On the Road to Pottersville

 

According to Robert Parry, the goal of the right-wing Republican Tea Bag Party is set on "Turning America into Pottersville."

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.

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.

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."

The Man Behind Fear, Hate and Greed

Fox News chairman Roger Ailes. Photograph: James Leynse/ James Leynse/CORBIS SABA

A very interesting and frightening perspective of Roger Ailes, "The Chairman" of Fox News exposes Ailes as a fear based, paranoid media mogul. Below is an excerpt from Roger Ailes and the rise of Fox News.

Even Rupert Murdoch is afraid of Roger Ailes, the paranoid boss of Fox News. But 'the Chairman' is using his power to make Americans more right wing, more ignorant and ever more terrified.

To watch even a day of Fox News – the anger, the bombast, the virulent paranoid streak, the unending appeals to white resentment, the reporting that is held to the same standard of evidence as a political campaign attack ad – is to see a refraction of its founder, one of the most skilled and fearsome operatives in the history of the Republican party. As a political consultant, Ailes repackaged Richard Nixon for television in 1968, papered over Ronald Reagan's budding Alzheimer's in 1984, shamelessly stoked racial fears to elect George Bush in 1988, and waged a secret campaign on behalf of Big Tobacco to derail healthcare reform in 1993. "He was the premier guy in the business," says former Reagan campaign manager Ed Rollins. "He was our Michelangelo."

In the fable Ailes tells about his own life, he made a clean break with his dirty political past long before 1996, when he joined forces with Murdoch to launch Fox News. "I quit politics," he has claimed, "because I hated it." But an examination of his career reveals that Ailes has used Fox News to pioneer a new form of political campaign – one that enables the Republican party to bypass skeptical reporters and wage an around-the-clock, partisan assault on public opinion. The network, at its core, is a giant sound stage created to mimic the look and feel of a news operation, cleverly camouflaging political propaganda as independent journalism.

The result is one of the most powerful political machines in American history. One that plays a leading role in defining Republican talking points and advancing the agenda of the far right. Fox News tilted the electoral balance to George W Bush in 2000, prematurely declaring him president in a move that prompted every other network to follow suit. It helped create the Tea Party, transforming it from the butt of late-night jokes into a nationwide insurgency capable of electing US senators. Fox News turbocharged the Republican takeover of the House last autumn, and even helped elect former Fox News host John Kasich as the union-busting governor of Ohio – with the help of $1.26m in campaign contributions from News Corp. And by incubating a host of potential Republican contenders on the Fox News payroll – including Sarah Palin, Mike Huckabee, Newt Gingrich and Rick Santorum – Ailes seems determined to add a fifth presidential notch to his belt in 2012. "Everything Roger wanted to do when he started out in politics, he's now doing 24/7 with his network," says a former News Corp executive. "It's come full circle."

The 71-year-old Ailes presents the classic figure of a cinematic villain: bald and obese, with dainty hands, Hitchcockian jowls and a lumbering gait. Friends describe him as loyal, generous and funny. But Ailes is also, by turns, a tyrant: "I only understand friendship or scorched earth," he has said. One former deputy pegs him as a cross between Don Rickles, the venomous comic, and Don Corleone. "What's fun for Roger is the destruction," says Dan Cooper, a key member of the team that founded Fox News. "When the light bulb goes on and he's got the trick to outmaneuver the enemy – that's his passion." Ailes is also deeply paranoid. Convinced that he has personally been targeted by al-Qaida for assassination, he surrounds himself with an aggressive security detail and is licensed to carry a concealed handgun.

The complete article can be found here.

Paranoia, fear, hate and greed make dangerous bedfellows.

"Ain't the Time to Close Your Eyes"

Republican talking points, regarding the Wisconsin collective bargaining-union busting issue, has emphasized that the Republican Governor, Scott Walker, was elected on a mandate of the voters. They say that 'he is doing what he was elected to do.' However a recent poll shows the reality of the situation, if the election were held today.

A Public Policy Polling survey released on Monday showed that if the Wisconsin governor’s election were held today, Walker would lose. A New York Times/ CBS News poll, also released on Monday, shows that 60% of Americans nationwide are against Walker’s plan to effectively end the collective bargaining rights of public employees.

That's right, Walker would lose the election. The reason is that the majority of Wisconsin voters , as well as the majority of voters nationwide, Americans don't want government officials to bust unions. They want rights for workers and they want the right of collective bargaining.

The Wisconsin protests are bringing American citizens together to stand up to the inequities of 'Big Government.' Yes, I said Big Government. Usually, the Republicans/Tea Party/Libertarians complain that 'government' is getting too big and is too invasive in our lives. What could be more invasive than the Governor, who represents the government, working to take away collective bargaining rights of workers. The Governor claimed these actions were necessary because of a budget crisis. The unions have agreed to all of the GOP's demands on wages and benefits, in exchange for Republicans dropping the provision that would strip them of the right to negotiate in the future. He won't accept any compromise and is now planning on laying off thousands of worker's to make his point.

As Joshua Holland notes, "Reporters who continue to portray this as a fight over wages and benefits are now committing journalistic malpractice."

Wake up people!

Matt Wisniewski, a 23 year-old college student, filmed the protests as they happened and put together two videos setting the action to the sound. His second video is set to the sound of "The Cave" by Mumford and Sons.

Wisconsin "Budget Repair Bill" Protest Pt 2 from Matt Wisniewski on Vimeo.

Wisniewski's first video shows images of the protest to the sound of Arcade Fire's "Rebellion (Lies)." WATCH here.

Supreme Court Justice Alito Fundraises for the Right

Think Progress recently confronted Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito Jr. regarding his appearance and involvement with a conservative fundraiser. When Alito was asked whether it was appropriate for a Supreme Court Justice to attend a highly political fundraiser with the chairman of the Republican Party, Alito repeatedly stated, “it’s not important that I’m here.”

The gala that Alito attended was the annual fundraiser for the American Spectator, a right-wing magazine.

Last night, the American Spectator — a right-wing magazine known for its role in the “Arkansas Project,” a well-funded effort to invent stories with the goal of eventually impeaching President Clinton — held its annual gala fundraising event. The Spectator is more than merely an ideological outlet. Spectator publisher Al Regnery helps lead a secretive group of conservatives called the “Conservative Action Project,” formed after President Obama’s election, to help lobby for conservative legislative priorities, elect Republicans (the Conservative Action Project helped campaign against Democrat Bill Owens in NY-23), and block President Obama’s judicial appointments. The Spectator’s gala last night, with ticket prices/sponsorship levels ranging from $250 to $25,000, featured prominent Republicans like RNC chairman Michael Steele, hedge fund billionaire Paul Singer (a major donor to Republican campaign committees and attack ad groups), and U.S. Chamber of Commerce board member and former Allied Capital CEO William Walton. Among the attendees toasting Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MN), the keynote speaker for the event, was Supreme Court Justice Sam Alito.

This is not the first time Alito has attended a political fundraiser.

In 2009, Alito also headlined a fundraising dinner for the Intercollegiate Studies Institute, which funded the conservative journalist James O’Keefe and Delaware Senate candidate Christine O'Donnell. Alito is reported to have helped the institute raise $70,000.

Recently, the media was atwitter with the story of Keith Olbermann, MSNBC's unabashedly liberal-leaning cable television host. Olbermann had openly contributed to three Democratic candidates' campaigns. He was suspended for a short time for violating network policies. When he returned he openly apologized for the brewhaha that ensued.

He apologized to viewers for "not having known by observation, since it is not in my contract, that NBC had rules about getting permission for making political donations, even though any rule like that in any company is probably not legal.

According to the Code of Conduct for United States Judges, a justice should not "solicit funds for, pay an assessment to, or make a contribution to a political organization or candidate, or attend or purchase a ticket for a dinner or other event sponsored by a political organization or candidate."

What was Alito's response when asked about "the ethical issues raised by his right-wing political fundraising?" Alito repeatedly stated, “it’s not important that I’m here.”

Where is the outrage that a Supreme Court Justice is an openly "activist judge?" Hey, Fox News, are you outraged? Glenn Beck, where is the conspiracy theory? Rush Limbaugh, are you jumping up and down that an activist judge is so open in his pandering?

Nope! All those right wing commentators and pundits are too busy bashing anyone who doesn't think like they do.

Falling for False News

Once again, the story making the rounds on cable news and in the main-steam media is a fabricated story about racism. Shouldn't the emphasis of this story be focused on the person who manipulated the information? Shouldn't the anger be focused on the lies that were touted as truth. Shouldn't the outrage be directed at the pervasive fake news that dominates right-wing media, blogs and pundits. Shouldn't the focus be on the scumbag who doctored the video tape? Instead, the emphasis has been on the allegation that the administration's actions stemmed from their fear of Fox News.

Jonathan Alter has a different take on this story. He believes the Obama Administration mishandled this fabricated scandal in order to create a "no distraction" zone.

How could the White House have screwed up so badly in the case of Shirley Sherrod, the Georgia USDA official who Wednesday received an apology from the Obama administration (through Robert Gibbs and Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack)?

Sherrod was the victim of a smear by the right-wing agent provocateur Andrew Breitbart and his fellow travelers at Fox News. (Yes, that side has adopted some Leninist tactics, as conservative antitax activist Grover Norquist has admitted over the years.) They took a two-and-a-half-minute clip from Sherrod's address to the NAACP and used it to depict her as a black racist who discriminated years ago against a white farmer. It turns out the farmer thought Sherrod had been a terrific help, and a full review of Sherrod's speech suggests that, far from being a racist, she had honestly (and successfully) worked through the complex racial preconceptions we all carry around in our heads.

The NAACP, which says it was "snookered" by Breitbart, acted first and asked questions later. This gave Vilsack and the White House cover to do the same. Only when Sherrod was allowed to defend herself on legitimate news programs (i.e., not on Fox) was the administration's rash and unjust firing fully exposed. So-called journalists didn't do the most elemental checking before running with the story.

The question is, why? Are the president and his team cowed by right-wingers? Doubtful. It seems more likely that the White House's astonishingly ham-handed response to this matter was the result of overreacting to criticism that Obama has suffered recently for his slow political reflexes. Combine that with a firm policy of "no distractions" and you have a recipe for a political hash and serious embarrassment.

To understand this story, you have to go back to the sacking of Van Jones, a midlevel White House aide of little importance (he worked on weatherizing inner-city homes) who was pilloried for days last year for signing a 2002 we-had-it-coming-on-9/11 petition. Fox made it seem as though this was the most critical issue facing America. The White House rightly concluded that Jones had to go and regretted having let the topic dominate Fox News and leach into the rest of the press. Better to have cut their losses earlier, aides concluded in retrospect. Then on Christmas Day with the case of the "underpants bomber" and again in May with the BP oil spill, Obama was legitimately criticized for not moving quickly enough to reassure the country and get on top of the story.

So now we come to the week of July 19, which was supposed to be all about the signing Wednesday of the financial-regulation bill, the largest piece of legislation regulating markets in 75 years. A secondary theme for the White House was the difference between the parties on extending unemployment benefits. In other words, real issues that affect real people, not cable flaps of little or no lasting consequence. So the White House had hoped to cut its losses on the Sherrod story.

"No distractions" has been Obama's mantra from the beginning. For most of 2009 and early 2010, this meant nothing was to distract from health care. It's not that Obama doesn't think race issues are significant—he has no trouble identifying himself as a proud African-American president—but he gets very irritated at having a racial conversation forced on him, especially by right-wingers. He wants to decide for himself when and where to discuss sensitive issues. But that's where Obama the control freak runs up against the realities of Washington. He can't always control the timing of public discussion, and when his administration neglects basic staff research (not to mention basic fairness to Sherrod), he looks lame. The policy of "no distractions" led to a big distraction—and another example of how the supposedly slick Chicago political operators are often all thumbs.

The news has been dominated by the Obama Administration's faux pas that accepted this negative false information as fact and did not sufficiently check for truth. That aspect should be highlighted but it should not be the only story told.

Now, there's a story! Rachel Maddox explains.

WATCH:

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

Sharron Angle's Angle

Sharron Angle, Republican candidate for U.S. Senate in Nevada

What is the Republican Party Senate candidate Sharron Angle proposing to outlaw in her bid for the Nevada Senate seat? She would like the State of Nevada to outlaw pot, booze, pornography and homosexuality. What does she support? Angle is a strong supporter of gun rights and for restoring American jurisprudence to its Biblical foundations. That is because in the 1990's Sharron Angle was a member of the Independent American Party.

For at least six years in the 1990s before she held state-level elective office, Angle was a member of the little-known Independent American Party, a right-wing party that combines elements of Ron Paul's doctrinaire libertarianism -- pro-gun, anti-tax, anti-bureaucracy, pro-states' rights -- with Christian social conservatism and fear of the "North American Union" and other forms of "global government." The small party attracted considerable controversy in 1994 when it took out a newspaper ad titled "Consequences of Sodomy: Ruin of a Nation," which suggested HIV could spread through the water.

Three members of the Independent American Party tell TPM that Angle, a Nye County, Nevada, school board member at the time, was an active member of the party in the 1990s. They say she only left the Independent American Party and became a Republican out of political expediency when she decided to seek a seat in the state assembly, to which she was elected in 1998.

According to the their website, the Independent American Party is the official Nevada State affiliate of the National Constitution Party. The Constitution Party's platform states that "the goal of the Constitution Party is to restore American jurisprudence to its Biblical foundations and to limit the federal government to its Constitutional boundaries."

Also, the Constitution Party is closely linked to Christian Reconstructionism.

What’s Christian Reconstructionism? Well it’s a theocratic intellectual and political movement founded by the late Armenian theologian R.J. Rushdoony, and it burst onto the American political scene in 1992 with the founding of the US Taxpayers Party, later renamed the Constitution Party. Founder of the two parties Howard Phillips was a member of Rushdoony’s inner circle and called the theologian “my wise counseler” according to journalist Frederick Clarkson, a noted authority on Christian Reconstructionism.

Rushdoony wanted to base American law and government on Old Testament scripture. He advocated stoning to death adulterers, women who have intercourse before marriage, active homosexuals, and people who strike or curse at their parents (the full list of miscreants who according to Rushdoony should be bashed to death with rocks is much longer than this.) Why rocks ? As Rushdoony’s son-in-law Gary North, another leading Christian Reconstructionist, put it, “There are many reasons. First, the implements of execution are available to everyone at virtually no cost.” North has described executions-by-stoning as “community projects.”

R.J. Rushdoony had a number of other notable views – he was a Holocaust revisionist who claimed in his master work The Institutes of Biblical Law that less than one million Jews were killed by the Nazis during World War Two and that most of those died from cold rather than execution.

The most interesting aspect of these events is that Senator Jim DeMint is now raising money for Angle using the mailing list of the Christian Reconstructionist organization American Vision. Their website states that "American Vision’s mission is to Restore America to its Biblical Foundation—from Genesis to Revelation."

Not everyone is supporting Angle's Republican bid. Some Independent American Party members are quite bitter about her switching party allegiance.

Christopher Hansen, brother of party founder Daniel Hansen and himself a former chair of the party, tells TPM that "I think Sharron in her heart is a very good person." But he remains upset that "she decided to go over and join with the fascist Republicans."

"The national Republicans are going to come in here and teach her how to be a good Republican stooge," he predicts. "She'll just be another dyed-in-the-wool stooge Republican."

DeMint is appealing to the far-right in an effort to defeat Harry Reid in November. He is willing to support a candidate who comes from a party that thinks he's a fascist. The citizens of Nevada will have to decide in November if money will buy their vote.

Right Wing pundits who dismissed spill, now blame Obama

Conservative pundits initially tried to minimize the amount of damage from the the Deepwater Horizon oil platform explosion on April 20, 2010, comparing it to "natural seepage" from the ocean floor.

Now that oil has infiltrated the Louisiana wetlands, those same conservative pundits that initially believed the spill would turn out to be "no big deal" have (falsely) blamed President Obama for not reacting to the disaster sooner. WATCH:

Fox News, Freedomworks and the Tea Bag Party

Here's the story of voice over artist and on-camera actor D.C. Douglas who left a critical complaint in the voice mail of FreedomWorks regarding the Tea Party. Freedomworks is a conservative lobbying firm headed by the Ex-Republican House Majority Leader Dick Armey. They are a big supporter of the the Fox News sponsored tea bagging party movement. WATCH:

Of course, Fox News picked up on this and created a news story about Douglas' voice message. Douglas then produced a public service announcement (PSA) regarding what had occurred. WATCH:

Glenn Beck Shilling Gold

— Dale Stephanos

Glenn Beck has been ranting about the decline of the dollar and the coming of the "financial holocaust." After this fear mongering rant, he then advises his followers to "buy gold." In doing so he has become an accomplice to the California based company, Goldline International.

Rep. Anthony Weiner (D-N.Y.) is now targeting fear mongering shows including Beck and other right wing radio show hosts for "scaring the hell out of their customers and then using that fear to help their sponsor Goldline fleece them."

Throughout Glenn Beck's meteoric rise to become king of all right-wing media, a once-obscure Santa Monica peddler of gold coins called Goldline International has been along for the ride. The support of Beck and other radio hosts -- mainly conservatives like Mark Levin and Fred Thompson -- who spend 55 minutes creating fear of an economic collapse and then five minutes telling you why coins from a company like Goldline are the only safe haven has helped Goldline become a $500 million company.

This, for example, is what 2 million TV viewers who clicked on Beck's nightly Fox News Channel show heard on Oct. 6, 2009:

You don't have any gold, right? This is you. This is you. This is your savings. How much did you lose if you had any money in your 401k? Did you lose, let's say, I don't know, 40 percent of it? So, that's gone. Now, did you know that the dollar has lost nearly 29 percent of its value in the last seven years? Twenty-nine percent. OK, that's gone. Just gone.

This isn't an advertisement, although it may sound like one. It's the editorial content of the show, although at some point during the hour viewers are sure to see an ad for Goldline with their "800" number prominently displayed. Meanwhile, visitors to GlennBeck.com see a big ad for Goldline, while visitors to Goldline.com can see testimonials from Beck for Goldline. It's hard to know sometimes where Beck -- who famously told his viewers to get behind "God, gold, and guns" -- ends and Goldline begins.

Never mind that anxiety-drenched radio listeners never got to hear the other side of the gold coin, which is that the industry is plagued by high-pressure sales tactics as well as high commissions which mean that gold -- already at a record high (although not when adjusted for inflation) -- would have to rise well beyond its current highs to see a reasonable return on their investment.

Finally, a grown-up has stepped in to try to clean up this mess -- Rep. Anthony Weiner of New York.

At this hour, Weiner is holding a news conference not only to call out Goldline as "a company that uses conservative rhetoric, high pressure sales tactics and tall tales about the future of gold to sell over priced coins that can be bought somewhere else for cheaper," but to ask regulators from the Federal Trade Commission and Securities and Exchange Commission to investigate its tactics.

Weiner's staff investigated Goldline and found that the coins it sells are not the good investment that its salesmen -- who are not licensed investment advisers -- claim that it is to consumers, because the price of gold would essentially have to double beyond its current high to begin seeing any gains. Specially, the investigators found Goldline coins selling for 90 percent above the melt value of the coin, that is, its value by weight. The largest markup seen on a coin, Weiner said, was 208 percent above the melt value.

"In the past there is always the "product" that is either the next big thing (the dot com boom) or the investment that will never go down in price (the housing market), and in the past much of the media has failed in its duty to conduct due diligence, but never before have they worked so hand in hand to cheat consumers," Weiner said in his prepared report. "Commentators like Glenn Beck who are shilling for Goldline are either the worst financial advisers around or knowingly lying to their loyal viewers."

Adds Weiner:

Goldline's high pressure sales tactics and fear mongering about big government as well as their ability to hire sales staff and spokespeople who misrepresent their roles are case studies in why entities like the SEC and FTC are necessary.

For another perspective on "How Beck and other right-wing talkers turned paranoia into a pitch for Goldline, the gold dealer one congressman says is conspiring to "cheat consumers," see a Mother Jones investigation.

Americans Need to Grow Up!

President Obama nominated solicitor general Elana Kagan to fill Justice Steven's seat. The right-wing predictably have found numerous reasons for opposing her nomination. There are also many progressives who have offered reasons why Kagan shouldn't be the nominee. In analyzing both the right and left arguments, a pattern has appeared.

On the left, the arguments against Kagan are based on the perception that she is a blank slate. Because her opinions have not been framed, she might swing the Supreme Court to the right of center. Also there is a concern that she would not be able to fill the liberal shoes of Justice Stevens. These concerns are all based on her opinions or the lack of a record for her opinions.

On the right, the arguments against Kagan run the gambit: she lacks judicial experience; she is "hostile to the military" and allegedly banned recruiters from the Harvard campus; and that she is a lesbian and ‘no lesbian is qualified’ to sit on the SCOTUS. These concerns have no relevance as to her opinions but are based solely on allegations and innuendo.

The far-right talking heads have also begun the ugliness of the right-wing attack machine against Kagan.

The confirmation process for Sonia Sotomayor was characterized by sexist and racist attacks. Unfortunately, as soon as Obama announced Kagan's nomination yesterday, many conservatives showed that they want to go down the same path.

Hate radio host Rush Limbaugh said that he didn't "need to go too deep in analyzing the babe" and commented, "I guess she can change her mind. She's a woman."

The far-right American Family Association urged the media to ask Kagan, "Are you a lesbian?" because "no lesbian is qualified to sit on the Supreme Court." For the record, Kagan has not publicly commented on her private life, and the White House has criticized commentators for "applying old stereotypes to single women with successful careers."

Republican lawmakers plan on using Kagan to protest Obama's larger agenda, saying that they will press her to comment on the frivolous lawsuits to declare health care reform unconstitutional.

Conservative activists are urging senators to also "drag the confirmation fight out until the August congressional recess, to eat up precious time Democrats need to round out their agenda."

To top if all off, the RNC hit Kagan for endorsing the view of Marshall, the nation's first African-American Supreme Court justice, that the original U.S. Constitution was "defective." Of course, Marshall was referring to the fact that the original document endorsed slavery.

Viscous rumors and allegations do not help the process advance. There are individuals on the right who believe that it is "legitimate, indeed mandatory, to grill minority (or perceived minority) nominees about their personal experiences and to force them to answer how those experiences would affect their views of the Constitution." Richard Kim from the Nation raises this issue of a double standard.

Just once I'd like to see this double-standard—complicated in Kagan's case by the perception that she's in the closet—applied to straight white men. Tell me, Judge Roberts, about your heterosexual life experiences? How do you think your bountiful virility will affect your opinions about privacy?

There are many Democrats who highly support the Kagan nomination and base this on her intellect, her broad understanding of constitutional issues and her ability to listen to both sides before rendering an opinion.

Have there been any Republicans who have analyzed the Kagan nomination on an intellectual basis rather than a gut reaction?

It is time for Americans to recognize the need of different voices to argue an issue based on the merits. Versus, the exaggeration and ugliness of attacking a difference of opinion solely based on hate, racism or intolerance.

No to Socialsm, Yes to Corporatocracy!

The Tea Bag Movement, the Republican Party and the right-wing pundits are all claiming that Obama and the Democrats are socialists. Let's call these groups the 'anti-socialists.' They believe that Obama wants government ownership of everything. They claim that people should be able to control their own destinies, their own economic choices and their own health care. They are against government regulation and against social assistance. But, what history has shown is that without sufficient regulation, society becomes very unbalanced.

For example, in the 19th century the Robber Barons took advantage of an unregulated banking and commercial system. They amassed enormous personal wealth. In response to the Great Depression of 1929, Congress enacted banking regulations in 1933 known as the Glass–Steagall Act which introduced banking reforms. It wasn't until 1999, that certain provisions that prohibited a bank holding company from owning other financial companies were repealed by the Gramm–Leach–Bliley Act.

It was the Glass-Steagall Act that prohibited any one institution from consolidating an investment bank, a commercial bank, and an insurance company into one entity. The Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act then allowed commercial banks, investment banks, securities firms, and insurance companies to consolidate. A bi-partisan congress passed the Gramm–Leach–Bliley Act and President Clinton signed it into law.

Recently, President Bill Clinton said that even before the repeal of Glass-Steagall the principles of the legislation had been breached. "Clinton said he regretted not trying to regulate derivatives."

“On derivatives, yeah I think they were wrong and I think I was wrong to take [their advice] because the argument on derivatives was that these things are expensive and sophisticated and only a handful of investors will buy them and they don’t need any extra protection, and any extra transparency. The money they’re putting up guarantees them transparency.” [...]

Clinton said he regretted not trying to regulate derivatives, but that Republicans would have stood in the way. “Now, I think if I had tried to regulate them because the Republicans were the majority in the Congress, they would have stopped it. But I wish I should have been caught trying. I mean, that was a mistake I made.”

That brings us to today.

During a recent interview on Bill Moyers Journal with economists James Kwak and Simon Johnson, Bill Moyers discussed with his guests the devastating financial crisis of '08. The discussion focused on "whether the financial powers are more profitable, and more resistant to regulation than ever."

Bill Moyers: Let me get to the blunt conclusion you reach in your book. You say that two years after the devastating financial crisis of '08 our country is still at the mercy of an oligarchy that is bigger, more profitable, and more resistant to regulation than ever. Correct?

Simon Johnson: Absolutely correct, Bill. The big banks became stronger as a result of the bailout. That may seem extraordinary, but it's really true. They're turning that increased economic clout into more political power. And they're using that political power to go out and take the same sort of risks that got us into disaster in September 2008.

Bill Moyers: And your definition of oligarchy is?

Simon Johnson: Oligarchy is just- it's a very simple, straightforward idea from Aristotle. It's political power based on economic power. And it's the rise of the banks in economic terms, which we document at length, that it'd turn into political power. And they then feed that back into more deregulation, more opportunities to go out and take reckless risks and-- and capture huge amounts of money.

Bill Moyers: And you say that these this oligarchy consists of six megabanks. What are the six banks?

James Kwak: They are Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, JPMorgan Chase, Citigroup, Bank of America, and Wells Fargo.

Bill Moyers: And you write that they control 60 percent of our gross national product?

James Kwak: They have assets equivalent to 60 percent of our gross national product. And to put this in perspective, in the mid-1990s, these six banks or their predecessors, since there have been a lot of mergers, had less than 20 percent. Their assets were less than 20 percent of the gross national product.

Bill Moyers: And what's the threat from an oligarchy of this size and scale?

Simon Johnson: They can distort the system, Bill. They can change the rules of the game to favor themselves. And unfortunately, the way it works in modern finance is when the rules favor you, you go out and you take a lot of risk. And you blow up from time to time, because it's not your problem. When it blows up, it's the taxpayer and it's the government that has to sort it out.

Bill Moyers: So, you're not kidding when you say it's an oligarchy?

James Kwak: Exactly. I think that in particular, we can see how the oligarchy has actually become more powerful in the last since the financial crisis. If we look at the way they've behaved in Washington. For example, they've been spending more than $1 million per day lobbying Congress and fighting financial reform. I think that's for some time, the financial sector got its way in Washington through the power of ideology, through the power of persuasion. And in the last year and a half, we've seen the gloves come off. They are fighting as hard as they can to stop reform.

Simon Johnson: I know people react a little negatively when you use this term for the United States. But it means political power derived from economic power. That's what we're looking at here. It's disproportionate, it's unfair, it is very unproductive, by the way. Undermines business in this society. And it's an oligarchy like we see in other countries.

Today, six banks control 60% of the Gross National Product (GNP) which according to Simon Johnson and James Kwak is considered an oligarchy.

This brings us back to the 'anti-socialists.' They are extremely fearful. They rant and rave that President Obama wants the federal government to own all means of production. Although they accept their medicare payments and social security checks, they have railed against the recent health care legislation even though it is an insurance company for-profit health care plan.

What is the anti-socialist position on the issue of economics and banking regulation? Are the anti-socialists content with an oligarchy of our banking industry? Are they ranting and raving, yelling and screaming, demonstrating against the corporate oligarchy (corporatocracy) of banking? Are they outraged that only 6 banks own 60% of GNP?

Sarah Palin:

Palin apparently thinks that the solution to our economic mess in the United States is less government regulation rather than more to rein the bankers and Wall Street in for their bad behavior.

Tea Party:

This movement is against stronger regulation. As Republicans softened their stance against the financial regulation bill, tea partyers reacted by lashing out against the GOP.

GOP Conservatives:

For conservatives the best bank regulation is no regulation. Conservatives, of course, think we need less regulation, not more.

Judging from the rallies on Wall Street yesterday, the capitalists haven't bought into the GOP talking points about socialism quite to the extent of the Glenn Beck/Rush Limbaugh crowd of modern day Know Nothings. But if you think the conservatives dig in on healthcare reform, just watch them on financial reform-- the real line in the sand for the representatives of institutionalized Greed and Selfishness.

After foot (and knuckle) dragging all year, the GOP was left out of the final legislation entirely-- although far, far too many of their reactionary demands were met as Dodd and the Democrats compromised with good sense for no reason, unless currying favor with the banksters is considered reasonable in Inside the Beltway Democratic circles. Yesterday the Senate Banking Committee approved Dodd's financial overhaul legislation 13-10, without a single Republican vote.

The 10 crooked, bribe-taking handmaidens of the Wall Street banks who have vowed to throw themselves under the bus of progress are Richard Shelby (R-AL- $5,213,130), Robert Bennett (R-UT- $2,354,767), Jim Bunning (R-KY- $2,580,305), Mike Crapo (R-ID- $1,728,513), Bob Corker (R-TN- $3,058,330), Jim DeMint (R-SC- $2,463,860), David Diapers Vitter (R-LA- $2,083,149), Mike Johanns (R-NE- $687,621), Kay Bailey Hutchison (R-TX- $4,702,438) and Judd Gregg (R-NH- $1,077,149).

Dodd says his bill will end taxpayer-funded bailouts of companies supposedly "too big to fail," regulate-- for the first time-- the multitrillion-dollar derivatives market, and bring long-overdue consumer protection to financial products. The Republicans have watered down the most important aspects of real reform and are expected to filibuster the eventual bill, no matter how weak and crappy the Democrats make it to please them. Sound familiar?

WATCH Fox News explain the Republican position.

Are you confused yet? Totally. The Fox News guy says that there are already enough laws on the books to handle every economic situation. Both he and Professor Bill Black seem to be blaming the economic situation on both Obama, Geithner and the Democrats. But on April 3, 2009, Bill Black was interviewed by Bill Moyers. Here is what he had to say. Click HERE to watch the program.

BILL MOYERS: If I wanted to go looking for the parties to this, with a good bird dog, where would you send me? WILLIAM K. BLACK: Well, that's exactly what hasn't happened. We haven't looked, all right? The Bush Administration essentially got rid of regulation, so if nobody was looking, you were able to do this with impunity and that's exactly what happened. Where would you look? You'd look at the specialty lenders. The lenders that did almost all of their work in the sub-prime and what's called Alt-A, liars' loans.

The anti-socialists want small government, individual liberty, and free markets. They don't want any banking regulation. They don't want government control. Yet, what we now have is a corporate oligarchy which controls our economic system and inhibits individual freedoms and free markets.

The right-wing motto has now become: No to Socialism, Yes to Corporatocracy!

Ayn Rand's Admiration of a Serial Killer

Photo Credit: Creative Commons

Marc Ames in AlterNet writes about Ayn Rand and the sociopath superhero of her writings who was based on the "notorious serial murderer-dismemberer" who she worshiped. According to Ames, we should all be aware that Ayn Rand is the " guru to the Republican/Tea Party right-wing" and we should all beware!

Her works are treated as gospel by right-wing powerhouses like Alan Greenspan and Clarence Thomas, but Ayn Rand found early inspiration in 1920's murderer William Hickman.

There's something deeply unsettling about living in a country where millions of people froth at the mouth at the idea of giving health care to the tens of millions of Americans who don't have it, or who take pleasure at the thought of privatizing and slashing bedrock social programs like Social Security or Medicare. It might not be so hard to stomach if other Western countries also had a large, vocal chunk of the population that thought like this, but the U.S. is seemingly the only place where right-wing elites can openly share their distaste for the working poor. Where do they find their philosophical justification for this kind of attitude?

It turns out, you can trace much of this thinking back to Ayn Rand, a popular cult-philosopher who exerts a huge influence over much of the right-wing and libertarian crowd, but whose influence is only starting to spread out of the U.S.

One reason most countries don't find the time to embrace Ayn Rand's thinking is that she is a textbook sociopath. In her notebooks Ayn Rand worshiped a notorious serial murderer-dismemberer, and used this killer as an early model for the type of "ideal man" she promoted in her more famous books. These ideas were later picked up on and put into play by major right-wing figures of the past half decade, including the key architects of America's most recent economic catastrophe -- former Fed Chair Alan Greenspan and SEC Commissioner Chris Cox -- along with other notable right-wing Republicans such as Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, Rush Limbaugh and South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford.

The loudest of all the Republicans, right-wing attack-dog pundits and the Teabagger mobs fighting to kill health care reform and eviscerate "entitlement programs" increasingly hold up Ayn Rand as their guru. Sales of her books have soared in the past couple of years; one poll ranked Atlas Shrugged as the second most influential book of the 20th century, after the Bible.

The best way to get to the bottom of Ayn Rand's beliefs is to take a look at how she developed the superhero of her novel, Atlas Shrugged, John Galt. Back in the late 1920s, as Ayn Rand was working out her philosophy, she became enthralled by a real-life American serial killer, William Edward Hickman, whose gruesome, sadistic dismemberment of 12-year-old girl named Marion Parker in 1927 shocked the nation. Rand filled her early notebooks with worshipful praise of Hickman. According to biographer Jennifer Burns, author of Goddess of the Market, Rand was so smitten with Hickman that she modeled her first literary creation -- Danny Renahan, the protagonist of her unfinished first novel, The Little Street -- on him.

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

This echoes almost word for word Rand's later description of her character Howard Roark, the hero of her novel The Fountainhead: "He was born without the ability to consider others." (The Fountainhead is Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas' favorite book -- he even requires his clerks to read it.) [...]

As much as Ayn Rand detested human "parasites," there is one thing she strongly believed in: creating conditions that increase the productivity of her supermen -- the William Hickmans who rule her idealized America: "If [people] place such things as friendship and family ties above their own productive work, yes, then they are immoral. Friendship, family life and human relationships are not primary in a man's life. A man who places others first, above his own creative work, is an emotional parasite."

Republican faithful like GOP Congressman Paul Ryan read Ayn Rand and declare, with pride, "Rand makes the best case for the morality of democratic capitalism." Indeed. Except that Rand also despised democracy, writing that, "Democracy, in short, is a form of collectivism, which denies individual rights: the majority can do whatever it wants with no restrictions. In principle, the democratic government is all-powerful. Democracy is a totalitarian manifestation; it is not a form of freedom."

"Collectivism" is another one of those Randian epithets popular among her followers. Here is another Republican member of Congress, Michelle Bachman, parroting the Ayn Rand ideological line, to explain her reasoning for wanting to kill social programs:

"As much as the collectivist says to each according to his ability to each according to his need, that's not how mankind is wired. They want to make the best possible deal for themselves."

Whenever you hear politicians or Tea Partiers dividing up the world between "producers" and "collectivism," just know that those ideas and words more likely than not are derived from the deranged mind of a serial-killer groupie. When you hear them saying, "Go John Galt," hide your daughters and tell them not to talk to any strangers -- or Tea Party Republicans. And when you see them taking their razor blades to the last remaining programs protecting the middle class from total abject destitution -- Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid -- and bragging about how they are slashing these programs for "moral" reasons, just remember Ayn's morality and who inspired her.

Too many critics of Ayn Rand -- until recently I was one of them -- would rather dismiss her books and ideas as laughable, childish, and hackneyed. But she can't be dismissed because Rand is the name that keeps bubbling up from the Tea Party crowd and the elite conservative circuit in Washington as the Big Inspiration. The only way to protect ourselves from this thinking is the way you protect yourself from serial killers: smoke the Rand followers out, make them answer for following the crazed ideology of a serial-killer-groupie, and run them the hell out of town and out of our hemisphere.

The complete article can be read HERE.