Wisconsin Gov Scott Walker(R) Has Terrible Economic Record. Anti-American Fox News Spins The Numbers For Their Friend Scott

Wisconsin Gov Scott Walker(R) Has Terrible Economic Record. Anti-American Fox News Spins The Numbers For Their Friend Scott

Bill O'Reilly Touted Walker's Economic Record. In his Talking Points Memo segment, Fox News host Bill O'Reilly highlighted the drop in Wisconsin's unemployment rate, saying that Walker "has a pretty good story to tell." O'Reilly continued: "When he took office in January 2011, Wisconsin unemployment stood at 7.7 percent. Now it's down to 6.7 percent, according to the last reading in April." [Fox News, The O'Reilly Factor, 6/4/12]

....Journal Sentinel: Wisconsin's Job Numbers During Walker's First 13 Months In Office Was The "Worst Among The 50 States." In March, the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel compared job gains and losses among all 50 states between December 2010 and January 2011 and found Wisconsin's performance under Walker to be the "worst among the 50 states":

    In Gov. Walker's first 13 months (using December 2010 as the baseline), the state lost 8,500 non-farm jobs. That was worst among the 50 states.  Only four other states experienced a net decrease in that time. The chart below shows where other Midwestern states rank and shows the top state for job growth, Texas:

    Journal Sentinel 50 States Job Situation 2011

    If you take the most recent 12 months -- January 2011 to January 2012 - the state lost 12,500 non-farm jobs, also worst in the nation, a fact Democrats have seized on. [Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, 3/15/12]

Wisconsin's Economic Recovery Under Walker Has Lagged Behind Surrounding States

Economic Policy Institute: Under Walker, "Wisconsin Is Lagging With Employment" Compared To Surrounding Midwest States. An Economic Policy Institute analysis of BLS data shows that in the year since Walker took office in January 2011, "Wisconsin stands out in the region, lagging with employment significantly lower -- by 0.5 percent -- in Jan. 2012 than a year earlier":

EPI Midwest Job Trends 2011

[Economic Policy Institute, 3/16/12]

Journal Sentinel: Under Walker, Wisconsin "Has Lagged Substantially Behind The National Pace In Private Sector Job Growth." A chart from the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel shows that in the year since Walker took office, Wisconsin "has lagged substantially behind the national pace in private-sector job growth":

Why do Scott Walker and Fox News hate America and our ideals?

Conservative Republicans Are The Shame of The Nation: House 'Violence Against Women Act' Bill Ratchets Up Attacks on Domestic Violence Survivors

Conservative Republicans Are The Shame of The Nation: House 'Violence Against Women Act' Bill Ratchets Up Attacks on Domestic Violence Survivors

Women have been under economic assault in Washington for months. Deficit hawks have taken aim at social programs and civil rights protections that help keep women safe, healthy and able to participate in work and community life. To some lawmakers, none of that is more important than “saving” taxpayer dollars—which is often shorthand for robbing working women of both their earnings and their safety net.

The hostility toward women crested this week as conservative lawmakers pushed legislation that would gut the Violence Against Women Act (VAWA). House Bill 4970 isn't just oppressive to survivors; it attacks the civil and social rights of all women. By raising barriers to economic assistance and legal recourse, the legislation sends the message to countless women living in violent households that their place is still in the home.

Even with protective laws on the books, a woman struggling to support a family and avoid foreclosure faces a devastating choice when the alternative to an abusive home is homelessness. The decision to break away is even harder when local service programs and battered women’s shelters are themselves struggling for survival amid budget cuts.

Adding insult to injury, many states have failed to protect survivors’ access to unemployment insurance, which aggravates the economic instability that often keeps vulnerable women tied to abusive partners.

"The brutalization of women doesn’t go on just behind closed doors. On the House floor, the nation’s shame is now on full display."

The House version of VAWA would deal a blow to immigrants trapped in abusive relationships, making it harder to petition for legal status as abuse victims, and easier for abusers to terrorize partners who fear immigration authorities. Lisalyn Jacobs of the advocacy group Legal Momentum told In These Times that “immigrant women are particularly economically vulnerable and may either be relying on their abusive partner's income, or in a marginal position themselves that prevents them from being economically stable enough to leave their violent partners.” The bill also erodes mandates for public housing authorities to develop policies to help abused residents relocate to safer places.

The legislation also excludes lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer people from key protections—an exclusion compounded by poverty, homelessness and employment discrimination afflicting many LGBTQ populations. Similarly, the bill would undermine anti-domestic violence protections in Native American communities, where both poverty and gender-related violence are rampant.

The House bill comes at a time when the country’s economic crisis has taken an especially cruel toll on abuse victims. Although economic troubles don’t directly cause domestic violence, combined with anger and self-blame, can unemployment, poverty and other social stressors can definitely excerbate family conflicts and make escape prohibitively expensive.

The economics of intimate partner violence shape the impacts of abuse as well. According to a 2007 analysis by the National Coalition Against Domestic Violence:

        The cost of intimate partner violence exceeds $5.8 billion each year, $4.1 billion of which is for direct medical and mental health services.
        Victims of intimate partner violence lost almost 8 million days of paid work because of the violence perpetrated against them by current or former husbands, boyfriends and dates. This loss is the equivalent of more than 32,000 full-time jobs and almost 5.6 million days of household productivity as a result of violence.
        There are 16,800 homicides and $2.2 million (medically treated) injuries due to intimate partner violence annually, which costs $37 billion.

A 2009 study published by the National Resource Center on Domestic Violence noted that compared with other women, "women who report [domestic violence] victimization also report more days arriving late to work, more absenteeism from work, more psychological and physical health problems that may reduce their productivity, and greater difficulty maintaining employment over time.” In the perverse cycle of economic oppression and violence, some abusers capitalize on women's financial dependency by harassing their partners to interfere with their jobs, or simply stealing money from them.

Efforts to claw back protections for survivors are the tip of a widening spectrum of policies promoting gender inequality, including welfare regulations that punish single mothers, budgetary attacks on reproductive health care for the working poor, and now, abandonment of the state’s basic responsibility to protect women from physical and economic abuse.

Advocates have supported the Senate version of the VAWA bill, which contains the progressive provisions absent in the House legislation. But overall, funding for related programs and services has been precarious year to year. Jacobs said, “neither bill contains the strong response to the economic needs of survivors of violence that would be appropriate given the fragile state of the economy.”

The brutalization of women doesn’t go on just behind closed doors. On the House floor, the nation’s shame is now on full display.

How can this be, conservatives claim they have not declared war on women. Would the party of "values" be once again lying to the public. Could the party of values once again be acting like some authoritarian thugs who do not have the capacity for empathy that normal human being and good Americans should have.

Scott Brown(R-MA) Scared Of Elizabeth Warren 

Why Have Conservative Republicans Declared War on Women - America’s Women Can’t Be Trusted

Mitt Romney Debt Speech Ignores Key Facts - His plan, the conservative Republican plan would increase the deficit by $5 trillion over ten years.

Why Did Scott Brown(R) Vote Against Children and Pander to Polluters

Why Did Scott Brown(R) Vote Against Children and Pander to Polluters

Sean Hannity Is Pissed That Obama Killed Bin Laden So He Takes Revenge In Unhinged Attacks

Senator Sleaze Scott Brown (R-MS)

 

Identity Politics cartoon thumbnail via Kos

Sean Hannity Is Pissed That Obama Killed Bin Laden So He Takes Revenge In Unhinged Attacks

Sean Hannity devoted his Fox News show Friday to furthering misleading attacks on President Obama's record on  national security.

Hannity opened his show by playing a misleading political ad from a right-wing political activist that deceptively edited statements President Obama made about the Osama bin Laden raid to make it look like Obama took all the credit for the success of the raid himself. Hannity then asked audience members whether they agreed that Obama "politicized the killing of bin Laden this week":

The reality is that President Obama has repeatedly thanked and praised the American troops and other military and intelligence individuals who participated in the mission.

Hannity later turned to birther and less than ethical Fox military analyst Gen. Thomas McInerney to criticize the Obama administration for attempting to negotiate with the Taliban. McInerney said "you can't negotiate with them." However, CIA Director Gen. David Petraeus, former Defense Secretary Robert Gates, and many other national security experts have said that it is in America's interest to negotiate with the Taliban.

Perhaps the most disgraceful part of Hannity's special was when he brought up the topic of waterboarding and said that "President Obama calls that torture." Fox national security analyst KT McFarland then offered a full-throated defense of the practice:

    McFARLAND: No, it's not torture. And there's a second issue, which is: Did it work? And it worked. And if it worked, it's kept the United States safe for this last 10 years -- even if it's torture, it's probably worth doing.

In fact, former interrogators, intelligence officials, and experts have stated that torture did not lead to bin Laden's whereabouts, and furthermore, that it doesn't provide trustworthy information.

And it's not just President Obama that "claims" waterboarding is torture.

In April 2006, Human Rights Watch sent an open letter to Bush Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, signed by more than 100 law and legal studies professors, which stated that "waterboarding is torture." The letter continued:

    Waterboarding is torture. It causes severe physical suffering in the form of reflexive choking, gagging, and the feeling of suffocation. It may cause severe pain in some cases. If uninterrupted, waterboarding will cause death by suffocation. It is also foreseeable that waterboarding, by producing an experience of drowning, will cause severe mental pain and suffering. The technique is a form of mock execution by suffocation with water. The process incapacitates the victim from drawing breath, and causes panic, distress, and terror of imminent death. Many victims of waterboarding suffer prolonged mental harm for years and even decades afterward.

Military experts, including a Bush adviser on terrorism, agree. So does Republican Sen. John McCain, who wrote in a Washington Post op-ed in May 2011 that waterboarding "is a mock execution and thus an exquisite form of torture."

And according to the most recent major polling on the issue, a majority of Americans also consider waterboarding to be torture.

Hannity once promised to undergo waterbroading to prove it was not torture. To this day Hannity has not kept his promise to be waterbroaded. Like your average conservative pundits Hannity has one quality in great supply, cowardice. Hannity may be even be a bigger coward than he is a liar and hypocrite. Hannity is not an American patriotic he is a blister, a pox, trying to degrade American values. That is the reason he has so many conservative fans. Sean-boy reflects their values. Regardless of what pretend patriots like Hannity and his fans think waterbroading is illegal and immoral. The U.S. government prosecuted the Japanese for using water torture during WW II.

Tavis Smiley Defuses Bill O’Reilly’s Loaded Interview about “Race-Based” Virginia Assault

President Obama: Don’t Let Romney ‘Turn Back The Clock’

Conservative Republicans Know No Shame When it Comes To Exploiting Terrorism

The 2012 Elections - Another Season of Conservative Republican Lies, Real Values Become an Inconvenience

The 2012 Elections - Another Season of Conservative Republican Lies, Real Values Become an Inconvenience

A spring awash with Etch A Sketch conservatives, camera-wielding GOP con men and a bogus deficit reduction budget from House Republicans shows that for the right, wrong is justified when it achieves the desired results.

A perfect example of this political philosophy is the work of James E. O’Keefe III, a right wing, unsupervised, unaccountable, self-appointed and self-styled “investigative journalist” who has violated federal law, lied about his identity and deceitfully cut and pasted video to destroy what he perceives as liberal institutions.

Oddly for the party that claims conservative Christians as key constituents, O’Keefe’s misbehavior is celebrated by GOP talking heads — the likes of Glenn Beck and Sean Hannity. That encourages copycats. The New York Times last week told the tale of one. John M. Howting, a bungling video scam man, sees himself as an O’Keefe apostle.

Honorable journalists abide by an ethics code forbidding lying to secure a story. For them, the end does not justify the means. By contrast, for O’Keefe and today’s Etch A Sketch conservatives, the end they want vindicates any scheme to secure it. Deliberate lying, cynical deceit, cut-and-paste deception – all of that is rationalized by conservatives to get their way. It’s a lovely escape clause they’ve written for themselves from that annoying Judeo-Christian thou-shalt-not-lie commandment.

O’Keefe wanna-be John M. Howting tried clumsily to trod in his disgraced mentor’s footsteps, lying about his name, who he represented and his intentions in a failed effort to discredit a couple of what he perceived to be liberal New York community groups.

O’Keefe had better luck. This right wing rebel without a conscience lied about his name, who he represented and his intentions in successful efforts to manipulate some targets into saying stupid stuff, which he surreptitiously recorded. His deceptive and distorted films destroyed ACORN and damaged other groups he considered progressive. Despite O’Keefe’s liberal use of the Commandment escape clause, he became conservatives’ golden boy.

Among right-wing talk show hosts who urged their conservative Christian listeners to praise the con was Bill O’Reilly who said O’Keefe should be awarded a Congressional Medal. Not so worshiping were federal prosecutors who charged O’Keefe with misrepresenting himself in an attempted phone hacking at the office of U.S. Sen. Mary Landrieu, D-La. O’Keefe pleaded guilty. And not so revering was the California state attorney general who determined that O’Keefe’s sliced-and-diced video misrepresented the actions of ACORN workers.

Conforming to the conservatives’ philosophy of wrong-is-right-if-the-right-benefits is GOP Presidential candidate Mitt Romney. Like a Judas, he betrayed his own health insurance program.
Romney contended that requiring everyone to get health insurance – known as the individual mandate — was good when he was governor of Massachusetts and signed Romneycare, which includes it. As Congress considered health care reform, Romney repeatedly said Romneycare should be the model for the nation. But later when conservatives blasted the individual mandate in Obamacare, Romney sold out his Massachusetts plan, saying an individual mandate was not good for the nation.

Similarly, in 1994 during Romney’s failed campaign for U.S. Sen. Ted Kennedy’s seat, Romney and his wife attended a Planned Parenthood fundraiser and she donated $150 to the group. But now, in pursuit of the vote of the anti-abortion Christian right, Romney no longer likes Planned Parenthood so much, promising:

    “Planned Parenthood, we’re going to get rid of that.”

Are those switches adorable little flip-flops or calculated lying? The comments of a chief Romney aide, Eric Fehrnstrom, show they are calculated. A reporter asked Fehrnstrom how Romney would appeal to crucial middle-of-the-road voters in the fall after taking such hard right positions in the spring to win the primary. Fehrnstrom compared the campaign to an Etch A Sketch:

    “You can kind of shake it up and restart all over again.”

So, basically, tell the conservative Christian primary voters one thing. Then tell the mainstream general election voters something else. This is the campaign of the GOP front-runner, the party’s likely standard-bearer. This is who most Republicans voted for.

It makes sense really. Apparently Republicans don’t expect the truth. Look at the Ryan budget. He calls it the Path to Prosperity. The nation went down this road of tax cuts for the rich and program cuts for the middle class before, under Bush II, and it was a one-way road to increased income inequality. Voodoo trickledown economics is a path to prosperity only for the already prosperous.

Congressman Paul Ryan contends his budget is a deficit-buster, that it would shrink the deficit to 1.2 percent of the gross domestic product by 2022 – which is exactly the same place where the country would be if it did nothing, according to the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office. In addition, the cumulative 10-year deficits under Ryan’s plan would be $200 billion higher than just doing nothing. No busting going on there.

The GOP wants conservative Christian votes so badly it’s willing to break those set-in-stone rules conservative Christians revere.

Conservatives only have two choices if they should wake up one day and be cursed to only be able to tell the truth - they either hate America or they love America the way a child abuser loves their children.

Conservatives are completely out of touch with reality - Rep. Virginia Foxx (R-NC) has 'little tolerance' for student loans

I'm not sure how a full-time college student is supposed to come up with $50,000 per year, unless it's selling things Virginia Foxx probably doesn't approve of. But I guess back when Virginia Foxx went to college the tuition was five pumpkins and a bag of turnips, and if she could come up with it then, surely an 18-year-old can come up with $200,000 now. Get a job! Well, it's minimum wage, so get four jobs, slacker! (Oh, and did I mention that back then, they all tied onions to their belts, which was the style at the time?)

For newcomers who haven't heard of Virginia Foxx before, she is a proud member of the House dimwit caucus, alongside such esteemed freedom-geniuses as Allen West and Louie Gohmert. Amongst their weaponry: Gullibility, foot-in-mouth disease, and a fanatical lack of awareness as to the most basic realities faced by other people in the country. So yes, she says stuff like this all the time.

Welcome to Conservative America Where Wealth is Rewarded and Work is Punished

Welcome to Conservative America Where Wealth is Rewarded and Work is Punished

The Wall Street Journal noted this week that CEO pay lagged behind profits and productivity last year, mirroring a trend that has been occurring with workers’ wages for decades. But even that slight modicum of moderation regarding executive compensation evidently didn’t extend to Bank of America, which gave CEO Brian Moynihan a $7.5 million pay package — six times as much as he made in 2010 — following a year in which the company’s stock plummeted:

    Bank of America gave its CEO a pay package worth $7.5 million last year, six times as large as the year before. It happened while the company’s stock lost more than half its value and the bank lost its claim as the biggest in the country.

    The package for CEO Brian Moynihan included a salary of $950,000, a $6.1 million stock award and about $420,000 worth of use of company aircraft and tax and financial advice.

For those keeping score, Bank of America’s stock dropped 58 percent in 2011 and the bank surrendered its title as the nation’s largest to JP Morgan Chase. A good chunk of the stock award was actually given to Moynihan for the bank’s 2010 performance, when it lost money.

In addition to seeing its stock tank, Bank of America has also been, according to a whistleblower suit, intentionally blocking troubled homeowners from receiving mortgage aid. The whistleblower alleges that BofA misled borrowers about their eligibility for federal mortgage aid programs and that “the bank and its agents routinely pretended to have lost homeowners’ documents.” (But remember, Bank of America will modify your mortgage as long as you erase all the mean things you’ve been saying about it on Twitter.)

BofA has also been tied up in the foreclosure fraud scandal, and just a few months ago paid $335 million to settle charges that its subsidiary discriminated against minorities in its lending. If this is how much Moynihan gets after that sort of year, what will he receive if the bank actually has a good one?

While financial reform passed by Democrats and President Obama does not micro-manage businesses to the point where reform can limit CEO pay, it does address regulation of some of Wall Street's worse abuses like defrauding regular working Americans. This would be the financial reform that conservatives have pulled every obstructionist trick to stop from being implemented. Why? Because they see CEOs like Brian Moynihan as their base of support. Conservatives figure if they protect the financial elite the financial elite will look out for them.

CEOs like Moynihan are the people that Sen Scott Brown(R-MA) considers his best friends.

Conservative Puppet of the Week Sen Scott Brown(R-MA) - Has Strings Pulled by Anti-American Publisher Rupert Murdoch

Conservative Puppet of the Week Sen Scott Brown(R-MA) - Has Strings Pulled by Anti-American Publisher Rupert Murdoch

News Corp. subsidiary Fox News -- which actively aided the Massachusetts Republican during his 2010 campaign -- is playing host to Brown as he promotes his new book, published by News Corp. subsidiary HarperCollins.

Brown appeared on Fox's Hannity last night and Fox & Friends this morning to discuss the book, which Fox's Brian Kilmeade said "is going to be rockin' up the charts."

The Associated Press noted that "highlights" of Brown's book tour include "the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library in Simi Valley, Calif., and The Villages retirement community in Florida, where Sarah Palin promoted 'Going Rogue.'" Palin's Going Rogue was also published by News Corp. subsidiary HarperCollins.

According to the FEC, Brown's campaign committee proposed to "use the book to influence Senator Brown's election, such as by distributing books as 'thank you' gifts to campaign contributors and political supporters."

On February 17, the FEC issued an advisory opinion that concluded Brown's campaign committee's proposal to "use campaign funds to purchase copies of the book from the book's publisher at the fair market price, and to have the publisher donate to charity Senator Brown's royalties from sales of the book to the Committee, is permissible." However, the FEC "could not approve a response on whether Senator Brown may host fundraising events in cities where the publisher pays his travel costs to promote the book."

As Media Matters documented in 2010, Fox News repeatedly hosted Brown in the days leading up to his 2010 special election, and Fox News political analyst Dick Morris urged viewers to "go to DickMorris.com ... to help elect Brown," because if "we win this fight, then there will never be another victory for Obama."

Fox also repeatedly misrepresented remarks made by Brown's Democratic opponent -- Martha Coakley -- to portray her as incompetent.

Shortly after Brown won the 2010 special election, Fox News contributor Newt Gingrich acknowledged that Fox News helped make Brown's "insurgency possible."

Ever hear Sen brown offer up any real solutions for real problems. No, and that is because Brown basically recycles all the worthless sound bites of conservative great thinkers like George Bush. Brown thinks America has a debt problem when we have the lowest revenue in decades. We're over regulated, brown repeats like a little puppet, just like every conservative robot. Except we have much the same regulation we had during the Clinton boom years. Brown wants smaller government? That sound bite is meaningless code speak from conservatives. What they mean is they want government to let corporate crooks and polluters to get away with anything they want. That worked out real well on Wall Street, right?


20 Experts Who Say Drilling Won't Lower Gas Prices

Wingnut Conspiracy Theory of the Day: Trayvon Photo Was Lightened to Make Him Look ‘Innocent’

Hold The Broccoli: What Limbaugh And Fox Get Wrong About The Constitution And The Affordable Care Act

Anti-American Conservative Group Crossroads GPS  Launches $650,000 False Ad Campaign On Gas Prices

Why Does CBS and Mark Knoller Hate Facts

Why Does CBS and Mark Knoller Hate Facts - CBS's Mark Knoller Falsely Claims Debt Has Increased More Under Obama Than Bush

Mark Knoller is the White House correspondent for CBS Radio, and a first-class right-wing tool. Monday night, he posted an article titled, "National debt has increased more under Obama than under Bush," which sent wingnuts scurrying to their Twitter accounts. The problem is, the piece is BS. Here's Knoller's key graf:

    The Debt rose $4.899 trillion during the two terms of the Bush presidency. It has now gone up $4.939 trillion since President Obama took office.

Don't you just love the way he capitalizes "debt"?

What Knoller doesn't specify, naturally, is what the debt was when Bush began his presidency. And that's a glaring omission, because unless you don't know that, you can't accurately compare the records. So here it is.

In 2001, the national debt Bush inherited was around $5.7T, give or take. Some of that debt in 2001 has to be attributed to Clinton, just as some of the debt in 2009 when Obama took office has to be attributed to Bush. When W. left office in 2009, the debt was nearly $11T. That's an increase of 89 percent.

Under Obama, the debt has increased from about $11T to about $15T, about 40 percent.

And what's behind that increase? Historically low taxes and historically low revenues -- and the worst financial crash since the 1930s. There's been no "binge" in spending, as Knoller wants you to believe.

America hating conservatives like Michelle Malkin who think a misinformed public is good for democracy, has echoed Knoll's lie. C&L are correct. The Obama administration has not gone on some spending spree, they have been one of the most fiscally conservative administrations in modern history.

Top Romney Adviser Says Romney Can Change His Positions After The Primaries: ‘It’s Almost Like An Etch A Sketch’

FACT CHECK: More US drilling didn't drop gas price

Why Does Paul Ryan(R-WI) Hate America and Seniors

2012, Another Year and Another Conservative Republican Attempt to Destroy Medicare

2012, Another Year and Another Conservative Republican Attempt to Destroy Medicare

Are Republicans ready to be trusted with the reins of power?

If you’re thinking of answering this in the affirmative, you might want to pause long enough to learn what transpired on the third floor of the Capitol on Thursday. There, four prominent Republican lawmakers announced their proposal to abolish Medicare — “sunset” was their pseudo-verb — even for those currently on the program or nearing retirement.

In Medicare’s place would be a private plan that would raise the eligibility age and shift trillions of dollars worth of health-care coverage from the government to the elderly. “This will be the new Medicare,” Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.), the proposal’s author, announced.

For years, Republicans have insisted that they would not end Medicare as we know it and that any changes to the program would not affect those in or near retirement. In the span of 20 minutes Thursday, they jettisoned both promises.

“The president and Harry Reid have been licking their chops for over three years now waiting for Republicans to actually try to deal with the large problems like Medicare,” Sen. Jim DeMint (R-S.C.) told reporters. “So, this is the moment they’ve been waiting for.”

He’s right about that. Don’t expect Mitt Romney, Rick Santorum, Mitch McConnell or John Boehner to take up the cry; the party leadership isn’t about to line up for abolishing the popular entitlement program. The real question is whether party leaders would be able to repel this conservative movement to end Medicare if Republicans gain control of the White House and Congress, where conservatives already dominate the GOP caucuses.

The end-Medicare sponsors are key figures: DeMint is the godfather of the Tea Party, and he was joined by Paul and Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah), two conservative rising stars. Completing the foursome was Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), an influential thinker. Two other Republican senators, Richard Burr of North Carolina and Tom Coburn of Oklahoma, have introduced a somewhat related plan to deal with Medicare, and Rep. Paul Ryan’s House Republican budget would also privatize Medicare, though on a slower timetable.

But DeMint and his colleagues think the time to end Medicare is now — with a cold-turkey conversion to a private program, effective in 2014. “I think if Americans actually find out the truth about what we’re doing, it will be a very big positive for Republicans in the fall,” DeMint forecast.

All the details aren’t out, but Paul says his plan would cut funding of Medicare by $1?trillion over 10 years and reduce Medicare’s liabilities by $16 trillion. It would do that by enrolling Medicare recipients in the health plan now used by federal workers. The government would pay 75 percent of the insurance premium on average but 30 percent or less for those who earned more than $100,000 a year. The eligibility age would gradually be raised to 70 from 65. If seniors can’t afford their share of the premium, they can apply for Medicaid, the health program for the poor.

Paul claimed his idea came from the Democrats’ 2004 presidential platform. But John Kerry wanted to extend the federal employee health plan to the general population, not to Medicare recipients. The 2004 platform vowed to “oppose privatizing Medicare.”

The CBPP has already run the numbers so this plan - a recycled version of Anti-American Paul Ryan (R-WI) plan and it would mean economic and health devastation to millions of Americans. So conservatives seem to hate America, seniors, the military and the disabled. What's  next apple pie and puppies.

Refund Please - Why Are Taxpayers Forced to Support Broadcasting Conservative Smiley Faced Fascist Rush Limabugh

Refund Please - Why Are Taxpayers Forced to Support Broadcasting Conservative Smiley Faced Fascist Rush Limabugh

Rush Limbaugh's defiant, halfhearted apology didn't convince anyone that he'd mended his ways.

As of Tuesday evening, Limbaugh's program had shed 35 advertisers, according to ThinkProgress. The count includes AOL, Sears, Allstate Insurance, Geico, and John Deere. As advertisers increasingly respond to pressure, online and off, from angry customers, other activists are turning their anger directly against the radio outlets that broadcast Limbaugh's show.

So far this week, two stations have dropped the program. WBEC in Pittsfield, Massachusetts, and KPUA in Hilo, Hawaii, were the first, and if the pressure continues, they may not be the last. WBEC's general manager, Peter Barry, said in a statement, “The nature of Rush's programming has always presented challenges for us and he's always pushed the envelope. But this time he's taken it too far."

Iraq war veterans Miranda Norman, Kayla Williams and Robin Eckstein, and Katherine Scheirman, the former chief of medical operations for the U.S. Air Force, all with the organization VoteVets, released a statement calling for Limbaugh's show to be removed from taxpayer-funded American Forces Network, which is heard by troops serving overseas. (Like all who syndicate Rush's program, AFN pays for the privilege.) They wrote:

    Rush Limbaugh has a freedom of speech and can say what he wants, but in light of his horribly misogynistic comments, American Forces Radio should no longer give him a platform. Our entire military depends on troops respecting each other – women and men. There simply can be no place on military airwaves for sentiments that would undermine that respect. When many of our female troops use birth control, for Limbaugh to say they are “sluts” and “prostitutes” is beyond the pale. It isn’t just disrespectful to our women serving our country, but it’s language that goes against everything that makes our military work. Again, we swore to uphold our Constitution, including the freedom of speech, and would not take that away from anyone – even Limbaugh. But that does not mean AFN should broadcast him. In fact, it shouldn’t.

The Pentagon, though, doesn't seem interested in dropping Limbaugh yet. A spokesman told the AP it would continue to air a variety of programming. But VoteVets has a petition to remove Rush, and other sites have more information on who to contact to stop spending taxpayer dollars on Limbaugh.

But the real test is how Clear Channel, the mega-conglomerate that distributes Limbaugh's show, will react. A petitioner at MoveOn's SignOn.org Web site is asking for Clear Channel to drop Limbaugh's show, and 200,939 people had signed it as of press time. Curt Hopkins at the Christian Science Monitor pointed out that, “unlike Limbaugh, the San Antonio-based company has quarterly revenue targets to meet and has to be concerned about the immediate reaction of shareholders. Clear Channel operates 866 stations in 150 markets in the United States.”

Clear Channel has been the largest owner of radio stations in the U.S. since telecom ownership rules were relaxed by the Telecommunications Act of 1996. The company has faced charges of censorship, and has consolidated its hold over radio in part by getting rid of local hosts and programs and syndicating national shows instead. It was bought out in 2008 and taken private by Bain Capital (founded by presidential candidate Mitt Romney, who still rakes in the cash from Bain and who has remained mostly quiet on the Limbaugh issue) and Thomas H. Lee Partners.

Limbaugh's 2008 contract with Clear Channel goes through 2016, and was worth $400 million in total. Limbaugh broadcasts his show from a 24,000-square-foot mansion in Florida, and has a private jet that alone is worth $54 million.

Premiere Networks, the subsidiary of Clear Channel that distributes shows like Limbaugh's, makes money not only from advertisers, but from the stations that pay to play its programs. A Daily Kos blogger, giving instructions on how to take action against Limbaugh at local radio stations, pointed out that Limbaugh's show is probably the most expensive program the station carries. The combination of advertisers dropping out and stations ditching Rush might be enough to spur the parent company into action.

Or maybe not.

"As long as the Limbaugh show maintains its ratings and notoriety, there will be advertisers eager to utilize it," Michael Harrison, publisher of the talk radio trade magazine, Talkers, told the Christian Science Monitor. “I would imagine Clear Channel is already picking up new sponsors to replace the ones that have publicly defected and I wouldn't be surprised if some of those that have canceled come back after the dust has settled....The American advertising industry is not necessarily known for its taste or dignity.”

 In no way has Limbaugh's "free'speech been infringed upon. he can say anything he likes. The public and businesses also have a right to their free speech and to respond as they wish. Limbaugh is losing because he went too far. or at least this time among millions of hateful smears the public drew a line and said that is enough. he appeals mostly to uneducated rubes who believe the urban myths Limbaugh makes faster than Hostess can manufacture Twinkies. Limbaugh reassures these infantile man-children that all their weird imagined wrongs, conspiracies and fake patriotism are true. Rush is like a warm bottle of milk for right-wing losers. That's fine, this is supposed to be a free country, but tax payers shouldn't have to pay for it.

Is Anti-American Conservative Rick Santorum Sane?

Is Anti-American Conservative Rick Santorum Sane?
Santorum claims that in the Netherlands 50% of all euthanizations are forced and that elderly people flee the country in fear of being euthanized.

He furthermore claims that elderly people wear 'Don't euthanize me' bracelets and euthanasia accounts for 10% of all deaths in the Netherlands.

It is way past time for rational caring citizens of the USA to say no to the crazy fascist-lite weirdos like Santorum. They are like an anchor around America's neck. They are dragging the country into the gutter of weird, crazy and radical.

 

 Sarah Palin is another fake patriot. She knows nothing about American history, American law or economics. She has followers because of the conservative cult of personality.


Pat Buchanan is Not a First Amendment Martyr. Pat is just an old smiley faced fascist who made millions over the years spreading hatred for the USA.

Mitt Romney Is Financially Invested In The Birth Control Industry

Note the chart shows most PAC money are large right-wing radical conservative PACs.

 Mitt Romney Is Financially Invested In The Birth Control

Mitt Romney has attacked the Obama administration’s regulation requiring employers and insurers to provide reproductive health care services — including contraception — by arguing that the rule is undermining the religious liberties of Catholics and imposing “a secular vision on Americans who believe that they should not have their religious freedom taken away.” As ThinkProgress has reported, Romney’s newfound sensitivities contradict his record as governor of Massachusetts — where he accepted a very similar contraception equity law — and his previous public commitments to increasing public funding for birth control. In 2005, Romney even asked the Massachusetts Department of Health to issue regulations requiring all hospitals to issue emergency contraception to rape victims, without providing an exception for Catholic hospitals.

Now, an examination of Romney’s financial investments reveals that the very same GOP frontrunner who is now petitioning the White House to extend the regulation’s conscience clause and exclude more women from the benefits of birth control is himself invested in and profiting from pharmaceutical companies that produce the frequently prescribed and extremely common medication:

    Romney’s Goldman Sachs 2002 Exchange Place Fund, valued at over a million dollars in 2010, brought in nearly $600,000 in gains in 2010 and is invested in:

    - Watson Pharmaceuticals: manufacturer of nine forms of emergency contraception (which Romney incorrectly identifies as “abortifacients“).
    - Johnson & Johnson: launched the first U.S. prescription birth control product in 1931 and produces various forms of birth control.
    - Merck: produces various forms of birth control
    - Mylan: produces birth control medication and filed the first application for a generic birth control pill last year.
    - Pfizer: a contraception producer that recently had to recall about a million packs of birth-control pills that weren’t packaged correctly.

Romney often disclaims any responsibility for or knowledge of his own investments by claiming that they are held in a private trust. But since filing his legally-required public financial disclosure reports and certifying that the information is “true, complete, and correct” to the best of his knowledge, the trust ceased to be a “blind trust” as he knew what was in it. Romney signed such disclosure forms last August and during his unsuccessful 2008 presidential bid in August 2007.

Can a conservative run for office that does not have a closet full of skeletons, baggage full of hypocrisies, believe in weird conspiracy theories and have less than two wives. Conservatism is not a system of political beliefs it is just a tent for all the loons in America. Just because they hide their craziness behind patriotism doesn't mean they should be allowed to get away with being swindlers, hypocrites, immoral vultures and serial liars.

Most NFL Team Owners Are Right-wing Conservatives So It Figures That The Super Bowl Is Socialist

Most NFL Team Owners Are Right-wing Conservatives So It Figures That The Super Bowl Is Socialist

OK.  It’s the Patriots vs. the Giants.  Between now and Feb. 5th a zillion words will be written about who will win the Super Bowl and why and how and by what point spread. With permission of all you sports fans out there  I’d like to offer a few hundred words to raise another question about this upcoming football contest.

Is the Super Bowl a socialist enterprise?  Yes the language is provocative but not, I believe, inappropriate.  After all Indiana, the site of the next Super Bowl, is currently governed by those who insist government should play a minimal role, and the word they and their Republican counterparts around the country use in this election year to describe those who disagree is socialist.

I submit that the Super Bowl in Indianapolis is socialist from head to toe.

Start with the venue. Governments paid for over 80 percent of the new $750 million Lucas Oil Stadium.  The Colts chipped in about 15 percent, an investment they probably recouped in inflated asset value the day the stadium opened.   Governments are also covering the estimated $20 million a year in operating deficits.

But this is only the tip of the iceberg.  The NFL itself is a government creation.   

Back in 1961 Commissioner Pete Rozelle convinced Congress to grant anti-trust immunity to the NFL to allow it to negotiate with broad companies as a single entity. Its first contract with CBS proved so lucrative that each team had $332,000 in the bank at the beginning of the season, a sum that exceeded most team payrolls at the time. Flush with cash, team owners might have started a bidding war for players if a truly free market in labor prevailed.  

But having eliminated a free market externally in the broadcast marketplace, this new government sanctioned monopoly proceeded eliminated a free market internally ion the labor marketplace. The NFL imposed a rule allowing any team losing a free agent to another team to receive something of equal value from that team.  Few teams were willing to risk signing a high profile free agent only to see their own rosters depleted.  

Free agency came about only in 1993 after a jury ruled in favor of the players in a restraint of trade lawsuit brought by a group of players.   That verdict and the threat of a class action filed by Reggie White of the Philadelphia Eagles on behalf of all NFL players led the league to the bargaining table.  Yet the owners still refused to allow a completely free market by demanding and receiving a salary cap.

Back in 1961, to gain the support of all the owners, the NFL decided to distribute the revenue equally to all teams.  Nothing more socialist than that.  But this created a problem.  The Green Bay Packers were (and are) a non-profit team whose community ownership structure prevented it from blackmailing cities into giving it huge taxpayer subsidies by threatening to leave.  Equal revenue sharing could result in other communities opting for the Green Bay model.  The NFL quickly closed that door by amending its constitution.  Article V, Section 4, often called the “Green Bay Rule,” declares “charitable organizations and/or corporations not organized for profit and not now a member of the league may not hold membership in the National Football League.”

Some might justify the huge subsidies to football stadiums because of their purported equally huge positive local economic impact.  The evidence does not support that argument.  Numerous researchers have examined the question and in virtually every case found no statistically significant positive correlation between sport facility construction and economic development.  As for the Super Bowl itself, a study of six Super Bowls from 1979 to 1998 by economist Phil Porter found no increase in taxable sales in the host community compared to previous years without the game. Economists Robert Baade and Victor Matheson found that hosting the Super Bowl was associated with an increase in employment in host cities of a paltry 537 jobs.   

Not that any of this matters a whit to a true blue football fan.  I myself look forward to sitting back and enjoying a hard fought game.

But this is an election year. A year in which the role of government will be vigorously debated. The Super Bowl is a reflection of governments aggressively intervening, not on behalf of the poor or the consumer or the worker but on behalf of the 1/10th of 1%.  Eighteen of the 32 NFL teams are owned by billionaires.   Perhaps during the interminable commercials we might pause a moment and reflect on the fact that we are watching a truly socialist spectacle.

The NFL is operated much like America's biggest corporations, the profits are private enterprise, but the public has to pay for any losses. Why are at least a third of Americans so in love with the fake patriotism movement known as conservatism and the conservative view of what capitalism should look like..

Mitt Romney, Bain and Right-Wing Death Squads

Romney tapped El Salvador's wealthy families, including one linked to right-wing death squads 

A significant portion of the seed money that created Mitt Romney’s private equity firm, Bain Capital, was provided by wealthy oligarchs from El Salvador, including members of a family with a relative who allegedly financed rightist groups that used death squads during the country’s bloody civil war in the 1980s

Bain, the source of Romney’s fabulous personal wealth, has been the subject of recent attacks in the Republican primary over allegations that Romney and the firm behaved like, in Rick Perry’s words, “vulture capitalists.”One TV spot denounced Romney for relying on “foreign seed money from Latin America” but did not say where the money came from. In fact, Romney recruited as investors wealthy Central Americans who were seeking a safe haven for their capital during a tumultuous and violent period in the region.

Like so much about Bain, which is known for secrecy and has been dubbed a “black box,” all the names of the investors who put up the money for the initial fund in 1984 are not known. Much of what we do know was first reported by the Boston Globe in 1994 when Romney ran for U.S. Senate against Ted Kennedy.

In 1984, Romney had been tapped by his boss at Bain & Co, a consulting firm, to create a spin-off venture capital fund, Bain Capital.

A Costa Rica-born Bain official named Harry Strachan invited friends and former clients in Central America to a presentation about the fund with Romney in Miami. The group was impressed and “signed up for 20% of the fund,” according to Strachan’s memoir. That was about $6.5 million, according to the Globe. Bain partners themselves were putting up half the money, according to Strachan. Thus the Central American investors had contributed 40 percent of the outside capital.

Back in 1984, wealthy Salvadoran families were looking for safe investments as violence and upheaval engulfed the country. The war, which pitted leftist guerrillas against a right-wing government backed by the Reagan administration, ultimately left over 70,000 people dead in the tiny nation before a peace deal was brokered by the United Nations in 1992. The vast majority of violence, a UN truth commission later found, was committed by rightist death squads and the military, which received U.S. training and $6 billion in military and economic aid. The Reagan administration feared that El Salvador could become a foothold for Communists in Central America.

The notorious death squads were financed by members of the Salvadoran oligarchy and had close links to the country’s military. The death squads kidnapped, tortured, and killed suspected leftists in urban areas fueling an insurgency that retreated to rural areas and waged war on the government from the countryside. The war, which lasted 12 years, triggered an exodus that brought more than 1 million Salvadorans to the United States.

There is no evidence that any of Bain Capital’s original investors were involved in these sorts of activities. But the identities of some of the investors remain secret, and there are family names that raise questions.

Four members of the de Sola family were among the original Bain investors, or “limited partners” in the company, the Globe reported. Their relative and “one-time business partner,” Orlando de Sola, was an important figure in El Salvador. A well-known right-wing coffee grower with an (in his words) “authoritarian” vision for the country, de Sola spent time living in Miami but was also a founding member of the right-wing Arena party, lead by a U.S.-trained former intelligence officer named Roberto D’Aubuisson.

Craig Pyes, an investigative reporter then with the Albuquerque Journal, wrote a series on the rightist death squads based on extensive on-the-ground reporting in El Salvador in the early 1980s with Laurie Becklund of the Los Angeles Times, while the death squads were still active.

Pyes, who has since won two Pulitzer Prizes and is now a private investigator in California, says that no one has produced any proof that de Sola directly funded death squads.

“However,” Pyes says, “he was in the inner circle of the group around D’Aubuisson at the time that D’Aubuisson was well known to be involved in the death squads. De Sola’s name appears in a December 1983 FBI cable as one of 29 people suspected by State Department officials of furnishing funds and weapons to Salvadoran death squads.”

De Sola’s name also turned up in a notebook, seized from an aide to D’Aubuisson named Saravia, that detailed the finances of D’Aubuisson’s terrorist network, according to Pyes.

The Saravia notebook, reviewed by U.S. officials, listed weapons purchases, payments, and what appear to be descriptions of violent plots by rightists, including the assassination of El Salvador’s Archbishop Oscar Arnulfo Romero in 1980. Asked about the notebook by the New York Times in the late 1980s, de Sola denied that he had ever helped finance political violence. De Sola could not be reached for comment for this story.

Romney, for his part, who was much more accessible to the press in 1994, told the Globe that year that “we investigated the individuals’ integrity and looked for any obvious signs of illegal activity and problems in their background, and found none. We did not investigate in-laws and relatives.” He also said that Bain had checked the names of the Bain investors with the U.S. government. Given the policy of the Reagan administration at the time, though, it’s not clear going to the government would have been the most effective vetting mechanism.

It’s impossible to fully explore the backgrounds of the original Bain investors because we don’t know all their identities, including the names of the four members of the de Sola family mentioned by the Globe. Neither the Romney camp, Bain Capital, nor Strachan — the Bain executive who recruited the Central Americans — responded to requests for comment.

During his first presidential bid in 2007, Romney more than once touted the Central American investors in Bain while trying to woo Hispanic voters. 

Romney has learned from the Bush family, never leave your bloody fingerprints on anything. Romney and his apologists can always claim he was once or twice removed from actual murderous thugs so everything is just peachy.

Conservative Welfare Queen Mitt Romney no stranger to tax breaks, subsidies

Conservative Welfare Queen Mitt Romney no stranger to tax breaks, subsidies

As Mitt Romney defends his record running a private equity firm, he frequently points to a fast-growing Indiana steel company, financed in part by Bain Capital, that now employs 6,000 workers.

What Romney doesn't mention is that Steel Dynamics also received generous tax breaks and other subsidies provided by the state of Indiana and the residents of DeKalb County, where the company's first mill was built.

The story of Bain and Steel Dynamics illustrates how Romney, during his business career, made avid use of public-private partnerships, something that many conservatives consider to be "corporate welfare." It is a commitment that carried over into his term as governor of Massachusetts, when he offered similar incentives to lure businesses to his state.

Yet as he seeks the GOP presidential nomination, he emphasizes government's adverse effects on economic growth.

"Fundamentally, what happens in America that creates jobs is not government. It has its role. But by and large, it gets in the way of creating jobs," he said during a debate Saturday sponsored by ABC News and Yahoo.

Bain Capital began looking at investing in the steel start-up in late 1993. At the time, Steel Dynamics was weighing where to locate its first plant, based in part on which region offered the best tax incentives. In June 1994, Bain put $18.2 million into Steel Dynamics, making it the largest domestic equity holder. It sold its stake five years later for $104 million, a return of more than $85 million.
As Bain made its investment, the state and county pledged $37 million in subsidies and grants for the $385-million plant project. The county also levied a new income tax to finance infrastructure improvements to benefit the steel mill over the heated objections of some county residents.

"I'm very pro-business, but I'm not pro-business-welfare," said DeKalb County resident Suzanne Beaman, 58, who fought the incentives. Steel Dynamics "would have done fine without our tax dollars, I have no doubt."

Another steel company in which Bain invested, GS Industries, went bankrupt in 2001, causing more than 700 workers to lose their jobs, health insurance and a part of their pensions. Before going under, the company paid large dividends to Bain partners and expanded its Kansas City plant with the help of tax subsidies. It also sought a $50-million federal loan guarantee.

"This is corporate welfare," said Tad DeHaven, a budget analyst with the Washington-based Cato Institute, which encourages free-market economic policies. DeHaven, who is familiar with corporate tax subsidies in Indiana and other states, called the incentives Steel Dynamics received "an example of the government stepping into the marketplace, picking winners and losers, providing profits to business owners and leaving taxpayers stuck with the bill."

On Thursday, Romney acknowledged that government can help spur private enterprise.

"When I was governor of our state, we competed aggressively to get companies to move to our state and provide benefits to them if they were to decide to bring manufacturing jobs, for instance," he said during a campaign stop in Greer, S.C. "That's the nature of competition between states. I'm happy with competition and do believe in free enterprise."

The outline of the tax subsidies to Steel Dynamics was initially provided to the Los Angeles Times/Tribune Washington Bureau by American Bridge 21st Century, a pro-Democratic "super PAC." The details emerged during a week in which Romney has repeatedly cited Steel Dynamics as an example of his successful job creation while he was head of Bain Capital.

Launched as a start-up at a time when many American steel mills were foundering, Steel Dynamics is the fifth-largest producer of carbon steel products in the country, generating $6.3 billion in revenue in 2010.

Government support was a key ingredient to getting it off the ground.

When local officials in DeKalb County learned that three veteran steel mill executives were starting the company in 1993 and looking for a home for their new mini-mill, they pulled out all the stops. "These people don't just drive by and choose accidentally to be your neighbor," said Jack Bercaw, a Butler businessman who was co-chairman of the recruitment drive.

The county promised $23.4 million in property tax abatements and tax increment finance bonds, as well as a new income tax to generate economic development funds. The latter was required by the state, which shelled out another $13.6 million in tax credits, energy grants, workforce training and funds for roads.

A new quarter-percent tax on DeKalb County residents financed infrastructure improvements such as roads and railroad exchanges that benefited Steel Dynamics, Bercaw said. The county also created a new redevelopment commission and redevelopment authority to oversee the activity.

Steel Dynamics executives did not respond to requests for comment. But in a 1994 interview with a trade journal, then-Chief Executive Keith Busse said the $4.4 million the company initially received in state tax credits, in particular, helped persuade Steel Dynamics to locate in Indiana. Busse told a business panel that same year, however, that he was opposed to the new income tax levied by DeKalb County, according to the Fort Wayne Journal Gazette.

David Stickler, an investor and advisor specializing in the steel industry who engineered the original financing package that launched Steel Dynamics, said the $37 million in grants and subsidies was not only a financial boost, but also helped persuade larger lenders to sign on.
"What I've found is that the senior lending banks, especially lenders from overseas, take great comfort in the fact that the local and state government entities are showing a willingness to partner on the project," Stickler said.

Boston-based Bain became involved with Steel Dynamics about two months after the company formed in 1993. At that point, the management team had already sought incentive packages from the state and county. Stickler said Bain executives were well-briefed on the proposed deal and noted that they were particularly thorough in examining the intricacies of the deals' structure.

"They lifted up every rock, they stress-tested every financial scenario," Stickler said. "Before they put their money into a transaction, they wanted to know that as many of the risks have been mitigated as possible."

A spokesman for Bain said Thursday that the private equity firm "has had a 28-year track record of growing great companies, including partnering with the management team to help to launch and grow Steel Dynamics. We are extremely proud of the work our employees have done throughout our history to build our businesses and improve their operations."

In DeKalb County, the tax incentives rankled some local residents, who protested the deal at county government meetings.

Tim Heffley, then a Democratic county commissioner, was opposed to the new tax but was outvoted. "I was just against any company getting handouts from the government, corporate welfare," said Heffley, who nevertheless praised Steel Dynamics as a good company that has brought jobs to the region.

Nearly two decades later, some are still smarting about the subsidies.

America is being sold the BIG Lie by conservatives. In election years or when a Democrat holds an office conservative think they have some kind of moral right to have, conservative preach the gospel of super pure capitalism. yet time and again conservatives lie. The capitalism they practice is never pure. They get help from influential friends, state and federal government. America should demand that conservatives stop the Big Lies. While we all get to read the eventual truth and feel some vindication that at least these raging hypocrites were exposed, millions of Americans have lost their jobs because of conservative economic policies.

Vote Rick Santorum Because America Can Never Get Enough Conservative Corruption

Vote Rick Santorum Because America Can Never Get Enough Conservative Corruption

Rick Santorum has received, and courted, plenty of comparisons with Mike Huckabee since his near-victory in the Iowa Caucuses, but not all of them have been earned. Yes, like Huckabee in 2008, Santorum has been heavily dependent on grassroots campaigning, with direct appeals to evangelical voters, and a veneer of folksy, blue-collar economic populism. But the comparison ought to stop there. What Santorum cannot match is Huckabee’s status as a genuine Washington outsider, someone untainted by the corrupt dealings inside the beltway. Indeed, Santorum’s record shows him to be deeply connected to the ethically unsavory and legally dubious world of DC influence-peddling.

Since losing his Pennsylvania Senate seat in 2006, Santorum has used his connections to land a series of highly-paid jobs. Consol Energy, a natural gas company specializing in “hydrofracking” and the fifth-largest donor to his 2006 campaign, paid him $142,000 for consulting work. He also earned $395,000 sitting on the board of United Health Services (UHS), a for-profit hospital chain whose CEO made contributions to his Senate campaigns and which stood to benefit from a big hike in Medicare payments Santorum proposed in 2003. (Incidentally, the Department of Justice sued UHS for Medicare and Medicaid fraud during Santorum’s four-year tenure on its board.) Santorum also earned paychecks from a religious advocacy group, a lobbying firm, and a think tank. For pushing legislation benefitting UHS and several other companies, one ethics group named Santorum to its “most corrupt Senators” list.

Santorum has made his post-Senate career doing the sort of quasi-lobbying that helped sink Newt Gingrich’s campaign in Iowa. But in fact, while still in office, he was a central actor in an even more sordid venture: The K Street Project. Started in 1989 by GOP strategist Grover Norquist and brought to prominence by former House majority leader Tom DeLay in 1995, the K Street Project was a highly organized effort to funnel Republican Congressional staffers into jobs at lobbying firms, trade organizations, and corporations, while attempting to block Democrats from those same posts. From 2001 until 2006, Santorum was the Project’s point man for the Senate, while House Majority Whip Roy Blunt manned the House side.

In 2006, the K Street Project was effectively forced to shut down amid public outcry; the following year, an ethics reform law made such outfits illegal. But in its heyday, it helped create an unprecedented revolving door between the White House, Congress and K Street, blurring distinctions between Republican policy and corporate welfare. As Elizabeth Drew put it in a 2005 New York Review of Books piece, “Democratic lobbyists have been pushed out of their jobs as a result; business associations who hire Democrats for prominent positions have been subject to retribution. They are told that they won’t be able to see the people on Capitol Hill they want to see.” Nicholas Confessore, in a groundbreaking 2003 Washington Monthly expose of the Project, detailed the goal bluntly: “First, move the party to K Street. Then move the government there, too.”

At the center of all this was Santorum. According to Confessore, Santorum conducted weekly breakfasts with lobbyists, and occasionally Congressmen and White House staff, during which he attempted to match Republican Hill staffers with K Street job openings. As Confessore put it, “Every week, the lobbyists present pass around a list of the jobs available and discuss whom to support. Santorum's responsibility is to make sure each one is filled by a loyal Republican—a Senator's chief of staff, for instance, or a top White House aide, or another lobbyist whose reliability has been demonstrated.” The group refused to meet with Democrats, and threatened sanctions against lobbies that did.

Revolving door tactics, until then de facto lobbying policy, were formalized and transformed into a “pay to play” system by the K Street Project. In 2003, after the top post at The Motion Picture Association of America went to a Democrat instead of a Republican, House Republicans reneged on an impending tax break, hitting the movie industry with a $1.5 billion bill. After the Democrat was chosen, Roll Call reported that “Santorum has begun discussing what the consequences are for the movie industry.” (Santorum, though he often denies his involvement in the K Street Project, more or less confirmed his involvement in the MPAA flap.) Later that year, the Washington Post revealed that the House Financial Services Committee pressured a consortium of mutual funds to oust a top lobbyist who was a Democrat in exchange for relaxing a pending investigation. After the smoke cleared, she was replaced by a Republican.

Whether the K Street Project was truly successful is up for debate. Confessore and Drew’s reports portray intimidated and marginalized Democratic lobbyists. According to a 2003 Washington Post story, a Republican National Committee official boasted that 33 of 36 top lobbying jobs had recently gone to Republicans. Former lobbyist Patrick Griffin, now an adjunct professorial lecturer at American University, told me that the project embodied the brazen crudeness of “DeLayism,” but also suggested that most lobbying firms and corporations were not “stupid” enough to purge Democratic staff and risk alienating much of the Hill.

What is clear is how much Santorum’s legacy is entangled with the two most corrupt political figures of the last decade: DeLay, and Jack Abramoff, who was said to have been involved in the Project. (Abramoff reportedly attended Santorum’s very first meeting, though Abramoff denied involvement and Santorum said in 2001 he couldn’t remember if he had.) Abramoff’s recent assertion that he “owned” politicians by dangling the promise of highly-paid lobbying gigs in front of powerful Hill staffers, though hyperbolic, is a fairly apt description of the K Street Project’s goals.

Gosh another conservative presidency run like organized crime. It will be like the good old days of the Bush administration or the Reagan administration. Conservatives have absolutely excelled at convincing much of the public that their anti-democracy, anti-constitution, anti-freedom, anti-American values policies are patriotic. Until those Americans wake up and smell the truth we can count on criminals in brooks Brothers suits like Rick Santorum to keep coming back from the dead like the anti-American zombies they are.