How Far Will Wisconsin Fascists Go To Win Next Tuesday?

They haven't been held accountable in the past... so why not try it again?

For many of Wisconsin's most vulnerable people, those thrown out of work by the failure of economic bets by Masters of the Universe they had nothing to do with, yesterday's biggest news was another attack on their ability to survive by Scott Walker and his zombie legislature. A week from today, thousands of voters in Wisconsin can go to the polls and turn their state back from Walker's overtly fascist path. That's next Tuesday-- and it's still not too late to lend a hand to progressives like Sandy Pasch running neck and neck with right-wing extremists like Alberta Darling. Yesterday Wisconsin Democratic Party chairman Mike Tate issued this statement:

"The six Republican recall senators need a heart and a lesson. That's because a week is a long time to wait for people who need to pay bills, who are suffering in Scott Walker's unemployment economy, who are up against the wreckage caused by Republican policies of reckless greed. Today, in one of the most heartless acts to have taken place in a season of heartless acts, Scott Walker's lapdogs in the Senate voted to make our state's job seekers wait a week until they are able to receive vital benefits to allow them to feed their families and clothe their children. What these six Republicans did is the ultimate act of kicking the unemployed while they're down."

Hard to imagine the Republicans could simultaneously be doing something even worse... but they are. (And I'm not even talking about burning down activists' headquarters in La Crosse to help the floundering Kapanke campaign.) Last week we mentioned that Scott Walker was on the fontlines-- leading the charge in fact-- in the ALEC plot against democracy itself. This week, his forces were on the rampage. The Koch Brothers' proto-fascist front group, the misnamed Americans For Prosperity, is sending out absentee ballots to Democrats with instructions to return them on August 11-- two days late. Here's what they've been sending to Wisconsin homes with registered Democrats, in order to undermine the campaigns of Shelly Moore and Nancy Nusbaum:


Democratic chairman Mike Tate, again:

"Scott Walker has sought the help of the corporate front group "Americans For Prosperity," and here they come with dirty tricks clearly meant to meddle in our elections and suppress votes against the Koch Brothers' agenda. Wisconsin's election authorities must stop the black hand of the corporate special interests and their front groups who are trying to strangle democracy in our state and support the six Republican senators now facing recall.

These six Republicans must immediately denounce the AFP scheme or it will signal to the public that they endorse the suppression of Wisconsin votes."

They filed a complaint with Wisconsin Government Accountability Board but what about the Justice Department? Does subverting democracy not rise to a serious enough offense for them? Many people think it is:

Americans for Prosperity is funded by David and Charles Koch, who funneled millions of dollars to Scott Walker and his radical allies. Walker’s allies have raised the specter of voter irregularity to further their agenda.

Make no mistake: This is voter suppression-- pure and simple. Americans for Prosperity must be taken to task for this disgusting, immoral, and anti-democratic behavior.

The battle against Big Business dominance is being fought on many fronts, even in Wisconsin. Yesterday, in explaining why he couldn't support Obama's anti-family deal with the GOP, Russ Feingold said "The debt ceiling deal should remove any doubt of the power corporate interests have over our government. That deal, hammered out by the president and Republican Congressional leaders, places the burden of reducing our long-term budget problems on average Americans, while the wealthiest individuals and corporations are given a free pass. Americans are willing to bear their share of the burden of addressing our nation’s long-term budget problems, but those sacrifices should be shared by all." Another front in the class war conservatives are waging against ordinary American families.

TPM speculates this morning that their may be catastrophic unintended consequences for Wisconsin from the abject surrender to the fascists by Obama and the Democrats yesterday.

[T]he perceived progressive failure in DC over the debt ceiling deal could snatch defeat from the jaws of victory in the wild and crazy Wisconsin recalls, leading to the kind of political domino effect left-leaning critics of the debt deal fear most.

Here's how the scenario works: as they're still licking their wounds from a national fight that in the eyes of many Democrats went the Tea Party's way, progressives in Wisconsin will be trying to pull out their voters for a round of recalls on August 9. That electorate could be underwhelmed now, folks familiar with the recalls say. And that could be the difference between flipping the Wisconsin state Senate away from Governor Scott Walker (R) and keeping it in Republican hands.

"There may be some who are sad to the point that they'll stay home," Charles Chamberlain, political director for Democracy for America, told TPM. DFA has spent well over a million dollars on the recall races, and expects to spend a lot more as the get-out-the-vote work begins in earnest.

The trouble is, Chamberlain said, the deal cut by President Obama and the Republicans to raise the debt ceiling has many of the same aspects as union-busting budget Walker passed through the Wisconsin legislature, firing up what has become one of the most active progressive battlefields in years.

"No real protections on entitlements. Dramatic cuts out of education. No shared sacrifice," Chamberlain rattled off. "That's exactly what happened in Wisconsin."

DFA's research has shown voters in the recalls motivated by cuts to programs like Medicare in Rep. Paul Ryan's (R-WI) House budget (which has been the subject of more than one ad the group has run in contest). Behind that, they're moved by the potential for cuts in education programs as well as policies that adversely affect the middle class workers like librarians and teachers.

Progressive critics have said the deal to raise the debt ceiling could have many of the same effects. And the fact that voters just watched Obama get behind the deal could have a chilling effect on turnout.

Or will Obama's Satan Sandwich have just the opposite effect? Or no effect at all. 7 days. Last minute help is welcome.

ALEC-- The Biggest Threat To America Since The Nazis... And A Very Similar One

Lately we've been doing a lot of reporting on the history of American fascism in the '30s and '40s and how the far right's activism back then planted the seeds for current developments in the Republican Party. Wealthy families, business and media groups, phony churches and political committees today can trace their roots directly back to antecedents who helped facilitate the rise of Hitler and Mussolini and who worked for their success, some even after the U.S. went to war against Germany and Italy.

On Saturday, for example, we looked at the power of the one of America's preeminent fascist dynasties, the DuPonts, and how they used one of their fascist front groups, the National Manufacturers Association, to push an anti-union, anti-regulatory, anti-family agenda that sounds exactly like the kinds of programs being pushed by current fascist-oriented Republicans like Scott Walker (R-WI) and John Kasich (R-OH). Walker and Kasich are both prominent alumni of today's most fascist-oriented GOP front organizations, ALEC (the American Legislative Excahnge Council), a private legislative organization responsible to no one but... the Koch Bros. Never heard of it? It's a much bigger threat to you and your family than al Qaeda ever was or ever will be. The website that tracks ALEC uses this warning as their introduction:

Through the corporate-funded American Legislative Exchange Council, global corporations and state politicians vote behind closed doors to try to rewrite state laws that govern your rights. These so-called "model bills" reach into almost every area of American life and often directly benefit huge corporations. Through ALEC, corporations have "a VOICE and a VOTE" on specific changes to the law that are then proposed in your state. DO YOU?

This week's Nation features an important exposé on ALEC by John Nichols that every American should read.

“Never has the time been so right,” Louisiana State Representative Noble Ellington told conservative legislators gathered in Washington to plan the radical remaking of policies in the states. It was one month after the 2010 midterm elections. Republicans had grabbed 680 legislative seats and secured a power trifecta-- control of both legislative chambers and the governorship-- in twenty-one states. Ellington was speaking for hundreds of attendees at a “States and Nation Policy Summit,” featuring GOP stars like Texas Governor Rick Perry, former House Speaker Newt Gingrich and House Majority Leader Eric Cantor. Convened by the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC)-- “the nation’s largest, non-partisan, individual public-private membership association of state legislators,” as the spin-savvy group describes itself-- the meeting did not intend to draw up an agenda for the upcoming legislative session. That had already been done by ALEC’s elite task forces of lawmakers and corporate representatives. The new legislators were there to grab their weapons: carefully crafted model bills seeking to impose a one-size-fits-all agenda on the states.

Founded in 1973 by Paul Weyrich and other conservative activists frustrated by recent electoral setbacks, ALEC is a critical arm of the right-wing network of policy shops that, with infusions of corporate cash, has evolved to shape American politics. Inspired by Milton Friedman’s call for conservatives to “develop alternatives to existing policies [and] keep them alive and available,” ALEC’s model legislation reflects long-term goals: downsizing government, removing regulations on corporations and making it harder to hold the economically and politically powerful to account. Corporate donors retain veto power over the language, which is developed by the secretive task forces. The task forces cover issues from education to health policy. ALEC’s priorities for the 2011 session included bills to privatize education, break unions, deregulate major industries, pass voter ID laws and more. In states across the country they succeeded, with stacks of new laws signed by GOP governors like Ohio’s John Kasich and Wisconsin’s Scott Walker, both ALEC alums.

The details of ALEC’s model bills have been available only to the group’s 2,000 legislative and 300 corporate members. But thanks to a leak to Aliya Rahman, an Ohio-based activist who helped organize protests at ALEC’s Spring Task Force meeting in Cincinnati, The Nation has obtained more than 800 documents representing decades of model legislation. Teaming up with the Center for Media and Democracy, The Nation asked policy experts to analyze this never-before-seen archive.

There are 5 analyises of those documents available through The Nation, blueprints for a corporatist takeover of the United States; that's a polite way of saying a fascist takeover:

“Sabotaging Healthcare,” by Wendell Potter

“The Koch Connection,” by Lisa Graves

“Rigging Elections,” by John Nichols

“Business Domination Inc.,” by Joel Rogers and Laura Dresser

"Starving Public Schools,” by Julie Underwood

Happy Bastille Day!

How American Is Fascism? Among U.S. Ruling Elites-- Absolutely Prevalent

Kissing and making up with dedicated hereditary traitors never works. For them, historically, it's just an opportunity to try again. Many historians-- including African-Americans ones-- realize that the Southern aristocracy got off way too lightly after the Civil War. Their spawn is back... in a big way, successfully preaching the same racism and anti-democratic obscurantism that tore the country apart in the 1850s and 1860s.

Far more contemporaneous is how the "leading families" of American Business were all able to skip away from their aggressive support of fascism during the 1930s and '40s. I've been following the story in The Nazi Hydra in America of how the American ruling elites, in awe and in love with fascism, tried to sell out the country to Hitler. None were punished-- and their sons prospered and went on fulfilled Huey Long's prediction: "Of course we will have fascism in America, but we will call it democracy." The Bush's, the son and grandson of a big-time fascist and Nazi collaborator are just the most obvious examples. Far more insidious are the ones hiding in the shadows, the millionaires and billionaires who worked to defeat America and whose spawn is still seeking to undermine democracy today.

Yesterday Think Progress' Lee Fang posted about how the Koch family was celebrated this week for the major contribution of founding father, Fred-- the financial godfather of the right-wing hate group, the John Birch Society, whose tenets are infused in everything his two degenerate sons are doing to American politics today. "As a founding board member, Fred helped engineer a hysterical wave of attacks on labor, intellectuals, public education, liberal clergy members, and other pillars of society he viewed as a threat. Birchers decried everyone from former President Eisenhower to water utility administrators as pawns in a global communist conspiracy. In the last two years, as the Koch name has become synonymous with right-wing plutocracy in the United States, the Koch family has played down its relation to the Birchers. However, the New American, the official mouthpiece of the John Birch Society, published a piece this morning celebrating Fred and the Koch family’s pivotal role in developing the group:"

Koch warned that American institutions were honeycombed with communist subversives, from labor unions and tax-free foundations to universities and churches. Art and newsprint, radio and television-- all these media had been transmuted into vehicles of communist propaganda. [...] Fred Koch was no fly-by-night pamphleteer. He spent a generous portion of his later years using his wealth and influence to fight the communism he abhorred. He was an early member of the John Birch Society’s National Council, an advisory group to JBS founder Robert Welch. Koch supported a variety of freedom-related causes, all the while continuing to build the company today known as Koch Industries.

Fang reminds us that the Bircher paean to ole Fred glosses over his record of bigotry. "In a booklet he authored, Fred railed against civil rights leaders, and claimed the movement against racial segregation was a communist plot to use African Americans to destabilize the country. The Koch-funded Birchers held numerous rallies during the ’60s claiming integration would lead to a 'mongrelization' of the races. Although the present-day Koch brothers try to eschew explicit racism, their top Tea Party front group, Americans for Prosperity, is currently pursuing similar racial segregation goals. In North Carolina, the Americans for Prosperity chapter led a campaign to end a highly successful public school integration system."

Because of their ostentatious financing of the Tea Party "movement," the Kochs are in the spotlight today but they are far from the only offspring of American fascists. In fact, as contemptible and reprehensible as their father was, he wasn't technically a traitor (as far as I know.) The same can't be said about J.P. Morgan, the Dulles Brothers, Prescott Bush, the du Pont family, the Rockefellers, the Hunts, the Mellons... obviously the Fords. Remember, Wall Street and corporate America built Hitler's war machine-- and not just because they wanted to make a quick buck... they believed in the fascist doctrines he was espousing. The "biggest names" in America actively sabotaged the war effort while American boys were dying on the battlefields of Europe and Asia. Yeadon makes it clear in Nazi Hydra that "just as the backers of Hitler's were rich industrialists, so were the backers of fascism in the United States" and that, in fact, many of them were the same backers... as the following quote from the New York Times from the Ambassador to Germany, William Dodd shows:

"A clique of U.S. industrialists is hell-bent to bring a fascist state to supplant our democratic government and is working closely with the fascist regime in Germany and Italy. I have had plenty of opportunity in my post in Berlin to witness how close some of our American ruling families are to the Nazi regime. On (the ship) a fellow passenger, who is a prominent executive of one of the largest corporations, told me point blank that he would be ready to take definite action to bring fascism into America if President Roosevelt continued his progressive policies.

Certain American industrialist had a great deal to do with bringing fascist regimes into being in both Germany and Italy. They extended aid to help fascism occupy the seat of power, and they are helping to keep it there.

Propagandists for the fascist groups try to dismiss the fascist scare. We should be aware of the symptoms. When industrialists ignore laws designed for social and economic progress they will seek recourse to a fascist state when the institutions of our government compel them to comply with the provisions."

As Yeadon makes clear with his careful research, "Americans have never been told the truth about the extent of corporate America's involvement with the Nazis. The media has spoon-fed Americans into believing that only a handful of companies were involved. In reality, more than 300 American corporations were illegally arming Nazi Germany during the war... They could have severed all links with Nazi Germany, but instead chose to continue to support a regime at war with their own country. In doing so, those corporations became willing accomplices to the Holocaust, traitors to their country and guilty of war crimes. The traitors responsible for such actions and crimes should have received justice at the end of a hangman's noose. Sadly, not one American corporation was charged with aiding the Nazis." They all got away scott free-- to fight another day. And we're talking about household names like General Motors, IBM, duPont, Standard Oil, International Harvester, Ford, General Electric, United Fruit, Alcoa... The heart of fascist ideology of the 1930s in Germany, Italy, Spain and here in the U.S.-- and of the far right today-- was corporate rule.

It is the basis for the visceral level of hate for unions, fueled by the corporate elite and their propaganda organizations. There is no better example to illustrate the power of the pro-fascists in the United States, than to compare the plight of the American worker with his counterpart in the rest of the industrial nations. In every category, the American worker comes up short when compared to the workers in other industrial nations. As an example the American worker earns 44% less than his German counterpart and 15% (1994 figures) less than his Japanese counterpart. ... While the average American worker is lucky to receive a two-week vacation his European counterpart enjoys a five-week vacation-- or more-- and a list of benefits that the American worker can only dream about.

Nor is the plight of the worker seeking to unionize much different today than it was in the 1930-40s. There are a myriad of companies today in the United States that provide security for corporate America. In reality, these companies are nothing more than hired thugs and union busters. While the muggings and factory death squads are not as great a threat today, the American worker is still being spied on. However, corporate America has no qualms about murdering union organizers in other countries. A recent report revealed that Coke Cola had hired right wing death squads to murder union organizers in Columbia. The United Steel workers union has filed suit in Miami alleging that Coca-Cola and Panamerican Beverages, its principal bottler in Latin America, waged what union leaders describe as a campaign of terror, using paramilitaries to kill, torture and kidnap union leaders in Columbia.

Marching for the billionaires who paid for their buses:

Koch Gangsters, Bursting With Record Profits, Blame High Gas Prices On Obama-- While Bernie Sanders Introduces The 10 Million Solar Roofs Act

With all the extra billions in profits Big Oil-- particularly the Koch gangsters-- have made by gouging the American public on gas, they're launching a major propaganda attack on Obama... blaming him for high gas prices. The Koch's GOP front group, Americans for Prosperity, is leading the way "asserting that the administration’s regulation of the energy industries is key to pain at the pump." They're hoping the public is too confused to think about their record profits and the fact that domestic drilling is also near an all-time high. Keep in mind that after World War II, when Big Oil was exposed for supplying Germany and Japan with oil and shown to be traitors, the Republican (and Nazi-sympathizer) head of Standard Oil, William Stamp Farish haughtily told a Senate investigation that Standard Oil was "an international company." Much as they do on TV today with an unrelenting series of misleading ads, Standard buffed its image with an advertising campaign that promoted the virtues of its products, and was helped along by the willingness of the major papers, who were the beneficiaries of the ad dollars.

The Kochs and other Big Oil gangsters have done all they could to retard the development of energy alternatives-- and the GOP (and Blue Dogs) have gone right along with them-- as they've accepted hundreds of millions of dollars in legalistic bribes in return. Though it wasn't widely reported, last week two senators from the opposite end of the spectrum-- Vermont Independent Bernie Sanders, who takes no more from Big Oil, and Arkansas Republican John Boozman, a conservative corporate shill who's gobbled up $119,152 in "contributions"-- introduced legislation that aims to lower the cost of solar power and put the U.S. on track to install 10 million solar systems on homes and businesses by 2020.

As I've explained before, this year I took the plunge and went all solar for my electric energy. My monthly electric bill is now zero. In fact, I'm making excess electricity on my roof and shipping it back into the L.A. power grid. (I get a credit.) I can't understand why states don't require all new homes to be built with solar panels on the roof-- although Big Oil has fought against these kinds of proposals very effectively.

Sanders and Boozman are the chairman and ranking member, respectively, of the Senate Green Jobs and New Economy Subcommittee. They were joined in introducing the solar legislation by Sen. Jeff Bingaman, the chairman of the Energy and Natural Resources Committee.

"This legislation will make it more affordable for families and businesses to install solar, by helping communities reduce the costs associated with solar energy permitting," Sanders said. "As we lower the cost of solar energy and increase our use of solar, we can create hundreds of thousands of good-paying manufacturing and installation jobs in this country. This bill also sets strong targets for American solar energy production, to ensure we compete vigorously with China and Europe for solar energy jobs."

Boozman said the goal is to reduce unnecessary bureaucratic hurdles to American-made solar energy. "Our country benefits by using our domestic energy resources, including the expanded use of renewables, such as solar and wind energy. A simplified permitting process will make solar energy more affordable. I am especially pleased that our bill is fully offset and uses existing authorized spending to spur improvements in solar permitting and encourage the deployment of solar energy systems."

The 10 Million Solar Roofs Act of 2011 would establish a goal of powering 10 million homes and businesses with solar energy by 2020. The measure also would incorporate a Department of Energy initiative called SunShot to make solar more competitive with conventional energy technologies. The bill would provide grants to communities to help them make their solar energy permitting process less costly and more efficient, and would recognize and reward communities that have adopted common policies on solar permits.  

A solar industry report said obstacles to acquiring local permits add up to $2,500 to the cost of a typical residential solar installation. The Department of Energy also identified local permitting costs as an obstacle to further lowering solar energy costs that declined by 60 percent since 1995.

Supporters of The Ten Million Solar Roofs bill include the Solar Energy Industries Association, the National League of Cities, and the League of Conservation Voters.

Watch Big Oil tug on the leashes of their congressional shills to kill this one fast.