Sunday Classics preview: En route to more of our musical storms, we encounter perhaps the most eerily wonderful music I know

Just because you live in a cave in a forest doesn't mean you don't have big problems. This is strange and wonderful music that speaks of an all-but-insoluble one.


by Ken

I thought we could wrap up our series on musical storms this week, but as often happens, the musical materials refused to cooperate, and instead insisted on having things their way.

I thought we could get away with a fly-by of several operatic storms that rage at the start of acts (or even of an opera) and then subside, allowing the action to proceed without further weather impediment. And then we could move on to the business of a couple of violent storms that are totally integrated into scenes of their operas. But those act-opening storms, as I focused on them, refused to be dismissed so airily, and so I decided to allow them a post of their own.

Which provided an opportunity in tonight's preview to focus on the music we've just heard, which is the very first thing we hear in one of the operas in which a later act begins with one of this week's storms. And frankly I'm delighted, because not only is this the most unexpectedly arresting musical curtain-raiser I know, it's music that burrows as deep into at least my imagination as any music I know, thanks to the combination of its utterly individual musical ideas and the brilliantly original orchestral setting.

For those who don't recognize it, I'll identify it in a moment, and we're going to hear it again, and again, as well as some more music from this opera, which I think is one of the less-loved operas in the standard repertory.


FOR MORE OF THIS STRANGE AND WONDERFUL MUSIC, CLICK HERE

OUR MUSICAL STORMS TO DATE

Preview: Tonight's musical selections should give you a good idea of Sunday's subject (January 13)
The thunderstorm movement from Beethoven's Pastoral Symphony and Otello's "Esultate" from Verdi's Otello

Stormy weather, part 1 (January 15)
Verdi's Otello, Beethoven's Pastoral Symphony, and Berlioz's Les Troyens

Preview: Given the resources at his disposal, Vivaldi's musical storms may be the most remarkable of all (January 27)
The three storm movements from Vivaldi's Four Seasons

With the full symphony orchestra you can create a heckuva storm (aka: Musical storms, part 2) (January 29)
Beethoven's Pastoral Symphony (again), Berlioz's Symphonie fantastique, Grofé's Grand Canyon Suite, Johann Strauss II's Amid Thunder and Lightning polka, Richard Strauss's Alpine Symphony, Grieg's Peer Gynt incidental music, Britten's Peter Grimes, and Rossini's Barber of Seville

Preview: En route to more of our musical storms, we encounter perhaps the most eerily wonderful music I know (February 3)

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Just 'cause you can't read without moving your lips doesn't mean you aren't able to extract a ringing endorsement of capitalism from the Bible

by Ken

And the best thing is, when you find it, the Wall Street Journal will print your name and give you money! How sweet is that? The system works!

I'm guessing this Rabbi Aryeh Spero is the kind of prince whose life work has been spreading anti-Semitism. No, not fighting anti-Semitism, spreading it. I mean, who wouldn't hate a miserable lying sack of doody like this? Your average street-level sex worker, by comparison, is at least providing a useful service, especially by comparison with a wackadoodle clergywhore who interprets his calling from God as a mandate to provide blowjobs for deep-pocketed economic predators.

I almost wrote "deep-pocketed economic predators who are the object of their God's wrath," and officially this is probably true, since not many religions can afford to be caught fronting for the avatars of greed and selfishness. The reality, though, is that it's the grandees of greed who keep nearly all religions going, and in more cases than note provide their reason for being -- they're just not supposed to talk about that.

But I haven't told you yet what I'm talking about. OK, folks, it's time for you to meet the good rabbi, courtesy of Catherine Rampell yesterday on the NYT's Economix blog.

February 2, 2012, 1:40 PM
What Else Does the Bible Teach About Capitalism?

By CATHERINE RAMPELL

Earlier this week, The Wall Street Journal published an opinion article by Rabbi Aryeh Spero titled “What the Bible Teaches About Capitalism,” which argued that Americans should laud Mitt Romney’s private equity career.

An outline of his reasoning: The United States was founded upon “the Judeo-Christian ethos,” and within that ethos “resides a ringing endorsement of capitalism as a moral endeavor.”

The Bible and related Judaic-Christian teaching are pro-capitalist, he argues, because God’s people are told to work and encouraged to be creative (which could be read as entrepreneurial), and because the Tenth Commandment forbids envy (including envy of the 1 percent). Additionally, Rabbi Spero notes, “King Solomon’s thriving kingdom crashed once his son decided to impose onerous taxes.”

Whatever capitalism’s merits, I’m not sure hanging its moral legitimacy on Jewish Scripture is such a solid plan. The Holy Book also conveys plenty of ideas that are anti-capitalist and anti-free-market.

Deuteronomy 23:19, for example, orders: “Do not charge your brother interest, whether on money or food or anything else that may earn interest.” “Foreigners” can be charged interest, however. Exactly who counts as a foreigner has fueled centuries of debate, and at least one Shakespearean play. (That play, “The Merchant of Venice” was home to the line “The devil can cite Scripture for his purpose,” by the way.)

Additionally, a biblical prohibition against “taking advantage” of the person on the other side of a sale was interpreted by ancient rabbis to mean that sellers were permitted a profit margin that was no greater than one-sixth of a good’s selling price. Any markup beyond that had to be returned to the buyer.

That restriction might not go over very well in private equity circles.

The one thing we can be grateful for is that the rabbi, being a rabbi, isn't pretending to be speaking in the name of Jesus, who has suffered the cosmic indignity of having millions of sociopathic Crap Christian power-mongers pretending to be speaking in his name when in fact they devote all their energies to making a mockery of everything he believed and preached.

Of course the right-wing Crap Christians have been working overtime on a modern mistranslation of the Bible to reinvent Jesus as One of Their Own, a really macho monger of war and hate. It's a piece of cake, actually, as long as you rewrite everything the poor guy is reputed ever to have said or done. Luckiily, modern-day right-wingers believe they were born with a divine mandate to lie their putrid guts out.

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Identity Politics-- Yuck

It drives me crazy when so-called "progressive" organizations endorse someone because of their membership in an "identity group" rather than because of their policies. No one is worse than EMILY's List. They routinely endorse corrupt, conservative women over progressive men (or even over progressive women). It's why EMILY's List has gone from being one of the most trusted names in politics to just a clownish distaff appendage of the DCCC. At the same time, the need to get more and better women leaders into positions of power is absolutely crucial-- not women corporatists who are as bad as men but women whose perspective leads them to work tenaciously for working families and progressives values. This is a poster Darcy Burner, a progressive House candidate in Washington state, put together yesterday for a friend. It's a unique perspective-- held by about 51% of the population:


The Republican Party and their reactionary allies among Blue Dogs and other conservative Democrats have been inexorably chipping away at women's rights. It's a mania, a sickness, among conservatives. And it's part of the reason why the whole idea of a need for more women elected officials resonates so strongly. A few weeks ago I invited Kelda Helen Roys to write a guest post. I only wish my own district-- which is even bluer than WI-2, 87% of our votes going for Obama in 2008-- had the kind of choice voters in WI-2 have between Kelda and Mark Pocan, another absolutely outstanding progressive stalwart with a long record that shows what an amazing congressmember he would be. Over half the population of the country consists of women but women make up less than 20% of the House of Representatives. Shocking, isn't it? Or do you think it doesn't matter. What follows are from a letter Kelda sent Wisconsin voters this week:

As you may have heard, Susan G. Komen has signed onto the radical right's anti-woman agenda, choosing to defund Planned Parenthood's lifesaving breast cancer screening programs across the country. This move comes after the recent hiring of a Sarah Palin-endorsed, anti-gay, anti-choice former Georgia gubernatorial candidate to serve as Komen's Senior VP of Public Policy.

I have been fighting right-wing assaults on women's health my entire career. As the former executive director of a statewide reproductive rights organization, I will be one of the only women in Congress with a background in women's health. Whether it is fighting the attacks on the Healthy Youth Act, speaking out against the "personhood" amendment, or calling out anti-science policies in Washington, I have been on the front lines defending women's health and privacy from anti-choice forces.

But now I need your help. I am running for Congress because I believe that it is not enough to simply vote pro-choice. To counter these continuous assaults on women's health, we must send a strong advocate who won't just vote the right way, but will help lead the movement to forcefully confront all attacks on women's health.

...I am the only candidate in this race even discussing these issues, and I give you my promise that I will be the strongest advocate for choice in Washington.

I have no doubt that Mark Pocan will vote the right way on women's issues every single time. He's proven that by his public service. So how do you pick between these two? I wish we were so lucky in my district.

So What's Going To Happen Tomorrow In Nevada?

I somehow don't think Trump's on-again, off-again endorsement of Mitt Romney will make any difference to anyone (especially not in light of today's spectacular jobs growth numbers, a success for Obama in the face of relentless and vicious Republican obstructionism from teh first day of hs term)-- although there was a recent Pew survey showing that an endorsement from the clownish Donald would make people less likely to vote for a candidate. Still, it is amazing that Trump gave his nod to Romney, who he loathes, especially after Romney wrecked his shot at a debate circus in November. (And speaking of clowns, Nevada deranged teabagger queen Sharron Angle's endorsement of Santorum isn't going to make any difference to anyone either.) So what can we expect tomorrow in Nevada? According to a brand new poll in the Las Vegas Review-Journal, it's going to be a Romney landslide, as close to 50% as he should expect anywhere outside of Utah.

A new poll shows Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney headed for a blowout victory Saturday in Nevada's GOP caucuses.

Romney wins support from 45 percent of Nevada Republicans who said they plan to participate in the caucuses, the survey commissioned by the Las Vegas Review-Journal and 8NewsNow said.

Newt Gingrich is Romney's closest threat with 25 percent backing, thanks in large part to Republicans who say they "strongly support" the tea party movement.

Rick Santorum edges out Ron Paul, 11 percent to 9 percent, although the Texas congressman often outperforms polls by turning out his loyal backers in caucus contests, where party members pick their favorites. Paul is deeply organized here. Santorum, a former senator from Pennsylvania, is not well-known in Nevada and only recently hired staff and opened an office to compete here.

...At the core of Romney's strength in Nevada is support from fellow Mormons. The survey showed 85.5 percent of members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints said they planned to caucus for Romney compared with single-digit LDS support for the other candidates. Mormons made up one-quarter of GOP caucus-goers in 2008, although they are about 7 percent of the state population.

Ahhh... the Mormons. It's practically been a tenet of their faith ever since founder Joseph Smith was assassinated while he was running for president that someday the Mormons would seize the White House and transform America. Mormons think Romney (from their version of an aristocratic Mormon lineage) is the one to make that dream come true and, regardless of ideological differences, they're doing everything they can for him-- from knocking on doors-- they're used to that-- to donating huge amounts of cash.

Just 7.5 percent of Silver State residents are Mormon, but when it comes to Saturday’s caucuses, Mormons will likely constitute a significant chunk of voters. In 2008, about a quarter of Republican caucus voters were Mormon.

“Not only will they vote for Romney,” says Nevada GOP strategist Robert Uithoven of the state’s Mormons, “but they always turn out. No matter what election, no matter who’s on the ballot, they are as reliable voters as you can find in Nevada.”

“Typically political strategists in this state try to zero in on where the LDS vote is going to go, because they are such reliable voters,” Uithoven adds, comparing it with how the senior vote is tracked closely in many states because seniors are such reliable voters.

For Romney, Mormons are a demographic group he can almost entirely capture. Last cycle, according to exit polls, 94 percent of Mormon GOP voters backed Romney. Silver State politicos anticipate that Romney will likely perform about as well this year with Mormon voters.

“Most of them are going to see this as an opportunity to get an LDS [member] as the nominee, if not the president,” says David Damore, a political-science professor at University of Nevada–Las Vegas. “And that’s going to outweigh anything else.”

For Gingrich, Paul, and Santorum, Nevada thus proves a uniquely difficult state to win. It’s theoretically possible to lose the Mormon vote and win the state, but it would require finding a significant bloc of support among the three quarters of voters that aren’t Mormon. On Monday, Gingrich was blunt about the difficulties of winning the state, saying, “Nevada’s tricky because of the Mormon influence, but we have a shot at it.”

...[Connor] Boyack concedes that it can be tough to persuade Mormons to look at a candidate besides Romney.

“I do know that many people base their support for Mitt Romney almost entirely on the fact that he’s a Mormon,” he says, “and it would be great to have a member of our faith in the White House, just as black people did with Obama.”

Romney and his Mormon backers should remember, though, that he isn't the first right-wing elitist to brag about not caring for the poor. He joins the proud ranks of Caligula, Charles I, Louis XVI, Marie Antoinette, Nicholas II, Benito Mussolini, Saddam Hussein, Muammar Gaddafi...

Your DCCC-- Working Furiously To Elect More Republicans In Florida

Young woman flanked by 2 wealthy Republicans with political ambitions

In 2006 Blue America was supporting school teacher and Florida union and Democratic activist Dave Lutrin in the 16th CD against Republican incumbent Mark Foley. The district takes in St Lucie, Palm Beach, Martin, Charlotte, Highlands and some smaller counties. When Lutrin started running, no one thought he had a chance to beat Foley, a guy who was a fairly well-known closet case and hypocrite but who had managed to pull the wool over the eyes of his local Republican supporters year after year. Then DCCC chairman Rahm Emanuel became privy to the fact that Foley was molesting underage congressional pages and was even caught, drunk, trying to break into the boy pages dormitory. The inept congressman who was supposed to be in charge of protecting the pages, pious baloney salesman John Shimkus (R-IL) told Foley not to do it again. Emanuel, instead of alerting the police, as was his legal responsibility, decided to use the information strategically. He sat on it and waited for the right time in the election cycle to leak it. Meanwhile, he recruited a rich Republican, Tim Mahoney, got him to switch his voter registration to Team Blue and set about-- with the help of Steny Hoyer-- to drive Lutrin out of the race. They dried up his sources of contributions and endorsements, wrecking his faith in his own party-- tools the DCCC commonly uses against progressives and grassroots followers.

Long story short: Foley resigned in disgrace but too late (thanks to Emanuel's impeccable timing) to get his name off the ballot, Mahoney won-- by less than 4,000 votes (49-48%)-- went on to serve in Congress as a Blue Dog who voted with the GOP on almost all the important issues and was then caught up in his own sex scandal, losing the seat in a landslide to plutocratic nitwit Tom Rooney after one miserable term (and in an otherwise banner year for House Democrats).

Fast-forward to 2011 and Dave Lutrin decides to get into the race for the seat in his district again. The DCCC-- now chaired by another corrupt conservative in the Emanuel mold, Steve Israel-- ignores him. Like Rahm (and Romney), Israel doesn't think middle class union members should be running for Congress, just self-funders and people with rolodexes filled with the names of wealthy friends and associates. Ignoring is one thing but then something very strange happened, a chain of events that is weird even for Florida GOP politics.

Republican Rep. Allen West will endorse former state lawmaker Adam Hasner, who is announcing that he'll drop his U.S. Senate bid and run for the seat West is leaving. West plans to run in a friendlier Palm Beach County-based congressional seat. 

The endorsement from the Tea Party-backed West comes in the midst a political scramble for Florida's congressional seats. Thanks to redistricting, sitting lawmakers are trying to find friendly home districts-- and so are potential challengers. 

A chain reaction of announcements culminated Tuesday when Republican U.S. Rep. Tom Rooney, who currently represents Martin, St. Lucie and Palm Beach Counties, announced he’d run in a new proposed congressional district that stretches from Martin to Charlotte County.

West then said he’d run in Rooney’s old seat, opening up a slot for a Republican in West’s District 22 seat, which straddles Palm Beach and Broward counties.

That allows Adam Hasner to exit the U.S. Senate race and run for West’s old seat. Hasner, who was struggling in a five-way Republican Senate race, would be running in a congressional seat that mirrors his old Delray-Beach-based state legislative district.

The Miami Herald doesn't have the sequence of events exactly right but the effect is the same. And they left off one other Republican move. The DCCC has another Mahoney-type Republican, rich kid Patrick Murphy, who was trying to run in the 22nd, but getting no traction whatsoever against the real Democrat in that race, Lois Frankel. So the DCCC wants Murphy, who was as recently as last year not just voting for Republicans but donating money to them (including to Mitt Romney), as well as to Steve Israel, to run against West in the 16th. It's an exact replay of what happened in 2006: the DCCC is looking to muscle out a real Democrat-- Dave Lutrin-- to shoehorn in a rich GOP self-funder willing to don a blue tee-shirt for the campaign. It makes my stomach turn, but that's your DCCC. Dave Lutrin can use some help to fight off the GOP interloper. Please consider giving him what you can here.

How could the Democrats not defeat Allen West in November? Just leave it to Steve Israel.

How Sensible Regulations Can Stop The One Percent... From Poisoning Every Person In Berkeley

Is there a government regulation that prevents a congressman from paying for his wife's plastic surgery out of his campaign funds?

Patricia McKeon, a 70 year old strict Mormon grandma and wife of House Armed Services Committee chairman, Buck McKeon, is running for the California Assembly because, she told a local newspaper, the "government was too intrusive in people’s lives." That's a very common theme among right-wing politicians, and would-be politicians, coast to coast, almost all of whom insist that the government vigorously interfere with, among other things, women's choice, LGBT equality, and marijuana use. At least conservatives no longer demand the government return runaway slaves to their rightful owners. Conservative Republicans, like the McKeons, favor every kind of authoritarian intrusion into people's lives but oppose any and all regulation that protects the environment, consumers or workers. They speak, like all Republicans, for the one percent and for corporate America.

I've been reading Cheri Seymour's frightening book, The Last Circle and I came across a page that I thought could stand alone and out of the book's context to help understand the danger of Republican Party anti-regulatory mania. One bit of context. The biotech company, BioRad Laboratories, Inc. and its subsidiaries, under discussion here, was owned by a pack of right-wing GOP operatives including Edwin Meese. Seymour starts the discussion by referring to an article in the San Francisco Chronicle on May 31, 1991, entitled, "S.F. Firm Faces Toxics Charges."

A criminal complaint had been filed against a law firm, an investment banking house and several lawyers and financiers involved with InFerGene Company for abandoning its toxic wastes after filing for bankruptcy.

According to an affidavit filed by the Solano County District Attorney's office at the Fairfield Municipal Court, after InFerGene was evicted from the premises, a county inspector found several hundred containers including petri dishes and vials marked "chlamydia, herpes, and HSV2." Many others contained "bacteria of unknown etiology."

A Vacaville newspaper reported that on December 7, an environmental health inspector found 36 55-gallon drums of radioactive Butanol containing "beef mucosa." They were improperly stored and lacked labels showing content, hazard warning or the owner's business address. A follow-up report made by the environmental health office noted that a Halloween 1990 investigation into a smell was traced to a door with a radiation warning on it. The department had recommended that the lab doors be sealed and the pipe opening sealed.

In all, the county Environmental Health Department had responded four times to complaints about smells from the InFerGene labs in the Benicia Industrial Park well before it shut down in February. One complaint listed persistent smells causing nausea, a problem also cited by others still working in the area.

...In June, 1991, the San Francisco Examiner published a story entitled, "Germ War Lab Alarms Berkeley" which noted the community of West Berkeley "was home to the Defense Department's one and only supplier of anti-plague vaccine." On December 28, 1990, four maintenance men made an unauthorized entrance into a room at Cutter Biological which housed Yersinia pestis, commonly known as "The Black Plague," which once killed a quarter of the population of Europe 650 years ago.

There was no harm to the workers and no release of the live bacteria, but if an accident had occurred, all of Berkeley would have been wiped out.

She goes on to discuss highly toxic experimental "vaccines" being developed by Wackenhut on Indian reservations-- where there are no pesky federal regulatory impediments-- that resulted in the deaths of dozens of Native Americans. And the talks about similar experiments on Iraqi battlefields that resulted in thousands of illnesses among unsuspecting-- and unprotected (by regulations or anything else) American soldiers.

Welcome to Republican-world. It's ugly and brutish. But don't worry; life spans will be mercifully short... at least for the 99%. So why is the above related to this information I'm about to convey? Easy to put 2 + 2 together and get a look at a bleak future.

President Barack Obama has raised more money for his re-election bid from small-dollar donors than Republican Mitt Romney has collected from all his contributors, according to a new Center for Responsive Politics analysis.

Obama brought in approximately $58.5 million last year from individuals who donated $200 or less, successfully rallying a massive base of online donors through frequent email pitches and solicitations to purchase merchandise that ranges from t-shirts to coffee mugs bearing Obama's birth certificate to the "Fired Up, Ready to Grill" apron.

Overall, since he launched his re-election campaign in April, Obama has raised about $125 million. Thus, about 47 percent of his total receipts-- nearly $1 out of every $2 raised-- has come from a donor of $200 or less, the threshold for itemized reporting with the Federal Election Commission.

Meanwhile, Romney, who has raised about $56.5 million for his presidential campaign, saw only about 9 percent of that-- or $5.2 million-- coming from small-dollar donors, according to the Center's research.

Big donors, people who give thousands or even millions, expect something in return, something worth that kind of "investment." Small donors, on the other hand, contribute because they believe in principles and values and a better future.

caption contest

There's something explosive about the combination of truth + funny -- the latest from Andy Borowitz and Lee Camp

The latest "Moment of Clarity" from the great Lee Camp. For news of a special show Lee's doing in NYC on February 18, scroll down.

by Ken

Thinking back, I'm not sure I can overstate the importance of the emergence of Jon Stewart and The Daily Show during the darkest depths of the Chimp-the-Prez Bush regime. It seemed as if it mattered mostly because it was one of the few mainstreamish national outlets where, despite the guise of a fake-news show, viewers were exposed to so much of the actual news. But somewhere in there you have to factor in the fact that Jon and company made it all so funny.

I don't have any scientific formula for how this marriage of truth and funny works. It's patently obvious that truth isn't inherently funny, and deserves to be heard and spread without having to be, and it's just as obvious that you can be funny without being aspiring to the condition of truthfulness. (Daily Show alum Stephen Colbert introduced us to the crucial concept of truthiness, which essentially aspired to the condition of un-truthfulness, offering instead the appearance of truth.)

But still, there's something special about that combination of truth and funny. Thinking about it, it occurred to me that while there are lots of other reasons why Keith Olbermann and Rachel Maddow have carved out such important places in the truth-telling game, it's probably no coincidence that they both have sensational senses of humor, and understand how to incorporate the funny without in any way diminishing their seriousness.

It's just a matter of personal time management that I've drastically cut back my political-TV-watching time. In part it's been made possible by the emergence of brilliant online funny-truth-tellers like Andy Borowitz and Lee Camp. How terrific is it to encounter stuff like this on a regular basis in my e-mail?

LA JOLLA, CA (The Borowitz Report) –- Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney today released the following letter to the American people:

Dear American People:

Yesterday, comments I made about poor people made me look terrible. This always seems to happen when I say what I really believe.

The fact is, I do care about poor people. That’s because I’m poor myself, when you compare me to Mark Zuckerberg.

According to most projections, Facebook’s IPO should net Mr. Zuckerberg a personal fortune of $28 billion. I couldn’t make a pile of dough-re-mi like that even if I fired people twenty-four hours a day.

Now, let’s take a look at Mitt Romney’s net worth: a measly $200 million. Now do you see why I consider myself poor? Compared to Mark Zuckerberg, Mitt Romney is practically a crack whore.

Now, I’m not going to sit here and envy a rich person like Mark Zuckerberg. That’s exactly what President Obama wants poor people like me to do. Mark Zuckerberg made his money fair and square, by creating useful products like imaginary sheep and angry birds. Say what you will about Facebook, it has totally revolutionized the way we waste our lives.

The fact is, if you’re poor in America, you should do what Mark Zuckerberg did: create a social network. I’ve just started my own, called TwoFaceBook. With TwoFaceBook, your profile doesn’t stay the same for more than two seconds.

In closing, there’s one more reason I don’t worry about poor people. They have Groupons.

Vote for me,

Mitt Romney

LOS ANGELES-AREA FOLKS: ANDY B IS COMING TO YOU!

On February 28, Writers Bloc will present Andy in conversation with another seriously funny guy, Patton Oswalt (left), at the Saban Theater in Beverly Hills, in what Andy describes on his website as his "only scheduled show on the West Coast this year." (I guess that "only scheduled show" weaseltry protects him from lawsuits by disgruntled literal-minded fans in the event that he should wind up doing another show on the West Coast between now and December 31.)

For more information and online ticket-buying, go here.


AND IN NEW YORK, LEE CAMP IS TAPING AN ALBUM

On January 20 Lee reported:

I will be taping my second comedy album at the Bowery Poetry Club in NYC on Saturday, Feb 18th at 10pm AND I WANT YOU TO BE THERE. It’s only $8 to get in and there is no drink minimum. Special Guest: Ted Alexandro! Plus, there will be free brownies. …Not kidding. My last comedy album was listed as one of the top 5 of 2011 in Dusted Magazine, so why would you miss this one LIVE? Tickets are available online here: www.bit.ly/LeeCampTix

At that price I could afford to snap up a ticket as soon as I saw the announcement. Though space is limited, I believe there are still tickets available. If you've seen any of Lee's videos you should know what to expect, but I can vouch for the fact that seeing him do it in person -- and doing a whole show -- is amazing. (If you can't make it, you can get more information about Lee's first album here, including a link to free samples on iTunes, where you can also download it.)

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Republican Party Class War Against The Middle Class And Campaign Finance Reform

Earlier this morning we talked about Romney's revealing "slip of the tongue" in terms of not caring for poor people. (A tangent: people should never confuse the Christian Jesus, the one who talked a lot about caring for poor people, with the Mormon Jesus, who they claim was resurrected as the Aztec and Mayan feathered serpent deity Quetzalcoatl and who, like Romney, didn't concern himself with the poor. Tangent over.) The video above has nothing to do with Quetzalcoatl or the Mormons; it's about American democracy itself. It shows Senator Bernie Sanders (I-VT), standing on the Senate floor, introducing an amendment to overturn Citizens United, which was, in effect, the culmination of the efforts of the wealthy to overturn both the meaning of the American and the French Revolutions. Citizens United was the bloodless coup d'etat by the wealthy to take over America and relegate democracy itself to the scrap heap of history. Bernie's amendment makes it clear that:

• Corporations are not persons with constitutional rights equal to real people.

• Corporations are subject to regulation by the people.

• Corporations may not make campaign contributions or any election expenditures.

• Congress and states have the power to regulate campaign finances.

There's a reason why American corporations, despite the lies propagated by the GOP and their media outlets, are the most undertaxed corporations in the industrialized world. And that reason is the very nature of the political elites in this country-- the wealthy... and not just Willard M. Romney.

Some members of Congress are threatening to allow the U.S. to default on its debt obligations-- and send financial markets into a tailspin-- unless the President agrees to large, sudden cuts in the budget deficit without any increase in tax revenue. But the most recent data from the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development(OECD),theOffice of Management and Budget and the Census Bureau reveal that the U.S. is already one of the least taxed countries in the developed world. Only two OECD countries have lower taxes as a share of gross domestic product (GDP) than the United States.

Overall, U.S. Taxes Are Third-Lowest Among OECD Nations

* In 2009, total federal, state and local taxes in the United States were 22.6 percent of our gross domestic product, ranking 26th among the 28 OECD countries for which data are available. Only Chile (18.2 percent) and Mexico (17.5 percent) had lower taxes.

* In 2009, total taxes in the 25 OECD nations with higher taxes than ours ranged from 24.6 percent of GDP in Turkey to 48.2 percent in Denmark.

* In most cases, the difference in tax levels between the U.S. and OECD countries is not even close. Of the 25 OECD nations with taxes higher than ours, 22 of them have taxes that are at least 25 percent higher, and 15 have taxes at least 50 percent higher.

Corporate Income Taxes

Many corporate leaders have noted that other OECD countries have lowered their corporate tax rates in recent years, but fail to mention that these countries have also closed corporate tax loopholes while the U.S. has expanded them. As a result, the U.S. collects less corporate taxes as a share of GDP than all but one of
the 26 OECD countries for which data are available.

* In 1965, U.S. corporate income taxes were 4.0 percent of our GDP, compared to 2.3 percent of GDP in other OECD countries.

* But by 2009, U.S. corporate taxes had fallen to only 1.3 percent of our GDP, while corporate income taxes of the other OECD nations collectively stood at 2.4 percent.

* Many countries experienced unusually low corporate tax receipts in the last couple years due to the recession. But even when U.S. corporate taxes recently peaked in 2007 at 3.2 percent of GDP, the average for the other OECD nations was well ahead, at 3.8 percent of GDP.

* In 2009, only Iceland had lower corporate taxes as a share of GDP than the U.S.

Personal Income Taxes

* In 2000, the year before President George W. Bush took office, personal income taxes were 12.3 percent of our GDP.

*Since the Bush tax cuts were enacted, personal income taxes have plummeted. Even with the brief economic bubble that caused income tax receipts to rise in 2007, personal income taxes were consistently well below their 2000 level as a share of GDP ever since the Bush tax cuts were enacted.

* In 2009, U.S. personal income taxes were just 7.7 percent of GDP.

Social Insurance Taxes

* Social insurance taxes and other wage taxes have risen rapidly worldwide.

* Since 1965, social insurance taxes in the U.S. have risen from 3.2 percent of GDP to 6.2 percent of GDP in 2009.

* In other OECD countries, social insurance and other wage taxes rose from 6.1 percent of GDP to 10.8 percent over the same period.

Sales, Excise and Other Consumption Taxes

* In 1965, total federal, state and local consumption taxes in the U.S. were 5.5 percent of GDP. By 2009 they were 4.1 percent.

* In other OECD countries, consumption taxes were 9.6 percent of GDP in 1965, and 9.1 percent in 2009.

Property & Wealth Taxes

* Property and wealth taxes in the U.S. (about 90 percent of which are state and local real estate taxes) fell from 3.9 percent of GDP in 1965 to 2.9 percent in 1980, and have held stable thereafter. They were 3.2 percent of GDP in 2009.

Dr. Steve Porter, Pennsylvania's Independent Candidate For Congress

Dr. Steve Porter has been a good friend of Blue America's since we got started in 2005. At that time he ran for Congress in northwestern Pennsylvania as a Democrat. I was somewhat naïve back then and couldn't understand why the DCCC wouldn't help such an independent-minded stalwart progressive. Now I understand that the DCCC isn't looking for stalwart progressives and absolutely hates independent-minded thinkers. Steve ran again-- but as an independent. I've invited him to join me on a panel at Netroots Nation in June to help people understand how antithetical to the progressive movement an organization like the DCCC, built as part of a vast incumbent protection racket and imbued with values that extol corruption. truly is. Should be fun. I've asked the Netroots Nation folks to invite Chairman Israel as well. Meanwhile, Steve is, once again-- and as an independent, running for the Erie-based House seat in Pennsylvania. I asked him to give us an idea of what it's all about.

Why I Am Running For Congress As An Independent

-by Steven Porter, Ph.D.
 
For most of my 68 years, I, like millions of my fellow citizens, have fallen prey to the myth that our two-party system would further the American democracy.
 
But I was wrong. I didn't heed the warnings of our first President, George Washington, who begged us in his farewell address of 1796 to avoid turning the reins of government over to political parties.
 
Listen, dear God, listen to his words.
 
"I have already intimated to you the danger of parties to the state," he said. "The alternate domination of one faction over another... serves to distract the public...enfeeble the administration... agitate with jealousies, kindle animosity, and foment riot."
 
And as our seats of government were turned over in every state legislature and almost every court to our two-party duopoly, the tenets of our Constitution and sources of our very freedom were prostituted by greed and the desire for power to the point where service to the people has now become a governmental impossibility.
 
In 1976 with the Buckley vs. Valeo ruling which equated money with free speech and in 2010 when the Citizens United decision of the Supreme Court made political contributions virtually unlimited and virtually anonymous, we allowed the nails of our democratic coffin to be driven tight.
 
In the last twenty years, the wealthy who lust for profits and control have spent an incredible $25 trillion  to put into Congress their own lapdogs. People thus owned-- no matter how they once might have wished to serve the nation-- now serve their financial masters. So our legislators squabble over party power and fail term after term to deal with the crises which face us.
 
If you go to www.opensecrets.org, you will find the statistics of the Center for Responsive Politics.  Don't believe me. See the flow of money for yourselves. Look, for example, at the $5 trillion used by the financial industry to buy Congress since 1990. Then ask yourselves how our representatives can serve those of us who have lost our homes and our jobs when their first order of business is to bail out the banks which put them in office.
 
Well, they can't. Nor can they provide affordable health care before profits to the insurance carriers, nor clean air before oil leases, nor peace before feeding the industries of war.
 
Confused and misled by corporatized news and under-educated by a continually failed school system, our public has been paralyzed by ignorance and distracted by a media whose profits rely on prurience rather than meaningful information.
 
Consider this: 37% of American voters are registered independents, yet only 2 of the 535 members of Congress are independents. That is because state-by-state, in ways often patently unconstitutional, everyone but a Republican or a Democrat is denied equal access to the ballot  [see Grand Illusion by lawyer Theresa Amato]. For example, here, now, in the state of Pennsylvania, while a Republican or Democrat needs only 1,000 signatures to get on the ballot, I-- an unaffiliated independent-- must get 2% of the total of the winning congressional candidate's vote in the 2010 election. That is far more than 1,000 signatures. And that in spite of Pennsylvania's own constitution which says that elections shall be "free and equal." It also violates the equal protection clause of the 14th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution which states that all Americans shall have the equal protection of the laws of the land.
 
I wish I could put all of my research into this one post. I can't. But it is there for you to see in my books. I beg you to read Preserving America and check the references for yourselves. I urge you to listen to my internet broadcasts on http://webtalkradio.net/shows/preserving-america/. I ask you to visit my campaign website, www.porter4congress.com. You will find the truth there, waiting for you to verify, waiting for our nation to hear.
 
I run with an easily understood platform which-- as I look to our future-- I do not see changing.
 
1.  Leave Afghanistan now.

2.  Remove the Social Security earnings cap.

3.  Replace Obamacare with HR 676,  the Physicians National Health Program.

4.  Restore the tax rates on corporations and the wealthiest 1% of Americans so that they generate one-half of what they did in 1960 when corporations accounted for 25% of federal revenues rather than the 9% they yield today, and when the wealthiest 1% were taxed on rates close to 80% instead of the approximately 30% rate of today.

5.  With the monies derived from these steps, institute public works projects in solar power generation, wind power generation, and building a national watershed program.


6.  Fund all elections with taxes already paid and equally distributed to candidates who are allowed to gain ballot access by laws applied equally to all.
 
This simple six-item platform will pay off our debts, make us energy independent, put millions to work now and into the future, and end the bribery of our government.
 
For years we have been brainwashed by the major parties and a press designed to control us instead of inform us.  We have been brainwashed to think that if we do not vote either for a Republican or a Democrat, we throw our votes away. And so we leap from the frying pan of the Republicans to the fire of the Democrats and throw our democracy away.
 
I beg you to support my campaign. Get me elected and see what an honest, un-owned voice in Congress will do. Give me the chance to speak for us. I will not fail you, and-- if I do--cut me loose. You lose very little if you respond to me in mass. Maybe $100. Maybe 2 years. You might, however, gain back the promise of your nation.

OK, So Romney Isn't Concerned About The Very Poor-- Is That A Surprise To Someone?

Mitt Romney is the candidate of, by and for the rich. That simple. His statement yesterday that he's not really concerned about the very poor shouldn't come as a surprise, except in terms of how inept he is as a politician. Even a clod like Bush didn't blunder into saying stuff that dumb. And who are "the very poor" in Willard's mind? People who make less than $100,000 a year? Who knows... remember, this freak referred to the $360,000 he took in from speaking engagements in the same way normal people think about the money they find behind their sofa cushions. And look at who's funding his campaign-- aside from the Mormons who want to fulfilled Joseph Smith's dream of capturing the White House, greedy millionaires and billionaires who think now, thanks to the worst Supreme Court in American history, is the time for their big move to take over the country entirely.

A quarter of the money amassed by Romney’s campaign and an allied super PAC has come from just 41 people, each of whom has given more than $100,000, according to a Washington Post analysis of disclosure data. Nearly a dozen of the donors have contributed $1 million or more.

Four of the $1 million donors are hedge fund managers, and Dems will surely point to this as evidence that the very rich are fueling Romney’s campaign because his tax policies protect their financial interests. The loophole that Obama’s Buffett Rule would close keeps their tax rates lower than those paid by many middle class taxpayers.

Exacerbating this picture, of course, is the fact that Romney himself is a member of this class that benefits so handsomely from the unfairness of this tax structure. The Dem strategy is to paint Romney as the walking embodiment of everything that’s unfair about our economy and tax system, and all the ways it’s rigged for the wealthy and against the middle class. The fact that a tiny handful of extremely wealthy individuals who are reaping so much from the current structure-- as is Romney himself-- are investing so heavily in his candidacy will only strengthen the case.

Even a Romney-supporting creep like Jonah Goldberg sensed something was wrong. "The problem, for others at least, is that because he isn’t a natural politician he breaks the language where it needs to bend. He uses language-- 'I like to fire people!' 'It’s nothing to get angry about' etc-- that doesn’t make him seem like an unconventional politician. Rather his language makes him seem like a caricature of a conventionally stiff country club Republican... A case in point, here he is this morning talking about how he’s 'not very concerned about the very poor'. I get the point he’s making. It’s a point that Bill Clinton won the presidency with-- but with language that attracted voters. Romney’s language won’t do anything of the sort. And the concern is, after nearly a decade of running for president, if he can’t get this stuff down now he never will."

Tuesday night, of course, his best precincts in Florida, were precincts with lots of rich people and he did worst, even among Republicans, where ordinary families are struggling to make ends meet. These are the folks Mitt Romney doesn't care about:

• In 2010, more than 4 million more women than men lived in poverty.

• Families headed by a single adult are more likely to be headed by women, and these female-headed families are at greater risk of poverty and deep poverty. 34.2% of families with a female householder where no husband is present were poor and 17% were living in deep poverty. 17.3% of families with a male householder where no wife was present were poor and 7.9% were living in deep poverty. 7.6% of married couple families with children were living in poverty and 2.4% were in deep poverty.

• Children living in single female-headed families were more than four times as likely to be living in poverty, and seven times as likely to be living in deep poverty, than children living in married couple families

Romney's class has gotten away without paying their fair share for far too long. They should be taxed the way they were taxed when Eisenhower was president and the country's economic growth was explosive and all boats were being lifted and the country was growing by leaps and bounds. Obama's middle-course, of 30% isn't even halfway there.



And here's Lawrence O'Donnell from last night discussing Romney's bungled win in Florida. I'm including it here because of the Rush Limbaugh comments at the 3 minute mark. He's worried about Romney coming across as "the prototypical rich Republican." You think?

A Vote For Romney Is A Vote For Austerity-- In Other Words, Depression

Krugman gave a talk in Paris today and yesterday he posted the slides he's using as visual aids on his blog, like the one above. He also did a provocative NY Times column about the austerity debacle. It's not good news for the societies being dragged into a worldwide austerity regime by the selfish, greed-obsessed economic and political elites.

Last week the National Institute of Economic and Social Research, a British think tank, released a startling chart comparing the current slump with past recessions and recoveries. It turns out that by one important measure-- changes in real G.D.P. since the recession began-- Britain is doing worse this time than it did during the Great Depression. Four years into the Depression, British G.D.P. had regained its previous peak; four years after the Great Recession began, Britain is nowhere close to regaining its lost ground.


Nor is Britain unique. Italy is also doing worse than it did in the 1930s-- and with Spain clearly headed for a double-dip recession, that makes three of Europe’s big five economies members of the worse-than club. Yes, there are some caveats and complications. But this nonetheless represents a stunning failure of policy.

And it’s a failure, in particular, of the austerity doctrine that has dominated elite policy discussion both in Europe and, to a large extent, in the United States for the past two years.

...Britain, in particular, was supposed to be a showcase for “expansionary austerity,” the notion that instead of increasing government spending to fight recessions, you should slash spending instead-- and that this would lead to faster economic growth. “Those who argue that dealing with our deficit and promoting growth are somehow alternatives are wrong,” declared David Cameron, Britain’s prime minister. “You cannot put off the first in order to promote the second.”

How could the economy thrive when unemployment was already high, and government policies were directly reducing employment even further? Confidence! “I firmly believe,” declared Jean-Claude Trichet-- at the time the president of the European Central Bank, and a strong advocate of the doctrine of expansionary austerity-- “that in the current circumstances confidence-inspiring policies will foster and not hamper economic recovery, because confidence is the key factor today.”

Such invocations of the confidence fairy were never plausible; researchers at the International Monetary Fund and elsewhere quickly debunked the supposed evidence that spending cuts create jobs. Yet influential people on both sides of the Atlantic heaped praise on the prophets of austerity, Mr. Cameron in particular, because the doctrine of expansionary austerity dovetailed with their ideological agendas.

Thus in October 2010 David Broder, who virtually embodied conventional wisdom, praised Mr. Cameron for his boldness, and in particular for “brushing aside the warnings of economists that the sudden, severe medicine could cut short Britain’s economic recovery and throw the nation back into recession.” He then called on President Obama to “do a Cameron” and pursue “a radical rollback of the welfare state now.”

Strange to say, however, those warnings from economists proved all too accurate. And we’re quite fortunate that Mr. Obama did not, in fact, do a Cameron.

Which is not to say that all is well with U.S. policy. True, the federal government has avoided all-out austerity. But state and local governments, which must run more or less balanced budgets, have slashed spending and employment as federal aid runs out-- and this has been a major drag on the overall economy. Without those spending cuts, we might already have been on the road to self-sustaining growth; as it is, recovery still hangs in the balance.

And we may get tipped in the wrong direction by Continental Europe, where austerity policies are having the same effect as in Britain, with many signs pointing to recession this year.

The infuriating thing about this tragedy is that it was completely unnecessary. Half a century ago, any economist--- or for that matter any undergraduate who had read Paul Samuelson’s textbook Economics-- could have told you that austerity in the face of depression was a very bad idea. But policy makers, pundits and, I’m sorry to say, many economists decided, largely for political reasons, to forget what they used to know. And millions of workers are paying the price for their willful amnesia.

The Financial Times pointed out that the Eurozone jobless rate is at euro-era high. The number of jobless in the 17 countries of the single currency bloc rose in December for an eighth consecutive month to 16.5 million-- 10.4%.

Critics of EU efforts argue that Brussels has focused on fiscal austerity at the expense of growth. Some also belittled the new initiative signed on Monday as little more than warmed up commitments to policies that have been promised or proposed before.

“The council’s [representing national governments] presentation of a strategy for growth is a strategy in name only being far too narrow in scope, too vague in commitments and too small in ambitions to have much impact,” said Sony Kapoor, head of the economic consultancy Re-Define.

“While it is important the council is at least talking about growth and the need to generate employment, they have precious little of substance to say at this point.”

José Manuel Barroso, the European Commission president, on Tuesday presented EU leaders with a dire report on employment across the region, particularly among the young, where countries such as Spain and Greece are posting youth unemployment rates of close to 50 per cent. “We cannot accept that almost a quarter of Europe’s young people are unemployed,” Mr Barroso said.

...[U]nemployment in the debt-laden periphery has reached severe proportions. Portugal’s jobless rate rose the fastest out of the entire bloc, up 0.4 per cent to 13.6 per cent. Spain was steady at 22.9 per cent, the highest in the EU.

EU leaders pledged to accelerate the spending of European development funds to help alleviate unemployment. But the money they have in mind, from the regional and social affairs budget, has already long been earmarked for boosting jobs and growth, and none of the countries will receive new resources.

National governments will have to submit plans to boost job creation, outlining new measures to cut claimants. Teams of EU officials will assist those countries with the highest jobless rates, a process which started on Tuesday with preliminary contacts with the national capitals. But under tough new fiscal rules, no high-debt governments will be able to stray from the austerity measures.

“We cannot resort to fiscal stimulus to boost growth at the present time,” Mr Barroso said.

For people who like to pretend they're "pro-life," it's amazing how much death they manage to spread

The mission of the Susan G. Komen for the Cure took an unexpected twist with the hiring of an anti-choice zealot as its policy VP. Now, in furtherance of that demented creature's agenda, the foundation has gone into the business of spreading breast cancer.

“Susan Komen would not give in to bullies or to fear. Too bad the foundation bearing her name did.”

-- a tweet by author Judy Blume

by Ken

On one count you have to hand it to the authoritarian sociopoaths who packaged their opposition to abortion, which is at least a defensible position, into a crusade of oppression packaged under the lying claim of being "pro-life." You have to hand it to them because they were in the vanguard of the New Ultra Right which takes it as a requirement not merely an option that every word out of their mouths be a lie.

Of course they're not "pro-life." How could they be when they believe life is such a toxic, hateful, pestilential biological state? No, what they love is being the judges who determine who else should die. Most of the pro-deathers can never have enough death via executions, wars, poverty, and disease. Even when it comes to banning abortion, apparently the thought of all those women dying in back-room and back-alley procedures is probably better for them than sex. Oh wait, everything is better than sex for them, unless it's for procreation. (Just the people who should be encouraged to procreate.)

As we've noted frequently, the giddy-with-power Ultra Right is now engaging in an all-out war on women, and as we've also noted, with the anti-abortion jihad awaiting only the final death blow from their sociopathic-deviant majority on the Supreme Court, they've already moved to their next target: contraception. Since they are totally devoid of any decency or morality, naturally they feel empowered to destroy those who stand in their way. Planned Parenthood has already been targeted for an ACORN-style death for the sin of not advocating any of its cardinal virtues: ignorance, hatred, and economic imperialism. (I guess it's only natural for sociopaths incapable of decency or humanity to burn with hatred for anyone who embraces those qualities.)

As you've probably heard, the death-worshipping sociopaths have now scored a signal triumph, thanks to a bestial hate-mongering creature named Karen Handel, having wormed herself into position as senior vice president of public policy at the Susan G. Komen for the Cure, a foundation dedicated to breast-cancer awareness, which has been contributing substantial sums to Planned Parenthood to enable large numbers of women to avail themselves of cancer screening exams, she has now engineered a cutoff of that funding.

What she's saying, of course, is that she wishes to allot cancer suffering and death on women who wish to avail themselves of contraception., in defiance of her authoritarian psychopathology. And so, in the service of her loathsome dementia, she has singlehandedly transformed the Komen foundation's mission from fighting cancer to spreading it. (As usual with these demons, the Handel creature shows no evidence of having the slightest interest in the well-being of any actually born human being.) This is what happens when you consort with demons.

As the folks in the ThinkProgress War Room noted in a great post this evening, "New Attacks in the Right-Wing War on Women: Right-Wing Bullies Attack Access to Basic Women's Health Care" (with lots of links onsite):

The good news is that people across the country rose up to defend Planned Parenthood against this kind of right-wing bullying. One foundation made an emergency $250,000 donation to cover breast cancer screenings and then another 6,000 donors stepped up in the last 24 hours with an additional $150,000. Richards emailed supporters today to thank them and say the group would fight on:

It doesn’t matter what the anti-choice, anti-women’s health forces out there do. As parents, we tell our kids not to give in to bullies — and we shouldn’t, either. I promise you that we won’t, no matter what.

Progressive groups, including MoveOn, UltraViolet, CredoAction, and the campaigning arm of Daily Kos blasted their supporters to ask them to stand up and fight back against the attacks. Members of Congress, including Reps. Jackie Speier (D-CA) and Mike Honda (D-CA) and Sens. Barbara Boxer (D-CA), Patty Murray (D-WA), and Frank Lautenberg (D-NJ) also expressed their anger and dismay at Komen’s decision. Noted author Judy Blume took to Twitter, commenting: “Susan Komen would not give in to bullies or to fear. Too bad the foundation bearing her name did.”

Meanwhile, according to one analysis of social media reaction, just 27 percent said Komen’s decision was right, while 30 percent said it was wrong and an additional 23 percent said they’d stop donating to Komen as a result. Another 11 percent said it would hurt low-income women.

For its part, after receiving thousands of negative comments on Facebook, Komen issued a non-apology today that seemed to attack Planned Parenthood:

Making this issue political or leveraging it for fundraising purposes would be a disservice to women.

This afternoon, two local Susan G. Komen affiliates announced their opposition to the parent group’s decision.

Is that supposed to be a joke, accusing those who have risen in shock and outrage -- at this shocking and outrageous decision -- of "making this issue political"? The foundation made a calculated decision to do just that when it made the Handel creature its policy czar. As Lori at Feministing noted, Handel "is a staunch anti-choicer, who went so far as to pledge to defund PP’s services when she was running for Governor [of Georgia]."

The Komen foundation made the choice to immerse their organziation in ultra-right-wing zealotry, so I don't know why they're so touchy now that they're proceeding with the agenda. You'd think they would be beaming as they tell all those women whose cancer-screening services they're defunding: "F--k you, bitches! Let the dying proceed!"

#

What Does Buck McKeon Fear?

I hope you're following the Buck McKeon saga. The ending will be explosive. Monday's episode will catch you up and put what we're going to look at today in perspective.

So what does ole Buck fear? His life is one big tangle of fears, but today he has three big ones, two from federal prosecutors and one from voters in CA-25 (Simi Valley, Santa Clarita, Antelope Valley). He's scared witless that voters in his district will figure out that his vote in favor of the TARP bankster bailout was connected to his huge Countrywide bribe. And of course it was. That leads to what scares him about the feds. Sooner or later someone is going to ask how it's possible that the house he bought at 25305 Joyce Place in Stevenson Ranch cost him $261,000 on August 15, 1997, but one year later his pal Angelo Mozilo let him refi it, under extraordinary terms, for an additional $315,000. What was the quid pro quo?

His other fear is that one of the shady donors-- a defense contractor who funneled money into his wife's campaign at his request-- will, under pressure, turn state's evidence and put him behind bars. One has to wonder if he will figure out that following Elton Gallegly into retirement is his only way to extricate himself from this mess.

When the Countrywide scandal started to break, McKeon's emergency damage-control team sent him a memo advising him to keep away from local reporters and to set up a meeting with the newspaper's editors instead. They suggested a practice session so he could go over possible tough questions and get his story "straight." They outlined 11 tough questions he'd have to prepare for:

1. How could you not know?
2. Did you not review your own loan documents?
3. You may not have known when you applied for the mortgage, but didn't you notice a difference in the rates when you signed fr the mortgage?
4. Why did you go to Countrywide to obtain a mortgage?
5. How were you given an FOA [Friend of Angelo] designation?
6. Did you ever meet Angelo?
7. What is your relationship with Countrywide? Lobbyist?
8. How much money have you been given by Countrywide? Was Countrywide part of teh bailout?
9. You voted for TARP; was it because of special interest money/treatment you received by big banks?
10. Are there any other instances where you were given special tratment because of your position?
11. If you don't remember receiving this special treatment, how can you be so sure that you haven't received special treatment in other instances?

If the House Ethics Committee wasn't part of DC's incumbent-protection racket, McKeon would already have been asked to resign from Congress by his pal Boehner. Inside the Beltway media is starting to notice you're running a House of Crooks, Mr. Speaker, just like Tom DeLay was.

An increasing number of House Republicans are getting wrapped up in allegations of ethics violations ahead of the November elections, handing Democrats easy campaign fodder and putting the GOP in an unexpected bind.

Republican leaders in the lower chamber pledged to run an ethically sound ship when they took control last year. But as the second session gets under way, nearly a dozen GOP lawmakers are being questions on a wide array of their financial dealings, and House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) has not publicly admonished them.

...By next Monday the House Ethics Committee is slated to decide whether to formally investigate Rep. Vern Buchanan (R-Fla.). Moreover, allegations arose over this past weekend that Rep. Michael Grimm (R-N.Y.) might have accepted illegal campaign donations, according to The New York Times.

Additionally, there are the three Republicans-- Reps. Pete Sessions (Texas), Buck McKeon (Calif.) and Elton Gallegly (Calif.)-- who earlier this month were referred to the House Ethics Committee for taking part in Countrywide’s VIP mortgage program, aimed at gaining special favor from lawmakers.

Sessions serves as the chairman of the National Republican Congressional Committee (NRCC), while Buchanan serves as the GOP reelection arm’s finance chairman. Grimm is one of the NRCC’s regional chairs.

...“House Republicans are standing idly by while federal investigations and scandals mount against leading members of their own caucus,” said Jesse Ferguson, a spokesman for the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee.

“Republicans pledged a ‘zero tolerance’ policy on ethics but after all these scandals, voters are going to send a forceful and unmistakable message: they have zero tolerance for scandal-plagued House Republicans,” Ferguson said.

So the damage control memo-- which also suggests dragging another FOA, neighboring Elton Gallegly, into the mess-- was dated January 6, 2012. Ole Elton suddenly announced he was retiring January 7, 2012. Also that memo on the 6th discusses how McKeon should respond-- as in mislead-- the press about the Countrywide revelations. On the 13th he announced he was shocked to hear them, a blatant borne out by the memo. His opponent, Lee Rogers, has a post up on his campaign blog that points out McKeons denials raise more questions than they answer.

“On Friday, Representative McKeon met with The Signal and the Antelope Valley Press to review the documents related to his controversial Countrywide VIP loan. I’m glad Mr. McKeon listened to me and many of his constituents, who called for him to be more transparent on the issue and release his loan documents. In his interview, he defended himself by stating that his loan interest rate was near the prevailing rate in October of 1998, which constituted evidence that he didn’t receive favored treatment.

“However, this doesn’t exclude favoritism because he may not have qualified for the prevailing rate. His business was failing and went bankrupt shortly after that time. Howard and Phil’s Western Wear was millions of dollars in corporate debt, including $400,000 in unpaid state sales taxes.

“The House Oversight Committee uncovered evidence that Rep. McKeon was referred to the Countrywide VIP program by a lobbyist from the Mortgage Bankers Association of America. They also reported that CEO Anthony Mozilo intervened in McKeon’s mortgage and personally approved his loan without any documentation of assets, liabilities, or income.

“Mozilo instructed the loan officer to cut the interest rate by 1 percent, which equates to $68,000 in savings for McKeon over 30 years. This would be a mortgage not available to other borrowers. Those are the facts. Additionally, this also raises a question about how McKeon was able to refinance a home he purchased one year earlier for an additional $315,000.

“The House Oversight Committee reviewed the same documents and found enough evidence to refer this matter to the House Ethics Committee for an investigation.

“Because of the atrocious acts of Countrywide Financial Corp., we must hold accountable those who instigated the housing crisis. Darrell Issa (R-CA) has previously stated that the Countrywide VIP program was nothing less than a bribe to those who were in positions of power. We await the results of the House Ethics Committee’s investigation.”

Other Things Buck McKeon Fears

Interviews like the one investigative journalist Lee Fang did with KHTS, which expose his corruption to a wider audience of voters.

KHTS: I’m reading the article and I’m saying to myself is there anything illegal or just inappropriate?

LF: I talked to some McCain-Feingold experts, that’s the campaign finance law on the books, and they said in this case there’s no evidence of illegal conduct. That being said, it’s clear that this lobbyist Mark Valente, this defense contract lobbyist, is trying to get around the Federal limit. The law that limits the amount he can give to a member. He’s basically circumventing the Federal law and giving to McKeon’s wife who is running for the State Assembly. This is legal, but it raises serious ethical concerns, because California has different rules and by giving to Patrician McKeon, or coordinating funds to her, he can basically give her unlimited amounts.

KHTS: He might say just because you give to my wife that’s not any influence on me.
LF: Sure, and that’s completely fair but there’s an interesting kind of pattern here. Buck McKeon has been very unusual for a member of Congress. He’s put his wife on his Congressional campaign staff for the last 10 years. A few members of Congress have done this but in various small kind of ways. I know there’s a Congressman in Maryland who puts his aunt as bookkeeper and pays her about $10,000 a year. But for Buck McKeon he’s put Patricia on his payroll and paid her over half a million dollars over the last 10 years and I believe he’s also paid other family members for Web development, for maintaining his campaign website. Large payments as much as $1,000 a month. So, there’s a strange pattern here where it at least gives the appearance that McKeon is open to the idea of his campaign contributors funneling money to his family.

KHTS: Other than this instance with Patricia, is there another instance that you’re seeing?

LF: I’ve seen reports that David Logan, who is the husband of McKeon’s daughter Tricia, has been paid by the McKeon campaign. And more than that, the Wall Street Journal had a big story, I believe two or three weeks ago, showing that Countrywide, which was caught giving bribes to several Democratic senators several years ago also gave a preferential mortgage to Buck McKeon in the late '90s, so this is a serious ethical cloud and the payments to Patricia McKeon add to that pattern.

(Editor’s note: McKeon officials have rebuffed requests from KHTS to provide copies of the Countrywide loan documents.)

And there's the local newspapers. Who reads them? Just the local voters. Most people in CA-25 don't read the Ventura Star, except the folks in Simi Valley, a new part of the district that's never been represented by McKeon, but have just met him in this feature story:

As a general rule, major defense contractors don't get involved in campaigns for state political offices. There's no Pentagon in Sacramento, and the governor doesn't have an army.

That is changing this year in the race for the new 38th Assembly District, campaign finance reports filed Tuesday revealed.

Republican candidate Patricia McKeon, wife of Rep. Buck McKeon, chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, reported $19,200 in contributions from seven defense contractors or their representatives, including four of the top five recipients of U.S. military contracts. That amount represents more than one-fifth of the money she raised last year, other than a personal loan she made to her campaign.

The contributions, said a spokesman for Common Cause of California, are a clear sign that military contractors are seeking to gain favor with the Republican congressman whose committee oversees U.S. military operations.

"We believe this is a way for these companies to influence Congressman McKeon," said Phillip Ung. "The success of her candidacy absolutely affects him. It affects their family's income and the family's political future."

Hi, Simi Valley, meet your new (corrupt, scumbag) congressman, old Buck McKeon! And of course, Buck is very fearful that Boehner will ask him to step down as chair of the House Armed Services Committee. Why would Boehner do that? Buck sure seems to be taking an inordinate amount of bribes from defense contractors and laundering them through his wife's campaign. Could get embarrassing for the GOP as the election ramps up.

Disclosures posted last evening at the California Secretary of State’s Web site confirm that a flood of military contractor money has flowed to Patricia McKeon, who is running for an open Assembly seat in a district that overlaps that of her husband Republican Congressman Buck McKeon, chairman of the House Armed Services Committee.

...In her first few months of fundraising, Patricia McKeon collected at least $19,200 from defense contractors or their registered lobbyists. Her husband of 49 years is already the top recipient of military industry cash in Congress, so some of the contributions to his wife appear to be an attempt to get around federal campaign contribution limits.

Lockheed Martin, a company locked in a pitched battle to stave off cuts to the lucrative F-35 Joint Strike Fighter jet, cut Patricia McKeon’s campaign a $3,000 check.

Congressman Buck McKeon has rigorously defended the jets, despite growing concerns that the planes will run almost $90 million over budget each.

The lobbying firm Beau Butler LLC gave Patricia McKeon as well. Beau Butler lobbies for Proxy Aviations, a drone company. Although its not clear why a drone maker would rally to Patricia McKeon’s call to end plastic bag taxes, the industry is an important cause for Buck McKeon. He’s co-chair of a caucus dedicated to promoting drones for both military and civillian purposes.

Please Help Blue America Replace Blue Dog Tim Holden With Matt Cartwright, A Proven Advocate For Working Families

Even before I got to know Matt Cartwright I heard rumblings of dirty tricks coming out of sleazy defeated Blue Dog Chris Carney, who has been working to help his fellow reactionary Democrat Tim Holden hold onto a seat he has little to do with. Holden is listed as "an incumbent," but the majority of the people-- and the vast majority of the Democrats-- in the new 17th CD were never represented by him and have little in common with his conservative politics.

Tim Holden backed the Democrats 31.96% of the time on crucial roll calls in 2011. There were Republicans who voted less frequently with Boehner and Cantor than Holden! He's adamantly anti-populist when it comes to economic issues, and he's a virulent homophobe, and not a single Republican is worse than him on issues involving freedom of speech and the press. As for women's health, he wasn't just a voter for Bart Stupak's devastating anti-Choice bill; he was the senior co-sponsor on the Democratic side. His voting record on women's choice is abysmal, worse than over 20 Republicans'. He's completely the wrong congressman for a blue district like the new 17th.

So who's this guy Matt Cartwright who's running against him? I wrote a bit about him last week; let me get into the weeds today. Matt told me he's running for Congress because he believes that "the government needs to work for the middle class, not just the most powerful." For the past 24 years, as an attorney with Munley, Munley & Cartwright, Matt spent his time fighting for the middle class and for working families against major corporations, insurance
companies, big banks and corporate greed.

He's a member of the board of governors of the American Association for Justice, and in addition to his experience as an attorney, Matt's a member of the “Brain Trust” for The Small Business Advocate for nearly a decade. In that role, he's worked to protect middle class interests and working families by addressing issues such as: unfair provisions in business contracts, predatory lending practices and auditing malpractice. He understands how corporate America has taken advantage of our working families and the middle class-- the other side of the inauthentic Mitt Romney "private business" story.

While Matt has served the community outside of government, he’s no stranger to the political process. In 1992, he was an elected delegate for candidate Bill Clinton at the Democratic National Convention, representing Pennsylvania’s 10th Congressional District, where I used to live.

Earlier, he graduated magna cum laude from Hamilton College, where he earned a B.A. in history (1983) and he's a Law Review graduate of the University of Pennsylvania’s Law School, where he earned a J.D. in 1986.

A family man with a wife and two sons, Matt isn't a career politician and is very much aware of how out of touch government has become from the lives of working families and the American middle class. In Congress, he's determined to continue his work protecting the country’s most vulnerable citizens and making government work for his Pennsylvania neighbors.

Meanwhile, redistricting has totally changed the 17th District, which now includes parts of Carbon, Lackawanna, Luzerne, Monroe and Northampton Counties and all of Schuylkill County. About 86% of likely Democratic voters have never been represented by Holden. In addition, almost 60% of the voting population resides in the Luzerne-Lackawanna area, where Cartwright has lived and worked for 24 years. For the last seven years he has appeared five nights a week on the early evening news on WBRE-TV and WYOU-TV, answering viewers’ legal questions. He is widely known in the Luzerne-Lackawanna area.

You may recall that Holden was challenged in the 2010 primary in the “old” 17th CD by Sheila Dow-Ford, who Blue America endorsed. Her biggest problem was that the corporate-friendly Blue Dog outraised her by a staggering 15-to-1 margin. Still, working with a few scattered radio ads as her only medium, she was able to capture 34.7% of the primary vote. Democrats had already been souring on Holden and his reactionary politics.

The new 17th District is a much more Democratic seat, with a D+4 PVI. In fact, in 2008, in the voting districts that make up the new district, President Obama defeated John McCain 65% to 35%. Whoever wins this primary-- the right-wing Blue Dog corporatist or the progressive champion-- will be in Congress in 2013.

Matt Cartwright’s positions on important current issues are a much better match for the new 17th than Tim Holden’s.

* On health care, Cartwright would have supported President Obama’s Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act of 2010, and in fact was dissatisfied that it did not go far enough to expand health care coverage for more Americans. Holden stated that the bill went too far, and he actually voted against it.

* On the economy, Matt believes that the government has a vital role to play in helping to smooth out the rough edges of the free-market economy. For example, he believes it is essential that the federal government retain the flexibility to be able to stimulate the economy in times of recession, and that measures like a balanced-budget amendment would hamstring such efforts and hurt those who suffer most in downturns. In November 2011, Tim Holden joined just 24 other Democrats to vote for a balanced-budget amendment.

* Matt believes the way to keep the national debt in check is to enact responsible revenue legislation. He would vote to repeal the Bush tax breaks and to return to the tax rates of the Clinton administration. He believes that confidence that the federal government is behaving responsibly breeds economic activity, and that the responsible tax policies of the 1990s were in large part responsible for the economic confidence and prosperity that prevailed at that time.

* Matt believes that the federal government needs to invest in American infrastructure and needs to do so in a way that takes the long view and the global view. He believes that investing in one-off earmarked pork projects is the wrong approach. Instead, his view is that this country needs to make a comprehensive, cohesive plan for improving and upgrading our infrastructure in a way that will enable our businesses to compete with global competitors and will stop the flow of American jobs overseas. That means not only investing in repairing existing roads and bridges, but also examining ideas for more highway capacity in congested areas. It means not only repairing existing rail infrastructure but also investing in high-speed rail systems

* It also means not only investing in education but also exploring ways to enable teachers to help our students compete on the world job market. Matt believes we cannot be penny-wise and pound-foolish. He believes that if we do not shore up our nation’s economic and education infrastructure, we will lose more and more jobs to international competition.

* On the environment, Matt believes it is a mistake to think that a strong economy and a protected environment are mutually exclusive.

Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the famous environmentalist, has made the point that there is an inadequacy in the way harm to the environment is accounted for. If there is damage done to the environment in the production of a product, unless the environmental cost is included in the income statement, we have not made an accurate accounting of what that product cost to make. Those who complain that environmental regulations are overburdening their enterprises are simply expressing their dissatisfaction that they are not being allowed to engage in inaccurate environmental accounting.

The problem is that other countries are lax in their adoption and enforcement of environmental standards. If it costs an American manufacturer 5% more to produce a product because of U.S. EPA requirements, the answer to that problem is not for America to abandon its environmental protection standards. The answer lies in addressing the issue with our trade partners. Matt Cartwright believes that where a foreign manufacturer produces a product for 5% less money than an American manufacturer, and the reason is the lack of environmental safeguards at the foreign plant, that is no different from foreign manufacturers illegally “dumping” cheap goods in this country. An effective trade policy-- fair trade, not free trade-– is the answer to the problem.

Matt Cartwright believes that global warming is a serious threat to the well-being and national security of the United States. In 2007, in a case called Massachusetts v. EPA, the United States Supreme Court decided that the Clean Air Act applies to greenhouse gases. Since then, a number of Republican Representatives in Congress-– and Blue Dogs like Tim Holden-– have been trying to pass legislation delaying and frustrating the application of the Clean Air Act mandates to greenhouse gas emissions. Principal among the beneficiaries of these attempts is the coal-fired electricity generation business, as well as the coal mine operators that supply them. Matt Cartwright believes this industry should comply with the Clean Air Act. He also believes that cap and trade is a proven, effective tool for helping American industry comply with U.S. environmental laws.

He believes that the Halliburton Loophole-– which Holden voted for-– should be repealed.

* Matt believes strongly in protecting the civil rights of American citizens, including their right to privacy, their right to engage in collective bargaining, their right to vote in elections without new and burdensome requirements, and their right to be free of hate crimes.

Tim Holden, as I mentioned, has voted against the Democrats and the president as a default position. Some examples:

* As the economy continued to struggle, Holden was one of only 24 Democrats who voted against the Helping Families Save Their Homes Act, legislation that helps distressed families keep their homes.

* Holden voted against the Health Care Reconciliation Act, claiming that the bill "went too far," making him one of the 32 Democrats who voted against affordable health care and medicine to seniors, young adults, those with pre-existing conditions and women seeking preventive healthcare services.

* Holden voted against the TARP Reform and Accountability Act, which would have made sure that TARP funds were used to benefit the economy and the middle class instead of bonuses for Wall Street executives. Only 9 other Democrats joined the GOP on that one (while 18 Republicans crossed in the other direction).

Blue America has added Matt Cartwright to our page dedicated to replacing Blue Dogs. In 2010 we helped rid the Congress of Bobby Bright. This year we'd like to help get rid of Tim Holden and Heath Shuler and replace them with dedicated progressives. Please give us a hand if you can.