For some odd reason, the Koch folks want to be one degree of separation from the tea parties. I don't understand it, since the good tea party people are simply grassroots, everyman movements, based on Mom, apple pie, the American Way, and various homegrown flavors of tea, right?

When it comes to the tea parties, not so much. I expect this stems from Koch's desire to have us believe the tea party groups are simply organically grown magic groups who needed no fertilizer from large US corporations.

From a statement provided to TPM:

"Koch companies value free speech and believe it is good to have more Americans engaged in key policy issues. That said, Koch companies, the Koch foundations, Charles Koch and David Koch have no ties to and have never given money to FreedomWorks. In addition, no funding has been provided by Koch companies, the Koch foundations, Charles Koch or David Koch specifically to support the tea parties. Thanks for your consideration."

Parse the statement very carefully. Their keyword is "specifically". And on that level, their statement appears to be true. They have not earmarked any funds that I can see to "specifically" fund tea parties, nor is there evidence of any involvement from them in the FreedomWorks organization.

Yet it is true and it is false. I built a genealogy for FreedomWorks and some of the other right-wing organizations last fall when the health care debate was being hijacked. I pulled every 990 and financial statement for every player I could find for a ten-year period and compiled the results.

FreedomWorks' predecessor was Citizens for a Sound Economy Foundation. Of the three major players who donated large sums to Citizens for a Sound Economy, Koch charities were by far and away the largest donors, with nearly $13 million donated between 1985 and 2005. Other large donors include the Olin Foundation, the Coors Family, and the Scaife foundations.

Citizens for a Sound Economy (CSE) underwent a transformation in 2004 when it merged with Empower America and was reborn as FreedomWorks. CSEF was renamed, becoming Americans for Prosperity. Just like that, one Koch-Scaife-Coors-Olin venture became two. Twice the voice; twice the reach.

Now, let's look specifically at Americans for Prosperity, since FreedomWorks is a Dick Armey production at this time with some assistance from related Republican organizations. There is no question -- none whatsoever -- that Americans for Prosperity was heavily involved in the tea parties this summer and the ongoing tea party meetings, movements, training, and pot-stirring.

Yes, FreedomWorks AND Americans for Prosperity gave their names and their money to events supporting the tea parties. Let's start with Ohio.

There was an event at Ohio State University earlier this year, featuring Ron Paul and Judge Andrew Napolitano, who was taping a segment of his Freedom Watch show for Fox News. The entire event is online on the Freedom Watch archive page.

The event was put on by the Young Americans for Liberty at Ohio State. Their March, 2010 quarterly report is online at the IRS website, and has the following organizational donor detail*:

1. Ohio Freedom Alliance: $1,000
2. WethePeopleUnderGod.com: $1000
3. Americans for Prosperity - Ohio: $1,000
4. Ohio Liberty Council: $3,000
5. University of Cincinnati: $1,000
6. Jacob Group,CPAs, LLC: $1,000

Out of $11,150 received, these six donors represent 72% of the total, and one of those donors is Americans for Prosperity. A visit to the Ron Paul Ohio website lists those donors as co-sponsors. A visit to the Liberty Alliance Ohio site confirms their role as a tea party organizer. (They're also publicizing the 2nd Amendment scary march on Washington, DC, but that's another story for another day).

Young Americans for Liberty is currently taking on "health care nullification", falling into lockstep with this month's tea party theme.

WethePeopleUnderGod.com is the requisite religious right representative. They organize prayer and bus trips. They describe themselves this way:

We are a concerned group of citizens who feel that we have lost sight of the true meaning of representative government (government by the people,of the people and for the people).

And on the side they list their contact info:

Freedom Institute

PO Box 386

Dayton,Ohio 45419

And when I tried to dig deeper, I was able to reverse-trace the listed number to Joyce Brownell, who is listed as one of the organizers for...yes, that's right, the Campaign for Liberty tea party protests in Washington DC.

Another cosponsor (though no contributions are listed on the report) is The Leadership Institute masquerading as CampusReform.org. The Leadership Institute is Morton Blackwell's project. On the front page, they advertise the DC Freedom 5K on April 17, 2010.

The DC Freedom 5K, an event hosted by Americans for Prosperity and the Charles G. Koch Charitable Foundation, is a 3.1 mile race for all ages to celebrate freedom in a fun, nontraditional environment.

I could have stopped at the point where Americans for Prosperity was a donor, but I want this to be clear: Whether it's Ron Paul or Sarah Palin or tea parties or gun protests or health care protests or fun races for the family, the backbone is crafted from the same DNA. That DNA includes funding -- direct or indirect -- from the Koch brothers. They birthed Americans for Prosperity and FreedomWorks. They didn't have to write the check to the Ohio State Young Americans for Liberty to be intimately involved in funding, sponsoring, indoctrinating and fomenting tea parties.

If you don't believe me, I dare you to look at this to get an idea of what they're up to on college campuses.

It's the same thing Republicans always do, but in typical fashion, they've taken that thing they did before and called it something different. Dave Niewert's post comparing the Patriot movement to the Tea Party movement is a must-read to see how they do it.

*I am choosing not to report individuals' donations in the body of the post, but they can be seen by visiting the link to the report.

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Evidently, Bill O'Reilly's idea of defending his network's journalistic honor is to lie blatantly -- not just to his national TV audience, but to a U.S. Senator to boot.

Last night on his Fox News show, BillO -- incensed by Sen. Tom Coburn's suggestion that Fox News' coverage of the health-care debate was misleading and biased -- tried to claim that no one on Fox had ever suggested that you'll get thrown in jail if you don't buy health insurance.

O'Reilly claimed it three times in the course of the interview, each time with escalating falsity, culminating with the claim that his staff had carefully researched the question and found that no one at Fox had ever said it.

Oh really? Because as you can see, we have the video that demonstrates clearly otherwise.

Glenn Beck, as a matter of fact, said it on his own Fox News show -- and he said it on Bill O'Reilly's program too, directly to O'Reilly's face. And O'Reilly made a joke about it.

Nor was Beck alone among Fox anchors saying it.

Here's how O'Reilly put it to Coburn:

O'Reilly: OK, but can you tell me one person on Fox News, just one, who has told this audience that they'll go to jail if they don't buy health insurance.

...

O'Reilly: Well, why then was it legitimate to bring in Fox News in the discussion, when, No. 1, you don't know anybody on Fox News -- because there hasn't been anyone -- that said people will go to jail if they don't buy mandatory insurance.

...

O'Reilly: Well, tell me, what -- because it doesn't happen here. And we researched to find out if anybody on Fox News had ever said you're going to jail if you don't buy health insurance. Nobody's ever said it.

Of course, none other than O'Reilly's sometime stagemate, Glenn Beck told his audience on Nov. 12, 2009:

Beck: But if you don't play by their new rules on health care, oooh, here's a new little twist. Have you heard this? You're going to be looking at a fun little stint in jail.

... But if you don't play ball with them now, if you don't get into their government health care, there will be jail time. And that of course was fair.

The next day, Nov. 13, in his weekly appearance on The O'Reilly Factor, chatting over his then-recent appendectomy, Beck repeated the line, and O'Reilly responded by asking Beck if he intended to go to jail over health insurance (transcript courtesy Media Matters):

O'REILLY: Couldn't they do [liposuction] at the same time [as your appendectomy]?

BECK: No, they wouldn't. No. I don't have universal health care.

O'REILLY: Well you will soon.

BECK: Or I'll go to jail.

O'REILLY: Are you going to be a conscientious objector to health care?

BECK: You know, this is the first time in history in our country where, just to be a citizen, just to not go to jail, you have to buy something.

That's some crack research squad O'Reilly has there -- they can't even rustle up the times this lie was repeated on O'Reilly's own show.

No wonder the fact that not only did they miss the Beck claims, they missed that Sean Hannity made the same claim (citing Dick Morris), as did Judge Andrew Napolitano. All on the Fox News Channel.

O'Reilly clearly got away with lying to Coburn to his face.

But as for defending Fox's honor, well, let's just say that it worked about as well as it should.

So the Washington Post interviews this Tea Party leader and former militiaman, the one who urged people to break Democratic party office windows, as if he were just someone with another reasonable point of view that's not worth examining. It's the old "he said, she said" that's just what we've come to expect from the corporate media.

They don't even mention that he's calling for an armed march on Washington for April 19 - a favorite of extremists because in addition to being the date of the first shots fired at Lexington in the Revolutionary War, it's also the anniversary of the last day of the government siege in Waco and the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing. No implied threat there, though! If you listen to the above radio interview, his stated position boils down to: Don't make me shoot you.

And in the final irony, of COURSE he's on government disability:

Vanderboegh said he once worked as a warehouse manager but now lives on government disability checks. He said he receives $1,300 a month because of his congestive heart failure, diabetes and hypertension. He has private health insurance through his wife, who works for a company that sells forklift products.

Born in Michigan and raised in Ohio, Vanderboegh said he was not always a libertarian. He once was active in the Young Socialist Alliance and the Progressive Labor Party. "In my youth, I was a communist," he said. But in the mid-1970s, Vanderboegh read Friedrich von Hayek's "The Road to Serfdom," among other books, and had an epiphany.

"From that point on, I could never take Marxism-Leninism seriously again," Vanderboegh said.

He said he long opposed President Obama because he believed the president has "collectivism" tendencies. But he became especially energized during the health-care debate.

"Collectivism" tendencies. You mean, like government disability?

Vanderboegh said he advocates breaking windows only of Democratic Party offices, not congressional offices, and that he does not condone the death threats and other incidents of harassment that some Democratic lawmakers have faced.

"Obviously I not only deplore or decry that, but I denounce that vigorously because it has nothing to do with what I was advocating," he said.

(h/t nr for the graphic)

OK, let's have some fun. There's a new Harris poll that was just released and the results are pretty hysterical. It's not scientific, but based on who decided to take it online during the height of the health care debate, so take it for what it is:

On the heels of health care, a new Harris poll reveals Republican attitudes about Obama: Two-thirds think he's a socialist, 57 percent a Muslim—and 24 percent say "he may be the Antichrist."

To anyone who thinks the end of the health-care vote means a return to civility, wake up.

Obama Derangement Syndrome—pathological hatred of the president posing as patriotism—has infected the Republican Party. Here's new data to prove it:

67 percent of Republicans (and 40 percent of Americans overall) believe that Obama is a socialist. The belief that Obama is a “domestic enemy” is widely held—a sign of trouble yet to come.

57 percent of Republicans (32 percent overall) believe that Obama is a Muslim 45 percent of Republicans (25 percent overall) agree with the Birthers in their belief that Obama was "not born in the United States and so is not eligible to be president" 38 percent of Republicans (20 percent overall) say that Obama is "doing many of the things that Hitler did" Scariest of all, 24 percent of Republicans (14 percent overall) say that Obama "may be the Antichrist." These numbers all come from a brand-new Harris poll, inspired in part by my new book Wingnuts. It demonstrates the cost of the campaign of fear and hate that has been pumped up in the service of hyper-partisanship over the past 15 months. We are playing with dynamite by demonizing our president and dividing the United States in the process. What might be good for ratings is bad for the country.

• Michelle Goldberg: What the Polls Really Show The poll, which surveyed 2,230 people right at the height of the health-care reform debate, also clearly shows that education is a barrier to extremism. Respondents without a college education are vastly more likely to believe such claims, while Americans with college degrees or better are less easily duped. It's a reminder of what the 19th-century educator Horace Mann once too-loftily said: "Ignorance breeds monsters to fill up the vacancies of the soul that are unoccupied by the verities of knowledge."

The poll was based on John Avlon's new book: Wingnuts. If nothing else it speaks to the people that are clicking through and then taking the poll. Clearly there is a derangement syndrome going on in America today. We know this by the behavior we see everyday and the actions...oh...like...cutting someone's gas line. Things like that.

Courtesy of my friend Tracey, who enjoys the fine Canadian health system and wonders about all the lies told to Americans:

Democrats: "We need health care reform"

Republicans: "Liberal fascists! Give us a majority and we'll do it better"

Democrats: "Done, you have majority of both houses"

12 years later, health care is irrefutably worse in every respect for every single person in the United States

Democrats: "We need health care reform"

Republicans: "Liberal fascists! Americans are tired of partisan politics!"

Democrats: "OK, let's compromise"

Republicans: "OK, get rid of half your ideas"

Democrats: "Done"

Republicans: "Too liberal, get rid of half your ideas"

Democrats: "Done"

Republicans: "Too liberal, get rid of half your ideas"

Democrats: "Done"

Republicans: "Too liberal, get rid of half your ideas"

Democrats: "Done"

Republicans: "Too liberal, get rid of half your ideas"

Democrats: "Done. Time to end debate"

Republicans: "Too liberal, we need more debate, we will filibuster to prevent you from voting"

Democrats: "OK, we'll vote--sorry guys, debate is ended. It's time to vote on the bill"

Republicans: "Too liberal, we vote no"

Democrats: "OK, it passed anyway--sorry guys."

One month later

Continue reading »

I really don't know what's going on with Eric Massa, but I'm concerned about him. In the space of less than two weeks, we hear news that he's will not seek re-election because of a recurrence of cancer, then we hear that he's under the cloud of an ethics investigation for sexual harassment (which he at the time termed for "salty language"). Then he decides to resign altogether from the House, claiming he's being pushed out by his fellow Democrats because of his vote on the health care reform, most notably in a odd (and naked) confrontation with Rahm Emanuel.

I don't really want to get into the prurient details of the ethics investigation or the allegations that came out today. I don't really care about Massa's sexuality one way or the other. He's sponsored no anti-gay legislation; in fact, he's been at the forefront of repealing DADT. So as far as I'm concerned, there's no hypocrisy there, as there is with Roy Ashburn. Howie Klein has written an account on both politicians, putting it into the context of his own experiences, and I don't think I could state it better.

But what I am concerned about is that Massa--clearly reeling and hurting and lashing out--has agreed to appear for the whole hour on Glenn Beck to condemn the Democratic Party.

I'm not sure if Massa is aware of how much disdain Glenn Beck holds him in, comparing him to a terrorist this morning:

And Beck isn't the only one:

Conservatives are already turning on Massa in advance of the Beck interview. Michelle Malkin trashed Beck on his own radio show Tuesday for asking Massa on, while Rush Limbaugh dismissed Massa as a no-name "kook" on his broadcast Tuesday, warning, "Anybody who embraces this guy is going to get caught."

Sadly, the larger meaning of this is completely lost on her fans:

Sarah Palin drew a straight line from Alaska to Alberta as she told a sold-out, largely adoring crowd in Calgary that the province gets her message of less government, lower taxes and development of natural resources.

In what was billed as her first Canadian appearance since stepping down as governor of Alaska last summer, Ms. Palin's trademark folksy charm was on full display Saturday night.[..]

The vocal opponent of health-care reform in the U.S. steered largely clear of the topic except to reveal a tidbit about her life growing up not far from Whitehorse.

“We used to hustle over the border for health care we received in Canada,” she said. “And I think now, isn't that ironic?”

Well yes, Sarah, you could call it "ironic" that you feel no compunction about running across the border to avail yourself of the health care you fight and lie and propagandize against to keep your fellow Americans from enjoying. Or you could call it "grossly hypocritical." However, I prefer to think of it as "brainlessly missing the picture" and hoping to take a bunch a tea baggers down with you. If we indeed had "the best health care system in the world", why would anyone go to Canada?

Because it was free? Because you didn't need to decide whether the need for a doctor was important enough to pay the associated costs, even if it meant forgoing a few meals or a payment elsewhere? Because you felt you had a RIGHT to good health and the Canadian government agreed that it is in everyone's best interest?

Was the socialized medicine safety net of Canada frightening? Of course not. It was a social service that Palin used when she needed...even though she presumably paid no taxes into the Canadian system (remember how important it was to the GOP to make sure illegal immigrants couldn't milk the system).

But will any one of her fans or the nut case tea-baggers screaming about how Obama wants to turn us into some socialist state ever put two and two together and realize it's something we should aspire to?

Of course not.

Don't you love how the Republicans concern troll the Democratic Party election prospects? As if they're all so worried about whether or not the Democratic Party will retain their majority. One of my husband's less-than-genius friends made the mistake of parroting those GOP talking points to us and even he had to concede (after we pushed back with that greatest liberal weapon of reality) that if the GOP really thought that the Dems could lose their majority, they'd keep their big mouths shut and let them implode. The truth is--and it's obvious to anyone who thinks about it--they know that passing health care reform will help the Democratic Party and they're trying to keep that from happening with all their obfuscations and meaningless memes like reconciliation equating to "jamming it through Congress".

Normally, when I do research on post on happenings in the Middle East, I check in on Juan Cole's blog. He's the go-to guy on Mid East affairs. But Juan did a post yesterday injecting another well-needed bit of reality into the health care debate:

The invented Republican/ Foxy News talking point du jour is that the Democrats intend to 'ram health care reform down our throats' even though 'the American people don't want it.'

Bzzz. That's just wrong! First of all, when there is a landslide triumph for a party as there was in November, 2008, for the victor to actually govern and legislate is not 'ramming' anything down anyone's 'throat.' It is doing what the people asked you to do. Obama campaigned on this issue, and presumably that fact had not escaped the electorate's notice.

Just so we don't forget, if we sized the lower 48 states according to their population, this is what the Democratic victory looked like, according to cartophilia:

So it is that little tiny red thing that is talking about 'ramming' down 'throats.'

Second, 80 percent of Americans in a recent ABC/Post poll want to prohibit limits on pre-existing conditions, and 72 percent want to impose an employer mandate. Some 63 percent favor some form of public health care reform. The same proportion, 63%, want president Obama to keep trying to pass a reform. A majority, 56%, want everyone to be covered. The allegation that the 'public doesn't want it' is an artificial creation of millions of dollars in disinformation money purveyed by the pharmaceutical companies through the US Chamber of Commerce and their bought-and-paid-for congressmen and senators. If a pollster explains to a member of the public what is actually in the bill, Americans like most of the provisions, as Ezra Klein says.

Hmmm....so that would be 180° different from what McConnell said. What are the chances of that? Cole reminds us of what the Republicans "jammed" through on us:

1. The illegal invasion and occupation of Iraq, ending the lives of thousands of service members and millions of civilians, adding trillions of dollars to the deficit, allowing widespread corruption by private companies, some of whom benefited the administration directly;
2. Torture, not just of terrorists but of innocent citizens too, ending habeas corpus and bringing down the reputation of the country among the global community;
3. Warrantless wiretappings of Americans;
4. The gutting of regulations in the financial and mortgage industries, paving way for the worst economy since the Great Depression;
5. Massive tax cuts for the wealthy, born on the backs of the middle class--passed, by the way, through reconciliation;
6. Abandonment of our troops in Afghanistan, allowing the leadership of the Taliban and al Qaeda to resurge.

So the question for Mitch McConnell & Friends is who do you really think is "jamming" whom?

I suppose the president is doing this as political cover for the eventual use of reconciliation. But I suspect he really thinks he's going to change the way things work in Congress -- either he's crazy, or a genius. Personally, I wish he'd give up trying to be the Great Mediator and just ram through his agenda - the same way George Bush did with much less public support:

President Obama moved to jump-start the stalled health-care debate Sunday, inviting Republicans in Congress to participate in a bipartisan, half-day televised summit on the subject this month.

The president made the offer in an interview with CBS News anchor Katie Couric hours before the network televised the Super Bowl.

Obama challenged Republicans, who have been largely unified in opposing his proposals, to bring their best ideas for how to cover more Americans and fix the health insurance system to the public discussion.

"I want to consult closely with our Republican colleagues," Obama said. "What I want to do is to ask them to put their ideas on the table. . . . I want to come back and have a large meeting, Republicans and Democrats, to go through, systematically, all the best ideas that are out there and move it forward."

The invitation to meet together on Feb. 25 -- and to do so live in front of the American public -- represents an effort by Obama to hit the reset button on the top domestic priority of his first year in office. It also reflects a recognition that he must have at least some Republican support if he hopes to see health-care reform pass.

[...] GOP leaders on Sunday said they welcomed the outreach but called it evidence that Obama knows he must start over if he wants to earn their support going forward.

I never understood why the Obama campaign and even his administration refused to call out Reagan and conservatism, ever. Is David Axelrod that daffy? I hated his campaign approach during the summer because he allowed conservatives to define Obama without putting up much of a fight until the end of September, and he also allowed them to define the health-care debate and kept Obama on the sidelines for the most part. What is wrong with him? I'd like to say that they are novices, but he's been in politics a very long time.

Digby and I were screaming the last two years that the word "conservatism" should have been called out for being the manifest cause of the destruction wreaked on the American people and the world during eight years of Bush-Cheney-GOP congressional rule. But did you hear a peep out of President Obama? He actually brought up Reagan's name in the election in a positive fashion.

I've been toying with an idea to bring back Bush because his administration laid waste to our land except for the very wealthy. There's a reason why he has disappeared for almost an entire year. His visage still causes a lot of distress in America, even when deployed for a worthy cause such as the Haiti earthquake disaster -- even Bush himself looked like annoyed that he had been roped into helping. Well, we do need someone to look after those Shysters.

Paul Krugman's column addressed this point quite succinctly.

Finally, about that narrative: It’s instructive to compare Mr. Obama’s rhetorical stance on the economy with that of Ronald Reagan. It’s often forgotten now, but unemployment actually soared after Reagan’s 1981 tax cut. Reagan, however, had a ready answer for critics: everything going wrong was the result of the failed policies of the past. In effect, Reagan spent his first few years in office continuing to run against Jimmy Carter.

Mr. Obama could have done the same — with, I’d argue, considerably more justice. He could have pointed out, repeatedly, that the continuing troubles of America’s economy are the result of a financial crisis that developed under the Bush administration, and was at least in part the result of the Bush administration’s refusal to regulate the banks.

But he didn’t. Maybe he still dreams of bridging the partisan divide; maybe he fears the ire of pundits who consider blaming your predecessor for current problems uncouth — if you’re a Democrat. (It’s O.K. if you’re a Republican.) Whatever the reason, Mr. Obama has allowed the public to forget, with remarkable speed, that the economy’s troubles didn’t start on his watch.

I remember there was a poll done in the beginning of his term which said that Americans were willing to give the new president at least eighteen months to get it together because we recognized the failure of Bush and Cheney as a nation, but as economic conditions get worse, patience is the first to go. And then Axelrod allowed the populist anger to get away from them, when it was legitimate for his administration to have gone after the Wall Street fat cats right from the beginning of his presidency. And it should have been critical to included conservative principles in their critiques, rather than let the Tea Parties resurrect them as somehow a solution to the very problems they caused in the first place.

Digby writes:

It was clear during the campaign that Obama was reluctant to confront the Reagan legacy on its basic terms, preferring to dryly characterize his governing philosophy as technocratic and competent. I think that was a mistake, since people really have no other framework within which to understand their problems, when things go badly, they have no other way of understanding it except for blaming "big government" for either causing it or failing to fix it.

Today, they may be angry at the banks, but they see the problem being that the government gave these institutions preferential treatment over them rather than that they caused this worldwide economic crisis with their irresponsible, swashbuckling, gambling culture --- which now must be regulated by the government. I think most people see the recession, the banking crisis, unemployment and the rest as only a failure of government --- and they are assuming that the way to fix it is by making government smaller. After all, both Democrats and Republicans keep telling them that it's so.

I'm very glad to see that Obama is finally taking some action against the banks. It is the Democrats' best hope of reframing the debate, although I think it's awfully late in the game. Today, he seemed to sideline Geithner and Summers publicly, but the question is whether or not he's finally figured out that they are part of the problem, not the solution.

I don't think Obama's words alone have enough credibility anymore to fix this. He's going to have to take some concrete action.

And Democrats are going to have to accept that need to attack the Reagan legacy more directly and make an affirmative case for government. I would have thought that was obvious, but the Democratic party and Obama himself seem to have believed otherwise. If they persist with merely tweaking the Reagan legacy, they will find themselves in this same situation over and over again. As long as people see government as the problem, progressivism, liberalism, whatever you want to call it, will fail.

As usual it will remain the job of us bloggers to remind America how bad conservatism has been for the country. Maybe someday there will be a few more politicians who will state the obvious and not be afraid of the Broders in the Village, who only hold Democrats to their standard of "bipartisanship."

Obama clearly bought into the Village idea that "bipartisanship" was an ideal end unto itself. He's been disabused by the reality that the Village version of it permits conservatives to lie with impunity while punishing liberals for having the temerity to point that ugly fact out, and forces liberals to compromise on each and every one of their principles in order to prove their "seriousness" (a quality always defined by how far to the right it is). We'll see if the lesson sinks in.