Rum. And Koch.

Special-interest groups and their propaganda are not new but since the advent of the internet, not only has the manner of information dissemination changed, but so has the way the information is consumed.

Where once a pressure group only had the printed medium, when radio came along, they went with it. Same with television. And now, the Internet and in particular social media like Twitter, Facebook, and the rest.

Pressure groups take on all sorts of personas. Mothers Against Drunk Driving (MADD) is a pressure group. But so are television networks, for that matter. Each tries to get the media consumer to consume their media.

The hope, the expectation, is that by osmosis, you’ll get the message and start seeing things their way. If there’s an interest, there’s a Twitter account for it.

Four Phases of Interest Group Development

Pressure, Interests, and Ideas

Just about any ‘grouping’ of people can be construed to fit the definition. Some try to get you to change your behavior; some to make you aware of something you may not have been aware of, and others to share a little or as yet unknown idea. And some want to make money.

All of them wish for you to believe them to be the new, relevant ‘thought leaders’. And each group's arguments make better sense that the other’s. And, they all produce policy papers, analysis, statistics, and endorsements to prove it.

Much has been discussed regarding the Koch brothers and their many-faceted effort to influence the body politic of late. Many, especially from the left, have decried the massive amounts of money they pump into their efforts, some even accusing the Machine of trying to buy elections.

It’s hard not to agree with this argument, considering the Machine seems to have a product available to slake a wide variety of political thirsts.

If it’s Right-to-Work, there’s ALEC, U.S. Chamber of Commerce, National Right to Work Committee and others.

If Minimum Wage is your bag, there’s the American Enterprise Institute, the Heritage Foundation, the National Association of Manufacturer’s and others.

Reince and repeat for tax reform, voter rights, segregation, and on and on.

Types of Interest Groups

These days, it not unusual at all to learn that a particular businessman belongs to any number of associations, involving a variety of industries, and in an array of functions. When criticized for this, they will mention that many if not all of the Founding Fathers belonged to business associations.

What they don’t mention is that before the modern era, a business man usually belong to only one association, if any[1].

What’s more, in the modern era, a particular association or think tank may serve several functions such a trade association and as a type of ‘chamber of commerce’ for a segmented market, as well as a social group.

Similar-Issue Politics

The Koch brothers aren't the first moneyed-interest to employ multi-pronged marketing as a way of affecting the tone and direction of political discourse, just the biggest. And they may be the best at it.

They have been linked to no less than an oodleplex[i] of think tanks, policy institutes, advocacy groups, etc. All of which concern themselves with the same issues, have incestuous staff arrangements, receive funding from the same sources, and are all independent and non-partisan. According to them, anyway.

Yet, the Koch brothers didn’t invent this scheme. Before them, there was the John Birch Society, who claimed, when discussing their approach to ‘educating the public’ (I forgot to mention all the educating going on), to have gotten the idea from the Communist Party, no less.

Great Expectations

But they didn't really. Years before the JBS was even a small tingly glioma in Robert Welch Jr.’s brainstem, a group calling themselves the American Liberty League (ALL), an organization that espoused Ayn Rand’s philosophy earlier than she did, operated in much the same way. Like Koch, they embraced the idea of the uncommon man.

Obviously, they didn’t use Twitter or Facebook. But they did issue a slew of pamphlets, leaflets, radio ads, and press releases. Led by prominent businessmen, politicians, and academics, the group sought to defend the “American Way”.

As Frederick Rudolph in The American Historical Review said this about the ALL:

“The cloak in which the Liberty League dressed itself in order to promote its position and its program was made of respectable generalities, partial self-delusion, intense sincerity, and frequently embarrassing hypocrisy. It supported with worshipful intensity the Constitution of the United States; it placed itself on the side of the individual and of liberty in opposition to an encroaching government bureaucracy; it respected the judgment of the founding fathers who had so wisely incorporated the separation of federal powers and the rights of the states into the great national document.”

Sound familiar? How could a group who held the Constitution and (gasp) the Founding Fathers in such high regard be anti-American?

The League’s main opponent: The President of the United States of America, Franklin Roosevelt. The group was determined to do all they could to push back on the affront to liberty and individualism that was the New Deal.

When one member of the group referred to the depression as a ‘healthful tonic’, the public, still reeling in the depression caused by the rugged individualism of uncommon men, wasn’t too receptive to their message.

One would have thought that such accomplished men, scholars some, would have been a bit smarter about their public comments. Really, they should have known better. Harold Ickes, Roosevelt’s Secretary of the Interior called the ALL a coalition of “industrialists, constitutional lawyers, and captains of finance who drove our good ship onto the rocks[ii]”

Captain’s Rum

Years earlier, many of the same men involved with the American Liberty League had come together to form the Association Against the Prohibition Amendment (AAPA), founded in 1918 by Captain William Stayton.

It’s not hard to understand what this group was about. And once their objective was met, they disappeared.

There is one similarity between the old and the new: The various Koch groups, with their tendency to cross-pollenate ideas and leadership personnel, a throw-back to the AAPA, constitute a locus of ideology driven by one ever-present goal: Money.

There is also one huge difference: From time to time we hear from the Koch brothers, Charles, in particular, who says that the two have had their names dragged through the mud simply for trying to be good citizens by providing information and educational materials to the public. They claim it is fundamentally unfair for the public to link their good name to such nefarious aims such as ‘trying to buy elections’, citing that other players are afoot, and their names aren’t mentioned in the same context.

There are reasons for this. One is that no one else is involved in so many areas and no one else is as committed as they are or are willing to spend so much of their fortunes to see that public issues are resolved to their liking. The other reason is that the Koch brothers, more than the others, make their contributions so selective that each dollar given is done so with the objective of putting even more money back into their own pockets. The Koch’s don’t really makes donations, they make investments, tax free.

Romancing the Stonecutters

In opposition to the businessmen’s groups were those with different 'interests', namely, the trade associations. Since Roman times up to the present day, guilds, or unions, acted as a counterweight to seek decent wages and otherwise improve working conditions for craftsman.

Back then, as with the informal business associations, guilds and unions were local affairs. Today, keeping pace with the industrial organizations, the unions have taken to social media as well. See: Fire, fighting with.

The guilds came to America along with industry.

There were Baker’s Guilds, Ship-Builder’s Guilds, and even Banker’s Guilds. Following close behind them were the employer, or owner groups such as The Employers’ Central Executive Committee (against unionization and the eight-hour day), the Law and Order League, and the Railroad General Managers’ Association, which worked in opposition to the Knights of Labor.

The power of the Koch Machine to apply pressure on elected officials, often through their special-interest associations, has only been rivaled by the British East India Company. The laws the Koch Machine fights against are designed to protect ordinary people, working class people, from predators like the Koch’s (and others, of course) who would exploit their lives for their own profit.

Because of social media, the Koch Machine is even more powerful when it comes to foisting its propaganda upon the public. The lessons from previous groups is not lost on the Koch Machine. Instead of issuing bold, yet honest, statements, the various front groups disguise their objectives in terms of ‘personal liberty’, ‘protecting the constitution’, and the ever popular ‘freedom’, i.e., protecting America, and its Constitution. Who could oppose such efforts?

In a review of “You Are the Government[iii]”, Lane W. Lancaster writes:

“If the words he (Shouse) uses in describing such matters as our Bill of Rights, the Federal system, and the system of checks and balances, are to be given their usual meaning, no such government ever existed anywhere.”

Divide Et Impera

When responding to critics, spokesmen for the various issue advocacy groups claim that the founding fathers’ also belonged to such groups. There is truth to this. Well after the war for independence, special interests played an active part in influencing legislation. Wool, tobacco, hemp, and sugar producers successfully petitioned the government in favor of their financial interests.

However, in the era of the founding fathers, businessmen typically belonged to only one such group, if any[iv]. These days, it’s not at all unusual to see a member of one special interest group belong to a number of other groups at the same time. There are now people whose only source of income comes from involvement in such groups

Grover Norquist’s Wednesday Meetings

Point in fact: the Koch Machine employs 240 full-time staff in 32 states. And, that’s just for Americans for Prosperity. That’s a big difference from the guys raising a pint at the Green Dragon.

Pressure groups such as Club for Growth, American Legislative Exchange Council, and the CATO Institute are surrogates for Koch Industries. Their purpose is to persuade you (or your elected representatives) to buy their product, which may range from changes in tax structures and rates to regulatory reform, all meant to line the pockets of Charles and David Koch.

Heads They Win, Tails You Lose

Because contributing to these organizations is tax exempt, the actual tax payers (the 98%) foot the bill, in the same way that taxpayers subsidize Walmart and McDonald’s profits.

Maybe what we need is a limit on the amount of tax-exempt money spent on these groups. Not a limit on what can be given to them, just a limit on how much the rest of us have to cover.

Murray Edelman points out that a policy adopted through special interest groups produces two types of rewards: 1) tangible rewards to those doing the lobbying; and 2) symbolic rewards to the rest. For those who won’t receive financial gain, there’s the satisfaction of knowing that there are others who feel the same as they do. That’s often enough, for some. For example, some non-membership organizations have thousands of pledged supporters on Facebook, thousands of followers on Twitter, and thousands of subscribers on email lists[v].

Some interest groups are spin-offs from other groups. Some are born in opposition to existing groups. Moral victories are hollow. To win, to make the effort (and money) worthwhile, the group must convince government to act:

“Government continues to respond to groups that clearly communicate their interests and have the funding to convey their message effectively. Still, representation is not simply a matter of responding to specific interests or citizens. Government must also respond to society’s collective needs, and responsiveness to particular interests can reduce overall responsiveness.[vi]”

It’s when government stops responding to the interests of all its citizens and focuses on satisfying a small handful of certain citizens that inequality grows. Make no mistake, the Koch brothers aren’t the only concern in this matter. There’s the Walton, Bradley, Richardson, DeVos, Schaif, Cargill, and MacMillan families. But they are the most in-your-face actors on the stage.

That’s why they get so much press.

The difference in treatment between the Koch Machine and say, Walmart? Because unlike Walmart (who came under fire recently because one of its stores held a food drive for its own employees, basically asking their customers to chip in even more beyond the public assistance money spent on Walmart's needy employees, because the company sure as hell wasn't going to), isn't so bold as to fund a medusa's head of issue groups that basically claim the government is picking on them.

Doing so while failing to mention the tax breaks, low extraction fees (another government giveaway), and publicly paid-for subsidies that Koch Industries and its subsidiaries receive.

What the Koch Machine is doing is the same that many others are doing - only they are doing so much more of it. The Koch's are taking advantage of the fact that change is not uniform and coordinated among the many aspects of life. that is to say, technology changes at a a faster rate than our overall society does, and the Koch Machine takes advantage of that fact.

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[1] See “The Evolution of Business Groupings”, Clarence E. Bonnett, published in “Pressure Groups & Propaganda” – The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science – Thorsten Sellin, Ed.

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[i] An “oodleplex” could be defined as a ‘very big number’.

[ii] https://www.nationalreview.com/nrd/300943/print

[iii] Written by Jouett Shouse, who served as President for both the AAPA and the ALL.

[iv] See “Pressure Groups and Propaganda”, published by the American Academy of Political and Social Science, Harwood L. Childs, Ed. Philadelphia, 1935.

[v] “The Not-So-Special Interests”, Matt Grossman. Stanford University Press, Stanford, 2012.

[vi] “Interest Group Politics”, Allan J. Cigler and Burdett A. Loomis, Ed.s. CQ Press, Washington D.C. 2002

 On The Right, Yet In The Wrong

In an article published in the Washington Times, Grover Norquist is crying once again about taxes. While it’s fair to say that nobody likes paying taxes, Norquist, at this point in time, should well understand that taxes are a necessity, if for no other reason than to enforce patent laws that make his privileged friends rich.

He claims that, originally, it was promised that only the “really rich” would have to pay taxes, and that “taxes would remain forever low”. Who ‘they’ are or when and in what context the promise of ‘forever low’ taxes was made, he doesn’t say.

Referring to the advent of the Tax Law of 1913, the dumb-ol', forever-incompetent Federal Government understood something that Norquist does not, that taxes should be levied in accordance of not just ability to pay, but in proportion to the benefits received from the government.

(Isn't it amazing? In Washington, people go from working within government, where they are deemed utterly incompetent by many republicans, to lobbying for republicans, where their incredible personal talents are highly sought.)

Some of the benefits received disproportionately to those with large incomes were (and still are): patent law enforcement, infrastructure acquisition (roads, freeways, interstate highways, sewer systems to remove industrial waste, electrical grids to provide the means of powering manufacturing facilities, maintenance of bridges, etc.)

Sure, individuals with lower incomes benefit from those things as well. But not anywhere near the extent that, say, Walmart or Cargill or Georgia-Pacific or Apple benefits from them. The average Joe doesn’t benefit from used-by-all infrastructure to the point where they are able to accumulate enough money through use of it to, say, buy or create their own political party.

Norquist wants government to ‘leave us alone’. Most people would have no severe argument with that concept. Except that most individuals can’t afford to hire their own private army of lawyers to go the owners of big corporations to recoup the cost of all that infrastructure that those same big corporations use more of than all the Jane Six-pack’s of the country do, put together.

That’s one reason why we have government in the first place. 

In a “Message to Congress on Tax Revision” from June 19th, 1935, President Franklin D. Roosevelt said:

“On the basis of these studies and of other studies conducted by officials of the Treasury, I am able to make a number of suggestions of important changes in our policy of taxation. These are based on the broad principle that if a government is to be prudent its taxes must produce ample revenues without discouraging enterprise; and if it is to be just it must distribute the burden of taxes equitably. I do not believe that our present system of taxation completely meets this test. Our revenue laws have operated in many ways to the unfair advantage of the few, and they have done little to prevent an unjust concentration of wealth and economic power.” (Emphasis added).

Norquist continues his whine[1], describing how that tax rates have gone up and the highest income amounts for those rates have gone down, over time. What he fails to grasp (intentionally – it’s his job to fail to grasp things like this) is the reason for this is that the original rates and amounts were out of synch with reality.

Reality isn’t Norquist’s strong suit to begin with. This is Grover speaking:

"Americans for Tax Reform is a national taxpayer organization dedicated to opposing any and all tax increases. We work at the national, state and local level for lower taxes, less government spending and limited government."

This is what intellectuals refer to as 'Bullshit'.

He calls what’s happened with the tax code –get this- “Trickle-Down Taxation”. (Grover, take a piece of well-meaning, friendly advice: Don’t use that term while having a beer at your friendly neighborhood watering hole. Just don’t.)

See how funny he is?

Whatever term is used to describe the phenomena, what it actually does is it forces the fat-cats to be responsible citizens. And it is forced – it has to be – the Mammon worshippers won’t do it on their own.

He adds that the Alternative Minimum Tax was “invented to punish 155 Americans who bought municipal bonds”. Wrong again, Grover. This requires correction:

The AMT was created to:

“ensure that the highest-income households could not exploit loopholes, exclusions, and deductions to avoid paying any federal income tax.”[2]

The only people being ‘punished’ were ultra-wealthy tax scofflaws who think that ‘taxes’ are something that ‘commoners’ only should have to pay.

Norquist’s use of the number ‘155’ is meant to convey a small, targeted group of people in order to make his larger point: That the tax now applies to many, many more than originally intended – see how cancerous government is?

He goes on to lament Obama’s tobacco excise tax, and how it disproportionately affects the poor and middle class, which is an argument that’s nearly as old as the Union[3]. More importantly, even though he decries this ‘sin tax’, has joined a similar fight against alcohol[4], but is oddly comfortable with a tax on weed[5]. Consistency is not something this man values.

Norquist wants a future America to resemble the country’s first 137 years – where a man was a man and a woman couldn’t vote and other men were property, where children worked in factories and if they got hurt – too bad. Ahh, the good old days.

But the best part comes when he talks about states with no income tax – and boy, oh boy – does he get things wrong.

He asks you to imagine living in a state that has no income tax, implying that it would be an improvement. And it would – but only if you’re already wealthy. According to the Institute on Taxation & Economic Policy:

“virtually every state’s tax system is fundamentally unfair and is made more so by the absence of a progressive personal income tax…”

But Norquist doesn’t care about the plight of the poor, and any talk we hear from Republicans about helping people move up the economic ladder is simply lip service.

In fact, Norquist really doesn’t care about taxes – what he cares about is his employer’s having to pay taxes.

[1] I for one, am getting quite tired of hearing from the very, very, well-off about how hard their lives are because of their wealth and how they use it. See “Charles Koch’s Pity Party”.
[2] http://www.cbpp.org/cms/?fa=view&id=1063
[3] http://www.druglibrary.org/schaffer/library/studies/nc/nc2b_3.htm
[4] http://articles.philly.com/2006-10-14/news/25417105_1_tax-exempt-groups-senate-report-nonprofit-groups
[5] http://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2013/10/grover-norquist-gives-pot-taxes-high-five

The Game of Moans

Another Libertarian, of the ‘personal responsibility’ Libertarians has cried victim in the face of alleged wrongdoing.

This time it is manifest in the person of Tucker Nelson, an intern for Grover Norquist’s Americans for Tax Reform, as reported in the Washington Examiner.

As an aside, Grover’s organization is considered a non-profit, but it really is all about profit – mainly the Koch brother’s. ATR, and Norquist, in real life, have no problem with taxes or tax increases – as long as it doesn’t affect his friends.

Norquist injected himself into the Volkswagen/UAW labor organizing issue at the company’s Chattanooga Tennessee plant earlier this year. Why? Because Norquist, and apparently ATR itself, is anti-union. Why? Because they know that union workers earn more money (actually, they are paid more – even non-union workers earn more than they are paid, they just don’t receive the all pay they earn).

Norquist knows, as well as his meal ticket, the Koch brothers, that economic power leads to political power. Considering that none of the workers were born to wealth, (like Chuckie, Davy, and Norqy), so why should they have anything to say about the society in which they live? Nevermind that the company wanted the workers to organize.

Because now, even other ‘producers’ should subordinate themselves to the Koch-funded ATR.

As I’m sure that Norquist and the gang are aware, Ayn Rand would consider those workers nothing more than ‘moochers’ and ‘takers’. (What exactly, did Ayn ‘create’, except for two poorly written fantasy stories that appeal to mainly adolescent males and are no more than therapy for her to exercise her childhood demons and dissappointments anyway?)

No matter. The point is that it’s an astonishing act of hypocrisy to cry victim while perpetuating harm upon others.

Yet Nelson’s complaint of victim-ness involves the UAW subpoenaing emails between her and her grandfather. According to the Examiner, Nelson wrote:

“I may be the only intern in U.S. history to be subject to this sort of legal attack by a union. My family was quite concerned. Grandpa even sent me an e-mail:
"Tucker — What kind of cookies should we send you when you are in the slammer? Grandpa."
I didn’t have the heart to tell him that his e-mail — and my cookie preference — were now subject to the document sweep.” 

Wow. Poor gramps. He was so concerned he even sent an email. The family must be devastated. I hope they can find the strength to carry on.

It’s clear the animals at the UAW will stop at nothing.

Dirtier Than Nixon

Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker is running for President of the United States of America. Sure, he’s being coy about it, but everyone knows that’s his plan.

With Walker as President, you’ll get plenty of promises, but few good results. Although he doesn’t really care what the average person thinks about him, as long as they vote for him. His real concern is carrying water for those he needs to advance his career.

Walker was never about public service. Can anyone point to a solid reason he was elected as Milwaukee County Executive? Other than this, I mean. What has he ever accomplished that moved society forward?

For Scott Walker it has always been about him. His career. His aspirations.

Yet, he brings nothing to the table.

Walker had an excellent opportunity to demonstrate to the people of Milwaukee County just how good he is at managing large, complex enterprises. The results?

The State was forced to take over Milwaukee County’s public assistance programs, due to Walker's ineptness. It’s almost as if Milwaukee County had picked their ill-prepared, unskilled, and unqualified cousin for the position.

“The State's unprecedented move Tuesday to strip Milwaukee County of its role in administering food aid, child care and medical assistance programs was prompted by years of county mismanagement, state Health Services Secretary Karen Timberlake said.”

“The state "has in fact expended millions of additional dollars and thousands of hours of staff resources to assist your county over a period of years," Timberlake wrote. "Despite these efforts, Milwaukee County's performance fails national and state standards and is failing the people of the county."

"Milwaukee County has demonstrated a sustained inability to successfully provide services to its (poor) customers," Timberlake said in a letter to Walker. She disputed Walker's assertion that the problem has been the state underfunding the operation, or due to the souring economy[1].

A ‘sustained inability’. For those who strive towards process excellence, those are damning words. But ‘process excellence’ was the last thing on Walker’s mind. What Timberlake is saying, essentially, is ‘we gave you more help than your predecessors and you still couldn’t do the job’. Walker wanted failure, because from his Randian perspective, those receiving the help weren’t the ‘creative minds’, the ‘makers’ that added value to society, they were ‘takers’, nothing more than grist for the mill and entirely expendable.

Got it. Refuse to administer help (that’s already available) to those most in need, then when they remain needy, seek excuses, not solutions. Thus, the self-fulfilling prophesy becomes the proof.

While on the campaign trail, expect to hear many things from Walker. Programmed talking points produced by his Koch-sponsored handlers designed to mask the real agenda: continue to push for policies that reward the wealthy for being wealthy while destroying America’s middle-class and keep those already struggling from improving their condition.

But what he won’t talk about are any of the scandals and near-scandals that follow him.

Tom Barrett, Milwaukee Mayor and Democrat Gubernatorial opponent in both the 2010 and the recall elections, had this to say about Walker and his tight-lipped defense strategy:

“There are just so many questions that Gov. Walker refuses to answer. He refuses to answer questions about who’s paying his legal defense fees for his criminal defense lawyers. He refuses to answer questions on where he goes on fundraising trips when he should’ve been in Madison working on legislation. He refuses to answer questions such as, ‘Did he sign recall petitions against Sen. [Russ] Feingold and Sen. [Herb] Kohl?’ The more questions he refuses to answer, the more people are asking themselves, why is he asking us to trust him[2]?”

Regarding whether or not Walker signed recall petitions against Senators Feingold and Kohl, walker says:

“I don’t remember what may or may not have been put in front of me. I just don’t remember. Do you remember everything you signed 15 years ago?” he said in the interview. “The mayor’s just desperate.”

Which makes you wonder: Does Walker read what he signs? Signing a recall petition is not like, say, taking a survey or some routine paperwork. Surely one would remember a petition. Do we want a president that is either unfocused or is a liar?

Another scandal surrounding Walker is the John Doe 1 & 2 investigations. John Doe 1 involved Walker’s Milwaukee County staff working on his bid for governor while on county time. Walker has repeatedly stated he knew nothing of what the staffers were up to.

The notion that Walker puts forward as to his lack of knowledge whether or not his staff was breaking election laws, is incongruent with being a manager that is focused on the work to be done, and therefore laughable. If he didn’t know what was going on in his own office, what does that say about his skill at administration? Yet, he his damned by his own words. Writing about the indictments brought forth on Kelly Rindfleisch, Walker says:

"We cannot afford another story like this one…No one can give them any reason to do another story. That means no laptops, no websites, no time away during the workday, etc[3]”

So, he knew.

Walker habitually surrounds himself with corrupt people. One of his biggest contributors paid a fine of $166,900 for illegally funneling money to Walker’s campaign. And let’s not forget the convictions of former Walker staffers in the John Doe I probe.

But it’s not just crooks that Walker keeps company with, it’s stupid people with disgusting values. Walker’s former deputy chief of staff, Tim Russell, and his partner, Brian Pierck, chose the brilliant user name of “Walker04” when visiting child pornography sites[4].

Imagine the selection process that was used to locate such great talent. Now, imagine that same expertise applied to potential cabinet secretaries and even Supreme Court nominees.

All this might matter to a person if they were intent on serving the public, not so with Walker – like the Honey Badger – he just doesn’t care. Walker is only concerned with advancing his own career. Make no mistake: Walker uses the Koch brothers (and others) as much as they use him.

Let’s also not forget Walker’s demonstrated fealty to the Koch brothers, and particularly the infamous phone call. Last time I checked, neither Koch brother was a citizen of Wisconsin. To further cement the relationship between the Koch brothers and the Right in general, reflect for a moment of the efforts of ALEC – funded by Koch.

To be fair, not all the blame for ALEC’s influence can be placed at Walker’s feet – too many Wisconsin Republicans holding office offer sacrifice at this altar. Let’s just not forget that we are the sacrifice they are offering.

Walker has made the largest cuts to public education in the state – ever. The result of Walker’s ‘administration’? Wisconsin ranks poorly compared to any other state in terms of economic health and job creation, the keystone of his campaign promises. Transfer that thinking to the national level.

This all goes beyond money. It speaks to the question of what kind of society we wish to have. Do we want to live in a country where the number of dollars you have is the only metric worth considering? What about the overall quality of life attainable to the average citizen, even if they aren’t filthy rich? Is it only the moneyed-class that has a right to pursue happiness?

If you aren’t convinced that the only reason Walker is Governor of Wisconsin is the Tea Party frenzy of 2010 – manufactured by Koch – and that the Tea Party is an entirely astroturf effort, consider the following:

“Many of the ideas propounded in the 1980 campaign presaged the Tea Party movement. Ed Clark told The Nation that libertarians were getting ready to stage ‘a very big tea party’, because people were ‘sick to death’ of taxes.[5]”

They’ve been at this for a while.

Most frightening of all are the ties that the Koch’s have to the John Birch Society, possibly the most extreme right-wing group ever, with the possible exception of the Ayn Rand Society, though are nearly one and the same.

Even William F. Buckley, Jr., whom no one could mistake for a left-leaning socialist-sympathisizing flower-child condemned the John Birch Society, and Barry Goldwater felt the need to distance himself from the group.[6]

And the Koch’s are fulfilling the JBS agenda, if not in name, then certainly in deed. Helped by Grover Norquist (no friend of middle America and another Randian robot), who wants to return the country back to the good old days of the 1880’s where there corporations ruled people’s lives in nearly every way and made countless miserable.

In this worldview, regular people are of no use – they are not the ‘creative minds’ Rand writes of but the ‘reactive minds’ that L. Ron Hubbard pities[7]. Nevermind that the ‘creative minds’ (read ‘job creators) that Rand talks about could never realize success if not for the ‘takers’ she despises.

This is why Wisconsin voters carry a burden unlike those of other states. Wisconsin has the opportunity, nay duty, to turn him out of office – any office. People of Wisconsin need to reclaim their place as innovators of public service and policy.

They’ve done it before, and come November, they will realize another first: the first state to rebuke the big-money Koch-Machine fueled era of Randian/Birch government.

As William Finnegan, writing in the New Yorker[8], put it:

“Wisconsinites aren't used to such hard-nosed politics. Bipartisan consensus is a cherished local value; laws mandating official transparency are proudly upheld. The good-government tradition is strong, and many Wisconsinites like to suggest, politely, that the state has been indispensable to social progress in America. It was here that the first progressive state income-tax and workers'-compensation laws were passed, in 1911; the first unemployment insurance established, in 1932; the first collective bargaining agreement for public employees signed, in 1959. The country's first kindergarten was opened in Wisconsin. The historic bastion of Wisconsin progressivism was the Republican Party. As William Cronon, a University of Wisconsin historian, writes, "The Democratic Party was so ineffective that Wisconsin politics were largely conducted as debates between the progressive and conservative wings of the Republican Party." At times, the Socialists (Milwaukee had three Socialist mayors, the most recent serving until 1960) and Robert M. La Follette's Progressives also played vital roles”.

Scott Walker has brought nothing to positive to Wisconsin, he'll bring nothing positive the the country. He's already dirtier than Nixon was when he was forced out of the Oval Office in disgrace. His friends are linked to the most paranoid and extremist organizations ever to crawl the Earth.

Walker has mis-managed Wisconsin's affairs in a spectacular show of incompetence. Likewise as Milwaukee County Executive. And, he the same thi...wait. What did he do as a member of the state assembly?

Now, he wants to be President. He has the Koch brother's money backing him. He's able to lie with a straight face. He might make it, after all. That's why Wisconsin simply must stop him, here.

Wisconsin is ready to rise to the challenge and lead the country away from the perverse distortion of of our Founding Father's vision. Our motto is "Out of Many, One" not "For a Few, All".

Come November, it’s on the people of Wisconsin, more than anyone else, to set the ship of state aright once again and put the country back on a genuine path to prosperity for all. And this time, a democrat will lead them.

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[1] The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel February 3, 2009.

[2] “Scott Walker Keeps Low Profile Before Wisconsin Recall Vote. David Catanese, Politico.com

http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0512/76809.html

[3] “Sending Scott Walker Packing” Ruth Conniff, Progressive magazine March 2012, Vol. 76, Issue 3

[4]http://host.madison.com/news/local/crime_and_courts/former-walker-aide-tim-russell-gets-prison-for-stealing-from/article_fbe19ae6-64b7-11e2-a1ae-0019bb2963f4.html

[5] http://occupymuseums.org/press/TheNewYorker.pdf

[6] http://www.commentarymagazine.com/article/goldwater-the-john-birch-society-and-me/

[7] For a discussion of the similarities of Rand’s philosophy and Hubbard’s, see “The Ayn Rand Cult”, by Jeff Waler. Open Court Publishing, Peru, Illinois 1999.

[8] “The Storm”, William Finnegan, New Yorker 3/5/2012 Vol.88, Issue 3.

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Grover Norquist and the John Birch Society – Part 2

Grover Norquist has stated he’d like to see the country return to the 1880’s, before unions were legal, before labor laws, before social security, medicare.

He wants to get rid of unemployment insurance for those that the economy has thrown out of work. 

Nevermind that having a substantial amount of unemployed workers fits perfectly into his (and the John Birch Society, the Koch brothers, Tea Partiers – all one and the same[i]) vision of society.

Grover has worked hard over the past 3 decades or so in achieving the Koch brother’s goals, referred to by William F. Buckley, Jr., no less, as “Arnarcho-Totalitarianism”. He’s done so through his Americans for Tax Reform cell, funded with Koch money.

Norquist is against any tax.

More accurately, he’s against any tax that his friends will have to pay.

He’s also for “Free Trade”, because free trade means ‘no tariffs’, and a tariff is a tax by another name. As we have seen with NAFTA, it also means a loss of high-paying jobs to other countries and that, coupled with already high unemployment, leads to desperate people willing to work for next to nothing.

Which, in turn, leads to an erosion of economic power in the hands of ‘ordinary’ people – those not of the moneyed-class. And that is exactly the goal of his union-busting efforts (witness his interjecting himself in the VW/UAW situation). He knows that economic power leads to political power – and that cannot be tolerated.

One of the reasons that Mr. Norquist is successful in his propaganda, is that like the Koch brothers, transparency is shunned in favor of masking the source of the prolfeed (and funding) that his various organizations issue forth, coupled with using proxies to get the message out.

Norquist has once again used a tactic promoted by the John Birch Society: Public Relations and Marketing. In the book “50 Years of Dissent”, C. Wright Mills says this about the right and how they use media as a weapon:

“Alongside the very rich, and supplanting them as popular models, are the synthetic celebrities of national glamor who often make a virtue out of cultural poverty and political illiteracy. By their very nature they are transient figures of mass means of distraction rather than sources of authority and anchors of traditional continuity.”

(It would be easier to show pictures of Rush Limbaugh, Bill O'Reilly, Sean Hannity, Sarah Palin, and the rest of the right-wing media darlings.)

This all points to a situation where the masses are forced to grovel for survival. His vision, or at least what he’s working toward, is a society where there are very few good-paying jobs, many fewer jobs overall than what is required for a healthy society at least, no job security, no relief if you lose your job, no help if you get hurt on the job – all lead to a population that is in constant fear.

The role of the lower-class is to be grateful for the few crumbs you are allowed to have.

He claims he only wants the government to leave people alone, and this is something I think he’s being truthful about: He wants the government to leave businesses alone when they make products that harm you, when they pollute the air you breathe and the water you drink, when it comes time for them to share the burden of rebuilding infrastructure they use to manufacture and distribute their products – and more.

He also wants the government to leave you alone when the business practices of his friends leaves you with no income, no way to feed your children, no way to become healthy again when you fall ill, or when you are hurt in an industrial accident -  because if the government did help you, that would be socialism. 

Yet, he’s apparently fine when his Wall Street friends socialize the risk involved in their economically dangerous schemes to get even richer.

Without saying it, Norquist and his Rabid Right friends want to turn the country into a third-world-class nation, with them and the rest of the clique as the New Barons to oversee their serfs. And, they feel it is only right that it is they who are in charge and make the decisions – after all, they’re the ones with the money – and everyone knows the real Golden Rule.

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[i] http://occupymuseums.org/press/TheNewYorker.pdf

Grover Norquist and the John Birch Society – Part 1

When the workers at Volkswagen’ Tennessee plant began organizing, with the acquiescence, if not outright encouragement of management, they knew there would be some amongst the workforce that felt differently than the UAW leadership and many other of their coworkers about unionization, and that having the union represent the workers was not a given.

What they couldn’t have anticipated was the resistance from the Governor of the state, Bill Haslam and one of the state’s Senators, Bob Corker, both Republicans. Considering that the management of VW was more than okay with the idea of the workers organizing (in fact, they consider it vital that their workforce be organized in some fashion) and that one of the Republican tenets is ‘local control’, why would organizing be a problem for anyone?

When it started to look like the union would get voted in, both Haslam and Corker sprung into action to thwart the effort, despite the Republican party’s position on ‘less government interference’.

But they weren’t alone. Grover Norquist, he of the ‘No Tax Pledge’, decided that the workers in Tennessee were having trouble deciding for themselves whether they wanted to be represented by the UAW or not. Because, after all, what did those workers know? None of them were the President of any lobbying groups.

An odd development, I thought, since this had nothing to do with raising taxes – because management at VW were going to have their workforce organized in some fashion no matter what anyone else thought about it (and the worker’s panel may insist that no future plants be built in the southern U.S. because of the efforts of Haslam, Corker, and Norquist)

Research into Norquist made it clear: Norquist is, perhaps not officially, but definitely in spirit, a Bircher – as in the John Birch Society. His philosophy mimics the Bircher’s exactly.

No, not really. You see, one of the guiding principles the JBS claims to adhere to is ‘individual liberty’, and Norquist definitely doesn’t believe in that – at least not when it comes to workers joining a union that is. No matter. The Birchers don’t believe it either. What they do believe, regardless of what they claim to believe, is individual liberty only for those they deem worthy – big money interests.

Like the Koch brothers. Their father Fred was a founding member of the JBS and both brothers were members, at least for a while. Charles resigned at one point over the Vietnam war. But he rejoined, at least in spirit (the JBS doesn’t publish the names of its members).

Koch money, and Norquist’s leadership may not have created the Tea Party (don’t count it out), but Koch money has supported the nascent movement and Norquist provided strategy. And it’s always been that way with the JBS.

The JBS was active in the Goldwater presidential campaign in 1964 (Goldwater’s famous quote about ‘extremism is no vice’ was a shout-out to the Society) and Ronald Reagan’s victory in California[i]. When Reagan took the White House in 1980, he had Norquist nearby and asked the young promising extremist to start what became Americans for Tax Reform.

Norquist has stated many times that he'd like America to return to the good old days of the 1880's. No Social Security, No labor laws, no safety net, no unions. He'd probably like to see only landowners voting as it once was, or some of us being declarred 3/5's of a person. Norquist marches in lockstep with JBS ideology, and it'd be damn hard to be more rabidly conservative than that.

The Society seemed to have gone dormant for years, particularly after William F. Buckley, Jr.’s denouncement of the group. But they’ve never gone away completely. For years, no one heard the name of the group, but that’s has changed.

End of Part 1


[i] James Phalen “Mutiny In The John Birch Society” Saturday Evening Post, April 8, 1967.

If Peter Pan and Ayn Rand Had A Child...



According to 60 minutes, Norquist got the idea to “Brand the Republican Party as the party that will never raise your taxes” when he was 12 years old and volunteering for the Nixon campaign.

“If the parties would brand themselves the way Coke and Pepsi and other products do…”

Strange in and of itself. There’s nothing wrong with it, just damn odd. How many 12 year-olds think that way?

In the piece, 60 minutes goes on to say:

“Many Republican congressmen fear retaliation from Norquist if they even suggest that a tax increase for the wealthiest of Americans should be up for discussion…”

Emphasis mine.

This really is no secret, that the opposition to tax increases applies only to the wealthy and not to Joe six-pack, and is demonstrated clearly in Norquist’s silence about taxpayer funding for a new sports facility for the Milwaukee Bucks basketball Corporation.

Norquist is most known for his ‘Pledge” that he forces republicans to sign, promising that they will never vote for a bill that raises taxes. In fact, it’s not enough to sign the pledge once, as Mitt Romney learned. And woe be to any who refuse to sign, as defeating them will become Norquist’s new mission.

Former Senator Alan Simpson, Co-Chair of the National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform, considers Norquist to be “megalomaniac, an ego maniac". Simpson is what is referred to as an ‘adult’ and understands that in the real world, compromises need to be made and that stomp-your-feet-and-hold-your-breath-till-you-turn-blue demands are not how responsible adults operate.

Norquist wouldn’t know much about that, never having a position of real responsibility. Unless, you consider writing speeches and making threats real responsibility.

According to www.nndb.com, Norquist equates taxing rich people with the holocaust. To paraphrase, Norquist says that it’s not right or okay to do something to a group of people just because you’re not doing that thing to everyone.

Yet, this philosophy doesn’t extend to the non-wealthy. Grover, genius that he is, can’t seem to grasp that when he fights for and wins tax breaks for the already wealthy, a greater tax burden falls in those less able to pay them.

In an article in Mother Jones, Ralph Nader says Norquist’s quest is:

“the most powerful, nihilistic movement in Washington…It is such a cold-blooded atmosphere it would sustain icicles.”

And it shows. Willing, if not eager, to strip the needy and elderly of any semblance of a social net, all so that the wealthy prosper further.

The article adds:

Norquist calls it[1] the “Leave-Us-Alone Coalition,” a grouping of gun owners, the Christian right, homeschoolers, libertarians, and business leaders that he has almost single-handedly managed to unite. The common vision: an America in which the rich will be taxed at the same rates as the poor, where capital is freed from government constraints, where government services are turned over to the free market, where the minimum wage is repealed, unions are made irrelevant, and law-abiding citizens can pack handguns in every state and town. "My ideal citizen is the self-employed, homeschooling, IRA-owning guy with a concealed-carry permit,” says Norquist. “Because that person doesn't need the goddamn government for anything.”

This is the Tea Party agenda, word for word. Or, it would be if the Tea Party had a standard platform. It doesn’t because there is no one Tea party. That may be by design, because then you can’t target them. It becomes political Whack-A-Mole.

Perhaps the most disturbing aspect of Mr. Norquist is that he knows how to win. The vision for America that he adopted back when he was 12 years old is coming true – pick up any paper, visit any news website, and it’s all there.

Norquist wants the country to return to the status quo of yesteryear – the ‘gilded age’ minus the economic prosperity (because economic power leads to political power) for common folks, the era of the Robber Baron. The only cure for this dystopian Randian vision is to use the same tools that progressives used 100 years ago: educate, organize, and vote.


[1] The ‘Wednesday morning group’.

A Triple-Foul

I’ve read that soon, print newspapers will be a thing of the past.

I know of one that few will miss: The Milwaukee Urinal-Journal Sentinel.

The reason that prompts me to make such a statement is that the only good thing about the paper is the local section.

Most of the editorials are predictable, even laughable.

Case in  point: the April 20^th editorial regarding the soon-to-be new Milwaukee Bucks Basketball Corporation facility.

In the editorial, the Journal’s editorial board makes the argument that, since it’s a foregone conclusion that taxpayer money will be spent to fund a new arena (and maybe more), the community should step back, take a deep breath, and think about the big picture.

In their minds this means consideration for a number of other things, such as maybe some kind of museum, or stores, or whatever that ‘we’ might want to include in this new facility.

But not, for instance, any tie-in to mass transit. The Journal says that’s another conversation. I disagree.

Since it’s inevitable that public money is going to help the new millionaires who bought the team make even more money, and that it’s likely that this public money will come in the form of a sales tax, and that many of those who will end up paying this new sales tax use mass transit to go the low paying jobs that provide the income that will be taxed, providing improvements such as more routes into suburban industrial parks and the like should be at the forefront of the discussion, and is not ‘tangential’ as the board suggests.

Where are all the anti-tax conservatives? Why haven’t we heard the usual hew-and-cry from the Tea Partiers, Neocons, and the rest of the Rabid Right? Where’s Grover Norquist?

Norquist, he of the “No Tax Increase Pledge”, insinuated himself into the Volkswagen-UAW flap over the union’s effort to organize workers at the VW Tennessee plant, which had nothing to do with tax rates anyway. Where is this self-appointed slayer of bigger government, this Champion of the 'Leave Us Alone' mantra? Why doesn’t it bother him that the people of southeastern Wisconsin are about to be oppressed by a new layer of taxing-authority government?

I keep forgetting that people like Norquist don’t really care so much about taxes, what they care about I that their friends aren’t taxed. And since this new Bucks tax will be paid by those with little to no political clout whatsoever, all is fine.

It probably does irritate Norquist that the new owners have pledged $100M to help build the facility. Fools. Don’t they know they could get that money from taxes as well?

We have our own local version (kind of) of Norquist in the person of Christian Schneider, columnist for the above mentioned newspaper and avid Scott Walker lapdog. The only reason Schneider hasn’t gone batshit crazy over the impending new tax is because his LordMaster™ Scott Walker hasn't yet made an edict regarding the issue.

He does, however, find it within him to make such funny jokes about how the team could come up with the rest of the money for the facility without raising taxes. While Schneider’s column is meant to be tongue-in-cheek, it really is foot-in-mouth.

First, the math. While not meant to be realistic, they betray how the right thinks about people’s money. Not big corporations or the very rich, but regular people’s money. The numbers don’t reflect any sort of reality because they don’t need to. Not in the context of raising taxes for a new basketball temple or when lowering the tax rates on the very wealthy, which the not very wealthy at all end up paying so that the much-more wealthy can enjoy themselves during their much-more frequent downtime. The only thing that matters to Schneider or Norquist is that no one with money is going to have to pay anymore tax. King’s don’t pay taxes, their subjects do.

Once again, those on the right (The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, Grover Norquist, and Christian Schneider, in this case) demonstrate that they don’t have to actually live the values they proscribe for others, as long as the proletariat does.