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.

---

[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.

Gov. Walker Wants To Eliminate Wisconsin's State Income Tax

Walker recently floated out the idea of eliminating Wisconsin's state income tax. he hasn't come up with a plan yet as he claims he wants input from 'the people'.

That's something we in Wisconsin haven't heard from him before, but he is running for President, so he has to at minimum appear to care what voters think.

He says he has no definite scheme in mind, but we know that can't be the case. This guy's middle name is subterfuge. That's mainly because he knows his policies are unpopular and can't just come out say what he wants to do. Geez, if he did that, he probably wouldn't get elected.

Let's look at Wisconsin's current state income tax, compare it to other state's that have no state income tax and see if it can't be discerned where Walker is really going with this.

Currently, there are seven states with no state income tax: Alaska, Florida, Nevada, South Dakota, Texas, Washington, and Wyoming.

Right off the bat, you can see that the line representing Wisconsin doesn't follow the contour for the states with no income tax. The reason for this is that Wisconsin's current tax structure has a graduated design and is far more progressive than those states that have no income tax.

Wisconsin's state motto is "Forward" and used to be lauded for it's progressiveness. In fact, it was Wisconsin's Republicans that gave the state this reputation.

Now, with Walker running the state, this is no longer the case as his main interest is serving his overseers. And, the one thing his overseers lust after more than possibly anything else, is the elimination of capital gains taxes. Considering that Walker is a man of little or no real substance and will bend to whatever political wind is blowing (Tea Party, anyone? Anyone? Bueller?), watch for it to be forced down the throats of the people.

If we're lucky, we'll end up with a tax structure that resembles the 'overall average' of data sets reflected in the chart above and those least able to fight back will end up bearing the heaviest load. That last part is sure to be a feature of whatever plan Walker comes up with because we now live in an echo of days past where the only ones that mattered were those with money.

Follow me on Twitter for more analysis on this and other topics.

Falling Hard While Falling Short

You hear an awful lot from politicians, conservatives mostly, of how important the private sector is and how the public sector should be eschewed. They seem to forget, exactly as they are speaking those words, that they themselves are working in the public sector.

Maybe the reason we hear this repeated so often from conservatives is that they really do know how hard it is to work in the private sector and they’re trying their best to avoid it by getting elected or, if already in office, to stay there.

And, if not public office, at least a friendly think tank assignment.

It is a dog-eat-dog world, after all.

By working in the private sector, one can focus their talents on practicing self reliance and avoid the temptations of receiving public benefits of any sort, gumption...bootstraps...get up and go (but not this kind). 

So the narrative goes. Sounds good, at least at first blush. Yet, how come so many of those that espouse this philosophy do not adhere to it themselves?

Paul Ryan, a front-runner for a leadership position on the Hypocratic Party, is an excellent example of this phenomena. He works hard to try to deny others' government benefits that he was able to take advantage of. Then, he used the education he got to largely avoid working in the private sector. Why?

Could it be that Ryan feels it’s a lot easier to tell other people how to live, what to do, than to live up to those ideals himself?

Ayn Rand’s name often comes up (she is his hero), when someone invariably mentions the ‘makers’ and the ‘takers’, as Ryan has been known to do. It turns out she herself became a taker in her later years, receiving both Social Security and Medicare, after railing against any form of government assistance, yet she saw no irony in it, when she needed it.

Imagine. The Queen of Self Reliance relying on someone other than herself.

(One of Rand's biggest followers, Nathan Blumenthal (who went by 'Nathaniel Branden', in order to incorporate Rand's name in his) had an affair with Ayn and after he lost interest in the John Birch Society's pin-up girl, began seeing another someone who wasn't his wife. Ayn found out, excommunicated him, which led him to contemplate whether the "Collective" (Ayn's ironic term for her inner circle of friends) would try to assassinate him. Fun group, no doubt.)

This begs the question: If it’s okay to take Social Security, Medicaid, etc. with the justification that your own money was put into it and therefore, one is entitled (I apologize for my language - I hope there are no children in the room) to it, okay...okay – but then you have to stop criticizing others (like Ryan does, but spares any criticism of Rand) who are receiving, or have received, Social Security.

If, on the other hand, you maintain the position that Rand became a ‘taker’, then you must denounce her and her philosophy and never repeat it again.

We also have another member of the Hypocratic Party, Ron Johnson, purported job creator, famed Tea Partier, is another candidate for Hypocratic Party leader. This former CEO of Pacur LLC, a company which received a $75,000 federal grant in 1979 and between 1983 and 1985 used industrial development bonds to fund plant expansion.

Ron Johnson, Senator from Wisconsin, is an admirer of Rand. He's another pretender, posing as a self-resourceful businessman who tries hard to make it sound like he's all bootstrap. Except he isn't. He claims that he and his brother-in-law started Pacur. while this claim is technically true, it is also only technically true. The new company had in reality been in operation, and simply took it's one customer and re-named itself.

Again, nothing wrong with this, and at least it is in the private sector. Yet to hear Johnson talk about it, he make it sound as if he did it on his own. The reality is that he caught a break through the public assistance with loans and grants. That, and marrying a woman who's family had a thriving business didn't hurt, either.

And there, right there, is the rub. Both Johnson and Ryan caught a break and that break is what made the difference in their lives, and surely in the lives of their respective families as well. Others who would benefit from the benefits Ryan got, for instance, wouldn’t be able to leverage those ‘breaks’ as well as he did because we all don’t come from wealthy families to begin with. This group would be using that money to survive, not to thrive.

But if you get a break that’s available to anyone and after you get that break and no longer need it, you fight to deny that same break to others who do need it and are currently in the same boat you were in when you got it, is hypocrisy.

When you hold a position of power from where you can achieve that goal of denying other’s what you once had, then you are in the lead for the Hypocratic Party’s nomination.