New Year’s Resolution for Progressives: Don’t Apologize for Democrats

Published on Wednesday, December 30, 2009 by CommonDreams.org

New Year’s Resolution: Don’t Apologize for Democrats

by Jeff Cohen

For the new year, let's resolve: Don't defend Democrats when they don't deserve defending. And that certainly includes President Obama.

Let's further resolve: Put principles above party and never lose our voice on human rights and social justice.

When we mute ourselves as a Democratic president pursues corporatist or militarist policies, we only encourage such policies.

If it was wrong for Bush to bail out Wall Street with virtually no controls, then it's wrong for Obama. If indefinite "preventative detention" was wrong under Bush, then it's wrong under Obama. If military occupation and deepening troop deployments were wrong under Bush, then they're wrong under Obama.

Imagine if McCain had defeated Obama in 2008 and soon tripled the number of U.S. troops in Afghanistan. I have little doubt that activists would have mobilized major opposition, denouncing the reality of more U.S. soldiers in Afghanistan and Iraq combined than even Bush had deployed.

But as Obama goes about tripling the troops in Afghanistan, with more U.S. soldiers in war zones that Bush ever had -- and proposes the biggest military budget in world history -- many activists have lost their voices.

When Obama's West Point speech on Afghanistan paid lip service to benchmarks and a timeline (as even Bush learned to do on Iraq), how did the once independent MoveOn react? Its leaders sent out a muted petition urging -- benchmarks and a timeline. The email might as well have been written by Rahm Emanuel in the West Wing.

Taking cues from the Obama White House, liberal groups went quiet on Wall Street bailouts and bonuses -- thus helping rightwing teabaggers and corporate-fronts to pose as populist saviors of the middle class.

By going soft on the White House or Democratic Congressional leaders, most netroots groups have undermined genuine progressives in Congress -- on issues from Iraq and Afghanistan to Wall Street and health care.

Instead of launching their health care reform efforts behind an easily-explained, cost-effective "Enhanced Medicare for All" bill co-sponsored by dozens of progressive Congress members, netroots leaders meekly made a "public option" their starting demand and pretended not to notice when Rahm Emanuel began signaling last spring that the White House had no intention of pushing for it.

Predictably, we've ended up with corporate-enrichment legislation that forcibly delivers tens of millions of customers to big insurers and big pharma -- with almost no cost controls because of private deals cut in the White House . In the New York Times before Christmas, beneath an accurate header "Corporate Glee," a news article asserted: "The insurance companies were probably among the merriest of industries last week . . . But the drug companies were certainly joyful, too." Insurance stocks are soaring on Wall Street.

It's tragically ironic that netroots forces joined Democratic leaders in killing Medicare for All as an unrealistic starting demand and now are belatedly urging "kill the bill."

I'm old enough to remember that when Democrats are in majority power -- controlling both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue -- they are capable of horrific policies. With Lyndon Johnson in the White House, most Democrats in Congress went along with Vietnam escalation. And with President Clinton, some leading Congressional Democrats joined mostly Republicans in backing the anti-worker, anti-environmental NAFTA.

The good news -- during the eras of Vietnam and NAFTA -- is that large numbers of progressive activists stood fast to their principles and vocally opposed those wrong-headed Democratic policies. They didn't follow Democratic leaders over the cliff or pretend that Democratic presidents are automatically "on our side" or well-intentioned.

And back then we lacked the most awesome tool ever invented for independent grassroots mobilization: the Internet.

The Net has helped unleash a golden age for independent media -- and for journalists unafraid to challenge leaders of both parties: folks like Glenn Greenwald, Jeremy Scahill, Arianna Huffington, Matt Taibbi and Amy Goodman, to name a few.

Thanks to the Internet and independent media, progressive activists are more fully and more quickly informed about national and global issues than ever. Yet many activists are poorly represented by national netroots groups that often function as appendages of the Democratic leadership.

While independent progressive media are booming on the Internet, the largest netroots political-action groups are sorely lacking in independence.

Be it resolved: In 2010, we will not apologize for indefensible Democratic policies, and we will no longer support netroots groups that fail to resist such policies.

Jeff Cohen is an associate professor of journalism and the director of the Park Center for Independent Media at Ithaca College, founder of the media watch group FAIR, and former board member of Progressive Democrats of America. In 2002, he was a producer and pundit at MSNBC (overseen by NBC News). His latest book is Cable News Confidential: My Misadventures in Corporate Media.

ACORN Didn't Commit Voter Fraud or Misuse Federal Funding but GOP Did

Report Says ACORN Didn't Commit Voter Fraud or Misuse Federal Funding

Wednesday 30 December 2009

by: Mary Susan Littlepage, t r u t h o u t | Report

(Image: Troy Page / t r u t h o u t; Adapted: Gregor Bug, Tyler Haglund)

The Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN) did not commit voter fraud, and it didn't misuse federal funding in the last five years, according to a recently released report prepared by the Congressional Research Service (CRS), a nonpartisan investigational arm of Congress.

Among its findings, CRS also reported that recently enacted federal legislation to prohibit funding to ACORN raises significant constitutional concerns. The report said courts "may have a sufficient basis" to conclude that the legislation "violates the prohibition against bills of attainder." Also, concerning recent "sting" operations related to ACORN, although state laws vary, two states, Maryland and California, "appear to ban private recording of face to face conversations absent the consent of all the participants," the report said.

The CRS report was requested by House Judiciary Chairman John Conyers Jr. (D-Michigan) and House Financial Services Committee Chairman Barney Frank in September.

"There were no instances of individuals who were allegedly registered to vote improperly by ACORN or its employees and who were reported attempting to vote at the polls," the CRS report states.

This report came on the heels of another report that also cleared ACORN of wrongdoing. That outside report indicated ACORN doesn't show a pattern of intentional and illegal behavior in undercover videos that conservatives shot of ACORN staffers. That's according to an independent, two-month review of ACORN released in early December by Scott Harshbarger, senior counsel at Proskauer Rose and former Massachusetts attorney general. Proskauer Rose is a law firm that led the independent review of ACORN at the behest of its senior officials. This review shows the independent analysis requested by ACORN on September 21 in the wake of the video controversies, significant negative news coverage and lost support among some funders, allies and supporters.

Videos of ACORN staffers advising a woman (Hannah Giles) acting as a prostitute and a man (James O'Keefe) as a boyfriend led to much criticism. In the undercover videos, the pair plans to buy a house for use as a brothel, pretends to seek assistance with illegal matters such as prostitution and human trafficking and gets advice from a few ACORN employees. The two filmed their meetings with a hidden camera at ACORN offices, further igniting the Republicans' war against ACORN. The videographers visited ACORN or ACORN Housing offices in Baltimore, Brooklyn, Los Angeles, Miami, Philadelphia, San Bernardino, San Diego and Washington, DC.

The CRS report was compiled by information research specialist Meredith Peterson; law librarian Julia Taylor; senior specialist in American public law Charles Doyle, information research specialist Julius Jefferson and legislative attorney Kenneth Thomas.

Founded in 1970, ACORN is the largest grassroots community organization of low- and moderate-income people, with more than 400,000 member families organized into more than 1,200 neighborhood chapters in about 75 cities across the country. The national organization is based in Washington, DC, and deals with finances and governance. It also coordinates national issues-based campaigns and voter registration drives.

ACORN evolved from a grassroots, community-based organization with a mission of advocacy for the poor and powerless into, in recent years, a major national entity in both scope and ambition. Historically, ACORN has, as part of its community-organizing mission, provided a range of services for its constituency, including citizen engagement, lobbying, political mobilization, voter registration and advocacy about foreclosure prevention, fair wage laws, affordable housing, first-time home ownership, predatory lending reform and mortgage protection.

The CRS report, though, states that the Maryland Wiretap Act, modeled after the federal statute Schmerling v. Injured Workers' Insurance Fund, makes it unlawful to "willfully intercept ... any ... oral ... communication" or to "willfully disclose ... the contents of any ... oral communication, knowing ... that the information was obtained through the interception of an ... oral ... communication ... violation" of the Maryland Wiretap Act.

According to the CRS report, Maryland defines an oral communication as "any conversation or words spoken to or by any person in private conversation," and "When an oral communication is intercepted, determining whether a violation of the Wiretap occurred hinges on a jury determination that at least one of the parties had a reasonable expectation of privacy."

Meanwhile California law "makes it a crime to eavesdrop upon or record a confidential communication, intentionally, without the consent of all the parties to the communication, and by means of an electronic amplifying or recording device."

The report states, "As a general matter, federal law permits private individuals to record face to face conversations, as long as the recording is not done for criminal or tortuous purposes." The New York law seems "more forgiving, for it only reaches those who record remotely"; the laws of Washington, DC, mirror federal law prior to 1986 amendments to the federal statute; and "D.C. law permits one-party consent recordings, although the consequences of the want of complete symmetry with federal provisions are unclear." On the other hand, "the laws of Maryland and California appear to ban private recording of face to face conversation, absent the consent of all of the participants."

Concerning ACORN's efforts to help people with housing issues, the CRS report concludes that ACORN's activities promote the development of affordable housing, provide counseling to first-time homebuyers and homeowners facing foreclosure, and support people affected by Hurricane Katrina.

For example, the CRC report states that ACORN's 2006 annual report indicates that ACORN Housing Corporation's (AHC) development program secured more than $140 million in construction financing to develop 735 new units of affordable housing in Houston, Chicago, Phoenix and New York. CRS also found reports of ACORN activities related to improving housing conditions, including organizing tenants to demand repairs and conducting lead paint outreach programs. In addition, AHC reported that in 2006 it counseled 13,738 first-time homeowners and helped 1,474 homeowners into more affordable mortgages. And CRC also states that ACORN has been "very involved" with housing activities in the Gulf Coast area after Hurricane Katrina: ACORN helped in the cleanup of 1,850 homes and organized 10,000 hurricane survivors into the ACORN Katrina Survivors Association.

Conservatives, including Rep. Darrell Issa (R-California) and Rep. Lamar Smith (R-Texas), have criticized ACORN for a long time. Republican members of Congress also dubbed ACORN a "criminal enterprise" with close and current ties to the highest levels of the Obama administration and the labor movement. Republicans created 81 pages of documents about ACORN's voter registration activities in 2004 and 2006 to supplement Issa's July 2009 report, "Is ACORN Intentionally Structured as a Criminal Enterprise?" Also, Representative Issa previously sponsored the "Defund ACORN Act."

ACORN lost its long-standing federal funding in two September votes, but it wasn't only Republicans who voted against providing ACORN funding: The House voted 345-75, which included 172 Democrats, to prohibit ACORN from getting federal funds. The vote came after the video camera controversy, which triggered much media coverage in right-wing news outlets and then also in the mainstream press. Also, ACORN was denied funding for a three-year $780,000 grant for outreach to poor communities and to raise awareness of the lung disease asthma; ACORN's grant got dropped with the Environmental Protection Agency as a result of the approval of the Defund ACORN Act.

However, in an analysis of legislation to prohibit funding to ACORN, Kenneth Thomas states in the CRS report that "while the regulatory purpose of ensuring that federal funds are properly spent is a legitimate one, it is not clear that imposing a permanent government-wide ban on contracting with or providing grants to ACORN under the proposed Defund ACORN Act fits that purpose, at least when the ban is applied only to ACORN and its affiliates." Thomas also writes, "The brevity of the funding moratorium imposed on ACORN and its affiliates under the 2010 Continuing Appropriation Resolution, however, could arguably be justified as an expedience necessary to address an issue of immediate congressional concern, while allowing Congress sufficient time to consider a longer term solution."

Talking about the CRS report, Conyers said, "I appreciate the careful work of CRS on these issues. I look forward to seeing the results of the work being undertaken by other agencies, including the recently announced Government Accountability Office review concerning federal funding of ACORN."

Meanwhile ACORN critic Rep. Steve King (R-Iowa) told The American Spectator that he was disappointed that the Democratic-controlled Congress and the Obama administration aren't doing much about what he considers wrongdoings by ACORN.

In the story, the House Judiciary Committee member describes the ACORN saga as "the largest corruption crisis in the history of America" and says, "It's thousands of times bigger than Watergate because Watergate was only a little break-in by a couple of guys."

10 Reasons and Background Info to Kill the Senate Health Care Bill

http://fdlaction.firedoglake.com/

10 Reasons to Kill the Senate Health Care Bill

By: Jane Hamsher Monday December 21, 2009 7:10 am

FDL has become the go-to place for coverage of the health care bill due to the work of our incredible team. Jon Walker’s second-to-none knowledge of the health care bill has made the policy and political analysis he offers up at FDL Action a driving force. Dave Dayen’s reporting at the FDL News Desk, Marcy Wheeler ’s research and in-depth analysis at Emptywheel, Laura Flanders’ interviews at GritTV, our FDL team of writers and editors, and our community members at The Seminal provide the most independent and comprehensive picture of what’s happening moment-by-moment on the health care debate to be found anywhere.

So, I asked them to help make it simple: how do we let people know what’s going to happen to them if the Senate bill passes? Everyone put their heads together and came up with a list:

Top 10 Reasons to Kill Senate Health Care Bill

1. Forces you to pay up to 8% of your income to private insurance corporations — whether you want to or not.
2. If you refuse to buy the insurance, you’ll have to pay penalties of up to 2% of your annual income to the IRS.
3. Many will be forced to buy poor-quality insurance they can’t afford to use, with $11,900 in annual out-of-pocket expenses over and above their annual premiums.
4. Massive restriction on a woman’s right to choose, designed to trigger a challenge to Roe v. Wade in the Supreme Court.
5. Paid for by taxes on the middle class insurance plan you have right now through your employer, causing them to cut back benefits and increase co-pays.
6. Many of the taxes to pay for the bill start now, but most Americans won’t see any benefits — like an end to discrimination against those with preexisting conditions — until 2014 when the program begins.
7. Allows insurance companies to charge people who are older 300% more than others.
8. Grants monopolies to drug companies that will keep generic versions of expensive biotech drugs from ever coming to market.
9. No re-importation of prescription drugs, which would save consumers $100 billion over 10 years.
10. The cost of medical care will continue to rise, and insurance premiums for a family of four will rise an average of $1,000 a year — meaning in 10 years, your family’s insurance premium will be $10,000 more annually than it is right now.

Background information on each point:

1. Hardship Waiver And Restrictions On Immigrants Buying Insurance Undercut Arguments For An Individual Mandate, by Jon Walker
2. What’s in the Manager’s Amendment by David Dayen
3. MyBarackObama Tax by Marcy Wheeler
4. Emperor Ben Nelson: All Your Uteruses Are Belong To Me by Scarecrow
5. The Senate Bill is Designed to Make Your Health Insurance Worse by Jon Walker
6. Best way to “Fix It Later” Is With No Individual Mandate Now by Jon Walker
7. The Senate Health Care Bill is Built on a Mountain of Sand by Jon Walker
8. The Devil in Anna Eshoo’s Details by Jane Hamsher
9. Liveblog of the Dorgan Reimportation Amendment by David Dayen
10. Answering Nate Silver’s 20 Questions on the Health Care Bill by Jon Walker

The Senate bill isn’t a “starter home,” it’s a sink hole. It needs to die so something else can take its place. It doesn’t matter whether people are on the right or the left — once they understand the con job that’s about to be foist upon them, they agree. That’s why Harry Reid and President Obama are trying to jam it through as fast as they can, before people get wise. So email the list to your friends and family, tweet it and spread the word.

Sign the petition: kill the Senate bill.

Published on Wednesday, December 30, 2009 by firedoglake.com

Right and Left Agree: Mandates are the Road to Neo-Feudalism

by Jane Hamsher

There is tremendous fear rising on both the right and the left that the announced intention of Congress - to force every American to pay tribute to private corporations, with no government alternative - sets a dangerous and frightening precedent with implications far outside the scope of health care.

If the health care bill written by the Senate is passed, middle class Americans will be mandated to pay almost as much to private insurance companies as they do to the federal government in taxes, with the IRS acting as a collection agency for penalties of 2% of your annual income for refusing to comply.

This is just one of many recent measures that have brought liberal progressives and conservative libertarians together to join forces in opposition:

• Democrat Alan Grayson worked successfully this year with Republican Ron Paul to pass legislation to audit the Federal Reserve, with 317 cosponsors as diverse as Dennis Kucinich and Michelle Bachmann.
• On December 3, the liberal Campaign for America's Future wrote a letter to the Senate opposing the reconfirmation of Federal Reserve chief Ben Bernanke until such an audit has been conducted. The letter was signed by James Galbraith, Robert Weisman, Chris Bowers and myself on the left, and Grover Norquist, Phillis Schlafly, and Larry Greenley on the right. Financial blogger Tyler Durden and young organizer Tiffiniy Cheng joined them.
• Also on December 3, conservative Jim Bunning joined liberal Bernie Sanders in placing a hold on the Bernanke nomination until the Fed had been audited.
• On December 15, CAF again sent a letter to the Senate Banking Committee, asking them to delay the vote on the Bernanke confirmation until Audit the Fed received a stand alone vote in the Senate. It was signed by Matt KIbbe of Freedomworks, John Tate of the Campaign for Liberty, and Grover Norquist on the right, and David Swanson of AfterDowiningStreet, Dean Baker and Robert Borosage on the left.
• On December 21, a letter was written opposing the mandate in the health care bill. It was signed by Bob Fertik of Democrats.com, Howie Klein of DownWithTyranny, Brad Friedman of Velvet Revolution, Tim Carpenter of Progressive Democrats of America on the left and Grover Norquist, Jim Martin of 60 Plus Association, Duane Parde of the National Taxpayers Union on the right.
• On December 23, Grover Norquist and I sent a letter to Attorney General Eric Holder calling for an investigation into Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac and White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel's conflicts of interest before the White House could lift the cap on the commitment to them from $400 billion to $800 billion with no Inspector General in place.

The individuals on both sides of the political spectrum who signed these letters agree on very little, but they do share both a tremendous concern for the corporatist control of government that politicians in both parties seem hell-bent on achieving.

In 2003, the Democrats railed in opposition when the Republicans passed Medicare Part D prescription drug coverage that didn't allow for negotiated drug prices. And in 2006 when Democrats took over Congress, one of the hallmarks of their first hundred days was passing legislation allowing Medicare to do so, supported by both Rahm Emanuel and Barack Obama. Of course, it had no chance of passing with George Bush in the White House.

Candidate Barack Obama said the ability to negotiate for drug prices would save $30 billion a year in medical costs. Yet when President Obama got to the White House, one of the first things he did was negotiate a secret deal with PhRMA that prevented drug price negotiations in exchange for $150 million in political advertising to help vulnerable Democrats in the House and in support of the health care bill.

In the Senate, Tom Carper said that because PhRMA had paid for the deal with political advertising, they were obligated to abide by it.

Jeff Sessions railed against the corrupt PhRMA deal that didn't allow for prescription drug price negotiation. He didn't mention that he voted for the 2000 bill without it, and when he had the chance to vote for it in the Senate in 2006, he voted "no" himself. Both parties are equally blameworthy - the only difference is who is in power and taking PhRMA's money.

The PhRMA deal is one of many negotiated by the White House this last summer which formed the underpinnings of the health care bill. From then on, it just became a matter of which member was going to extract what deals for their votes, and who was going to take the blame for cutting popular elements from the legislation that the corporate "stakeholders" didn't want.

As FDL's Jon Walker wrote recently, if the ability to cut health care costs hadn't been auctioned off to private corporations in exchange for political patronage, there would have been no government subsidy necessary to make insurance coverage affordable.

We are ceding control of the government to private corporations, not figuratively but literally. When the Senate Finance Committee bill was released earlier this year, the "author" was a former VP of Wellpoint. Liberals, conservatives and independents alike are all justifiably alarmed at what this represents.

It is tragic that health care for the poor is being held hostage to the corporatist agenda, a fig leaf to buy public support and disguise this bill for what it is. As blogger Marcy Wheeler noted in a piece called Health Care and the Road to Neo-Feudalism:

I understand the temptation to offer 30 million people health care. What I don't understand is the nonchalance with which we're about to fundamentally shift the relationships of governance in doing so.

Just as those on the libertarian right were demonized by the Republican establishment for opposing the Iraq war during the Bush years, so progressives on the left are being pilloried for "damaging the cause" by joining with Republicans to oppose these extreme measures. It's ironic that the most virulent supporters of a President who ran on "bipartisanship" should reject it so vehemently when it becomes critical of the policies pursued by his White House.

This "right-left wraparound" is happening because politicians in both parties have become so unresponsive to popular sentiment: public support for stifling investigation of the bank bailouts just to protect the President are infinitesimally small, and fortunately Dennis Kucinich announced today that he would commence an investigation into the Fannie/Freddie bailout. But it's a testament to the extreme nature of what is happening to our government that such traditional political foes could find common cause in opposing it.

It's foolish to say that only those who agree with you on every issue are allowed to share your opinion when it comes to opposing something like the mandated bailout of Aetna - it isn't necessary to achieve health care reform. As Jon Walker notes, removing the mandate would reduce the CBO score and its inclusion in the health care bill with no government alternative is unacceptable for moral, political and policy reasons.

Candidate Obama himself opposed the mandate. Keith Olberman and Howard Dean concur.

As Markos Moulitsas of Daily Kos said, "remove the mandate or kill this bill." We've opened a "war room" at Firedoglake with information about calling your member of Congress to demand that this provision to bail out the insurance industry be removed from the health care bill before they agree to cast their vote in favor of it.

And nobody needs to pass an ideological purity test before they can use it.

Join us to oppose the mandate. Enter the war room.

© 2009 firedoglake

Jane Hamsher is the founder of firedoglake.com. Her work has also appeared on The Daily Beat, AlterNet, The Nation and The American Prospect.

Supreme Court to OK Al Qaeda donation for Sarah Palin?

Greg Palast

Supreme Court to OK Al Qaeda donation for Sarah Palin?

Tuesday, December 15, 2009

Ruling expected today to let corporations invest in politicians

By Greg Palast | for AlterNet
Tuesday, December 15, 2009

I thought that headline would get your attention. And it's true.

I'm biting my nails waiting for the Supreme Court's ruling in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, which could come down as early as today. At issue: whether corporations, as "unnatural persons," can make contributions to political campaigns.

The outcome is foregone: the six GOP appointees to the court are expected to use the case to junk federal laws that now bar corporations from stuffing campaign coffers.

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Vote: Should Sarah Palin be allowed to keep money from Al Qaeda Inc.?

Listen to Palast talking about corporate campaign contributions

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Technically, there's a narrower matter before the court in this case: whether the McCain-Feingold Act may prohibit corporations from funding "independent" campaign advertisements such as the "Swift Boat" ads that smeared John Kerry. However, campaign finance reformers are steeling themselves for the court's right wing to go much further, knocking down all longstanding rules against donations by corporate treasuries.

Allowing company campaign spending will not, as progressives fear, cause an avalanche of corporate cash into politics. Sadly, that's already happened: we have been snowed under by tens of millions of dollars given through corporate PACs and "bundling" of individual contributions from corporate pay-rollers.

The court's expected decision is far, far more dangerous to U.S. democracy. Think: Manchurian candidates.

I'm losing sleep over the millions — or billions — of dollars that could flood into our elections from ARAMCO, the Saudi Oil corporation's U.S. unit; or from the maker of "New Order" fashions, the Chinese People's Liberation Army. Or from Bin Laden Construction corporation. Or Bin Laden Destruction Corporation.

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Support this ongoing investigation by making a donation to the non-profit Investigative Journalism foundation. By donating today you will receive a gift of your choice in time for Christmas: www.gregpalast.com/store/

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Right now, corporations can give loads of loot through PACs. While this money stinks (Barack Obama took none of it), anyone can go through a PAC's federal disclosure filing and see the name of every individual who put money into it. And every contributor must be a citizen of the USA.

But, if the Supreme Court rules that corporations can support candidates without limit, there is nothing that stops, say, a Delaware-incorporated handmaiden of the Burmese junta from picking a Congressman or two with a cache of loot masked by a corporate alias.

Candidate Barack Obama was one sharp speaker, but he would not have been heard, and certainly would not have won, without the astonishing outpouring of donations from two million Americans. It was an unprecedented uprising-by-PayPal, overwhelming the old fat-cat sources of funding.

Well, kiss that small-donor revolution goodbye. If the Supreme Court votes as expected, progressive list serves won't stand a chance against the resources of new "citizens" such as CNOOC, the China National Offshore Oil Corporation. Maybe UBS (United Bank of Switzerland), which faces U.S. criminal prosecution and a billion-dollar fine for fraud, might be tempted to invest in a few Senate seats. As would XYZ Corporation, whose owners remain hidden by "street names."

George Bush's former Solicitor General Ted Olson argued the case to the court on behalf of Citizens United, a corporate front that funded an attack on Hillary Clinton during the 2008 primary. Olson's wife died on September 11, 2001 on the hijacked airliner that hit the Pentagon. Maybe it was a bit crude of me, but I contacted Olson's office to ask how much "Al Qaeda, Inc." should be allowed to donate to support the election of his local congressman.

Olson has not responded.

The danger of foreign loot loading into U.S. campaigns, not much noted in the media chat about the Citizens case, was the first concern raised by Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who asked about opening the door to "mega-corporations" owned by foreign governments. Olson offered Ginsburg a fudge, that Congress might be able to prohibit foreign corporations from making donations, though Olson made clear he thought any such restriction a bad idea.

Tara Malloy, attorney with the Campaign Legal Center of Washington D.C., is biting her nails awaiting the decision. If Olson gets his way, she told me, corporations will have more rights than people. Only United States citizens may donate or influence campaigns, but a foreign government can, veiled behind a corporate treasury, dump money into ballot battles.

Malloy also noted that under the law today, human-people, as opposed to corporate-people, may only give $2,300 to a presidential campaign. But hedge fund billionaires, for example, who typically operate through dozens of corporate vessels, could, should Olson prevail, give unlimited sums through each of these "unnatural" creatures.

And once the Taliban incorporates in Delaware, they could ante up for the best democracy money can buy.

In July, the Chinese government, in preparation for President Obama's visit, held diplomatic discussions in which they skirted issues of human rights and Tibet. Notably, the Chinese, who hold a $2 trillion mortgage on our Treasury, raised concerns about the cost of Obama's health care reform bill. Would our nervous Chinese landlords have an interest in buying the White House for an opponent of government spending such as Gov. Palin? Ya betcha!

The potential for foreign infiltration of what remains of our democracy is an adjunct of the fact that the source and control money from corporate treasuries (unlike registered PACs), is necessarily hidden. Who the heck are the real stockholders? Or as Butch asked Sundance, "Who are these guys?"
We'll never know.

Hidden money funding, whether foreign or domestic, is the new venom that the court could inject into the system by an expansive decision in Citizens United.

We've been there. The 1994 election brought Newt Gingrich to power in a GOP takeover of the Congress funded by a very strange source.

Congressional investigators found that in crucial swing races, Democrats had fallen victim to a flood of last-minute attack ads funded by a group called, "Coalition for Our Children's Future." The $25 million that paid for those ads came, not from concerned parents, but from a corporation called "Triad Inc."

Evidence suggests Triad Inc. was the front for the ultra-right-wing billionaire Koch Brothers and their private petroleum company, Koch Industries. Had the corporate connection been proven, the Kochs and their corporation could have faced indictment under federal election law. If the Supreme Court now decides in favor of unlimited corporate electioneering, then such money-poisoned politicking would become legit.

So it's not just un-Americans we need to fear but the Polluter-Americans, Pharma-mericans, Bank-Americans and Hedge-Americans that could manipulate campaigns while hidden behind corporate veils. And if so, our future elections, while nominally a contest between Republicans and Democrats, may in fact come down to a three-way battle between China, Saudi Arabia and Goldman Sachs.

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Greg Palast is the author of the New York Times bestseller The Best Democracy Money Can Buy." Palast investigated Triad Inc. for The Guardian (UK). View Palast's reports for BBC TV and Democracy Now! at www.gregpalast.com.

Just How Racist Is the Tea Party Movement?

Just How Racist Is the Tea Party Movement?

By Bill Berkowitz, IPS News. Posted December 28, 2009.

Are the openly-racist elements within the Tea Party movement an aberration, or are they more firmly entrenched than tea partiers would care to admit?

OAKLAND, California, 22 Dec (IPS) - It began with Apr. 15 Tax Day protests as thousands rallied in a number of cities across the country.

It continued on into the summer with raucous town hall meetings and gun-toting anti-Barack Obama demonstrators, and appeared to reach its apex with a Sep. 12 march on Washington, which drew nearly 100,000 participants.

Now, however, some in the so-called Tea Party movement are turning their attention toward becoming a force during the 2010 congressional elections.

Several reports on the Sep. 12 event noted it was a nearly all-white crowd and some demonstrators carried an assortment of "homemade" anti-Obama posters, declaring that "The Anti-Christ Is Living in the White House", and calling the president an "Oppressive Bloodsucking Arrogant Muslim Alien".

Despite the fact that it doesn't have a clear identity, and serious questions about the movement's character remain to be answered, the Tea Party movement has been one of the most intriguing political developments of the past year.

Is it a grassroots movement, or has it been organised and funded by Washington-based conservative groups? Could it be both? Is it mainly concerned with economic issues (government spending, taxes, deficits) or are the Christian Right's traditional social issues (abortion, same-sex marriage) of interest to tea partiers?

Are there several -- possibly competing -- ideological tendencies within the movement?

While tea partiers made a lot of noise this past summer, doing their best to put the kybosh on health care reform, is there a future for the movement?

A recent Rasmussen Poll suggests that there very well might be.

In theoretical three-way congressional races between a Democrat, Republican and Tea Party candidate, the Tea Party candidate outpolled the Republican. Democrats attracted 36 percent of the vote; the Tea Party candidate received 23 percent, and the Republican finished third at 18 percent, with 22 percent undecided.

(According to the Rasmussen Reports website, "survey...respondents were asked to assume that the Tea Party movement organized as a new political party. In practical terms, it is unlikely that a true third-party option would perform as well as the polling data indicates. The rules of the election process - written by Republicans and Democrats - provide substantial advantages for the two established major parties.)

Interestingly enough, in an effort to build the movement, some Tea Party organisers have taken to "studying the grassroots training methods of the late Saul Alinsky, the community organizer known for campus protests in the 1960s and who inspired the structure of Obama's presidential campaign," the San Francisco Chronicle recently reported.

Tea Party groups are also using "Tea Party: The Documentary Film" as an organising tool. In a pre-premiere press release, the filmmakers claimed that the film would deal with the "allegations of racism".

And that indeed appears to be the issue that could stymie the movement's growth.

While Tea Party events have become a safe haven for people carrying racist anti-Obama signs, people of colour have stayed away in droves. Members of white nationalist organisations openly participate in Tea Party events and view the movement as a fertile recruiting ground.

Questions about the overlap between tea partiers and anti-immigration activists might be answered when an immigration reform bill is taken up next year.

Are the openly-racist elements within the Tea Party movement an aberration scorned by most Tea Party participants as John Hawkins, who runs a website called RightWingNews, insists, or are they more firmly entrenched than tea partiers would care to admit?

"The tea parties themselves are made up of a diverse bloc of different political elements, and white nationalists have chosen to make a stand inside the tea parties," one expert, Devin Burghart, told IPS.

For the past 17 years, Burghart has researched and written on virtually all facets of contemporary white nationalism. He is currently vice president of the Institute for Research & Education on Human Rights, which monitors and publishes on the activities of white nationalist groups.

"The exact extent of the racist element inside the Tea Parties is difficult to quantify, because they are not a static phenomena, and it depends on who shows up," he explained. "That said, it's enough of a factor to attract the attention of a significant portion of the white nationalist movement."

"It's not a matter of how many African-American or Latino/a folks show up at these tea parties, it's about the content and character of the arguments made at them," Burghart added.

Not only have "tea partiers have turned up with overtly racist signs and slogans" at rallies from coast to coast, he said, but also many participants "cling to the belief that our first African-American president is not only un-American, he was not even born in the country".

Unfortunately, Burghart noted, "There's little evidence to indicate that tea party leaders are doing anything to address the racism in their ranks."

Burghart said that he was not surprised that "tea party activists would deny their racism". After all, "racists have been denying their racism even before pro-secessionist bigots couched their arguments in bogus claims about states' rights".

However, he added, "To anyone with any degree of sensitivity to the issue, the tea parties have clearly shown themselves to be racist, in the lineage of George Wallace - who when he campaigned up North eschewed talk of racial segregation in favour ranting against 'elites.'"

In an article at the Institute for Research and Education on Human Rights' website, Leonard Zeskind, the organisation's president and author of the recently published "Blood and Politics: The History of White Nationalism from the Margins to the Mainstream", pointed out that the anti-Obama "opposition" contains "many different political elements".

These include "ultra-conservative Republicans of both the Pat Buchanan and free market variety; anti-tax Tea Party libertarians from the Ron Paul camp; Christian right activists intent on re-molding the country into their kind of Kingdom; birth certificate conspiracy theorists, anti-immigrant nativists of the armed Minuteman and the policy wonk variety; third party 'constitutionalists'; and white nationalists of both the citizens councils and the Stormfront national socialist variety."

If Tea Party activists can ferret out racists and white nationalists from their ranks – and not become a mouthpiece for Christian Right ideologues - it could become a legitimate force on the U.S. political landscape.

Meanwhile, a host of groups, operating under assorted Tea Party banners, are working to influence the 2010 mid-term elections.

See more stories tagged with: neo-nazis, racists, tea party, tea partiers, anti-tax

Bill Berkowitz is a freelance writer covering right-wing groups and movements.

Confucius: East-West, good-evil, right-wrong?

Confucius

East-West, good-evil, right-wrong?

Still from “BKK Siam Square, Bangkok 03-12-02, 2002” | courtesy Beat Streuli (www.beatstreuli.com) and Murray Guy, New York

This summer, just three days before he was elected prime minister of Japan, Yukio Hatoyama published an op-ed article in the pages of the New York Times that ruffled more than a few feathers, both at home and abroad. “A New Path for Japan,” a critique of American-style capitalism and its failings and a call for a greater regional integration of Asian nations, was seen by many as a diatribe against the perniciousness of the selfish West and a sentimental, quasi-socialist embrace of the more benign, communally sensitive East. In a way it was.

Voices rose on both sides of the world – even before Hatoyama was officially elected. American commentators decried the weakening or potential collapse of the US-Japan security alliance, a postwar deal rooted in Cold War politics that has largely reduced Japan to a compliant host of American military bases and a reliable supplier of American consumer goods: America’s impotent little brother, or in artist Takashi Murakami’s formulation, a reconfigured “Little Boy” (from the codename of the bomb dropped on Hiroshima). Some were even snarkier, questioning Hatoyama’s fitness for governance and claiming his party would ruin Japan’s economy.

On the Japanese side, officials clamored to suggest that the article was never intended for publication in the Times, claiming the op-ed was a truncated version of a longer essay (true) whose original template was far more nuanced and America-friendly (debatable). At one point, rumors emerged from Tokyo that the article had been published by the newspaper without permission, raising copyright-infringement concerns and the suspicion that it had been leaked by members of the opposition party, whose very America-friendly members were on the verge of losing power for the first time (with one brief exception) in 55 years.

I happened to read the story in New York, where friends and colleagues who had no reason to know the name of Japan’s then prime minister were becoming increasingly aware that the nation was about to undergo an historic electoral and paradigmatic shift. But I found the borderline hysterical reactions on both sides of the world amusing and also intensely revealing. For what Hatoyama seemed to be saying to readers in the West from his soon-to-be-pulpit boiled down to this: We’ve tried your way. We’ve been trying it most strenuously since the end of the war. We’ve seen the good, the bad and the ugly. But things have changed, and it’s time to do it our way now.

The principles of the “our way” Hatoyama outlines wouldn’t surprise anyone familiar with Japanese culture or with the broader tenets sustained in many Asian societies. Cautioning against “the dangers inherent within freedom,” he calls for a return to the Japanese concept of yuai: a sense of love, friendship and brother/sisterhood that binds communities together and gives them a sense of purpose, meaning and security. Contrasting this with the loss of human dignity resulting from an economic system in which “people are simply personnel expenses,” Hatoyama especially focuses on the need to shrink economic disparities and embrace a new era of multipolarity, in which no single nation – pointedly, neither the US nor China – holds all the cards.

Sound familiar? US President and Nobel Peace Prize-winner Barack Obama sounded very similar notes on the campaign trail and in his acceptance speeches: espousing the restoration of dignity to the American worker, the value and virtue of community-building, healthcare for all citizens and respecting all national leaders, be they friend or foe, in a multipolar 21st century world.

I suspect the overblown reaction to Hatoyama’s op-ed – anxieties and accusations in the West, denials and dust-ups in the East – ensued not because of his vision for Japan’s imminent new path, but because he clarified a paradigm shift that is now fully under way. The winds of change are today blowing East to West; the new path is already here.

Permit me, for a moment, to get philosophical about portability – specifically, the Sony Walkman, which celebrated its 30th birthday earlier this summer, exactly two months before Hatoyama’s election.

When the Walkman emerged in the US, massive, multilayer component stereo systems were still de rigueur in America, maximizing the sonic boom in your basement or bedroom, but also standing as a brute physical monument to your tastes and fiscal prowess. Visiting a friend’s home and admiring his chest-high monolith of stereo components was akin to oohing and aahing over the gleaming fins and fenders of his massive American car. The consumer product was an extension of the self, and size, not to mention price tags, definitely mattered.

To be sure, Japanese brand names soon edged in on the heft. Pioneer, Panasonic and, yes, Sony eventually displaced Magnavox and Zenith. But the arrival of the Sony Walkman and its successful penetration of Western markets heralded a new set of priorities. The Walkman didn’t boast of its owner’s wallet or individual acumen. Sleek and small, you didn’t look at it, you listened to it. It sounded, to early users at least, like a million bucks. It was an affordable inconspicuous and unobtrusive portable device. I shared tapes and earphones with numerous pals on school buses and in hallways and locker rooms. I was no longer showing off my equipment or expertise to a single visitor, but building a community through personal contact.

What I only dimly knew then, of course, was that the Walkman was produced by a nation low on national resources, limited in space and keen on reinvention. A nation much like the world we are all living in now.

Ten years ago American journalist T.R. Reid wrote a book called Confucius Lives Next Door, in which he tried to make a compelling argument for the West’s adoption of Asian ways. I read it when it first appeared and thought what many critics wrote: Are you crazy? His itemized lists of Japanese virtues read like a laundry list of American phobias: respect your elders, don’t question authority, do your work obediently, learn to live with adversity, don’t challenge the status quo.

But rereading the book now, ten years after its publication, I realize Reid was on to something, however poorly timed his analysis. We are living in a world of declining expectations and aspirations, so the cliché goes, but only if our goals are based on a dying paradigm. If we are living in a world of real possibility, where egalitarianism can coexist with capitalism, where selfhood doesn’t collide with community, then maybe Asia can show us where we’re going.

Shortly after September 11, 2001, my Japanese mother flew from Boston to Tokyo to visit me. Though her flight was nearly empty, she said she wasn’t worried. Once you’ve lived through relentless B-29 firebombing raids, as she did during World War II, you can bear one day of terror attacks and get on with your plans.

Together we flew to Okayama Prefecture in southwestern Japan to meet one of her cousins for a tour of the island-studded Inland Sea. Her cousin collected us in his new car, which he was clearly very proud of. It was a Toyota (of course), and a bit boxy in design, but it had a sleek dashboard with digital readouts that lucidly registered every atmospheric and automotive tick. The ride was smooth and the seats were comfortable, but every time he braked for a red light, the car’s engine simply stopped. It was entirely silent.

“This is a hybrid vehicle,” he explained, “a mix of electric and gas. It’s called the Prius. It’s the least wasteful car in the world.”

My mother peered back at me over the headrest. “Do you think this could ever be popular in America?”

I didn’t hesitate. “Never,” I said. “It’s too quiet.”

Americans, I believed, stake their claim by being loud, individualistic, even borderline obnoxious. Excess is the point – and is often prized and celebrated. A vehicle with tailored wings or Humvee mass has to purr, hum and roar when it stops and starts at a traffic light. This Prius, whatever its technological assets and environmental soundness, was simply too timid and conscientious for the bright and mighty West.

But that was then. Neither my mother nor her cousin nor I could have anticipated the absurdity and impotence of America’s ongoing “war on terror” and its increasingly Pyrrhic and pathetic invasions of both Afghanistan and Iraq. None of us could have foreseen the economic collapse that has laid bare the rickety assumptions the American mythology of selfhood and selfishness was precariously erected on. And in the days after 9/11 we didn’t yet realize that the West and its romantically errant ways were fast becoming unsustainable: fodder for fools who still think the good life, defined by commerce, is forever.

What’s happening in America and in other Western nations is as simple as it is necessary: We’ve begun looking to Asian models for cues to shape our intertwined futures.

Today the Toyota Prius is one of America’s top-selling cars. Toyota can barely keep pace with American consumer demand, and the Prius comes with lengthy waiting lists. Today China manufactures every bit of clothing you and I own, with the possible exception of an Italian suit or French dress for formal occasions. Sushi is in the supermarket, chopsticks are at the ballpark.

“Asia is undergoing a renaissance,” says Japanese novelist Haruki Murakami, speaking to me in downtown Tokyo about his decision to let a Vietnamese-French director, Tran Anh Hung, film his novel Norwegian Wood. “The entire region has changed because we now have money and power. And we do things differently than the West. It’s a different sense of time, sound and vision. This is a tremendous opportunity for us to be leaders rather than followers.”

Asia is far from perfect, of course. The cronyism, corruption and lack of transparency that have plagued regional politics, for example, need to go. And to varying degrees many Asian societies have incorporated positive values we associate with the West: critical independence, selfhood, entrepreneurship and thoughtful irreverence. But is it time now, a decade after Reid’s book on the virtues of Confucianism, for the West to adopt some good news from the East: community, calm, reverence and egalitarianism? And do we even need the hackneyed binaries of East/West, good/evil, right/wrong, socialism/capitalism, or can we finally proceed without them?

As we move into the next decade of the new century, I propose that we in the West embrace Asia’s successful societies– not as exotic mysteries, but as new potential paradigms. The West has contributed to Japan in spades. There would arguably be no Osamu Tezuka, Hayao Miyazaki or global anime explosion without artists like Walt Disney and Max Fleischer, and probably no Walkman without the advancement of stereophonic sound technologies in Europe and America. Today’s laptops and iPods, cell phones and other mobile devices are better understood as products of Japanamerica: a hybrid source from which we’ve all benefited.

Let’s listen to our neighbors in the East. A culture that prizes quiet contemplation, self-abnegation, community and stability should not threaten us in the West. We can do better if we learn from one another. And with our entire planet threatened by extinction, we need to.

Roland Nozomu Kelts is the author of Japanamerica: How Japanese Pop Culture Has Invaded the US. He is a lecturer at the University of Tokyo, a contributing editor for A Public Space magazine and a columnist for the Daily Yomiuri. His forthcoming novel is called Access.