The Tea Party Constitution Versus the Constitution

The Tea Party Constitution Versus the Constitution

The default position for Tea Party candidates such as Christine O'Donnell in Delaware, Joe Miller in Alaska, Sharon Angle in Nevada, Ken Buck in Colorado and Ron Johnson in Wisconsin is to declare that—if elected—they will follow the dictates of the Constitution.

But that is a campaign slogan, not a serious commitment.

If O'Donnell, Johnson and their Tea'd-Off compatriots were even minimally serious about adhering to the founding document, they would all be thoughtful critics of the undeclared wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, ardent foes of the Patriot Act and steady opponents of free trade deals that remove the authority of Congress to represent and serve the interests of American workers, farmers and communities. But then they would be Russ Feingold, and it goes against the Tea Party narrative—at least as it has been framed by the movement's corporate paymasters and messaging consultants—to regard a progressive Democrat as the most ardent defender of the American experiment.

So it should be understood that O'Donnell, Miller, Angle, Buck, Johnson and the rest of the Tea Partisans who might be senators are not talking about the Constitution as it was written or as the founders intended it. Rather, they are talking about the Constitution as they would like to see it rewritten and reinterpreted—with the help of the most activist Supreme Court in American history. While their intents are radical, their prospects must be seen in light of the fact that Chief Justice John Roberts and his conservative majority have already reinterpreted the First Amendment's free speech protection in a manner that extends the natural rights that the founders reserved for human beings to multinational corporations.

How big a leap would it be to rewrite the amendment's referencing of religion as an invitation to promote an establishment of religion?

That depends on whether you are reading Christine O'Donnell's Constitution or Thomas Jefferson's Constitution.

O'Donnell, the Tea Party favorite who is carrying the Republican banner in this fall's Delaware US Senate contest, found herself debating the First Amendment earlier this month at the Widener University Law School—where the man whose seat she hopes to occupy, Vice President Joe Biden, once taught constitutional law.

Her Democratic opponent, Chris Coons, explained that, while parochial schools can teach creationism, the Constitution makes it clear that "religious doctrine doesn't belong in our public schools."

O'Donnell shot back: "Where in the Constitution is the separation of church and state?"

Coons explained that the First Amendment bars Congress from making laws respecting the establishment of religion.

To which O'Donnell responded: "You're telling me that's in the First Amendment?"

"You actually audibly heard the crowd gasp," Widener University political scientist Wesley Leckrone told the Associated Press.

No surprise there. The law professors and law students in the room recognized that Coons had been referencing the specific language of the First Amendment, which reads: "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances."

Law professors may expect candidates for the US Senate—where Supreme Court nominations are approved or rejected—to have at least a passing familiarity with the Constitution's most famous section,

But expectations with regard to the Constitution go out the window when O'Donnell and her Tea Party cronies comment of the document.

That's because they presume the Constitution outlines an agenda reflective of their own passions—in keeping with the satirical headline in The Onion: "Area Man Passionate Defender Of What He Imagines Constitution To Be"—rather than a set of enlightenment ideals that rejected the divine right of kings, priestly titles and official state religions.

What distinguished the American Constitution and the founding moment was this recognition that individual liberty and the democratic experiment upon which the United States was embarking required freedom of thought and action with regard to religion—a freedom that was preserved and protected by leaders who recognized that they ruled by the will of the people rather than by "divine right."

Today's Tea Party candidates are hardly the only partisans who have hailed the Constitution without actually bothering to consult it—let alone consider expressions from the founders regarding its intents and purposes. But as the O'Donnell incident illustrates, their confusion with regard to the founding document might best be described as unsettling. Wisconsin Senate candidate Johnson, for instance, has fretted during the current campaign about how the Constitution "is not an easy document to read" and complained that he was finding it "hard to study." While Johnson said he thought he was clear on the free speech and right to bear arms parts, he griped that: "There are also things that aren't quite so easy."

But one part is actually very easy, as we have not merely the wording on paper but the clearly expressed original intentions of the founders.

That's the part about keeping government out of the business of establishing or encouraging particular religious ideas or practices.

The United States was not founded as a country that "tolerated" religious diversity. It was founded as a country that embraced that diversity as one of its greatest strengths, welcoming Christians, Jews and Muslims, believers, nonbelievers and skeptics into a polity where, as George Washington explained, "The government… gives to bigotry no sanction, to persecution no assistance."

The US Senate made the founding position explicit and official a decade after the drafting of the Constitution, when the chamber ratified the Treaty of Peace and Friendship between the United States of America and the Bey and Subjects of Tripoli of Barbary, with its declaration that: "As the Government of the United States of America is not, in any sense, founded on the Christian religion; as it has in itself no character of enmity against the laws, religion, or tranquility, of Mussulmen; and, as the said States never entered into any war, or act of hostility against any Mahometan nation, it is declared by the parties, that no pretext arising from religious opinions, shall ever produce an interruption of the harmony existing between the two countries."

Again and again, the principle was explicitly affirmed. The most famous of these affirmations came in 1802, when Thomas Jefferson explained in his letter to the Danbury Baptists that: "Believing with you that religion is a matter which lies solely between man and his God, that he owes account to none other for his faith or his worship, that the legitimate powers of government reach actions only, and not opinions, I contemplate with sovereign reverence that act of the whole American people which declared that their legislature should 'make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof,' thus building a wall of separation between church and state."

While the founders survived, there was no mystery about their "original intent" with regard to that wall of separation between church and state. Indeed, when the greatest of our public services, the post office, was developed, it was determined without serious debate that mail would be delivered seven days a week.

Only in the late 1820s did some Christian groups object. And their complaints were quickly rejected by Congress, which adopted the position—stated by Kentucky Sen. Richard M. Johnson—that: "our government is a civil and not a religious institution."

Many adherents of the Tea Party movement fear that the United States is adrift, floating further and further from the moorings put in place at the republic's founding.

In this, they are probably correct.

America, founded by sons and daughters of the enlightenment, who rejected the notion that there was anything "divine" about the crimes and corruptions done in the name of European monarchs and false piety, has drifted.

Candidates for the highest offices are unfamiliar with or hostile to the basic premises of the republic. And their wrongheaded positions are, increasingly, sustained by justices of a Supreme Court that has tipped the scales of justice against the Constitution itself.

It is true that our founding values are neglected and affronted in these times. But the assault is not coming from members of the House and Senate who vote for unemployment benefits are want to maintain Social Security,

It is coming from politicians like Christine O'Donnell and Ron Johnson, who never took the Constitution seriously—and still don't.

Reprinted as a public service.

Florida Woman Buying Elections in the Northeast

New York and New Hampshire residents probably think they’ve never heard of Parker Collier, but in reality, they see her almost every time they turn on the TV. An investigation by Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) has revealed that Ms. Collier (who lives in Naples, Florida) is the primary donor to a group called “Revere America,” which is spending almost $2.3 million on ads in the two states. The group’s chairman is former New York Governor George Pataki, whose former political strategist Art Finkelstein has been deeply involved in the campaigns of candidates supported by the Colliers, including that of former Republican Senate candidate Bill Binnie during the primary this year.

“It’s unlikely residents in either state have any idea a wealthy Florida resident is trying to impact their votes,” said CREW Executive Director Melanie Sloan. “If Ms. Collier doesn’t like a candidate, let her come out and say it. Creating and hiding behind this shady group is an affront to our democracy, and an insult to voters. Yet thanks to the Supreme Court and the disastrous Citizens United decision, this is the world we live in.”

Citizens United, where a ultra-conservative Supreme Court decided that corporations have the same rights as individuals is already having a disastrous effect on our democracy. Votes have become something to be bought like cheap tube socks made in China. No wonder that Republicans are against campign reform, it would mean they could no longer buy elections. They'd have to have actual ideas and make sound arguments.

Is Sharron Angle Qualified to be a Senator

Sharron Angle Left Far-Right Third Party For Electoral Expedience, Members Say

The key to understanding Nevada Republican Senate candidate Sharron Angle may be the fact that she has not always been a Republican.

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.

Sharron Angle Adds Insult To Injury With New Racially-Tinged Immigration Ad

Last week, I reported that Sharron Angle’s (R) own spokesperson slammed the Nevada senatorial candidate’s vicious immigration ad which fallaciously portrayed opponent Sen. Harry Reid (D-NV) as being the “best friend an illegal alien ever had.” The racial overtones of the ad were so offensive that chairwoman of the Nevada Republican Hispanic Caucus and Angle spokesperson, Tibi Ellis, stated “I condemned this type of propaganda, no matter who is running them, where they blame Mexicans as the only problem and where they attack them as the only source of illegal immigration.”

Ellis may have an even bigger problem with Angle’s latest racially-tinged ad which goes after Reid and his support of undocumented students. The ad includes the offensive footage of menacing men with flashlights walking along a fence that was featured in her first ad. However, it also adds new images of scowling Latino men as the narrator proclaims, “and now Harry Reid is fighting for a program that would give preferred college tuition rates to none other than illegal aliens.” The image is juxtaposed against a photo of white college graduates in their graduation robes. At the end, the narrator asks, “What does Harry Reid have against you?”

Watch it:

The ad appears to be vaguely referencing the Development, Relief and Education for Alien Minors (DREAM) Act which Reid attached to the defense reauthorization bill last month as an amendment. The DREAM Act wouldn’t give undocumented students special tuition rates, but it would eliminate a federal provision that penalizes states that provide in-state tuition without regard to immigration status. Angle’s ad doesn’t mention that it would also allow certain undocumented immigrant youth who were brought to the U.S. by their parents at a young age to eventually obtain legal permanent status by enlisting in the military or attending a university. A June 2010 national poll of 1,008 adults revealed that 70 percent of voters support the DREAM Act, across party lines.

Reid’s campaign released a fact check and a statement on the ad saying, “despicably, Angle’s new ad ramps up her use of incendiary imagery to appeal to Nevadans’ worst fears, while using the exact same thoroughly-debunked lies from her first two ads – lies that independent analysts and fact-checkers have called out as false.”

Angle isn’t the only Republican candidate to employ offensive images that reinforce negative anti-Latino stereotypes. Sen. David Vitter (R-LA) used the same exact photo in one of his own attack ads

Sharron Angle Is Against Abortion In Cases Of Rape Or Incest: It Would Interfere With God’s ‘Plan’

She even took the extreme position that women should not have control over their reproductive rights in cases of rape or incest, because it would interfere with God’s “plan” for them:

Sharron Angle wants to phase out Medicare and Social Security

Nevada Republican U.S. Senate nominee Sharron Angle made many extremist statements during her primary campaign, and some of the most egregious involve her goal to eliminate Social Security and Medicare and privatize those two vital senior safety nets.

During a May 2010 debate on the public affairs show “Face to Face with John Ralston” Angle said, “We need to phase Medicare and Social Security out in favor of something privatized.” She repeated these views around the state.

Now that she must appeal to a much broader and far less extreme electorate than the right-wing Republican base in her race against Sen. Majority Leader Harry Reid (D), Angle has become much less vocal about her plans to eliminate Social Security and Medicare.

Florida's Marko Rubio Is George Bush Jr

Florida's Rubio Is George Bush Jr

On Saturday, Sarah Palin spoke at a GOP Victory Rally in Orlando, Fla. Among the topics she talked about was the “mavericky” nature of GOP Senate candidate Marco Rubio:

Hearing Marco Rubio, you know, I’m thinking, when we consider this revolution, where it’s been proven now, in this last year, that really anything is possible in these campaigns, where Marco Rubio started and kinda taking on the establishment and mavericky, going rogue, you know, doing it. And I look at him and I think, you know, we kinda started a whole bunch of this stuff. So, very very proud and encouraged by Marco.

But a quick persual of Rubio’s agenda for the U.S. Senate shows that he is anything but a maverick. In fact, his agenda very closely aligns with the proposals of his party’s leadership and it is difficult to find any instances where he bucks the national Republican Party.

As ThinkProgress has noted before, Rubio’s economic agenda consists, almost entirely, of cutting taxes — primarily on corporations and the wealthy. He wants to cut the bureaucracy, reallocate the bailout funds, end the stimulus, end earmarks, and pass a constitutional amendment to balance the budget. Rubio proposed requiring federal tax increases to be approved by two-thirds of Congress. He has, in the past, promoted private accounts for Social Security and wants to freeze all discretionary spending in Washington.

He also has advocated repealing at least a portion of health care reform and replacing it with policies such as allowing Americans to buy insurance across state lines. Rubio has derided “judicial activism” and promotes the idea of “securing our borders” as a solution on the issue of undocumented immigration. He also continues to promote deep water oil drilling as a solution to energy concerns, even after the BP oil spill off his state’s Gulf Coast.

Rubio’s agenda is very much in line with the national Republican Party agenda and he seems rarely, if ever, to “go rogue” against the party.

Taxes? They're the lowest they've been in thirty years - which includes the Obama tax cut. So how is Rubio going to pay down the deficit. Health care reform is good for families and small business - why does Rubio want to hurt those two groups. There has been some anti-American conservative judicial activism by the Republicans on the Supreme Court - like the diasaterous Citizens Untied case which has opened the flood gates of secret orgainization and shadowy special interests money. Rubio is just as right-wing and out of touch as his hero George W. Bush.

Study Documents Conservative Corporate Takeover Of Supreme Court

Fox and Dick Morris - Republican corruption and lack of American values

Fox and Dick Morris - Republican corruption and lack of American values

Dick Morris used his position as a Fox News "political analyst" to tout and solicit donations for the Republican-aligned group Americans for New Leadership weeks after they began paying him thousands of dollars. During his appearances, Morris did not disclose that he was receiving money from the group.

To the contrary, Morris appears to have significantly misled Fox News viewers about his financial ties to Republican entities. On Wednesday's O'Reilly Factor, Morris said he is working hard for the Republican Party and then added, "without compensation." Morris did not reference ANL or any of the numerous other Republican entities that have been padding his bank account.

Republicans pay one of the dumbest political pundits in the world to shill for them. OK, no news here. Republicans learned nothing from the Bush-Tom Delay K-Street era of the conservative culture of corruption.

Conservative hack George Will of the Washington Post is the world's worse columnist. Maybe Dick Morris and finds could buy Will some values.

P.J. O’Rourke - a conservative hate monger for hire has been drunk so long he actually thinks he's funny

"Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (Ky.) was a fierce critic of the federal bailout of General Motors and Chrysler last year, saying he could not "ask the American taxpayer to subsidize failure." - But he is happy to take money from GM's new political action committee.

Pennsylvania House GOP candidate Mike Kelly Will Divine the Answers Only if Elected

Pennsylvania House GOP candidate Mike Kelly Will Divine the Answers Only if Elected

During a debate Thursday night, Pennsylvania House GOP candidate Mike Kelly was asked by the moderator to name “specific” cuts he would make to the federal budget. Kelly clearly understood the question, since he repeated the word “specific” in his response no less than 8 times.

But despite mentioning the word “specific,” there was nothing actually specific in Kelly’s response. Eight times Kelly rebuffed his own insistence that he would address the issue “very specifically.” His excuses ran the gamut, from “let me get there and I’ll figure it out” to “I can’t tell you,” and from “the specificity is in the process” to “I’d tear it apart”

[ ]...Of course, Kelly is not alone in his refusal to give specific ways he would cut the federal budget. Just last week, California Senate nominee Carly Fiorina (R) was asked by Chris Wallace seven separate times which expenditures she would cut, only to rebuff the Fox News Sunday host each time. As ThinkProgress has noted, decrying the federal budget deficit while simultaneously offering no specific solutions to reduce it has quickly become a rite of passage for GOP candidates this election.

This might be the new century right-wing conservative version of faith based politics. Kelly, Fiorina, Miller and Angle have no answers - just have faith in them they're figure it out once they start collecting a pay check from tax payers. Its like a kid who says give me the keys to the fighter jet I'll figure out how to fly it once I get in the cockpit.

Rep. Peter DeFazio Investigating Impeachment For Chief Justice John Roberts - Rep. DeFazio probably won't get anywhere but at least he is focusing attention on one of the worse Supreme Court decisions of all time (Citizens United) and the fact it was made by conservatives who - for some weird reason think corporations are people.

Democrats Recoup TARP Bail-out Started By Republicans

When the kool-kid konservatives were running amok, spending like crazy and not collecting revenue they crashed the economy and left the adults -Democrats and Obama with the bill. Well the adults have collected the debt and made money in the process - Wall Street Bailout Returns 8.2% Profit Beating Treasury Bonds

The U.S. government’s bailout of financial firms through the Troubled Asset Relief Program provided taxpayers with higher returns than yields paid on 30- year Treasury bonds -- enough money to fund the Securities and Exchange Commission for the next two decades.

The government has earned $25.2 billion on its investment of $309 billion in banks and insurance companies, an 8.2 percent return over two years, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. That beat U.S. Treasuries, high-yield savings accounts, money- market funds and certificates of deposit. Investing in the stock market or gold would have paid off better.


When the government first announced its intention to plow funds into the nation’s banks in October 2008 to resuscitate the financial system, many expected it to lose hundreds of billions of dollars. Two years later TARP’s bank and insurance investments have made money, and about two-thirds of the funds have been paid back. Yet Democrats are struggling to turn those gains into political capital, and the indirect costs of propping up banks could have longer-term consequences for the economy.

“From the perspective of the taxpayers getting their money back, TARP has been a great success,” said Todd Petzel, chief investment officer at New York-based Offit Capital Advisors LLC, which has more than $5 billion of assets under management.

There are still some unknowns but projections look good for recovering almost all the TARP funds. Obama and Democrats have also lowered the national debt as a percentage of GDP.

Another Millionaire Republican Has The Answer to Our Economic Woes

West Virginia GOP Senate candidate millionaire John Raese Joins The Tenther Chorus Claiming Minimum Wage Is Unconstitutional

In an interview last week with the right-wing Washington Times, West Virginia GOP Senate candidate John Raese doubled-down on his previously expressed opposition to the minimum wage, falsely claiming that the law is unconstitutional:

Mr. Raese, chief executive officer of Morgantown-based Greer Industries, which runs interests as diverse as mining and broadcasting, has taken fire for saying he would abolish the minimum wage. But he has refused to back down, saying it’s not only bad policy, but it’s not constitutional.

“I don’t think it is. And the reason I don’t think it is, is the same reason the [National Recovery Administration] was not constitutional in 1936,” he said. “It was declared unconstitutional because it was government micromanaging an intervention into the private sector. Well, what are price controls, or what are wage controls? They’re the same thing.”

It’s difficult to count the errors in Raese’s reading of the Constitution. The Constitution gives Congress the power “[t]o regulate commerce…among the several states,” a power which even ultraconservative Justice Antonin Scalia agrees gives Congress broad authority to regulate “economic activity.” And the Supreme Court unanimously upheld the first federal minimum wage law in a 1941 decision called United States v. Darby.

Moreover, the decision striking down the National Recovery Administration (NRA), A. L. A. Schechter Poultry Corp. v. United States, did not ban laws that “micromanage” the private sector, as Raese suggests. The principal reason why the law authorizing the NRA was struck down is because it gave the President nearly limitless power to approve “codes of fair competition” governing businesses without first seeking congressional approval. A.L.A. Schechter stands for the very banal proposition that Congress cannot delegate its entire legislative power to one man.

Additionally, A.L.A. Schechter was also the last gasp of a narrow “tenther” view of congressional power that would not only eliminate the federal minimum wage, but which would also lead to child labor laws and the federal ban on whites-only lunch counters being declared unconstitutional. So when Raese claims that the minimum wage is unconstitutional, or when Rand Paul suggests that Congress lacks the authority to ban whites-only lunch counters, or when Joe “A Noun, A Verb and Unconstitutional” Miller claims that federal child labor laws violate the Constitution, they are all really calling for the same thing — a return to a discredited era where the most basic laws protecting workers, consumers and other ordinary Americans were completely forbidden.

It might be coincidental that champions of this wired interpretation of the 10th Amendment also basically support the institution of slavery. Why pay anyone a wage or a living wage - after all wouldn't that mean business would - at least n the short term rake in the profits. John Raese once said he earned his money the old fashioned way - he inherited it. No wonder he is so out of touch with average Americans.

Bankers Broke The Economy And Got Rich Doing It

Today’s absurd William Cohan column actually argues that we don’t need consumer protections in banking—nevermind the subprime explosion, the $8 trillion dollar housing bubble or the 1.2 million foreclosures expected this year. Nevermind the $38 billion in overdraft fees the banking industry reaped in 2009, or the ridiculous fine-print on credit cards. Nope, in William Cohan’s crazy world, the mortgage crisis was basically a problem caused by idiot consumers who—according to Cohan-- don’t even deserve basic legal protections.

Cohan makes only two real points in his column, both of them profoundly stupid. The silliest objection is his obviously disingenuous sticker-shock at the $500-million-a-year budget the new Consumer Financial Protection Bureau will have:

“In an era of huge budget deficits and a depleted treasury, that’s a lot of money for taxpayers to fork over every year to support a new government bureaucracy designed to protect us from our own worst impulses.”

Nobody who knows anything about budgets could be appalled by this number. Even by the standards of government bureaucracy, the CFPB’s funding is paltry. It’s only 10% of the Fed’s annual budget, and about half of the SEC’s. Eliminating or quintupling the CFPB’s funding would be totally insignificant to the overall federal budget. But even if this number did matter, Cohan’s analysis is preposterously short-sighted.

Employing a police force seems like a waste of taxpayer dollars until you get robbed, and so it is with financial regulation. Right now the U.S. economy struggling through a horrible recession, which has included significant government expenditures to bailout Wall Street and keep the job market afloat. All of this was caused by a predatory lending binge financed and implemented by Wall Street. Decent consumer protections would have prevented the housing bubble from getting totally out of control, and would have prevented Wall Street from destroying itself. If it costs us $500 million a year to save 8 million jobs, $8 trillion in household wealth, and $4 trillion in bailout money, that seems like a pretty good deal to me.

This budgetary argument holds no matter who is responsible for the mortgage crisis, be they banks or borrowers, predatory or pristine. But Cohan doubles down on his idiocy, saying that actually, borrowers don’t deserve to be protected from predatory banks.

Like virtually every senseless diatribe against the CFPB written over the past two years, this attack isn’t directed against the CFPB itself, but against the very idea of consumer protection—something that has been a common-sense element of bank regulation for centuries. Things got off track over the past thirty years (with accelerating aggressiveness during the Bush years) as bank regulators simply stopped enforcing consumer protection laws.

The CFPB does not create some wild new standard of regulation—it’s just an effort to ensure that somebody actually enforces the basic consumer protection mandate that existing regulators have ignored. The existing regulators failed, because they’re more worried about short-term bank profitability—the more money a bank makes, the less likely it is to fail, and the less likely that the regulator will be embarrassed by a disastrous bank failure. To existing agencies, it doesn’t matter where that profitability comes from—if it’s from predatory lending, they’ll just look the other way. The CFPB breaks this perverse incentive structure by establishing an agency that only works with consumer protection issues—not bank profitability.

Cohan waits until the final paragraph of his column to deliver the “evidence” for why we don’t need a CFPB, and he gets it completely, horribly wrong.

“Yes, some people who have lost their homes were victims of fraudulent mortgage brokers and shady lenders. But the vast majority of those who held the billions of dollars in mortgages now foreclosed on knew exactly what they were doing. And one of the dirty little secrets of the financial crisis is that one homeowner after another signed mortgage-loan documents that were filled with inaccurate information about his or her net worth, assets, salaries and ability to make monthly mortgage payments. Why would someone sign a loan document knowing full well the information on it was inaccurate and the mortgage could never be repaid?”

The only real statistic on mortgage fraud comes from the FBI, and it doesn’t back up Cohan’s claims at all. As early as 2004, the FBI was warning about an “epidemic” in mortgage fraud—not a few bad apples, not “some people,” but an epidemic . We know that mortgage fraud was standard operating procedure at Washington Mutual, now part of JPMorgan Chase, and they weren’t alone—for five years, rampantfraud was a basic component of the U.S. mortgage machine. And according to the FBI, 80 percent—repeat, 80 percent—of this fraud was perpetrated by the lender.

So, let’s answer Cohan’s question. Why would people knowingly set themselves up for foreclosure? They wouldn’t! The key incentives for fraud and deception do not apply to rational borrowers who want to live in their homes. They apply to lenders, who were being paid very well to push borrowers into unaffordable mortgages. Bankers and brokers were paid kickbacks to steer borrowers into subprime loans, when those same borrowers would have qualified for ordinary mortgages. With heavy demand for mortgage-backed securities on Wall Street, banks knew they could issue garbage loans and stick other investors with the tab—so they did. The list of lenders who pawned their crappy loans off onto other people includes many of the biggest names in finance: Wells Fargo, Wachovia, Citigroup Bank of America, Countrywide, Washington Mutual and more. Banks stood to make a lot of money from fraud. Borrowers, by contrast, could count on foreclosure. Who do you think is going to falsify the income on loan applications?

Sure, there were borrowers who tried to game the system. But the story of mortgage fraud in the housing bubble is overwhelmingly a story of malpractice by bonus-crazed bankers, not borrowers. We need Elizabeth Warren and the CFPB to protect our economy from such abuses. This is a question of basic law enforcement, something Cohan apparently believes

The Pledge of Sane Americans Against the Republican Pledge

The Pledge of Sane Americans Against the Republican Pledge

I pledge that I will actually read the Constitution before pledging to uphold it. And I pledge that if I am too stupid to understand its intent, I won’t become a politician.

I pledge not to start two wars, give tax breaks to millionaires, ruin the economy and then get mad when someone shows me the bill.

I pledge not to be a hypocrite or a Tea Party Republican---whichever comes first.

I pledge to remember that religious freedoms apply to all religions including the lack of a religion. And I pledge to remember that no matter how much I believe in my religion, I will remember that my neighbor believes in his religion just as much. And finally, I pledge that if I believe in my religion too much I will keep it to myself. [...]

I pledge that I won’t hate gay people in public and then sleep with them in private.

I pledge to accept the fact that John McCain really can’t pull his head out of his ass at this point. It’s in too deep. [...]

And Margaret, my dear, I pledge that I will vote on November 2. I meant it. Really.

The Republican pledge swears to double down on the trickle down voodoo economics that made the poor poorer and the middle-class lose ground - Robbing the Middle Class: Republican 'Pledge' Lets Wall Street off the Hook

As my CAF colleague Richad Eskow has noted, this Pact to Rob The Middle Class has plenty of other problems -- but fundamentally, it's supposed to be a discussion about government spending and the federal budget deficit. For anyone to even pretend to discuss those issues without mentioning the past decade's Wall Street excess is simply laughable. The increases in government spending under President Barack Obama have been an attempt to counter economic damage wreaked by Wall Street under President George W. Bush. They haven't been enough, but they've helped -- just ask economist Mark Zandi, former adviser to Sen. John McCain's presidential campaign .

But after watching a deregulated Wall Street pump out trillions of dollars worth of ridiculous predatory mortgages and then amplify their bets tenfold in the unregulated derivatives market, Republicans now promise to hold up any new government regulation that "costs" the economy more than $100 million.

The Destructive Con Job of the Modern GOP

If the Republicans take back the House and (in a Democratic doomsday scenario) the Senate, history will show that it was because of one of the great con jobs ever played in politics. For what is the current political zeitgeist but the result of one long game of three-card monte played for the rubes who actually think they'll know where the queen is? The con is this: Republicans and their media allies have convinced too many voters that Democrats have either accomplished nothing or have only accomplished things that will hurt them. They have done so despite the facts that: 1. a great deal has been accomplished; 2. what hasn't been accomplished is due almost entirely to Republican obstructionism; and 3. what's been passed has been watered down in order to appease Republicans and some of the asshole Democrats. The greatest part of it? That the GOP's refusal to govern is them standing up for "American" values, which, if you think about it, is about right.

In other words, Republicans use extremist tactics and extremist rhetoric (for, truly, there's not a single thing passed in this Congress that even approaches "socialism"), and, if those fail, they lie outright. And in doing so, they make their mostly reasonable, way-too acquiescent opponents seem like despicable fuckbags who want America to become part Mexico/part Sharialand. That's an awesome con job: shutdown the functioning of part of the government through procedural chicanery that most people won't give a damn about (A hold? What the fuck is that? We don't have time for civics classes anymore) and blame the majority, which is easy to understand: "Oh, Democrats in power. Democrats must naturally suck."

The frustrating part is that, even if polls now show some tightening in races, it's worked. The con job has been successful. The ultimate plan of the GOP is to make governing in DC so impossible, so untenable, that it ceases to function except on the limited terms of a savage conservatism. And we're making it possible. The whiplash-inducing fickleness of the American electorate is part and parcel of a people who are deluded with their sense of individual self-worth and entitlement. Those who bitch about President Obama's lack of bipartisanship are idiots. Obama gave the Republicans a Marshall Plan of political cover after their devastation in 2008. And, like Germany before it, they used it to grow powerful again.

The polls seem fickle at best or maybe the public is ready to return to the economic and foreign policy debacles of the Republican Congress of the Bush era. Where we had uncontrolled spending, tax cuts for the wealthy, one war created to benefit the Republican party and another war that was screwed up so Republicans could get us into the one that made no sense. We can look forward to Republicans repealing health care for children, seniors and the disabled. We can look forward to government run by nut cases like Sharron Angle(R-NV) and criminals like Mark Rubio(R-Fl).

Like Her Hero Dick Cheney, Sharron Angle is a Pathological Liar

In the Sen. Reid versus crazy Sharron Angle debate the media has decided Angle won. All of Angle's answers were either lies, distortions or avoidance of having any concrete solutions to the problems she was asked about. Angle has a long history of lies, highly inflammatory rhetoric, distortions and radical views,

In response to her pastor’s hateful remarks attacking the Mormon Church as a “cult,” Angle says she hasn’t been a member for six years; it’s been less than one

LAS VEGAS – Sharron Angle continues to refuse to step up and explain her relationship with a former spiritual advisor whose controversial remarks are making national news. In a bombshell interview first published this morning in the Reno News & Review, Angle’s former long-time pastor, John Reed, launched a bigoted attack against The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, of which Sen. Reid is a member.

Despite the hateful religious bigotry involved, Angle wouldn’t address her relationship with her former spiritual advisor for the original story, and only after the ensuing media firestorm erupted did her spokesman issue a brief statement. In it, he claimed that Angle had not been a member of Sonrise church for six years.

“Sharron has not been a member of this other church for over six years, and her former pastor in no way speaks for Sharron.”

But according to the AP, that is a complete and total lie:

But Reed said Angle sang in a contemporary Christian band and taught Sunday school for more than a decade at his Reno church until her husband urged her to switch to a different house of worship earlier this year where he could hold a more prominent volunteer position. “She asked if she could come back and visit,” Reed said. “She was very sad to leave us.”

That’s right – Sharron Angle’s “pathological” inclination to offer bald-faced lies to the media and the voters of Nevada is so extreme that she lied about church.

“This hateful rhetoric from Sharron Angle’s former spiritual advisor is so serious that she owes the people of Nevada a personal explanation, especially since she didn’t think it serious enough to address until it became a national media frenzy,” said Reid campaign spokesman Kelly Steele. “Sharron Angle says she wants an informed electorate, and whether it's her relationship with her hateful former spiritual advisor, the national scandal surrounding her botched influence-peddling scheme with Tea Party candidate Scott Ashjian, or her extremely callous comments mocking 'autism' coverage, it's time for Sharron Angle to stop hiding behind her handlers and step up and explain herself.”

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Sharron Angle Wants To Privatize Social Security Like Chile

Republican U.S. Senate hopeful Sharron Angle says the nation's Social Security system needs to be privatized, and she says it was done before in Chile.CBS affiliate 8 News Now reports on what the Tea Party-backed hopeful had to say on the matter in an interview on Thursday:

...Angle's new ads say she's out to save Social Security by protecting it from government raids.
But in the primary, she said that Medicare and Social Security needed to be phased out in favor of something privatized, saying, that it can't be fixed. 8 News NOW asked how is that not a flip flop.

"It is when we have a $2.5 trillion raid and pillaging going on and an empty trust fund and now we are upside down. As of last Friday, they said, (there was a) $41 billion shortfall in Social Security. $41 billion less going in than coming out. It's broken," she said.

Angle then referred to 1980s Chile -- then under a military dictatorship -- to explain her previous statements that the United States should phase out its current system.

"When I said privatize, that's what I meant," explained the Senate contender. "That I thought we would just have to go to the private sector for a template on how this is supposed to be done. However, I've since been studying and Chile has done this."

However, the pension system established in 1981 by right-wing Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet is no longer a fully private system. Chile's system was revamped in 2008 to expand public pensions for groups left out of its system, including low-income seniors.

There are lots of reasons why, in the real world, a privatized system doesn't work.

For the first ten years, while Chile had high inflation, their investment funds did well, since about half was invested in government bonds that were indexed to inflation. But once the economy cooled down, returns fell and they now pay little in return.

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Angle’s proposal to privatize the VA would end the system as we know it, completely abandon tried-and-true system veterans depend on for prescriptions, doctor’s visits

LAS VEGAS – The Reid campaign today released a new TV ad highlighting Sharron Angle’s extreme and dangerous agenda for Nevada’s veterans—ending the Veteran’s Administration as we know it with her risky scheme to privatize the system. Despite the best efforts of Angle’s new DC handlers to completely repackage her, Angle has consistently declined the chance to walk back her extreme position that would ultimately hurt Nevada’s vets and jeopardize their access to quality care.

That’s not an exaggeration. In Sharron Angle’s Nevada, when veterans returned home after risking their lives to defend our freedoms, their guaranteed right to have quality government treatment for injuries, illnesses, and prescription drug costs would no longer be guaranteed – it would be put into the hands of the private sector. The same private sector that Angle believes should have no basic coverage requirements and should be allowed to exclude anyone they want based on pre-existing conditions.

When asked point blank asked if things like prescription drugs and doctor’s visits should be covered by the VA, Angle callously answered:

“No, not if you’re moving towards a privatized system.”

When pressed later in the conversation on specifics, Angle demurred when asked if eliminating VA coverage would simply leave veterans out in the cold, saying that was something the President or other members of Congress could figure out.

WATCH THE NEW TV AD HERE: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Q2fdBLRKP8

“Given Sharron Angle’s extreme and dangerous agenda to eliminate Social Security and Medicare entirely, it’s no surprise that she would also leave Nevada’s veterans out in the cold by ending their access to guaranteed government health care for the service they’ve provided to our country,” said Reid campaign spokesman Kelly Steele. “By proposing privatization of the Veterans Administration, Sharron Angle has once again put her extreme and dangerous agenda above the needs of ordinary Nevadans – this time callously ignoring the sacrifice and service of our nation’s veterans, both here in Nevada and throughout our nation.”

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The Las Vegas Review Journal is basically a Republican newspaper. Last October after an interview with Sharron Angle they reported that she believes in phasing Medicare out. “As for Medicare, she (Angle) said the entitlement program popular with seniors will eventually grow too costly to maintain… ‘We need to phase it out,’ she said.” Rand Paul went even further. A Courier-Journal review of Paul’s prior statements found he had compared Medicare to Soviet socialism. “Advancing his belief that health care prices should be set by the marketplace, Paul also has attacked having government set Medicare reimbursements for doctors. The fundamental reason why Medicare is failing is why the Soviet Union failed-- socialism doesn't work," Paul said on Kentucky Tonight on June 16, 1998. "You have ... no price fluctuation.” (Interestingly more than half of Rand Paul's income-- he's an uncertified eye doctor-- comes from Medicare.)

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Sharron Angle: Rape, Incest Part of God's Plan -- Opposes Abortion No Matter What
The Nevada GOP nominee for Senate thinks abortion should not be allowed even in cases of rape and incest.

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Sharron Angle And Her Husband Receive Government Health Care

Throughout her campaign for U.S. Senate in Nevada, GOP candidate and tea party favorite Sharron Angle has railed against government intervention in just about everything. Angle said she wants to “personalize” Social Security, and she even went so far as to suggest the possibility of an armed insurrection against the U.S. government to protect “against a tyrannical government.” Part of Angle’s anti-government philosophy has also included health care. She wants to repeal the new health care law and recently attacked mandating coverage for autism and maternity leave. She even suggested that Medicare and VA coverage work “towards a privatized system.” But Politico notes today that Angle this week admitted that both she and her husband benefit from government subsidized health care:

Angle’s campaign acknowledged to Nevada journalist Jon Ralston Monday that both the candidate and her husband receive health care from the federal government. Spokeswoman Ciara Matthews said in a statement: “Mr. Ted Angle receives his pension through the (federal) Civil Service Retirement System. While it is not supplemented by the federal government, current civil servants pay into the program to pay the schedule of those already retired – much like how the Social Security Program works today. Mr. Angle does not qualify – nor does he receive Social Security benefits. His health insurance plan (the Federal Employee Health Program), which also covers Sharron, is a continuation of what he was receiving while he worked for the federal government.”

If Obama and Pelosi Are Socialists They Are Doing a Horrible Job

Campaign finance reform: R.I.P?

For four decades, advocates for stricter campaign finance rules have been on a long, slow march to make big money in politics less important and more transparent.

Now, in 2010, they are seeing the results: Never in modern political history has there been so much secret money gushing into an American election.

By Election Day, independent groups will have aired more than $200 million worth of campaign ads using cash that can’t be traced back to its original source, predicts Fred Wertheimer, president of the non-profit group Democracy 21.

“And this is just the beginning,” Wertheimer said. “Unless we get some changes here to mitigate this problem, I would expect we will see $500 million or more in 2012.”

For Wertheimer, and the other lobbyists, lawyers and academics who push for tougher campaign cash restrictions and often refer to themselves as “the reform community,” this year’s election is not merely a disappointment.

There have been plenty of those in the years since their movement took off amid the abuses of the Nixon era. But always in the past reformers have been able to keep faith that, whatever setbacks they faced, their cause was on a gradual path to victory.

This year feels more like a repudiation of their lives’ work. And it has raised two basic questions that strike at the very core of the ethos of the campaign-finance reform effort: Can the flow of money into elections be limited if the courts have deemed political giving and spending a First Amendment right? Can any system of rules to make money more transparent ever keep up with the legal devices that powerful interests use to keep their influence hidden?

“This is a low point for the campaign finance reform movement – I’ve never seen it lower,” said Craig Holman, a leading campaign finance lobbyist for Public Citizen, a non-profit group that has played a role in most major legal and legislative fights on the issue since the Watergate scandal of the mid-1970s.

“We’re not faring well today. At this point, we’re looking to monitor the level of chaos and scandal that is going to happen in the 2010 general election to try to bring life back into the reform movement going into 2012.”

For their antagonists, conservatives such as columnist George Will who have long derided campaign finance restrictions as unnecessary meddling in the political process, it’s a heady time in which their side is winning the day in the courts, regulatory agencies and even Congress.

“It’s no secret that the reformers are on the run – they’ve gotten pounded in the courts and also have not been very successful legislatively,” said Brad Smith, chairman of the Center for Competitive Politics, a non-profit that opposes many campaign regulations and that has had a hand in several recent important court cases striking down such rules.

Only a decade ago, the campaign finance movement achieved one of its greatest victories: the 2002 Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act, which reformers saw as a foundation they would build upon in the years ahead.

The act, which came to be known as McCain-Feingold for its Senate sponsors, Republican John McCain of Arizona and Democrat Russ Feingold of Wisconsin, was the most sweeping overhaul of campaign finance rules since a suite of reforms enacted after Watergate.

McCain-Feingold prohibited national party committees from accepting huge so-called soft money donations, set new rules barring coordination of big-money advertising campaigns between candidates and outside groups, enacted a so-called “millionaire’s amendment” granting special fund-raising privileges to candidates running against self-funders, and barred corporations and unions from airing hard-hitting issue-based ads known as electioneering communications in close proximity to Election Day.

The law – and major pieces of the precedent upon which it was based – is now in shambles, with reformers left clinging to its last remaining major pillar, the ban on soft money, which was upheld by a lower court this year but is expected to be the subject of future challenges.

The electioneering communication provision and millionaire’s amendment have been wiped away by a Supreme Court that became reliably skeptical of campaign finance regulation with former President George W. Bush’s appointments of John Roberts and Samuel Alito to the court.

America has or had a choice between government by and for the people grounded in funding by the people. Conservatives spent billions to change that to the government bought and paid for by special interests. Expect more of the same as the mid-term elections in 2010 usher even more bought and paid for Republicans into Congress. Wall Street to Spend $144 Billion in Pay and Bonuses — Record High and

Some tragic comedy reading - Neocon Like Me: How I Spent A Year In Iraq Teaching With The Bush-Cheney Crazies

Republicans Claim Wall St the Victim

I could have added one more group to blame for the failures of conservatism and Republicans - working class Americans. That's right, Republicans want America to believe Wall St financiers who used exotic derivative trades and encouraged the leading of toxic loans( which they tried to cover up) was all the fault of arm twisting working class Americans: Conservatives Push Absurd Lie that Wall Street Hustlers Were Innocent Victims ... of Poor People

..excerpt from senior writer Joshua Holland's new book, The Fifteen Biggest Lies about the Economy (And Everything Else the Right Doesn't Want You to Know about Taxes, Jobs, and Corporate America).

Perhaps the most pernicious right-wing lie of late is that the Wall Street hustlers who came close to bringing the global economy to its knees in 2008 were just innocent victims of government-sponsored programs that forced them to lower lending standards in a misguided effort to increase home ownership among the poor (read: dark-skinned).

It’s an alluring story line for those who are ideologically predisposed to blame “inner city” people instead of MBAs in suits roaming the executive suite. It’s also patent nonsense—a Big Lie that has nonetheless become an object of almost religious belief for some on the Right.

Jeb Hensarling, a notably obtuse Republican back-bencher from Texas, wrote that “the conservative case is simple”:

The [Community Reinvestment Act] compelled banks to relax their traditional underwriting practices in favor of more “flexible” criteria. These subjective standards were then applied to all borrowers, not just low-income individuals, leading to a surge in lower-quality loans. . . . Blame should [also be] directed at Fannie [Mae] and Freddie [Mac], and their thirst for weaker underwriting to help meet their federally mandated “affordable housing” goals. . . . This distortion has had seismic consequences as market participants, wrongly believing GSE-touched loans were sanctioned by the government and therefore safe, began to rely on a government mandate as a substitute for their own due diligence.

This tale has everything a conservative could want—Big Government overreach, well-intentioned but out-of-touch liberals causing devastating unanticipated consequences with their social tinkering, and even their favorite bogeyman, ACORN, and other low-income housing advocates that have pushed for increased home-ownership among the poor.

The narrative gained steam with an influential op-ed in the Wall Street Journal by Peter Wallison, a fellow with the American Enterprise Institute (who, according to his bio, “had a significant role in the development of the Reagan administration’s proposals for the deregulation of the financial services industry”). Wallison found that “Almost two-thirds of all the bad mortgages in our financial system, many of which are now defaulting at unprecedented rates, were bought by government agencies or required by government regulations.”

The data shows that the principal buyers were insured banks, government sponsored enterprises (GSEs) such as Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, and the FHA—all government agencies or private companies forced to comply with government mandates about mortgage lending.

The sleight-of-hand here is pretty straightforward. The U.S. government regulates lenders and provides deposit insurance to banks, which means that a large chunk of all home loans—good, bad, and in between—have some connection to a government program. It’s like saying that the government is responsible for pollution because the EPA regulates industrial emissions.

Yet no bank has ever been “forced to comply with government mandates about mortgage lending.” There are no “government mandates,” and there never were. In order to qualify for government-backed deposit insurance—a benefit that banks aren’t forced to accept but enjoy having—the Community Reinvestment Act and similar measures designed to prevent discrimination in lending (to qualified individuals) only encourage banks to lend in all of the areas where they do business. And Section 802 (b) of the Act stresses that all loans must be “consistent with safe and sound operations”—it’s the opposite of requiring that lenders write risky mortgages.

There are no penalties for noncompliance with CRA guidelines. The only “stick” hanging over banks that fail to meet those standards is that their refusal might be taken into account by regulators when they want to open new branches or merge with other financial institutions. What’s more, there are no defined standards for CRA compliance, and within the banking community, the loose guidelines are considered to be somewhat of a joke.

As Sheila Blair, the chairwoman of the FDIC, asked in a December 2008 speech, “Where in the CRA does it say: make loans to people who can’t afford to repay? Nowhere! And the fact is, the lending practices that are causing problems today were driven by a desire for market share and revenue growth . . . pure and simple.”

Fannie and Freddie: Tempted by Easy Profits

Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were created by an act of Congress, but they are (or were, until being taken over in the wake of the housing crash) private, for-profit entities whose dual mandate was to increase the availability of mortgages to moderate- and low-income families, and at the same time turn a profit for their shareholders. Fannie and Freddie did end up with a very large portfolio of subprime loans, with a high rate of default, but they didn’t get into the market because the government mandated it. They dived in deep because there were profits to be made as the housing bubble expanded. As Mary Kane, a finance reporter for the Washington Independent, put it:

Neither the Community Reinvestment Act—the law most cited as the culprit—nor other affordable housing goals set by the government forced Fannie, Freddie or any other lender to make loans they didn’t want to. The lure of the subprime market was high yields and healthy profit margins—it’s as simple as that.

Contrary to the conservative spin, University of Michigan law professor Michael Barr told a congressional committee that although there was in fact quite a bit of irresponsible lending in low-income communities in the late 1990s and the early 2000s, “More than half of subprime loans were made by independent mortgage companies not subject to comprehensive federal supervision; another 30 percent of such originations were made by affiliates of banks or thrifts, which are not subject to routine examination or supervision, and the remaining 20 percent were made by banks and thrifts [subject to CRA standards].” Barr concluded, “The worst and most widespread abuses occurred in the institutions with the least federal oversight [italics added].”

That’s not to say that millions of Americans didn’t bite off more than they would eventually be able to chew in the housing market. A lot of people looking to turn a quick buck by capturing the booming value of real estate in the mid- to late 2000s bought property with “teaser” loans that offered very low rates for the first few years; the investors assumed that they’d be able to turn a tidy profit before higher interest rates kicked in. Many of those individuals have since found themselves “under water”—owing more on their homes (and investment properties) than they’re worth.

Yet it’s worth noting that most of the experts also didn’t identify the real estate bubble as a problem, even as home prices far surpassed values that could be reasonably explained by the laws of supply and demand. Irrational exuberance was the theme of the day. In 2006, David Learah, the former head of the National Association of Realtors, wrote a book titled Why the Real Estate Boom Will Not Bust—And How You Can Profit from It: How to Build Wealth in Today’s Expanding Real Estate Market. The book made quite a splash at the time.

In 2010, former Fed chairman Alan Greenspan offered a bit of historical revisionism to a House committee investigating the causes of the financial crisis, telling lawmakers, “In 2002, I expressed concern . . . that our extraordinary housing boom, financed by very large increases in mortgage debt, cannot continue indefinitely. . . . I warned of the consequences of this situation in testimony before the Senate Banking Committee in 2004.”

Writing in the Washington Post, Dana Milbank offered a corrective with some of the highlights of Greenspan’s congressional testimony at the peak of the housing bubble. In 2005, Greenspan told lawmakers, “A bubble in home prices for the nation as a whole does not appear likely.” He added, “Home price declines . . . were they to occur, likely would not have substantial macroeconomic implications,” and explained that “nationwide banking and widespread securitization of mortgages make it less likely that financial intermediation would be impaired.”

In English, that last bit meant “Banks won’t get into serious trouble even if things do go to hell,” and we know how well that prediction turned out. If Greenspan could be so wrong and the smart people at the Washington Post and the New York Times couldn’t see this huge, dangerously inflated housing bubble, how was your average couple trying to get a place to live or the small investor looking for a few bucks in rental income supposed to make a rational decision about how much debt to take on? That’s not a defense of individuals who got in over their heads; it’s simply an important bit of context.

The narrative that the real estate crash and the subsequent recession were the fault of borrowers, especially poor and middle-income borrowers—while members of the financial community were innocent victims—is not only revisionism of the worst kind, but it’s an especially egregious lie.

The obvious sin of this claim is that it shifts responsibility for the mess away from those who created it, but what makes it even more disgraceful is that conservatives have long argued that efforts to increase home ownership among low-income families and communities of color was the “free market” thing to do (and have, to some degree, negated the need for a decent social safety net). It was George W. Bush, not Vladimir Lenin, who said in a 2002 speech, “We have a problem here in America . . . a homeownership gap,” and said, “we’ve got to work together to close [the gap] for the good of our country.” This was standard American Enterprise Institute–quality conservative fare.

Blaming individuals is easy—it’s not hard to understand how people could borrow a bunch of cash they were later unable to pay back. The real cause of the housing crash is, of course, a far more complicated tale. And it’s a story that ultimately represents the abject failure of conservative economic mythology.

Career wing-nut welfare queen Newt Gingrich can't do basic math - Sorry, Newt: Democrats are the Party of Paychecks

In his latest effort to rebrand both the Republican and Democratic parties, former House Speaker Newt Gingrich has also rewritten history. Labeling his GOP "the party of paychecks" and Democrats "the party of food stamps" in advance of his upcoming campaign swing, Gingrich declared "we have historically since Ronald Reagan of 1980 been the party of job creation." Sadly for Newt's mythmaking, the historical record clearly states otherwise. From job creation and expanding incomes to GDP growth, stock market performance and almost any other measure of success, the economy almost always does better under Democrats.

Lots of figures and statistic at the link. Newt and his sycophant followers need not bother, what with all the information and fancy numbers to understand.

New York Times runs softball profile of Pamela Geller - In the Times' telling, the bigoted anti-Islam activist is merely a "provocateur" and Washington outsider. Geller and her anti-American insanity not only got a boost in this profile, but the nut jobs and weirdo bloggers who associate with her do also.

Republicans Talk Deficit But Ignore Where Cuts Can Be Made

Republicans Talk Deficit But Ignore Where Cuts Can Be Made

Establishment conservatives love to talk about the need to cut government spending, but they always seem to find an excuse whenever there is a serious effort to actually do it. Last year, for example, they opposed cutting Medicare as part of health care reform. Now they are banding together to stop cuts in defense spending, which is a fifth of the federal budget, even as they also insist that the deficit is our most critical problem.

This hypocrisy was on full display on Oct. 4, as American Enterprise Institute president Arthur Brooks, Heritage Foundation president Ed Feulner, and Weekly Standard editor Bill Kristol penned a joint op-ed for the right-wing Wall Street Journal editorial page on why the defense budget should be totally off limits to budget cutters.

First, they claim the military is not the “true source of our fiscal woes.” No one is saying the defense budget is the sole source of the deficit, but the fact is that it has risen from 3 percent of the gross domestic product in fiscal year 2001 to 4.7 percent this year. That additional 1.7 percent of GDP amounts to $250 billion in spending — almost 20 percent of this year’s budget deficit. And according to a recent Congressional Research Service report, the cost of wars in Iraq and Afghanistan alone accounted for 23 percent of the combined budget deficits between fiscal years 2003 and 2010.

Brooks, Feulner and Kristol then claim that “terrorism and piracy in sea lanes around the world,” potential future threats from a “nuclear Iran” or a China “that can deny access to U.S. ships or aircraft in the Asian-Pacific region” justify a defense budget only slightly smaller as a share of GDP than at the height of the Cold War, when the Soviet Union had thousands of nuclear missiles targeted directly at the United States.

Tufts University foreign policy expert Daniel Drezner was underwhelmed by the argument. “Terrorism and piracy are certainly security concerns — but they don’t compare to the Cold War,” he said. “A nuclear Iran is a major regional headache, but it’s not the Cold War. A generation from now, maybe China poses as serious threat as the Cold War Soviet Union. Maybe. That’s a generation away, however.”

American University defense expert Gordon Adams was equally unimpressed by the trio’s rationalization:

It is little more than a façade to justify growing defense budgets as far as the eye can see, affordable or not. First, we are leaving Iraq as we speak and will be drawing down in Afghanistan starting next year… [which] frees up a considerable amount of military personnel. Second, anyone who thinks terrorists and pirates justify a $700 billion defense budget and a 2-million-person force (actives and reserves) has clearly drunk way too much Kool-Aid. These missions are important, but they do not drive anywhere near that number of forces. Third, …The U.S. has ample sea and air power to cope for decades with a rising China, whose economic pursuits pose a much more significant problem for the U.S. than their military pursuits.

The fact of the matter is that China spends half the share of its GDP on defense as the U.S. — less than $100 billion last year, according to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, the primary source for internationally comparable data on military expenditures. That’s less than 15 percent of what we spent. According to SIPRI, the military budgets of every nation on earth other than the U.S added together would only come to 46 percent of the total. In other words, the U.S. defense budget is 54 percent of world military spending.

The idea that we need a defense budget almost 60 percent larger as a share of GDP than a decade ago is ludicrous. While it is true that the wars initiated by George W. Bush and a Republican Congress will impose a financial burden on American taxpayers for many years to come, that isn’t enough to justify spending more than half of the world’s military expenditures. Almost all our NATO allies get by spending well less than half what we spend as a share of GDP.

The economy is in shambles. A Republican legacy that may out live anyone reading this post. President Obama inherited a Republican budget and a Republican train wreck. Now Republicans are feed up that Obama cannot fix the problems they made in two to four years. It is like a 14 year old complaining that Daddy won't clean up his spilled milk any more or not as fast as Daddy used to. Republicans have been and stubbornly remain the movement of spilled brats in denial over complicity in wrecking the economy every time they get a chance to lead.

Reality need not apply: Fox, Michelle Malkin and Newt Gingrich continues to deny aid to poor is stimulative

Tea Nut Republican Sharron Angle Resorts to Blatant Dishonesty. Hey its the only way conservatives can win.

Conservatives and Fox News Ignores Foreign Cash Used to Influence Elections

Conservatives and Fox News Ignores Foreign Cash Used to Influence Elections

The Washington Post’s Greg Sargent reports that the Chamber of Commerce has issued yet another response to our story – at least the fifth different statement it has offered since we first reported yesterday morning on their foreign sources of funding. The Chamber’s latest effort is to engage in personal name-calling, referring to ThinkProgress as “a George Soros-funded, anti-business blog” that is “deceitful.” This smoke-and-mirrors response serves to obfuscate the basic facts which ThinkProgress revealed:

1) The Chamber acknowledges that it receives foreign sources of funding.
2) The foreign funds go directly into the Chamber’s general 501(c)(6) entity.
3) At least $300,000 has been channeled from foreign companies in India and Bahrain to the account.
4) The foreign sources include foreign state-owned companies, including the State Bank of India and the Bahrain Petroleum Company.
5) The Chamber’s 501(c)(6) entity is used to launch an unprecedented $75 million partisan attack ad campaign against Democrats.

Nothing the Chamber has said in response to our story refutes those basic set of facts. The right-wing business group claims that it has a “system” in place to ensure that money is not being used for illegal purposes, namely to influence U.S. elections. But the Chamber refuses to explain how that “system” works, and is instead demanding that the public simply trust-but-not-verify.

In a statement provided to Sargent, the Chamber reveals that foreign-based “AmChams pay nominal dues to the Chamber — approximately $100,000 total across all 115 AmChams.” But “AmChams” are only a small piece of the puzzle.

Most of the Chamber’s foreign sources of funds come from large multi-national corporations who are headquartered abroad, like BP and Siemens. Direct contributions from foreign firms also are accepted under the auspices of the Chamber’s “Business Councils” located in various foreign countries. The Chamber states that only “a relative handful [of its 300,000 members] are non-U.S. based companies.” Relative handful? How many is that? And how much are they contributing?

As long as the Chamber is willing to continue issuing statements, here’s some questions we have that perhaps they can answer for us:

1) What is this “system” they claim to have in place to keep foreign money out of their election program?
2) Why do they refuse to even say whether or not the foreign money is going into the same general fund that is used to pay for their attack ads?
3) If the foreign money isn’t paying for “political activities,” then what is it paying for? Lobbying?

Fox joyed in the witch hunt using edited and falsified video to rhetorically burn ACORN at the stake. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce who has never meet a wad of cash it would turn down is playing games with money it receives from foreign countries and corporations. The Chamber of Right-wing Lies says they keep some money in one pile and some money in another pile - so like dude that money is different - you know trust them and do not verify.

What did defender of perverts, Wisconsin's Ron Johnson, know and when did he know it?

Republicans prefer the actors in their West Virginia attack ads look sufficiently like "hicks" dressed in plaid and ball caps.


Sharron Angle Adds Insult To Injury With New Racist Ad - Be afraid, be very afraid of the those people of Latin heritage.

Cop Killer Poplawskiv Was a Big Glenn Beck Fan

Cop Killer Poplawskiv Was a Big Glenn Beck Fan

Richard "Pop" Poplawski has fans now.

You probably remember Poplawski, or if you don't it won't take much to refresh your memory. He's the aimless, unemployed 22-year-old man, living in a red-brick working class neighborhood of Pittsburgh, who went off on the morning of April 4, 2009, the 41st anniversary of the shooting of Martin Luther King Jr. When he was done firing his extensive arsenal including an AK-47 style semi-automatic, he'd fatally gunned down three Pittsburgh police officers who came to his house, initially, over a domestic dispute with his mom. There was a brief stir -- perhaps too brief, in hindsight -- when a friend told TV reporters that Poplawski feared that with Barack Obama in the White House the government would confiscate his guns.

Last week, I got an email alert that a man from just a few miles down the Allegheny River from where Poplawski carried out his murderous rampage was going to jail for violating his probabtion by stockpiling 10 firearms and a cache of ammunition. Federal authorities contacted local police after they learned online that 32-year-old Hardy Lloyd was a big fan of Poplawski:

In April 2009, the FBI started investigating Lloyd's website because he posted a message praising Richard Poplawski....

The investigation turned up a blog entry in which Lloyd talked about his shotgun. During a search of Lloyd's home, agents found 10 firearms as well as white supremacist literature and Nazi propaganda booklets.

This is how hate talk is increasingly viral in America in 2010. At the bottom of the chain, a cop-killer like Richard Poplawski becomes a hero to a clearly deranged man like Hardy Lloyd. But who were Richard "Pop" Poplawski's heroes?

Glenn Beck...to begin with. Also a host of foul-mouthed shock jocks including non-political ones like Opie and Anthony, and also the community on the white-supremacist websites like Stormfront.org, which is basically the Facebook of neo-Nazism and has remained popular in a time of despair. The role of Big Media and hate talk or whacked-out conspiracy theories is particularly disturbing. While individuals like Poplawski are ultimately responsible for their warped action, what is the responsibility of media millionaires, "high-def hucksters" who now jack up their ratings not just by being provocative but by speaking of violence or irrational conspiracies -- especially when the evidence mounts every day that these ill-conceived words broadcast from coast-to-coast are motivating America's most unglued?

This January, I spent several days in Pittsburgh investigating the Poplawski case and seeking to learn more about what really motivated him to kill three police officers. The research was for a chapter in my book, The Backlash: Right-Wing Radicals, High-Def Hucksters and Paranoid Politics in the Age of Obama, which comes out at the end of the month. I learned quite a bit -- including a couple of new details about the shooting and Poplawski's past that will be revealed when the book is published. But the main thing was that Poplawski's fears about the "Obama gun confiscation" was the proverbial tip of the iceberg when it came to his increasingly paranoid ideas that he seemed to glean largely from talk radio and from Beck.

"Rich, like myself, loved Glenn Beck," Poplawski's best friend Eddie Perkovic told me during a long interview in his narrow rowhouse on the steep hill running down to the Allegheny. (Perkovic had a lot of time -- he was wearing an ankle bracelet for house arrest because of an unrelated case.) Perkovic and his mom -- who also had a close relationship with the accused cop-killer, still awaiting trial -- told me that for months Poplawski had been obsessed with an idea -- frequently discussed by Beck, including in ads for his sponsor Food Insurance -- of the need to stockpile food and even toilet paper for a societal breakdown. Poplawski was also convinced that paper money would become worthless -- another claim given credence by the Fox News Channel host, particularly in close connection with his frequent shilling for the now-under-investigation gold-coin peddler Goldline International.

And there was another idea that not only worried Poplawski but which Perkovic and his mom still swore by in January 2010 -- despite widespread debunkings in the mainstream media -- that the government had established a gulag of what Perkovic called "Guantanamo camps" here in the United States, for the purpose of arresting and detaining law-abiding Americans. This was the idea that Beck famously declared on FNC on March 3, 2009, or one month and one day before the shootings, that "I can't debunk." Poplawski downloaded to the Web a video of Beck glibly discussing the possibility of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, or FEMA, abusing its powers with a U.S. Congressman, Ron Paul of Texas. Poplawski's mother later said in a swown statement that her son "liked police when they were not curtailing his constitutional rights." By then, Officers Eric Guy Kelly, Stephen Mayhle and Paul Sciullo II were already dead.

If would be easy to blow off the Poplawski case -- horrible as it is -- if it just a one-time thing. The evidence is mounting that this is far from the case, sadly. In recent days, we've learned about the incident involving an ex-convict named Byron Williams who loaded up a truck with weapons and -- saying he was on his way to an obscure outfit called The Tides Organization to launch a revolution -- wounded two officers near Oakland, Calif., before he was arrested. Research showed that no other media figure had discussed the Tides Foundation...except for Glenn Beck.

In fact, the notion that America is on the brink of a violent right-wing uprising is becoming such common currency that some outbreaks don't even leap to the national news, even when murder is involved. I would not even have learned of this alarming story had a friend not emailed it to me last week:

A Pennsylvania prison guard charged with murdering a man at a shooting range and stealing his semi-automatic rifle told police that he was stockpiling guns as part of a plan to overthrow the federal government, according to a police affidavit reviewed by Salon...

"Peake said he has been stealing guns for the purpose of aiding an organization that Peake refused to name. Peake said the organization is collecting guns for the purpose of overthrowing the federal government. Peake said he and Tuso together are members of this organization. Peake [said] that he would kill to defend his country and he was stealing weapons to defend his country."

When these stories begin to become routine, this nation is in big, big trouble. Not long ago, Bill Clinton gave a moving speech to mark the 15th anniversary of the Oklahoma City bombing, in which he spoke the connection between increasingly conspiratorial and angry talk on the radio and even TV networks like Fox and the incitement to violence. He said their words "fall on the connected and the unhinged alike."

The unhinged will always be with us. But highly paid media stars -- and their allies in Congress and elsewhere -- with followings in the millions floating bizarre theories and obsessing on violent remedies, are a new and most alarming phenominon.

These high-def hucksters can tone down this madness, starting right now. So why don't they?

Beck has at least once said his viewers should not resort to violence. So he preaches violence, swears everyone is going to be a victim of some bizarre plot, gets everyone worked up, tells them to keep their guns at hand and thinks once he has all these nut bags worked up he can calm them down with a kind of small print warning that acting out the things he says might be a bad idea.

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