Sharron Angle Endorses South American Dictator's Agenda

Sharron Angle Endorses South American Dictator's Agenda

Reid opponent Sharron Angle stumps for military dictators retirement program. To those who've actually studied recent history, former Chilean military dictator Augusto Pinochet Ugarte was a cruel tyrant.

But to Sharron Angle, the tea parties' favorite U.S. Senate candidate from Nevada, he had at least one good idea: replacing the country's Social Security-like program with compulsory private retirement savings accounts.

Or, that's at least what she said -- that Medicare and Social Security must be "phased out" for "private" programs -- in a recent interview.


Sound familiar? That's because Pinochet's former labor minister, has since become one of the world's leading advocates of privatizing pension accounts. After demolishing the nation's political stronghold, he went to work for the conservative-leaning Cato Institute to advocate around the world for private retirement accounts. He's even credited as the man who convinced former U.S. President George W. Bush to pursue an agenda of privatizing Social Security.
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Angle, in a recent interview with News 8 Now in Las Vegas, appeared taken aback when asked if her position on Social Security is a "flip flop". While she's been advocating privatization as of late, she's also released a television advertisement that would seem to convey quite the opposite message.

Watch:

Confronted by a journalist with the apparent conflict in her messaging, she replied, according to the report: "It is when we have a $2.5 trillion raid and pillaging going on and an empty trust fund and now we are upside down. As of last Friday, they said, (there was a) $41 billion shortfall in Social Security. $41 billion less going in than coming out. It's broken.

"When I said privatize, that's what I meant. That I thought we would just have to go to the private sector for a template on how this is supposed to be done. However, I've since been studying and Chile has done this."
And just what happened in Chile after the country's public pension system was taken private? Barbara T. Dreyfuss, writing for Mother Jones in April, 2005, explained:

    The transition was expensive and funded by slashing government programs, selling off state-owned industries, selling bonds to the new pension funds, and raising taxes. Privatization costs, which also included a government subsidy for workers unable to accumulate enough in their private accounts to guarantee a minimum income in retirement, averaged more than 6 percent of Chile's gross domestic product in the 1980s and are expected to average more than 4 percent of GDP each year until 2037.

    [...]

    The [World Bank] found that exorbitant fees and other costs charged by private pension fund managers eat up as much as 15 percent of the contributions made by average Chilean workers, and even more for poorer workers. Investment returns have been far more modest than the hefty 11 percent return claimed by the private managers. The Chilean government's pension superintendent says actual returns for someone earning Chile's minimum wage were only 3.7 percent between 1994 and 2000.

    A recent report by the Chilean government brought more grim news, forecasting that as many as half of all workers won't be able to save enough to receive the minimum pension when they retire.

 

Angle is clearly too extreme for America. Why is she taking her economic guidance from a far right fascist dictator. Angle is established a record as a pathological liar.

Wisconsin Far Right-wing Republican Ron Johnson is the Know Nothing Candidate

Wisconsin Far Right-wing Republican Ron Johnson is the Know Nothing Candidate

I cannot vote for Ron Johnson. He's too unrealistic about his aspirations in Washington. If elected, he will be just one of 100 Senators. He will have no rank, record, or reputation. Or any political IOU's either! Chances are he will just be a pawn, subject to manipulation by the Republican leadership. How much can he really do for Wisconsin under those circumstances?

His understanding of government is limited. He laments the number of lawyers in the Senate. Legislators write laws, not pursue lawsuits. They debate philosophies, policies, regulations and overall budgets.

He's contradictory about "creating jobs." He says he knows how to create jobs, but then contends that governments cannot create jobs. What does he really believe about this issue? And why won't he answer questions about those beliefs?

His statements indicate he may serve only one term of six years. It takes decades to achieve major initiatives in government. How can he do anything significant in just six years?

He decries "career politicians." We need long-term office holders to protect us from the inertia of bureaucrats and the aggressive antics of lobbyists from special interest groups. Amateur politicians in office for a few years are often stalled or easily "conned" by the more sophisticated.

His negative "attack ads" are ridiculously obvious attempts to scare the ignorant and uneducated. Political hacks he pays for have produced these blatant insults to Wisconsin's voters. And then he "approves of them." He criticizes "career politicians," but seems to be acting like the worse of them!

He has refused to have more than three debates and also declined to be interviewed by newspaper editorial staffs. What is he hiding about his political philosophies and policies on various issues? We voters need to know!

R.E. Schallert

Winneconne

Far Right Bush Conservative Ron Johnson lacks answers and leadership skills

The election for the United States Senate is coming soon. I think we should have more information about Ron Johnson's positions. The political ads have shown he is a strong family man, a successful businessman. He and his wife are active in the area's parochial schools and he is going to cut government spending.

Is he in favor of withdrawing the military from Iraq and Afghanistan? How about the 100,000 military personnel that have been stationed in Japan and Germany since the end of World War II? It would reduce the defense budget considerably. Will there be jobs for them? Are you willing to reduce the defense budget? The Pentagon has contracts in every Congressional district in the United States. One of the largest is here in Oshkosh.

If you eliminate the recent medical insurance program, do you have a paper on how to help those who cannot afford health insurance premiums or have pre-existing health problems? Are you really serious about the changes you mentioned about Social Security and Medicare?

You have said government cannot create jobs, only the private sector can. What about the Great Depression of the 1930s with the Tennessee Valley Authority, the building of the Hoover Dam which created the industries and agriculture in Arizona, Nevada and southern California, or the dams on the Columbia River, which provided electricity to refine aluminum.

In Wisconsin we have had government assistance for our airports and the dams on the Wisconsin and Fox Rivers.

Nearly $200 million of stimulus money has been or is being spent in Winnebago County. Should these local units of government return this money and finance these projects themselves through the property tax?

Talk is cheap; it takes money to buy whiskey.

John Allen

Oshkosh

Republicans Love China. America Not So Much

Republicans Love China. America Not So Much

On Tuesday, the residents of New Jersey saw the future - in China. On the same day that Governor Chris Christie killed funding for the badly needed second Hudson River rail tunnel, Beijing rolled out its fastest bullet train yet. As it turns out, Christie's budget ax is just the latest symptom of a growing epidemic. Across the country, the United States is walking away from its crumbling infrastructure even as America's competitors commit the resources to win in the 21st century global economy.

To be sure, China is making those investments. America's largest credit not only dominates the U.S. in launching cleaner coal-fired power plants, but by January leapfrogged the West to become the world's largest producer of wind turbines and solar panels. Just last week, an Australian study found that the China, the globe's biggest polluter, is now the clear leader in clean energy efforts.

And the Chinese make really fast trains, too. As the Wall Street Journal announced today:

    Yesterday marked the launch of the latest link in China's high-speed rail network: A service between Shanghai and Hangzhou with sustained speeds of more than 245 miles per hour. The slick new train, which set a speed record during a trial run last month, covers the 200 kilometers between the two southern cities in 45 minutes -- twice as fast as the older rail service.

Meanwhile in the Garden State, Republican poster child Chris Christie guaranteed that by standing still, Americans will fall further behind.

Two weeks after first declaring he would end New Jersey's $2.7 billion contribution to what Paul Krugman deemed "America's most important current public works project," Governor Christie announced the final nail in the coffin of the long-planned and much-needed second rail tunnel under the Hudson River. Despite appeals from Transportation Secretary Ray Lahood, Christie pulled the plug on a new link to Manhattan over 20 years in the making. As AP reported:

    Christie, a rising star in the Republican Party for his fearless budget-slashing, has argued that his cash-strapped state can't afford to pay for any overruns on the $9 billion-plus rail tunnel under the Hudson River. The state is on the hook for $2.7 billion plus overruns.

    "In the end, my decision does not change," Christie said. "I cannot place upon the citizens of New Jersey an open-ended letter of credit, and that's what this project represents."

    The federal government and the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey are each contributing $3 billion.

By refusing to complete an effort that would double the capacity now provided by a century-old tunnel into New York, Christie isn't merely turning his back on his state's 185,000 daily rail commuters. Even as the economy struggles to recover from the deepest recession in three generations, he's also walking away from badly needed jobs:

    Officials estimated it would provide 6,000 construction jobs immediately and as many as 40,000 jobs after its completion in 2018.

As Krugman explained earlier this month, "Canceling the tunnel was also a blow to national hopes of recovery, part of a pattern of penny-pinching that has played a large role in our continuing economic stagnation." The combination of the economic downturn and Republican anti-government orthodoxy is toxic for the nation's dilapidated infrastructure:

    New Jersey's governor wants to kill a $9 billion-plus train tunnel to New York City because of runaway costs. Six thousand miles away, Hawaii's outgoing governor is having second thoughts about a proposed $5.5 billion rail line in Honolulu.

    In many of the 48 states in between, infrastructure projects are languishing on the drawing board, awaiting the right mix of creative financing, political arm-twisting and timing to move forward. And a struggling economy and a surge of political candidates opposed to big spending could make it a long wait.

For its part, the AP lamented:

    Has the nation that built the Hoover Dam, brought electricity to the rural South and engineered the interstate highway system lost its appetite for big public works projects? At a time when other countries are pouring money into steel and concrete, is the U.S. unwilling to think long-term?

Undoubtedly, the answer is yes. In the UK, a $45 billion high-speed rail link between London and the West Midlands is in the works. By 2020, Japan will complete a $70 billion freeway between Osaka and Tokyo. And while Australia is pouring $38 billion into relieving traffic congestion in Melbourne, even Algeria is committing over $11 billion to create an east-west highway.

Back in Trenton, Assembly Transportation committee chairman John Wisniewski called Christie's decision a "monumental failure of leadership."

Christie is said to be a rising star of the Republican Party. A party increasingly pro growth for China and every other country, but ready to slash funds for any project that will take America's infrastructure into the 21st Century. Ironic that from 1982 to 1992 and again from 2000 to 2008 Republicans thought big government and running up big debts was fine as long as they were the ones handing out the checks. In both instances they left America in sad shape and Democratic administrations had to clean up the mess.  Now that its time to invest in America, Republicans want to cut and run.

Like clockwork: Conservatives return to baseless voter fraud allegations

Continuing a pattern in which media conservatives stoke fears about election fraud by Democrats, Bill O'Reilly baselessly raised the specter of voter fraud in Washington state and Illinois in the midterm elections. In fact, voter fraud occurs infrequently, and many of the past claims by the conservative media that election fraud took place have been false.



....ustice Department report shows very few prosecutions for illegally casting ballots. According to a report by the Public Integrity Section of the Justice Department, from October 2002 through September 2005, the Justice Department charged 95 people with "election fraud" and convicted 55. Among those, however, just 17 individuals were convicted for casting fraudulent ballots; cases against three other individuals were pending at the time of the report. In addition, the Justice Department convicted one election official of submitting fraudulent ballots and convicted five individuals of registration fraud, with cases against 12 individuals pending at the time of the report. Thirty-two individuals were convicted of other "election fraud" issues, including Republicans convicted of offenses arising from "a scheme to block the phone lines used by two Manchester [New Hampshire] organizations to arrange drives to the polls during the 2002 general election" -- in other words, these convictions were connected to voter suppression efforts, not voter fraud. Several other people listed in the report were convicted of vote-buying.

NYU's Brennan Center: Allegations of voter fraud "simply do not pan out" and distract from "real [election] problems that need real solutions." From a 2007 report by New York University's Brennan Center for Justice:

    Perhaps because these stories are dramatic, voter fraud makes a popular scapegoat. In the aftermath of a close election, losing candidates are often quick to blame voter fraud for the results. Legislators cite voter fraud as justification for various new restrictions on the exercise of the franchise. And pundits trot out the same few anecdotes time and again as proof that a wave of fraud is imminent.

    Allegations of widespread voter fraud, however, often prove greatly exaggerated. It is easy to grab headlines with a lurid claim ("Tens of thousands may be voting illegally!"); the follow-up -- when any exists -- is not usually deemed newsworthy. Yet on closer examination, many of the claims of voter fraud amount to a great deal of smoke without much fire. The allegations simply do not pan out.

    These inflated claims are not harmless. Crying "wolf" when the allegations are unsubstantiated distracts attention from real problems that need real solutions.

Senate Candidate Ron Johnson Dismissive of Vets But Looks Out for Rights of Child Molesters

Senate Candidate Ron Johnson Dismissive of Vets But Looks Out for Rights of Child Molesters

Amid sporadic and below-the-political-radar Tea Party threats to privatize the U.S. Dept of Veterans Affairs (DVA), Wisconsin Republican-Tea Party Senate candidate Ron Johnson maintains his secret policy specifics to be revealed should he assume office.

Asked what the Department of Veterans Affairs’ responsibility is to homeless veterans, Johnson recently declared that his election campaign is not “about details” such as the welfare of America’s 107,000 homeless veterans.

The Wisconsin Senate race is being portrayed nationally as a bellwether election on the strength and political vitality of the Tea Party, and the inclination of the American electorate to stand behind President Baa in the face of near constant, unanimous GOP opposition that is long on talking-point criticism and short on policy initiatives.

Johnson’s opponent, Sen. Russ Feingold (D-Middleton, Wisconsin), has stepped up his criticism of Johnson, blasting his GOP opponent for a lack of specifics in their final debate last week.

Feingold now has hit back with a new ad blasting Johnson for maintaining his silence on specific initiatives addressing policy issues. - video at link.

Johnson has generally kept his actual solutions to any problem a secret. he was a Bush-Cheney supporter so that means he was an enabler of the current recession. Ron's apathy towards veterans is also ironic when compared to his support of the rights of child molesters. Ron Johnson, WI Senate Candidate, Opposed Wisconsin Child Victims Act

Overseas Ballots and the Military

Overseas Ballots and the Military

We were recently contacted by a representative of the Federal Voting Assistance Program in response to our posts about Fox News' faux military ballots controversy. As a companion piece to their trumped up accusations about the New Black Panther Party, Fox is now accusing the Obama administration of not enforcing a deadline for getting out military and overseas ballots, despite a lack of evidence that that's really the case. Now, we've got evidence to the contrary. Some states have an agreement with the DOJ to extend the deadline to receive ballots from military service members and other U.S. citizens living overseas. Military and overseas voters can also access their ballots online via FVAP.gov.

Erin E St Pierre, Communications Specialist for the Federal Voting Assistance Program (FVAP), told us that voters can get their ballot from FVAP.gov, complete it and print it with just a few clicks. Here's St. Pierre's explanation:

    For example, choose who you are (military or overseas citizen, 1st click), then choose your state from the map (2nd click), then choose “get your ballot” (3rd click). Complete the ballot, print and sign it. It takes less than ten minutes.

    When completed, the package presented includes the ballot, envelope template, and instructions on submitting the ballot (address, fax and email for election official are included). Postage is even free when using the envelope template (http://www.fvap.gov/resources/media/returnenvelope.pdf), and the Military Postal System Agency has provided free express mail and tracking for overseas military (go to the MPO and ask for form Label 11-DOD). Also, FedEx has special options for overseas citizens (https://www.overseasvotefoundation.org/overseas/ExpressYourVote.htm). It’s that easy.

St. Pierre also noted, "Just because the state didn’t get the paper ballots out in time, does not mean military and overseas citizens cannot vote, they can... With elections less than two weeks away, voters need to know they can still request and receive their ballots within a matter of minutes. Absentee voting no longer takes weeks, but minutes."

So don't buy Fox News' hype. *From a post by Ellen at Newshounds

Tea Nut conservative Sharron Angle Releases Yet Another Race-Baiting Ad

First, Republican senatorial candidate Sharron Angle ran offensive images of menacing Latino men with flashlights walking along a fence alongside a snapshot of an innocent looking white family in order to make the point that her opponent Sen. Harry Reid (D-NV) is the “best friend an illegal alien ever had.” Then her campaign released a second commercial with a new image of scowling Latino men juxtaposed against a photo of white college graduates. Despite the fact that her ads have sparked outrage in the Latino community, Angle has decided to continue with her anti-Latino campaign theme.

In her newest attack ad, Angle pits brown against white in order to make the case that Reid is a friend of dark-skinned, scary looking “illegal aliens” and an enemy of white Nevadans like her:

Watch it: Angle's despicable race bating video at the link.

Angle’s third ad is especially surprising considering the fact that many outlets are reporting that Latinos may decide the tight Nevada senatorial race. “Angle has made few friends among Latinos after she supported neighboring Arizona’s controversial SB 1070 law, the strictest in the nation to curb illegal immigrants. And as polling day gets closer, her gaffes and missteps are helping to bring the Latino vote out for Reid,” reported Reuters last week.

Tea Party Bought and Paid for by Greedy Corporate Interests

Tea Party Inc.: The Big Money and Powerful Elites Behind the Right-Wing's Latest Uprising

But it has now become clear that these Tea Party "outsiders" are all part of an inside game, a battle for control of the Republican party.

Though billed as a people's movement, the Tea Party wouldn't exist without a gusher of cash from oil billionaire David H. Koch and the vast media empire of Rupert Murdoch. Many of the small donations to Tea Party candidates have been cultivated by either Fox News Channel, a property of Murdoch's News Corporation, or the Americans for Prosperity Foundation, chaired by Koch. The movement's major organizations are all run, not by first-time, mad-as-hell activists, but by former GOP officials or operatives.

Taken together, Americans for Prosperity, FreedomWorks (another far-right political group seeded by the Kochs) and Murdoch's News Corp, owner of Fox News and the Wall Street Journal, form the corporate headquarters of a conglomerate one might call Tea Party, Inc. This is the syndicate that funds the organizing, crafts the messages, and channels the rage of conservative Americans at their falling fortunes into an oppositional force to President Obama and to any government solution to the current economic calamity. Groups such as Tea Party Express, Tea Party Nation, and the FreedomWorks-affiliated Tea Party Patriots; the bevy of political consultants for hire; and various allied elected officials can be understood as Tea Party, Inc.'s loosely affiliated subsidiaries. The Web sites of FreedomWorks, Americans for Prosperity and the Tea Party side projects of Fox News Channel's Glenn Beck are linked with those of Tea Party Express and Tea Party Patriots, all of which in turn solicit support for Tea Party candidates.

The armies of angry white people with their "Don't Tread on Me" flags, the actual grassroots activists, are not the agents of the Tea Party revolt, but its end users, enriching the Tea Party's corporate owners just as you and I enrich Google through our clicks.

....The Capitol Hill Franchise

The self-appointed head of Tea Party, Inc.'s Capitol Hill division is the junior senator from South Carolina, Jim DeMint. DeMint is the top Senate recipient of donations from the Koch Industries' PAC, reeling in $22,000 in the current election cycle for a race he stands virtually no chance of losing. The Kochs' PAC is also the number three donor to DeMint's PAC, the Senate Conservatives Fund, which he spends on other races.

In DeMint, the Kochs found a politician who will make no compromises on their far-right agenda, favoring tax cuts and opposing health-care reform, green energy, labor unions and regulation of any kind. Last year, DeMint received the Americans for Prosperity Foundation's George Washington Award, bestowed upon the senator by Koch himself. Speaking at the organization's summit in August, Koch said DeMint "has consistently stood for freedom against this big-government agenda." In backing DeMint's power play against leaders of the Republican establishment, particularly his challenge to the power of Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, the Kochs stand poised to push those establishment leaders into the same uncompromising positions.

Echoing DeMint's agenda are Rep. Michele Bachmann, a Minnesota Republican who, in July, founded a Tea Party Caucus in the House of Representatives, and Rep. Mike Pence, a Republican from Indiana, who is House GOP conference chairman and a charter member of the new caucus. Both are Tea Party favorites, and Bachmann is a regular speaker at Americans for Prosperity events. At the Americans for Prosperity Foundation's RightOnline conference, held in Las Vegas in July, Pence used a luncheon address to make the case for melding the free-market Tea Party agenda with the values of the religious right, while Bachmann entertained a banquet crowd with herplan to phase out Social Security.

FreedomWorks has its eye on a political transformation in the Senate, and is closely allied with DeMint, whose PAC is spending hundreds of thousands of dollars on behalf of many of the same Tea Party-backed Senate candidates endorsed by the FreedomWorks PAC, including Sharron Angle (currently in a tight race against Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid), Rand Paul in Kentucky, Marco Rubio in Florida, and Utah's Mike Lee. (Bachmann's Tea Party Caucus was announced the day after Paul, addressing FreedomWorks activists on a July 13 conference call, suggested a Tea Party caucus for the Senate.) Each of these candidacies began as primary challenges to establishment Republicans endorsed by McConnell.

In September, Huffington Post political columnist Sam Stein cited a Democratic strategist who said that by the midterms' close, Americans for Prosperity will have spent $45 million on organizing "voter education" and get-out-the-vote activities that test the limits of legal nonprofit expenditures. Actually, Americans for Prosperity president Tim Phillips told me his plan was to raise and spend even more, though he wouldn't name a figure. Even the lesser amount, according to tax filings, would represent a tripling of its funds since 2008.

FreedomWorks also hopes to triple its revenue, from $3 million in 2008, according to tax filings, to an anticipated $10 million this election cycle, according to Adam Brandon, the group's communications director. In a fundraising video sent by FreedomWorks to new members, leaders announce that every dollar raised will be matched by an unnamed donor. Both Brandon and Koch Industries spokesperson Melissa Cohlmia say that FreedomWorks has received no funding from the Kochs or their foundations since 2004, so there is likely another high-roller involved. But neither FreedomWorks nor Americans for Prosperity,nor its foundation, is required by law to disclose its donors and -- like advocacy organizations across the political spectrum -- they don't.

At any rate, the vast expenditures on organizing have worked in at least one way: FreedomWorks' membership had reached nearly 1.1 million by mid-October, according to the group's Web site ticker. Americans for Prosperity claims 1.5 million members and chapters in 31 states.

....The Tea Party’s two major patrons are fabulously wealthy. David Koch is heir to the fortunes of Koch Industries, described in 2008 by Fortune as the largest privately held corporation in the United States, and was ranked by Forbes as one of the world's richest people, with an estimated personal wealth of $17.5 billion. Rupert Murdoch, founder and CEO of News Corp -- ranked by Fortune as world's second-largest entertainment company -- was also rated by Forbes among the world's wealthiest, with personal wealth of $6.3 billion.

Koch Industries, with David as executive vice-president and his brother Charles as CEO, presides over a vast conglomerate of oil and gas interests, as well as holdings in timber and chemicals. Since the 1970s, the two men have funded and controlled a large network of right-wing institutions, launching the libertarian Cato Institute in 1977 and the Mercatus Institute in 1985, all of which advocate business deregulation under the rubric of "free markets."

Both cornerstones of Tea Party Inc. -- FreedomWorks and the two entities comprising Americans for Prosperity -- sprang from Koch's riches. FreedomWorks rose from the ashes of Citizens for a Sound Economy, an early Astroturf group and think tank he founded during the Reagan years to advocate for lower taxes, less regulation, and smaller government. CSE was rebranded as FreedomWorks in 2004, after a corporate-style merger with Empower America, founded by the late Republican Congressman Jack Kemp to limit government and privatize government services.

That same year, Koch rebranded CSE's foundation as the Americans for Prosperity Foundation and founded its sibling organization, Americans for Prosperity.[i] Koch hired the politically connected Tim Phillips to serve as president of both organizations. (Phillips is a business partner of former Christian Coalition director Ralph Reed in a political consulting firm, Century Strategies, which was implicated, but never charged, in the bribery scandal that sent Jack Abramoff to prison.)

Koch and his allies built the underpinnings for a movement not quite ready to be born. The absent ingredient was rage. But by 2009, with the collapse of the economy and the election of the nation's first African-American president, the supply chain of rage was complete, and the Tea Party came roaring to life. Rupert Murdoch gave the new movement legitimacy by means of sympathetic columns in the Wall Street Journal, boosterism from Sean Hannity and Glenn Beck and a regular media platform on Fox News Channel for Tea Party personalities and candidates. As Jane Mayer remarked in her New Yorker profile of the Kochs, the Tea Party had at last turned their private agenda into a mass movement.

The role of these groups in launching the movement is indisputable. In concert with Glenn Beck's 912 Project, FreedomWorks did the logistical organizing for the first Tea Party march on Washington, in September 2009. Beck launched the 912 Project on his Fox News Channel show, promoted the march on his show and mobilized for it through a social networking Web site built by his production company.

Since then, the groups have been tearing through the Murdoch-Koch agenda. Americans for Prosperity says it convened, through an offshoot, some 300 rallies against health-care reform, and once the healthcare bill was passed in March, the organization quickly moved to block cap-and-trade as a means of regulating carbon emissions. In fact, at an Americans for Prosperity Foundation conference I attended in Pittsburgh in August 2009, cap-and-trade was already being introduced as the next Tea Party battle. This is a longstanding priority for Koch Industries, a major polluter heavily invested in old energy technologies. In a March 2010 report, Greenpeace said that, over the years, the Koch brothers have "quietly funneled" nearly $50 million to "climate-denial front groups that are working to delay policies and regulations aimed at stopping global warming."

Wall Street Journal columnist Stephen Moore -- a member of the newspaper's editorial board and a former fellow at the Koch-funded Cato Institute -- told the gathering of Tea Party activists he thought global warming was "the greatest hoax of the last 100 years." He called the climate change agenda "not just evil, but…contrary to the free-market system that made this country great."

The Media Storm

It is not unusual for op-ed pages to reflect the bias of an outlet's owners. It is highly unusual, however, for news operations to engage in outright political organizing on behalf of a CEO's agenda. Yet that's just what certain Fox News hosts and Wall Street Journal columnists seem to be doing on behalf of Rupert Murdoch, who is opposed to regulation of any kind, hates taxes, and despises labor unions -- having famously broken unions at his UK newspapers.

News Corp's best-known personalities accomplish this by working hand in glove with the like-minded ideologues at Americans for Prosperity. Fox News hosts, along with Stephen Moore and fellow Wall Street Journal columnist John Fund, are regular speakers at conferences sponsored by the Americans for Prosperity Foundation. At the group's 2009 RightOnline conference, a third of the plenary speakers were News Corp writers and pundits, including Moore and Fund, as well as Jim Pinkerton and Michelle Malkin, who were paid Fox commentators at the time. Fox News personality John Stossel spoke against health-care reform at three rallies sponsored by Americans for Prosperity, while Sean Hannity, host of a prime-time Fox News show, live-broadcast Americans for Prosperity's 2009 Tax Day protest in Atlanta -- and the network preempted regular programming to present it. Moore and Fund also shill for the foundation's anti-regulatory "worker education" project, known as Prosperity101. 

Do the average tea partier know the goals of the Koch brothers and FreedomWorks/ It is to roll back many of the most noble aspects of a modern democracy. They'd like to do way with all environmental laws, open up our national parks and forests to greedy developers, they'd like to do away with Social Security and Medicare ( or make these problems have so little benefits they are of little use). The heads of the tea party would like to do away with Workman's compensation, with overtime pay and the five day work week. They would like to be free to export jobs to anywhere there is some poor jerk will to to the work for chump change per hour. In other words that want to return America to the mid-1800s when most Americans lived in poverty and died in middle-age. The 10 Republican House candidates with the most bizarre, unnerving and downright alarming baggage who just might sneak through next week.

Taxed Enough Already. Not in the Real World

Taxed Enough Already. Not in the Real World

On Monday, the New York Times asked, "What if a president cut Americans' income taxes by $116 billion and nobody noticed?" As it turns out, that question neatly sums up the sad dynamic at play in the 2010 midterm elections. On the one hand, President Obama and his Democratic allies have utterly failed to tout the tax cuts delivered as promised to 95% of working households. On the other, Republican mythmaking and Tea Party fury have succeeded in drowning out both the Democrats' message - and the truth.

Stephen Colbert famously declared that "reality has a well-known liberal bias." But not, the New York Times explained, when no one is paying attention to it.

    In a troubling sign for Democrats as they head into the midterm elections, their signature tax cut of the past two years, which decreased income taxes by up to $400 a year for individuals and $800 for married couples, has gone largely unnoticed.

    In a New York Times/CBS News Poll last month, fewer than one in 10 respondents knew that the Obama administration had lowered taxes for most Americans. Half of those polled said they thought that their taxes had stayed the same, a third thought that their taxes had gone up, and about a tenth said they did not know. As Thom Tillis, a Republican state representative, put it as the dinner wound down here, "This was the tax cut that fell in the woods -- nobody heard it."

Of course, it was impossible to hear about what Steve Benen deemed the largest two-year tax cut in American history over the jet-engine decibel level of right-wing rage, a cacophony willingly amplified by the media. Among the almost endless Tea Party delusions about Obama's birth, his religion, death panels, "keeping government out of Medicare" and so much more, the Tea Bagger fraud that income taxes have gone up under President Obama is perhaps the most successful.

Another CBS News poll in February revealed the mass delusion of the American people in general and Tea Baggers in particular when it comes to the Obama tax cuts. A quarter of respondents said the Obama administration increased taxes while 53% said they were unchanged. Only 12% rightly answered that federal income taxes had come down under President Obama.

But among the confused Tea Party crowd, the belief is akin to asserting the sun orbits the earth:

    Of people who support the grassroots, "Tea Party" movement, only 2 percent think taxes have been decreased, 46 percent say taxes are the same, and a whopping 44 percent say they believe taxes have gone up.

It's no wonder that former Reagan Treasury official Bruce Bartlett aptly concluded, ""For an antitax group," Bartlett aptly concluded, "they don't know much about taxes."

There are lots of achievements in the history of the United States. Unfortunately malicious ignorance remains one thing we cannot seem to overcome. Thanks to conservatives for making ignorance of the facts an ongoing tradition.

Support For Veterans Shows Sharp Partisan Divide

According to an analysis by the nonpartisan Iraq & Afghanistan Veterans of America Action Fund, Republicans in Congress have dramatically failed to support our troops after they come home. IAVA’s 2010 Veteran Report Card, based on the key veterans’ legislation that came to a vote during the 111th Congress, exposed a sharp partisan divide on the level of support for Iraq and Afghanistan veterans, as MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow tabulated yesterday. Of the 94 elected officials that earned an A or A+ rating from IAVA, 91 were Democrats. Of the 154 officials who received a D or F, 142 were Republicans:

Another conservative tradition. Using the military as a partisan tool, but not appreciating their sacrifices.

Every time conservative czar Glenn Beck falls out of the bed of his mansion we get another lame conspiracy: Conservative media link Beck's "spooky dude" Soros to Williams firing theory