

In short, the whole historical subtext here is that fascists throughout Europe betrayed their countrymen to align with the Nazis, and used “anti-Communism” as a convenient cover for what they did, even when Germany was officially at peace, and even technically allied with the Soviet Union.  This very same deceitful sub-text was kept alive after the war, and served as the foundation for GOP ethiniic outreach, particularly to Eastern European communities, for decades therafter… even unto the present day.

In 1988, political researcher, journalist and author Russ Belant prepared a report on these networks and some of those involved which spearheaded a public reaction that lead to the resignation of a few disgraced staffers on GHW Bush’s presidential campaign.  The report was eventually re-published as a book, Old Nazis, The New Right & The Republican Party.  The following are some excerpts that lay out a sufficient core of the story to make the central point of what exactly was going on.

First, from the introduction, which opens with Reagan in the immediate aftermath of his Bitburg fiasco, and helps shed some retrospective light on Reagan’s delusional mischaracterization of the Waffen SS buried there as “victims” of Hitler.  It also makes clear that the very existence of this heritage group was an unmistakable indication of the racist, authoritarian nature of the GOP’s long-term electoral strategy:

Flash forward to 1988 and the GHW Bush presidential campaign.  He needs all the help he can get, particularly in swing state ethnic enclaves (such as Ohio, of course).  This is when the story of a handful of these men breaks in the media, and resignations follow:

The resignations, however, were entirely for show.  The GOP had no intention of abandoning its most valuably allies, who served them as faithfully as they had once served the Nazis, albeit in a manner more discrete:

The NRCC formally rebuffed its ethnic affiliates prefunctory self-examination, but in reality, nothing changed.  The decades-old wink-and-a-nod relationship continued un-altered, because it embodied an authoritarian identity-based strategy to promote a gradual realignment of ethnic communities around the Republican Party:

Perhaps in 1991 this up-beat conclusion could be accepted. But it failed to recognize what the GOP was really up to–and what it would soon accomplish in the form of a multi-front advance of identity-based fantasy-of-revenge politics, which was most visible in the form of the “Militia Movement”, but which a multitude of different tributaries, of which the heritage councils was but one.  And this last brief passage proved very prescient, indeed:

All that happened more than 20 years ago, and while it has been totally forgotten by Versailles and the M$M, it has been thoroughly stirred into the stew of rightwing resentment fantasies.  The last thing that current-day resesntment cheerleaders–from Beck on down–want is for folks to start poking into the past, and laying out exactly how they (not liberals) are the ones with specific, historical connections with Nazi Germany, and the greatest death panels of all time.

Perhaps Rich Iott has direct ties with these earlier figures or the groups they lead. Perhaps not.  Either way, he may only be a faint echo of this mass-murdering past. But it’s one echo too many for a party with so much to hide, and so much investment in projecting its hidden secrets onto its political enemies.

This post first appeared on Open Left.

When you argue based on fear, you can win at the ballot box, but you will lose in court.  That’s the bottom line of the district court decision overturning Proposition 8–and of a comprehensive new report on the Propositon 8 election campaign, which focused specific attention on the role of fear generated by false charges that school children would be impacted.  (More on the report below.)

From the end of the decision:

Moral disapproval alone is an improper basis on which to deny rights to gay men and lesbians. The evidence shows conclusively that Proposition 8 enacts, without reason, a private moral view that same-sex couples are inferior to opposite-sex couples. FF 76, 79-80; Romer, 517 US at 634 (”[L]aws of the kind now before us raise the inevitable inference that the disadvantage imposed is born of animosity toward the class of persons affected.”). Because Proposition 8 disadvantages gays and lesbians without any rational justification, Proposition 8 violates the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. CONCLUSION Proposition 8 fails to advance any rational basis in singling out gay men and lesbians for denial of a marriage license. Indeed, the evidence shows Proposition 8 does nothing more than enshrine in the California Constitution the notion that opposite sex couples are superior to same-sex couples. Because California has no interest in discriminating against gay men and lesbians, and because Proposition 8 prevents California from fulfilling its constitutional obligation to provide marriages on an equal basis, the court concludes that Proposition 8 is unconstitutional.

Proposition 8 was overturned because of the facts–including the facts surrounding the resort to unfounded fears, which do not provide a rational basis for discriminatory state action under our Constitution (about which, the right as a whole understands virtually nothing). This is how the federal court system works: The district courts–trial courts–are finders of facts.  This is the only place where Justice Roberts’ claim to be an “umpire calling balling and strikes” makes any sense.  Above and beyond this level, arguments overwhelmingly address matters of law and questions of proper application.  The trial court’s findings of fact enjoy a heavy presumption that is rarely questioned, which is a strong reason to believe that the ruling will stand on appeal.  It also doesn’t hurt that the ruling relies on citations to previous rulings by Justice Kennedy.  Presuming Kennedy feels that he has been correctly cited, it seems unlikely that he would join his more conservative colleagues in overturning this finding of fact by arguing that the judge got the law wrong.

As Andrew Koppelman explained in the NY Times:

[I]f the Supreme Court reverses the district court’s decision that same-sex couples have a right to marry, it will have to do it in the teeth of Judge Walker’s factual findings that same-sex marriage is good for gay people and the children they raise (one out of five same-sex couples in California are raising children), that there are no discernible differences between same-sex and opposite-sex couples, that “domestic partnerships” offer fewer benefits than marriage and irrationally stigmatize same-sex relationships as inferior, that recognition of same-sex couples’ right to marry does no detectable harm to heterosexual marriages, and that the campaign for Proposition 8, which outlawed same-sex marriage in California, relied on prejudice and vicious anti-gay stereotypes, such as the idea that gay people are dangerous to children.Judge Walker carefully avoided resting his holding on any controversial proposition of law, such as the idea that gay people should be regarded as a specially protected minority under the Fourteenth Amendment. Instead, he relied on law already laid down by the Supreme Court. He held that Proposition 8 lacked a rational basis, because the “facts” that were invoked in its defense were manifestly false.

It’s been noted by many others as well as Koppelman that there was a long list of factual findings by judge in his ruling.  But I’d like to focus on some key parts of the ruling that bring forth what seem to be the most crucial of them–the overwhelming preponderance of evidence from the plaintiffs, and the basic agreement of the proponent’s key witness that gay marriage would be good for those whe were married, plus the implausibility that any harm to the state would result.

I’m quoting here from a key part of the ruling, where Judge Walker describes the imbalance and insufficiency of evidence and highlights the key questions that matters of fact must answer:

Plaintiffs presented eight lay witnesses, including the four plaintiffs, and nine expert witnesses. Proponents’ evidentiary presentation was dwarfed by that of plaintiffs. Proponents presented two expert witnesses and conducted lengthy and thorough cross-examinations of plaintiffs’ expert witnesses but failed to build a credible factual record to support their claim that Proposition 8 served a legitimate government interest.Although the evidence covered a range of issues, the direct and cross-examinations focused on the following broad questions:

WHETHER ANY EVIDENCE SUPPORTS CALIFORNIA’S REFUSAL TO RECOGNIZE MARRIAGE BETWEEN TWO PEOPLE BECAUSE OF THEIR SEX;

WHETHER ANY EVIDENCE SHOWS CALIFORNIA HAS AN INTEREST IN DIFFERENTIATING BETWEEN SAME-SEX AND OPPOSITE-SEX UNIONS; and

WHETHER THE EVIDENCE SHOWS PROPOSITION 8 ENACTED A PRIVATE MORAL VIEW WITHOUT ADVANCING A LEGITIMATE GOVERNMENT INTEREST.

Framed by these three questions and before detailing the court’s credibility determinations and findings of fact, the court abridges the testimony at trial: ….

Of that abridged testimony, what stands out as key was simply that plaintiffs established the realworld significance of what was at stake in terms of the broad sweep of history (personal significance was dealt with elsewhere).  In contrast, Prop 8 proponents not only failed to undermine this factual record, their own expert witness, David Blankenhorn (whose credentials were pitilessly scrutinized elsewhere in the decision), actually ended up agreeing that allowing same-sex marriage would have beneficial effects, with only speculative harms.

First the differences in testimony are laid out:

Plaintiffs and proponents presented expert testimony on the meaning of marriage. Historian Nancy Cott testified about the public institution of marriage and the state’s interest in recognizing and regulating marriages. Tr 185:9-13. She explained that marriage is “a couple’s choice to live with each other, to remain committed to one another, and to form a household based on their own feelings about one another, and their agreement to join in an economic partnership and support one another in terms of the material needs of life.” Tr 201:9-14. The state’s primary purpose in regulating marriage is to create stable households. Tr 222:13-17.Think tank founder David Blankenhorn testified that marriage is “a socially-approved sexual relationship between a man and a woman” with a primary purpose to “regulate filiation.” Tr 2742:9-10, 18. Blankenhorn testified that others hold to an alternative and, to Blankenhorn, conflicting definition of marriage: “a private adult commitment” that focuses on “the tender feelings that the spouses have for one another.” Tr 2755:25-2756:1; 2756:10-2757:17; 2761:5-6. To Blankenhorn, marriage is either a socially approved sexual relationship between a man and a woman for the purpose of bearing and raising children who are biologically related to both spouses or a private relationship between two consenting adults.
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Cott explained that marriage as a social institution encompasses a socially approved sexual union and an affective relationship and, for the state, forms the basis of stable households and private support obligations.

But then the focus begins shifting toward bringing out similarities:

Both Cott and Blankenhorn addressed marriage as a historical institution. Cott pointed to consistent historical features of marriage, including that civil law, as opposed to religious custom, has always been supreme in regulating and defining marriage in the United States, Tr 195:9-15, and that one’s ability to consent to marriage is a basic civil right, Tr 202:2-5.Blankenhorn identified three rules of marriage (discussed further in the credibility determinations, section I below), which he testified have been consistent across cultures and times: (1) the rule of opposites (the “man/woman” rule); (2) the rule of two; and (3) the rule of sex. Tr 2879:17-25. Cott identified historical changes in the institution of marriage, including the removal of race restrictions through court decisions and the elimination of coverture and other gender-based distinctions. Blankenhorn identified changes that to him signify the deinstitutionalization of marriage, including an increase in births outside of marriage and an increasing divorce rate.

Both Cott and Blankenhorn testified that California stands to benefit if it were to resume issuing marriage licenses to same-sex couples. Blankenhorn noted that marriage would benefit same-sex couples and their children, would reduce discrimination against gays and lesbians and would be “a victory for the worthy ideas of tolerance and inclusion.” Tr 2850:12-13. Despite the multitude of benefits identified by Blankenhorn that would flow to the state, to gays and lesbians and to American ideals were California to recognize same-sex marriage, Blankenhorn testified that the state should not recognize same-sex marriage. Blankenhorn reasoned that the benefits of same-sex marriage are not valuable enough because same-sex marriage could conceivably weaken marriage as an institution. Cott testified that the state would benefit from recognizing same-sex marriage because such marriages would provide “another resource for stability and social order.” Tr 252:19-23.

The decision continues by expanding to include other expert testimony, and to indicate differences in credibility:

Psychologist Letitia Anne Peplau testified that couples benefit both physically and economically when they are married. Peplau testified that those benefits would accrue to same-sex as well as opposite-sex married couples. To Peplau, the desire of same-sex couples to marry illustrates the health of the institution of marriage and not, as Blankenhorn testified, the weakening of marriage. Economist Lee Badgett provided evidence that same-sex couples would benefit economically if they were able to marry and that same-sex marriage would have no adverse effect on the institution of marriage or on opposite-sex couples.As explained in the credibility determinations, section I below, the court finds the testimony of Cott, Peplau and Badgett to support findings on the definition and purpose of civil marriage; the testimony of Blankenhorn is unreliable. The trial evidence provides no basis for establishing that California has an interest in refusing to recognize marriage between two people because of their sex.

Toward the end of the decision–and running into the passage I quoted earlier, Judge Walker addresses the irrational foundations of the fear-based Prop 8 campaign:

Proponents’ purported rationales are nothing more than post-hoc justifications. While the Equal Protection Clause does not prohibit post-hoc rationales, they must connect to the classification drawn. Here, the purported state interests fit so poorly with Proposition 8 that they are irrational, as explained above. What is left is evidence that Proposition 8 enacts a moral view that there is something “wrong” with same-sex couples. See FF 78-80.The evidence at trial regarding the campaign to pass Proposition 8 uncloaks the most likely explanation for its passage: a desire to advance the belief that opposite-sex couples are morally superior to same-sex couples. FF 79-80. The campaign relied heavily on negative stereotypes about gays and lesbians and focused on protecting children from inchoate threats vaguely associated with gays and lesbians. FF 79-80; See PX0016 Video, Have You Thought About It? (video of a young girl asking whether the viewer has considered the consequences to her of Proposition 8 but not explaining what those consequences might be).

At trial, proponents’ counsel attempted through crossexamination to show that the campaign wanted to protect children from learning about same-sex marriage in school. See PX0390A Video, Ron Prentice Addressing Supporters of Proposition 8, Excerpt; Tr 132:25-133:3 (proponents’ counsel to Katami: “But the fact is that what the Yes on 8 campaign was pointing at, is that kids would be taught about same-sex relationships in first and second grade; isn’t that a fact, that that’s what they were referring to?”). The evidence shows, however, that Proposition 8 played on a fear that exposure to homosexuality would turn children into homosexuals and that parents should dread having children who are not heterosexual. FF 79; PX0099 Video, It’s Already Happened (mother’s expression of horror upon realizing her daughter now knows she can marry a princess).

The testimony of George Chauncey places the Protect Marriage campaign advertisements in historical context as echoing messages from previous campaigns to enact legal measures to disadvantage gays and lesbians. FF 74, 77-80. The Protect Marriage campaign advertisements ensured California voters had these previous fear-inducing messages in mind. FF 80. The evidence at trial shows those fears to be completely unfounded. FF 47-49, 68-73, 76-80.

Moral disapproval alone is an improper basis on which to deny rights to gay men and lesbians. The evidence shows conclusively that Proposition 8 enacts, without reason, a private moral view that same-sex couples are inferior to opposite-sex couples. FF 76, 79-80; Romer, 517 US at 634 (”[L]aws of the kind now before us raise the inevitable inference that the disadvantage imposed is born of animosity toward the class of persons affected.”). Because Proposition 8 disadvantages gays and lesbians without any rational justification, Proposition 8 violates the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.

Here is an excerpt from the report’s abstract:

This report also puts Prop 8 in context, and notes its remarkable similarity to other same-sex marriage campaigns. Prop 8 illustrates three patterns-two dysfunctional, one functional–that define much of the LGBT struggle with ballot measures since they first cropped up in the 1970s.The first pattern is that anti-gay forces know how to exploit and stimulate anti-gay prejudice, and the LGBT community has difficulty facing and responding to the attack. Recycling a lie as old as Anita Bryant’s “Save Our Children” campaign in 1977, the anti-gay Yes on 8 campaign whipped up fears about kids to move voters to its side. In the final six weeks of the campaign, a minimum of 687,000 voters moved towards favoring the ban the on same-sex marriage. The voters who most dramatically moved toward the ban were not African-Americans or Republicans. Those who moved were largely part of the pro-LGBT base that got peeled away, particularly parents and voters of parenting age. In the closing weeks, almost three-quarters of the net movement toward the ban-approximately 500,000 voters-were parents with children under eighteen living at home. Other voters who also moved away in big numbers were white Democrats, Independents, and voters in the greater San Francisco Bay area. Yes on 8’s fear-mongering about children was particularly effective because No on 8 waited sixteen of the thirty days remaining until the election was over to directly respond. Once No on 8 responded directly in its TV ads, it made up some of the ground lost earlier.

Think Progress notes:

Interestingly, the argument is so effective because it’s so familiar. Societies have long used children to deny rights to minority groups. Medieval anti-Semitism portrayed Jews as animals bent on destroying the children of the majority and accused them of murdering Christian babies in ritual sacrifices. In the late 1970s anti-gay crusader Antia Bryant organized a “Save Our Children” against a nondiscrimination ordinance in Florida, warning that “a particularly deviant-minded [gay] teacher could sexually molest children.”It’s always been about the children and history suggests that as gay people become more prominent in society and this argument loses currency, it will be transfered to a different minority group.

Indeed, the same pattern was seen with respect to racial segregation.  The NAACP legal strategy to overturn Plessy took account of this, and began by challenging segregation at the graduate school level, knowing that it was a sure loser to try to begin with grade-school classrooms. It’s always about the children.  They are the ones who must be “protected”, who must be “carefully taught”:

You’ve got to be taught to hate and fear
You’ve got to be taught from year to year
It’s got to be drummed in your dear little ear
You’ve got to be carefully taught

You’ve got to be taught to be afraid
Of people whose eyes are oddly made
And people whose skin is a different shade
You’ve got to be carefully taught

You’ve got to be taught before it’s too late
Before you are six or seven or eight
To hate all the people your relatives hate
You’ve got to be carefully taught
You’ve got to be carefully taught

This post first appeared on Open Left.

This is too much for even Fox News toady Carl Cameron, apparently. From TPM:

Sharron Angle has further expounded on her strategy of courting conservative media and avoiding more mainstream sources — it’s not just about money, as she’s said before, but also about only being asked the questions she wants.

“We needed to have the press be our friend,” Angle said in an interview that aired on Fox over the weekend.

“Wait a minute. Hold on a second. To be your friend?” said a disbelieving Carl Cameron. Before Angle could fully answer, he added: “That sounds naive.” Apparently this was too much for even him.

“Well, no,” said Angle. “We wanted them to ask the questions we want to answer so that they report the news the way we want it to be reported.”

Angle continued: “And when I get on a show, and I say, ‘Send money to SharronAngle.com,’ so that your listeners will know that if they want to support me they need to go to SharronAngle.com.”

Well, at least we know have a clear definition of the “liberal media”: Anyone who asks a question that a conservative doesn’t want to answer.

This is really a very revealing tip-of-the-iceberg moment for understanding how conservatives completely reinterpret the entire framework of liberal democracy: Rights for me, but not for thee!  And yes America is founded on the principles of liberal political theory, which is why conservatives hate America–a fact we should lear to start repeating over and over again.

This post originally appeared on Open Left.

When bin Laden conceived of making war with America it was absurd on multiple levels, not least of which was that so few Muslims cared about his obsession with US bases in Saudi Arabia.  It took a really long time for him to catch onto the Israeli oppression of Palestinians as a cause he could exploit.  In spring of 2002, the Arab League offered a way out, but Bush was too obsessed with framing Iraq for an invasion to pay any attention.  When Obama finally took over in 2009, there was some hope that he might understand the nature of the conflict he had inherited–particularly when he put George Mitchell in charge of the most intractable part.

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This post first appeared on Open Left.

In America, conservatives couldn’t kill the welfare state because it was too popular, so they decided to re-purpose it for conservative ends. These are their stories.

One of the things I’ve been trying now for a couple of years is to try to figure out why is it that so many hedge fund managers, wealthy Americans, and big banks, Wall Street banks, executives of Wall Street banks, have all lined-up supporting and getting involved in the development of charter schools. I think I may have come across one of the reasons. There’s a lot of money to be made in charter schools, and I’m not talking just about the for-profit management companies that run a lot of these charter schools.It turns out that at the tail end of the Clinton administration in 2000, Congress passed a new kind of tax credit called a New Markets tax credit. What this allows is it gives enormous federal tax credit to banks and equity funds that invest in community projects in underserved communities and it’s been used heavily now for the last several years for charter schools. I have focused on Albany, New York, which in New York state, is the district with the highest percentage of children in charter schools, twenty percent of the schoolchildren in Albany attend are now attending charter schools. I discovered that quite a few of the charter schools there have been built using these New Markets tax credits.

What happens is the investors who put up the money to build charter schools get to basically or virtually double their money in seven years through a thirty-nine percent tax credit from the federal government. In addition, this is a tax credit on money that they’re lending, so they’re also collecting interest on the loans as well as getting the thirty-nine percent tax credit. They piggy-back the tax credit on other kinds of federal tax credits like historic preservation or job creation or brownfields credits.

The result is, you can put in ten million dollars and in seven years double your money. The problem is, that the charter schools end up paying in rents, the debt service on these loans and so now, a lot of the charter schools in Albany are straining paying their debt service–their rent has gone up from $170,000 to $500,000 in a year or–huge increases in their rents as they strain to pay off these loans, these construction loans. The rents are eating-up huge portions of their total cost. And, of course, the money is coming from the state.

I’ve written before about the larger phenomena of which this is a part–the conservative’s re-purposing of the welfare state for conservative ends once they realized the impossibility of destroying it outright, because of its popularity.  “What’s wrong with the third ‘Third Way’” provides an historical overview, and I’ve described examples in “Student Loan Debt–A Symptom of the Conservative Welfare State Shift”, “Superbowl Sunday highlights conservative welfare state in action”, and “Green grow the oil wells–oh!” (published just yesterday).  So here is yet another one.

In his column, Gonzalez gave a more detailed view of what’s been going on:

In Albany, which boasts the state’s highest percentage of charter school enrollments, a nonprofit called the Brighter Choice Foundation has employed the New Markets Tax Credit to arrange private financing for five of the city’s nine charter schools.But many of those same schools are now straining to pay escalating rents, which are going toward the debt service that Brighter Choice incurred during construction.

The Henry Johnson Charter School, for example, saw the rent for its 31,000-square-foot building skyrocket from $170,000 in 2008 to $560,000 last year.

The Albany Community School’s rent jumped from $195,000 to $350,000.

Green Tech High Charter School rents went from $443,000 to $487,000.

Meanwhile, all the Albany charter schools haven’t achieved the enrollment levels their founders expected, even after recruiting hundreds of students from suburban school districts to fill their seats.

The result has been less money in per-pupil state aid to pay operating costs, including those big rent bills.

Several charters have fallen into additional debt to the Brighter Choice Foundation.

You’d think these financial problems would raise eyebrows among state regulators – or at least worry those charter school boards.

But the powerful charter lobby has so far successfully battled to prevent independent government audits of how its schools spend their state aid.

And key officers of Albany’s charter school boards are themselves board members, employees or former employees of the Brighter Choice Foundation or its affiliates.

This is obviously a very bad deal for the public.  It’s even a bad deal for those who are true believers in the charter school sham. But it can be difficult to really understand what’s going on–and what’s fundamentally wrong with it–if you don’t stand back to see the larger picture.  So, here’s a quick run-down.

When Otto von Bismark created the first conservative welfare state, it was designed to co-opt the Social Democrat’s most popular idea, while strengthening German industry internationally and strengthening the power of its elites internally by placing them in charge of caring for social needs.  In America, the pattern is a little messier, as it represents a convergence of different conservative interests, all the while being disavowed as conservatives repeatedly claim to be against the “nanny state”.  But here we can see at least five different conservative ends being served at once:  (1) The attack on public education itself is a prime example of the attack on social democratic ideas and institutions, paralleling Bismark’s co-opting of the Social Democratic Party’s most popular idea. This serves to discredit public education, take money away from the public education system, and take money and jobs away from public employees and their unions.  (2) The siphoning off of certain students into separate learning environments is part of the conservative agenda for inscribing hierarchical differences in society. (3) The creation of lucrative money-making opportunities funnels public money to more wealthy members of society. (4) The creation of private governance structures further strengthens the power of unaccountable conservative elites, weakening democratic control.  (5) The private governance structures in turn empower crony networks that can also serve as organizing foundations for further consolidation of conservative power.

There is no way to effectively deal with these problems (conservative goals) in isolation.  They need to be seen and combatted as a whole.  If not, then one bad conservative idea will just be replaced by another, and another.

Of course this is easier said than done.  But doing it begins with recognizing the nature of what needs to be done.

This post originally appeared on Open Left.

The last two weeks have been quite a dynamic period of time.  The GOP determination to make financial reform an endless fight ala health care reform seems to have suddenly crumpled, a sudden rise in media scrutiny, along with chilling reminders of the 15th Anniversary of the Oklahoma Bombing seems to have suddenly taken the wind out of the Tea Party Movement–though for how long no one can say, and the passage of a deeply racist anti-immigrant law in Arizona has produced a wave of violent threats against Representative Grijalva.  This only describes part of the complex dynamics of political shifts over the past two weeks, but it’s still far too much for most of us to get a handle on, partly because the dominant terms of political discourse–even in progressive online circles–is simply too impoverished to adequately describe what is happening.  I’d like to focus attention on a few highlightable incidents in order to draw out what is difficult for us to deal with conceptually, and then bring in a recent blog post by Sara Robinson at the Campaign for America’s Future, “None Dare Call It Sedition”, that I think is enormously clarifying.

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This post originally appeared on the Daily Kos.

Living in a state that gets more federal money than it gives in federal taxes is a powerful political factor in influencing voting for a Republican for President.

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