HAVA Opens the Door to Potential Abuses
The 2002 “reform” bill was called the Helping America Vote Act. It was a measure that was to give the Republican Party a great advantage in future elections. Designed to eliminate hanging chads and other threats to the nation’s election system, the Help America Vote Act of 2002 may have unleashed even greater threats to the integrity of the ballot. It mandates that all states improve their training of election workers and balloting procedures by 2006. Congress promised to provide the states with $3.9 in aid over three years to carry out the provisions of the bill, but later proved slow in appropriating the money. States often used the money to implement “paperless ballots,” or touch-screen voting.
Machines that make possible paper validation audit trails in the event of malfunctions were unavailable when the 2002 act was passed. However such machines eventually were produced. They printed what the voter did, but the voter did not get a receipt. Often, there was a way for the voter to see the record of what he had done. Regardless of the type of device, they were far more error prone than any other method of voting. Sometimes the printers jammed. Sometimes the printed record did not match the electronic record of votes cast. The central programs for tabulating votes frequently broke down. By 2008, some jurisdictions were scrapping their touch screen voting machines.
Legislation to require audit trails died in the House Administration Democrat sponsors but has attracted only 8 from the nation’s governing party. For some reason, the Republican Congress has been unable to consider this legislation. It is impossible to prove beyond all doubt that electronic vote tampering has changed the results of major elections, but there is a plethora of evidence to suggest that control of the firms that service the voting machines and calculation programs has given the GOP a great advantage. Republicans added provisions that encourage scrubbing the rolls of ineligible voters and requires first-time voters to show identification of various sorts. These provisions make it difficult to challenge the purging of voters. This HAVA requirement has led to the introduction of state legislation to mandate such identification materials as would likely dampen participation in elections, particularly among minority people. In Florida, additional purging of voters was carried out under legislation that forbade the reproduction of the list of suspected felons.
When the secrecy provision was struck down in 2004, it was learned that a new list of purged voters contained nearly 50,000 names. Beginning, January 1, 2006, HAVA gives the 50 state secretaries of state the power to purge voters whose ID cards and Social Security numbers do not correspond with information found on state verification lists. This provision has spawned a great deal of state voter ID legislation, which can easily be used to purge black and Hispanic voters when they show up to vote. In Georgia, the Secretary of State purged 80,000 voters in June 2006, even though to falsely register was already a crime.
A number of states have used HAVA to justify hiring Choice Point, a Republican-operated company to purge the voting rolls of “ineligible voters.” The danger here is that the voter rolls will be scrubbed as they were in Florida in 2000, where between 40,000 and 97,000 people were deprived of the right to vote under the cover of scrubbing the rolls in order to remove felons. Unfair scrubbing was an object of considerable interest in the United Kingdom, where a television investigative report explored the Florida situation in detail. A Choice Point spokesman observed, “Given the outcome of our work in Florida and with the new president in place, we think our services will expand across the country.” An estimated one million voters are expected to be unfairly disqualified from voting as a result of HAVA’s scrubbing provision. They will be disproportionately minority people. In 2006, a provision of HAVA takes effect that makes it possible to improve upon the scrubbing by giving many minority voters provisional ballots that will never be counted.
The 2002 “reform” bill was called the Helping America Vote Act. It was a measure that was to give the Republican Party a great advantage in future elections. Designed to eliminate hanging chads and other threats to the nation’s election system, the Help America Vote Act of 2002 may have unleashed even greater threats to the integrity of the ballot. It mandates that all states improve their training of election workers and balloting procedures by 2006. Congress promised to provide the states with $3.9 in aid over three years to carry out the provisions of the bill, but later proved slow in appropriating the money. States often used the money to implement “paperless ballots,” or touch-screen voting.
Machines that make possible paper validation audit trails in the event of malfunctions were unavailable when the 2002 act was passed. However such machines eventually were produced. They printed what the voter did, but the voter did not get a receipt. Often, there was a way for the voter to see the record of what he had done. Regardless of the type of device, they were far more error prone than any other method of voting. Sometimes the printers jammed. Sometimes the printed record did not match the electronic record of votes cast. The central programs for tabulating votes frequently broke down. By 2008, some jurisdictions were scrapping their touch screen voting machines.
Legislation to require audit trails died in the House Administration Democrat sponsors but has attracted only 8 from the nation’s governing party. For some reason, the Republican Congress has been unable to consider this legislation. It is impossible to prove beyond all doubt that electronic vote tampering has changed the results of major elections, but there is a plethora of evidence to suggest that control of the firms that service the voting machines and calculation programs has given the GOP a great advantage. Republicans added provisions that encourage scrubbing the rolls of ineligible voters and requires first-time voters to show identification of various sorts. These provisions make it difficult to challenge the purging of voters. This HAVA requirement has led to the introduction of state legislation to mandate such identification materials as would likely dampen participation in elections, particularly among minority people. In Florida, additional purging of voters was carried out under legislation that forbade the reproduction of the list of suspected felons.
When the secrecy provision was struck down in 2004, it was learned that a new list of purged voters contained nearly 50,000 names. Beginning, January 1, 2006, HAVA gives the 50 state secretaries of state the power to purge voters whose ID cards and Social Security numbers do not correspond with information found on state verification lists. This provision has spawned a great deal of state voter ID legislation, which can easily be used to purge black and Hispanic voters when they show up to vote. In Georgia, the Secretary of State purged 80,000 voters in June 2006, even though to falsely register was already a crime.
A number of states have used HAVA to justify hiring Choice Point, a Republican-operated company to purge the voting rolls of “ineligible voters.” The danger here is that the voter rolls will be scrubbed as they were in Florida in 2000, where between 40,000 and 97,000 people were deprived of the right to vote under the cover of scrubbing the rolls in order to remove felons. Unfair scrubbing was an object of considerable interest in the United Kingdom, where a television investigative report explored the Florida situation in detail. A Choice Point spokesman observed, “Given the outcome of our work in Florida and with the new president in place, we think our services will expand across the country.” An estimated one million voters are expected to be unfairly disqualified from voting as a result of HAVA’s scrubbing provision. They will be disproportionately minority people. In 2006, a provision of HAVA takes effect that makes it possible to improve upon the scrubbing by giving many minority voters provisional ballots that will never be counted.
Sherman has written African American Baseball: A Brief History, which can be acquired from LuLu Publishing on line.http://www.lulu.com/browse/search.php?search_forum
Showing posts with label politics. Show all posts
Showing posts with label politics. Show all posts
Saturday, March 29, 2008
Sunday, February 24, 2008
The New Right Within the GOP
By the late 1970s, the New Right was becoming a very powerful force in American conservative community. The New Right still did not dominate the Republican National Committee in 1979, and its leaders complained about the way the RNC distributed money among candidates. Beginning in 1977, Bill Brock led the RNC in modernizing its operations and developing a much larger donor base by appealing to New Right cultural concerns. In 1980, the New Right held 40 of 435 House Seats and ten seats in the Senate. In the Reagan years, there were sharp clashes between the New Right and other Republicans, but the New Right was gaining ground. In 1995, the Speaker of the House was a member of the New Right, and a year later Republican leaders in both Houses were from the New Right. Other Republicans were learning that New Right rhetoric raised money, attracted volunteer workers, and brought in votes. In 1978, they backed a Democrat over George W. Bush in a Texas House race because they thought Bush was a “blue-stocking” Republican like his father, and many of them sat out the 1992 presidential election because George H.W. Bush broke a promise not to raise taxes. He had done sin in return for a Democratic promise to limit spending because a massive debt was threatening the nation’s economic health.
In the 1990s, the New Right was the core of the Republican party and dominated its caucuses in Congress. Other Republicans also learned that the New Right punished other Republicans who appeared too moderate or too willing to do business with Democrats. Moderates came to be defined as those who adhered to traditional Republican fiscal restraint and who were uneasy with the extremism of the cultural conservatives. Their critics called them RINOS, Republicans in Name Only because they did not walk in lock step with their much more numerous conservative colleagues. In time, some of they were called “gypsy moths.”
By the count of Representative Mike Castle, president of the Republican Main Street Coalition, there were still 45 House Republican moderates, of a total of 229, in 2003. His count might be correct, but most of the 45 have been intimidated into moving right. In the House, they have been stripped of committee chairmanships for insufficient loyalty or for not raising enough money for the party. Some of them have faced costly primary fights with well-financed conservatives. While they usually managed to survive, the message was clear to them and other moderates.
As they retire in frustration or die, they are replaced by hard-liners. In the 2006 by-elections, the voters removed one moderate Republican senator and a number of House moderates in part because their presence had helped the GOP control both houses.
There was a time when the Republican Party was an uneasy coalition of moderates like Hugh Scott of Pennsylvania and Gerald Ford of Michigan. The moderates are now shrinking in size and frequently afraid to vote their convictions, and the party is run by hyperconservatives from George W. Bush on down to the leadership in both houses of Congress. . Over time, the Right defeated a number of moderates and liberals in primaries; among them: Clifford Case of New Jersey, Tom Kuchel of California, and Jacob Javits of New York. In 2004, the New Right, funded by t he Club for Growth almost defeated Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania. Subsequently, Specter found it necessary to make a number of promises to the Right in order to become chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee. Specter’s close call with political extinction probably convinced the remaining Republican moderates in Congress that they must follow the New Right leadership or lose their seats.
In challenging these moderates and liberals, the New Right had the advantage of superior financial resources, but their greatest asset was a Republican electorate that had been moving to the right for some time. Senator Specter had great difficulties in Allegheny County, once a stronghold of moderate Republicanism but now reflecting more and more the views of Senator Rick Santorum. Ironically, Santorum and a number of moderate Republicans were defeated in the 2006 reaction against the unsuccessful war in Iraq. It seems the moderates were defeated because they were helping the GOP control Congress. Some suggest the election showed that the party must move toward the center, but the fact is that there are not many moderate Republicans in Washington to help the party set a new course.
Of course, although not all Republicans are from the New Right, it does tend to dominate Republican primaries and the party’s leadership in Congress. By the late 1990s, they had been around so long that they were often called ideological conservatives rather than the New Right. Most other Republicans are what can be called pragmatic conservatives. They avoid the harsh rhetoric of the ideologues and abandon New Right positions when necessary. Nevertheless, the New Right controls the party’s core, and that enables the New Right to dominate the GOP. This political worldview offered fairly simple explanations of and solutions to problems and was an ideology that appealed to the true believer and those who needed to face the world with an arsenal of certainties. It was an outlook that inspired and sustained passion. On the other hand, the liberalism that grew out of the progressive era and the New Deal was a form of pragmatism and rationalism that was animated by commitments to justice and compassion. This pragmatic outlook had no place for absolutes and placed a premium on demonstrably useful ideas. Liberal pragmatists believed that a science of governance could be developed and that government could be employed to improve the lives of citizens. However, it rarely was the source of passion.
Belief in absolute ideas remained powerful among conservatives, and the strength of these convictions was capable of fueling great passion and zeal. The arguments of the New Right and the thought of the neoliberals together constitute a powerful de facto ideology that has come to constitute the dominant political and societal worldview in the United States. The so-called New Democrats have only been able to ward off its most destructive applications by accepting many Republican tenets. To survive in politics, Democrats have had to avoid outright denunciations of neo-liberalism and the New Right. In 2006, Democrats regained control of Congress in part by avoiding cultural issues and rarely challenging many economic policies.
Anger and fear intensified belief in these New Right ideas, creating a strongly believed ideology that was impervious to factual information. In time a form of groupthink developed in the conservative subculture that simply filtered out any information that seemed contradictory. Over time, a foreign policy component to the ideology emerged, and again there seemed to be a process at work that simply rejected any information that suggested that any foreign policy initiative that sprang from it could be risky or lead to disaster. For example, even after the occupation of Iraq had become a quagmire in 2003 and 2004, conservatives simply rejected any information that called their course into question. In 2006, many voters found they could no longer overlook the unfolding disaster in Iraq, but their decision to give the Democrats a chance at power did not mean that the time-tested cultural issues of the New Right had lost their potency.
Enlisting in the cultural war gave people a sense of being associated with a noble cause and gave life meaning. The attack of al Qaeda terrorists on the World Trade Center and Pentagon on September 11, 2001 provided the Republican Party with a particularly powerful war psychology and an opportunity to capitalize indefinitely on people’s fears . Soon America was involved in a protracted international war on terror against an “axis of evil.” Battles were to be fought in Afghanistan and Iraq, but the homeland itself was threatened. Supporting this war effort bestowed a great sense of meaning, as every nation has a latent “passionate yearning for a nationalist cause that exalts us, the kind that war alone is able to deliver.” Whoever is leading a nation in such a time is seen as a fearless, effective leader. People in wartime situations desperately want to believe in the existing leadership. The Bush administration did everything possible to expand the heroic image war bestowed upon him, and there was “little that logic or fact or truth” could do to tarnish this image. Those who questioned the leader risked the wrath of many voters. Many had already learned to fear that liberals would destroy traditional American culture. Now they were to learn that only George W. Bush could protect them from physical attack, and that the dreaded liberals might dismantle America’s defenses. It was potent stuff.
As Slovenian cultural theorist and philosopher Slavoj Zizek noted, modern-day ideologists are almost impervious to factual information. “The way ideology works today is much more mysterious ....There’s an active refusal to know.... The key factor is not that people are duped--there’s an active will not to know.” Zizek used the example of the belief of a majority of Americans that the al Qaeda terrorists were allied with Iraq even though the great preponderance of evidence suggested otherwise. People would not abandon that view or the falsehood that Iraqis were behind the 9/11 attack on the United States because they needed reassurance that their faith in the nation’s elected leader was justified and that they were in good hands. A reporter who interviewed delegates to the 2004 Republican National Convention, repeatedly heard that the invasion of Iraq was justified because “ ‘they’--meaning Iraqis” struck us on 9/11. Theirs was a belief system that could not be cracked. He thought it was that of “ the minority of a minority,” but polling data in that year suggested a much larger number held this belief system. The journalist correctly noted, “In this belief system, the arguments of their opponents carry, essentially, no weight whatsoever....”Their belief system precluded even considering information that conflicted with it.
The traditional conservative thinker John Lukacs wrote, "when...temperance is weak, or unenforced, or unpopular, then democracy is nothing else than populism. More precisely: then it is nationalist populism....the fundamental problem of the future." Right-wing populism easily morphed into nationalist populism. Anyone objecting to any policy that claimed to be part of the war on terrorism was likely to have her patriotism questioned. Jim Gibbons, a Republican Congressman from Nebraska, was to say it was "too damn bad we didn’t buy {critics of the Iraq war} tickets to become human shields there. He also said those who complained about corporate contributions to President Bush were "communists.” Such outbursts are relatively rare because they tend to spook independent voters, but his remarks accurately reflect the spirit of nationalist populism. There were many other ways to say the same thing without alarming independents and moderates.
So far the union of right-wing populism and extreme nationalism has not produced fascism, but it has clearly threatened the health of our democratic polity. John Lukacs believes the new populism could almost destroy democracy because it so easily degenerates into the tyranny of the majority. 'Nationalism is a very low and cheap common denominator that unites people,'' Lukacs says. ''It is hatred that unites people. People take satisfaction from the idea that we are good because our enemies are evil. This is a very American syndrome, but it is also universally true of mankind.'' Lukacs was one of the few conservative intellectuals to object to Senator Joseph McCarthy; it is likely that he will have even less company this time around.
Sherman has written African American Baseball: A brief History, which can be acquired from LuLu Publishing on line.http://www.lulu.com/browse/search.php?search_forum
In the 1990s, the New Right was the core of the Republican party and dominated its caucuses in Congress. Other Republicans also learned that the New Right punished other Republicans who appeared too moderate or too willing to do business with Democrats. Moderates came to be defined as those who adhered to traditional Republican fiscal restraint and who were uneasy with the extremism of the cultural conservatives. Their critics called them RINOS, Republicans in Name Only because they did not walk in lock step with their much more numerous conservative colleagues. In time, some of they were called “gypsy moths.”
By the count of Representative Mike Castle, president of the Republican Main Street Coalition, there were still 45 House Republican moderates, of a total of 229, in 2003. His count might be correct, but most of the 45 have been intimidated into moving right. In the House, they have been stripped of committee chairmanships for insufficient loyalty or for not raising enough money for the party. Some of them have faced costly primary fights with well-financed conservatives. While they usually managed to survive, the message was clear to them and other moderates.
As they retire in frustration or die, they are replaced by hard-liners. In the 2006 by-elections, the voters removed one moderate Republican senator and a number of House moderates in part because their presence had helped the GOP control both houses.
There was a time when the Republican Party was an uneasy coalition of moderates like Hugh Scott of Pennsylvania and Gerald Ford of Michigan. The moderates are now shrinking in size and frequently afraid to vote their convictions, and the party is run by hyperconservatives from George W. Bush on down to the leadership in both houses of Congress. . Over time, the Right defeated a number of moderates and liberals in primaries; among them: Clifford Case of New Jersey, Tom Kuchel of California, and Jacob Javits of New York. In 2004, the New Right, funded by t he Club for Growth almost defeated Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania. Subsequently, Specter found it necessary to make a number of promises to the Right in order to become chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee. Specter’s close call with political extinction probably convinced the remaining Republican moderates in Congress that they must follow the New Right leadership or lose their seats.
In challenging these moderates and liberals, the New Right had the advantage of superior financial resources, but their greatest asset was a Republican electorate that had been moving to the right for some time. Senator Specter had great difficulties in Allegheny County, once a stronghold of moderate Republicanism but now reflecting more and more the views of Senator Rick Santorum. Ironically, Santorum and a number of moderate Republicans were defeated in the 2006 reaction against the unsuccessful war in Iraq. It seems the moderates were defeated because they were helping the GOP control Congress. Some suggest the election showed that the party must move toward the center, but the fact is that there are not many moderate Republicans in Washington to help the party set a new course.
Of course, although not all Republicans are from the New Right, it does tend to dominate Republican primaries and the party’s leadership in Congress. By the late 1990s, they had been around so long that they were often called ideological conservatives rather than the New Right. Most other Republicans are what can be called pragmatic conservatives. They avoid the harsh rhetoric of the ideologues and abandon New Right positions when necessary. Nevertheless, the New Right controls the party’s core, and that enables the New Right to dominate the GOP. This political worldview offered fairly simple explanations of and solutions to problems and was an ideology that appealed to the true believer and those who needed to face the world with an arsenal of certainties. It was an outlook that inspired and sustained passion. On the other hand, the liberalism that grew out of the progressive era and the New Deal was a form of pragmatism and rationalism that was animated by commitments to justice and compassion. This pragmatic outlook had no place for absolutes and placed a premium on demonstrably useful ideas. Liberal pragmatists believed that a science of governance could be developed and that government could be employed to improve the lives of citizens. However, it rarely was the source of passion.
Belief in absolute ideas remained powerful among conservatives, and the strength of these convictions was capable of fueling great passion and zeal. The arguments of the New Right and the thought of the neoliberals together constitute a powerful de facto ideology that has come to constitute the dominant political and societal worldview in the United States. The so-called New Democrats have only been able to ward off its most destructive applications by accepting many Republican tenets. To survive in politics, Democrats have had to avoid outright denunciations of neo-liberalism and the New Right. In 2006, Democrats regained control of Congress in part by avoiding cultural issues and rarely challenging many economic policies.
Anger and fear intensified belief in these New Right ideas, creating a strongly believed ideology that was impervious to factual information. In time a form of groupthink developed in the conservative subculture that simply filtered out any information that seemed contradictory. Over time, a foreign policy component to the ideology emerged, and again there seemed to be a process at work that simply rejected any information that suggested that any foreign policy initiative that sprang from it could be risky or lead to disaster. For example, even after the occupation of Iraq had become a quagmire in 2003 and 2004, conservatives simply rejected any information that called their course into question. In 2006, many voters found they could no longer overlook the unfolding disaster in Iraq, but their decision to give the Democrats a chance at power did not mean that the time-tested cultural issues of the New Right had lost their potency.
Enlisting in the cultural war gave people a sense of being associated with a noble cause and gave life meaning. The attack of al Qaeda terrorists on the World Trade Center and Pentagon on September 11, 2001 provided the Republican Party with a particularly powerful war psychology and an opportunity to capitalize indefinitely on people’s fears . Soon America was involved in a protracted international war on terror against an “axis of evil.” Battles were to be fought in Afghanistan and Iraq, but the homeland itself was threatened. Supporting this war effort bestowed a great sense of meaning, as every nation has a latent “passionate yearning for a nationalist cause that exalts us, the kind that war alone is able to deliver.” Whoever is leading a nation in such a time is seen as a fearless, effective leader. People in wartime situations desperately want to believe in the existing leadership. The Bush administration did everything possible to expand the heroic image war bestowed upon him, and there was “little that logic or fact or truth” could do to tarnish this image. Those who questioned the leader risked the wrath of many voters. Many had already learned to fear that liberals would destroy traditional American culture. Now they were to learn that only George W. Bush could protect them from physical attack, and that the dreaded liberals might dismantle America’s defenses. It was potent stuff.
As Slovenian cultural theorist and philosopher Slavoj Zizek noted, modern-day ideologists are almost impervious to factual information. “The way ideology works today is much more mysterious ....There’s an active refusal to know.... The key factor is not that people are duped--there’s an active will not to know.” Zizek used the example of the belief of a majority of Americans that the al Qaeda terrorists were allied with Iraq even though the great preponderance of evidence suggested otherwise. People would not abandon that view or the falsehood that Iraqis were behind the 9/11 attack on the United States because they needed reassurance that their faith in the nation’s elected leader was justified and that they were in good hands. A reporter who interviewed delegates to the 2004 Republican National Convention, repeatedly heard that the invasion of Iraq was justified because “ ‘they’--meaning Iraqis” struck us on 9/11. Theirs was a belief system that could not be cracked. He thought it was that of “ the minority of a minority,” but polling data in that year suggested a much larger number held this belief system. The journalist correctly noted, “In this belief system, the arguments of their opponents carry, essentially, no weight whatsoever....”Their belief system precluded even considering information that conflicted with it.
The traditional conservative thinker John Lukacs wrote, "when...temperance is weak, or unenforced, or unpopular, then democracy is nothing else than populism. More precisely: then it is nationalist populism....the fundamental problem of the future." Right-wing populism easily morphed into nationalist populism. Anyone objecting to any policy that claimed to be part of the war on terrorism was likely to have her patriotism questioned. Jim Gibbons, a Republican Congressman from Nebraska, was to say it was "too damn bad we didn’t buy {critics of the Iraq war} tickets to become human shields there. He also said those who complained about corporate contributions to President Bush were "communists.” Such outbursts are relatively rare because they tend to spook independent voters, but his remarks accurately reflect the spirit of nationalist populism. There were many other ways to say the same thing without alarming independents and moderates.
So far the union of right-wing populism and extreme nationalism has not produced fascism, but it has clearly threatened the health of our democratic polity. John Lukacs believes the new populism could almost destroy democracy because it so easily degenerates into the tyranny of the majority. 'Nationalism is a very low and cheap common denominator that unites people,'' Lukacs says. ''It is hatred that unites people. People take satisfaction from the idea that we are good because our enemies are evil. This is a very American syndrome, but it is also universally true of mankind.'' Lukacs was one of the few conservative intellectuals to object to Senator Joseph McCarthy; it is likely that he will have even less company this time around.
Sherman has written African American Baseball: A brief History, which can be acquired from LuLu Publishing on line.http://www.lulu.com/browse/search.php?search_forum
Friday, February 22, 2008
Right-Wing Populism
The American populist tradition appeared to have reversed itself; populism now openly supported giving more to the wealthy and battling economic regulations. In fact, a distinction should be made between right-wing populism, which emphasizes cultural questions, and left-leaning populism, which focuses on economics. A few people, like Fred Harris in the seventies, and Molly Ivins, advocated left-populism, but it was right-wing populism that often was to carry the day. Some traditional conservatives have objected to referring to New Right thought as populism and prefer to call it “corporate populism” because it is so much the result of affluent sponsorship. Right-sing populism emerged before there was gridlock in government, but the appearance of gridlock seems to have brought more frustrated voters under the banner of the New Right. This movement to the right was fed by a growing preoccupation with the decline in traditional values, impatience with dissent and pluralism, which appeared as grave threats for longed-for unity, and uneasiness with some traditional elites. By the early years of the Twenty-First Century, the growth of the right was further enhanced by belief in redemptive violence--this time in support of warfare in the name of combating terrorism.
Right-wing populism is very close to the fundamentalism that Jimmy Carter has identified as an ascendant force in society and religion. Andrew Sullivan spoke of the “fundamentalist psyche” which seeks absolute truths and all encompassing ideologies, leaves no room for discussion or debate, and stifles individual thought. Historically, movements for social change have often been instruments of status groups that felt an intense need to assert and legitimize their identities. Right wing populism, here in the form of the New Right, usually is fed by the bitterness and frustration of people facing status loss. These people do not want to be like people in the so-called "blue" states; they are simply intent upon expressing their identity as "decent" people and their anger over being mistreated because of that decency. Their status group anger has been framed in terms of a misguided notion of authenticity. They believe they are the real Americans as opposed to the phonies. The essential element is the populist belief that good decent people are being conspired against by some sort of elite. Left wing populists worry about an economic elite; right wing populists are concerned about what they think is a cultural elite. In many respects, right wing populism is a classical mass movement. Many of its members become true believers, who are dogmatic, intolerant, and often-angry believers in a soul-stirring ideology. They believe they have the absolute truth and often become fanatically devoted to their movement and its leaders. Membership in the movement rather than individual liberty is what is important to them. Perhaps this explains why these people have shown no concern about the rapid erosion of individual liberties since 9/11.
Economic stagnation and the breakdown of welfare capitalism in the United States disoriented millions of people, who sought answers and affirmation of their identities. One might expect them to drift into a political movement that clearly and directly addressed their situation. However, cultural arguments touch people more deeply, and they accepted an ideology that somewhat tangentially offered them some economic relief. Economic historian Alexander Cershenkron noted that even nations with long democratic traditions can become democracies without democrats. It is not so difficult to have a generous view of fellow citizens when living standards are rising. Economic growth makes the expansion of democracy possible. When people's economic prospects are declining, it is so much easier to be less inclusive, less trusting, and more inclined to accept views that place blame on a nation's woes on others.
The 2004 U.S election provides clear evidence of the extent to which anxiety rooted in economic concerns was displaced to cultural matters. Sixty one percent of white voters refused to support John Kerry. In 1991, Stanley Greenberg wrote that "unless there are some limits to the [ Democratic] Party's moral agnosticism," it will not win over the average family. In Europe, those who lost their jobs, faced great insecurity or had to accept less income and benefits are loosely called the "abandoned workers." In the United States, there is a very broad definition of middle class, and the New Right here is considered a middle class phenomenon. Among the recruits to right-wing populism were many Reagan Democrats, who faced great economic insecurity but also believed their cultural and religious values were under assault. What has emerged in the last thirty years is a self-conscious status group in the United States, the members of which would not object to the descriptive term "Middle America."
Over time, this vast status group became desperate and anxious, believing their social and economic positions were slipping or in danger of slipping. These middle class Americans developed a sub-culture or collective consciousness made up of orientations that guide their actions, particularly at election time. These orientations represent a form of conservative populism. Invariably, conservative populists identified their own fates with that of the nation, which also faced very grave threats. They, like their nation, were virtuous and deserved primacy among other people and nations. Their opponents were not just somewhat wrong; they were "evil."
Max Weber argued that there is a strong need for psychic comfort or a feeling of established worthiness. He thought that class-consciousness was essentially "psychological thoughts of men about their lives. " In this instance, we are not dealing with a class. Status groups also shaped by a very similar form of consciousness. In the late Twentieth Century, marketing and other techniques that make it possible to frame information and arguments in such a way as to shape the content of group consciousness. Weber believed the most compelling ideologies developed when a powerful set of ideas were taken up by the disadvantaged. That is why it was so important to persuade a vast slice of Middle Americans, regardless of their economic status, that they are somehow disadvantaged. Today, the party of the right-wing populists often controls every branch of the national government state governments. Nevertheless, the anger of the right-wing populists has not abated because they believe that the media, press, universities, and entertainment are still dominated by liberals who are committed to destroying American culture.
Inevitably, complaints about the opinions of these so-called elites evolved into efforts to censure and punish them. Actors who voiced unpopular opinions faced boycotts of their TV programs and films, and state legislators concocted ways to discipline unpopular professors. In Florida, Representative Dennis Baxley recently introduced a bill enabling college students to sue professors who strayed from “mainstream beliefs” and turned their classrooms into a “totalitarian niche.” His main example was claiming that evolution was a fact.
To some degree the belief that they are conspired against gives victims a tonic and confers upon them special identities. They cannot congratulate themselves on their political success or the fact that the press largely has been intimidated into soft-peddling or ignoring stories that would offend conservatives. Their radio and television shockmeisters continually remind them that they are not safe as long as there is a Hillary Clinton or Ted Kennedy in the Senate or as long as The New York Times or Washington Post remain in print. Cultural crusades have been powered by anxiety rooted in economic and status tensions. Concern over economic and status questions is redirected by clever conservative information specialists to cultural quests where the chances of success seem greater. At work is an historical process that somehow displaced feelings of deep economic anxieties, which reappeared as cultural resentments. The "somehow" means we cannot explain how or why it happened other than to note that these occurrences from Roman times forward could best be seen as examples of the irrational and unconscious in history.
What can be called psycho-cultural climates exist in history, as the great Lucien Febvre suggested, but the followers of Clio have made little progress in deciphering them. Intense stress and fear of losing control of one’s destiny generates the emotional energy that drives these psycho-historical situations. Some experience an intense need to belong, which adherence to the New Right satisfies. Economic anxiety occurred after a period of great abundance and what seemed to be the promise of continued affluence, or fulfillment of the American Dream. It occurred simultaneously with the emergence of postmodern culture, which brought in its wake ambiguity and contradiction in respect to values. A great majority of the same people experiencing economic anxiety was also troubled by new threats to their values. Perhaps some found the new mental freedom an invitation to inner anarchy, as Adorno noted half a century ago. In any event, they lacked the mental structures to address the cultural disorientation of the period and its potential threats in matters of conscience. Some probably found that their central cultural and religious beliefs were not as strong as they had though, and that craved a consistent and rigorous way of thinking. They were unprepared for a pluralistic culture and moral ambiguities. The crusade of the New Right seemed to resolve these inner conflicts and allowed them to cope with the anxieties of these times.
An event in March 2005, seemed to demonstrate that there may be limits to how far political capitalizing on popular cultural concerns can go. Congress rushed to facilitate moving of the case of Terri Schiavo, a woman in a persistent vegetative state, from the Florida Courts to the federal courts. The issue was reattaching her feeding tube. ABC News turned up a Republican internal memo that suggested that this was a political bonanza and offering talked points. Surprisingly, over 60% of the public rejected this blatant politicization of a family tragedy. This suggests that even some Evangelicals Protestants and traditional Catholics were not on board, and it might also suggest that growing right wing populism might become more difficult in future.
The behavior of the Right suggests that conservative leaders though the New Right must take advantage of situations like this to be sure that its followers remain sufficiently inflamed to assure the GOP election victories. The episode, and the GOP’s response to it, probably insured that the most reliable portion of its base would turn out in record numbers in 2006. Far from having overreached, the GOP deepened the commitment of evangelical voters to the party and planted the thought among the elderly that the GOP was there to prevent the ending of their life support. Reverend Louis Sheldon, founder of the Traditional Values Coalition, implied as much when he said, “That is what I see as the blessing of dear Terri’s life, “ providing” the conservative Christian movement in America” a cause with which to galvanize itself.
After the 2004 defeat of John Kerry, many concluded that it was how one spoke about cultural issues that made the difference, and that George W. Bush’s appeal to conservative religious people explained what had happened. For many on the Christian Right, it was not a matter of language. They were convinced that God had made Bush president of the United States Pat Robertson called Bush a “prophet,” and Ralph Reed said God picked Bush to become president. Bush consistently encouraged this belief and told a group of Amish in 2004 that “I trust God speaks through me.” In fact, a more powerful and complex force was at work in establishing Republican dominance in the United States-- right-wing populism as embodied in the New Right. At work was much more than many people responding to several hot button, values-laden issues. The Democrats were up against a complex, powerful social movement that took decades to build and a mind-set that will prove very difficult to change. True, the outlook of the Christian Right lends itself to right-wing populism, but they are two different although closely related phenomena. Today’s incarnation of Right-wing populism is equated with evangelical religion, but it could stand-alone as it frequently does in Europe. Right-wing populism is at the heart of the New Right’s identity and is largely a reaction against social change. It comes wrapped as ultra-Americanism and assertive nationalism, which got a great boost from the terrible events of September 11, 2001.
Failing to understand fully what they were up against, some Democrats slightly toned down their support for all forms of abortion, and many of them acquired a book on cognitive linguistics that correctly showed that Republicans were very skilled at recasting unpopular policies in favorable language and at "branding" Democrats as very undesirable political products. The reading will do them some good, but it is necessary for them to learn much more about right-wing populism. The main elements of populism are celebrating "the people" and battling elites. American right-wing populists believe an elitist coalition of big government bureaucrats, old money aristocrats, and the so-called “New Class” of academicians, intellectuals, media people, and technocrats dominate the country. The belief that the elite looks down on other Americans gives right-wing populism its great force which is expressed in anger, resentment, and determination to go to the polls and strike a blow against their enemies This view emerged as part of Richard Nixon’s effort to blame the lack of success in Vietnam on dissenters. It was a version of the old right wing “stab in the back” position, and was preceded by the claim that Eastern Europe was sold out at Yalta and that Truman liberals prevented MacArthur from winning in Korea.
The New Left of the 1960s unwittingly made it very easy to develop the New Class argument and apply it to liberals and Democrats, both of whom the New Left despised by the late sixties. Though deeply committed to creating a republic based on peace, love and brotherhood, the young radicals were unwilling to acknowledge the common humanity of those who opposed them. Indeed the New Left was extremely intolerant and made it clear that those who disagreed with them were greedy, stupid and evil. They seemed particularly angry with ordinary Americans because they did not respond to calls to leave factories and fall behind the banners of the New Left. Although the leadership of the Democratic Party feared and disliked the New Left, Republican publicists successfully identified liberals and Democrats with the New Left, calling them the New Class. Many ordinary Americans bought the argument and came to despise those who allegedly despised them. Occasionally in coming years Democratic intellectuals, who generally did not share the outlook of the New Left, foolishly expressed their befuddlement at why so many working class Americans identified so strongly with policies that all but guaranteed that prosperity would not trickle down to them. Their unguarded remarks revealed an ignorance of the emotional and spiritual needs of other Americans and were grist for the propaganda mill devoted to showing that all Democrats were elitists who had contempt for ordinary Americans. The New Class argument was a brilliant political ploy and would eventually play a big role in guaranteeing that Republicans would almost always control both houses of Congress after 1994.
White House speechwriter William Safire crafted Vice President Spiro Agnew’s attack on “an effete corps of impudent snobs, who characterize themselves as intellectuals,” but the word Agnew really had in mind was “fags.” It was as though Nixon had been present at the creation of politics; he had a genius for “ looking beneath social surfaces to see and exploit subterranean anxieties...” in the words of Rick Perlstein. Decades later, as the cultural war got much rougher, there was constant talk about the “gay agenda” of the left. The culture war argument became the main theme of right wing rhetoric. And it was never more powerful than when coupled with promoting a war. Kevin Baker was probably wrong when he suggested that “The whole purpose of the war in Iraq -- and the war on terrorism seems to have been to foment divisions and to win elections....” But he was right in noting that the cultural argument in a war context was so powerful that most Americans reluctantly accepted torturing foreigners and easily came to terms with the executive’s new claims to power, including spying on American citizens and even imprisoning a few without the protections of due process.
Christopher Lasch has suggested that the “New Class” argument has been persuasive because liberals, unable to persuade the masses to accept some democratic reforms have relied upon the courts to accomplish them--essentially using undemocratic means to achieve democratic ends. Moreover, they have lost the popular touch, labeling working class fears about programs to establish economic injustice “working-class authoritarianism.” In social science terms, what is occurring may be negative deference on the part of people who consider themselves in society’s periphery toward those who they think illegitimately occupy the center.
The so-called elitists are accused of trying to destroy American culture, and the New Right sees a nation divided by two starkly different cultures, one good and one evil. The term "liberal" has been redefined to mean people who are trying to overturn traditional American culture by supporting moral relativism, permissiveness, softness on crime, pornography, abortion, homosexuality, euthanasia, and stem cell research. For the New Right the word “liberal” meant this snooty and destructive cultural elite and its adherents. In addition, conservative Christian propagandists continually told Godly people that they were under siege by immoral secularists. People came to see themselves as a despised and put-down minority, and they yearned to even the score and demonstrate that they were worthy of respect. In creating the mental structures of this growing subculture, conservative publicists linked threats to traditional culture with policies that damaged free enterprise and weakened the U.S. position in the Cold War. All this contributed to a mindset in which scapegoating and acceptance of simplistic explanations for a variety of phenomena became common. Conservative spokesmen are able to blame almost all the moral evils they find on liberalism, usually because of its advocacy of permissiveness.
Yet the New Right blamed the corporate scandals of 2000-2001 on just a few people, thus precluding thorough efforts to prevent more abuses. This “bad apple theory” has been seen as a form of New Right permissiveness. The same “Bad Apple” theory has been used to explain the abuses of prisoners by American soldiers and private contractors. It was much easier to blame all manner of difficulties on a liberal cultural elite and to blame other problems on the poor below them, who were considered sinful and lazy and bent on living off others. Even worse, in the eyes of some, was the fact that many of the poor were black. The great danger is that their behavior would contaminate society and that other Americans would emulate them. The objects of their fear and loathing included homosexuals, feminists, immigrants, welfare mothers, and criminals. A certain amount of bullying of other unpopular minorities, such as homosexuals and Muslims, was also to be expected, but so far the New Right’s founders and leaders have managed to prevent the kinds of excesses that would permanently alarm middle class America.
Right wing populist worldview is a simplistic black and white picture that bears little resemblance to reality but, with the help of a small army of propagandists, pundits and preachers, it has become the core frame of reference for the New Right. Growing belief that liberals are conspiring to undermine American culture and are contemptuous of ordinary Americans has generated paranoia and rage which has activated the New Right and enabled it to grow steadily as a political force over three decades. The fear and loathing of so-called elitists and their alleged plans to destroy American culture is far more important in motivating political action than particular issues like abortion or gay marriage. American right-wing populism’s four main characteristics are majoritarianism -- even in defiance of constitutional government, anti-elitism, intense nationalism, and anti-intellectualism.
Historically, populism has led to anti-Semitism and racism. Polish writer Adam Michnik suggested that populism always contains an element of envy and employs demagoguery. When mixed with intense nationalism, it can produce fascism. However, it is likely that right populism would lose some of its charm in the United States if it were to spawn overt and excessive authoritarianism and obvious anti-Semitism or racism. In the past, forms of populism in the United States have burned themselves out fairly quickly because they soon were manifesting more than a little bizarre and outrageous behavior. This latest incarnation has steadily grown over three decades, and zealous followers have been kept on somewhat acceptable paths by an army of radio talk show hosts, pundits, and very adept political managers. It has been no small accomplishment.
There seems no accurate way to determine how far and how fast right-wing populism can continue to spread across a population. Right wing populism is growing by leaps in bounds in Islamic countries, where conditions are more than ripe for its spread. Experience in the United States has demonstrated its steady growth, and the continual spread of evangelical Christianity seems to prepare its way for still more New Right growth. In the 1950s, people who held views similar to those of the New Right were considered part of the so-called lunatic fringe. By the 1980s, there were many more of these people, but their views were not considered mainstream. Today, the New Right dominates the nation’s most powerful political party and has reason to claim that its outlook is becoming that of mainstream America.
As late as 2002, Republicans continually played on the twin themes of a liberal conspiracy to damage America and their own victimization. In February 2002, Republicans who attended the annual meeting of the Conservative Action Conference were in high spirits. A poll in April 2002 demonstrated that 52% of voters believed George W. Bush was either a liberal or a moderate--- this despite a clearly conservative record on domestic issues except for a moderate approach to education in his first year and his reluctantly and almost stealthily signing the Campaign Reform Act in his second. Polls were showing that President Bush’s towering popularity was being translated into much greater public support for Republicans on a broad range of domestic issues. Most speakers agreed with Bush strategist Karl Rove that the voters would reward Republicans for Bush’s handling of the war. Polster Kellyanne Conway rejoiced,” George Bush has been more Reagan than Bush.” Even though the press was handling the president with kid gloves, some felt it necessary ritualistically to repeat GOP complaints about a biased press. Governor Marc Racicot lamented that it was so hard “to get a conservative message across” because to the heavy liberal bias of the media and because it requires a “higher level of incisive analysis.”
Despite their success in nearly destroying the Clinton presidency, others complained that Democrats are better political street fighters than Republicans. Although Republicans had good reason to expect to come out of the November elections with workable majorities in both houses of Congress, they seemed to need to continue to see themselves as a beleaguered, put-upon minority. It was as though some realized that these beliefs produce cohesiveness and empowerment. A few expressed some concern about the growth of federal power that the events of September 11 had brought about, but none blamed the Bush administration. On January 8, 2006, US Senator John Cornyn of Texas appeared on Meet the Press and managed to answer each question by calling liberals “outsiders.” He could not have deployed this winning GOP strategy more obviously.
Sherman has written African American Baseball: A brief History, which can be acquired from LuLu Publishing on line.http://www.lulu.com/browse/search.php?search_forum
Right-wing populism is very close to the fundamentalism that Jimmy Carter has identified as an ascendant force in society and religion. Andrew Sullivan spoke of the “fundamentalist psyche” which seeks absolute truths and all encompassing ideologies, leaves no room for discussion or debate, and stifles individual thought. Historically, movements for social change have often been instruments of status groups that felt an intense need to assert and legitimize their identities. Right wing populism, here in the form of the New Right, usually is fed by the bitterness and frustration of people facing status loss. These people do not want to be like people in the so-called "blue" states; they are simply intent upon expressing their identity as "decent" people and their anger over being mistreated because of that decency. Their status group anger has been framed in terms of a misguided notion of authenticity. They believe they are the real Americans as opposed to the phonies. The essential element is the populist belief that good decent people are being conspired against by some sort of elite. Left wing populists worry about an economic elite; right wing populists are concerned about what they think is a cultural elite. In many respects, right wing populism is a classical mass movement. Many of its members become true believers, who are dogmatic, intolerant, and often-angry believers in a soul-stirring ideology. They believe they have the absolute truth and often become fanatically devoted to their movement and its leaders. Membership in the movement rather than individual liberty is what is important to them. Perhaps this explains why these people have shown no concern about the rapid erosion of individual liberties since 9/11.
Economic stagnation and the breakdown of welfare capitalism in the United States disoriented millions of people, who sought answers and affirmation of their identities. One might expect them to drift into a political movement that clearly and directly addressed their situation. However, cultural arguments touch people more deeply, and they accepted an ideology that somewhat tangentially offered them some economic relief. Economic historian Alexander Cershenkron noted that even nations with long democratic traditions can become democracies without democrats. It is not so difficult to have a generous view of fellow citizens when living standards are rising. Economic growth makes the expansion of democracy possible. When people's economic prospects are declining, it is so much easier to be less inclusive, less trusting, and more inclined to accept views that place blame on a nation's woes on others.
The 2004 U.S election provides clear evidence of the extent to which anxiety rooted in economic concerns was displaced to cultural matters. Sixty one percent of white voters refused to support John Kerry. In 1991, Stanley Greenberg wrote that "unless there are some limits to the [ Democratic] Party's moral agnosticism," it will not win over the average family. In Europe, those who lost their jobs, faced great insecurity or had to accept less income and benefits are loosely called the "abandoned workers." In the United States, there is a very broad definition of middle class, and the New Right here is considered a middle class phenomenon. Among the recruits to right-wing populism were many Reagan Democrats, who faced great economic insecurity but also believed their cultural and religious values were under assault. What has emerged in the last thirty years is a self-conscious status group in the United States, the members of which would not object to the descriptive term "Middle America."
Over time, this vast status group became desperate and anxious, believing their social and economic positions were slipping or in danger of slipping. These middle class Americans developed a sub-culture or collective consciousness made up of orientations that guide their actions, particularly at election time. These orientations represent a form of conservative populism. Invariably, conservative populists identified their own fates with that of the nation, which also faced very grave threats. They, like their nation, were virtuous and deserved primacy among other people and nations. Their opponents were not just somewhat wrong; they were "evil."
Max Weber argued that there is a strong need for psychic comfort or a feeling of established worthiness. He thought that class-consciousness was essentially "psychological thoughts of men about their lives. " In this instance, we are not dealing with a class. Status groups also shaped by a very similar form of consciousness. In the late Twentieth Century, marketing and other techniques that make it possible to frame information and arguments in such a way as to shape the content of group consciousness. Weber believed the most compelling ideologies developed when a powerful set of ideas were taken up by the disadvantaged. That is why it was so important to persuade a vast slice of Middle Americans, regardless of their economic status, that they are somehow disadvantaged. Today, the party of the right-wing populists often controls every branch of the national government state governments. Nevertheless, the anger of the right-wing populists has not abated because they believe that the media, press, universities, and entertainment are still dominated by liberals who are committed to destroying American culture.
Inevitably, complaints about the opinions of these so-called elites evolved into efforts to censure and punish them. Actors who voiced unpopular opinions faced boycotts of their TV programs and films, and state legislators concocted ways to discipline unpopular professors. In Florida, Representative Dennis Baxley recently introduced a bill enabling college students to sue professors who strayed from “mainstream beliefs” and turned their classrooms into a “totalitarian niche.” His main example was claiming that evolution was a fact.
To some degree the belief that they are conspired against gives victims a tonic and confers upon them special identities. They cannot congratulate themselves on their political success or the fact that the press largely has been intimidated into soft-peddling or ignoring stories that would offend conservatives. Their radio and television shockmeisters continually remind them that they are not safe as long as there is a Hillary Clinton or Ted Kennedy in the Senate or as long as The New York Times or Washington Post remain in print. Cultural crusades have been powered by anxiety rooted in economic and status tensions. Concern over economic and status questions is redirected by clever conservative information specialists to cultural quests where the chances of success seem greater. At work is an historical process that somehow displaced feelings of deep economic anxieties, which reappeared as cultural resentments. The "somehow" means we cannot explain how or why it happened other than to note that these occurrences from Roman times forward could best be seen as examples of the irrational and unconscious in history.
What can be called psycho-cultural climates exist in history, as the great Lucien Febvre suggested, but the followers of Clio have made little progress in deciphering them. Intense stress and fear of losing control of one’s destiny generates the emotional energy that drives these psycho-historical situations. Some experience an intense need to belong, which adherence to the New Right satisfies. Economic anxiety occurred after a period of great abundance and what seemed to be the promise of continued affluence, or fulfillment of the American Dream. It occurred simultaneously with the emergence of postmodern culture, which brought in its wake ambiguity and contradiction in respect to values. A great majority of the same people experiencing economic anxiety was also troubled by new threats to their values. Perhaps some found the new mental freedom an invitation to inner anarchy, as Adorno noted half a century ago. In any event, they lacked the mental structures to address the cultural disorientation of the period and its potential threats in matters of conscience. Some probably found that their central cultural and religious beliefs were not as strong as they had though, and that craved a consistent and rigorous way of thinking. They were unprepared for a pluralistic culture and moral ambiguities. The crusade of the New Right seemed to resolve these inner conflicts and allowed them to cope with the anxieties of these times.
An event in March 2005, seemed to demonstrate that there may be limits to how far political capitalizing on popular cultural concerns can go. Congress rushed to facilitate moving of the case of Terri Schiavo, a woman in a persistent vegetative state, from the Florida Courts to the federal courts. The issue was reattaching her feeding tube. ABC News turned up a Republican internal memo that suggested that this was a political bonanza and offering talked points. Surprisingly, over 60% of the public rejected this blatant politicization of a family tragedy. This suggests that even some Evangelicals Protestants and traditional Catholics were not on board, and it might also suggest that growing right wing populism might become more difficult in future.
The behavior of the Right suggests that conservative leaders though the New Right must take advantage of situations like this to be sure that its followers remain sufficiently inflamed to assure the GOP election victories. The episode, and the GOP’s response to it, probably insured that the most reliable portion of its base would turn out in record numbers in 2006. Far from having overreached, the GOP deepened the commitment of evangelical voters to the party and planted the thought among the elderly that the GOP was there to prevent the ending of their life support. Reverend Louis Sheldon, founder of the Traditional Values Coalition, implied as much when he said, “That is what I see as the blessing of dear Terri’s life, “ providing” the conservative Christian movement in America” a cause with which to galvanize itself.
After the 2004 defeat of John Kerry, many concluded that it was how one spoke about cultural issues that made the difference, and that George W. Bush’s appeal to conservative religious people explained what had happened. For many on the Christian Right, it was not a matter of language. They were convinced that God had made Bush president of the United States Pat Robertson called Bush a “prophet,” and Ralph Reed said God picked Bush to become president. Bush consistently encouraged this belief and told a group of Amish in 2004 that “I trust God speaks through me.” In fact, a more powerful and complex force was at work in establishing Republican dominance in the United States-- right-wing populism as embodied in the New Right. At work was much more than many people responding to several hot button, values-laden issues. The Democrats were up against a complex, powerful social movement that took decades to build and a mind-set that will prove very difficult to change. True, the outlook of the Christian Right lends itself to right-wing populism, but they are two different although closely related phenomena. Today’s incarnation of Right-wing populism is equated with evangelical religion, but it could stand-alone as it frequently does in Europe. Right-wing populism is at the heart of the New Right’s identity and is largely a reaction against social change. It comes wrapped as ultra-Americanism and assertive nationalism, which got a great boost from the terrible events of September 11, 2001.
Failing to understand fully what they were up against, some Democrats slightly toned down their support for all forms of abortion, and many of them acquired a book on cognitive linguistics that correctly showed that Republicans were very skilled at recasting unpopular policies in favorable language and at "branding" Democrats as very undesirable political products. The reading will do them some good, but it is necessary for them to learn much more about right-wing populism. The main elements of populism are celebrating "the people" and battling elites. American right-wing populists believe an elitist coalition of big government bureaucrats, old money aristocrats, and the so-called “New Class” of academicians, intellectuals, media people, and technocrats dominate the country. The belief that the elite looks down on other Americans gives right-wing populism its great force which is expressed in anger, resentment, and determination to go to the polls and strike a blow against their enemies This view emerged as part of Richard Nixon’s effort to blame the lack of success in Vietnam on dissenters. It was a version of the old right wing “stab in the back” position, and was preceded by the claim that Eastern Europe was sold out at Yalta and that Truman liberals prevented MacArthur from winning in Korea.
The New Left of the 1960s unwittingly made it very easy to develop the New Class argument and apply it to liberals and Democrats, both of whom the New Left despised by the late sixties. Though deeply committed to creating a republic based on peace, love and brotherhood, the young radicals were unwilling to acknowledge the common humanity of those who opposed them. Indeed the New Left was extremely intolerant and made it clear that those who disagreed with them were greedy, stupid and evil. They seemed particularly angry with ordinary Americans because they did not respond to calls to leave factories and fall behind the banners of the New Left. Although the leadership of the Democratic Party feared and disliked the New Left, Republican publicists successfully identified liberals and Democrats with the New Left, calling them the New Class. Many ordinary Americans bought the argument and came to despise those who allegedly despised them. Occasionally in coming years Democratic intellectuals, who generally did not share the outlook of the New Left, foolishly expressed their befuddlement at why so many working class Americans identified so strongly with policies that all but guaranteed that prosperity would not trickle down to them. Their unguarded remarks revealed an ignorance of the emotional and spiritual needs of other Americans and were grist for the propaganda mill devoted to showing that all Democrats were elitists who had contempt for ordinary Americans. The New Class argument was a brilliant political ploy and would eventually play a big role in guaranteeing that Republicans would almost always control both houses of Congress after 1994.
White House speechwriter William Safire crafted Vice President Spiro Agnew’s attack on “an effete corps of impudent snobs, who characterize themselves as intellectuals,” but the word Agnew really had in mind was “fags.” It was as though Nixon had been present at the creation of politics; he had a genius for “ looking beneath social surfaces to see and exploit subterranean anxieties...” in the words of Rick Perlstein. Decades later, as the cultural war got much rougher, there was constant talk about the “gay agenda” of the left. The culture war argument became the main theme of right wing rhetoric. And it was never more powerful than when coupled with promoting a war. Kevin Baker was probably wrong when he suggested that “The whole purpose of the war in Iraq -- and the war on terrorism seems to have been to foment divisions and to win elections....” But he was right in noting that the cultural argument in a war context was so powerful that most Americans reluctantly accepted torturing foreigners and easily came to terms with the executive’s new claims to power, including spying on American citizens and even imprisoning a few without the protections of due process.
Christopher Lasch has suggested that the “New Class” argument has been persuasive because liberals, unable to persuade the masses to accept some democratic reforms have relied upon the courts to accomplish them--essentially using undemocratic means to achieve democratic ends. Moreover, they have lost the popular touch, labeling working class fears about programs to establish economic injustice “working-class authoritarianism.” In social science terms, what is occurring may be negative deference on the part of people who consider themselves in society’s periphery toward those who they think illegitimately occupy the center.
The so-called elitists are accused of trying to destroy American culture, and the New Right sees a nation divided by two starkly different cultures, one good and one evil. The term "liberal" has been redefined to mean people who are trying to overturn traditional American culture by supporting moral relativism, permissiveness, softness on crime, pornography, abortion, homosexuality, euthanasia, and stem cell research. For the New Right the word “liberal” meant this snooty and destructive cultural elite and its adherents. In addition, conservative Christian propagandists continually told Godly people that they were under siege by immoral secularists. People came to see themselves as a despised and put-down minority, and they yearned to even the score and demonstrate that they were worthy of respect. In creating the mental structures of this growing subculture, conservative publicists linked threats to traditional culture with policies that damaged free enterprise and weakened the U.S. position in the Cold War. All this contributed to a mindset in which scapegoating and acceptance of simplistic explanations for a variety of phenomena became common. Conservative spokesmen are able to blame almost all the moral evils they find on liberalism, usually because of its advocacy of permissiveness.
Yet the New Right blamed the corporate scandals of 2000-2001 on just a few people, thus precluding thorough efforts to prevent more abuses. This “bad apple theory” has been seen as a form of New Right permissiveness. The same “Bad Apple” theory has been used to explain the abuses of prisoners by American soldiers and private contractors. It was much easier to blame all manner of difficulties on a liberal cultural elite and to blame other problems on the poor below them, who were considered sinful and lazy and bent on living off others. Even worse, in the eyes of some, was the fact that many of the poor were black. The great danger is that their behavior would contaminate society and that other Americans would emulate them. The objects of their fear and loathing included homosexuals, feminists, immigrants, welfare mothers, and criminals. A certain amount of bullying of other unpopular minorities, such as homosexuals and Muslims, was also to be expected, but so far the New Right’s founders and leaders have managed to prevent the kinds of excesses that would permanently alarm middle class America.
Right wing populist worldview is a simplistic black and white picture that bears little resemblance to reality but, with the help of a small army of propagandists, pundits and preachers, it has become the core frame of reference for the New Right. Growing belief that liberals are conspiring to undermine American culture and are contemptuous of ordinary Americans has generated paranoia and rage which has activated the New Right and enabled it to grow steadily as a political force over three decades. The fear and loathing of so-called elitists and their alleged plans to destroy American culture is far more important in motivating political action than particular issues like abortion or gay marriage. American right-wing populism’s four main characteristics are majoritarianism -- even in defiance of constitutional government, anti-elitism, intense nationalism, and anti-intellectualism.
Historically, populism has led to anti-Semitism and racism. Polish writer Adam Michnik suggested that populism always contains an element of envy and employs demagoguery. When mixed with intense nationalism, it can produce fascism. However, it is likely that right populism would lose some of its charm in the United States if it were to spawn overt and excessive authoritarianism and obvious anti-Semitism or racism. In the past, forms of populism in the United States have burned themselves out fairly quickly because they soon were manifesting more than a little bizarre and outrageous behavior. This latest incarnation has steadily grown over three decades, and zealous followers have been kept on somewhat acceptable paths by an army of radio talk show hosts, pundits, and very adept political managers. It has been no small accomplishment.
There seems no accurate way to determine how far and how fast right-wing populism can continue to spread across a population. Right wing populism is growing by leaps in bounds in Islamic countries, where conditions are more than ripe for its spread. Experience in the United States has demonstrated its steady growth, and the continual spread of evangelical Christianity seems to prepare its way for still more New Right growth. In the 1950s, people who held views similar to those of the New Right were considered part of the so-called lunatic fringe. By the 1980s, there were many more of these people, but their views were not considered mainstream. Today, the New Right dominates the nation’s most powerful political party and has reason to claim that its outlook is becoming that of mainstream America.
As late as 2002, Republicans continually played on the twin themes of a liberal conspiracy to damage America and their own victimization. In February 2002, Republicans who attended the annual meeting of the Conservative Action Conference were in high spirits. A poll in April 2002 demonstrated that 52% of voters believed George W. Bush was either a liberal or a moderate--- this despite a clearly conservative record on domestic issues except for a moderate approach to education in his first year and his reluctantly and almost stealthily signing the Campaign Reform Act in his second. Polls were showing that President Bush’s towering popularity was being translated into much greater public support for Republicans on a broad range of domestic issues. Most speakers agreed with Bush strategist Karl Rove that the voters would reward Republicans for Bush’s handling of the war. Polster Kellyanne Conway rejoiced,” George Bush has been more Reagan than Bush.” Even though the press was handling the president with kid gloves, some felt it necessary ritualistically to repeat GOP complaints about a biased press. Governor Marc Racicot lamented that it was so hard “to get a conservative message across” because to the heavy liberal bias of the media and because it requires a “higher level of incisive analysis.”
Despite their success in nearly destroying the Clinton presidency, others complained that Democrats are better political street fighters than Republicans. Although Republicans had good reason to expect to come out of the November elections with workable majorities in both houses of Congress, they seemed to need to continue to see themselves as a beleaguered, put-upon minority. It was as though some realized that these beliefs produce cohesiveness and empowerment. A few expressed some concern about the growth of federal power that the events of September 11 had brought about, but none blamed the Bush administration. On January 8, 2006, US Senator John Cornyn of Texas appeared on Meet the Press and managed to answer each question by calling liberals “outsiders.” He could not have deployed this winning GOP strategy more obviously.
Sherman has written African American Baseball: A brief History, which can be acquired from LuLu Publishing on line.http://www.lulu.com/browse/search.php?search_forum
Monday, February 18, 2008
The Enron Scandal: Part IV, the Cheney Energy Plan
The Cheney Energy Plan
William Gillespie, former Bush campaign aid was paid $525,000 to lobby the Bush administration to support ENRON-backed energy policies. Gillespie was in touch with energy task force staffers and the Energy Department. He also played a major role in getting repeal of the Alternative Minimum Tax into the Economic Stimulus Bill that passed the House of Representatives. That measure also carried a provision permitting firms to immediately take outstanding tax credits. In the case of Enron, that amounts to $254 million.
The Bush energy plan was developed in secret by Vice President Cheney and passed in 2005 in proceedings often clouded in secrecy. There were efforts to open the task force records, but they were successfully blocked in the courts. The Bush administration acknowledged that Vice President met with Enron executives six times about the proceedings of his energy task force. More complete information about its proceedings has not yet become available. It is known, however, that representatives of the Union of Concerned Scientists and the Natural Resources Defense Council, and as well as Carl Pope, director of the Sierra Club, were given an audience with the vice president only after the details of the energy plan had been made public. The deliberations of the energy task force resulted in quick approval for controversial of the pebble-bed nuclear reactor of Exelon Corporation. The firm, which has made large contributions to the Republican Party, insists that the design will provide safer cheap power in abundance, but environmentalists dispute these claims. ( )
The Bush-Cheney energy plan called for a 21 billion dollar subsidy for the energy industry. Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham played an important part in formulating it. His department spokesman admitted that Abraham had met with thirty six energy executives while formulating the plan. When the initial documents on the planning process were finally released, it became clear that me met with 109 energy executives and that he had no discussions with environmentalists or representatives of consumer groups. The firms they represented had given $16.6 million to the GOP since 1999 and about a third that much to the Democrats. A number of the plan’s proposals were positive responses to requests by energy giant Enron. One of them called for the repeal of the Public Holding Company Act of 1935, which was an obstacle to the firm’s acquisitions plans.( ) Threatened by the possibility of a court order, the Energy Task Force released 11,000 of 25,000 relevant pages of documents in late March. The National Resources Defense Council, who had sued to see the documents, stated that the documents were marked by many deletions but that it was still clear that the energy plan was essentially the handiwork of the energy companies. ( )
The energy plan mirrored policies advocated by Enron. It called for 17 policies advocated by Enron. A section was even added calling for increased energy production in India. Enron and the Indian government were involved in a dispute over Enron’s $2.9 billion investment in a Dabhol, Indian plant. Comparing drafts of the energy play, Congressman Henry Waxman discovered that section calling for increased energy production in India was a last minute addition, presumably to help Enron. The General Accounting Office went to court in late January 2002 to compel the Vice President to reveal who were the members of his energy task force. This was the first time in its 81 year history that the GAO had to sue the White House. It was public knowledge that he met with Enron officials at least six times about matters before the task force. Federal district Judge John D. Bates, a G.W. Bush appointee, was selected to preside over the case. He had been Kenneth Starr’s deputy in the Whitewater probe. In December, 2002, he upheld the Bush-Cheney position. However, the Natural Resources Defense Council and Judicial Watch also brought suite, and the likelihood that this litigation would be successful prompted administration to begin to release small amounts of information in late March. The case ultimately wound up in the court of Judge Emmet Sullivan who set and extended a deadline for releasing documents. Several days before Bates rendered his decision, a federal appeals court extended indefinitely the deadline for releasing the documents. After the GOP took control of both chambers. The decision not to continue the litigation was made with the advice of the Congressional leadership. Representative Henry Waxman of California saw it as an important step away from open government.( )
Sherman has written African American Baseball: A brief History, which can be acquired from LuLu Publishing on line.
William Gillespie, former Bush campaign aid was paid $525,000 to lobby the Bush administration to support ENRON-backed energy policies. Gillespie was in touch with energy task force staffers and the Energy Department. He also played a major role in getting repeal of the Alternative Minimum Tax into the Economic Stimulus Bill that passed the House of Representatives. That measure also carried a provision permitting firms to immediately take outstanding tax credits. In the case of Enron, that amounts to $254 million.
The Bush energy plan was developed in secret by Vice President Cheney and passed in 2005 in proceedings often clouded in secrecy. There were efforts to open the task force records, but they were successfully blocked in the courts. The Bush administration acknowledged that Vice President met with Enron executives six times about the proceedings of his energy task force. More complete information about its proceedings has not yet become available. It is known, however, that representatives of the Union of Concerned Scientists and the Natural Resources Defense Council, and as well as Carl Pope, director of the Sierra Club, were given an audience with the vice president only after the details of the energy plan had been made public. The deliberations of the energy task force resulted in quick approval for controversial of the pebble-bed nuclear reactor of Exelon Corporation. The firm, which has made large contributions to the Republican Party, insists that the design will provide safer cheap power in abundance, but environmentalists dispute these claims. ( )
The Bush-Cheney energy plan called for a 21 billion dollar subsidy for the energy industry. Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham played an important part in formulating it. His department spokesman admitted that Abraham had met with thirty six energy executives while formulating the plan. When the initial documents on the planning process were finally released, it became clear that me met with 109 energy executives and that he had no discussions with environmentalists or representatives of consumer groups. The firms they represented had given $16.6 million to the GOP since 1999 and about a third that much to the Democrats. A number of the plan’s proposals were positive responses to requests by energy giant Enron. One of them called for the repeal of the Public Holding Company Act of 1935, which was an obstacle to the firm’s acquisitions plans.( ) Threatened by the possibility of a court order, the Energy Task Force released 11,000 of 25,000 relevant pages of documents in late March. The National Resources Defense Council, who had sued to see the documents, stated that the documents were marked by many deletions but that it was still clear that the energy plan was essentially the handiwork of the energy companies. ( )
The energy plan mirrored policies advocated by Enron. It called for 17 policies advocated by Enron. A section was even added calling for increased energy production in India. Enron and the Indian government were involved in a dispute over Enron’s $2.9 billion investment in a Dabhol, Indian plant. Comparing drafts of the energy play, Congressman Henry Waxman discovered that section calling for increased energy production in India was a last minute addition, presumably to help Enron. The General Accounting Office went to court in late January 2002 to compel the Vice President to reveal who were the members of his energy task force. This was the first time in its 81 year history that the GAO had to sue the White House. It was public knowledge that he met with Enron officials at least six times about matters before the task force. Federal district Judge John D. Bates, a G.W. Bush appointee, was selected to preside over the case. He had been Kenneth Starr’s deputy in the Whitewater probe. In December, 2002, he upheld the Bush-Cheney position. However, the Natural Resources Defense Council and Judicial Watch also brought suite, and the likelihood that this litigation would be successful prompted administration to begin to release small amounts of information in late March. The case ultimately wound up in the court of Judge Emmet Sullivan who set and extended a deadline for releasing documents. Several days before Bates rendered his decision, a federal appeals court extended indefinitely the deadline for releasing the documents. After the GOP took control of both chambers. The decision not to continue the litigation was made with the advice of the Congressional leadership. Representative Henry Waxman of California saw it as an important step away from open government.( )
Sherman has written African American Baseball: A brief History, which can be acquired from LuLu Publishing on line.
Sunday, October 22, 2006
The Child Abduction-Child Sex Trail Goes Cold
So many gaps, contradictions, and disinformation color reports about government sponsored child abduction and abuse, that whatever the real story is, we will probably never know it. We are all conditioned to believe that these sorts of things simply could not happen. Even if there were twice as much partial information available, it would be hard to believe government could be involved, and the story would still be so incomplete that it would be consigned to speculation. According to Nobel laureate, many people–probably a majority– are wired emotionally in such a way that they cannot accept very much bad news about their leaders or society. These folks can rest easy, and the people he calls “realists” will continue to be uneasy because there is more than enough evidence to prompt worry.
A number of sources indicate that Roy Cohn operated a prostitution as early as the fifties and that CIA agent Edwin Wilson was connected with it so that mind control experiments could be carried out by permitting subjects to act out in real life their sexual fantasies. There is a little good information linking the 1950s operation to that of the seventies, which involved both these men. There is some information about a CIA sexual blackmail operation in the 1960s.
Former agent Frank Terpil wrote about agent Ed Wilson’s role in the blackmail operation of the seventies and added that photographs were taken by the agency’s Technical Services Division. The service was used to blackmail members of both parties as well as high government and military officials. Child sex was available, and prominent names were associated with the sex ring, including a future vice president and a very sanctimonious member of the Senate Judiciary Committee. Some report that Wilson did not operate the ring in the eighties; it passed to a higher official at Langley. There is only a little information on where the children were obtained. One good source say some came from Covenant House, back in the days when it was operated by a priest who was later removed for sexual abuse.
The names of the people allegedly operating government-tied sex rings are always the same and they are also associated with various Iran /Contra operations and various activities ast the Capizon Indian Reservation in Indo, California. This suggest that only a small minority of government agents are tied to the various illegal activities associated with the CIA, NSA, and FBI since the late seventies. This is comforting in a sense, but it also confirms the claim that a small network of right-wing intelligence people inside and outside the government called “The Enterprise” took shape in the late seventies and has been at work ever since. It emerged in opposition to Jimmy Carter but became an instrument of official policy in the Reagan-Bush,Srs. years. Its status now is unknown. When Bill Clinton said there was “ a government within a government” that he could not control, he may have had this in mind.
There are reports of children being moved through airstrips at Sheridan, Oregon, China Lake, California, and Santa Rosa, California. The latter airstrip sees the most traffic and is operated by FEMA. Of course, that airstrip is near Bohemian Grove, where child sex abuse is alleged to have occurred.
The name that crops up with greatest frequency is that of a man in Division Five of the FBI, who also worked for the CIA. He ran weapons in Iran Contra and did black bag jobs for J. Edgar Hoover. He admitted to Stewart Webb that he was involved in molesting children and said he could not leave black operations until George Herbert Walker Bush permitted it. Later in life in married a woman in the Church of Satan. Now he has infiltrated the ranks of people investigation child abuse and survivors organizations.
There are several survivors’ organizations that are obviously infiltrated by agents of the perpetrators and some people who probably never experienced child abuse. All the survivors claim they were snatched by government agents. They also say they were subjected to various experiments and became intelligence operatives and sex slaves. Some tell some unbelievable stories. Maybe they were preprogrammed to provide this disinformation to make all their claims seem ridiculous. On the other hand, their stories have many commonalities regarding techniques, people, places, and the like.
A number of sources indicate that Roy Cohn operated a prostitution as early as the fifties and that CIA agent Edwin Wilson was connected with it so that mind control experiments could be carried out by permitting subjects to act out in real life their sexual fantasies. There is a little good information linking the 1950s operation to that of the seventies, which involved both these men. There is some information about a CIA sexual blackmail operation in the 1960s.
Former agent Frank Terpil wrote about agent Ed Wilson’s role in the blackmail operation of the seventies and added that photographs were taken by the agency’s Technical Services Division. The service was used to blackmail members of both parties as well as high government and military officials. Child sex was available, and prominent names were associated with the sex ring, including a future vice president and a very sanctimonious member of the Senate Judiciary Committee. Some report that Wilson did not operate the ring in the eighties; it passed to a higher official at Langley. There is only a little information on where the children were obtained. One good source say some came from Covenant House, back in the days when it was operated by a priest who was later removed for sexual abuse.
The names of the people allegedly operating government-tied sex rings are always the same and they are also associated with various Iran /Contra operations and various activities ast the Capizon Indian Reservation in Indo, California. This suggest that only a small minority of government agents are tied to the various illegal activities associated with the CIA, NSA, and FBI since the late seventies. This is comforting in a sense, but it also confirms the claim that a small network of right-wing intelligence people inside and outside the government called “The Enterprise” took shape in the late seventies and has been at work ever since. It emerged in opposition to Jimmy Carter but became an instrument of official policy in the Reagan-Bush,Srs. years. Its status now is unknown. When Bill Clinton said there was “ a government within a government” that he could not control, he may have had this in mind.
There are reports of children being moved through airstrips at Sheridan, Oregon, China Lake, California, and Santa Rosa, California. The latter airstrip sees the most traffic and is operated by FEMA. Of course, that airstrip is near Bohemian Grove, where child sex abuse is alleged to have occurred.
The name that crops up with greatest frequency is that of a man in Division Five of the FBI, who also worked for the CIA. He ran weapons in Iran Contra and did black bag jobs for J. Edgar Hoover. He admitted to Stewart Webb that he was involved in molesting children and said he could not leave black operations until George Herbert Walker Bush permitted it. Later in life in married a woman in the Church of Satan. Now he has infiltrated the ranks of people investigation child abuse and survivors organizations.
There are several survivors’ organizations that are obviously infiltrated by agents of the perpetrators and some people who probably never experienced child abuse. All the survivors claim they were snatched by government agents. They also say they were subjected to various experiments and became intelligence operatives and sex slaves. Some tell some unbelievable stories. Maybe they were preprogrammed to provide this disinformation to make all their claims seem ridiculous. On the other hand, their stories have many commonalities regarding techniques, people, places, and the like.
Wednesday, October 11, 2006
Washington Sex Ring Stories Virtually Ignored
Alternative news reporter Tom Flocco writes that since 2000 Jack Abramoff has operated a sex ring in the Sheraton and Ritz Carlton hotels in Washington for influential Republicans. The sexual services of children, bisexuals, homosexuals, lesbians, and others were available for White House and Congressional Republicans as well as journalists. Ranking federal officials, military brass, and media hosts also used the service.
For some time, sex with children centered at Hilton because it had very secure areras to hide vehicles and move children--sometimes drugged--through hallways without the possibility of video surveillance. After employees became suspicious, the child sex operation was moved.
Some people who are incapable of mature sexual relationships prefer sex with children. But in other cases, it seems to be a mixture of sexual attraction and what has been called “libido dominandi.” People who are greatly attracted to accumulating power and wealth find sex with children particularly satisfying because it is easier to exercise complete power over children. To a degree it is a matter of “power tends to corrupt.”
Tom Hennigan, another investigator, claims that federal agents are leaking information about this ring that turned up in the Abramoff investigation and was suppressed. They claim there are photographs of prominent people in compromising positions. He adds that an important Senate leader and possible presidential candidate has visited these parties and is a friend of Victor Ashe, George W. Bush's college roomate. According to him, Jeff Gannon, introduced one leading Republican journalist as well as a ranking British politician to these sex parties.
There was little connection to the Mark Foley scandal except that what seemed to be Abramoff money was channelled to one of the ex-page's families. Another investigative reporter claims that Foley and Jeff Gannon recruited important people for the sex ring.
This information suggests that the Abramoff sex parties were separate from those sponsored by two San Diego Republicans at two other hotels. There was no evidence that those two men offered sex with children. That scandal-- a year old, called Hookergate" and now almost forgotten--involved about 15 Republicans from the House Appropriations Committee, who had access to sex in return for their votes. Two high-ranking figures from the CIA also attended these parties and have since resigned.
All this is reminescent of two sex rings in the 1980s that were mostly patronized by Republicans, intelligence people, and foreign dignitaries. Information about these rings is now appearing on numerous places on the internet. As in the case of the alleged Abramoff ring, children were involved as well as photographs.
Count on it. The alleged Abramoff sex ring will not become national news.
For some time, sex with children centered at Hilton because it had very secure areras to hide vehicles and move children--sometimes drugged--through hallways without the possibility of video surveillance. After employees became suspicious, the child sex operation was moved.
Some people who are incapable of mature sexual relationships prefer sex with children. But in other cases, it seems to be a mixture of sexual attraction and what has been called “libido dominandi.” People who are greatly attracted to accumulating power and wealth find sex with children particularly satisfying because it is easier to exercise complete power over children. To a degree it is a matter of “power tends to corrupt.”
Tom Hennigan, another investigator, claims that federal agents are leaking information about this ring that turned up in the Abramoff investigation and was suppressed. They claim there are photographs of prominent people in compromising positions. He adds that an important Senate leader and possible presidential candidate has visited these parties and is a friend of Victor Ashe, George W. Bush's college roomate. According to him, Jeff Gannon, introduced one leading Republican journalist as well as a ranking British politician to these sex parties.
There was little connection to the Mark Foley scandal except that what seemed to be Abramoff money was channelled to one of the ex-page's families. Another investigative reporter claims that Foley and Jeff Gannon recruited important people for the sex ring.
This information suggests that the Abramoff sex parties were separate from those sponsored by two San Diego Republicans at two other hotels. There was no evidence that those two men offered sex with children. That scandal-- a year old, called Hookergate" and now almost forgotten--involved about 15 Republicans from the House Appropriations Committee, who had access to sex in return for their votes. Two high-ranking figures from the CIA also attended these parties and have since resigned.
All this is reminescent of two sex rings in the 1980s that were mostly patronized by Republicans, intelligence people, and foreign dignitaries. Information about these rings is now appearing on numerous places on the internet. As in the case of the alleged Abramoff ring, children were involved as well as photographs.
Count on it. The alleged Abramoff sex ring will not become national news.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)