Former Florida governor was critical of current field in a speech this week, prompting rumours he could be a surprise contender
Paul Harris in New York
guardian.co.uk, Friday 24 February 2012
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/feb/24/jeb-bush-latest-white-knight-republican
Speculation that a late challenger might still emerge in the increasingly bitter race for the Republican presidential nomination is set to surge after former Florida governor Jeb Bush made remarks criticising the current field.
Bush, who is the brother of President George W Bush and son of President George Bush Sr, is a beloved figure among many conservatives who see him as a strong and charismatic leader who is popular in the must-win swing state of Florida.
That contrasts with a widespread unease among many Republican leaders and grassroots activists with the remaining crop of Republican candidates and the vitriolic nature of the fight between frontrunner Mitt Romney and his main challengers Rick Santorum and Newt Gingrich.
In answers to questions from the audience after a speech in Dallas on Thursday, Bush cautioned the remaining Republican campaigns from drifting so far to the right that they put off the key independent voters needed to beat President Barack Obama in November.
"I think it's important for the candidates to recognise though they have to appeal to primary voters, and not turn off independent voters that will be part of a winning coalition," Bush told the audience according to CBS news.
Bush also directly took on the strident tone of recent Republican debates, accusing participants of scare-mongering. "I used to be a conservative and I watch these debates and I'm wondering, I don't think I've changed, but it's a little troubling sometimes when people are appealing to people's fears and emotion rather than trying to get them to look over the horizon for a broader perspective and that's kind of where we are," he said according to Fox News.
With Mitt Romney failing so far to secure the nomination but with no convincing challenger emerging to unseat him, many Republican pundits have speculated about the possibility that none of the current field will be able to amass enough support to secure the nomination this August in Tampa.
Though that is still unlikely, and Romney remains favourite to win the contest, it has led to a slew of names being mentioned as possible "white knights" who could still enter the race or emerge at Tampa as a compromise candidate to unite a splintered party. They include Bush, New Jersey governor Chris Christie, Indiana governor Mitch Daniels and Wisconsin congressman Paul Ryan.
Though none of these figures have expressed any intention to run, and several have repeatedly denied it, Bush's comments are likely to set the rumour mill spinning furiously.
They also come after Tea Party favourite Sarah Palin entered the fray, raising the idea that she might see herself as her party's saviour. In recent interviews the former Alaska governor has said she would "help" out the party if a contested convention happened and told CNN earlier this month that she believed such an event would be a good thing. "I don't think it would be a negative for the party … That's part of the competition, that's part of the process and it may happen," she said.
Ron Paul's campaign has also complicated matters. Though the libertarian-leaning Texan congressman has not yet won a single state's popular ballot, he is trying to build up a large number of delegates to take to Tampa. In caucus states, where complex rules mean the number of delegates assigned to a candidate can outweigh their score in the popular vote, Ron Paul's campaign is working hard to win as much support as possible. That could see him amass a body of delegates in Tampa that far exceeds his standings in the polls and makes a contested convention, with no one having enough support to secure victory, more likely.
Showing posts with label Newt Gingrich. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Newt Gingrich. Show all posts
Tuesday, March 20, 2012
Monday, January 30, 2012
Turning America into Pottersville
Exclusive: The Republican presidential race has taken a detour into the “class warfare” that the party supposedly despises, with Newt Gingrich and Rick Perry tagging Mitt Romney as an elitist who got rich by laying off workers. But this spat misses the larger point of what the Right is doing to America, writes Robert Parry.
Robert Parry
January 14, 2012
http://consortiumnews.com/2012/01/14/turning-america-into-pottersville/
For many years, it appeared that the Right wanted to take the United States back to the 1950s – when blacks “knew their place,” women were “in the kitchen” and gays stayed “in the closet” – but it turns out that the intended back-in-time-travel was to the 1920s, to an era of a few haves and many have-nots, not only before the Civil Rights Movement but before the Great American Middle-Class.
The Right’s goal has been less to recreate the world of “Father Knows Best” than to establish a national “Pottersville,” like in the movie, “It’s a Wonderful Life,” where the existence of the average man and woman was brutish and unfulfilling, while the 1 percent of that age lived in gilded comfort and held sweeping power.
Actor Jimmy Stewart finding himself in Pottersville in "It's a Wonderful Life"
That is the message ironically coming from the expensive ad wars of the Republican presidential battle, where frontrunner Mitt Romney has emerged as the personification of the 1 percent and has been attacked by rivals who – while supporting similar policies favoring the ultra-rich – have savaged his career as a venture capitalist, or as Texas Gov. Rick Perry puts it, a “vulture capitalist.”
Romney’s response has been telling. The former chief executive of the corporate takeover firm Bain Capital went beyond the Right’s usual lament about “class warfare,” terming the criticism of high-flying financiers who use layoffs to fatten their bottom lines “the bitter politics of envy.”
And, if there remained any doubt about Romney’s status as the nation’s “elitist-in-chief,” he added that it was wrong to have a noisy and open debate about the dangers of growing income inequality. He told Matt Lauer on NBC’s “Today” that “I think it’s fine to talk about those things in quiet rooms, and discussions about tax policy and the like.”
In other words, keep the rabble from protesting their lot; leave these matters to the well-bred and the well-off, in their think tanks and their board rooms.
For decades, the Right has largely concealed this elitist agenda behind appeals to social conservatism and flag-waving patriotism. Many working- and middle-class Americans, especially white males, have sided with the economic free-marketers because the hated “lib-rhuls” supported civil rights for blacks, women and gays – and also questioned America’s military might.
Plus, many Americans have forgotten a basic truth: that the Great American Middle-Class was largely a creation of the federal government and its policies dating back to Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal. For many Americans in the middle-class, it was more satisfying to think that they or their parents had climbed the social ladder on their own. They didn’t need “guv-mint” help.
But the truth is that it was government policies arising out of the Great Depression and carried forward through the post-World War II years by both Republican and Democratic presidents that created the opportunities for tens of millions of Americans to achieve relative comfort and security.
Those policies ranged from Social Security and labor rights in the 1930s to the GI Bill after World War II to government investments in infrastructure and technological research in the decades that followed. Even in recent years, despite right-wing efforts to choke off this flow of progress, government programs – such as the Internet – brought greater efficiency to markets and wealth to many entrepreneurs.
So, not only is Massachusetts Senate candidate Elizabeth Warren right when she notes that “there is nobody in this country who got rich on his own,” it’s also true that government policies enabled large numbers of Americans to climb out of poverty and into the middle-class.
The Dick Cheney Example
Oddly, one of the best examples of this reality is the life of right-wing icon Dick Cheney, as he revealed in his recent memoir, In My Time. In the book, Cheney recognizes that his personal success was made possible by Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal and the fact that Cheney’s father managed to land a steady job with the federal government.
“I’ve often reflected on how different was the utterly stable environment he provided for his family and wondered if because of that I have been able to take risks, to change directions, and to leave one career path for another with hardly a second thought,” Cheney wrote.
By contrast, in sketching his family’s history, Cheney depicted the hard-scrabble life of farmers and small businessmen scratching out a living in the American Midwest and suffering financial reversals whenever the titans of Wall Street stumbled into a financial crisis and the bankers cut off credit.
After his forebears would make some modest headway from their hard work, they would find themselves back at square one, again and again, because of some “market” crisis or a negative weather pattern. Whether a financial panic or a sudden drought, everything was lost.
“In 1883, as the country struggled through a long economic depression, the sash and door factory that [Civil War veteran Samuel Fletcher Cheney] co-owned [in Defiance, Ohio] had to be sold to pay its debts,” Cheney wrote. “At the age of fifty-four, Samuel Cheney had to start over,” moving to Nebraska.
There, Samuel Cheney built a sod house and began a farm, enjoying some success until a drought hit, again forcing him to the edge. Despite a solid credit record, he noted that “the banks will not loan to anyone at present” and, in 1896, he had to watch all his possessions auctioned off at the Kearney County Courthouse. Samuel Cheney started another homestead in 1904 and kept working until he died in 1911 at the age of 82.
His third son, Thomas, who was nicknamed Bert (and who would become Dick Cheney’s grandfather), tried to build a different life as a cashier and part owner of a Sumner, Kansas, bank, named Farmers and Merchants Bank. But he still suffered when the economy crashed.
“Despite all his plans and success, Bert Cheney found that, like his father, he couldn’t escape the terrible power of nature,” Dick Cheney wrote. “When drought struck in the early 1930s, farmers couldn’t pay their debts, storekeepers had to close their doors, and Farmers and Merchants Bank went under. … My grandparents lost everything except for the house in which they lived.”
Finding Security
Bert Cheney’s son, Richard, ventured off in a different direction, working his way through Kearney State Teachers College and taking the civil service exam. He landed a job as a typist with the Veterans Administration in Lincoln, Nebraska.
“After scraping by for so long, he found the prospect of a $120 monthly salary and the security of a government job too good to turn down,” his son, Dick Cheney, wrote. “Before long he was offered a job with another federal agency, the Soil Conservation Service.
“The SCS taught farmers about crop rotation, terraced planting, contour plowing, and using ‘shelter belts’ of trees as windbreaks – techniques that would prevent the soil from blowing away, as it had in the dust storms of the Great Depression. My dad stayed with the SCS for more than thirty years, doing work of which he was immensely proud.
“He was also proud of the pension that came with federal employment – a pride that I didn’t understand until as an adult I learned about the economic catastrophes that his parents and grandparents had experienced and that had shadowed his own youth.”
Like many Americans, the Cheney family was pulled from the depths of the Great Depression by the New Deal of Franklin Roosevelt, cementing the family’s support for the Democratic president and his party. The family celebrated when little Dick was born on FDR’s birthday.
“When I was born [on Jan. 30, 1941] my granddad wanted to send a telegram to the president,” Cheney wrote in his memoir. “Both sides of my family were staunch New Deal Democrats, and Granddad was sure that FDR would want to know about the ‘little stranger’ with whom he now had a birthday in common.”
However, Dick Cheney took a different path. Freed from the insecurity that had afflicted his father and earlier Cheneys – caused by the cruel vicissitudes of laissez-faire capitalism – Dick Cheney enjoyed the relative comfort of middle-class life in post-World War II America. He took advantage of the many opportunities that presented themselves.
Most notably, Cheney attached himself to an ambitious Republican congressman from Illinois named Donald Rumsfeld. When Rumsfeld left Congress for posts in the Nixon administration, he brought Cheney along. Eventually Rumsfeld became White House chief of staff to President Gerald Ford and – when Rumsfeld was tapped to become Defense Secretary in 1975 – he recommended his young aide, Dick Cheney, to succeed him.
Cheney’s career path through the ranks of Republican national politics, with occasional trips through the revolving door into lucrative private-sector jobs, was set. He became a major player within the GOP Establishment, building a reputation as an ardent conservative, a foreign policy hawk – and a fierce opponent of the New Deal.
Demonizing Guv-mint
The Right’s ongoing campaign to dismantle the New Deal also has hinged on the demonization of “guv-mint,” a darkening of attitudes that became more possible when many middle-class Americans lost their memory of how their families had moved into the middle-class.
In the 1960s and 1970s, middle-class white men in particular came to view the government as a force for helping the poor, women and minorities, while putting pressure on white males to change long-established attitudes. Plus, they were told that the government was taking their hard-earned dollars to give to the undeserving.
When these messages – along with a mix of patriotic hoopla and coded appeals to bigotry – were delivered by the personable Ronald Reagan in 1980, middle- and working-class whites rallied to the Right’s banner. It was time, they felt, to dismantle many government programs for the poor and to get tough on foreign adversaries.
But Reagan’s most important policy was slashing taxes, especially those on the rich. Under Reagan’s “supply-side economics,” the top marginal tax rate – that is what the richest Americans pay on their highest tranche of income – was more than halved, from 70 percent to 28 percent.
Yet, since the promised surge in “supply-side” growth didn’t materialize, one result was a dramatic rise in the national debt. Another less obvious change was the incentivizing of greed. Under presidents from Dwight Eisenhower (when the top marginal tax rate was 90 percent) through Jimmy Carter (with a 70 percent top rate), taxes had been a disincentive against greed.
After all, if 70 to 90 percent of your highest tranche of income went to the government to help pay for building the nation, you had little personal incentive to press for that extra $1 million or $2 million. So corporate CEOs – while well-compensated – were happy earning about 25 times as much as their average worker in the 1960s. A few decades later, that ratio on CEO pay was about 200 times what the average worker was making.
As the Washington Post’s Peter Whoriskey framed this historic development in a June 19, 2011, article, U.S. business underwent a cultural transformation from the 1970s when chief executives believed more in sharing the wealth than they do today.
Whoriskey described the findings of researchers with access to economic data from the Internal Revenue Service. The numbers revealed that the big bucks were not flowing primarily to athletes or actors or even stock market speculators; America’s new super-rich were mostly corporate chieftains.
The article cited a U.S. dairy company CEO from the 1970s, Kenneth J. Douglas, who earned the equivalent of about $1 million a year. He lived comfortably but not ostentatiously. Douglas had an office on the second floor of a milk distribution center, and he turned down raises because he felt it would hurt morale at the plant, Whoriskey reported.
However, just a few decades later, Gregg L. Engles, the CEO of the same company, Dean Foods, averaged about 10 times what Douglas made; worked in a glittering high-rise office building in Dallas; owned a vacation estate in Vail, Colorado; belonged to four golf clubs; and traveled in a $10 million corporate jet. He apparently had little concern about what his workers thought.
“The evolution of executive grandeur – from very comfortable to jet-setting – reflects one of the primary reasons that the gap between those with the highest incomes and everyone else is widening,” Whoriskey reported.
“For years, statistics have depicted growing income disparity in the United States, and it has reached levels not seen since the Great Depression. In 2008, the last year for which data are available, for example, the top 0.1 percent of earners took in more than 10 percent of the personal income in the United States, including capital gains, and the top 1 percent took in more than 20 percent.”
The old New-Deal-to-post-World-War-II notion had been that a healthy middle-class contributed to profitable businesses because average people could afford to buy consumer goods, own their own homes and take an annual vacation with the kids. That “middle-class system,” however, had required intervention by the government as the representative of the everyman.
The consequences of several decades of Reaganism and its related ideas (such as shipping many middle-class jobs overseas) are now apparent. Wealth has been concentrated at the top with billionaires living extravagant lives while the middle-class shrinks and struggles. One everyman after another gets shoved down the social ladder into the lower classes and into poverty.
Those real-life consequences are painful. Millions of Americans forego needed medical care because they can’t afford health insurance; young people, burdened by college loans, crowd back in with their parents; trained workers settle for low-paying jobs or are unemployed; families skip vacations and other simple pleasures of life.
Beyond the unfairness, there is the macro-economic problem which comes from massive income disparity. A strong economy is one in which the vast majority people can buy products, which can then be manufactured more cheaply, creating a positive cycle of profits and prosperity.
Instead, Mitt Romney — and even his Republican rivals who criticize his personal business methods — are intent to press ahead down the dark road of Reaganism toward some nightmarish Pottersville. Instead of a vibrant debate about whether this is the right way to go, Romney instructs the masses to keep their mouths shut with the only permitted conversations about the nation’s future restricted to “quiet rooms.”
For more on related topics, see Robert Parry’s Lost History, Secrecy & Privilege and Neck Deep, now available in a three-book set for the discount price of only $29. For details, click here.
Robert Parry broke many of the Iran-Contra stories in the 1980s for the Associated Press and Newsweek. His latest book, Neck Deep: The Disastrous Presidency of George W. Bush, was written with two of his sons, Sam and Nat, and can be ordered at neckdeepbook.com. His two previous books, Secrecy & Privilege: The Rise of the Bush Dynasty from Watergate to Iraq and Lost History: Contras, Cocaine, the Press & ‘Project Truth’ are also available there.
Robert Parry
January 14, 2012
http://consortiumnews.com/2012/01/14/turning-america-into-pottersville/
For many years, it appeared that the Right wanted to take the United States back to the 1950s – when blacks “knew their place,” women were “in the kitchen” and gays stayed “in the closet” – but it turns out that the intended back-in-time-travel was to the 1920s, to an era of a few haves and many have-nots, not only before the Civil Rights Movement but before the Great American Middle-Class.
The Right’s goal has been less to recreate the world of “Father Knows Best” than to establish a national “Pottersville,” like in the movie, “It’s a Wonderful Life,” where the existence of the average man and woman was brutish and unfulfilling, while the 1 percent of that age lived in gilded comfort and held sweeping power.
Actor Jimmy Stewart finding himself in Pottersville in "It's a Wonderful Life"
That is the message ironically coming from the expensive ad wars of the Republican presidential battle, where frontrunner Mitt Romney has emerged as the personification of the 1 percent and has been attacked by rivals who – while supporting similar policies favoring the ultra-rich – have savaged his career as a venture capitalist, or as Texas Gov. Rick Perry puts it, a “vulture capitalist.”
Romney’s response has been telling. The former chief executive of the corporate takeover firm Bain Capital went beyond the Right’s usual lament about “class warfare,” terming the criticism of high-flying financiers who use layoffs to fatten their bottom lines “the bitter politics of envy.”
And, if there remained any doubt about Romney’s status as the nation’s “elitist-in-chief,” he added that it was wrong to have a noisy and open debate about the dangers of growing income inequality. He told Matt Lauer on NBC’s “Today” that “I think it’s fine to talk about those things in quiet rooms, and discussions about tax policy and the like.”
In other words, keep the rabble from protesting their lot; leave these matters to the well-bred and the well-off, in their think tanks and their board rooms.
For decades, the Right has largely concealed this elitist agenda behind appeals to social conservatism and flag-waving patriotism. Many working- and middle-class Americans, especially white males, have sided with the economic free-marketers because the hated “lib-rhuls” supported civil rights for blacks, women and gays – and also questioned America’s military might.
Plus, many Americans have forgotten a basic truth: that the Great American Middle-Class was largely a creation of the federal government and its policies dating back to Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal. For many Americans in the middle-class, it was more satisfying to think that they or their parents had climbed the social ladder on their own. They didn’t need “guv-mint” help.
But the truth is that it was government policies arising out of the Great Depression and carried forward through the post-World War II years by both Republican and Democratic presidents that created the opportunities for tens of millions of Americans to achieve relative comfort and security.
Those policies ranged from Social Security and labor rights in the 1930s to the GI Bill after World War II to government investments in infrastructure and technological research in the decades that followed. Even in recent years, despite right-wing efforts to choke off this flow of progress, government programs – such as the Internet – brought greater efficiency to markets and wealth to many entrepreneurs.
So, not only is Massachusetts Senate candidate Elizabeth Warren right when she notes that “there is nobody in this country who got rich on his own,” it’s also true that government policies enabled large numbers of Americans to climb out of poverty and into the middle-class.
The Dick Cheney Example
Oddly, one of the best examples of this reality is the life of right-wing icon Dick Cheney, as he revealed in his recent memoir, In My Time. In the book, Cheney recognizes that his personal success was made possible by Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal and the fact that Cheney’s father managed to land a steady job with the federal government.
“I’ve often reflected on how different was the utterly stable environment he provided for his family and wondered if because of that I have been able to take risks, to change directions, and to leave one career path for another with hardly a second thought,” Cheney wrote.
By contrast, in sketching his family’s history, Cheney depicted the hard-scrabble life of farmers and small businessmen scratching out a living in the American Midwest and suffering financial reversals whenever the titans of Wall Street stumbled into a financial crisis and the bankers cut off credit.
After his forebears would make some modest headway from their hard work, they would find themselves back at square one, again and again, because of some “market” crisis or a negative weather pattern. Whether a financial panic or a sudden drought, everything was lost.
“In 1883, as the country struggled through a long economic depression, the sash and door factory that [Civil War veteran Samuel Fletcher Cheney] co-owned [in Defiance, Ohio] had to be sold to pay its debts,” Cheney wrote. “At the age of fifty-four, Samuel Cheney had to start over,” moving to Nebraska.
There, Samuel Cheney built a sod house and began a farm, enjoying some success until a drought hit, again forcing him to the edge. Despite a solid credit record, he noted that “the banks will not loan to anyone at present” and, in 1896, he had to watch all his possessions auctioned off at the Kearney County Courthouse. Samuel Cheney started another homestead in 1904 and kept working until he died in 1911 at the age of 82.
His third son, Thomas, who was nicknamed Bert (and who would become Dick Cheney’s grandfather), tried to build a different life as a cashier and part owner of a Sumner, Kansas, bank, named Farmers and Merchants Bank. But he still suffered when the economy crashed.
“Despite all his plans and success, Bert Cheney found that, like his father, he couldn’t escape the terrible power of nature,” Dick Cheney wrote. “When drought struck in the early 1930s, farmers couldn’t pay their debts, storekeepers had to close their doors, and Farmers and Merchants Bank went under. … My grandparents lost everything except for the house in which they lived.”
Finding Security
Bert Cheney’s son, Richard, ventured off in a different direction, working his way through Kearney State Teachers College and taking the civil service exam. He landed a job as a typist with the Veterans Administration in Lincoln, Nebraska.
“After scraping by for so long, he found the prospect of a $120 monthly salary and the security of a government job too good to turn down,” his son, Dick Cheney, wrote. “Before long he was offered a job with another federal agency, the Soil Conservation Service.
“The SCS taught farmers about crop rotation, terraced planting, contour plowing, and using ‘shelter belts’ of trees as windbreaks – techniques that would prevent the soil from blowing away, as it had in the dust storms of the Great Depression. My dad stayed with the SCS for more than thirty years, doing work of which he was immensely proud.
“He was also proud of the pension that came with federal employment – a pride that I didn’t understand until as an adult I learned about the economic catastrophes that his parents and grandparents had experienced and that had shadowed his own youth.”
Like many Americans, the Cheney family was pulled from the depths of the Great Depression by the New Deal of Franklin Roosevelt, cementing the family’s support for the Democratic president and his party. The family celebrated when little Dick was born on FDR’s birthday.
“When I was born [on Jan. 30, 1941] my granddad wanted to send a telegram to the president,” Cheney wrote in his memoir. “Both sides of my family were staunch New Deal Democrats, and Granddad was sure that FDR would want to know about the ‘little stranger’ with whom he now had a birthday in common.”
However, Dick Cheney took a different path. Freed from the insecurity that had afflicted his father and earlier Cheneys – caused by the cruel vicissitudes of laissez-faire capitalism – Dick Cheney enjoyed the relative comfort of middle-class life in post-World War II America. He took advantage of the many opportunities that presented themselves.
Most notably, Cheney attached himself to an ambitious Republican congressman from Illinois named Donald Rumsfeld. When Rumsfeld left Congress for posts in the Nixon administration, he brought Cheney along. Eventually Rumsfeld became White House chief of staff to President Gerald Ford and – when Rumsfeld was tapped to become Defense Secretary in 1975 – he recommended his young aide, Dick Cheney, to succeed him.
Cheney’s career path through the ranks of Republican national politics, with occasional trips through the revolving door into lucrative private-sector jobs, was set. He became a major player within the GOP Establishment, building a reputation as an ardent conservative, a foreign policy hawk – and a fierce opponent of the New Deal.
Demonizing Guv-mint
The Right’s ongoing campaign to dismantle the New Deal also has hinged on the demonization of “guv-mint,” a darkening of attitudes that became more possible when many middle-class Americans lost their memory of how their families had moved into the middle-class.
In the 1960s and 1970s, middle-class white men in particular came to view the government as a force for helping the poor, women and minorities, while putting pressure on white males to change long-established attitudes. Plus, they were told that the government was taking their hard-earned dollars to give to the undeserving.
When these messages – along with a mix of patriotic hoopla and coded appeals to bigotry – were delivered by the personable Ronald Reagan in 1980, middle- and working-class whites rallied to the Right’s banner. It was time, they felt, to dismantle many government programs for the poor and to get tough on foreign adversaries.
But Reagan’s most important policy was slashing taxes, especially those on the rich. Under Reagan’s “supply-side economics,” the top marginal tax rate – that is what the richest Americans pay on their highest tranche of income – was more than halved, from 70 percent to 28 percent.
Yet, since the promised surge in “supply-side” growth didn’t materialize, one result was a dramatic rise in the national debt. Another less obvious change was the incentivizing of greed. Under presidents from Dwight Eisenhower (when the top marginal tax rate was 90 percent) through Jimmy Carter (with a 70 percent top rate), taxes had been a disincentive against greed.
After all, if 70 to 90 percent of your highest tranche of income went to the government to help pay for building the nation, you had little personal incentive to press for that extra $1 million or $2 million. So corporate CEOs – while well-compensated – were happy earning about 25 times as much as their average worker in the 1960s. A few decades later, that ratio on CEO pay was about 200 times what the average worker was making.
As the Washington Post’s Peter Whoriskey framed this historic development in a June 19, 2011, article, U.S. business underwent a cultural transformation from the 1970s when chief executives believed more in sharing the wealth than they do today.
Whoriskey described the findings of researchers with access to economic data from the Internal Revenue Service. The numbers revealed that the big bucks were not flowing primarily to athletes or actors or even stock market speculators; America’s new super-rich were mostly corporate chieftains.
The article cited a U.S. dairy company CEO from the 1970s, Kenneth J. Douglas, who earned the equivalent of about $1 million a year. He lived comfortably but not ostentatiously. Douglas had an office on the second floor of a milk distribution center, and he turned down raises because he felt it would hurt morale at the plant, Whoriskey reported.
However, just a few decades later, Gregg L. Engles, the CEO of the same company, Dean Foods, averaged about 10 times what Douglas made; worked in a glittering high-rise office building in Dallas; owned a vacation estate in Vail, Colorado; belonged to four golf clubs; and traveled in a $10 million corporate jet. He apparently had little concern about what his workers thought.
“The evolution of executive grandeur – from very comfortable to jet-setting – reflects one of the primary reasons that the gap between those with the highest incomes and everyone else is widening,” Whoriskey reported.
“For years, statistics have depicted growing income disparity in the United States, and it has reached levels not seen since the Great Depression. In 2008, the last year for which data are available, for example, the top 0.1 percent of earners took in more than 10 percent of the personal income in the United States, including capital gains, and the top 1 percent took in more than 20 percent.”
The old New-Deal-to-post-World-War-II notion had been that a healthy middle-class contributed to profitable businesses because average people could afford to buy consumer goods, own their own homes and take an annual vacation with the kids. That “middle-class system,” however, had required intervention by the government as the representative of the everyman.
The consequences of several decades of Reaganism and its related ideas (such as shipping many middle-class jobs overseas) are now apparent. Wealth has been concentrated at the top with billionaires living extravagant lives while the middle-class shrinks and struggles. One everyman after another gets shoved down the social ladder into the lower classes and into poverty.
Those real-life consequences are painful. Millions of Americans forego needed medical care because they can’t afford health insurance; young people, burdened by college loans, crowd back in with their parents; trained workers settle for low-paying jobs or are unemployed; families skip vacations and other simple pleasures of life.
Beyond the unfairness, there is the macro-economic problem which comes from massive income disparity. A strong economy is one in which the vast majority people can buy products, which can then be manufactured more cheaply, creating a positive cycle of profits and prosperity.
Instead, Mitt Romney — and even his Republican rivals who criticize his personal business methods — are intent to press ahead down the dark road of Reaganism toward some nightmarish Pottersville. Instead of a vibrant debate about whether this is the right way to go, Romney instructs the masses to keep their mouths shut with the only permitted conversations about the nation’s future restricted to “quiet rooms.”
For more on related topics, see Robert Parry’s Lost History, Secrecy & Privilege and Neck Deep, now available in a three-book set for the discount price of only $29. For details, click here.
Robert Parry broke many of the Iran-Contra stories in the 1980s for the Associated Press and Newsweek. His latest book, Neck Deep: The Disastrous Presidency of George W. Bush, was written with two of his sons, Sam and Nat, and can be ordered at neckdeepbook.com. His two previous books, Secrecy & Privilege: The Rise of the Bush Dynasty from Watergate to Iraq and Lost History: Contras, Cocaine, the Press & ‘Project Truth’ are also available there.
Friday, December 23, 2011
Gingrich Morality
“See, when I smoked pot it was illegal, but not immoral. Now, it is illegal AND immoral. The law didn’t change, only the morality... That’s why you get to go to jail and I don’t.”
Newt Gingrich explaining in 1996 why he supported the death penalty for possession of marijuana even though he was an admitted pot smoker in college...
Newt Gingrich explaining in 1996 why he supported the death penalty for possession of marijuana even though he was an admitted pot smoker in college...
Thursday, December 1, 2011
Gingrich Says Child Labor Laws Should Be Rolled Back...
Gingrich Says Child Labor Laws Should Be Rolled Back So Kids Can Be Janitors
David Teich
November 21, 2011
http://2012.talkingpointsmemo.com/2011/11/gingrich-says-child-labor-laws-should-be-rolled-back-so-kids-can-be-janitors.php
Newt Gingrich’s desire to roll back Social Security is no secret. But apparently his quest to tackle decades-old New Deal policies doesn’t stop there.
Now Gingrich is taking on an issue he says “no liberal wants to deal with” — economically suffocating child labor laws.
During a Harvard address on Friday, Gingrich blamed child labor restrictions for doing “more to create income inequality in the United States than any other single policy.” “It is tragic what we do in the poorest neighborhoods, entrapping children in…child laws, which are truly stupid,” said Gingrich.
“Most of these schools ought to get rid of the unionized janitors, have one master janitor and pay local students to take care of the school,” he added. “The kids would actually do work, they would have cash, they would have pride in the schools, they’d begin the process of rising.”
Gingrich likes to tout his credentials as a historian, so he may be aware that America’s first major federal child labor restrictions were enacted amidst an economic crisis even worse than today’s: President Franklin Roosevelt signed the Fair Labor Standards Act during the Great Depression. In part, the 1938 law passed because many adults were so desperate for work they were willing to take low-paying jobs normally reserved for children.
David Teich
November 21, 2011
http://2012.talkingpointsmemo.com/2011/11/gingrich-says-child-labor-laws-should-be-rolled-back-so-kids-can-be-janitors.php
Newt Gingrich’s desire to roll back Social Security is no secret. But apparently his quest to tackle decades-old New Deal policies doesn’t stop there.
Now Gingrich is taking on an issue he says “no liberal wants to deal with” — economically suffocating child labor laws.
During a Harvard address on Friday, Gingrich blamed child labor restrictions for doing “more to create income inequality in the United States than any other single policy.” “It is tragic what we do in the poorest neighborhoods, entrapping children in…child laws, which are truly stupid,” said Gingrich.
“Most of these schools ought to get rid of the unionized janitors, have one master janitor and pay local students to take care of the school,” he added. “The kids would actually do work, they would have cash, they would have pride in the schools, they’d begin the process of rising.”
Gingrich likes to tout his credentials as a historian, so he may be aware that America’s first major federal child labor restrictions were enacted amidst an economic crisis even worse than today’s: President Franklin Roosevelt signed the Fair Labor Standards Act during the Great Depression. In part, the 1938 law passed because many adults were so desperate for work they were willing to take low-paying jobs normally reserved for children.
Wednesday, October 27, 2010
Tea Party ‘founder’: Palin, Gingrich a ‘joke’
http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2010/10/tea-party-founder-slams-tea-party/
Tea Party ‘founder’: Palin, Gingrich a ‘joke’
Daniel Tencer
Wednesday, October 20th, 2010
A financial blogger and ex-CEO credited with being one of the original "founders" of the Tea Party has come out against the movement, saying it has been hijacked by the very people it was protesting and is now obsessed with "guns, gays and God."
In a "message" to the Tea Party Wednesday, Karl Denninger declared that he "ought to sue" anyone who uses the Tea Party name "for defamation."
"Yeah, that's a joke," he writes. "But so are you. All of you. Especially Sarah Palin, Newt Gingrich, Bob Barr, and douchebag groups such as the 'Tea Party Patriots.'"
Denninger writes: "Tea Party my ass. This was nothing other than the Republican Party stealing the anger of a population that was fed up with the Republican Party's own theft of their tax money at gunpoint to bail out the robbers of Wall Street and fraudulently redirecting it back toward electing the very people who stole all the ****ing money!"
Denninger runs Market Ticker, a financially-focused blog that has been strongly opposed to bank bailouts and has railed against excessive government spending. He founded the group FedUpUSA in early 2008, shortly after the collapse of investment bank Bear Stearns.
In January of 2009, Market Ticker bloggers including Graham Makohoniuk and Stephanie Jasky suggested "mailing a tea bag" to Congress to protest the planned $800-billion stimulus package and $700-billion bank bailout. Denninger followed that up with a call for a "tea party" protest to coincide with President Obama's inauguration, thus helping to unofficially launch the political movement.
“I saw everybody fawning over Obama with the inauguration and yet here he was appointing people like Larry Summer[s] and Tim Geithner to his team who were all part of creating the problem,” Denninger said in a media interview.
Now Denninger says the whole movement has been steered away from its mission to demand fiscal responsibility from government and financial institutions.
The Tea Party was initiated as a political protest against the unlawful and in fact unconstitutional usurpation of power from the Congress and The People in the form of extortion-led bailouts of enterprises that had engaged in acts that I, and many others, believe were at least civilly actionable and in many cases crossed the line into criminal activity.
This indictment is not limited to the nation's large banks, although it certainly starts there. The corruption of our economic and monetary systems runs the gamut from Fannie and Freddie through their ties to Congress (including literal sexual encounters in some cases), banking interests selling trash securities to everyone from pension funds on down, judges who don't judge but rather protect monied interests on Wall Street, The Federal Reserve intentionally debasing our currency and monetizing government debt, government spending that is running 40% above revenues and much more.
In short, The Tea Party was and is about the the corruption of American Politics and the blatant and outrageous theft from all Americans that has resulted. It is about personal responsibility and enforcement of the law against those who have robbed, financially ****d and pillaged the nation.
Yet today we hear literally nothing about these issues among the so-called "Tea Party" candidates and their backers. Sarah Palin has not said one word about locking up the banksters that brought up on the housing bubble and economic collapse. Not one word about Bernanke's out-of-control Fed and the arguably unlawful monetization of Fannie and Freddie paper, not to mention the monetization of the Federal Debt.
Tea Party ‘founder’: Palin, Gingrich a ‘joke’
Daniel Tencer
Wednesday, October 20th, 2010
A financial blogger and ex-CEO credited with being one of the original "founders" of the Tea Party has come out against the movement, saying it has been hijacked by the very people it was protesting and is now obsessed with "guns, gays and God."
In a "message" to the Tea Party Wednesday, Karl Denninger declared that he "ought to sue" anyone who uses the Tea Party name "for defamation."
"Yeah, that's a joke," he writes. "But so are you. All of you. Especially Sarah Palin, Newt Gingrich, Bob Barr, and douchebag groups such as the 'Tea Party Patriots.'"
Denninger writes: "Tea Party my ass. This was nothing other than the Republican Party stealing the anger of a population that was fed up with the Republican Party's own theft of their tax money at gunpoint to bail out the robbers of Wall Street and fraudulently redirecting it back toward electing the very people who stole all the ****ing money!"
Denninger runs Market Ticker, a financially-focused blog that has been strongly opposed to bank bailouts and has railed against excessive government spending. He founded the group FedUpUSA in early 2008, shortly after the collapse of investment bank Bear Stearns.
In January of 2009, Market Ticker bloggers including Graham Makohoniuk and Stephanie Jasky suggested "mailing a tea bag" to Congress to protest the planned $800-billion stimulus package and $700-billion bank bailout. Denninger followed that up with a call for a "tea party" protest to coincide with President Obama's inauguration, thus helping to unofficially launch the political movement.
“I saw everybody fawning over Obama with the inauguration and yet here he was appointing people like Larry Summer[s] and Tim Geithner to his team who were all part of creating the problem,” Denninger said in a media interview.
Now Denninger says the whole movement has been steered away from its mission to demand fiscal responsibility from government and financial institutions.
The Tea Party was initiated as a political protest against the unlawful and in fact unconstitutional usurpation of power from the Congress and The People in the form of extortion-led bailouts of enterprises that had engaged in acts that I, and many others, believe were at least civilly actionable and in many cases crossed the line into criminal activity.
This indictment is not limited to the nation's large banks, although it certainly starts there. The corruption of our economic and monetary systems runs the gamut from Fannie and Freddie through their ties to Congress (including literal sexual encounters in some cases), banking interests selling trash securities to everyone from pension funds on down, judges who don't judge but rather protect monied interests on Wall Street, The Federal Reserve intentionally debasing our currency and monetizing government debt, government spending that is running 40% above revenues and much more.
In short, The Tea Party was and is about the the corruption of American Politics and the blatant and outrageous theft from all Americans that has resulted. It is about personal responsibility and enforcement of the law against those who have robbed, financially ****d and pillaged the nation.
Yet today we hear literally nothing about these issues among the so-called "Tea Party" candidates and their backers. Sarah Palin has not said one word about locking up the banksters that brought up on the housing bubble and economic collapse. Not one word about Bernanke's out-of-control Fed and the arguably unlawful monetization of Fannie and Freddie paper, not to mention the monetization of the Federal Debt.
Friday, October 8, 2010
Obama's 2012 insurance policy?
http://www.salon.com/news/politics/war_room/2010/09/30/obama_2012_republicans/index.html
Thursday, Sep 30, 2010
Obama's 2012 insurance policy?
It's remarkable how many of the Republicans in the '12 mix are spectacularly unelectable
Steve Kornacki
What may be most notable in the new Gallup poll on the 2012 Republican presidential race is the significant distance between Mitt Romney, who leads the crowded pack with 19 percent, and the next candidate without obvious and glaring general election liabilities. Just consider the results:
Romney 19%
Sarah Palin 16%
Mike Huckabee 12%
Newt Gingrich 9%
Ron Paul 7%
Tim Pawlenty 3%
With the disclaimer that anything is possible (and the obligatory acknowledgement that many Democrats didn't believe until the very end in 1980 that Ronald Reagan could ever actually win the Whitre House), it's hard to imagine Palin, Huckabee, Gingrich or Paul winning a general election in 2012, even if the economy hasn't improved significantly. They just carry too much baggage, and nominating one of them would likely produce something like what we're now seeing in Delaware, where a radioactive GOP nominee is about to cost the GOP a seat it would otherwise win.
I can't remember so many poiosnous general election prospects near the top of the GOP field at this stage in any recent contest. Last time around, John McCain, Rudy Giuliani and (sort of) Romney were all near the top of the pack early. All of them passed the November electability test. (Sure, McCain fell flat against Barack Obama, but that was more a testament to the political climate; that same race in the climate of, say, 2004, could well have produced a different result.) Back in the 2000 cycle, the big GOP fish included George W. Bush, Elizabeth Dole and McCain. For 1996, we had Bob Dole and Jack Kemp, and in 1988, George H.W. Bush, Dole and Kemp. Sure, there were some toxic prospects in these cycles (Dan Quayle figured prominently in '96 talk and actually ran -- briefly -- in '00), but in each race had more than one general election heavyweight out front early. Not so for 2012.
Moreover, as NBC's First Read noted this morning, Romney's grip on the frontrunner's slot is unusually tenuous. The GOP's conservative base is markedly cooler to him than it was to McCain at this point in the '08 cycle and Dole at this point in the '96 cycle, even as that same base seems to be warming up even more to Palin, Gingrich and Huckabee. Factor in the most alarming GOP Senate primary results this year -- a Republican electorate in Delaware that willfully committed political suicide, for instance -- and it's fair to questions the assumption that the GOP primary electorate of 2012 will be as pragamtic as it's been in the past. Don't forget: the last time the Republican base was as angry at its own establishment as it is now was in the late '70s. Back then, the favorite of the restive right for the next GOP nomination also happened to be the next-in-line guy: Reagan. But Romney, to borrow a tired expression, is no Ronald Reagan. To the New Right of the late '70s, Reagan was practically a god. To the Tea Party, though, Romney is just a somewhat likable, extremely ambitious office-seeker.
This should provide at least a little comfort to Barack Obama. I've written before that his 2012 fate will rest on the economy. If it improves significantly between now and then, he'll win, no matter whom the GOP nominates. And if it doesn't, he'll be in serious trouble. But the evolution of the GOP in the Obama era suggests a third possibility: that the economy will be weak enough to give the GOP a winnable race in 2012 -- but that they'll nominate a candidate who's incapable of taking advantage of it.
Steve Kornacki is Salon's news editor. Reach him by email at SKornacki@salon.com and follow him on Twitter @SteveKornacki
Thursday, Sep 30, 2010
Obama's 2012 insurance policy?
It's remarkable how many of the Republicans in the '12 mix are spectacularly unelectable
Steve Kornacki
What may be most notable in the new Gallup poll on the 2012 Republican presidential race is the significant distance between Mitt Romney, who leads the crowded pack with 19 percent, and the next candidate without obvious and glaring general election liabilities. Just consider the results:
Romney 19%
Sarah Palin 16%
Mike Huckabee 12%
Newt Gingrich 9%
Ron Paul 7%
Tim Pawlenty 3%
With the disclaimer that anything is possible (and the obligatory acknowledgement that many Democrats didn't believe until the very end in 1980 that Ronald Reagan could ever actually win the Whitre House), it's hard to imagine Palin, Huckabee, Gingrich or Paul winning a general election in 2012, even if the economy hasn't improved significantly. They just carry too much baggage, and nominating one of them would likely produce something like what we're now seeing in Delaware, where a radioactive GOP nominee is about to cost the GOP a seat it would otherwise win.
I can't remember so many poiosnous general election prospects near the top of the GOP field at this stage in any recent contest. Last time around, John McCain, Rudy Giuliani and (sort of) Romney were all near the top of the pack early. All of them passed the November electability test. (Sure, McCain fell flat against Barack Obama, but that was more a testament to the political climate; that same race in the climate of, say, 2004, could well have produced a different result.) Back in the 2000 cycle, the big GOP fish included George W. Bush, Elizabeth Dole and McCain. For 1996, we had Bob Dole and Jack Kemp, and in 1988, George H.W. Bush, Dole and Kemp. Sure, there were some toxic prospects in these cycles (Dan Quayle figured prominently in '96 talk and actually ran -- briefly -- in '00), but in each race had more than one general election heavyweight out front early. Not so for 2012.
Moreover, as NBC's First Read noted this morning, Romney's grip on the frontrunner's slot is unusually tenuous. The GOP's conservative base is markedly cooler to him than it was to McCain at this point in the '08 cycle and Dole at this point in the '96 cycle, even as that same base seems to be warming up even more to Palin, Gingrich and Huckabee. Factor in the most alarming GOP Senate primary results this year -- a Republican electorate in Delaware that willfully committed political suicide, for instance -- and it's fair to questions the assumption that the GOP primary electorate of 2012 will be as pragamtic as it's been in the past. Don't forget: the last time the Republican base was as angry at its own establishment as it is now was in the late '70s. Back then, the favorite of the restive right for the next GOP nomination also happened to be the next-in-line guy: Reagan. But Romney, to borrow a tired expression, is no Ronald Reagan. To the New Right of the late '70s, Reagan was practically a god. To the Tea Party, though, Romney is just a somewhat likable, extremely ambitious office-seeker.
This should provide at least a little comfort to Barack Obama. I've written before that his 2012 fate will rest on the economy. If it improves significantly between now and then, he'll win, no matter whom the GOP nominates. And if it doesn't, he'll be in serious trouble. But the evolution of the GOP in the Obama era suggests a third possibility: that the economy will be weak enough to give the GOP a winnable race in 2012 -- but that they'll nominate a candidate who's incapable of taking advantage of it.
Steve Kornacki is Salon's news editor. Reach him by email at SKornacki@salon.com and follow him on Twitter @SteveKornacki
Thursday, September 23, 2010
At Least 17 Republicans in 2012 Presidential Election Field
http://politics.usnews.com/news/blogs/washington-whispers/2010/09/10/at-least-17-republicans-in-2012-presidential-election-field
At Least 17 Republicans in 2012 Presidential Election Field
Paul Bedard
September 10, 2010
When Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour told us this week that the 2012 GOP presidential field will be "wide open," we had no idea just how many Republicans might be marching to Iowa, New Hampshire, South Carolina, and Nevada for the opening caucuses and primaries. Including Barbour, who will decide after the fall midterm elections but who is expected to run in 2012, Washington political insiders tell us that nine Republicans are almost a lock to run and another eight are considering a presidential bid.
Many former presidential campaign organizers say that now is the time to be considering a bid because by spring of next year, the list of announced candidates will be firm and those in will be divvying up staff and raising money.
The top tier of candidates includes many in the news like Sarah Palin and Mitt Romney, but some newbies have scratched their way into the category like budget-slashing New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie and former House Speaker Newt Gingrich. Long shots include some who've already made trips to Iowa, like former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum.
"A starting place. That's all anybody has," said Barbour, dismissing talk of front-runners this far out of the election.
Here's the latest list of those who want President Obama's job.
The A-Team Nine
- Former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, the front-runner, largely because he was the runner-up to Sen. John McCain in 2008.
- Former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, who has recently made a name for herself by endorsing winning Tea Party candidates.
- Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour, a social conservative in his second term.
- Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels, a fiscal conservative in his second term.
- Mike Huckabee, a Fox host and former 2008 presidential candidate.
- Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich.
- South Dakota Sen. John Thune, a conservative and darling of the party for defeating former Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle in 2004.
- New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, whose budget cutting in his first year has impressed many in GOP ranks who want him to apply his touch to Washington.
- Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty, already running and showing his conservative side.
The Eight Long Shots
- Indiana Rep. Mike Pence, a hero to fiscal conservatives.
- South Carolina Sen. Jim DeMint, a Palinesque conservative who's helped steer the U.S. Senate to the right.
- Texas Rep. Ron Paul, the gadfly 2008 candidate who kept a very loyal following.
- South Carolina Republican gubernatorial candidate Nikki Haley, who hasn't even won yet but is being heralded as the new Sarah Palin.
- Former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush who has rejected a run but who still gets kudos for being the "smart Bush" for his successful two terms in Florida.
- Former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum, who'd be the social conservative in the race.
- Former United Nations Ambassador John Bolton, a foreign policy hawk who conservatives adore.
- Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal whose effort to protect his shores from the Gulf Oil Spill won him notoriety lost when he gave a lackluster national political address in 2009.
At Least 17 Republicans in 2012 Presidential Election Field
Paul Bedard
September 10, 2010
When Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour told us this week that the 2012 GOP presidential field will be "wide open," we had no idea just how many Republicans might be marching to Iowa, New Hampshire, South Carolina, and Nevada for the opening caucuses and primaries. Including Barbour, who will decide after the fall midterm elections but who is expected to run in 2012, Washington political insiders tell us that nine Republicans are almost a lock to run and another eight are considering a presidential bid.
Many former presidential campaign organizers say that now is the time to be considering a bid because by spring of next year, the list of announced candidates will be firm and those in will be divvying up staff and raising money.
The top tier of candidates includes many in the news like Sarah Palin and Mitt Romney, but some newbies have scratched their way into the category like budget-slashing New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie and former House Speaker Newt Gingrich. Long shots include some who've already made trips to Iowa, like former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum.
"A starting place. That's all anybody has," said Barbour, dismissing talk of front-runners this far out of the election.
Here's the latest list of those who want President Obama's job.
The A-Team Nine
- Former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, the front-runner, largely because he was the runner-up to Sen. John McCain in 2008.
- Former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, who has recently made a name for herself by endorsing winning Tea Party candidates.
- Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour, a social conservative in his second term.
- Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels, a fiscal conservative in his second term.
- Mike Huckabee, a Fox host and former 2008 presidential candidate.
- Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich.
- South Dakota Sen. John Thune, a conservative and darling of the party for defeating former Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle in 2004.
- New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, whose budget cutting in his first year has impressed many in GOP ranks who want him to apply his touch to Washington.
- Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty, already running and showing his conservative side.
The Eight Long Shots
- Indiana Rep. Mike Pence, a hero to fiscal conservatives.
- South Carolina Sen. Jim DeMint, a Palinesque conservative who's helped steer the U.S. Senate to the right.
- Texas Rep. Ron Paul, the gadfly 2008 candidate who kept a very loyal following.
- South Carolina Republican gubernatorial candidate Nikki Haley, who hasn't even won yet but is being heralded as the new Sarah Palin.
- Former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush who has rejected a run but who still gets kudos for being the "smart Bush" for his successful two terms in Florida.
- Former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum, who'd be the social conservative in the race.
- Former United Nations Ambassador John Bolton, a foreign policy hawk who conservatives adore.
- Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal whose effort to protect his shores from the Gulf Oil Spill won him notoriety lost when he gave a lackluster national political address in 2009.
Saturday, September 4, 2010
Burn, Witch, Burn!: America Rages Against Islam
http://revoltoftheplebs.wordpress.com/2010/08/27/burn-witch-burn-america-rages-against-islam/
Burn, Witch, Burn!: America Rages Against Islam
by Keith Johnson
8-27-2010
Islamophobia is sweeping the nation—and it couldn’t have come at a better time. Just when the American people were starting to become distracted with trivial issues like the potential stock market crash, the re-branding of the war in Iraq, and the ongoing environmental disaster in the Gulf—along comes a crisis of Biblical proportions, that threatens to destroy the moral fiber of America itself, and deliver its Christian population into the diabolical hands of an Islamic dictatorship ruled under the precepts of Sharia law.
Oh, foolish man. What can you not be made to believe?
~Adam Weishaupt~
By now, it should be quite obvious that the hysteria centered on the proposed construction of an Islamic cultural center—a full two blocks from Ground Zero—is nothing more than an engineered distraction, designed to take the focus away from serious geopolitical and domestic issues as we head into the November elections.
Late last year, we watched in horror as the Tea Party movement was infiltrated by certain personalities from the GOP establishment. Glenn Beck, Dick Armey, Rick Perry, Sarah Palin, and others of that same ilk—all dressed down to mingle with working class folks— and let them know that the Republican party shares their pain. Before these clowns got involved, the focus of the Tea Party was on big government, compulsory health insurance and Wall Street bailouts. But over a period of time—as these Johnny-Come-Latelies sunk their fingers deeper into the pie—they used their influence to diffuse the ire against Wall Street and redirect those energies to support the GOP war agenda.
Now we are starting to see large swaths of Tea Party factions taking up the war banner at their events—complete with metrosexual cowboys singing war anthems in the background—and stirring up racial tensions the likes of which we have not witnessed since before the civil rights movement of the 1960’s.
No longer is Wall Street feeling the hot pangs of public anger breathing down their necks. These terrorists have been left to their own devices, with free reign to continue their raping and pillaging of the American dream. Now, cab drivers wearing turbans have more to fear than the bankster gangster riding in their back seats.
From New York City to Southern California, large groups of paranoid warmongers gather outside Islamic places of worship to parrot the lies fed to them by the mainstream media. Much of their ammunition comes straight out of a likely source: FOX News.
On August 16, disgraced former congressman Newt Gingrich made an appearance on the morning program, FOX and Friends, and said, “Nazis don’t have the right to put up a sign next to the Holocaust museum in Washington. We would never accept the Japanese putting up a site next to Pearl Harbor. There’s no reason for us to accept a mosque next to the World Trade Center.” Is that right? Well, according to that line of thinking, and assuming that America is a Christian nation (like so many people claim it to be), would it not be just as wrong for us to expect the Japanese to accept a Christian church in Hiroshima or for the Germans to accept one in Dresden? You, Mr. Gingrich, may think that these are entirely different circumstances. But I’d waged that there are thousands of Germans and Japanese who would beg to differ.
Later that week, on the same program, host Brian Kilmeade asserted his fear that the Islamic Cultural Center in New York City would be the future site of a new “Hamburg Cell.” In case you didn’t know, the “Hamburg Cell” was where three alleged hijackers reportedly cooked up the 911 plot. Two of the three men were tried in Germany, but the cases were dropped when the U.S. failed to provide any incriminating evidence that linked them to the attacks.
Other FOX propagandists, like Dick Morris, claim that the center will be used to ‘train and recruit’ future terrorists. “Shariah law mandates jihad” blurted Morris. “And it mandates terrorism and suicide bombing. So this is really a juridical center that is being established to study and promote and train and recruit Shariah law advocates, which will become terrorists. … We’re establishing literally a command center for terrorism right at the 9/11 site.” This kind of B.S. brings to mind that famous Arte Johnson line from ‘Rowan and Martin’s Laugh-In’: “Very interesting…but stupid!”
Recent evidence suggests just the opposite of Morris’ line of thinking. According to a recent New York Times article, “A two-year study by a group of academics on American Muslims and terrorism concluded that contemporary mosques are actually a deterrent to the spread of militant Islam and terrorism. The study was conducted by professors with Duke’s Sanford School of Public Policy and the University of North Carolina. It disclosed that many mosque leaders had put significant effort into countering extremism by building youth programs, sponsoring antiviolence forums and scrutinizing teachers and texts.”
But this won’t stop the likes of Gingrich, Kilmeade and Morris from spreading their message of intolerance. They have an agenda, and that agenda is to stir up a deep-seated hatred against the Muslim community in order to rally support for a war on Iran. And they’ve been very effective. Their rhetoric is being picked up and repeated by Islamophobes all across the nation. For them, it’s all about the fear of Shariah law, disrespect to 911 victims, and the paranoid assumption that all Mosques are staging grounds for future terrorist attacks.
In Murfreesboro, Tennessee—opponents of a proposed Mosque spray-painted the words “Not Welcome” on a sign that marked the construction site, and later tore it to shreds. They also brought dogs to intimidate Muslims as they worshipped in the modest office space they’ve been using as a prayer room. One man—sounding a lot like Newt Gingrich—told a CNN reporter that “In Islam, a mosque means ‘We have conquered this country,’” And where are they? They’re in the center of Tennessee. They’re going to say, ‘We have conquered Tennessee.’” Oh, boy! First Tennessee…then the world!
In Temecula, California—plans by the Islamic community to build a mosque on a four-acre parcel of land has sparked a similar protest. Pastor Bill Rench, of Temecula Calvary Baptist Church, echoed Kilmeade and Morris when he stated, “There is a concern with all the rumors you hear about sleeper cells and all that. Are we supposed to be complacent just because these people say it’s a religion of peace? Many others have said the same thing.” Yes, Pastor Rench, many others have said the same thing. I think you would be hard pressed to find a religion which has not been used by some greedy tyrant as a pretext to wage war…including Christianity.
A website for a group calling itself ‘We the People—Citizens in Action’ called on their members to attend a rally in Temecula and to “bring your Bibles, flags, signs, dogs and singing voice.” At the event, demonstrators held up signs that read ‘No Sharia Law’ and ‘Muslims Danced For Joy on 9/11.’ Apparently they haven’t learned that the “so-called” dancing Palestinians they’re referring to were actually paid to perform in front of the camera with candy and cakes supplied to them by the Israel Ministry of Defense. The whole thing was staged.
What was not staged were the five dancing Israelis arrested on 9/11, who were reported to police after being seen cheering and ‘high-fiving’ as they watched the towers come down. They’d been shooting video of the disaster from a short distance away. They were later released by police and deported back to Israel, where three of them admitted on Israeli TV that they were in New York City that day to “document the event.”
In Bridgeport, Connecticut—a dozen “so-called” Christian demonstrators angrily screamed, “Islam is a lie” and “Jesus hates Muslims” at worshippers of a local Mosque. One demonstrator even confronted a group of children and called them “murderers.” Have these people even read the scriptures? Where can Jesus be found to say that he hates Muslims? Muslims weren’t even around during the time Christ walked the Earth. Islam began almost six hundred years after the death of Christ. There is not even one biblical passage that eludes to Islam or mosques or Muslims.
We haven’t seen this level of ignorance and superstition since the Salem Witch Trials of the 1600’s. There are many parallels that be can drawn from that time and now. During that era of American history, the colonies suffered from severe enviromental and economic troubles. Severe weather changes resulted in crop failures which devastated livestock and the ability for families to put food on the table. What made matters worse was the influential and fervently religious Puritans, who were very active politically, and attributed all adversity to the wrath of God. The economic woes, coupled by a belief that all bad things are a result of supernatural punishment for unrepentant sin, fostered a climate of suspicion that sent many in search of the source to their problems. Someone had to take the blame and be held to answer for all the troubles they inflicted upon everyone else. While the fanatically religious clung to their superstitions in pursuit of justice, many others took advantage of the hysteria and used it as an opportunity to eliminate bitter rivals and steal coveted and valuable pieces of property.
What we don’t understand, we fear. What we fear, we judge as evil. What we judge as evil, we attempt to control. And what we cannot control…we attack.
We see the same thing happening today. As we fall deeper into our own economic crisis—aggravated by enviromental disasters and poor money policies—the ignorant masses are susceptible to clinging to a simple explanation for their troubles. In this case, it is Islam. They are the modern day witches, whose behavior is foreign and therefore a threat that must be exterminated. Our modern day equivelent to the Puritans are those fervently religious and politically active Judeo-Christians who cling to a politicised perversion of Biblical scriptures. They have been led to believe that allegiance to the state of Israel is critical to their salvation. If Islam is a threat to Israel, then Islam is the enemy that must be defeated. Then, of course, there are those who are simply taking advantage of the hysteria. These are our politicians, who will send our children to die in these most unholy of wars, and clean up whatever spoils those wars have wrought.
Contrary to popular perception, none of the victims of the Salem Witch Trials were burned at the stake. However, the victims of these latest witchhunts have not had it so easy. Entire villages have burned to the ground in Afghanistan, white phosphorus has been dropped on Palestinian children in Gaza, and talks of a strike on Iran may very well place a mushroom cloud over Tehran in the not so distant future.
Here at home, violence has already begun to show its ugly face. In New York City, a Muslim cab driver’s throat was aledgedly slashed by an irate Islamophobe, and elsewhere, several prayer rugs were urinated upon by an angry drunk shouting racial slurs. Is this the beginning of even greater violence that we should expect to witness as the rage against Islam escalates out of control?
This frightening trend is indeed a crisis—but to both Democrat and Republican candidates seeking office in November—this is a god send. For the Republicans, the mosque controversey is a good prop, like the paper mache’ mask that the “Wizard of Oz” lit on fire and waved around to scare Dorothy into taking on the Wicked Witch of the West. For the Democrats, bringing attention to the frenzied hysteria of the reactionary right provides a good opportunity to lure back disgruntled dissenters, who have been suffering a bit of buyers remorse since Obama took office.
It’s a sad thing to watch. Just when the time was ripe for the people of this nation to unite in opposition to the established government, we are now beginning to see them part ways… and herded back into their respective corners.
Burn, Witch, Burn!: America Rages Against Islam
by Keith Johnson
8-27-2010
Islamophobia is sweeping the nation—and it couldn’t have come at a better time. Just when the American people were starting to become distracted with trivial issues like the potential stock market crash, the re-branding of the war in Iraq, and the ongoing environmental disaster in the Gulf—along comes a crisis of Biblical proportions, that threatens to destroy the moral fiber of America itself, and deliver its Christian population into the diabolical hands of an Islamic dictatorship ruled under the precepts of Sharia law.
Oh, foolish man. What can you not be made to believe?
~Adam Weishaupt~
By now, it should be quite obvious that the hysteria centered on the proposed construction of an Islamic cultural center—a full two blocks from Ground Zero—is nothing more than an engineered distraction, designed to take the focus away from serious geopolitical and domestic issues as we head into the November elections.
Late last year, we watched in horror as the Tea Party movement was infiltrated by certain personalities from the GOP establishment. Glenn Beck, Dick Armey, Rick Perry, Sarah Palin, and others of that same ilk—all dressed down to mingle with working class folks— and let them know that the Republican party shares their pain. Before these clowns got involved, the focus of the Tea Party was on big government, compulsory health insurance and Wall Street bailouts. But over a period of time—as these Johnny-Come-Latelies sunk their fingers deeper into the pie—they used their influence to diffuse the ire against Wall Street and redirect those energies to support the GOP war agenda.
Now we are starting to see large swaths of Tea Party factions taking up the war banner at their events—complete with metrosexual cowboys singing war anthems in the background—and stirring up racial tensions the likes of which we have not witnessed since before the civil rights movement of the 1960’s.
No longer is Wall Street feeling the hot pangs of public anger breathing down their necks. These terrorists have been left to their own devices, with free reign to continue their raping and pillaging of the American dream. Now, cab drivers wearing turbans have more to fear than the bankster gangster riding in their back seats.
From New York City to Southern California, large groups of paranoid warmongers gather outside Islamic places of worship to parrot the lies fed to them by the mainstream media. Much of their ammunition comes straight out of a likely source: FOX News.
On August 16, disgraced former congressman Newt Gingrich made an appearance on the morning program, FOX and Friends, and said, “Nazis don’t have the right to put up a sign next to the Holocaust museum in Washington. We would never accept the Japanese putting up a site next to Pearl Harbor. There’s no reason for us to accept a mosque next to the World Trade Center.” Is that right? Well, according to that line of thinking, and assuming that America is a Christian nation (like so many people claim it to be), would it not be just as wrong for us to expect the Japanese to accept a Christian church in Hiroshima or for the Germans to accept one in Dresden? You, Mr. Gingrich, may think that these are entirely different circumstances. But I’d waged that there are thousands of Germans and Japanese who would beg to differ.
Later that week, on the same program, host Brian Kilmeade asserted his fear that the Islamic Cultural Center in New York City would be the future site of a new “Hamburg Cell.” In case you didn’t know, the “Hamburg Cell” was where three alleged hijackers reportedly cooked up the 911 plot. Two of the three men were tried in Germany, but the cases were dropped when the U.S. failed to provide any incriminating evidence that linked them to the attacks.
Other FOX propagandists, like Dick Morris, claim that the center will be used to ‘train and recruit’ future terrorists. “Shariah law mandates jihad” blurted Morris. “And it mandates terrorism and suicide bombing. So this is really a juridical center that is being established to study and promote and train and recruit Shariah law advocates, which will become terrorists. … We’re establishing literally a command center for terrorism right at the 9/11 site.” This kind of B.S. brings to mind that famous Arte Johnson line from ‘Rowan and Martin’s Laugh-In’: “Very interesting…but stupid!”
Recent evidence suggests just the opposite of Morris’ line of thinking. According to a recent New York Times article, “A two-year study by a group of academics on American Muslims and terrorism concluded that contemporary mosques are actually a deterrent to the spread of militant Islam and terrorism. The study was conducted by professors with Duke’s Sanford School of Public Policy and the University of North Carolina. It disclosed that many mosque leaders had put significant effort into countering extremism by building youth programs, sponsoring antiviolence forums and scrutinizing teachers and texts.”
But this won’t stop the likes of Gingrich, Kilmeade and Morris from spreading their message of intolerance. They have an agenda, and that agenda is to stir up a deep-seated hatred against the Muslim community in order to rally support for a war on Iran. And they’ve been very effective. Their rhetoric is being picked up and repeated by Islamophobes all across the nation. For them, it’s all about the fear of Shariah law, disrespect to 911 victims, and the paranoid assumption that all Mosques are staging grounds for future terrorist attacks.
In Murfreesboro, Tennessee—opponents of a proposed Mosque spray-painted the words “Not Welcome” on a sign that marked the construction site, and later tore it to shreds. They also brought dogs to intimidate Muslims as they worshipped in the modest office space they’ve been using as a prayer room. One man—sounding a lot like Newt Gingrich—told a CNN reporter that “In Islam, a mosque means ‘We have conquered this country,’” And where are they? They’re in the center of Tennessee. They’re going to say, ‘We have conquered Tennessee.’” Oh, boy! First Tennessee…then the world!
In Temecula, California—plans by the Islamic community to build a mosque on a four-acre parcel of land has sparked a similar protest. Pastor Bill Rench, of Temecula Calvary Baptist Church, echoed Kilmeade and Morris when he stated, “There is a concern with all the rumors you hear about sleeper cells and all that. Are we supposed to be complacent just because these people say it’s a religion of peace? Many others have said the same thing.” Yes, Pastor Rench, many others have said the same thing. I think you would be hard pressed to find a religion which has not been used by some greedy tyrant as a pretext to wage war…including Christianity.
A website for a group calling itself ‘We the People—Citizens in Action’ called on their members to attend a rally in Temecula and to “bring your Bibles, flags, signs, dogs and singing voice.” At the event, demonstrators held up signs that read ‘No Sharia Law’ and ‘Muslims Danced For Joy on 9/11.’ Apparently they haven’t learned that the “so-called” dancing Palestinians they’re referring to were actually paid to perform in front of the camera with candy and cakes supplied to them by the Israel Ministry of Defense. The whole thing was staged.
What was not staged were the five dancing Israelis arrested on 9/11, who were reported to police after being seen cheering and ‘high-fiving’ as they watched the towers come down. They’d been shooting video of the disaster from a short distance away. They were later released by police and deported back to Israel, where three of them admitted on Israeli TV that they were in New York City that day to “document the event.”
In Bridgeport, Connecticut—a dozen “so-called” Christian demonstrators angrily screamed, “Islam is a lie” and “Jesus hates Muslims” at worshippers of a local Mosque. One demonstrator even confronted a group of children and called them “murderers.” Have these people even read the scriptures? Where can Jesus be found to say that he hates Muslims? Muslims weren’t even around during the time Christ walked the Earth. Islam began almost six hundred years after the death of Christ. There is not even one biblical passage that eludes to Islam or mosques or Muslims.
We haven’t seen this level of ignorance and superstition since the Salem Witch Trials of the 1600’s. There are many parallels that be can drawn from that time and now. During that era of American history, the colonies suffered from severe enviromental and economic troubles. Severe weather changes resulted in crop failures which devastated livestock and the ability for families to put food on the table. What made matters worse was the influential and fervently religious Puritans, who were very active politically, and attributed all adversity to the wrath of God. The economic woes, coupled by a belief that all bad things are a result of supernatural punishment for unrepentant sin, fostered a climate of suspicion that sent many in search of the source to their problems. Someone had to take the blame and be held to answer for all the troubles they inflicted upon everyone else. While the fanatically religious clung to their superstitions in pursuit of justice, many others took advantage of the hysteria and used it as an opportunity to eliminate bitter rivals and steal coveted and valuable pieces of property.
What we don’t understand, we fear. What we fear, we judge as evil. What we judge as evil, we attempt to control. And what we cannot control…we attack.
We see the same thing happening today. As we fall deeper into our own economic crisis—aggravated by enviromental disasters and poor money policies—the ignorant masses are susceptible to clinging to a simple explanation for their troubles. In this case, it is Islam. They are the modern day witches, whose behavior is foreign and therefore a threat that must be exterminated. Our modern day equivelent to the Puritans are those fervently religious and politically active Judeo-Christians who cling to a politicised perversion of Biblical scriptures. They have been led to believe that allegiance to the state of Israel is critical to their salvation. If Islam is a threat to Israel, then Islam is the enemy that must be defeated. Then, of course, there are those who are simply taking advantage of the hysteria. These are our politicians, who will send our children to die in these most unholy of wars, and clean up whatever spoils those wars have wrought.
Contrary to popular perception, none of the victims of the Salem Witch Trials were burned at the stake. However, the victims of these latest witchhunts have not had it so easy. Entire villages have burned to the ground in Afghanistan, white phosphorus has been dropped on Palestinian children in Gaza, and talks of a strike on Iran may very well place a mushroom cloud over Tehran in the not so distant future.
Here at home, violence has already begun to show its ugly face. In New York City, a Muslim cab driver’s throat was aledgedly slashed by an irate Islamophobe, and elsewhere, several prayer rugs were urinated upon by an angry drunk shouting racial slurs. Is this the beginning of even greater violence that we should expect to witness as the rage against Islam escalates out of control?
This frightening trend is indeed a crisis—but to both Democrat and Republican candidates seeking office in November—this is a god send. For the Republicans, the mosque controversey is a good prop, like the paper mache’ mask that the “Wizard of Oz” lit on fire and waved around to scare Dorothy into taking on the Wicked Witch of the West. For the Democrats, bringing attention to the frenzied hysteria of the reactionary right provides a good opportunity to lure back disgruntled dissenters, who have been suffering a bit of buyers remorse since Obama took office.
It’s a sad thing to watch. Just when the time was ripe for the people of this nation to unite in opposition to the established government, we are now beginning to see them part ways… and herded back into their respective corners.
Friday, August 27, 2010
The “Ground Zero mosque”: Obama cowers before right-wing hysteria
http://wsws.org/articles/2010/aug2010/pers-a18.shtml
The “Ground Zero mosque”: Obama cowers before right-wing hysteria
18 August 2010
Bill Van Auken
With the US mid-term elections less than three months away, the issue that has become the focus of this campaign season is a telling indicator of the intensely reactionary character of official politics in America and of both big business parties.
Employing unbridled hypocrisy and cynicism, right-wing forces centered in the Republican Party, but aided and abetted by leading Democrats, have attempted to whip up mob hysteria against a proposed Islamic cultural center that has been approved by local authorities for construction in lower Manhattan.
The center, the Cordoba House, is to include a swimming pool, a gym, an arts center and a memorial to the victims of the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks. While its supporters have stressed its inter-faith character, it has been almost universally dubbed the “Ground Zero mosque.”
Semi-fascist elements have denounced the proposed center—to be built two and a half blocks from where New York City’s World Trade Center once stood—as a desecration of the “sacred ground” where over 2,700 people were killed on 9/11. Former House Speaker and likely contender for the Republican presidential nomination in 2012 Newt Gingrich has compared the backers of the project to Nazis protesting outside the Holocaust museum.
The reality is that, nearly nine years after the attacks, the former World Trade Center largely remains a hole in the ground, a sprawling construction site in which little has been built. No memorial has been erected to those who died, as real estate developers and government officials have haggled year after year over financial terms.
Within roughly the same walking distance from this “sacred ground,” one passes strip joints, porn shops, betting parlors and dance clubs, none of which appear to have wounded the sensibilities of these patriotic defenders of the sanctity of Ground Zero. The center itself is to take the place of a dilapidated warehouse, previously the site of a Burlington Coat Factory outlet.
The real aims of those attacking the Cordoba House are not the protection of the nonexistent sanctity of Ground Zero or the shielding of the sensibilities of 9/11 victims’ families. It is a vicious attempt to foment and exploit religious bigotry, xenophobia and outright racism to drive politics ever further to the right.
The far-reaching implications of this campaign entail an assault on the First Amendment of the US Constitution, guaranteeing freedom of speech and religion and barring the government from establishing a state religion or lending preference to one religion over another. This includes the right of Muslims, or any other religious minority, to worship how and where they choose, without the interference of the government or other religious institutions. The “Ground Zero mosque” campaign is consciously directed at mobilizing elements of the religious right that reject this principle.
It is entirely in sync with a parallel attempt to foment mass hysteria over immigration, portraying immigrants as a criminal class responsible for the loss of jobs and social services. Increasingly, this campaign has embraced the demand for the repeal of the US Constitution’s 14th Amendment—which guarantees citizenship to every person born in the US—in order to clear the way for the deportation of millions of children born in the US to undocumented immigrants. This amendment is the constitutional foundation of equal protection under the law.
In both cases, the assault on core constitutional principles and democratic rights has been coupled with venomous rhetoric that serves as an incitement to violence against immigrants, racial minorities and Muslims.
For months, the Obama White House refused to comment on the controversy, insisting in the face of an assault on core constitutional principles and a nationwide hate campaign that the dispute was little more than a local zoning matter.
Then, last Friday, Obama delivered a speech to a Ramadan dinner at the White House affirming that “Muslims have the same right to practice their religion as everyone else in this country. And that includes the right to build a place of worship and a community center in Lower Manhattan … This is America. And our commitment to religious freedom must be unshakeable.”
Within the space of 24 hours—and in the wake of a firestorm of Republican right criticism—Obama demonstrated that his commitment was anything but unshakeable. “I was not commenting and will not comment on the wisdom of making the decision to put a mosque there,” he told reporters. “I was commenting very specifically on the right of people that date back to our founding.”
In other words, Obama’s White House speech was nothing more than a formal recognition of the constitutional rights that he is sworn to defend, upholding them in principle, while refusing to lift a finger in their defense against those who would deny these rights in practice.
Obama’s cowardly retreat was followed by a similar statement from Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (Democrat, Nevada), who on Monday issued a gutless statement acknowledging that “The First Amendment protects freedom of religion,” while insisting “the mosque should be built someplace else.” Needless to say, the senator did not propose any alternative site, much less offer to have the center built in Nevada.
There is little to distinguish Obama and Reid from Gingrich, Sarah Palin and others on the Republican right, who also formally acknowledge freedom of religion, while demanding that this freedom be denied to Muslims. Both parties are content to turn the Constitution into a dead letter, replacing it with statutes more suited to police-state repression at home and permanent military aggression abroad.
Why did Obama bother giving the speech if he was prepared to repudiate it so quickly? Clearly, it was not motivated by any concern for religious freedom or democratic rights.
The real motivation was suggested in a Washington Post column by Michael Gerson, the former speechwriter for George W. Bush, who aptly noted that with his speech and speedy backtracking, “Obama managed to collect all the political damage for taking an unpopular stand without gaining credit for political courage.”
The US president, Gerson continued, was compelled to make such a speech, because he “leads a coalition that includes Iraqi and Afghan Muslims who risk death each day fighting Islamic radicalism at our side. How could he possibly tell them that their place of worship inherently symbolizes the triumph of terror?”
Obama acted not out of commitment to constitutional principles, but rather, in all likelihood, at the prodding of the Pentagon and the US foreign policy establishment. They fear that the anti-Muslim campaign being whipped up by the Republican right could undermine US military campaigns in Iraq and Afghanistan to affirm Washington’s hegemony in the overwhelmingly Muslim Middle East and Central Asia, the world’s two most important sources of oil and gas.
Indeed, the principal figure involved in the Cordoba House project, Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf, plays a direct role in these US efforts. The State Department announced last week that it is sending Rauf on a goodwill tour of the Middle East, the third such mission by the Muslim cleric, with whom the State Department acknowledged having “a long-term relationship.” The Imam has also provided training for the FBI and police agencies in dealing with Muslim populations.
The “Ground Zero mosque” controversy has ensnared the Obama administration in an unavoidable contradiction. On the one hand US imperialism needs to recruit Muslim allies and puppets to further its two ongoing wars, as well as to support aggression against Iran. On the other hand, it has whipped up anti-Muslim sentiment within the general population and among US troops in order to generate religious-based support for these wars.
In the final analysis, the fascistic agitation against the Islamic center in Lower Manhattan, together with the cowering response of the Obama administration and the Democratic Party, demonstrate that militarism and imperialist war abroad coupled with ever-widening social inequality at home are incompatible with democratic rights. The escalating attacks on rights that go back to the founding of the American republic constitute a stark warning. The defense of these rights requires a counteroffensive by the working class against the reactionary social and political forces being mobilized to subvert them and against the profit system that gives rise to these attacks.
The “Ground Zero mosque”: Obama cowers before right-wing hysteria
18 August 2010
Bill Van Auken
With the US mid-term elections less than three months away, the issue that has become the focus of this campaign season is a telling indicator of the intensely reactionary character of official politics in America and of both big business parties.
Employing unbridled hypocrisy and cynicism, right-wing forces centered in the Republican Party, but aided and abetted by leading Democrats, have attempted to whip up mob hysteria against a proposed Islamic cultural center that has been approved by local authorities for construction in lower Manhattan.
The center, the Cordoba House, is to include a swimming pool, a gym, an arts center and a memorial to the victims of the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks. While its supporters have stressed its inter-faith character, it has been almost universally dubbed the “Ground Zero mosque.”
Semi-fascist elements have denounced the proposed center—to be built two and a half blocks from where New York City’s World Trade Center once stood—as a desecration of the “sacred ground” where over 2,700 people were killed on 9/11. Former House Speaker and likely contender for the Republican presidential nomination in 2012 Newt Gingrich has compared the backers of the project to Nazis protesting outside the Holocaust museum.
The reality is that, nearly nine years after the attacks, the former World Trade Center largely remains a hole in the ground, a sprawling construction site in which little has been built. No memorial has been erected to those who died, as real estate developers and government officials have haggled year after year over financial terms.
Within roughly the same walking distance from this “sacred ground,” one passes strip joints, porn shops, betting parlors and dance clubs, none of which appear to have wounded the sensibilities of these patriotic defenders of the sanctity of Ground Zero. The center itself is to take the place of a dilapidated warehouse, previously the site of a Burlington Coat Factory outlet.
The real aims of those attacking the Cordoba House are not the protection of the nonexistent sanctity of Ground Zero or the shielding of the sensibilities of 9/11 victims’ families. It is a vicious attempt to foment and exploit religious bigotry, xenophobia and outright racism to drive politics ever further to the right.
The far-reaching implications of this campaign entail an assault on the First Amendment of the US Constitution, guaranteeing freedom of speech and religion and barring the government from establishing a state religion or lending preference to one religion over another. This includes the right of Muslims, or any other religious minority, to worship how and where they choose, without the interference of the government or other religious institutions. The “Ground Zero mosque” campaign is consciously directed at mobilizing elements of the religious right that reject this principle.
It is entirely in sync with a parallel attempt to foment mass hysteria over immigration, portraying immigrants as a criminal class responsible for the loss of jobs and social services. Increasingly, this campaign has embraced the demand for the repeal of the US Constitution’s 14th Amendment—which guarantees citizenship to every person born in the US—in order to clear the way for the deportation of millions of children born in the US to undocumented immigrants. This amendment is the constitutional foundation of equal protection under the law.
In both cases, the assault on core constitutional principles and democratic rights has been coupled with venomous rhetoric that serves as an incitement to violence against immigrants, racial minorities and Muslims.
For months, the Obama White House refused to comment on the controversy, insisting in the face of an assault on core constitutional principles and a nationwide hate campaign that the dispute was little more than a local zoning matter.
Then, last Friday, Obama delivered a speech to a Ramadan dinner at the White House affirming that “Muslims have the same right to practice their religion as everyone else in this country. And that includes the right to build a place of worship and a community center in Lower Manhattan … This is America. And our commitment to religious freedom must be unshakeable.”
Within the space of 24 hours—and in the wake of a firestorm of Republican right criticism—Obama demonstrated that his commitment was anything but unshakeable. “I was not commenting and will not comment on the wisdom of making the decision to put a mosque there,” he told reporters. “I was commenting very specifically on the right of people that date back to our founding.”
In other words, Obama’s White House speech was nothing more than a formal recognition of the constitutional rights that he is sworn to defend, upholding them in principle, while refusing to lift a finger in their defense against those who would deny these rights in practice.
Obama’s cowardly retreat was followed by a similar statement from Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (Democrat, Nevada), who on Monday issued a gutless statement acknowledging that “The First Amendment protects freedom of religion,” while insisting “the mosque should be built someplace else.” Needless to say, the senator did not propose any alternative site, much less offer to have the center built in Nevada.
There is little to distinguish Obama and Reid from Gingrich, Sarah Palin and others on the Republican right, who also formally acknowledge freedom of religion, while demanding that this freedom be denied to Muslims. Both parties are content to turn the Constitution into a dead letter, replacing it with statutes more suited to police-state repression at home and permanent military aggression abroad.
Why did Obama bother giving the speech if he was prepared to repudiate it so quickly? Clearly, it was not motivated by any concern for religious freedom or democratic rights.
The real motivation was suggested in a Washington Post column by Michael Gerson, the former speechwriter for George W. Bush, who aptly noted that with his speech and speedy backtracking, “Obama managed to collect all the political damage for taking an unpopular stand without gaining credit for political courage.”
The US president, Gerson continued, was compelled to make such a speech, because he “leads a coalition that includes Iraqi and Afghan Muslims who risk death each day fighting Islamic radicalism at our side. How could he possibly tell them that their place of worship inherently symbolizes the triumph of terror?”
Obama acted not out of commitment to constitutional principles, but rather, in all likelihood, at the prodding of the Pentagon and the US foreign policy establishment. They fear that the anti-Muslim campaign being whipped up by the Republican right could undermine US military campaigns in Iraq and Afghanistan to affirm Washington’s hegemony in the overwhelmingly Muslim Middle East and Central Asia, the world’s two most important sources of oil and gas.
Indeed, the principal figure involved in the Cordoba House project, Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf, plays a direct role in these US efforts. The State Department announced last week that it is sending Rauf on a goodwill tour of the Middle East, the third such mission by the Muslim cleric, with whom the State Department acknowledged having “a long-term relationship.” The Imam has also provided training for the FBI and police agencies in dealing with Muslim populations.
The “Ground Zero mosque” controversy has ensnared the Obama administration in an unavoidable contradiction. On the one hand US imperialism needs to recruit Muslim allies and puppets to further its two ongoing wars, as well as to support aggression against Iran. On the other hand, it has whipped up anti-Muslim sentiment within the general population and among US troops in order to generate religious-based support for these wars.
In the final analysis, the fascistic agitation against the Islamic center in Lower Manhattan, together with the cowering response of the Obama administration and the Democratic Party, demonstrate that militarism and imperialist war abroad coupled with ever-widening social inequality at home are incompatible with democratic rights. The escalating attacks on rights that go back to the founding of the American republic constitute a stark warning. The defense of these rights requires a counteroffensive by the working class against the reactionary social and political forces being mobilized to subvert them and against the profit system that gives rise to these attacks.
Thursday, February 11, 2010
Tea Party Told to Embrace Republican Platform
http://www.prisonplanet.com/subverted-tea-party-movement-told-to-embrace-republican-platform.htmlSubverted Tea Party Movement Told to Embrace Republican Platform
Kurt Nimmo
Prison Planet.com
Friday, February 5, 2010
The Tea Party movement is now almost completely unrecognizable from what it was a few short years ago. It came to prominence in 2008 when the Libertarian Party of Illinois planned to hold an April 15, 2009 anti-tax “Boston Tea Party” in Chicago. In February 2009, the idea grew after CNBC personality Rick Santelli, speaking from the floor of the Chicago stock exchange, criticized the Obama administration’s tax and economic policies and urged Americans become Tea Party activists.
Establishment Republicans plan to run Sarah Palin as the Tea Party presidential candidate.
In fact, the idea began as the Boston Tea Party in 2006. It was founded by a group of former Libertarian Party members who criticized the party for its “abdication of political responsibilities,” declaring that “Americans deserve and desperately need a pro-freedom party that forcefully advocates libertarian solutions to the issues of today.” The Boston Tea Party opposed statism at all levels. “The Boston Tea Party supports reducing the size scope and power of government at all levels and on all issues, and opposes increasing the size, scope and power of government at any level, for any purpose.”
How things have changed.
It didn’t take long for establishment Republicans to steal the idea and claim it as their own. A few weeks after Rick Santelli made his comments, Ron Paul’s media coordinator Steve Gordon went on MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow show and complained about what he characterized as an attempt by Republicans to hijack the idea. Gordon specifically blamed former Republican House Speaker Newt Gingrich and Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee.
It didn’t take long for Republicans to embrace the idea. RNC Chairman Michael Steele, Sarah Palin, and Rep. Michele Bachmann from Minnesota have suggested the Tea Party should be rolled into the Republican Borg hive.
Now there will be a national Tea Party convention in Nashville. It will be a parade of Republican statists with former Alaskan governor Sarah Palin leading the charge. “I look forward to meeting many Americans who share a commitment to limited government, common sense and personal responsibility. This movement is truly a grassroots, organic effort. It’s not a top-down organization,” Palin wrote for USA Today, “it’s a ground-up call to action that already has both political parties rethinking the way they do business.”
Ground-up? Tea Party candidates for the 2010 mid-term elections “will be expected to support the Republican National Committee platform,” according to Fox News. “If a particular candidate meets the proposed Tea Party criteria he or she would be eligible for fundraising and grassroots Tea Party support.”
“Once elected to office, members would be required to join a Congressional Tea Party Caucus, attend regular meetings and be held accountable for the votes they cast. Those who stray from the Tea Party path would risk losing it’s support and a likely re-election challenge.”
In other words, business as usual. Under the rule of George W. Bush and the Republicans, “inflation-adjusted spending on the combined budgets of the 101 largest programs they vowed to eliminate in 1995 has grown by 27 percent, according to the libertarian Cato Institute. Eight years of a Republican president, six with a Republican-controlled Congress, resulted in bigger government, the biggest expansion of entitlements in 40 years and a $700 billion bailout of Wall Street that continues to grow,” writes Donny Ferguson of the Libertarian National Committee.
Bush and the Republicans also invaded two sovereign nations and killed more than a million Iraqis. Democrats by and large supported these war crimes. They also overwhelmingly supported the Republicans when they attacked the Constitution and the Bill of Rights (the so-called Patriot Act being only the most egregious example).
If the co-opted Tea Party embraces the Republican National Committee platform, it will finalize its mutation from a grassroots libertarian organization into an establishment statist tool pushing a national debt for the banksters, bloated government, taxation, perpetual war, and continued attacks on the Constitution and the Bill of Rights.
It should be obvious by now that the Republicans plan to run Sarah Palin against Obama in 2012. This will be a disaster for the Republicans because many Americans are not fooled by her sudden Tea Party plumage. Republicans are desperate to regain control of the White House and Congress and give us four or eight more years of Bush and his warmongering statist neocons. It is a shabby and absurdly transparent gimmick.
Real Tea Party activists and supporters need to reject Palin, Huckabee, Gingrich, and the Republicans out of hand. They should be vocal about their rejection. Otherwise we will end up with another ideologue and teleprompter reading cigar store Indian for the ruling elite.
Friday, December 4, 2009
Tea Party Co-Founder Blasts Mainstream GOP
http://caivn.org/article/2009/11/30/tea-party-co-founder-blasts-mainstream-gop-imitators
Tea Party Co-Founder Blasts Mainstream GOP Imitators
by Chad Peace
Mon, Nov 30th 2009
In 2007, the modern tea party movement took shape, in a vastly different form than it now presents itself. Spurred by an impending recession, a government overrun by deception and corruption, and an unprecedented expansion of government under eight years of “conservative” leadership, the first modern day tea partiers had positive causes of action: honesty, respect for the rule of law, and protection of the rights of the smallest minority; the individual.
In late 2007, on the anniversary of the original Boston Tea Party, positive protestors laid hope in a solution. In a 24 hours period, in concert with symbolic and peaceful re-enactments of the Boston Tea Party in over 50 cities across the country, energetic tea partiers dumped over 5.2 million dollars into a long-shot presidential campaign to support a candidate that embodied honesty, respect, and sincerity in the pursuit strict constitutional leadership. The goal: to entrust our highest office to a man of principles, who would be shackled by a devotion to the constitution, rather than obligations to special interests.
I am proud to have been a participant in that tea party. In witnessing the tens of thousands of “patriots” that peacefully marched through the streets and donated extravagantly to a candidate relegated to a status of “darkhorse” by the mainstream, my respect turned to passion. I was convinced that the average American was beginning to see through the veil of scripted partisan sermons, designed to coddle fears and perpetuate the superficial battle between a “left” and “right”.
Over the next year, I harvested an addiction to contrarianism. An incessant hunger for serious political debate, fueled by coffee, cigarettes and eighteen-hour workdays changed my world. I was a dark-horse political enthusiast, with blinders on.
Then, in mid-February of 2009, Rick Santelli gave a now infamous rant on CNBC, calling for a modern day “tea party” in July. Immediately, my business partner and I set up on online tea party website. Within days, we received tens of thousands of e-mails and passionate pleas for government accountability. Our vision was to change the political debate focused on general divisions to one centered on specific solutions. We asked our supporters to question party-line politicians and demand that our leaders take a more independent and reasoned stance on the issues facing our country.
In short time, desperate partisans were soiling the sheets. Knowing we had neither the financial means nor man-power to out-publicize political perverts, I was never-the-less convinced that this independent movement would not be overrun by golden idols. I wrote to our supporters, asking them to be wary of old Republican figureheads like Newt Gingrich and current political strategists Patrick Leahy, hiding their identity behind make-shift “grassroots” websites. I was hopeful that the same talking heads, like Hannity and O’Reilly, that asked us to bend over blindly to past leaders would not have enough credibility to grandstand in front of an independent-minded movement.
At some point, reality began piercing my passion. The tea party boat started becoming a wagon of whiners. Propelled by the moving mouths on TV and the talking heads of such ironically named organizations such as the “American Family Association” (one must agree that for an admitted adulterer with three ex-wives heading the AFA is ironic, right?), the movement lost its focus. No longer were tea partiers upset with the bipartisan corruption in Washington D.C., they are mad at the socialists communists Hitler-like Democrats. No longer did Constitutionalism mean respecting the rule of law, it meant Obama is not really our president. A movement founded on the principles of independent analysis, it has become a yelling fest for punch-drunk cynics armed with incoherent talking points.
Slowly, I’ve lost some of my unrealistic idealism. As I pull back the blinders, I try to look at the tea party from the eyes of an outsider, the average American. What I see is a bunch of people reciting partisan political sermons, coddling fears, and perpetuating a superficial battle between “left” and “right”; drowning the well intentioned idealists that remain.
As the battle rages, I have more faith than ever that an independent revolution will come. When the absurdity of our political process rises to the point where tea bags become a right wing rally cry and the left still manages to drop in the polls, there is a growing opportunity for the increasingly disenchanted to drive a stake right down the middle.
Tea Party Co-Founder Blasts Mainstream GOP Imitators
by Chad Peace
Mon, Nov 30th 2009
In 2007, the modern tea party movement took shape, in a vastly different form than it now presents itself. Spurred by an impending recession, a government overrun by deception and corruption, and an unprecedented expansion of government under eight years of “conservative” leadership, the first modern day tea partiers had positive causes of action: honesty, respect for the rule of law, and protection of the rights of the smallest minority; the individual.
In late 2007, on the anniversary of the original Boston Tea Party, positive protestors laid hope in a solution. In a 24 hours period, in concert with symbolic and peaceful re-enactments of the Boston Tea Party in over 50 cities across the country, energetic tea partiers dumped over 5.2 million dollars into a long-shot presidential campaign to support a candidate that embodied honesty, respect, and sincerity in the pursuit strict constitutional leadership. The goal: to entrust our highest office to a man of principles, who would be shackled by a devotion to the constitution, rather than obligations to special interests.
I am proud to have been a participant in that tea party. In witnessing the tens of thousands of “patriots” that peacefully marched through the streets and donated extravagantly to a candidate relegated to a status of “darkhorse” by the mainstream, my respect turned to passion. I was convinced that the average American was beginning to see through the veil of scripted partisan sermons, designed to coddle fears and perpetuate the superficial battle between a “left” and “right”.
Over the next year, I harvested an addiction to contrarianism. An incessant hunger for serious political debate, fueled by coffee, cigarettes and eighteen-hour workdays changed my world. I was a dark-horse political enthusiast, with blinders on.
Then, in mid-February of 2009, Rick Santelli gave a now infamous rant on CNBC, calling for a modern day “tea party” in July. Immediately, my business partner and I set up on online tea party website. Within days, we received tens of thousands of e-mails and passionate pleas for government accountability. Our vision was to change the political debate focused on general divisions to one centered on specific solutions. We asked our supporters to question party-line politicians and demand that our leaders take a more independent and reasoned stance on the issues facing our country.
In short time, desperate partisans were soiling the sheets. Knowing we had neither the financial means nor man-power to out-publicize political perverts, I was never-the-less convinced that this independent movement would not be overrun by golden idols. I wrote to our supporters, asking them to be wary of old Republican figureheads like Newt Gingrich and current political strategists Patrick Leahy, hiding their identity behind make-shift “grassroots” websites. I was hopeful that the same talking heads, like Hannity and O’Reilly, that asked us to bend over blindly to past leaders would not have enough credibility to grandstand in front of an independent-minded movement.
At some point, reality began piercing my passion. The tea party boat started becoming a wagon of whiners. Propelled by the moving mouths on TV and the talking heads of such ironically named organizations such as the “American Family Association” (one must agree that for an admitted adulterer with three ex-wives heading the AFA is ironic, right?), the movement lost its focus. No longer were tea partiers upset with the bipartisan corruption in Washington D.C., they are mad at the socialists communists Hitler-like Democrats. No longer did Constitutionalism mean respecting the rule of law, it meant Obama is not really our president. A movement founded on the principles of independent analysis, it has become a yelling fest for punch-drunk cynics armed with incoherent talking points.
Slowly, I’ve lost some of my unrealistic idealism. As I pull back the blinders, I try to look at the tea party from the eyes of an outsider, the average American. What I see is a bunch of people reciting partisan political sermons, coddling fears, and perpetuating a superficial battle between “left” and “right”; drowning the well intentioned idealists that remain.
As the battle rages, I have more faith than ever that an independent revolution will come. When the absurdity of our political process rises to the point where tea bags become a right wing rally cry and the left still manages to drop in the polls, there is a growing opportunity for the increasingly disenchanted to drive a stake right down the middle.
Thursday, September 10, 2009
Gingrich-Based History Curriculum Go National?
http://tpmmuckraker.talkingpointsmemo.com/2009/09/could_texas_gingrich_based_curriculum_go_national.php
Could Texas' Gingrich-Based High School History Curriculum Go National?
Justin Elliott September 4, 2009
While Republicans are busy gnashing their teeth over President Obama's imminent indoctrination of the nation's schoolchildren, there's an education story bubbling up in Texas that could have considerably more far-reaching consequences.
The GOP-controlled State Board of Education is working on a new set of statewide textbook standards for, among other subjects, U.S. History Studies Since Reconstruction. And it turns out what the board decides may end up having implications far beyond the Lone Star State.
The first draft of the standards, released at the end of July, is a doozy. It lays out a kind of Human Events version of U.S. history.
Approved textbooks, the standards say, must teach the Texan student to "identify significant conservative advocacy organizations and individuals, such as Newt Gingrich, Phyllis Schlafly, and the Moral Majority." No analogous liberal figures or groups are required, prompting protests from some legislators and committee members. (Read an excerpt here.)
The standards on Nixon: "describe Richard M. Nixon's role in the normalization of relations with China and the policy of detente."
On Reagan: "describe Ronald Reagan's role in restoring national confidence, such as Reaganomics and Peace with Strength." (That's it.)
The Cold War section is rendered as "U.S. responses to Soviet aggression after World War II ... "
The state board of education, made up of 10 Republicans and five Democrats, has to vote on the standards twice in the coming months before they would go into effect.
Comments in the margin of the draft explain the proposed changes. And a persistent, tendentious conservative voice comes through throughout. Next to the section listing key names and groups from the civil rights movement and 60s activism, including Martin Luther King, Betty Friedan, and the American Indian Movement, it's noted that a committee member demanded parity ... for late 20th century conservative groups:
MV[Multiple Views]: One person: inclusion of 7 names and organizations disproportionate compared to only 3 in conservative section.Next to a noncontroversial seeming item requiring students to "describe how McCarthyism, the arms race, and the space race increased Cold War tensions" is the note:
"MV[Multiple Views]: One member thinks that if McCarthyism is noted, then the Venona papers need to be explained that exonerates him."
A bullet point on "women and minority employment" as an economic effect of World II caused "one member" to gripe "there is too much emphasis on multiculturalism."
And "one member" deemed a section on "effective leadership" a perfect place to bring to students' attention Charlton Heston's celebrated (among right-wingers) culture war speech.
Here's what makes this a national story: what happens in Texas doesn't stay in Texas, says Diane Ravitch, professor of education at NYU.
That's because Texas is one of the two states with the largest student enrollments, along with California. "The publishers vie to get their books adopted for them, and the changes that are inserted to please Texas and California are then part of the textbooks made available to every other state," says Ravitch, who wrote a book about the politics of textbooks.
Rick Hess of the American Enterprise Institute explains it as a simple economic calculation by the big textbook publishers. "Publishers are generally reticent to run two different versions of a textbook," he says. "You can imagine the headache the expense the logistics, the storage, all of it."
But don't start saving for private school tuition just yet. A spokeswoman for the Texas State Board of Education tells TPMmuckraker the board will have to pass the standards first in January, in a "first reading and filing authorization vote," and then in March in a final vote, before they would go into effect. In an article on the controversy in the Houston Chronicle, one of the conservative leaders on the board actually predicted the standards will pass at least the first vote.
This one bears close watching.
Could Texas' Gingrich-Based High School History Curriculum Go National?
Justin Elliott September 4, 2009
While Republicans are busy gnashing their teeth over President Obama's imminent indoctrination of the nation's schoolchildren, there's an education story bubbling up in Texas that could have considerably more far-reaching consequences.
The GOP-controlled State Board of Education is working on a new set of statewide textbook standards for, among other subjects, U.S. History Studies Since Reconstruction. And it turns out what the board decides may end up having implications far beyond the Lone Star State.
The first draft of the standards, released at the end of July, is a doozy. It lays out a kind of Human Events version of U.S. history.
Approved textbooks, the standards say, must teach the Texan student to "identify significant conservative advocacy organizations and individuals, such as Newt Gingrich, Phyllis Schlafly, and the Moral Majority." No analogous liberal figures or groups are required, prompting protests from some legislators and committee members. (Read an excerpt here.)
The standards on Nixon: "describe Richard M. Nixon's role in the normalization of relations with China and the policy of detente."
On Reagan: "describe Ronald Reagan's role in restoring national confidence, such as Reaganomics and Peace with Strength." (That's it.)
The Cold War section is rendered as "U.S. responses to Soviet aggression after World War II ... "
The state board of education, made up of 10 Republicans and five Democrats, has to vote on the standards twice in the coming months before they would go into effect.
Comments in the margin of the draft explain the proposed changes. And a persistent, tendentious conservative voice comes through throughout. Next to the section listing key names and groups from the civil rights movement and 60s activism, including Martin Luther King, Betty Friedan, and the American Indian Movement, it's noted that a committee member demanded parity ... for late 20th century conservative groups:
MV[Multiple Views]: One person: inclusion of 7 names and organizations disproportionate compared to only 3 in conservative section.Next to a noncontroversial seeming item requiring students to "describe how McCarthyism, the arms race, and the space race increased Cold War tensions" is the note:
"MV[Multiple Views]: One member thinks that if McCarthyism is noted, then the Venona papers need to be explained that exonerates him."
A bullet point on "women and minority employment" as an economic effect of World II caused "one member" to gripe "there is too much emphasis on multiculturalism."
And "one member" deemed a section on "effective leadership" a perfect place to bring to students' attention Charlton Heston's celebrated (among right-wingers) culture war speech.
Here's what makes this a national story: what happens in Texas doesn't stay in Texas, says Diane Ravitch, professor of education at NYU.
That's because Texas is one of the two states with the largest student enrollments, along with California. "The publishers vie to get their books adopted for them, and the changes that are inserted to please Texas and California are then part of the textbooks made available to every other state," says Ravitch, who wrote a book about the politics of textbooks.
Rick Hess of the American Enterprise Institute explains it as a simple economic calculation by the big textbook publishers. "Publishers are generally reticent to run two different versions of a textbook," he says. "You can imagine the headache the expense the logistics, the storage, all of it."
But don't start saving for private school tuition just yet. A spokeswoman for the Texas State Board of Education tells TPMmuckraker the board will have to pass the standards first in January, in a "first reading and filing authorization vote," and then in March in a final vote, before they would go into effect. In an article on the controversy in the Houston Chronicle, one of the conservative leaders on the board actually predicted the standards will pass at least the first vote.
This one bears close watching.
Tuesday, August 18, 2009
Whitewashing Hiroshima
http://onlinejournal.com/artman/publish/article_5001.shtml
Whitewashing Hiroshima: The uncritical glorification of American militarism
By Gary G. Kohls, MD
Online Journal Contributing Writer
Aug 11, 2009
Back in 1995, the Smithsonian was preparing an honest, historically-accurate display dealing with the 50th anniversary of the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Amid much right-wing reactionary wrangling, from various ultrapatriotic veterans groups all the way up to the Newt Gingrich/GOP-dominated Congress, the Smithsonian was forced to eliminate all of the painful but historically important parts of the story -- the Japanese civilian perspective. So again we had another example of powerful politically conservative groups influencing public policy -- and history -- because they couldn’t handle what was necessary to face up to unpleasant historical truths.
The historians did have a gun to their heads, of course, but in the melee, the mainstream media -- and therefore the public -- ignored a vital historical point. And that is this: The war would have ended soon without the atomic bombs, and thus there would not have been a bloody American land invasion of Japan. American intelligence, with the full knowledge of President Truman, was fully aware of Japan’s desperate search for ways to honorably surrender weeks before the order was given for the mass slaughter of innocent civilians that was Hiroshima.
American intelligence data, revealed in the 1980s, shows that the mythical large-scale US invasion (theoretically planned for no sooner than November 1, 1945) would have been unnecessary. Japan was working on peace negotiations with the Allies through its Moscow ambassador as early as April of 1945. Truman knew of these developments, the US having broken the Japanese code years earlier, and all of Japan’s military and diplomatic messages were being intercepted. On July 13, 1945, Foreign Minister Togo said, “Unconditional surrender (giving up all sovereignty) is the only obstacle to peace.” Truman knew this, and the war could have ended by simply conceding a post-war figurehead position for the emperor -- a leader regarded as a deity in Japan. That concession was refused by the US, the Japanese continued trying to obtain an honorable peace and the bombs were dropped with no regard given to Japan’e attempts to negotiate. And after the war, the emperor remained in place. So what were the real reasons for 1) the refusal to accept Japan’s offer of surrender and 2) the decision to proceed with the bombings?
Shortly after WWII, military analyst Hanson Baldwin wrote, “The Japanese, in a military sense, were in a hopeless strategic situation by the time the Potsdam insistence on Japan’s unconditional surrender was made on July 26, 1945.” Admiral William Leahy, top military aide to President Truman, said in his war memoirs, “I Was There,” “It is my opinion that the use of this barbarous weapon at Hiroshima and Nagasaki was of no material assistance in our war against Japan. The Japanese were already defeated and ready to surrender because of the effective sea blockade and the successful bombing with conventional weapons. My own feeling is that in being the first to use it, we had adopted an ethical standard common to the barbarians of the Dark Ages.” And General Dwight D. Eisenhower agreed.
Truman proceeded with the plans to use the bombs, but he never officially ordered the Nagasaki bomb that followed Hiroshima by only three days. There are a number of factors that contributed to Truman’s decision.
1) The US had made a huge investment in time, mind and money ($2,000,000,000 in 1940 dollars) to produce three bombs, and there was no inclination -- and no guts -- to stop the momentum.
2) The US military -- as did its citizens -- had a bloodthirsty appetite for revenge because of Pearl Harbor. Mercy wasn’t in the vocabulary of the US military and the war-weary populace, and the missions were accomplished -- with essentially no objections by those who only knew the sanitized and censored-out version of events.
3) Hiroshima’s bomb was uranium and Nagasaki’s was plutonium. Scientific curiosity certainly was a significant factor for the bombing of Nagasaki. The decision to use both bombs had obviously been made well in advance. The three-day interval was unconscionably inadequate -- Japan being in shambles in its communications and transportation capabilities – and besides, no one, not the US military or even the Japanese high command, fully understood what had happened at Hiroshima. General Douglas MacArthur, commanding general of the entire Pacific theatre, was kept out of the loop about the existence of the bombs until five days before Hiroshima.
4) The Russians had proclaimed their intent to enter the war with Japan 90 days after V-E Day (Victory in Europe, May 8), which would have been Aug. 8, two days after Hiroshima was bombed. Indeed, Russia did declare war on August 8 and was marching across Manchuria when Nagasaki was incinerated. The US didn’t want Japan surrendering to anybody else, especially a future enemy, so the first nuclear “messages” of the infantile Cold War were sent. Russia indeed received far less of the spoils of war than they had anticipated, and the two superpowers were mired in the Cold War stalemate that eventually resulted in mutual moral and economic bankruptcy within a couple of generations.
An estimated 80,000 innocent and defenseless civilians -- plus 20,000 essentially weaponless young Japanese conscripts -- died instantly in the Hiroshima bombing. Hundreds of thousands more suffered agonizing bums, radiation sickness, leukemia and infections for the rest of their shortened lives, and generations of the survivor’s progeny inherited horrible radiation-induced illnesses, cancers and premature deaths. What has been covered up is the fact that 12 American Navy pilots, their existence well known to the US command, were incinerated in the Hiroshima jail on Aug. 6.
The 75,000 Nagasaki victims were virtually all innocent civilians, except for the inhabitants of an allied POW camp near Nagasaki’s ground zero. They were incinerated, carbonized and/or vaporized by a scientific experiment carried out by obedient, unaware soldiers and scientists. The War Dept. knew of the existence of the POWs but when informed, simply replied, “Targets previously assigned for Centerboard (code name for the Kokura/Nagasaki mission) remain unchanged.”
So the end of the war in the Pacific was just one more myth in a long list of myths that Americans have been fed by our military and political leaders, war being glorified in the process. A short list of some of the others includes the censored-out military invasions and occupations of countries such as this short list (just in the last 60 years): North Korea, Iran, Viet Nam, Laos, Cambodia, Granada, Panama, the Philippines, Chile, El Salvador, Nicaragua, Guatemala, Honduras, Haiti, Colombia, Iraq, Afghanistan, etc, etc.
But somehow most of us Americans still hang on to our shaky “my country right or wrong” patriotism, desperately wanting to believe the cunningly-orchestrated myths that our nation only works for peace, justice and promoting democracy and not mainly supporting evil dictators or promoting corrupt exploitive capitalism.
While it is true that the US military has faced down occasional despots, with natural heroism and sacrifice from dead and dying American soldiers, more often than not our methods of rationalizing the atrocities of war are identical to those of the “godless communists” or “evil empires” on the other side of the battle line. August 6 and 9, 1945 are just two more examples of the brutalization of “total war,” which is always accompanied by the unforgivable human slaughter called “collateral damage” and “friendly fire.”
The time has come for Americans to stand up for real justice and peace (rather than the unaffordable and self-perpetuating “armed truces” we have all over the world) by acknowledging the whole truth of history and owning up to the numerous international war crimes and crimes against humanity that have been orchestrated by American militarism in the last half-century. And then we need to start acknowledging and speaking out about our nation’s all-too-common military atrocities, as would all courageous people who have high ethical standards.
Doing what is right for the whole of humanity for a change, rather than just what is advantageous for our over-privileged American life-style, would be real honor, real patriotism and an essential start toward real peace.
Dr. Kohls is a recently retired physician from Duluth, Minn., whose holistic mental practice dealt extensively with posttraumatic stress disordered (PTSD) patients, many of whom were military veterans and all of whose serious neurological and psychological disabilities were preventable.
Whitewashing Hiroshima: The uncritical glorification of American militarism
By Gary G. Kohls, MD
Online Journal Contributing Writer
Aug 11, 2009
Back in 1995, the Smithsonian was preparing an honest, historically-accurate display dealing with the 50th anniversary of the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Amid much right-wing reactionary wrangling, from various ultrapatriotic veterans groups all the way up to the Newt Gingrich/GOP-dominated Congress, the Smithsonian was forced to eliminate all of the painful but historically important parts of the story -- the Japanese civilian perspective. So again we had another example of powerful politically conservative groups influencing public policy -- and history -- because they couldn’t handle what was necessary to face up to unpleasant historical truths.
The historians did have a gun to their heads, of course, but in the melee, the mainstream media -- and therefore the public -- ignored a vital historical point. And that is this: The war would have ended soon without the atomic bombs, and thus there would not have been a bloody American land invasion of Japan. American intelligence, with the full knowledge of President Truman, was fully aware of Japan’s desperate search for ways to honorably surrender weeks before the order was given for the mass slaughter of innocent civilians that was Hiroshima.
American intelligence data, revealed in the 1980s, shows that the mythical large-scale US invasion (theoretically planned for no sooner than November 1, 1945) would have been unnecessary. Japan was working on peace negotiations with the Allies through its Moscow ambassador as early as April of 1945. Truman knew of these developments, the US having broken the Japanese code years earlier, and all of Japan’s military and diplomatic messages were being intercepted. On July 13, 1945, Foreign Minister Togo said, “Unconditional surrender (giving up all sovereignty) is the only obstacle to peace.” Truman knew this, and the war could have ended by simply conceding a post-war figurehead position for the emperor -- a leader regarded as a deity in Japan. That concession was refused by the US, the Japanese continued trying to obtain an honorable peace and the bombs were dropped with no regard given to Japan’e attempts to negotiate. And after the war, the emperor remained in place. So what were the real reasons for 1) the refusal to accept Japan’s offer of surrender and 2) the decision to proceed with the bombings?
Shortly after WWII, military analyst Hanson Baldwin wrote, “The Japanese, in a military sense, were in a hopeless strategic situation by the time the Potsdam insistence on Japan’s unconditional surrender was made on July 26, 1945.” Admiral William Leahy, top military aide to President Truman, said in his war memoirs, “I Was There,” “It is my opinion that the use of this barbarous weapon at Hiroshima and Nagasaki was of no material assistance in our war against Japan. The Japanese were already defeated and ready to surrender because of the effective sea blockade and the successful bombing with conventional weapons. My own feeling is that in being the first to use it, we had adopted an ethical standard common to the barbarians of the Dark Ages.” And General Dwight D. Eisenhower agreed.
Truman proceeded with the plans to use the bombs, but he never officially ordered the Nagasaki bomb that followed Hiroshima by only three days. There are a number of factors that contributed to Truman’s decision.
1) The US had made a huge investment in time, mind and money ($2,000,000,000 in 1940 dollars) to produce three bombs, and there was no inclination -- and no guts -- to stop the momentum.
2) The US military -- as did its citizens -- had a bloodthirsty appetite for revenge because of Pearl Harbor. Mercy wasn’t in the vocabulary of the US military and the war-weary populace, and the missions were accomplished -- with essentially no objections by those who only knew the sanitized and censored-out version of events.
3) Hiroshima’s bomb was uranium and Nagasaki’s was plutonium. Scientific curiosity certainly was a significant factor for the bombing of Nagasaki. The decision to use both bombs had obviously been made well in advance. The three-day interval was unconscionably inadequate -- Japan being in shambles in its communications and transportation capabilities – and besides, no one, not the US military or even the Japanese high command, fully understood what had happened at Hiroshima. General Douglas MacArthur, commanding general of the entire Pacific theatre, was kept out of the loop about the existence of the bombs until five days before Hiroshima.
4) The Russians had proclaimed their intent to enter the war with Japan 90 days after V-E Day (Victory in Europe, May 8), which would have been Aug. 8, two days after Hiroshima was bombed. Indeed, Russia did declare war on August 8 and was marching across Manchuria when Nagasaki was incinerated. The US didn’t want Japan surrendering to anybody else, especially a future enemy, so the first nuclear “messages” of the infantile Cold War were sent. Russia indeed received far less of the spoils of war than they had anticipated, and the two superpowers were mired in the Cold War stalemate that eventually resulted in mutual moral and economic bankruptcy within a couple of generations.
An estimated 80,000 innocent and defenseless civilians -- plus 20,000 essentially weaponless young Japanese conscripts -- died instantly in the Hiroshima bombing. Hundreds of thousands more suffered agonizing bums, radiation sickness, leukemia and infections for the rest of their shortened lives, and generations of the survivor’s progeny inherited horrible radiation-induced illnesses, cancers and premature deaths. What has been covered up is the fact that 12 American Navy pilots, their existence well known to the US command, were incinerated in the Hiroshima jail on Aug. 6.
The 75,000 Nagasaki victims were virtually all innocent civilians, except for the inhabitants of an allied POW camp near Nagasaki’s ground zero. They were incinerated, carbonized and/or vaporized by a scientific experiment carried out by obedient, unaware soldiers and scientists. The War Dept. knew of the existence of the POWs but when informed, simply replied, “Targets previously assigned for Centerboard (code name for the Kokura/Nagasaki mission) remain unchanged.”
So the end of the war in the Pacific was just one more myth in a long list of myths that Americans have been fed by our military and political leaders, war being glorified in the process. A short list of some of the others includes the censored-out military invasions and occupations of countries such as this short list (just in the last 60 years): North Korea, Iran, Viet Nam, Laos, Cambodia, Granada, Panama, the Philippines, Chile, El Salvador, Nicaragua, Guatemala, Honduras, Haiti, Colombia, Iraq, Afghanistan, etc, etc.
But somehow most of us Americans still hang on to our shaky “my country right or wrong” patriotism, desperately wanting to believe the cunningly-orchestrated myths that our nation only works for peace, justice and promoting democracy and not mainly supporting evil dictators or promoting corrupt exploitive capitalism.
While it is true that the US military has faced down occasional despots, with natural heroism and sacrifice from dead and dying American soldiers, more often than not our methods of rationalizing the atrocities of war are identical to those of the “godless communists” or “evil empires” on the other side of the battle line. August 6 and 9, 1945 are just two more examples of the brutalization of “total war,” which is always accompanied by the unforgivable human slaughter called “collateral damage” and “friendly fire.”
The time has come for Americans to stand up for real justice and peace (rather than the unaffordable and self-perpetuating “armed truces” we have all over the world) by acknowledging the whole truth of history and owning up to the numerous international war crimes and crimes against humanity that have been orchestrated by American militarism in the last half-century. And then we need to start acknowledging and speaking out about our nation’s all-too-common military atrocities, as would all courageous people who have high ethical standards.
Doing what is right for the whole of humanity for a change, rather than just what is advantageous for our over-privileged American life-style, would be real honor, real patriotism and an essential start toward real peace.
Dr. Kohls is a recently retired physician from Duluth, Minn., whose holistic mental practice dealt extensively with posttraumatic stress disordered (PTSD) patients, many of whom were military veterans and all of whose serious neurological and psychological disabilities were preventable.
Friday, April 24, 2009
Don't Fall For the Old Divide And Conquer Trick
http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2009/04/dont-fall-for-old-divide-and-conquer.html
Wednesday, April 15, 2009
Don't Fall For the Old Divide And Conquer Trick
The powers-that-be are trying to distract us from the looting of our wallets by the big banks by creating a left-versus-right, us-versus-them drama.
You know, the old divide-and-conquer schtick.
Americans from across the political spectrum are furious at the financial elite who have robbed us blind, and their enablers in government.
While at the moment, conservatives are getting more press, those on the left are just as angry. For example, leading progressive Glenn Greenwald wrote an essay entitled "The virtues of public anger and the need for more" cheering the fact that Americans are starting to get in touch with their righteous anger at being ripped off.
Liberals have launched their own version of the tea party protests calling for the big banks to be broken up.
And many leading economists and policy experts have thunderously railed against Obama's continuation of Bush's cover-up-the-truth, too-big-to-fail, stick-it-to-the-taxpayers approach to the economic crisis.
On the conservative side of the aisle, Ron Paul's media coordinator said that the mainstream Republican party has tried to hijack the tea party movement and has "co-opted" its message. He warns against letting the movement be diverted:
It's important the people at the grassroots level stick to our guns and say no when they try to co-opt our message....
Bringing in someone like Gingrich takes away from the message. Newt Gingrich enabled George W. Bush, he enabled the big spending...
And as Michael Rivero has written:
Beware this "left wing versus right wing" dichotomy. This is an attempt to trick us into arguing with each other instead of uniting against the common cause of our problems...
The only real divide is the one mentioned at the very top of this article. The one percent that owns it all against the 99% of us being driven into poverty. The poor against the oligarchs.
To my friends on both the left and the right, I urge you to remember that folks on the other side of the aisle are not the problem. As honest people on both the left and the right agree, the real problems are:
Lack of honest disclosure about the shenanigans of the financial giants
Failing to prosecute the criminal actions of those companies and their big wigs
Failing to break up zombie insolvent companies
Slipping trillions of dollars into the hands of the richest and most powerful companies under the table
Gaming the numbers
And continuing to pursue failed economic policies even after they've been proven counterproductive
If we fall for the divide and conquer strategy, where idiots on both sides try to focus our anger on the "other team" instead of the real culprits, we will get distracted, lose direction, and thus became easy to ignore and control. Then the powers-that-be will be able to continue pickpocketing us for years to come.
Wednesday, April 15, 2009
Don't Fall For the Old Divide And Conquer Trick
The powers-that-be are trying to distract us from the looting of our wallets by the big banks by creating a left-versus-right, us-versus-them drama.
You know, the old divide-and-conquer schtick.
Americans from across the political spectrum are furious at the financial elite who have robbed us blind, and their enablers in government.
While at the moment, conservatives are getting more press, those on the left are just as angry. For example, leading progressive Glenn Greenwald wrote an essay entitled "The virtues of public anger and the need for more" cheering the fact that Americans are starting to get in touch with their righteous anger at being ripped off.
Liberals have launched their own version of the tea party protests calling for the big banks to be broken up.
And many leading economists and policy experts have thunderously railed against Obama's continuation of Bush's cover-up-the-truth, too-big-to-fail, stick-it-to-the-taxpayers approach to the economic crisis.
On the conservative side of the aisle, Ron Paul's media coordinator said that the mainstream Republican party has tried to hijack the tea party movement and has "co-opted" its message. He warns against letting the movement be diverted:
It's important the people at the grassroots level stick to our guns and say no when they try to co-opt our message....
Bringing in someone like Gingrich takes away from the message. Newt Gingrich enabled George W. Bush, he enabled the big spending...
And as Michael Rivero has written:
Beware this "left wing versus right wing" dichotomy. This is an attempt to trick us into arguing with each other instead of uniting against the common cause of our problems...
The only real divide is the one mentioned at the very top of this article. The one percent that owns it all against the 99% of us being driven into poverty. The poor against the oligarchs.
To my friends on both the left and the right, I urge you to remember that folks on the other side of the aisle are not the problem. As honest people on both the left and the right agree, the real problems are:
Lack of honest disclosure about the shenanigans of the financial giants
Failing to prosecute the criminal actions of those companies and their big wigs
Failing to break up zombie insolvent companies
Slipping trillions of dollars into the hands of the richest and most powerful companies under the table
Gaming the numbers
And continuing to pursue failed economic policies even after they've been proven counterproductive
If we fall for the divide and conquer strategy, where idiots on both sides try to focus our anger on the "other team" instead of the real culprits, we will get distracted, lose direction, and thus became easy to ignore and control. Then the powers-that-be will be able to continue pickpocketing us for years to come.
Thursday, November 13, 2008
Republicans Gear Up for 2012 Race
http://news.aol.com/elections/article/republicans-gear-up-for-2012-race/242287
Republicans Gear Up for 2012 Race
By Jonathan Martin, Politico.com
(Nov. 9) - Votes are still being counted in some races in last Tuesday’s election, but no matter: Talk of the potential Republican field in the 2012 presidential election is already underway.
Too early? Too bad — just look around.
Two potential candidates will be in Iowa before month’s end, multiple prospects — almost certainly including Sarah Palin — will make high-profile appearances next week at the Republican Governors Association (RGA) meeting, and Newt Gingrich’s name has already been floated in a Bob Novak column.
For a party anxious to move past a brutal election up and down the ballot, and especially a presidential campaign it would just as soon forget, it’s not too soon to start thinking about "next time," as the pros call it.
Now officially, of course, any talk of a presidential run is verboten.
“Oh, man,” drawled Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour, when asked about 2012 and specifically his own interest in a possible presidential run. “I’m going to tell you something. One of the worst things that can happen to the Republican Party in our effort to rebuild is for a bunch of people to start running for president. Anybody harboring that ambition needs to squelch it until after 2010. … Anybody out there running for president is undercutting what’s important. You do this against your own interest.”
Following Barbour’s admonition, every likely candidate asked the same question by Politico demurred in all the time-honored ways politicians demur about such questions.
Former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee: “That’s way too far away.”
Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal: “The most important thing I can do is be the best governor of Louisiana.”
South Dakota Sen. John Thune: “I’m just looking to help the team.”
Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty: “My day job is an honor and a privilege, and my focus is here.”
That is, according to the holy “don’t-get-beyond-the-next-cycle” writ of presidential politics, what they must say.
But don’t watch their mouths — keep an eye on their feet.
Huckabee, winner of the 2008 Iowa caucuses, returns to the Hawkeye State Nov. 20 for stops in Cedar Rapids and Des Moines to hawk his new book, “Do the Right Thing: Inside the Movement That's Bringing Common Sense Back to America.”
Huckabee, who is making his trek in a campaign-style bus with his likeness emblazoned on the side, is also slated to make five stops in South Carolina. The Palmetto State is home to the first-in-the-South GOP primary and a reliable indicator of who will get the party’s nomination in every primary since 1980. It was also Huckabee’s Waterloo this year, the place where he saw his presidential hopes slip away when Fred Thompson and Mitt Romney cut into his conservative vote share and enabled John McCain to snare a plurality win.
The book, he said, “makes the connection between conservative fiscal and social policy.”
“The size and scope of government is related to the way people behave,” noted Huckabee, who is also keeping his name fresh in the minds of Republican activists with a weekly talk show on Fox News.
Jindal, elected governor of Louisiana in 2007 after serving in Congress and holding health care posts in state and federal government, makes his first trip to Iowa on Nov. 22.
He’s keynoting the statewide banquet of the Iowa Family Policy Center, a Christian conservative group, in suburban Des Moines and will tour flood-ravaged Cedar Rapids, offering his insights as a hurricane-state governor to state and local officials.
Though only 37 and in his first year in statewide office, Jindal is already drawing rave reviews.
Asked in a post-election chat which Republican officeholders impressed him during the campaign, McCain campaign chief Steve Schmidt didn’t hesitate: “Bobby Jindal, no question.”
Anti-tax crusader Grover Norquist, who wanted Jindal to be McCain’s vice presidential nominee this year, said flatly: “Jindal will be president. I don’t know the year.”
Thune, who is eyeing a Senate leadership post, is likely to keep the majority of his travel confined between the Badlands and Siouxland. The freshman senator is up for re-election in 2010, and Democrats would like nothing more than to knock him off and ensure that their tall, handsome, hoops-loving president doesn’t have to worry about facing a tall, handsome, hoops-loving Republican in 2012. That he also knocked off Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle, a close Barack Obama confidant, only adds to the Democratic desire to send him the way of George Allen.
But to get a sense of Thune’s ambitions, look back, not forward, on the calendar. Since coming to the Senate, he’s been a hot ticket for GOP Lincoln Day dinners. Freshman senators from the Great Plains don’t trek to such party fundraisers in Kent County, Mich., (Grand Rapids) and Hillsborough County, Fla., (Tampa) because they like the chicken and rice pilaf.
Pawlenty, a runner-up in McCain’s veepstakes and frequent surrogate for the Arizona senator, will make his presence known this week in Miami, when the RGA holds its annual conference. He’ll be featured at the kickoff luncheon and then appear at two more open press roundtables in what will effectively be the first of many GOP cattle calls ahead of the 2012 contest.
Florida Gov. Charlie Crist, another potential 2012 aspirant and the event’s host, will close the session by giving a speech Thursday night focused on broadening the party, according to his closet political adviser.
“We can’t win with what we have right now,” said George LeMieux, who ran Crist’s 2006 gubernatorial run, a rare bright spot in a difficult cycle for Republicans.
Crist made inroads with African-Americans in his 2006 race and feels strongly about making the GOP more inclusive — a demographic imperative made clear by Tuesday’s election.
Predictably, LeMieux offered a standard-issue demurral on behalf of Crist when asked about 2012.
Barbour, Jindal and other prospects such as Texas Gov. Rick Perry, South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford and Utah Gov. Jon Huntsman will also brave the November weather at the InterContinental Miami.
But there is little doubt who will be the star of the show: Palin is virtually certain to make her first official post-election public appearance in the Lower 48 at the RGA, according to GOP sources.
Asked about a future run by CNN’s Dana Bash in the Phoenix Biltmore lobby on Wednesday, Palin said that “2012 sounds so far off that I can't even imagine what I'd be doing then.”
A source close to the Alaska governor says that she has been bruised by the finger-pointing in her direction by anonymous campaign aides — something made plain by her denunciation of them as “cowards” upon returning home Friday — but that she’s also “clearly an ambitious woman.”
Then there is Mitt Romney.
The former Massachusetts governor was a dogged surrogate on McCain’s behalf after their sometimes-bitter primary campaign and retains a loyal following in the party.
He declined an interview — he’s actually in Alaska on a cruise sponsored by National Review, a magazine that endorsed him in the GOP primary — but sources close to the CEO-turned-politician say he’s very much uncertain about whether he’ll run for elective office again and is keeping a close eye on what direction the party takes in the months ahead, especially with regard to Palin.
Romney is extraordinarily close to members of his family, and most are opposed to another run.
He is, though, likely to stay involved at least at a policy level.
“What I’d say is he’s keeping his options open for now,” said one source close to Romney.
And as for Gingrich, the always-plugged-in Novak seems to think he’s running, and other longtime Republicans around Washington say the same of the former House speaker.
His spokesman, Rick Tyler, even hints that it may be a possibility — edging dangerously close to speaking the unspeakable.
“We’ll see what Barack Obama does,” said Tyler.
Republicans Gear Up for 2012 Race
By Jonathan Martin, Politico.com
(Nov. 9) - Votes are still being counted in some races in last Tuesday’s election, but no matter: Talk of the potential Republican field in the 2012 presidential election is already underway.
Too early? Too bad — just look around.
Two potential candidates will be in Iowa before month’s end, multiple prospects — almost certainly including Sarah Palin — will make high-profile appearances next week at the Republican Governors Association (RGA) meeting, and Newt Gingrich’s name has already been floated in a Bob Novak column.
For a party anxious to move past a brutal election up and down the ballot, and especially a presidential campaign it would just as soon forget, it’s not too soon to start thinking about "next time," as the pros call it.
Now officially, of course, any talk of a presidential run is verboten.
“Oh, man,” drawled Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour, when asked about 2012 and specifically his own interest in a possible presidential run. “I’m going to tell you something. One of the worst things that can happen to the Republican Party in our effort to rebuild is for a bunch of people to start running for president. Anybody harboring that ambition needs to squelch it until after 2010. … Anybody out there running for president is undercutting what’s important. You do this against your own interest.”
Following Barbour’s admonition, every likely candidate asked the same question by Politico demurred in all the time-honored ways politicians demur about such questions.
Former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee: “That’s way too far away.”
Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal: “The most important thing I can do is be the best governor of Louisiana.”
South Dakota Sen. John Thune: “I’m just looking to help the team.”
Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty: “My day job is an honor and a privilege, and my focus is here.”
That is, according to the holy “don’t-get-beyond-the-next-cycle” writ of presidential politics, what they must say.
But don’t watch their mouths — keep an eye on their feet.
Huckabee, winner of the 2008 Iowa caucuses, returns to the Hawkeye State Nov. 20 for stops in Cedar Rapids and Des Moines to hawk his new book, “Do the Right Thing: Inside the Movement That's Bringing Common Sense Back to America.”
Huckabee, who is making his trek in a campaign-style bus with his likeness emblazoned on the side, is also slated to make five stops in South Carolina. The Palmetto State is home to the first-in-the-South GOP primary and a reliable indicator of who will get the party’s nomination in every primary since 1980. It was also Huckabee’s Waterloo this year, the place where he saw his presidential hopes slip away when Fred Thompson and Mitt Romney cut into his conservative vote share and enabled John McCain to snare a plurality win.
The book, he said, “makes the connection between conservative fiscal and social policy.”
“The size and scope of government is related to the way people behave,” noted Huckabee, who is also keeping his name fresh in the minds of Republican activists with a weekly talk show on Fox News.
Jindal, elected governor of Louisiana in 2007 after serving in Congress and holding health care posts in state and federal government, makes his first trip to Iowa on Nov. 22.
He’s keynoting the statewide banquet of the Iowa Family Policy Center, a Christian conservative group, in suburban Des Moines and will tour flood-ravaged Cedar Rapids, offering his insights as a hurricane-state governor to state and local officials.
Though only 37 and in his first year in statewide office, Jindal is already drawing rave reviews.
Asked in a post-election chat which Republican officeholders impressed him during the campaign, McCain campaign chief Steve Schmidt didn’t hesitate: “Bobby Jindal, no question.”
Anti-tax crusader Grover Norquist, who wanted Jindal to be McCain’s vice presidential nominee this year, said flatly: “Jindal will be president. I don’t know the year.”
Thune, who is eyeing a Senate leadership post, is likely to keep the majority of his travel confined between the Badlands and Siouxland. The freshman senator is up for re-election in 2010, and Democrats would like nothing more than to knock him off and ensure that their tall, handsome, hoops-loving president doesn’t have to worry about facing a tall, handsome, hoops-loving Republican in 2012. That he also knocked off Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle, a close Barack Obama confidant, only adds to the Democratic desire to send him the way of George Allen.
But to get a sense of Thune’s ambitions, look back, not forward, on the calendar. Since coming to the Senate, he’s been a hot ticket for GOP Lincoln Day dinners. Freshman senators from the Great Plains don’t trek to such party fundraisers in Kent County, Mich., (Grand Rapids) and Hillsborough County, Fla., (Tampa) because they like the chicken and rice pilaf.
Pawlenty, a runner-up in McCain’s veepstakes and frequent surrogate for the Arizona senator, will make his presence known this week in Miami, when the RGA holds its annual conference. He’ll be featured at the kickoff luncheon and then appear at two more open press roundtables in what will effectively be the first of many GOP cattle calls ahead of the 2012 contest.
Florida Gov. Charlie Crist, another potential 2012 aspirant and the event’s host, will close the session by giving a speech Thursday night focused on broadening the party, according to his closet political adviser.
“We can’t win with what we have right now,” said George LeMieux, who ran Crist’s 2006 gubernatorial run, a rare bright spot in a difficult cycle for Republicans.
Crist made inroads with African-Americans in his 2006 race and feels strongly about making the GOP more inclusive — a demographic imperative made clear by Tuesday’s election.
Predictably, LeMieux offered a standard-issue demurral on behalf of Crist when asked about 2012.
Barbour, Jindal and other prospects such as Texas Gov. Rick Perry, South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford and Utah Gov. Jon Huntsman will also brave the November weather at the InterContinental Miami.
But there is little doubt who will be the star of the show: Palin is virtually certain to make her first official post-election public appearance in the Lower 48 at the RGA, according to GOP sources.
Asked about a future run by CNN’s Dana Bash in the Phoenix Biltmore lobby on Wednesday, Palin said that “2012 sounds so far off that I can't even imagine what I'd be doing then.”
A source close to the Alaska governor says that she has been bruised by the finger-pointing in her direction by anonymous campaign aides — something made plain by her denunciation of them as “cowards” upon returning home Friday — but that she’s also “clearly an ambitious woman.”
Then there is Mitt Romney.
The former Massachusetts governor was a dogged surrogate on McCain’s behalf after their sometimes-bitter primary campaign and retains a loyal following in the party.
He declined an interview — he’s actually in Alaska on a cruise sponsored by National Review, a magazine that endorsed him in the GOP primary — but sources close to the CEO-turned-politician say he’s very much uncertain about whether he’ll run for elective office again and is keeping a close eye on what direction the party takes in the months ahead, especially with regard to Palin.
Romney is extraordinarily close to members of his family, and most are opposed to another run.
He is, though, likely to stay involved at least at a policy level.
“What I’d say is he’s keeping his options open for now,” said one source close to Romney.
And as for Gingrich, the always-plugged-in Novak seems to think he’s running, and other longtime Republicans around Washington say the same of the former House speaker.
His spokesman, Rick Tyler, even hints that it may be a possibility — edging dangerously close to speaking the unspeakable.
“We’ll see what Barack Obama does,” said Tyler.
Sunday, May 18, 2008
Republicans fear public has lost confidence
http://www.usatoday.com/news/politics/election2008/2008-05-14-gopfallout_N.htm
Republicans fear public has lost confidence
By Ken Dilanian, USA TODAY
5-14-8
WASHINGTON — Republicans must regain the confidence of Americans and recast their message to voters to avoid a catastrophe in the fall congressional elections, top GOP officials said Wednesday in a stark postmortem of a loss in rural Mississippi.
Rep. Tom Cole of Oklahoma, who runs the committee tasked with helping elect Republicans to Congress, said Tuesday's defeat in Mississippi — after losing GOP seats in other special elections in Illinois and Louisiana — was evidence that "a large section of the American people doesn't have confidence in the Republican Party."
"What we've got right now is a deficiency in our message and a loss of confidence by the American people to do what we say we're going to do," Cole said in a conference call with reporters.
He said, "When you lose three of these in a row, you have to get beyond campaign tactics and take a long hard look: Is there something wrong with your product?"
Cole did not elaborate on potential defects, but Democrats had a ready answer.
"The Republican message is 'no, veto, and status quo,' " said Rep. Chris Van Hollen of Maryland, chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee. He said Republicans couldn't win in Mississippi even though they poured $1 million into the race, sent Vice President Cheney to campaign and tried to link Democratic candidate Travis Childers to the controversy over Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama's former pastor.
Obama mentioned Childers' victory in a speech in Michigan. "This is a hard-core Republican seat, and they lost it by 8 points. They did everything they could. They ran ads with my face on it."
In a memo to GOP leaders posted on Politico's website, retiring Rep. Tom Davis, R-Va., offered a blunt verdict: "The Republican brand is in the trash can. … If we were a dog food, they would take us off the shelf."
"This is as bad as it gets for any party," said David Wasserman, House editor of the Cook Political Report, which tracks each race. "I've never seen a more defeated tone." Nevertheless, Wasserman said, his analysis shows the Democrats will pick up far fewer districts than they did in the 2006 election, when they gained 31 seats. He estimates the Democrats will gain five to 10 seats in the fall. "Democrats won most of the low-hanging fruit in 2006," he said.
Democratic leaders, not surprisingly, have a different view. They hope to capitalize on their winning formula in Mississippi and Louisiana, where their candidates' cultural conservatism played well.
"This clearly is a sign that there is no congressional district that is safe for Republican candidates who are following in the Bush shadow," said Van Hollen, whose committee has $44.3 million on hand, compared with $7.2 million for Cole's National Republican Congressional Committee.
Davis called the atmosphere for House Republicans "the worst since Watergate and is far more toxic than the fall of 2006."
House Republicans met with Cole in the Capitol to sift through the ashes of defeat in Mississippi's 1st District, which became vacant when Republican Roger Wicker was appointed to the Senate to replace retiring Republican Trent Lott. House Minority Leader John Boehner of Ohio called the result "a wake-up call." But there is no consensus on how to fix it.
Former speaker Newt Gingrich has urged House Republicans to come out with a series of dramatic proposals, including a moratorium on congressionally directed spending items known as earmarks. His ideas were not widely embraced.
Boehner is rolling out an "American Families Agenda" this week focusing on national security, tax cuts, balancing the budget and boosting domestic oil production.
Republicans fear public has lost confidence
By Ken Dilanian, USA TODAY
5-14-8
WASHINGTON — Republicans must regain the confidence of Americans and recast their message to voters to avoid a catastrophe in the fall congressional elections, top GOP officials said Wednesday in a stark postmortem of a loss in rural Mississippi.
Rep. Tom Cole of Oklahoma, who runs the committee tasked with helping elect Republicans to Congress, said Tuesday's defeat in Mississippi — after losing GOP seats in other special elections in Illinois and Louisiana — was evidence that "a large section of the American people doesn't have confidence in the Republican Party."
"What we've got right now is a deficiency in our message and a loss of confidence by the American people to do what we say we're going to do," Cole said in a conference call with reporters.
He said, "When you lose three of these in a row, you have to get beyond campaign tactics and take a long hard look: Is there something wrong with your product?"
Cole did not elaborate on potential defects, but Democrats had a ready answer.
"The Republican message is 'no, veto, and status quo,' " said Rep. Chris Van Hollen of Maryland, chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee. He said Republicans couldn't win in Mississippi even though they poured $1 million into the race, sent Vice President Cheney to campaign and tried to link Democratic candidate Travis Childers to the controversy over Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama's former pastor.
Obama mentioned Childers' victory in a speech in Michigan. "This is a hard-core Republican seat, and they lost it by 8 points. They did everything they could. They ran ads with my face on it."
In a memo to GOP leaders posted on Politico's website, retiring Rep. Tom Davis, R-Va., offered a blunt verdict: "The Republican brand is in the trash can. … If we were a dog food, they would take us off the shelf."
"This is as bad as it gets for any party," said David Wasserman, House editor of the Cook Political Report, which tracks each race. "I've never seen a more defeated tone." Nevertheless, Wasserman said, his analysis shows the Democrats will pick up far fewer districts than they did in the 2006 election, when they gained 31 seats. He estimates the Democrats will gain five to 10 seats in the fall. "Democrats won most of the low-hanging fruit in 2006," he said.
Democratic leaders, not surprisingly, have a different view. They hope to capitalize on their winning formula in Mississippi and Louisiana, where their candidates' cultural conservatism played well.
"This clearly is a sign that there is no congressional district that is safe for Republican candidates who are following in the Bush shadow," said Van Hollen, whose committee has $44.3 million on hand, compared with $7.2 million for Cole's National Republican Congressional Committee.
Davis called the atmosphere for House Republicans "the worst since Watergate and is far more toxic than the fall of 2006."
House Republicans met with Cole in the Capitol to sift through the ashes of defeat in Mississippi's 1st District, which became vacant when Republican Roger Wicker was appointed to the Senate to replace retiring Republican Trent Lott. House Minority Leader John Boehner of Ohio called the result "a wake-up call." But there is no consensus on how to fix it.
Former speaker Newt Gingrich has urged House Republicans to come out with a series of dramatic proposals, including a moratorium on congressionally directed spending items known as earmarks. His ideas were not widely embraced.
Boehner is rolling out an "American Families Agenda" this week focusing on national security, tax cuts, balancing the budget and boosting domestic oil production.
Tuesday, April 8, 2008
Gore unveils $300m climate ads
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/mar/31/algore.uselections08.climate
Gore unveils $300m climate ads
Suzanne Goldenberg in Washington
Monday March 31 2008
Al Gore, elevated to almost prophetic status for his campaign against global warming, on Sunday night unveiled a new $300m advertising blitz intended to force a debate on climate change during the presidential elections.
The Nobel laureate, who appeared with his wife, Tipper, on the CBS programme 60 Minutes to roll out the effort, is to donate a share of his personal fortune to the campaign.
The couple told 60 Minutes that they would donate his Nobel prize money as well as a matching sum in addition to their profits from the book and the movie of An Inconvenient Truth. The movie brought the issue of global warming home to millions of Americans, as well as winning Gore an Oscar.
In this latest campaign, Gore said he hopes to persuade Americans that protecting the planet transcends the usual political divisions.
"We all share the exact same interest in doing the right thing on this," he told CBS. "Are we destined to destroy this place that we call home, planet earth? I can't believe that that's our destiny. It is not our destiny. But we have to awaken to the moral duty that we have to do the right thing and get out of this silly political game-playing about it. This is about survival."
The first television advertisements, which are to begin airing on broadcast networks as well as cable starting on Wednesday, will pair up the most unlikely partners in the movement to address global warming.
A clip aired on CBS showed the Reverend Al Sharpton sharing a sofa with the conservative preacher Pat Robertson. The two men acknowledge they agree on almost nothing - barring the need to deal with global warming.
Other spots will feature the Democratic Speaker of the House of Representatives, Nancy Pelosi, alongside Newt Gingrich, the conservative Republican who once held the same post.
The support from such conservative figures as Gingrich and Robertson marks a victory for Gore in his efforts to make global warming a cause for all Americans: evangelical Christians and fiscal conservatives as well as those on the left.
The recognition for his work in the Nobel prize and the Oscar had helped overcoe scepticism about whether climate change is man-made.
By this point, Gore argued, the doubters - which include the vice-president, Dick Cheney - had been isolated as a fringe group.
"I think that those people are in such a tiny, tiny minority now with their point of view," he told CBS. "They're almost like the ones who still believe that the moon landing was staged in a movie lot in Arizona and those who believe the earth is flat. That demeans them a little bit, but it's not that far off."
The 60 Minutes segment marked a rare appearance from Gore in the presidential race. After the crushing experience of losing the White House to George Bush despite winning the popular vote in the 2000 elections, Gore has become a cult hero for his passionate advocacy on the environment.
A swathe of Democrats continue to hope that Gore will return to politics - despite his protestations - or that he will weigh in to bring an end to the bruising contest between Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama.
Gore, despite his eight years as Bill Clinton's vice-president, has so far remained neutral in the race.
He also made it clear he has no intention of intervening to bring the contest to a close. "I'm not applying for the job of broker," he told CBS.
The advertising campaign is being created by an advertising agency whose work is familiar to American television viewers. The same agency produced advertisements for Geico car insurance using talking lizards and spoof of Planet of the Apes.
Gore acknowledged that so far Clinton and Obama have devoted relatively little time to discussing their platforms on climate change. But, as he told CBS: "I'm not finished yet."
Gore unveils $300m climate ads
Suzanne Goldenberg in Washington
Monday March 31 2008
Al Gore, elevated to almost prophetic status for his campaign against global warming, on Sunday night unveiled a new $300m advertising blitz intended to force a debate on climate change during the presidential elections.
The Nobel laureate, who appeared with his wife, Tipper, on the CBS programme 60 Minutes to roll out the effort, is to donate a share of his personal fortune to the campaign.
The couple told 60 Minutes that they would donate his Nobel prize money as well as a matching sum in addition to their profits from the book and the movie of An Inconvenient Truth. The movie brought the issue of global warming home to millions of Americans, as well as winning Gore an Oscar.
In this latest campaign, Gore said he hopes to persuade Americans that protecting the planet transcends the usual political divisions.
"We all share the exact same interest in doing the right thing on this," he told CBS. "Are we destined to destroy this place that we call home, planet earth? I can't believe that that's our destiny. It is not our destiny. But we have to awaken to the moral duty that we have to do the right thing and get out of this silly political game-playing about it. This is about survival."
The first television advertisements, which are to begin airing on broadcast networks as well as cable starting on Wednesday, will pair up the most unlikely partners in the movement to address global warming.
A clip aired on CBS showed the Reverend Al Sharpton sharing a sofa with the conservative preacher Pat Robertson. The two men acknowledge they agree on almost nothing - barring the need to deal with global warming.
Other spots will feature the Democratic Speaker of the House of Representatives, Nancy Pelosi, alongside Newt Gingrich, the conservative Republican who once held the same post.
The support from such conservative figures as Gingrich and Robertson marks a victory for Gore in his efforts to make global warming a cause for all Americans: evangelical Christians and fiscal conservatives as well as those on the left.
The recognition for his work in the Nobel prize and the Oscar had helped overcoe scepticism about whether climate change is man-made.
By this point, Gore argued, the doubters - which include the vice-president, Dick Cheney - had been isolated as a fringe group.
"I think that those people are in such a tiny, tiny minority now with their point of view," he told CBS. "They're almost like the ones who still believe that the moon landing was staged in a movie lot in Arizona and those who believe the earth is flat. That demeans them a little bit, but it's not that far off."
The 60 Minutes segment marked a rare appearance from Gore in the presidential race. After the crushing experience of losing the White House to George Bush despite winning the popular vote in the 2000 elections, Gore has become a cult hero for his passionate advocacy on the environment.
A swathe of Democrats continue to hope that Gore will return to politics - despite his protestations - or that he will weigh in to bring an end to the bruising contest between Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama.
Gore, despite his eight years as Bill Clinton's vice-president, has so far remained neutral in the race.
He also made it clear he has no intention of intervening to bring the contest to a close. "I'm not applying for the job of broker," he told CBS.
The advertising campaign is being created by an advertising agency whose work is familiar to American television viewers. The same agency produced advertisements for Geico car insurance using talking lizards and spoof of Planet of the Apes.
Gore acknowledged that so far Clinton and Obama have devoted relatively little time to discussing their platforms on climate change. But, as he told CBS: "I'm not finished yet."
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