Conservative Chamber of Commerce Lobbied To Help GOP Kill Bill To Provide Health Care To 9/11 First Responders

Conservative Chamber of Commerce Lobbied To Help GOP Kill Bill To Provide Health Care To 9/11 First Responders

Last night, the Daily Show’s Jon Stewart skewered Republicans for killing deficit neutral legislation to provide health care to the 9/11 first responders and emergency workers who suffered illnesses from working at Ground Zero. He also mocked the celebrity-obsessed media that has completely ignored the story. Republicans, like Sen. John Thune (R-SD), filibustered the bill because they said tax cuts for the richest 2 percent were a higher priority for Congress. While Republicans quietly snuffed out efforts to compensate 9/11 heroes, they were aided by a quiet lobbying campaign by the powerful lobbying front — the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.

The Chamber fought to help kill the 9/11 compensation bill because it was funded by ending a special tax loophole exploited by foreign corporations doing business in the United States.

The “U.S.” part of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce is a misnomer. As ThinkProgress reported, the Chamber represents dozens of foreign businesses in the United Kingdom, France, Germany, Russia, Bahrain, India, Brazil, and other countries. An investigation of the Chamber turned up recent fundraising documents from the Chamber soliciting foreign contributions to the Chamber’s 501(c)(6), the tax entity the Chamber used to run nasty campaign ads against Democrats earlier this year.

In September, the Chamber sent a letter officially opposing the 9/11 first responders bill, called the “James Zadroga 9/11 Health and Compensation Act of 2010.” The Chamber warned that ending the tax loophole would “damage U.S. relationships with major trading partners” and “aggravate already unsettled financial markets.” A lobbying disclosure filed with the Senate confirms the Chamber contacted lawmakers to help kill the bill.

In typical fashion, the Chamber has not revealed which of its foreign members had asked them to kill the 9/11 bill. As the Chamber CEO explained to the Washington Monthly’s James Verini, the entire purpose of the Chamber is to provide “deniability” to corporations that want to affect the outcomes of elections or of public policy. In 2009, the Chamber secretly used a $86 million donation from the health insurance industry to fight health reform. At the time, the Chamber lied and claimed to the public that they were simply acting on behalf of the entire “business community.”

Republicans are continuing to protest any renewed attempts to pass the 9/11 first responders bill because of the tax issue raised by the Chamber. Yesterday, Sen. Susan Collins (R-ME) sent out a statement that mirrored the Chamber’s opposition to ending the foreign corporate tax loophole.

Holding 9-11 responders hostage so the could make sure people with tons of unearned wealth do not have to pay the same taxes they paid during the Bill Clinton boom years of the 1990s. Not shocking. Very typical of the way the Chamber and right-wing conservatives view how American democracy should work. The conservative movement likes to claim there is no class warfare and Democrats are wrong to use it as an issue. That because they don't want anyone to notice they declared war on average Americans decades ago.

Did Fannie or Freddie Trigger Economic Crisis

Did Fannie or Freddie Trigger Economic Crisis

As the economy worsens and Election Day approaches, a conservative campaign that blames the global financial crisis on a government push to make housing more affordable to lower-class Americans has taken off on talk radio and e-mail.

Commentators say that's what triggered the stock market meltdown and the freeze on credit. They've specifically targeted the mortgage finance giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, which the federal government seized on Sept. 6, contending that lending to poor and minority Americans caused Fannie's and Freddie's financial problems.

Federal housing data reveal that the charges aren't true, and that the private sector, not the government or government-backed companies, was behind the soaring subprime lending at the core of the crisis.

Subprime lending offered high-cost loans to the weakest borrowers during the housing boom that lasted from 2001 to 2007. Subprime lending was at its height from 2004 to 2006.

Federal Reserve Board data show that:

* More than 84 percent of the subprime mortgages in 2006 were issued by private lending institutions.

* Private firms made nearly 83 percent of the subprime loans to low- and moderate-income borrowers that year.

* Only one of the top 25 subprime lenders in 2006 was directly subject to the housing law that's being lambasted by conservative critics.

The "turmoil in financial markets clearly was triggered by a dramatic weakening of underwriting standards for U.S. subprime mortgages, beginning in late 2004 and extending into 2007," the President's Working Group on Financial Markets reported Friday.

Conservative critics claim that the Clinton administration pushed Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to make home ownership more available to riskier borrowers with little concern for their ability to pay the mortgages.

"I don't remember a clarion call that said Fannie and Freddie are a disaster. Loaning to minorities and risky folks is a disaster," said Neil Cavuto of Fox News.

Fannie, the Federal National Mortgage Association, and Freddie, the Federal Home Loan Mortgage Corp., don't lend money, to minorities or anyone else, however. They purchase loans from the private lenders who actually underwrite the loans.

It's a process called securitization, and by passing on the loans, banks have more capital on hand so they can lend even more.

This much is true. In an effort to promote affordable home ownership for minorities and rural whites, the Department of Housing and Urban Development set targets for Fannie and Freddie in 1992 to purchase low-income loans for sale into the secondary market that eventually reached this number: 52 percent of loans given to low-to moderate-income families.

To be sure, encouraging lower-income Americans to become homeowners gave unsophisticated borrowers and unscrupulous lenders and mortgage brokers more chances to turn dreams of homeownership in nightmares.

But these loans, and those to low- and moderate-income families represent a small portion of overall lending. And at the height of the housing boom in 2005 and 2006, Republicans and their party's standard bearer, President Bush, didn't criticize any sort of lending, frequently boasting that they were presiding over the highest-ever rates of U.S. homeownership.

Between 2004 and 2006, when subprime lending was exploding, Fannie and Freddie went from holding a high of 48 percent of the subprime loans that were sold into the secondary market to holding about 24 percent, according to data from Inside Mortgage Finance, a specialty publication. One reason is that Fannie and Freddie were subject to tougher standards than many of the unregulated players in the private sector who weakened lending standards, most of whom have gone bankrupt or are now in deep trouble.

During those same explosive three years, private investment banks — not Fannie and Freddie — dominated the mortgage loans that were packaged and sold into the secondary mortgage market. In 2005 and 2006, the private sector securitized almost two thirds of all U.S. mortgages, supplanting Fannie and Freddie, according to a number of specialty publications that track this data.

In 1999, the year many critics charge that the Clinton administration pressured Fannie and Freddie, the private sector sold into the secondary market just 18 percent of all mortgages.

Fueled by low interest rates and cheap credit, home prices between 2001 and 2007 galloped beyond anything ever seen, and that fueled demand for mortgage-backed securities, the technical term for mortgages that are sold to a company, usually an investment bank, which then pools and sells them into the secondary mortgage market.

About 70 percent of all U.S. mortgages are in this secondary mortgage market, according to the Federal Reserve.

Conservative critics also blame the subprime lending mess on the Community Reinvestment Act, a 31-year-old law aimed at freeing credit for underserved neighborhoods.

Congress created the CRA in 1977 to reverse years of redlining and other restrictive banking practices that locked the poor, and especially minorities, out of homeownership and the tax breaks and wealth creation it affords. The CRA requires federally regulated and insured financial institutions to show that they're lending and investing in their communities.

Conservative columnist Charles Krauthammer wrote recently that while the goal of the CRA was admirable, "it led to tremendous pressure on Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac — who in turn pressured banks and other lenders — to extend mortgages to people who were borrowing over their heads. That's called subprime lending. It lies at the root of our current calamity."

Fannie and Freddie, however, didn't pressure lenders to sell them more loans; they struggled to keep pace with their private sector competitors. In fact, their regulator, the Office of Federal Housing Enterprise Oversight, imposed new restrictions in 2006 that led to Fannie and Freddie losing even more market share in the booming subprime market.

What's more, only commercial banks and thrifts must follow CRA rules. The investment banks don't, nor did the now-bankrupt non-bank lenders such as New Century Financial Corp. and Ameriquest that underwrote most of the subprime loans.

These private non-bank lenders enjoyed a regulatory gap, allowing them to be regulated by 50 different state banking supervisors instead of the federal government. And mortgage brokers, who also weren't subject to federal regulation or the CRA, originated most of the subprime loans.

In a speech last March, Janet Yellen, the president of the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco, debunked the notion that the push for affordable housing created today's problems.

"Most of the loans made by depository institutions examined under the CRA have not been higher-priced loans," she said. "The CRA has increased the volume of responsible lending to low- and moderate-income households."

In a book on the sub-prime lending collapse published in June 2007, the late Federal Reserve Governor Ed Gramlich wrote that only one-third of all CRA loans had interest rates high enough to be considered sub-prime and that to the pleasant surprise of commercial banks there were low default rates. Banks that participated in CRA lending had found, he wrote, "that this new lending is good business."

Another myth spread by Faux News and conservatives bites the dust. One wonders if conservative Republicans are even capable of differentiating the truth from the bizarre fantasies in their head. This attempt to blame low income Americans is nothing new. According to conservatives working class Americans are lazy and a drain on society. These are the workers who make Gucci loafer Republican able to put their feet up on their desks and brag to their friends about all the wealth they think they're creating. Republicans hate to give credit where due but are always quick to shift blame.

Republicans Disappointed to Learn Fannie and Freddie Didn't Cause the Financial Crisis

Republicans Disappointed to Learn Fannie and Freddie Didn't Cause the Financial Crisis

(Adapted from the book Capital Offense: How Washington’s Wise Men Turned America’s Future over to Wall Street.)

Many on the right still contend that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the giant, quasi-governmental lending institutions, were the real cause of the 2008 financial crash. They insist that most of what went wrong can be laid to government housing policies, in other words. During the subprime mania, Fannie and Freddie ended up buying more subprime mortgage-backed securities than any other institution, abetted by the Bush administration, which gave them low-income credits to do so. This is what really drove the mania, many Republicans say. Indeed, the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission appears to be headed into a raucous final few weeks of disagreement over this issue, with Republican members pledging not to support a final report that lays most of the blame on reckless deregulation and Wall Street.

Unfortunately for the blame-the-government crowd, the facts don’t bear out their conclusions. Yes, Fannie and Freddie are government sponsored, but they’re run by shareholders looking for a substantial return. And the prime force that was driving them and just about everyone else in the world to take risks was Wall Street, which kept looking for higher returns. Indeed, Fannie and Freddie didn’t go nearly as far out on a limb as other lenders, and they hadn’t actually created derivative products themselves.

Beyond that, the seeds of the financial crash of 2008 were planted decades before the subprime securitization market took off. Some of the books that came out after the financial disaster would encourage another myth -- that the super-complex subprime securities known as “collateralized debt obligations,” or CDOs, were unique. And that therefore the subprime mortgage crisis was also a unique disaster. “The collateralized debt obligation may well go down in history as the worst thing anyone on Wall Street has ever thought up,” wrote David Faber of CNBC in one quickie book, And Then the Roof Caved In.

But Faber’s description slighted a long lineage of such complex derivatives and structured finance products going back to the early 1990s. Such problems were so prevalent that Brooksley Born, then head of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, called them “the hippopotamus under the rug.” The key to many successful derivatives trades was just as much deception back then as it later became during the subprime craze. “Quants” on the street -- many of them former physicists or other math geniuses -- were always finding complex new ways to repackage assets. The schemes usually followed the same theme: The key was to take junk or crap -- risky but very high-yielding bonds or securities denominated in pesos or Thai baht or Malaysian ringgits -- and disguise them well enough so that pension investors or insurance companies or others thought they were buying investment-grade stuff denominated in dollars. This was merely an augury of what these same firms later did by euphemizing poor credit risks as “subprime borrowers.”

Mini-blowups began happening in the the’90s, but the warning signs were ignored. Tempted by the high yields, state, county, and local investment funds that were supposed to be playing it safe began indulging in highly risky derivatives trades under cover. The temptation of showing great returns to one’s board of directors, looking like a market whiz, was just too great. And one by one, they began going up in smoke. At one point, 18 Ohio towns lost $14 million. City Colleges of Chicago lost almost its entire investment portfolio -- $96 million. In 1995, the Wisconsin Investment Board abruptly announced a $95 million loss, $60 million of which was linked to investments in the Mexican peso. These state and local funds had no business investing their citizens’ money in high-risk currency trades; in fact, most were banned by law from indulging in such speculation. But somehow they felt they could do it if they were packaged as derivatives.

Some of these scandals were so astonishing in scope and criminality that they should have raised at least a few warning flags back in Washington. Orange County, California, under its treasurer, Robert Citron -- a college dropout who consulted psychics and astrologers about interest rates -- had lost a billion dollars and filed for bankruptcy in 1994. Again, it was a case of a Wall Street firm, Merrill Lynch, knowingly selling Citron investments that were so complex he simply could not comprehend them. But no one did anything. As the speculative collapses continued, there were no rules in place to stop them -- no requirement as there was on exchanges for mark to market or paying margin on a daily or intra-daily basis.

As the years went by, the only change that occurred despite the regular blowups was even more deregulation. No wonder that the subprime securitization mortgage market later took off the way it did, leading to the bizarre world of CDOs. After all, at the start, CDOs were only the latest, “improved” version of a model long in the making, the process of turning dubious or bad assets into better-seeming securities while the adults weren’t watching, while central bankers were no longer getting their hands dirty with worrying about exposure. It was a process that was possible only with derivatives, when buyers were increasingly distant from the underlying asset, and when no one was monitoring production.

In his public comments, Fed Chairman Alan Greenspan kept saying again and again that derivatives were just diffusing risk through the system, parceling it out in little pieces, making everyone individually safer. That was true, but this process was also infecting the entire system with risk, and thereby making the total risk greater. Trade by trade, instrument by instrument, through CDOs and credit default swaps and the rest, every major market player was becoming systemically linked up with everyone else.

After 20 years of free-market fervor, the world of the mid-’00s had become one of overleveraged banks too big to regulate and trillions of dollars worth of derivatives bets that no one had track of -- which in turn were helping to accelerate huge flows of capital coming in from abroad -- and a Fed and government regulators who weren’t aware or weren’t watching.

And that was the real cause of the crisis, whose aftereffects continue to drag on the economy today. Fannie and Freddie were, like almost every other big player, both culprits and victims, but just two of many.

Republicans want everyone to believe the gov'mint and working class Americans were responsible for the economic crash. That's because the biggest part of the blame is on conservatives and their irrational zeal to deregulate everything - you know because Wall Street will always acts in the best interests of the little guy.

Arizona’s Gov. Jan Brewer (R) is Our Republican Two Faced Liar of the Day

Arizona’s Gov. Jan Brewer (R) is Our Republican Two Faced Liar of the Day

Anxious over serious state deficits, many Republican governors have decried Medicaid as the “monster” eating at the budget. Chief among them is Arizona’s Gov. Jan Brewer (R), who is committed to gutting Arizona’s Medicaid program at the expense of transplant patients. Ignoring pleas from Democratic lawmakers and transplant patients to restore the $1.4 million in funding to the transplant program, Brewer insists that such “optional,” “Cadillac” treatment for the dying must go toward recouping one-tenth of a percent from Arizona’s projected budget shortfall.

Brewer is no stranger to sacrificing the welfare of vulnerable constituents for a buck. But this particularly callous dogma made enough waves across the pond to bring Britain’s Channel 4 News Washington correspondent Sarah Smith to her doorstep. Confounded by Brewer’s dismissal of the lives her decision damns, Smith asked Brewer “how many people have to die” before she’d reverse her position. Calling the “obvious” question “unfair,” Brewer then quipped that “if people are so worried about the transplant patients, then they should ask the federal government in Washington to send us more money”:

I managed to “doorstep” her as we call it in TV – i.e. I caught her at a public event and just started asking questions, uninvited.

“How many people have to die before you are prepared to reverse your decision on the transplant operations?” seemed like the obvious question.

She said she thought that was unfair and started to explain how dire the state’s financial situation is. If people are so worried about the transplant patients then they should ask the federal government in Washington to send us more money, she said. But she would not explain to me, or to any Democrats in the state capitol, what she has done with the nearly $200 million she was already given in ‘stimulus funds’ to spend on anything she liked.

While suggesting that Arizonans should request more federal funding, Brewer openly vilifies a law — the Affordable Care Act — that provides exactly that. The health care law’s Medicaid expansion will foot 100 percent of the bill for states to expand until 2016 and 90 percent after 2020. However, to receive this funding, states have to maintain current eligibility levels in Medicaid and CHIP, something Brewer does not wish to maintain. And despite being well-aware of Arizona’s need for the health care law’s financial support, Brewer remains an outspoken champion of its full-scale repeal. In other words, Brewer is telling transplant advocates to ask for a helping hand she fully intends to bite.

While such dismissive treatment of those in need paints this Republican in a miserable light, Smith notes that Brewer’s position does help the GOP out in one notable way. In their interminable search for proof of health care “death panels,” right-wing Republicans need look no further than Arizona.

How or why is this pathological liar who has visions of headless bodies allowed to govern is a testament how low conservative standards are. Like most conservatives Brewer is more concerned about the social-darwinist agenda of the right-wing conservative movement than she is about the people of Arizona.

Pawlenty, Palin Push GOP War on Public Employees

Move over, welfare queens, IRS agents and trial lawyers. The Republican Party has a new bogeyman: the public employee. With a sluggish U.S. economy, cash-strapped states and under-funded pension programs, Tim Pawlenty, Sarah Palin and other leading lights of the GOP are scape-goating government workers and their unions for the nation's woes. Of course, there's only one problem with Rush Limbaugh's claim that public sector employees are "freeloaders" and the charge from Indiana Governor and GOP White House hopeful Mitch Daniels that they are a "new privileged class in America."

Like so much else conservative mythmaking, as we'll see below, it's simply not true.

Pawlenty and Palin have drink the conservative kool-aid. They think if you repeat completely false information over and over that it magically becomes the truth. Two more Republicans that score so low on the integrity meter it can't be measured. Why do Republicans like these seem to hate America and seem determined to destroy everything good about it.

Republicans Declare We The People Are Here to Serve Banks and Wall St

Republicans Declare We The People Are Here to Serve Banks and Wall St

Alabama Republican Spencer Bachus, the incoming chairman of the House banking committee, suggested Congress and federal regulators should play a subservient role with banks.

"In Washington, the view is that the banks are to be regulated, and my view is that Washington and the regulators are there to serve the banks," Bachus told The Birmingham News in an interview.

The Republican leadership last week designated Bachus the next chairman of the powerful House Financial Services Committee, which is tasked with overseeing banks, financial markets, housing and consumer credit.

Democrats characterized the remark as a Freudian slip, nicknaming the Alabaman "Big Bank Bachus" and claiming the new Republican-controlled House will put the interests of financial institutions ahead of the American public.

"Congressman Spencer 'Big Bank' Bachus has given Americans a startlingly honest answer about the House Republican agenda – do whatever is good for the big banks and Wall Street special interests, rather than what’s good for hardworking Americans,” said Jesse Ferguson, a spokesman for the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee.

Bachus later told the Birmingham News he merely meant Congress shouldn't micromanage banks.

The congressman from Alabama's 6th district has throughout his 18-year House career raised millions from financial interests, including over $1 million from commercial banks alone, according to the Center for Responsive Politics.

He has received over $800,000 from the real estate industry, $700,000 from securities and investment firms, and $415,000 from credit companies -- all of which he will have extraordinary influence over as banking committee chair.

Bachus was an important negotiator for the $700,000 billion Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) of 2008 -- often derided as the "bank bailout" -- which angered the public but also prevented a widespread collapse of the financial system. It passed with wide bipartisan support.

The outgoing chairman, Rep. Barney Frank (D-MA), played an instrumental role in developing sweeping financial regulatory reforms enacted by President Barack Obama in July.

This must be some of that tea flavored conservatism at work. The government and its duly elected representatives of the people are not there to serve the interests of the people, but to serve the interests of the greedy and irresponsible - at least according to conservative Republicans. That is the way kings and tyrants thought.

How Glenn Beck's Sick Logic and Revisionist History Incite Violence

How Glenn Beck's Twisted Worldview Goads Disturbed People into Acts of Violence

Radio and TV personality Glenn Beck plays a unique and extraordinary role in our political discourse. He’s an entertainer who once referred to himself as a “rodeo clown.” He’s a self-appointed “educator” whose books and “university” are miseducating millions of Americans with false claims about American history and a distorted view of our Constitution. And he’s an increasingly messianic figure who claims that he has been divinely anointed to lead the nation back to God.

Central to Beck’s influence is the intensity of his fans’ devotion to him. And central to the danger he poses is his willingness to stoke fear, anger, and hatred among those fans with a toxic, if lucrative, mixture of conspiracy theories and charges that America is on the verge of being destroyed by enemies from within. In Beck’s world, those enemies include not only President Obama and Democratic congressional leaders, but also progressive advocacy organizations, unions, and even churches that promote social justice as a part of their religious mission. What Beck preaches is that these are not merely political opponents with policy disagreements, but agents of evil whose goal is the destruction of America and who will stop at nothing -- including the deaths of millions -- to advance their freedom-destroying plans.

Beck has also raised the stakes by claiming a divine mandate for his view of the Constitution and the U.S. government. He has not only attacked President Obama’s politics, but has called the president’s views on the nature of salvation “evil” and “satanic.” Beck and David Barton, the Religious Right pseudo-historian he promotes, claim that their views of limited government and the Constitution are divinely inspired. So progressives are not only un-American, they are un-Christian and anti-God. “If we do not put God at the center of our own personal lives and the center of our country, we will not survive,” Beck said in August. “The country will be washed with blood and then someone will have to start over, and God only knows how long that takes."

Beck’s propaganda traffics in alarmism, paranoia, racial resentment, and anti-Semitic conspiracy theories. These would make for a combustible mix at any time. But it’s an even more dangerous combination during a time of widespread economic hardship, when so many people are hurting and increasingly desperate. While backing politicians who don’t believe the government has a role in addressing that pain, Beck offers explanations that can deepen the desperation.

“Times of threat bring increased aggression,” 21-year CIA veteran Jerrold Post told Politico last fall. “And the whole country’s under threat now, with the economic difficulties and political polarization. The need to have someone to blame is really strong in human psychology. And once you have someone to blame, especially when there’s a call to action, some see it as a time for heroic action.”

For some troubled Beck fans, that “heroic action” has meant taking up arms against the nation’s “enemies” as Beck has defined them. The poison that Beck administers daily to our political culture has intensified the nation’s divisions and inspired murderous violence. But rather than take any responsibility for the impact of his irresponsible rhetoric, Beck has responded by dismissing his critics, raising the volume of his violent rhetoric, and repeatedly suggesting to his viewers that he is in danger of being killed by progressive leaders.

Beck’s indifference to the damaging consequences of his language and actions has led a number of public interest organizations to join forces in an effort to hold Beck and Fox News accountable, with a campaign asking owners of televisions in public locations to turn off Fox, and a campaign urging advertisers to drop Fox and stop funding Beck’s irresponsible rhetoric.

We are not arguing that even his most inflammatory language makes him legally responsible for the actions of unstable or ideological individuals. But there is no question that words and ideas have consequences, and that he and those who support him bear moral responsibility for the consequences of his actions. His language creates a climate in which violence is more likely and less surprising.

Beck complains that his critics are enemies of free speech out to silence any dissenting voices. In fact, his critics are using their own First Amendment freedom to challenge Beck’s irresponsibility. His false charges and almost-impossible-to-parody conspiracy-theory chalkboard moments, go well beyond the kind of hard-hitting political disagreement that we expect and embrace in an open and democratic society. Beck is peddling something different and pernicious. It’s time to hold Beck, and those who enable him, accountable.

Media Matters and People For the American Way are two of the organizations Beck has identified as his enemies. Media Matters documents Beck’s actions on a daily basis, creating a massive archive of evidence supporting the challenge to his enablers. People For the American Way’s Right Wing Watch has analyzed and reported on Beck’s rhetorical tactics.

This report provides an overview of Beck’s rhetorical strategies and some of the deadly and damaging impact they have had; a more comprehensive catalogue of his radio and television comments can be found at Media Matters.

He’s no MLK (or Gandhi)

Beck tries to protect himself from criticism by comparing himself to Martin Luther King, Jr., and telling his followers that they should not engage in violence. But Beck undermines those calls to eschew violence by regularly employing his own violent imagery, and by portraying his political opponents in extreme terms -- as murderous thugs bent on destroying freedom and America itself.

As author Gerald Posner told MSNBC’s Chris Matthews, the atmosphere created by hostile rhetoric is “a license that allows somebody who's on the edge to cross the edge from thinking about acting out to actually crossing the line and being violent and thinking they can change history with a single bullet. And we have shown time and time again that that's possible.”

Some of Beck’s own followers aren’t so willing to renounce violence. Stephen Broden, who has appeared frequently on Beck’s Fox News show and spoke at his Restoring Honor rally this summer, has promoted Beck-style inflammatory rhetoric about death panels, claimed that the country’s economic crises were contrived, and compared the Obama administration to Nazis, all charges familiar to Beck’s listeners. When Broden, who was a Republican nominee for Congress from Texas this year, was challenged by a reporter, he backed away from some of his statements. But he would not renounce the possibility of political violence. “Our nation was founded on violence,” he said, affirming that he believes violent overthrow of the U.S. government is an option that “is on the table.”

The Threat of “Great and Powerful Evil” -- Communism, Fascism, or Both

Not long ago, American conservatives loudly cried foul if any activist on the left used language comparing the American Right Wing to fascist regimes elsewhere, but the same conservative movement now applauds and repeats charges made by Beck (and other pundits and elected officials) that the Obama administration is filled with communist revolutionaries and that the administration is bent on a Hitlerian destruction of American democracy. With images of Nazis marching behind him, Beck said, "People are once again feeling oppressed by an out of control state.... Like it or not, fascism is on the rise."

Beck has suggested that the Obama administration is looking for a “Reichstag moment” that it would use to seize military power and put an end to democracy. But that’s not the worst charge: Beck has said that the progressives -- or, in his mind, communist revolutionaries -- in the administration are willing to pursue their goals with genocidal violence resulting in millions of deaths. "The revolution of 1776 was a picnic compared to what the revolutionaries of today would like to do,” he charged, “It’s not a lot of fun. Usually millions of people die.” Here’s more:

“Great and powerful evil is on our doorstep…it is starting all over again…it shows you how close we came to falling into the same kind of trap that Europe did, that led to 70 million dead in China, led to 40 million dead with Stalin, 10 million dead by Hitler. We were this close. The progressive movement, it’s the same thing, we know better than you, we’re smarter than you…it’s not about freedom, don’t let them lie to you, it’s not about democracy, it is about control.”

On his June 10 show, Beck warned that "anarchists, Marxists, communists, revolutionaries, Maoists" have to "eliminate 10 percent of the U.S. population" in order to "gain control." They couldn't achieve such a goal when Richard Nixon was president, Beck stated, because "the family was together" and the government under Nixon "wasn't as corrupt as it is now." Beck added: "Now they can. Now they can."
On a smaller scale, when speaking to a woman who called in fearful that the Obama administration will want to kill her because she’s going on disability, Beck agreed that they would.

Beck frequently charges that the left is planning to provoke violence in America to achieve its aims. As Washington Post reporter Dana Milbank put it, “Beck has at times spoken against violence, but he more often forecasts it.” Beck has said that progressives support "armed insurrection," and that President Obama is "poking and prodding" the Tea Party to violence.

* “I believe these are the most dangerous two years of our republic. Because in the end, in revolutions, the real dangerous killers show up when things start to fall apart. When the nudge moves to shove, and the shove doesn't work, the killers show up. It happens every time. That's why we must be united for peace, we must be united with love, we must be united with God." [The Glenn Beck Program, 9/27/10]
* “Violence will come. And violence will come from the left. Violence is part of the plan. Not mine, not yours." [The Glenn Beck Program, 9/13/10]
* "I fear a Reichstag moment, a -- God forbid -- another 9-11, something that will turn this machine on, and power will be seized and voices will be silenced. God help us all.'' [Newsmax.com, 10/7/09]

Beck even twisted straightforward comments by former administration official Van Jones encouraging progressives to advocate for their priorities with the administration into a revolutionary plot. In Beck’s telling, Jones told activists “you have to force the president to do what he knows he has to,” which is reminiscent of a story about Franklin Delano Roosevelt telling an advocate, “I agree with you, now make me do it.” But in Beck’s hands it becomes code for the 1957 Czech revolution with “bad guys” orchestrating riots and violence so that the average people would support an authoritarian response.

“The far left needs the violence…they create chaos…they’re all infiltrated in the government… the government can swoop in to fix the problem.”

Beck is even promoting his novel The Overton Window by claiming that its conspiratorial plot to frame a Tea Party-like group in a violent attack is about to come true, with Beck himself as the one about to be framed. He cited a phrase in Tides Foundation founder Drummond Pike's letter to Fox News advertisers -- "no one ... wants to see another Oklahoma City"-- and claimed, "They are setting up another Oklahoma City. They are claiming that one is coming. And they've already marked the one who caused it."

Beck Predicts His Own Martyrdom

Beck has repeatedly suggested that the biggest targets of his criticism -- President Obama and philanthropist George Soros -- may be planning to have him killed. Last year he said, "[Y]ou can shoot me in the head ... but there will be 10 others that line up." Beck claimed that "the most powerful people on the planet on the left" were "not going to go away easy" because "[t]his game is for keeps. This is who controls the United States of America and its destiny." He asked his listeners to "please keep me in your prayers, keep my staff in your prayers, for safety, for wisdom," adding, "Just pray for protection, please." [The Glenn Beck Program, 9/8/09]

Back in March, it was the Obama administration: "For those of you in the administration, who are coming after me ... remember, you've broken three [of the 10 Commandments], let's not make it four; thou shalt not kill." [Glenn Beck, 3/23/10]

During his recent prolonged attack on Soros, he said “I do have a bulletproof car, George. I just want you to know.” He also said to Soros, "You can gun me down in the street, I'm not shutting up." He said that he had upgraded his home security "two days before the George Soros show."

He warned his viewers that a recent Soros gift to National Public Radio was “a bounty on my head” and announced, “This may be it for me.” He even portrayed himself in cosmic good-and-evil terms, intoning, “Strike me down, Vader, strike me down,” a reference to the Star Wars movie series implying that his legacy would be even stronger if he were martyred.

The U.S. itself is at risk

As inflammatory as all Beck’s previous charges have been, perhaps his most violence-inciting charge is that Obama and his allies are actually seeking the destruction of the Constitution and the United States itself. In one show he portrayed the president pouring gasoline on the American people and lighting it on fire, and warned that Obama was “closing Gitmo and letting the terrorists onto the streets.”

Last summer he warned that “the republic is in danger” and that "the American way of life is being systematically dismantled and destroyed." [The Glenn Beck Program, 8/5/09]

In January he warned, “Our Constitution, our republic -- if it survives -- it will only survive because the people are waking up and through the grace of God, because we are that close to losing our republic.” [The Glenn Beck Program, 1/20/10]

In May he suggested that Obama is "trying to destroy the country" and is pushing America toward civil war. [The Glenn Beck Program, 5/19/10]

And just this month he said that all the nation’s enemies are uniting to “destroy the United States of America.” He has described the main goal of Soros-funded progressive organizations as “the overthrow of the United States government and the collapsing of the dollar.”

Promoting Classic Anti-Semitic Conspiracy Theory

Beck recently devoted a huge amount of airtime to a multiple-show attack on George Soros, a financier and philanthropist who has funded a number of the progressive organizations that Beck tells his viewers are out to destroy America. Journalist Michelle Goldberg called the Soros attacks “a new low on American television” and spelled out the way Beck’s anti-Soros conspiracy theory was just an updated version of standard malevolent-Jews-secretly-control-the-world anti-Semitism.

Anti-Semitism, like all ideologies, tells a story about the world. It’s a story about almost occult Jewish power, about cabals that manipulate world events for their own gain. In classic anti-Semitic narratives, Jews control both the elites and the masses; they’re responsible for the communist revolution and the speculative excesses of capitalism. Their goal is to undermine society so that they can take over. Through the lens of anti-Semitism, social division, runaway inflation, and moral breakdown all make sense because they all have the same cause. Nazi propaganda called Jews drahtzieher—wire-pullers. They constitute a power above and beyond ordinary government authority. “There is a super-government which is allied to no government, which is free from them all, and yet which has its hand in them all,” Henry Ford wrote in The International Jew.

If you know this history, you’ll understand why Glenn Beck’s two-part “exposé” on George Soros, whom Beck calls “The Puppet Master,” was so shocking, even by Beck’s degraded standards. The program, which aired Tuesday and Wednesday, was a symphony of anti-Semitic dog-whistles. Nothing like it has ever been on American television before.

Oddly, Beck complained that Soros had “brought down four governments” -- Soros’ Open Society Fund did back pro-democratic forces struggling against communist tyrannies -- and warned that the U.S. would be the fifth.

Beck’s implication is that there was something sinister in Soros’ support for anti-communist civil society organizations in the former Soviet Union. Further, he sees such support as evidence that Soros will engineer a communist coup here in the United States. This kind of thinking only makes sense within the conspiratorial mind-set of classic anti-Semitism, in which Jews threaten all governments equally. And as a wealthy Jew with a distinct Eastern European accent, Soros is a perfect target for such theories.

And it goes without saying that this kind of conspiracy theory has often fueled anti-Jewish hatred and violence.

Progressive radio host Cenk Uygur described another part of Beck’s attack on Soros as “a lie so grotesque that it goes beyond the pale of even dirty politics.” As a child, Soros’ father tried to protect him from Nazis by bribing a local official to claim that Soros was the official’s Christian godson. At one point, the 14-year old Soros had to accompany the official on a trip to appraise land that had been confiscated by Jews. In Beck’s version, that became Soros helping the government confiscate the land of his friends and neighbors, and worse, “a Jewish boy helping send the Jews to the death camps.”

The episode is classic Beck, told without regard for the truth, and with an intention to cast the most awful aspersions on his target. The Anti-Defamation League’s Abraham Foxman called Beck’s criticisms of Soros “horrific,” “repugnant,” and “offensive.”

In recent months Beck, in his eagerness to smear his opponents as America-hating-communists, has been promoting books that turn out to have been written by notoriously anti-Semitic authors. Beck cited Elizabeth Dilling’s 1934 “The Red Network” as evidence that “McCarthy was absolutely right.” Media Matters calls Dilling “one of the more prolific anti-Semites of the mid-20th century.” Beck has also quoted from “Secrets of the Federal Reserve” by white supremacist Eustace Mullin.

Beck’s own violent rhetoric

In a speech at the Conservative Political Action Conference, Beck called progressivism “a cancer” on our society, and said, “It must be cut out of the system….You must eradicate it. It cannot co-exist.”

Beck said that if government agents tried to force his children to take the flu vaccine -- a favorite fear on the right-wing fringe -- they would “meet Mr. Smith and Mr. Wesson.”

He has joked about putting poison in Nancy Pelosi’s wine, choking Michael Moore to death with his bare hands, and beating Charles Rangel with a shovel.

“I’m thinking about killing Michael Moore, and I’m wondering if I could kill him myself, or if I would need to hire somebody to do it. No, I think I could. I think he could be looking me in the eye, you know, and I could just be choking the life out.”[xii]

“I want to kill [Rep.] Charlie Rangel with a shovel.”

“Every night I get down on my knees and pray that Dennis Kucinich will burst into flames.”

Last year, referring to a photo of Obama and other Democrats, he said, “…These bloodsucker vampires are not gonna just be satisfied with sucking the blood out of [business], their thirst for power and control is unquenchable. They will not stop… Either the economy becomes like the walking dead, or ya drive a stake through the heart of the bloodsuckers.”

Beck has warned "ACORN, GE, Obama, SEIU" that "you are awakening a sleeping giant, and I have nothing to do with it" and that "America is waking up. You know the American Revolution took place with 12 percent of the population? Twelve. Are you telling me there is not 30 percent of this population that you will have to shoot me in the forehead before I let somebody into my house to tell me how to raise my children; you will have to shoot me in the forehead before you take away my gun; you will have to shoot me in the forehead before I acquiesce and be silent."

And he has quoted a letter by Thomas Jefferson warning " 'If they lose freedom' -- he's speaking of us, future generations -- 'if they lose freedom, there will be rivers of blood.' " Beck continued in his own words, "Boy, I hope that's not true, but I can tell you there will be rivers of blood if we don't have values and principles." [Glenn Beck, 5/14/10]

Beck is among right-wing voices opposing the construction of the Islamic center that has been inaccurately labeled the “Ground Zero Mosque.” And he has warned American Muslims that other terrorist attacks or a war in the Middle East could provoke violence against them:

All you Muslims who have sat on your frickin' hands the whole time and have not been marching in the streets and have not been saying, "Hey, you know what? There are good Muslims and bad Muslims. We need to be the first ones in the recruitment office lining up to shoot the bad Muslims in the head." I'm telling you, with God as my witness, America is -- no I'm not going to make this an American thing -- human beings are not strong enough, unfortunately, to restrain themselves from putting up razor wire and putting you on one side of it. When things -- when people become hungry, when people see that their way of life is on the edge of being over, they will put razor wire up and just based on the way you look or just based on your religion, they will round you up. Is that wrong? Oh my gosh, it is Nazi, World War II wrong, but society has proved it time and time again: It will happen.

He has issued a similar warning to “illegal aliens”:

I've got a quick message for illegal aliens if you happen to be watching. You better start packing your bags. And to the politicians in Washington who are soft on illegal immigration, start packing up your office, because when the terrorists strike, which they will, and we find out that they're here illegally from some other country, we will be telling all of you to get the hell out. [Glenn Beck, May 9, 2007]

With all that, Beck is happy to blame progressives and “political correctness” for violence. Rich Gardner of the Philadelphia Independent Media Center wrote:

Yet, Beck says that ‘the American people...feel disenfranchised right now. [They] feel like nobody's hearing their voice. The government isn't hearing their voice. Even if you call, they don't listen to you on both sides.’ Beck goes on: "And every time they do speak out, they're shut down by political correctness. How do you not have those people turn into [Michael McLendon, the killer of 10 people in Alabama]?"

Violent Consequences

Discussing inflammatory rhetoric and its consequences with MSNBC’s Chris Matthews last year, author Gerald Posner said, “It's a license that allows somebody who's on the edge to cross the edge from thinking about acting out to actually crossing the line and being violent and thinking they can change history with a single bullet. And we have shown time and time again that that's possible.”

Glenn Beck’s inflammatory rhetoric has been tied to a number of violent attacks and threats against Beck’s targets and other public figures.

The Tides Foundation

In July, the San Francisco-based Tides Foundation was targeted for a massacre by Byron Williams. Fortunately, Williams was stopped by police and injured after a ferocious gun battle before he could carry out his assassinations at Tides and the ACLU. As the Christian Science Monitor reported,

Since then, alleged attacker Byron Williams has said in jailhouse interviews that he wanted to “start a revolution.” He says Beck was not the direct cause of his turning violent. But he does say: “I would have never started watching Fox News if it wasn't for the fact that Beck was on there. And it was the things that he did, it was the things he exposed that blew my mind.”

Beck has waged a rhetorical war against the Tides Foundation, placing them at the center of his chalkboard conspiracy theories, calling the foundation “bullies” and “thugs” and central to George Soros’ plans to destroy America. “I’m comin’ for ya, oh, I’m comin’ for ya,” he warned Tides on the air in September, saying that he wasn’t making threats but was planning to reverse all the work that Tides had done.

As Media Matters detailed, Byron Williams told journalist John Hamilton that Beck, "blew my mind," adding that Beck is "like a schoolteacher on TV." Williams also said that "Beck is gonna deny everything about violent approach and deny everything about conspiracies, but he'll give you every reason to believe it. He's protecting himself, and you can't blame him for that. So, I understand what he's doing." Williams continued:

And I'd say, well, you know, that's the thing. It's that anything you do is going to be considered promoting terror attacks or promoting violence. So now they've got Beck labeled as this guy that is trying to incite violence. And what I say is that if the truth incites violence, it means that we've been living too long in the lies.

Beck’s response was to dismiss any responsibility for violence by the “nutjob” and to “savor” -- in journalist Milbank’s words -- the fact that “no one knew what Tides was until the blackboard.”

Pittsburgh Police

In April 2009, Richard Poplawski shot and killed three police officers who had been called to his Pittsburgh house. Poplawski was reportedly a white supremacist who believed the Obama administration was planning to take away people’s guns and set up a police state. He once posted a YouTube clip of Glenn Beck discussing a conspiracy theory about FEMA setting up concentration camps to a white supremacist website.

Journalist Will Bunch interviewed Poplawski when researching his book The Backlash: Right-Wing Radicals, High-Def Hucksters and Paranoid Politics in the Age of Obama. Bunch found that Poplawski's fears about the "Obama gun confiscation" were the proverbial tip of the iceberg when it came to the 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 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.

Senator Patty Murray

Charles Wilson was convicted of making death threats against Sen. Patty Murray of Washington, which included a series of violent phone messages on themes familiar to anyone who has listened to Beck or other right-wing pundits. Among the messages cited in court documents:

By your attempts to overtake this country with socialism, somebody's gonna get to you one way or another and blow your fucking brains out, and I hope it does happen. If I have the chance, I would do it.

Kill the fucking Senator! Hang the fucking Senator! I hope somebody puts a fucking bullet between your fucking eyes. Far left liberal socialist democratic bitch. You mother-fucker. You sold the fucking people of the country out for socialism. I hope somebody fucking erasers your fucking life. Yes, I hope somebody assassinates you, you fucking bitch.

We are going to fuck you up. We are going to fuck you up as bad as we can. Yes, the independents. The real people of this country, not you spineless fucking socialists. You better watch your fucking back, baby, because there's people gonna come after you with fucking both fucking barrels, bitch.

Court filings also include a statement by a cousin of Wilson that his fears “were grown and fostered by Mr. Beck’s persuasive personality” and that he "was under the spell that Glenn Beck cast."

Illinois League of Women Voters

Beck targeted two officials of the League of Women Voters of Illinois after an October 20 debate in which one official declined an audience member’s request that the event start with the Pledge of Allegiance. After Beck attacked the two officials by name, they experienced an uptick of hateful calls and emails. Executive Director Jan Czarnik said she had reported death threats to the FBI.

Among the emails Czarnik received was this one:

You had better put a leash on your liberal lunatic Tate-Bradish. She will take you down. Her Pledge of Allegiance video is going viral, now that Beck outed her fanaticism. You will follow NPR down the rathole, thanks to her.

On the October 25 edition of his Fox News show, Beck said that the two women are "almost like in bed with George Soros."

Ideas and Rhetoric Have Consequences

Concerns about the impact of violent, inflammatory rhetoric like Glenn Beck’s are widespread and extend well beyond the progressive advocacy community to include members of law enforcement and some Republican commentators.

"The Becks of the world are people who are venting their opinions and it is inflammatory, it generates a lot of emotion and generates in some people overreaction…" says International Union of Police Associations spokesman Rich Roberts. “Inflammatory speech has a tendency to trigger those kinds of emotions."

Former Republican Member of Congress and MSNBC host Joe Scarborough criticized Beck last year for calling President Obama a racist. As reported by Politico, Scarborough said, “You cannot preach hatred. You cannot say the president’s a racist. You cannot stir up things that could have very deadly consequences.”

Security experts told Politico that potentially violent loners “can be influenced by the atmosphere around them” and that “angry rhetoric and images in the culture can agitate and inspire those loners to cross the line from anger to violence.”

James Alan Fox, the Lipman Family Professor of Criminology, Law and Public Policy at Northeastern University in Boston, told the Christian Science Monitor in October that people who act out in violence tend to be scapegoating for things going on in their own lives. And, as David Neiwert, journalist and author of The Eliminationists: How Hate Talk Radicalized the American Right, has noted, right-wing conspiracy theories of the type promoted by Glenn Beck support scapegoating narratives.

More from Neiwert:

Ideologues who inspire violent action through radicalizing propaganda have been with us for many decades, even centuries…..And what we know from experience about volatile, unstable actors…is that they can be readily induced into violent action by hateful rhetoric that demonizes and dehumanizes other people. And thanks to human nature and those same freedoms, we will certainly always have fearmongering demagogues among us. But the purveyors of such profoundly irresponsible rhetoric need to be called on it -- especially when they hold the nation's media megaphones.

Crimlinologist Fox sees the media’s role this way: “It gives them the opportunity to see themselves as a political martyr. Someone who is going to show society that he is right and everyone else is wrong. And [the media] gives him the opportunity to think he could become a hero for fellow conservatives.”

After the police shootout that prevented Byron Williams’ planned attack on the Tides Foundation, Rep. Peter King (R) of New York, senior Republican on the Homeland Security Committee, told Media Matters, “It is important that everyone in public life, whether on the right or on the left, realize that words have consequences.”

Glenn Beck and his enablers do not want to accept that his words -- particularly his false, inflammatory rhetoric that is designed to stir passionate fear and apocalyptic anger -- can be responsible for creating a climate of violence that undermines our democratic society and for encouraging deadly violence among some of those who hear it.

The Washington Post’s Dana Milbank had some advice for Beck:

Beck has prophesied darkly to his millions of followers that we are reaching "a point where the people will have exhausted all their options. When that happens, look out." One night on Fox, discussing the case of a man who killed 10 people, Beck suggested such things were inevitable. "If you're a conservative, you are called a racist, you want to starve children," he said. "And every time they do speak out, they are shut down by political correctness. How do you not have those people turn into that guy?"

Here's one idea: Stop encouraging them.

Beck follows in the tradition of Rush Limbaugh. He says he is serious until someone kills a cop or someone else and than claims he was just joking and people take him too seriously. Beck and Limbaugh want to have it both ways. They want to be taken seriously and for people to act on what they say but do not want to take responsibility when those actions damage property and harm people. Come to think of it they are both typical of many modern conservatives.

2011 -Tea Party Brings Culture of Corruption Back to Washington

At Least 13 New Republican Members Of Congress Hire Corporate Lobbyists To Manage Their Office

To many Americans, Washington is fundamentally broken. While corporations enjoy record profits and executives reward themselves with million-dollar bonuses, lobbyists have gamed the system so corporate behemoths like ExxonMobil and GE pay zero corporate income taxes. During the economic crisis, with high unemployment and stagnant wages, middle class Americans seem to be bearing the sacrifices. Riding a wave of this popular discontent, Republicans won a historical congressional election this year by channeling anger against “Beltway insiders” and Washington corruption.

Perhaps to the surprise of many Tea Party populists who helped elect them, the Washington Post reports, “Many incoming GOP lawmakers have hired registered lobbyists as senior aides. Several of the candidates won with strong support from the anti-establishment tea party movement.” These lobbyists are not public servants. They are experts at carving out special deals and tax giveaways to powerful corporations:

– Rep.-elect Marlin Stutzman (R-IN) selected lobbyist Tim Harris as his chief of staff. Harris works as lobbyist for a trade association representing the shareholders of energy companies like American Electric Power, Duke Energy, NiSource, Vectren.

– Rep.-elect Mike Pompeo (R-KS) selected Mark Chenowerth as his chief of staff. Chenowerth previously worked as a lawyer on the lobbying team for Koch Industries, the conglomerate owned by Charles and David Koch. As ThinkProgress reported early this year, Pompeo was groomed for office by Koch Industries-run front groups, and has served as an executive for Koch Industries oil company subsidiaries.

– Rep.-elect Robert Dold (R-IL) selected corporate lobbyist Eric Burgeson as his chief of staff. Burgeson works for the lobbying firm BGR Holdings serving business clients in China, the coal industry, and a nuclear company.

– Rep.-elect Chip Cravaack (R-MN) selected corporate lobbyist Rod Grams as his chief of staff. Grams works for a lobbying firm called Hecht, Spencer, and Associates where he represents 3M, Norfolk Southern and the Financial Services Roundtable, the trade association for the country’s largest banks.

– Rep.-elect Krisi Noem (R-SD) selected Jordon Stoick as her chief of staff. Stoick is a vice president at the lobbying firm Direct Impact. Direct Impact also specializes in building public support for corporate causes, boasting on its website that it once generated hundreds of letters to the FCC on behalf of the telecom industry.

– Rep.-elect Jeff Denham (R-CA) selected corporate lobbyist Jason Larrabee as his chief of staff. Larrabee is the founder of his own lobbying firm.

– Sen.-elect Pat Toomey (R-PA) selected former corporate lobbyist Chris Gahan as his chief of staff. Gaham previously worked at the lobbying firm Latham and Watkins.

– Rep.-elect Steve Pearce (R-NM) selected Todd Willens as his chief of staff. Willens is a lobbyist at Vitello Consulting, a firm that represents a number of interests, including a casino.

– Sen.-elect Charlie Bass (R-NH) selected lobbyist John Billings as his chief of staff. Billings is a lobbyist for a food marketing and whole sale trade association.

– Rep.-elect Chris Gibson (R-NY) selected Steve Stallmer as his chief of staff. Stallmer is a lobbyist for the Associated General Contractors of New York State.

– Sen.-elect Ron Johnson (R-WI) selected Don Kent as his chief of staff. Kent is a lobbyist for the firm Navigators Global. Navigators Global represents AT&T, CitiGroup, and other major corporations.

– Sen.-elect Mike Lee (R-UT) selected lobbyist Spencer Strokes as his chief of staff. Lee is one of the most prominent corporate lobbyists in Utah, representing clients from the private prison industry to the nuclear industry.

– Sen.-elect Rand Paul (R-KY) selected anti-union lobbyist Douglas Stafford for his chief of staff. Stafford is the vice president of the National Right to Work Committee.

These Republican lawmakers, many of whom cast themselves as insurgents, are linking their professional decisions into the corporate establishment of influence peddling. Congressional chiefs of staff are often in charge of helping members make pivotal decisions, like which positions to take on public debates, how to vote on pieces of legislation, and of course, how to use your votes to raise money for your re-election.

As the Washington Post reported last weekend, freshmen “Tea Party” Republicans have already ingratiated themselves into the cocktail culture of K Street. Dozens of freshmen Republicans have crowded into near-daily fundraisers, parties, and high-priced dinners hosted by corporate lobbyists.

Considering Republicans from 2000 to 2008 governed the country like Nero governed Rome they had to rebrand themselves as the new improved conservatives. Funny how much they have already turned out to be just as corrupt and elitist as the old conservative Republicans. This time will not be much different under Republican rule. They have already held working class families unemployment benefits hostage to get a tax cut for the richest one percent of Americans.