Ron Paul(R-TX) May Be a Useful Tool, But He is a Crackpot

Ron Paul(R-TX) May Be a Useful Tool, But He is a Crackpot

Can we talk? Ron Paul is not a charming oddball with a few peculiar notions. He's not merely "out of the mainstream." Ron Paul is a full bore crank. In fact he's practically the dictionary definition of a crank: a person who has a single obsessive, all-encompassing idea for how the world should work and is utterly blinded to the value of any competing ideas or competing interests.

This obsessive idea has, at various times in his career, led him to: denounce the Civil Rights Act because it infringed the free-market right of a monolithic white establishment to immiserate blacks; dabble in gold buggery and advocate the elimination of the Federal Reserve, apparently because the global economy worked so well back in the era before central banks; suggest that the border fence is being built to keep Americans from leaving the country; claim that Social Security and Medicare are unconstitutional and should be dismantled; mount repeated warnings that hyperinflation is right around the corner; insist that global warming is a gigantic hoax; hint that maybe the CIA helped to coordinate the 9/11 attacks; oppose government-sponsored flu shots; and allege that the UN wants to confiscate our guns.

This isn't the biography of a person with one or two unusual hobbyhorses. It's not something you can pretend doesn't matter. This is Grade A crankery, and all by itself it's reason enough to want nothing to do with Ron Paul. But of course, that's not all. As we've all known for the past four years, you can layer on top of this Paul's now infamous newsletters, in which he condoned a political strategy consciously designed to appeal to the worst strains of American homophobia, racial paranoia, militia hucksterism, and new-world-order fear-mongering. And on top of that, you can layer on the fact that Paul is plainly lying about these newsletters and his role in them.

Now, balanced against that you have the fact that Paul opposes the War on Drugs and supports a non-interventionist foreign policy. But guess what? Even there, he's a crank. Even if you're a hard-core non-interventionist yourself, you probably think World War II was a war worth fighting. But not Ron Paul. He thinks we should have just minded our own damn business. And even if you're a hardcore opponent of our current drug policy — if you think not just that marijuana should be legalized, not just that hard drugs should be decriminalized, but that all illicit drugs should be fully legalized — I'll bet you still think that maybe we should retain some regulations on a few of the worst drugs. They're pretty dangerous, after all, and no matter how much you hate the War on Drugs you might have a few qualms about a global marketing behemoth like RJ Reynolds having free rein to advertise and sell anything it wants, anywhere it wants, in any way it wants. But not Ron Paul. As near as I can tell, he just wants everything legalized, full stop.

Bottom line: Ron Paul is not merely a "flawed messenger" for these views. He's an absolutely toxic, far-right, crackpot messenger for these views. This is, granted, not Mussolini-made-the-trains-run-on-time levels of toxic, but still: if you truly support civil liberties at home and non-interventionism abroad, you should run, not walk, as fast as you can to keep your distance from Ron Paul. He's not the first or only person opposed to pre-emptive wars, after all, and his occasional denouncements of interventionism are hardly making this a hot topic of conversation among the masses. In fact, to the extent that his foreign policy views aren't simply being ignored, I'd guess that the only thing he's accomplishing is to make non-interventionism even more of a fringe view in American politics than it already is. Crackpots don't make good messengers.

 Paul just seems revolutionary to some young liberals because they don't remember when the far Right was full of isolationists conservatives. To be a modern conservatives means to put the U.S. military into whatever situation they feel like on any particular day. Other than his isolationism which is taken as being a promoter of peace, Paul is just an anti-American extremist like most modern conservatives.

His Royal Highness Mitt Romney Really Cares About The Workers

His Royal Highness Mitt Romney Really Cares About The Workers

Speaking to reporters tonight in Des Moines, Iowa, a worker laid off by a company owned by Bain Capital accused former Bain Capital CEO and current Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney of being “out of touch” with the concerns of average Americans.  Randy Johnson and more than 250 of his fellow workers at a Marion, Indiana American Pad and Paper (AMPAD) facility lost their jobs after Bain decided to close the plant amid a labor dispute.  Johnson, who noted that he personally reached out to Romney during the labor dispute, said, “I really think [Romney] didn’t care about the workers. It was all about profit over people.”  In addition to the layoffs and eventual bankrupting of AMPAD, Bain Capital under Romney’s leadership drove several other firms into bankruptcy and caused thousands of layoffs.

Conservatives and of course the radical anti-American movement known as conservatism finds nothing wrong with this kind of dog-eat-dog crony capitalism. Fair and humane capitalism in the tradition of American values is considered communism by the rabid fake patriots like Romney.

Conservatives Keep Mangling American History - Maybe That is Why Their Agenda is Anti-American

Conservatives Keep Mangling American History - Maybe That is Why Their Agenda is Anti-American

The mortgage crisis began in 2006 and it’s all President Obama’s fault—at least according to Fox News host Sean Hannity. Hannity recently blamed [1] Obama—“his policies, his economic plan, his fault”—for the mortgage crisis, ignoring who was actually president (that would be George W. Bush) as the housing market slipped [2].

Hannity’s is just one example of the selective memory and historical revision frequently on display in the conservative movement. Right-wing pundits, politicians and pseudo-historians are nibbling away at objective historical truths to rewrite history for present-day purposes, and hardly any topic is off-limits: glorifying the “Reagan Revolution” to children, sugarcoating the Jim Crow South and revising textbooks to offer a favorable view on Phyllis Schlafly—among many others.

Below, read about eight ways in which conservatives try to rewrite, sugarcoat or ignore aspects of American history.

1. Michele Bachmann on the founding fathers and slavery. Propelled to the front of the Republican field after her victory in the Iowa straw poll, Minnesota Representative Michele Bachmann’s historical views are notoriously error-prone. In one her infamous gaffes, she said [3] the founding fathers “work[ed] tirelessly to end slavery” (in fact, George Washington, James Madison and Thomas Jefferson owned slaves) and that John Quincy Adams [4] was a founding father—he was born in 1767.

Bachmann was a research assistant to John Eidsmoe for his 1987 book Christianity and the Constitution: The Faith of our Founding Fathers, in which Eidsmoe wrote, “The church and the state have separate spheres of authority, but both derive authority from God. In that sense America, like [Old Testament] Israel, is a theocracy.”

....................

2. Secession was fine, dandy and legal. Texas Governor and Republican presidential hopeful Rick Perry is fond of pro-secession comments [7]; in 2009, he joked [8] that “we can leave anytime we want. So we’re kind of thinking about that again.”

In his dreams. In fact, these attempts at humor sidestep what secession actually leads to: a nullification crisis, a Civil War, hundreds of thousands of casualties and the federal government as the victor anyway. And secession is illegal. In 1866 the Supreme Court ruled in Texas v. White [9] that Texas’s ordinance of secession was “absolutely null.”

...3. Forgetting September 11? Conservatives have an uncanny ability to misremember when the September 11 attacks occurred. In July, Fox News [12] host Eric Bolling said “we were certainly safe between 2000 and 2008?—?I don’t remember any terrorist attacks on American soil during that period of time.” (In his “apology [13],” he accepted no blame: “Yesterday, I misspoke when saying that there were no US terror attacks during the Bush years. Obviously, I meant in the aftermath of 9/11, but that is when the radical liberal left pounced on us…. thank you liberals for reminding me how petty you can be.”)

A surprising slip came from ex–New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani. In January 2010 he claimed [14] that “we had no domestic attacks under Bush.”

.....4. Mike Huckabee’s “Learn Our History.” Mike Huckabee’s cartoon history series is whitewashing American history. While claiming to engage children in an easy-to-digest format without “misrepresentations…historical inaccuracies, personal biases and political correctness,” personal biases somehow make an appearance [17]. Each video is produced with consultation from Learn Our History’s “Council of Masters;” one “Master,” Larry Schweikart, is the author of 48 Liberal Lies About American History, including “Lie #45: LBJ’s Great Society Had a Positive Impact on the Poor.”

In a DVD [18] on the “Reagan Revolution,” viewers are invited to “journey to a time when America suffered from financial, international and moral crisis:” Washington, DC, 1977. A knife-wielding African-American man demands “gimme yo’ money!” Ronald Reagan’s arrival—against triumphant music playing and a caption reading “one man transformed the nation…and the world”—changed all that for the better, the DVD suggests.

5. The New Deal did harm. Anti–New Deal views have long reverberated among Republicans. Bachmann [19] blamed FDR for turning a recession into a depression by passing “Hoot-Smalley Tariff” (never mind that it’s Smoot-Hawley and it was passed three years prior to Roosevelt’s inauguration). And a barrage of recent books, including FDR’s Folly, by Jim Powell of the Cato Institute, and Amity Shlaes’s The Forgotten Man, blame FDR and the New Deal for prolonging the Depression. Newt Gingrich has praised [20] The Forgotten Man, with its anti-stimulus message, as a blueprint for a return to “Whig-style free-market liberalism.”

6. David Barton. An amateur-turned-“historian,” Barton is the founder of WallBuilders, a pseudo-historical organization “with an emphasis on the moral, religious, and constitutional foundation on which America was built,” says its website. One of his revisions [21] insists that John Adams claimed that government cannot exist without the Holy Ghost. In his presentations of the subject, Barton misunderstands Adams’s mocking statement about fervent believers in the Holy Ghost as historical truth, omitting succeeding sentences wherein Adams describes those beliefs to be “Artifice and Cunning.”

Barton’s claims about the religious roots of the country have been debunked from academics, even from Christian colleges. John Fea, chair of the history department at Messiah College, wrote [22], “Barton claims to be a historian. He is not. He has just enough historical knowledge, and just enough charisma, to be very dangerous.”

7. Texas Textbook Revisions. Last year the Texas Board of Education revised public school textbooks, expanding [23]discussion of Ronald Reagan at the expense of public figures like Justice Sonia Sotomayor, omitting reference to Thomas Jefferson as an Enlightenment thinker in favor of Protestant leader John Calvin, and offering favorable views [24] on Senator Joseph McCarthy, women’s rights opponent Phyllis Schlafly and the Heritage Foundation.

Many historians opposed [25] the changes—but the board voted along party lines [26] to approve of the revisions. Nearly 5 million Texas students live with the result.

8. Jim Crow wasn’t that bad. Last December, Governor Haley Barbour of Mississippi sugarcoated Jim Crow–era Mississippi, saying [27] of his native Yazoo County, “I just don’t remember it as being that bad,” and, “You heard of the Citizens Councils? Up north they think it was like the KKK. Where I come from it was an organization of town leaders.”

In reality, 1960s Mississippi was 42 percent black, of which only 2 percent were registered to vote, according to the nonprofit African-American Registry [28]. Civil rights activists were murdered [29] and students rioted [30] against integration. “Not bad” indeed! 

The Declaration of Independence and the U.S. Constitution were both based on Liberal political theory. Democracy itself is a liberal concept. As is small-r republicanism. The latter is tricky, trying to find the balance between individual rights and the other extreme where everyone, citing their individual rights, does anything they please. Conservatives plainly do not believe in balance. They believe the financial elite should have all the power and run the country instead of the people.

Happy New Year From Anti-American Fox News Who Dreams of the Day All Americans Hate Each Other

Happy New Year From Anti-American Fox News Who Dreams of the Day All Americans Hate Each Other - Fox's History Of Mainstreaming Hate

Fox & Friends recently hosted Andrea Lafferty, president of the Traditional Values Coalition (TVC), an organization that the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) has labeled an anti-gay "hate group." Lafferty, who has described SPLC's designation of her group as a "badge of honor," is the latest member of an organization that SPLC has designated as a hate group or otherwise criticized for propagating hateful rhetoric to be invited to speak on Fox News.

...Southern Poverty Law Center: TVC Is An Anti-Gay "Hate Group"

SPLC Labels TVC An Anti-Gay "Hate Group." According to the SPLC, TVC will be listed as an anti-gay hate group as of 2011. SPLC elevates anti-gay groups to hate group status "based on their propagation of known falsehoods -- claims about LGBT people that have been thoroughly discredited by scientific authorities -- and repeated, groundless name-calling." From SPLC:

    The group has at times enjoyed remarkable access to the halls of power -- during the George W. Bush Administration, Sheldon and Lafferty visited the White House a combined 69 times, meeting personally with Bush in eight of the visits. But that does not mean that it has not long had a record of extreme gay-bashing.

    In 1985, [TVC founder Lou] Sheldon suggested forcing AIDS victims into "cities of refuge." In 1992, columnist Jimmy Breslin said that Sheldon told him that "homosexuals are dangerous. They proselytize. They come to the door, and if your son answers and nobody is there to stop it, they grab the son and run off with him. They steal him. They take him away and turn him into a homosexual." Sheldon later denied that he made the comments, but his website today includes strikingly similar language..

...TVC Is Just The Latest Hate Group Or Individual Criticized For Hateful Rhetoric To Be Mainstreamed By Fox

Fox & Friends Hosted President Of FAIR, Which SPLC Designated An Anti-Immigrant Hate Group. On the March 30 edition of Fox News' Fox & Friends, Carlson hosted Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR) President Dan Stein to attack immigrants. According to SPLC, FAIR is an anti-immigrant hate group. SPLC noted:

    Although FAIR maintains a veneer of legitimacy that has allowed its principals to testify in Congress and lobby the federal government, this veneer hides much ugliness. FAIR leaders have ties to white supremacist groups and eugenicists and have made many racist statements. Its advertisements have been rejected because of racist content. FAIR's founder, John Tanton, has expressed his wish that America remain a majority-white population: a goal to be achieved, presumably, by limiting the number of nonwhites who enter the country. One of the group's main goals is upending the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965, which ended a decades-long, racist quota system that limited immigration mostly to northern Europeans. FAIR President Dan Stein has called the Act a "mistake." [Southern Poverty Law Center, accessed 3/30/11; Media Matters, 3/30/11]

Beck Hosted Author Who Was Member Of League Of The South Hate Group. On the June 8, 2010, edition of Fox News' Glenn Beck, Beck hosted author Thomas Woods, who has been a member of League of the South, which SPLC describes as:

    [A] neo-Confederate group that advocates for a second Southern secession and a society dominated by "European Americans." The league believes the "godly" nation it wants to form should be run by an "Anglo-Celtic" (read: white) elite that would establish a Christian theocratic state and politically dominate blacks and other minorities. Originally founded by a group that included many Southern university professors, the group lost its Ph.D.s as it became more explicitly racist. The league denounces the federal government and northern and coastal states as part of "the Empire," a materialist and anti-religious society. [SPLC, accessed 8/4/11; Media Matters, 6/8/10]

Beck Promoted Book By "One Man Hate Group" Eustace Mullins. On the September 22, 2010, edition of his Fox News show, Beck attacked 20th century diplomat Edward House by promoting a book by Eustace Mullins called Secrets of the Federal Reserve. Mullins was described as a "nationally known white supremacist and anti-Semite" in his obituary and was "described in 2000 by the SPLC as a one-man organization of hate." From the Daily News Leader in his hometown of Staunton, VA:

...Fox Has Repeatedly Hosted Pam Geller, Subject Of SPLC "Hatewatch" Post. Fox News has repeatedly hosted anti-Islam blogger Pamela Geller, even after she was the subject of an August 25, 2010, "Hatewatch" post by SPLC titled, "White Supremacists Find Common Cause With Pam Geller's Anti-Islam Campaign." From the SPLC's description of Geller:

    Pamela Geller is the anti-Muslim movement's most visible and flamboyant figurehead. She's relentlessly shrill and coarse in her broad-brush denunciations of Islam and makes preposterous claims, such as that President Obama is the "love child" of Malcolm X. She makes no pretense of being learned in Islamic studies, leaving the argumentative heavy lifting to her Stop Islamization of America partner Robert Spencer. Geller has mingled comfortably with European racists and fascists, spoken favorably of South African racists, defended Serbian war criminal Radovan Karadzic and denied the existence of Serbian concentration camps. She has taken a strong pro-Israel stance to the point of being sharply critical of Jewish liberals. [SPLC, 8/25/10; SPLC, accessed 8/5/11; Media Matters, 7/25/11]

Fox Hosted Head Of Anti-Gay Hate Group Family Research Council To Attack Gender Diversity Education. On the May 26 edition of Fox News' America's Newsroom, co-host Martha MacCallum hosted Family Research Council president Tony Perkins to attack a school in California that was teaching a gender diversity class. The Family Research Council has been labeled by the SPLC as an anti-gay hate group.  

Rupert Murdoch's Fox news and other right-wing media want Americans to be intolerant, hateful and suspicious of each other because they and their organizations make millions of dollars doing so. It also gets conservatives with radical anti-American agendas elected to office. One might call the whole operation a kind of pyramid scheme of hate. As long as it pays, they'll keep telling the lies, dispensing distorted information and stirring up division among the American people.

Conservative Republicans Subscribe to Trickle Down Supply-side Economics - An Economic Theory That Has Never Worked Anywhere in the World, Ever

Conservative Republicans Subscribe to Trickle Down Supply-side Economics - An Economic Theory That Has Never Worked Anywhere in the World, Ever

In 1910, former President Theodore Roosevelt gave his rousing “New Nationalism” speech in Osawatomie, Kansas, where he called for new approaches to dealing with the problems the nation faced. President Obama visited Osawatomie today, and in his own speech — his first major economic speech since Occupy Wall Street protests began highlighting income inequality and corporate greed — Obama called for a new approach to addressing America’s current economic challenges.

In the process, Obama fired a shot across the bow of 30 years of conservative economic theory, a shot that was sorely needed but has been left in the chamber by Democratic presidents and political leaders, Obama included, far too often. Trickle down economics, the conservative theory embraced by Ronald Reagan and virtually every conservative since, “doesn’t work,” Obama declared. And even as conservatives have clung to the idea in the face of overwhelming evidence against it, “it has never worked,” Obama added:

    Now, just as there was in Teddy Roosevelt’s time, there’s been a certain crowd in Washington for the last few decades who respond to this economic challenge with the same old tune. “The market will take care of everything,” they tell us. If only we cut more regulations and cut more taxes – especially for the wealthy – our economy will grow stronger. Sure, there will be winners and losers. But if the winners do really well, jobs and prosperity will eventually trickle down to everyone else. And even if prosperity doesn’t trickle down, they argue, that’s the price of liberty.

    It’s a simple theory – one that speaks to our rugged individualism and healthy skepticism of too much government. And that theory fits well on a bumper sticker. Here’s the problem: It doesn’t work. It has never worked. It didn’t work when it was tried in the decade before the Great Depression. It’s not what led to the incredible post-war boom of the 50s and 60s. And it didn’t work when we tried it during the last decade.


Obama is right. The trickle-down policies put in place since the Reagan administration haven’t brought prosperity to the middle- and working-classes; if anything, they have made prosperity an illusion for the vast majority of Americans who don’t directly benefit from them.

Tax cuts for the wealthy, primarily those passed by Republicans in 2001 and 2003, lowered rates for the richest Americans to historically low levels — but those cuts were followed by massive deficits and weak job growth, not the economic boom conservatives promised. Anti-regulatory policies helped lead to a predatory financial system that busted the housing market, nearly collapsed the financial industry, and threw America into a recession that largely spared — and even enriched — the nation’s wealthiest. At the same time, millions of lower- and middle-class Americans lost jobs, retirement funds, and any hope of economic prosperity in their lifetime. Under 30 years of trickle down policies, wage growth has stagnated even as CEO pay has boomed.

Unfortunately, Obama’s speech won’t be enough to make such policies disappear. Republicans continue to espouse the same ideas — loosening regulations and cutting taxes on the rich while slashing programs that benefit the working- and middle-classes — in their attempts to bring about recovery. If history is any indicator, however, those policies would again fail to boost job creation and economic growth. As Obama noted today, those policies don’t work, and they never have.

The Bush tax cuts were supposed to be like rocket fuel for the economy. We've had them for 10 years. Anyone from blue-collar working class to middle-class can look around and tell you those jobs were just unicorns and magic rainbows, not reality.

OMG, Supercommittee Republican Rep. Fred Upton (R-MI) Admits Bush Tax Cuts Didn’t Create Jobs, Can’t Explain Why

OMG, Supercommittee Republican Rep. Fred Upton (R-MI) Admits Bush Tax Cuts Didn’t Create Jobs, Can’t Explain Why

Republicans this week filibustered a Democratic plan to extend a soon-to-expire payroll tax cut, objecting to the fact that the extension was paid for by implementing a small surtax on income in excess of $1 million. To justify their objection to taxing the wealthy, Republicans have revived their false claim that taxing the rich amounts to taxing small business owners and job creators.

Bloomberg’s Al Hunt asked Rep. Fred Upton (R-MI) — who represented the GOP on the fiscal supercommittee that failed to craft a deficit reduction package — to explain this viewpoint, considering that more jobs were created under the Clinton administration and its higher taxes on the rich than were created following the Bush tax cuts. Upton admitted that “I don’t know specifically the answer to that question,” nonsensically pointing to Friday’s jobs report instead of trying to argue the premise of Hunt’s question:

    HUNT: Why under those pre-Bush tax cut tax rates did the economy do so well in the ‘90s? And why under the Bush tax rates, less for the wealthy, to do so poorly in this decade?

    UPTON: Well, a couple things. One, spending went up, Al, the wars. I mean, that’s trillions of dollars. And also there was no change in the entitlements. And we also know -

    HUNT: But that shouldn’t hurt the economy. That shouldn’t hurt economic growth.

    UPTON: Yeah, but that impacts the debt and the deficit.

    HUNT: But I’m asking, why did the economy grow a lot? Why were more jobs created in the previous decade under higher taxes than in this decade under lower taxes?

    UPTON: I don’t know specifically the answer to that question. I can – I can maybe merit a guess. But, I mean, in large part is because our job – we lost jobs. I mean, look at the jobs report that came out this last week, three-hundred- some-thousand people actually stopped looking for jobs.



As Center for American Progress Director of Tax and Budget Policy Michael Linden found, “in the past 60 years, job growth has actually been greater in years when the top income tax rate was much higher than it is now.” In fact, “if you ranked each year since 1950 by overall job growth, the top five years would all boast marginal tax rates at 70 percent or higher.” The GOP, as Upton displays, simply has no explanation for these facts.

In a Bloomberg op-ed, wealthy investor Nick Hanauer also blew a hole in the GOP’s line of thinking, writing, “I can start a business based on a great idea, and initially hire dozens or hundreds of people. But if no one can afford to buy what I have to sell, my business will soon fail and all those jobs will evaporate. That’s why I can say with confidence that rich people don’t create jobs.” The GOP would do well to take note.

This is not particularly breaking news in the sense we know that conservatives practice economics the way cults practice their beliefs. Conservatives pay no attention to evidence, they just irrationally believe in what they believe, no matter how many millions of decent hard working Americans they hurt.

America Haters at Fox News Hosts Pollster Who is Paid To Make Up Smears About Health Care Reform

America Haters at Fox News Hosts Pollster Who is Paid To Make Up Smears About Health Care Reform

You may recall GOP pollster Frank Luntz's recently released a 28-page memo, "The Language of Healthcare 2009: The 10 Rules for Stopping the 'Washington Takeover' of Healthcare," which is intended to help conservatives defeat President Obama and congressional Democrats' health-care reform initiatives.  As we've noted over the past two weeks, Fox News has provided a forum for the Luntz talking points while Politico hyped his memo and downplayed a progressive pollster’s pro-health care reform memo.

Well, now it seems Luntz doesn't want anyone asking who paid for his "10 rules" memo.  Via Huffington Post's Sam Stein:

    Conservative communications guru Frank Luntz has written the playbook for GOP opposition to the Obama administration's health care proposal. His plan, which is heavy on framing the president's proposal as a government "takeover," is already popping up in statements from top congressional Republicans and on Fox News, despite the fact that no Democratic legislation has been proposed.

    But when it comes to discussing who funded his messaging, the wordsmith Luntz is notably devoid of words. Asked about his funder in an interview with the New York Times Magazine to be published on Sunday, Luntz was close-lipped:

    Q Who paid you to write the health care memo?

    A It's not relevant.

    Q A pharmaceutical company?

    A No pharmaceutical company was involved.

Riiiiiiight, it's not relevant who paid for the memo – a memo with talking points now being parroted by Fox News and other conservative media outlets and figures.  I know it may be a bit of a stretch to expect Luntz to understand that this is an issue about his credibility as a pollster – if he has any left – but it's the right thing to do.

 Luntz was one of the so-called experts used by the anti-American conservative movement to spread the falsehood about health care reform being socialism. That was found to be one of Poltifacts lies of the year. Unfortunately or fortunately depending on your point of view, health care reform or the ACA was a free market solution.

Anti-American Conservative Newt Gingrich Was Pro Health Care Mandate Before He Was Against It

Gingrich Backs Away From Individual Mandate: ‘I Never Focused On It Much’

In 1993, then-Speaker Newt Gingrich endorsed the concept of a national individual mandate, saying on Meet the Press, “I am for people, individuals — exactly like automobile insurance — individuals having health insurance and being required to have health insurance.” He reiterated the principle in 2007 — writing in a Des Moines Register op-ed, “Personal responsibility extends to the purchase of health insurance. Citizens should not be able to cheat their neighbors by not buying insurance” — and again in 2008: “Finally, we should insist that everyone above a certain level buy coverage (or, if they are opposed to insurance, post a bond).” His for-profit think tank, the Center for Health Transformation (CHT), still promotes the concept on its website, writing, “Anyone who earns more than $50,000 a year must purchase health insurance or post a bond.”

But since the requirement is also included in the Affordable Care Act, presidential candidate Newt Gingrich is against it and believes it to be unconstitutional. During an interview with the Union Leader on Monday, he announced that despite the long public record, he actually “never focused on it much on the federal level”:

    GINGRICH: I never focused on it much on the federal level. I talked about it at the center, at the state level and what we were trying to solve, we just concluded you couldn’t do it, it was too hard…As you work through it, at the time it was designed to block Hillarycare and the more you thought about it, the more you realized, a Congress that can compel you to do something like that, could compel you to do anything. What’s the limit to Congress’ power to dictate your life? And that, I think, will be heart of the argument at the Supreme Court?

The limit is actually fairly clear. The Supreme Court grants the Congress broad deference in regulating the country’s economic activities, so long as the activity is itself economic in nature. And since we all have bodies and they all get old and sick, health care costs are shifted to other payers throughout the country. In 2008, the government spent $43 billion providing uncompensated care to uninsured individuals. In that sense, even the failure to buy a product constitutes an “economic activity.”

For over sixty years conservative leaders such as Gingrich have been lying the Constitution. They say they believe in it literally word for word. While that kind of interpretation is not one the Founders intended - they did not have broadcast airwaves or air travel to regulate back in 1775 for one thing. Conservatives consistently cannot pass their own litmus tests. They decide to believe in whatever screwy point of view and than they find some way to shoe horn in their beliefs into the Constitution. This approach to living in a modern democratic republic is inherently Anti-American.

Republicans Claim The Stimulus Did Not Create Jobs and Government Cannot Create Jobs

Republicans Claim The Stimulus Did Not Create Jobs and Government Cannot Create Jobs

I have to admit, I never tire of stories like these.

    …Rep. Frank Guinta (R-NH) kicked it old school on Thursday by cutting the ribbon on a new road that received millions from the same spending bill he opposed.

    Guinta spoke at the opening ceremony for Raymond Wieczorek Drive, a new access road connecting various towns to the Manchester-Boston Regional Airport. Later he posted a picture of the event on his official Facebook page. Other attendees included Gov. John Lynch (D) and New Hampshire House Speaker William O’Brien.

    “It’s going to help us with our tourism, our economy, and it’s going to provide us greater flexibility for our residents, our business commuters, and those visiting our state,” Guinta said at the event. “It’s a real example of how when we put our mind to it we can accomplish anything we want to accomplish.”

These examples are a lot less common now, not because GOP officials have become more responsible, but because Recovery Act funding has just about been exhausted. But when the instances come along, they tend to be doozies.

In this case, Guinta absolutely loathes stimulus spending — his hatred for these public investments was a central part of his 2010 campaign platform — but that didn’t stop him from trying to take credit for the infrastructure project that was financed by stimulus spending. That this new project wouldn’t exist if Guinta had his way didn’t interfere with his smiles at the ribbon-cutting ceremony.

Now, every time these examples come up, I get some pushback. As the argument goes, these Republican lawmakers who hate stimulus spending and want stimulus spending at the same time aren’t really doing anything wrong, because once the funds are available, members of Congress have a responsibility to look out for their districts’ interests.

There’s certainly some truth to this, and I can fully appreciate the importance of fighting for a slice of a pie. After all, their taxpaying constituents are paying for these investments whether they like it or not.

The problem, though, is the ways in which this practice pokes holes in the larger Republican ideology. GOP lawmakers like Guinta run around telling the public that public investments can’t create jobs and are bad for the economy. GOP lawmakers like Guinta then also tell the public investments can create jobs and are good for the economy.

Look again at those remarks the conservative Republican lawmaker made at the ribbon-cutting ceremony: because Congress agreed to spend this money, over his objections, Guinta’s community will get a larger economic boost. But if that’s true, why has Guinta fought so hard to kill this and related investments? Isn’t boosting the economy a worthwhile goal?

If there’s money on the table, and Republicans want to fight for some of it, fine. But what gets me are the ideological arguments that are as wrong as they are cynical — public spending will undermine the economy, unless it’s in my area, in which case it will be good for the economy.

One way to explain how conservatives look at the world is whatever benefits them is good - there s no real underlying system of beliefs. They're like children who want a piece of candy are are going to stomp their feet and cry until they get. Everything else they say or do is just so much noise. Some conservatives still try to get away with calling themselves the party of Lincoln. That was around the last time the Republican party stood for any principles.

Conservatism Has Become The Cult of Ayn Rand

Conservatism Has Become The Cult of Ayn Rand

Many have commented on the remarkable callousness fashioned by this Republican presidential field. Most prominently, Herman Cain maintained that the poor and unemployed are responsible for their own plight; Ron Paul claimed that people who refrain from buying health insurance but become debilitated should not be bailed out by government healthcare—they should just die instead, his audience helpfully suggested (or hollered, rather); and just about all the candidates have recommended ever harsher, ever more absurd measures to keep out poor immigrants on our border with Mexico: double fences, electric fences, even soldiers with ‘real guns and real bullets,’ as Herman Cain put it.

What’s driving this show of meanness? You might say it’s just what the electorate—or some loud part thereof—wants. It seems like there are some seriously angry voters out there these days, and I’m sure the recession is taking a toll on people’s patience and generosity. And yet, I suspect this is no fleeting trend, but something with deeper ideological roots. In short, I sense Ayn Rand.

Rand has always had a good following, but her popularity has surged in recent years as conservatives repeatedly invoked her to counter Obama’s “Socialist” agenda. She has an impressive roster of conservative devotees: Clarence Thomas, Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck, and Ron Paul. Paul’s son, Senator Rand Paul quoted Ayn Rand at length during a congressional committee meeting this past year—to argue against government mandates for energy efficient light bulbs, of all things. Congressman Paul Ryan, the rising star from Wisconsin who drafted the Republican’s celebrated plan to slash the federal budget, reportedly urges all his staffers to read her works.

This is a powerful fan-base, and many have feared the consequences of Rand’s influence. I think we are seeing it now, for there are clear strains of her venom in the excesses of the Republican candidates—and beyond. Her trademark callousness is increasingly evident throughout our political discourse regarding the poor and vulnerable of society. The congressional super-committee charged with agreeing on a trillion dollars in federal deficit reduction is reportedly contemplating cuts to food stamps, while Republicans remain steadfast that taxes not rise on the rich. This, as the recession lingers and poverty rates soar, and we witness the greatest concentration of wealth among the rich since the 1920s. The Republican stance is mind-boggling in these circumstances—but Rand would certainly approve; indeed, she might favor far worse. Consider:

In her popular novels, Rand glorifies ambitious, fiercely independent individuals who soar and succeed by virtue of their own resources and willpower alone. It’s her ode to individualism that captivates her fans. Also the simplicity of her world view, I suspect: Rand’s is a Manichean universe populated by a few great souls on one side, and the inept masses on the other; the masses would perennially muddle in their own misery if not for the exceptional creativity and bravery of a few to do great things, and it’s up to the masses to keep out of their way. In Atlas Shrugged, Rand declares “The man at the top of the intellectual pyramid contributes the most to all those below him, but gets nothing except his material payment, receiving no intellectual bonus from others to add to the value of his time.” Upon little reflection, Rand’s reasoning is obviously specious. Who on earth rises to the top without the help of someone, anyone at all? Indeed, luck plays an important role in a person’s success, too—if you evaluate it honestly, that is. Rand’s thinking is a pleasant enough fiction for those at the top of the heap, but it’s wholly improbable, naïve—and rude.

Pry a little further, however, and Rand’s thinking quickly becomes quite cruel. In a 1967 article entitled “Requiem for Man,” Rand issues a scathing rebuttal to Pope Paul VI who dared suggest that capitalists must be mindful of global wealth disparity and the sufferings of the poor, and recognize a social obligation to help the unfortunate (the Vatican has notably issued similar remarks in a recent statement on the global financial crisis). Rand slams the Pope for urging us to show brotherly love to poor 3rd world “savages." To the contrary, she declares, when civilized man “discovers entire populations rotting alive in such conditions” he should not feel pity, but “a burning stab of pride” for “the achievements of his nations and his culture…” Amazingly, Rand fails to acknowledge how much the civilized nations have prospered at the expense of the global poor thanks to imperialism. Would she have us applaud the imperialists for their opportunism and exploitation?

In Rand’s view, the poor are better subject to our derision than compassion. What they want, what the Pope calls us to be sensitive to, are perfectly despicable needs: “The inhabitants of the world [that the Pope’s encyclical] proposes to establish are robots tuned to respond to a single stimulus: need—the lowest, grossest, physical, physicalistic need of any other robots anywhere: the minimum necessities, the barely sufficient to keep all robots in working order, eating, sleeping, eliminating, and procreating, to produce more robots to work, eat, sleep, eliminate, and procreate.” Her message to the millions starving in the world: your needs are not worth our consideration; just die why don’t you.

I’ve long wondered why—or how—Rand’s disciples conveniently, miraculously, ignored her heinous conclusions. It’s time Rand was seen for what she is—no glossing over it. Clearly, it’s not acceptable for our political leaders to be associated with her thought. Conservatives—any of her disciples indeed—have a clear choice: marginalize her work accordingly, or explain how a vision of radical individualism such as Rand’s does not lead to hate. A lot could be gained by the latter. At the very least, it might reveal the appropriate boundaries of our individualism, and make us more thoughtful to the vulnerable among us.

Firmin DeBrabander is Chair of Humanistic Studies and Associate Professor of Philosophy at the Maryland Institute College of Art.

Conservatives or Republitarians are like children who fall in love with superheroes like the simplistic ones Rand portrays in her fictional novels. In the real world we grow up and realize we're not cartoon characters and never can be. The rabid Right never grows up. They hold on to childish notions or delusions they got theirs without any help or any luck or any of the infrastructure a civilized society provides via taxes.

Why Do Republicans Hate American Families - Senate Republicans Kill the Democrats' Infrastructure Jobs Bill

Why Do Republicans Hate American Families - Senate Republicans Kill the Democrats' Infrastructure Jobs Bill

Senate Republicans, again, filibustered a component of President Obama's jobs bill, the Rebuild America Jobs Act. In any other world, it would have passed 51-47, but this is a Senate, so a majority vote means that the bill dies. Go USA!

This bill had $10 billion to establish an infrastructure bank, a proposal that has received plenty of Republican support in the past, as well as $50 billion in immediate funding for roads, bridges and airports, something else Republican Senators have supported in the past. When they were just blowing hot air. When it wasn't the nation's infrastructure and economy at stake.

The measure would have been funded by a 0.7 percent surtax on people making more than a million dollars a year, or about 1/500th of American citizens, who would have seen an increase of about 1/217th in their tax bill. Just in case you were left with any doubt over whether Republicans stood with the 1 percent or the 99 percent.

12:46 PM PT: Sens. Ben Nelson and Joe Lieberman voted with the Republicans (I know, you're shocked). The Republican version of the bill, which really didn't have anything m
Senate Republicans, again, filibustered a component of President Obama's jobs bill, the Rebuild America Jobs Act. In any other world, it would have passed 51-47, but this is a Senate, so a majority vote means that the bill dies. Go USA!


12:46 PM PT: Sens. Ben Nelson and Joe Lieberman voted with the Republicans (I know, you're shocked). The Republican version of the bill, which really didn't have anything much to do with jobs, failed 47-53.

Conservatives think it is more important the economy be dragged down to make Democrats look bad than it is to do what is best for the country. Modern conservative Republicans are not patriots as much as they are right-wing zealots who only care about their radical agenda. to make America look like half like a third world country and the other half gated communities where the bankers and elite live.

Republicans Criticize Obama's Withdrawing From Iraq On The Time-Table Bush and Republicans Agreed To

Republicans Criticize Obama's Withdrawing From Iraq On The Time-Table Bush and Republicans Agreed To

Why it’s safe to ignore Republican criticism of Obama’s policy in Iraq.

This is getting all too predictable. President Obama announced that all American troops will leave Iraq by the end of the year, in compliance not only with his election pledge but also with the terms of a U.S.-Iraq treaty. In response, the Republicans moaned and hollered that Obama is playing politics with national security, or that he could have negotiated a better outcome, or that he’s surrendering to Iranian domination.

It’s a safe bet that, had Obama announced he was keeping 10,000 troops in Iraq for the indefinite future, most of the same Republicans would have moaned and hollered that he was breaking a promise to the American people, draining the Treasury, and boosting the chance of a terrorist attack by Muslims angered at our continued occupation.
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More than this, their complaints are unfounded, based on either ignorance or deliberate distortion.

First, it is crucial to note that this withdrawal and its timetable were set in a treaty called the Status of Forces Agreement, signed Nov. 17, 2008, not by Obama (who wasn’t president yet) but rather by George W. Bush. SOFAs, as they’re often abbreviated, are treaties—bearing the force of national and international law—that presidents sign with each country that hosts U.S. armed forces. They set the terms and conditions under which those forces can stay.

The SOFA with Iraq states, in Article 24: “All U.S. forces are to withdraw from all Iraqi territory, waters, and airspace no later than the 31st of December of 2011.” That’s as definitive as these things get.
Article 30 does allow for amendments to the treaty, but only in the event of the “formal written approval of both parties and in accordance with the constitutional procedures in both countries.” For the past few months, U.S. officials (including some former Bush officials called back to join the delegation) have tested the waters to see if Iraqi lawmakers would allow—or, more to the point, wanted—an amendment that would permit some of the current 40,000 American troops to stay on. Their conclusion: The Iraqis had no such desire, and not much need.

Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., and some others have suggested that the sticking point was over a clause giving U.S. troops immunity from Iraqi prosecution for alleged crimes. This is a standard feature of such treaties, including of the earlier arrangement with Iraq. It’s true that the Iraqis refused to grant the immunity. But there was no leeway to negotiate an exemption, because the main sticking point was, and is, that the Iraqis simply do not want American troops in their country anymore. One U.S. official in Iraq said in a phone interview, “Even our erstwhile friends [among Iraqi politicians] want us out by the end of the year. None of them lifted a finger to keep us.”

Do Obama’s Republican critics, who have made such a big deal of Iraq’s bourgeoning democracy, really think Obama should (or could) have disregarded the democratically elected parliament of a sovereign nation—a sovereign ally, at that—in order to keep U.S. troops on that nation’s soil, allegedly for its own interest (as defined by us, not by them)? We would then become nothing but an occupying power, sure to trigger an escalation of armed resistance and appear hypocritical in the extreme.

Meanwhile, we have been withdrawing troops steadily for some time. And so far, violence has not been on the rise. In fact, it’s been sharply declining.

The authors also note two other things Republicans cannot seem to get through their partisan addled brains. Iraq has shown no signs of wanting to sign up with any of Iran's agenda. There are about 40,000 troops still in the region on the Kuwait border plus a naval task force in the area should Iraq need protection from invaders. Too bad conservatives seem more obsessed with trying to make Obama look bad than they are with creating jobs. Isn't that what they campaigned on in 2010. How many jobs bills have Republicans passed? Zero. Yet they have opposed Obama's Job Bill because it would make billionaires pay a few more dollars in taxes. How is it again that conservatives are not the self absorbed elitists. 

Private Wall Street Companies Caused The Financial Crisis — Not Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac Or The Community Reinvestment Act

Private Wall Street Companies Caused The Financial Crisis — Not Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac Or The Community Reinvestment Act

In the four years since the housing bubble burst, triggering a collapse in global financial markets whose value had been propped up through the repackaging and trading of home loans via complex financial instruments, there's been plenty of blame to go around. The Occupy Wall Street protests have called new attention to the root causes of the crisis, and led Republicans to reiterate their claim that government-backed lenders Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were the primary villains. The facts about the subprime mortgage market prove that claim false: Private firms dominated the subprime market boom of 2004-06, and were not even subject to the 1977 Community Reinvestment Act some Republicans vilify. Thanks to decades of financial deregulation, capped by President Bush's decision to appoint Wall Street regulators who believed their job was to help banks rather than curb banking abuses, financial giants were able to turn the mortgage market into a high-stakes casino. As investigative reporters and Congress' Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission have all shown, it was deregulation mixed with irresponsible and potentially illegal practices by private firms on Wall Street that caused both the bubble and the collapse.

...From 2004 To 2006, Fannie And Freddie's Share Of Subprime Market Fell From Almost Half To Just Under One-Quarter. As reported by McClatchy: "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." [McClatchy, 10/12/08, emphasis added]

    Fannie And Freddie Faced Tougher Regulatory Standards Than The Private Firms. As reported by McClatchy: "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." [McClatchy, 10/12/08]

2006: Private Firms Issued About Six Out Of Every Seven Subprime Mortgages. As reported by McClatchy:

    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. [McClatchy, 10/12/08, emphasis added]

2008: The 15 Largest Subprime Servicers Were All Private Companies, Despite Large Drops In The Volume Of Their Subprime Business Compared To 2007. McClatchy prepared a graphic based on Inside Mortgage Finance data showing the 15 largest subprime service companies in 2008: 

The conservative narrative that blames Fannie, Freddie and working class Americans is all about not admitting that free markets are not perfect. Free markets only work when properly regulated and that regulation enforced. Blaming anyone and any institution that was not pure free market is away to shift blame from the real constituency of the Anti-American conservative movement - the financial elite.

What Liberal Media - Most of President Obama's Accomplishments Go Unreported

What Liberal Media - Most of President Obama's Accomplishments Go Unreported

The teeming crowds of supporters who had cheered candidate Barack Obama’s agenda for “change you can believe in” receded quickly. The 2008 presidential election energized Americans who had never participated in politics before, particularly the young and minorities, and it attracted the interest and hopes of many independents, people who are usually less engaged in the political process. Once elected, the young president held to his word and pursued transformations in American social policy — healthcare reform, new tax breaks, and enhanced aid to college students — that vast majorities of Americans had long told pollsters they favored. Despite the usual travails of the legislative process, exacerbated in 2009 and 2010 by greater political polarization in Congress than at any other point in the post–World War II period, within 15 months Obama had already achieved much of what he set out to do on these issues. Yet Americans generally seemed unimpressed and increasingly disillusioned. The problem was that most of what was accomplished could not be seen: It remained invisible to average citizens.

The public had no trouble noticing the jockeying of special interests that sought favored treatment in legislation — that was plain to see — but the majority of Americans remained unaware of the contents of the president’s signature achievements, and they lacked a basic understanding of how they and their families might be affected by them. The first major piece of legislation that Obama had signed into law, the stimulus bill of February 2009, included a vast array of tax cuts: They totaled $288 billion, 37 percent of the cost of the entire bill. Among them, the Making Work Pay Tax Credit, one of his campaign promises, reduced income taxes for 95 percent of all working Americans. Yet one year after the law went into effect, when pollsters queried the public about whether the Obama administration had raised or lowered taxes for most Americans, only 12 percent answered correctly that taxes had decreased; 53 percent mistakenly thought taxes had stayed the same; and 24 percent even believed they had increased!

Healthcare reform represented Obama’s chief policy goal, and he expended a vast amount of political capital in pursuing it over his first 15 months in office. But in April 2010, just weeks after he signed the healthcare bill that extended coverage to the vast majority of working-age Americans and prohibited insurance companies from denying coverage to people who are ill, 55 percent of the public reported that they would describe their feelings about it as “confused.”

That same legislative package also contained sweeping changes in student aid policy that aimed to help more people attend college and complete degrees. Yet when Americans were asked how much they had heard about these changes, only 26 percent reported “a lot,” while 40 percent said “a little,” and fully 34 percent said “nothing at all.”

All told, the public seemed largely oblivious to the president’s major policy accomplishments.

While many who had voted for Obama grew complacent, grassroots mobilization emerged from another quarter, the insurgent Tea Party movement. Wielding placards at protests on tax day, town hall meetings and other public events, its supporters decried what they termed “government takeovers” of healthcare and student loans. At a gathering in Simpsonville, S.C., in August 2009, one man told Republican Rep. Robert Inglis, “Keep your government hands off my Medicare.” Inglis said later, “I had to politely explain that ‘Actually, sir, your healthcare is being provided by the government,’ but he wasn’t having any of it.”

While as of March 2010 only 13 percent of Americans reported that they considered themselves “part of the Tea Party movement,” nonetheless the frustration that it embodied resonated with growing numbers of Americans: 28 percent considered themselves supporters.

With the content of Obama’s legislative accomplishments appearing so opaque and incomprehensible even as the calls of opponents resonated loud and clear, most Americans registered reactions that were tepid at best, and many grew increasingly hostile. By the fall of 2010, 61 percent of likely voters told pollsters they favored a repeal of healthcare reform.

It was a sharp contrast to the warm reception given to sweeping social welfare laws achieved by earlier presidents. After Franklin D. Roosevelt signed into law the Social Security Act of 1935, 68 percent of the public voiced support for its “contributory old age insurance plan … which requires employers and workers to make equal contributions to workers’ pensions” — even though its benefits were not scheduled to begin for six years.

When Congress passed Lyndon Baines Johnson’s plan for Medicare in 1965, strong majorities repeatedly said they approved of it, as high as 82 percent in a December survey that year.

Until Obama’s presidency, perhaps never before had major laws that aimed to improve the lives of vast numbers of ordinary Americans gone so unrecognized and unappreciated by so many.

What explains the public’s reticence, frustration and confusion? Certainly its reactions owe partly to the worst economic conditions since the Great Depression, with more than two years of near 10 percent unemployment. Some of the lackluster response was inevitable, furthermore, given the sheer scope and complexity of the policy tasks Obama took on. And a share of the blame belongs to his administration’s own public relations efforts, which many observers considered underwhelming. Yet while each of these commonly cited factors undeniably played a role, they do not, by themselves, explain Americans’ blasé response to major social policy accomplishments that reflected broadly shared values. Historical comparisons make this evident. The public voiced its high approval for the Social Security Act of 1935, for example, when the nation was still mired in the Great Depression and when twice the proportion of Americans, 20 percent, remained jobless. That legislation was also multifaceted and complex, and it was even more novel for the United States than the 2010 healthcare package, marking the first major involvement of the U.S. federal government in social provision for people besides veterans and their relatives.

The main difference confronted by Obama emanated from the types of policies that he sought to reform, ones that generate particularly formidable obstacles. Any leader who seeks to transform “politics as usual” is bound to confront resistance — challenges emanating from the policies, practices and institutions already in place.

But the nature and difficulty of the task vary depending on the particular goals that reformers select and the historical context in which they pursue them. Roosevelt confronted a political landscape that presented its own challenges — not least, a Supreme Court that served as a major roadblock to his policy ambitions. His administration had to attempt to fashion policies that would circumvent the court’s reach and to build as much as possible on what already existed, such as social policies adopted by some states. But Obama’s policy agenda, in the current political context, requires him to engage in a struggle more akin to that undertaken by Progressive Era reformers, who had to destroy or reconstitute deeply entrenched relationships if they were to achieve change.

He could not follow the path of Roosevelt, finding a way around political obstacles or merely building on top of what existed; rather, he had to find ways to work through them, by either obliterating them or restructuring them.

This is because Obama, given his policy agenda, had steered directly into the looming precipice of the submerged state: existing policies that lay beneath the surface of U.S. market institutions and within the federal tax system. Contrary to opponents’ charges that his agenda involved the encroachment of the federal government into private matters, Obama was actually attempting to restructure a dense thicket of long-established public policies, but ones that are largely invisible to most Americans — and that are extremely resistant to change. Efforts to transform these policies, which have become entrenched fixtures of modern governance, generate a deeply conflictual politics that routinely alienates the public, hindering the chances of success or the sustainability of the reforms.

The “submerged state” includes a conglomeration of federal policies that function by providing incentives, subsidies or payments to private organizations or households to encourage or reimburse them for conducting activities deemed to serve a public purpose. Over the past 30 years, American political discourse has been dominated by a conservative public philosophy, one that espouses the virtues of small government. Its values have been pursued in part through efforts to scale back traditional forms of social provision, meaning visible benefits administered fairly directly by government. In the case of some programs geared to the young or to working-age people, the value of average benefits has withered and coverage has grown more restrictive.

Ironically, however, the more dramatic change over this period has been the flourishing of the policies of the submerged state, which operate through indirect means such as tax breaks to households or payments to private actors who provide services. Since 1980 these policies have proliferated in number, and the average size of their benefits has expanded dramatically.

Most of these ascendant policies function in a way that directly contradicts Americans’ expectations of social welfare policies: They shower their largest benefits on the most affluent Americans. Take the Home Mortgage Interest Deduction (HMID), for example, which is currently the nation’s most expensive social tax break aside from the tax-free status of employer-provided health coverage. Let us assume that a family buys a median-value home and to finance it borrows $230,000 at an interest rate of 6.25 percent for 30 years. The richer the household, the larger the benefit: In the first year, the average family, with an income between $16,751 and $68,000, would owe around $3,619 less in taxes; those in the next income group, with earnings up to $137,300, would reap an extra $5,146; and so forth, on up to the wealthiest 2 percent of families, with incomes over $373,650, who would enjoy a savings of $6,673. Of course, in reality, these differences are likely to be much greater. Low- to moderate-income Americans usually do not have enough deductions to itemize, so they would forgo this benefit and receive instead only the standard deduction. Meanwhile, the most affluent are likely to purchase far more expensive homes; if a family in the top income category opts for a more upscale home and borrows $500,000 for a mortgage, it will reap a benefit of $14,506 from the HMID; if this family purchases a truly exclusive property and borrows $1 million for a mortgage, it will qualify to keep a whopping $29,012!

This pattern of upward redistribution is repeated in numerous other policies of the submerged state: Federal largesse is allocated disproportionately to the nation’s most well-off households. Such policies consume a sizable portion of revenues and leave scarce resources available for programs that genuinely aid low- and middle-income Americans.

Yet despite their growing size, scope and tendency to channel government benefits toward the wealthy, the policies of the submerged state remain largely invisible to ordinary Americans: Indeed, their hallmark is the way they obscure government’s role from the view of the general public, including those who number among their beneficiaries. Even when people stare directly at these policies, many perceive only a freely functioning market system at work. They understand neither what is at stake in reform efforts nor the significance of their success. As a result, the charge leveled by opponents of reforms — that they amount to “government takeovers” — though blatantly inaccurate, makes many Americans at least uncomfortable with policy changes, if not openly hostile toward them.  ***Rest of the article continues at the link.

What with internet access to many government sites and public policy think tanks if the public, especially right-wing conservatives uses the internet at all it is go to sites whose bias is evident in the serial lies that tell about Obama and Democrats. Some minds are simply closed to the truth and new ideas. The example above of the tea nut who wanted government to keep their hands off his Medicare is a good example - Medicare is a government health insurance program, what conservatives derisively call an entitlement program. It is an entitlement because individuals pay for it through their payroll taxes. It is not a government giveaway. It is not giving anyone a free ride.

The Latest Desperate Smear Of Occupy Wall Street Protests: The Nazis Like Them

The American Nazi Party put out a statement on Thursday that was supportive of the Occupy Wall Street protests. Rocky Suhayda, the party's chairman, said, "My heart is right there with these people."

The right-wing blogosphere saw an opportunity to associate the protests with Nazis, and the pile-on began. The Blaze quoted the statement, as did Fox Nation and Gateway Pundit blogger Jim Hoft.

On the Monday edition of Fox News' flagship "straight news" program Special Report, anchor Bret Baier also treated this endorsement as if it were significant:

Interesting fact about Suhayda: During the 2008 presidential campaign, he declared his preference for Barack Obama over John McCain.

In a June 2008 piece, Esquire magazine interviewed Suhayda along with three other white supremacists -- and three of the four preferred Obama. Esquire also interviewed a black nationalist who chose McCain.

Similarly, an Al Qaeda affiliate expressed its hope that George W. Bush would win re-election in 2004, and an Al Qaeda website offered its support for McCain in 2008.

So, does this mean that Obama is just like the Nazis, or that Bush shares Al Qaeda's goals, or that McCain is a black nationalist?

Of course not. These are all ridiculous associations to make. Fringe groups make provocative comments like this all the time, often in the interest of attracting publicity.

The right-wing media's promotion of Suhayda's statement reveals an agenda that is dead-set on delegitimizing the message of the protests, to the extent that they're willing to employ comically flimsy logic in an attempt to do so.

Reminder: If a Nazi says something nice about you, that doesn't make you a Nazi.