enlarge

Credit: Political Carnival

Reality shows are like life, in that people on these programs do things people do in real life, (i.e. travel, date, lose weight) but the circumstances are contrived. The contestants are put in artificial situations with heightened rewards and it’s put on camera. The stakes are fake. The participants pre-screened. The episodes are scripted. It’s “reality” television.

It’s like reality…only augmented for drama and ratings.

Enter the United States Government. Civics and public servants are usually a snooze fest. Rules and procedures and suit-fillers giving long speeches are not all that interesting. Sure there was the occasional duel involving a member of Congress in the last 235 years. Bill Clinton’s enemies brought us a primetime sex scandal. But for the most part politics was watching history in the making, which is like watching anything else being made…slow and tedious.

Think documentary.

It’s hard to pinpoint the exact moment politics crossed over into full reality show mayhem. These things usually happen in a “perfect storm” situation. Meaning: it wasn’t just one thing. It was a couple of unforeseen events happening all at once – all horrifying to Republicans. One was the meltdown of the financial system in 2008. It was the moment Bush had to “abandon free market principles to save the free market system” with TARP. The other was McCain’s concession. Go ahead and watch the speech again. The homogeneous crowd looks like they’re at a wake for a Ralph Lauren and L.L. Bean murder/suicide as their candidate says Barack Hussein Obama will be his president.

If deregulation and tax cuts had done what they was claimed they would do and not wreck the world’s economy – then maybe having a guy whose middle name was the same as a Middle Eastern dictator we’ve spent trillions to take out, as the new president – wouldn’t have seemed so drastic.

But this is the moment when politics went from CSPAN to Jerry Springer. What happens when a guest on Springer gets accused of something and he’s clearly at fault? He gets louder and starts throwing out desperate accusations. “How do I know you didn’t give it to me?!”

So instead of contrition – they opted for defensive blustering with something vaguely foreign-sounding to blame.

This is the tea party: Freaked out Republicans. Lovers of unpaid-for tax cuts, unpaid-for wars and saturnalia on Wall Street were faced with the evidence that their ideas, when implemented, are terrible. So they took a cue from reality shows – they went full bombast. Then it was Obama (whose name also sounds like Osama) who passed TARP and doubled the debt (when that actually happened under the “compassionate conservative” Bush with a GOP Congress).

And just like when reality show producers figured out backstabbing and borderline psychopathic contestants meant ratings – during the health care reform debate the Republicans learned anything chanted by old people on television (no matter how nonsensical) dominates the debate. “Keep the government out of my Medicare!”

For the last two and a half years politics has been trash television. We’ve had right-wing stars staying relevant through mudslinging and shamelessness. The tea party wouldn’t be satisfied with just one Snooki. We’ve had fake stings by phony pimps and ideology-driven hoaxes. Astroturf is being sold as organic outrage.

In short: it’s staged. It’s over-produced indignation by interest groups that don’t do as well in the dullness of documentary style politics and need the chaos of the ridiculous to keep progress at bay.

Cutting government spending (think government jobs) during record unemployment? More tax cuts for the top 1% during record low tax rates and unprecedented tax exemptions? Do these ideas sound like something people come up with when they’re not just cynically throwing everything against the wall to see what sticks?

How many times do the cable news networks need to have a countdown clock up for congressional dustups that could shut down the government?

We’re being held captive by stunts. Choreographed stunts. This is not what deliberative government looks like.

This is what deliberate turmoil looks like.

Re-printed with permission

I'm going to keep hitting Michelle Rhee and the lies she tells for as long as it takes to get this message across. For example, in this video she says kids will graduate less educated than their parents. That's an outright lie and she can't back it up with any facts at all. But if it were true, it would be true because the idiotic NCLB has been around for ten years and has caused schools to suffer from testing-itis, where teachers teach to a set of standards instead of critical thinking and analytical skills. It might also be true because schools are the target of funding cuts, particularly as the right wing tries to ram "school choice" down our throat and pay the for-profits instead of the public schools.

In the comments to the post where this video was embedded one commenter's remarks stood out, because the person claimed to be progressive, but defended Michelle Rhee to the core. This comment in particular was interesting:

“Michelle is a pioneer in education reform, unafraid to challenge the status quo and offer real solutions. Her policies are neither left nor right, but driven by research and the desire to bring accountabi­lity to the education system.”

A check over on Twitter shows that GardenStBadger, as he is known on the Huffington Post, recently changed his twitter handle to Arman Belding. Arman Belding worked for Joe Trippi in the Washington DC area as a social media coordinator, before posting an excited announcement in May that he was taking a job with StudentsFirst.

So it appears that in addition to hiring away Hari Sevugan, Rhee is also employing some astroturf types who know their way around social media to push back on the truth about her: She is not progressive, does not have progressive ideas, and is funded by those who want to see public education die altogether.

One usually sees this kind of astroturf effort from the right wing, sort of like Freedomworks' efforts during just about every debate on every policy there is. So, is Rhee showing her right-wing stripes in order to try and convince progressives up is down? You make that call. It sure looks like it to me.

DOWNLOADS: (532)

PLAYS: (780)

Embed

Cable news is obsessed with the Tea Party. It's not unique to Fox News, either. Chris Matthews did an hour-long special on them. CNN hires them as commentators, despite their ugly daily behavior online. and now Greta Van Susteren has gotten in on the Tea Party gravy train with an hour-long love song to them last night.

There are some revealing moments mixed in with the usual nonsense from the likes of Dick Armey and Sarah Palin about how the tea parties are all organic and populist. Humbug and idiocy, that. But two segments in particular are worth watching, both from Utah Senators.

Orrin Hatch looks like a deer caught in the headlights. He's being squeezed hard by the Tea Party and moves farther right with each passing day, but this interview tells me he isn't very happy about it. It's interesting to hear him repeat several times in the beginning, middle and end of this segment how he believes most of them are good people who are 'just fed up'. Here's the revealer though:

They're good people. You always have the radicals in any organization, but the vast majority of them are honest, decent people who are sick and tired of what's happening in our country.

That disclaimer about radicals in any organization was an interesting one for him to make. I think Hatch knows he's a goner in 2012 but will hang on as long as possible in the hopes of moving the Republican party back toward reason because he knows the truth: the majority of them are radicals with a few honest and decent angry folks on the fringe edges.

Former Senator Robert Bennett is a very interesting man. There's no question that he was (and is) very frustrated with how the Tea Party swept through the 2010 primaries in Utah leaving him high and dry.

Continue reading »

It looks like Justice Clarence Thomas has a bit of a memory problem, and when combined with Ginni Thomas' lobbying efforts, a picture emerges of a deep ethical problem corrupting the highest court in the country.

The video above outlines Virginia "Ginni" Thomas' relationship to Liberty Central and Liberty Consulting. They suggest that Liberty Consulting is a front for Liberty Central, but I'm not sure about that, since the two organizations still keep separate websites, and one is for-profit while the other isn't.

What is clear, however, is that there is direct intent to cloak both operations behind a veil of secrecy while one of our Supreme Court justices takes up questions that deal directly with the very same issue. That's problem #1.

Problem #2 is a little stickier. While we knew that Justice Thomas did not disclose his wife's income from the Heritage Foundation and Liberty Central for the past six years, as was required, it seems that non-disclosure stretches back farther than that.

For twenty years, Clarence Thomas has not disclosed his wife's income, nor the source of that income. Twenty years.

Roger Schuler, at Daily Kos thinks Thomas' failure to disclose could be a felony.

News reports on the Thomas case generally have referenced 5 U.S. Code app. section 104, which calls for a misdemeanor punishment of up to $50,000 and one year imprisonment, or both, for each violation. Given that Thomas apparently violated the statute for roughly 20 years, he could wind up with a substantial penalty under that law.

But the punishment becomes much more severe under 18 U.S.C. 1001, which also appears to apply in the Thomas case. It is a felony statute carrying at least five years in prison, and a former official with the U.S. House of Representatives currently is under indictment for actions that almost mirror those in the Thomas case. Reports POE:

While 5 USC app section 104 makes this conduct a misdemeanor punishable for up to a year in prison, 18 USC section 1001 is a felony statute carrying at least five years in prison. In fact, Fraser Verrusio, former Policy Director for the U.S. House of Representatives Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure, is awaiting trial under section 1001 for not reporting income on his "United States House of Representatives Financial Disclosure Statement for Calendar Year 2003."

You can read more about the charges against Fraser Verrusio at the link below. It appears that he was given no opportunity to amend his filings:

Indictment in U.S. v. Fraser C. Verrusio (PDF)

Verrusio once worked for U.S. Rep. Don Young (R-AK), and the case has received extensive coverage in the Alaska press. The prosecution reportedly grew out of the Jack Abramoff affair.

His post goes on to discuss the fact that a similar case was heard by the Supreme Court in 1985, six years before Thomas was seated on the court. The court held that failure to disclose required information was a felony, not a misdemeanor.

Up to now, Justice Thomas has simply shrugged off his failure to disclose his wife's income and sources as a mere oversight, despite the fact that he "forgot" for 20 years. But what if it were intentional? ProtectOurElections.org has a theory that he didn't disclose her income or source because he might have been challenged for recusal due to conflict of interest. In fact, from 1993-1998, Virginia Thomas worked for Dick Armey.

enlarge

Source: Amendments to original disclosures, filed on Saturday, January 21, 2011 (PDF)

If we were to crowdsource an investigation and look at every case Justice Thomas heard from 1993 to 1998, I believe we would find a number of cases then, and possibly later than that where a conflict might emerge. Or, as PreserveOurElections.org suggests:

Kevin Zeese, attorney and spokesperson for ProtectOurElections.org, believes that Justice Thomas may have intentionally withheld the information in order to keep litigants from moving to disqualify him in cases where his wife's employment could cause a conflict of interest or where she could benefit from a decision. "Justice Thomas cast a critical vote in the Citizens United case allowing conservative groups like the Heritage Foundation and Liberty Central to raise millions of dollars in secret funds to support and elect conservative politicians," he said. "Had Justice Thomas disclosed that his wife worked for the Heritage Foundation, litigants may have had good cause to disqualify him from hearing that case. In fact, we are left to wonder if Justice Thomas knew that his wife was planning on leaving the Heritage Foundation to launch Liberty Central once Citizens United was decided. Clearly, she has benefitted personally from that decision."

Now my response to his specific assertion about the Heritage Foundation is that it was known and a challenge could have been made, disclosures or no disclosures. Her associations with Hillsdale college and the Heritage Foundation were known before the Citizens United case came to trial, I believe. But what wasn't known was her association with Dick Armey, who is the founding member of Americans for Prosperity, a close cousin of Citizens United. THAT's the connection everyone should be looking at.

As I watched the whole TSA swarm descend on the media and Internet over the past month, I was surprised at the violent reaction from the left AND right on airport screenings. Blowing this issue up right before the holidays seemed to be a Tea Party tactic from beginning to end, as far as I was concerned.

Mark Ames and Yasha Levine at The Nation contended in a post yesterday that the current publicity surge was orchestrated and magnified by organizations with ties to Koch Industries. With one exception, they list a solid trail that leads back to organizations with a vested interest in: a) discrediting government agencies and the TSA specifically; and b) discrediting the current administration's ability to handle national security. Unfortunately, they led off the article by trying to link up John Tyner ("Don't Touch My Junk") with these organizations, and as many critics have pointed out, there is no "there", there.

Glenn Greenwald:

As for his standing accused by The Nation of suspicion on the grounds of his avowed libertarianism, consider what he wrote several weeks before the TSA incident. In a post responding to this question -- "When’s the last time you were seriously inconvenienced or injured by something that big government did?" -- Tyner wrote:

Gay rights [infringements], TSA body scanners, highway checkpoints, the PATRIOT Act, warrantless wiretaps, extra-judicial assassinations, indefinite detentions, inflation, etc. Don't tell me that (some of) these don't affect me. When one person's rights are trampled, everybody's are, and that's just at the federal level.

What a right-wing monster! If only Democratic Party leaders -- who support most of the serious rights infringements he condemns -- were this monstrous. Or consider what he wrote about the statements of Juan Williams and Bill O'Reilly which conflated Muslims with Terrorists: (read the rest)

Jeremy Scahill:

The article my magazine, The Nation, published about John Tyner is a shameful smear

While I tend to agree with his criticism of their opening focus on John Tyner, and particularly the authors' focus on personal details of Tyner's education and background as evidence of his bias, that should not automatically disqualify the balance of their article, where they list at least six other connections which are solid and easily documented.

The authors responded to Greenwald's criticism late Wednesday, writing:

We believe that Tyner is in all likelihood innocent in his motives, but our larger point is that his discourse and the movement that has embraced it is far from innocent. In focusing entirely on our characterization of Tyner, Greenwald ignores the larger thrust of our argument and the vast majority of the evidence assembled in the piece, leaving a distorted impression of it.

On this point, I agree. Their article would have been stronger without any reference or only a mere passing reference to John Tyner. I don't believe anyone is arguing that the TSA is perfect, that their scanners are the best we have to offer, or that body searches are not a violation of civil liberties. I certainly am not. At the same time, these issues are not new. It isn't as though patdowns are a new procedure in effect as of this holiday. They've been doing them for years. So why now? Why when there are so many important issues on the table, is this one taking the center stage. Levine and Ames have the same question:

Here is what the article really said: Like many Americans, we found the TSA's intrusive procedures offensive and we are against the invasive pat-downs and attack on our civil liberties. This was a given in our article, and we stated as much. What our article did was look beyond the obvious surface, into possible reasons why this particular issue suddenly rose to forefront of the national debate, when dozens of other, more pressing issues are getting so little attention--people being kicked out of their homes and living on the street because of fraudulent foreclosures, a massive wealth transfer from struggling Americans to the financial sector, ongoing wars that are bankrupting the country and killing thousands, the attack on public education and so on.

They found enough connections inside and outside of Congress to warrant a report on it. Unfortunately, the gist of their findings has been lost in the larger anger over a) the tenuous linking to John Tyner; and b) the overall outrage over enhanced TSA screening procedures.

Here's what bothers me. This smelled like an overblown PR effort from the get-go. Again, I am NOT saying there aren't problems, but this happening right now when more people are flying home to family and friends for the holidays is not coincidental. It's just not. Now The Nation has linked the "OptOut" campaign to astroturf sources, but is still getting a complete smackdown by those who would ordinarily pay attention because...why?

The anti-TSA campaign began in early November, and gained traction just in the nick of time for Thanksgiving travel. Absent from the debate on the left side of the aisle was any discussion about where employees of the TSA stand with regard to unionizing (they have not had a chance to vote on a union to represent them yet); about the clamor for privatization despite the fact that privatization has failed once; whether those employees were properly trained and whether the actual stories told were factual or not. We know Meg McLain's was a complete fabrication. We know the guy headlined by Drudge actually cooperated with authorities.

So what is so unreasonable about linking up agendas with what certainly appears to be a well-timed and carefully crafted campaign? Isn't there a way to both acknowledge the issues inherent with these TSA screening procedures AND the idea that it's being capitalized upon for political gain?

To many, it seems to be a zero-sum game. If one doesn't choose to accept the premise that this entire brouhaha is an organic swarm commanding attention because of self-inflicted TSA incompetence -- malevolence, even -- from a government intent on invading every single aspect of our lives and killing the constitution, then in Greenwald's estimation we must be "centro-facist" (see below) party hacks falling into lockstep and yessing every move with no regard for facts, liberties, or any combination thereof. And that conclusion would exclude any possibility at all that there was, in fact, a PR push to make this a Very Big Issue at a time where a lot of people would be affected and view the TSA, and by extension, this administration in a negative light.

I do believe the TSA has bungled their handling of airport security. I do believe they believe they're doing what they're called to do, but doing it badly and without regard to people's rights. I also believe those errors were capitalized upon by people with agendas and money who set a PR machine in motion to score political points and ultimately political victories which also will disregard our rights and liberties. For Glenn Greenwald and others, this is less important than what the TSA is doing right now. He acknowledges the possibility that the six different instances cited by The Nation may have been true and factual, but for him, the mention and "smear" (his words, not mine) of John Tyner supercede any validity the other 3/4ths of their piece may have had.

It may be that several vocal opponents of the new TSA process are Koch-funded -- that wouldn't surprise me -- but that has absolutely nothing to do with Tyner, and The Nation, for which I have high regard, owes him an apology and retraction for the innuendo it smeared on him without a shred of evidence.

Nothing is absolute. It's likely that all dynamics are at work. Without the work of The Nation's reporters, we would be missing a piece of the larger picture. How are we harmed by that, and why shouldn't it be weighted with more than a passing nod tossed in a maelstrom of biting criticism?

Update and clarification: The term "centro-fascist" was one used by The Nation authors in their response to Glenn Greenwald. The phrasing I used made it appear to be attributable to him. I had originally quoted the authors' full quote using that term, and removed it to make the length readable. In so doing, it left that quote attributable to the wrong speaker.

DOWNLOADS: (841)

PLAYS: (1031)

Embed

Meet Lawrence A. Hunter, the executive director of the Alliance for Retirement Prosperity, senior fellow at the Americans for Prosperity Foundation (AFP) and the Institute for Policy Innovation (IPI). He might sound more familiar to you as the director of the Social Security Alliance, a 501(c)(4) group with the following mission statement (from their 2008 990 filing):

Working to promote the retirement security of today's seniors and the seniors of tomorrow. SSI's top policy priorities are to stop the raid on Social Security trust funds, prevent cuts to Social Security and Medicare benefits, and protect seniors from health care rationing and other limitations on their access to health care.

SSI was a recycle of an organization originally launched in 2004 at the time of the Great Social Security Privatization Debate. That organization was also known as the "Alliance for Retirement Prosperity", and was spun off by Jack Kemp and Dick Armey from Citizens for a Sound Economy, known today as FreedomWorks, and Kemp's Empower America. The IPI That organization's stated purpose was as follows:

Advocacy and lobbying activities aimed at reforming Social Security by dedicating a substantial portion of the payroll tax to large personal accounts.

The newest incarnation of the "Alliance for Retirement Prosperity" is a bit different, as Hunter indicates in the video. For starters, it's a for-profit group, purporting to be a "true alternative to the AARP". To that end, it offers members the opportunity to "ensure a prosperous, enriched and secure retirement" for the low, low price of $60 per year for the premium membership, and just $16 for an individual membership.

Continue reading »

enlarge

Credit: Washington Independent

Hmm....it looks like the most influential "grassroots" movement Koch money can buy can't quite gin up the interest one would expect:

Back in June we learned that the much hyped Tea Party Unity convention was being canceled and rescheduled to October 14-16 in Las Vegas. This barely registered a blip with the media at the time and I called them out on it and set the record straight on what this was really about.

We’re about a month out from their new announced date, and I thought I’d check them out and see how things were coming along.

Well my first stop was a Google search to find their web site. I found it, but this link should speak for itself. Check out nationalteapartyconvention.com. Oh you got a page not found error? Well there’s nothing wrong with your browser, the site doesn’t exist any more. And there’s absolutely zero media or blog coverage of the event since they announced the dates were changing. Not really what you’d expect for an event featuring Sharron Angle, Lou Dobbs, Joseph Farah, and Andrew Breitbart is it?

Well it gets better. I wanted to make sure the convention really was canceled and they weren’t just having web issues or neglected to do any PR for their event. So I put in a call to the Mirage hotel and asked if I could book a room in their block for the event. Turns out the room block had been canceled and the Mirage had no record of the event.

Given the amount of air time and influence the media continually gives this group of wackaloons, I gotta likewise take their prognostications of doom and gloom for the Dems holding onto the majority with a huge grain of salt. For crying out loud, with a critical mid-term election right around the corner, and Sarah Palin as the featured keynote speaker (complete with $100K speaking fee, thankyouverymuch) and Tea Party favorites like Sharron Angle and Breitbart scheduled to appear, they still can't sell enough tickets to hold a "Unity Conference".

It's just schadenfreude-licious.

DOWNLOADS: (3150)

PLAYS: (9145)

Embed

Remember this? This is Rachel Maddow's stellar segment on the "Swiftboat Veterans for Unaffordable Insurance", aka Rick Scott's organization, Conservatives for Patients Rights, the AstroTurf anti-health care reform group who led the opposition to any and all efforts to reform the health care system last year. As Rachel opined, "Having Rick Scott as your spokesman for health care reform is like having the eColi bacterium as your spokesman against handwashing."

Scott's involvement in Conservatives for Patients' Rights is just his latest venture. The real reason Floridians would be insane to even consider electing this man? His leadership of the Columbia/HCA hospital chain.

Columbia/HCA didn't just scheme to defraud Medicare a little bit. They schemed to commit fraud on a mega-fraud basis. And it wasn't just insurance companies they tried to rip off. It was Medicare, Medicaid, and even TRICARE, the health plan that covers our veterans. It wasn't only overbilling, either. Here's a partial list:

• Intentional year-end record fraud alleging payments from the government less than actually received, leaving the government with the burden of overpaying them.
• Payment of kickbacks to providers to inflate claims billed to Medicare, Medicaid and TRICARE.
• Billing costs to the government which were not allowed.
• Inflating the cost of transferring patients from HCA facilities to other, non-HCA facilities.
• Inflating claims for indigent patients.
• Paying kickbacks for diabetes patients.
• Overbilling states for Medicaid patients.

The entire list and summary of the case is on the DOJ website.

Columbia/HCA settled the morass of fraud claims for $1.7 billion, the largest-ever settlement of a Medicare fraud investigation.

Scott will be quick to jump in and remind anyone who raises the Columbia/HCA fraud settlement as an issue that he personally was not charged with any crime. While that may be true, it is also true that the company was under HIS leadership, and it was a publicly-owned corporation at the time.

Not only was the government taken for a ride, shareholders were, too. When Scott resigned, he took his multi-million dollar golden parachute and waved goodbye to the mess he left behind. The only ones holding the bag at that point were the shareholders. After a painful cleanup and stock buyout making the company privately-held again, Hospital Corporation of America (HCA) is poised for another $4.6 billion public offering.

This is the man who thinks he can lead Florida. The man who led a company while that company was busy defrauding the federal government now wants to lead a state. Even more concerning, his candidacy is actually getting some traction, leading me to once again ask this question:

Why is Rick Scott running for governor in Florida?

Read more about Rick Scott at Media Matters. They have a rich treasure trove of information there. And if you are in Florida, I hope you'll ask, and then repeat, my question above.

Bonus: Since "outsider" status seems to be some kind of political magic shield right now, Floridians should also ask themselves why billionaire Jeff Greene was a Republican until he became a Democrat and decided to run for the Senate.

Please see the updates at the bottom for the most current status. The original post was based upon a mistaken identity. I have left the original post intact with corrections below it.

If you were to believe Jeff Baker, you'd think that he was just a disgruntled small business owner who is frustrated with the economy squeezing him to the point where he needed to shut the doors. It's a story we've all heard, one I can even tell with my own specifics.

But Jeff Baker wanted to be sure the President heard him, so he put up a billboard on Interstate 190 that says "I need a freakin job. Period."

But every lost job hurts, said Jeff Baker, a Buffalo native who was forced to close his niche textile company near Albany, Adirondack Blanket Works, during the financial collapse more than a year ago.

"Losing a business is right up there in catastrophe land," said Baker, who had planned the billboard long before learning Obama was coming to town. "It's personally catastrophic and having to let go of people who were like family for over 10 years, you go through all that heartbreak."

He and his brother put up the sign and launched a website (www.inafj.org) with the hope of steering the conversation in Washington back toward the average American worker.

It's a really nice website, too. Not a homegrown. boring kind of site at all. It's got merchandise, videos, even "inafj.tv"!

A website like that doesn't come cheap, even if they hire a designer who uses a stock template and stock photos. It's nicely done.

See, here's what they didn't tell you. Scott Baker works for Breitbart.TV. [see update #2]

Scott Baker has reported and anchored television news for nearly 20 years.

He became interested in broadcasting while working on political campaigns during his school years at Wheaton College (Illinois).

He has worked at the Voice of America in Washington, D.C., CBS News in New York, and at local television stations in Erie, Pennsylvania, and Saginaw, Michigan, and for the last 13 years at WTAE-TV in Pittsburgh.

Viewers have come to know Scott best for both his humor and his skills anchoring and reporting during breaking news events.

According to Jeff Baker, Scott Baker paid for the sign, and likely for the rest of their 'movement', too. Or Breitbart did.

A movement? No. A campaign? Yes. Non-partisan? No. Hidden agenda? Yes.

Got it? Good. Now tell everyone else, including the MSM like CNN.com, CBS.com, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution and anyone else you can think of, because presenting this as the effort of one disgruntled businessman and his brother is just a lie, and Andrew Breitbart knows it.

John Amato is debating Breitbart in Beverly Hills next week. I hope he nails him with this duplicitous nonsense. [See update #2]

Update: A commenter points to this article published in the Buffalo News after mine was written which states that Scott Baker lives in Akron and is "vice president of operations at a local manufacturing company."

Would that be a local manufacturing company in Akron, or in Buffalo? Quite a commuting distance between the two. (3:40pm Although it is true that there's an Akron, NY as well near Buffalo.)

It goes on to say this about the video and website:

The CBS segment included two of the Buffalo State College students who appeared on the billboard and on a video posted on the brothers’ Web site, www.inafj.org . Scott Baker said his brother designed the site and produced the professional- looking video, using students Scott found through a friend on the college faculty, Jim Mayrose.

Obviously, if this article is accurate, I am inaccurate. And if I am accurate, the other article is inaccurate. Yes, the name Scott Baker is a common one, and I was able to find a listing for a Scott Baker in the Cleveland/Akron area. There's even a listing for a Scott Baker, HR Director of Cintas Corporation online, though one could wonder why a human resources specialist would be open to promoting this particular campaign. Still, those facts certainly support the conclusion that I was incorrect. Despite the fact that one of the earliest mentions (2 days ahead of the President's visit) was on Breitbart.com and Fox News got the first "exclusive" with the "creator of the movement", these facts would have cast enough doubt to stop me from concluding what I did.

I've given you the additional references so you, the reader can decide. Based on this additional information, I would not have made the definitive conclusion that I did last night. I would have said that given the commonality of the name no firm conclusion can be made.

I'd also recommend Jeff Baker consider web design or video production as his next career, since he did such a splendid job on the site, the integrated Facebook page, the social media PR management and the billboard. He's obviously quite talented.

I have one more question to ask Andrew Breitbart. When will he admit his "error" by publishing video edited to make ACORN look guilty when in fact, they acted in strict compliance with the law?

Update #2: I believe it's fair to say, at this point, that the Scott Baker associated with Breitbart.tv is NOT the same Scott Baker. In this case, it would appear that MSM has it right, that *I* got it wrong, and for that, I apologize to the Baker brothers, Scott Baker and Andrew Breitbart for getting it wrong. Additional information supports what was reported in the Buffalo News article in my first update.

I could ask to have this post pulled down completely but for the fact that bells can't be unrung, and I believe in owning my words AND my mistakes.

Please note: John Amato was not involved in the creation, research or updated information attached to this post. I take full responsibility for it and apologize to all readers for misleading them on this one.

What do you do when you live in Kansas, are the twin sons of disgraced Kansas Congressman Jim Ryun and you have access to a whole lot of money? What else? Start a non-profit organization to raise up a 'grassroots army'.

Meet American Majority, the newest right wing non-profit on the block. If you actually click that link you'll get a big overlay asking "Do you want your country back?" American Majority was born in 2008 (keep that date in mind), and its stated purpose is as follows:

American Majority, Inc.s' purpose is to create a national political training institute dedicated to recruiting, identifying, training and mentoring potential political leaders. More particularly, the organization is a, non-partisan political training institute whose mission is to train and equip a national network of leadership committed to individual freedom through limited government and the free market. Advocating true federalism, toward that end, the organization intends to build a national network of leaders and grassroots advocates who aspire to increase freedom for individuals and freedom and in the marketplace.

One weakness in their training materials has already emerged, as their Kansas field director evidently interpreted freedom for individuals and freedom in the marketplace to mean freedom to inject the Tea Party into a pitch for Google fiber.

One pass through their site and any thinking human being knows it's about as libertarian as my left foot. It's a Republican agitation arm disguised with some plasticky-looking grass on it. Before their first Texas training session in 2009, Drew Ryun sat down for an interview with the Dallas News. I appreciate his candor, and you will too.

A month after President Barack Obama took office in January, Drew Ryun moved to Texas and began organizing the state office of American Majority.

That would have been around what? February 2009? What took so long?

According to American Majority's 990 filing for 2008, they'd conducted 9 training sessions in Kansas, 4 in Louisiana, 4 in Minnesota, and 6 in Oklahoma by December 31, 2008. It doesn't take a math genius to figure out they were around before Barack Obama was elected in November, 2008. And if they were around before the general election, who were they training and for what purpose? And...who is funding them?

It's that last question that piqued my curiosity. Drew Ryun helps to answer the first part of it in the Dallas News article:

Ryun estimates that "above 75 percent" of American Majority's funding comes from the Sam Adams Alliance, a conservative think tank in Chicago. In return for their tax-exempt status, American Majority and the Sam Adams Alliance are required to make their income tax returns available to the public.

Who is the Sam Adams Alliance?

You may recognize the name if you've visited any Tea Party sites. Their logo usually rests alongside those of FreedomWorks, Americans for Prosperity, and other Republican sponsors.

Here are some facts about the Sam Adams Alliance published late in 2009:

The president of Sam Adams Alliance is John Tsarpalas, former executive director of the Illinois State Republican party. Eric O'Keefe, SAA's chairman and CEO, is a former executive director of the National Libertarian Party. He once worked for Citizens for Congressional Reform (pdf), a project of David Koch's Citizens for a Sound Economy. Along with noted Libertarian financier Howard Rich, O'Keefe sits on the board of directors of Americans for Limited Government.

Shortly before online activist Eric Odom helped kick-start the Tea Party movement, he was new media director for Sam Adams Alliance. This put him in charge of (among other things) setting up websites, coordinating Facebook groups, managing Twitter accounts and other social networking tasks. Odom's first known acts as a Tea Partier were to set up the OfficialChicagoTeaParty.com site and Facebook pages within hours of Rick Santelli's February rant, then spreading word through Twitter, initially utilizing #TCOT, a Twitter list and hashtag for Top Conservatives on Twitter.

Since their last tax filing in November 2009, they've added a new director. His name is Denis Calabrese. From his bio page:

Denis served as Washington D.C. Chief-of-Staff for the now retired Majority Leader of the U.S. House of Representatives, Congressman Richard Armey.

In the world of non-profits, large donors like to be on the board to oversee the donation they've given. In the past, the Sam Adams Alliance hasn't been a major player. In 2006 direct public support was $401,500. 2007 gifts and grants appear to be 1,822,458, but there are some discrepancies from one year to the next.

But in 2008, donations increased by a factor of ten. Total gifts and grants were $4,222,604. Denis Calabrese joins the board, and coincidentally happens to be Dick Armey's former chief of staff, and donations bloom into full-throated support for offshoots like America's Majority? Ah, the smell of astroturf in the spring.

Of the $4.2 million, $3.7 million was an "unusual grant".

Ordinarily, funds passing from one non-profit to another are listed on the donor's tax disclosures as a grant or gift. Unfortunately, in this case the identity of the donor is unknown, because the Sam Adams Alliance believes in free speech rights and intentionally conceals the identity of their donors. Why are they ashamed to admit who their donors are? What's bad about promoting liberty, small government, American values?

Continue reading »