GOP Congressional Primary Cannibalism

Yesterday, Inside-the-Beltway Republican-leaning trade publication, Politico, ran an interesting post with an even more interesting title, 5 Most Vulnerable House Incumbents. They probably should have worked the word "primary" into the title though because, as it turns out, that's what the post is about. I was getting ready to laugh in their faces for excluding the races where Republican corruptionists-- take Buck McKeon (R-CA) and "Mikey Suits," AKA- Michael Grimm (R-NY)-- are self-destructing and getting ready to hand red seats over to Democrats. And I was fuming about their coverage of the Upton race which doesn't even mention Democrat John Waltz. Then I realized it's all about primaries and I calmed down. I'm calm now. In fact, now I'm kickin' back and down-right enjoying what Alex Isenstadt had to say.

As you know if you hang out at this blog at all, we're no friends of GOP corruptionist and right-wing ideologue Spencer Bachus of Alabama. Just last week we took at look at his tendency to trade on insider information-- and as chairman of the House Financial Services Committee, that's a big deal. Outrageously, Boehner has refused to ask him to step down from that perch while he's being investigated by the House Ethics Committee. Would we like to see him out of Congress? Of course. What red-blooded American wouldn't? But Politico, I'm afraid was being a little optimistic in their assessment. Isenstadt seems to suggest his March 13 primary could be his last hurrah.

Last week, the Washington Post reported that the Office of Congressional Ethics had opened an investigation into whether the 64-year-old Financial Services Committee chairman had engaged in insider trading-- a potential violation of Securities and Exchange Commission and House rules.

The news couldn’t have come at a worse time for Bachus, who next month will defend in a GOP primary the seat he has held for nearly two decades.

The revelation has created a wide opening for Bachus’s lead Republican opponent, state Sen. Scott Beason, who took a not-so-veiled shot at Bachus on his website late last week: “If I’m elected, my No. 1 priority is going to be to serve the people in my district. I will not be a puppet for those who want to manipulate the system for their own ends.”

Bachus has typically cruised to reelection in the Birmingham-based 6th District, but he appears to understand the challenge ahead. The Alabama Republican has already hit the air with TV ads calling himself “Alabama’s conservative champion” who “doesn’t just talk the talk. He walks the walk.”

Beason faces high hurdles. The state senator didn’t launch his campaign until January-- giving him relatively little time to compete with the congressman and his formidable $1.4 million war chest. Beason will also need to address the controversy over his role during a 2011 gambling corruption probe, when he wore an FBI wiretap and was recorded calling African-American casino-goers “aborigines.”

Teabaggers and Club For Growth types are trying to knock off Tim Murphy (R-PA), whose 94.5 lifetime GOP score on crucial votes apparently isn't fascist-friendly enough for them, even though he's in a swing district. They're trying to replace him with a far right extremist, Evan Feinberg, in the April 24th primary.

The anti-tax Club for Growth has dropped into the district, slamming Murphy in TV ads as a labor-aligned liberal who supports earmarks, and the tea party-aligned FreedomWorks has endorsed Feinberg. GOP Sens. Rand Paul of Kentucky and Tom Coburn of Oklahoma have suggested they may support Feinberg, who formerly served as an aide to both senators, as well.

...Murphy, who has a spot on the influential Energy and Commerce Committee, has also received backup from the American Chemistry Council, which in December, took the unusual step of purchasing a $500,000 TV ad buy praising the congressman.

But the race that interested me most was the Michigan primary where right-wing fanatic Jack Hoogendyk is challenging Boehner crony and House Energy and Commerce Committee chair, plutocrat Fred Upton again. This one is the most interesting to me because it's a seat that a strong Democrat could certainly win. And Blue America is backing a strong Democrat there, John Waltz. In 2010 Upton won just 57% of the vote against Hoogendyk even though he swamped him in campaign cash. This time, though, the Club for Growth is airing TV spots hammering Upton for his voting in favor of Bush's bankster bailout. Take a look:



And here's another ad Club for Growth is running against him. Upton, loaded with corporate cash and Chamber of Commerce ads, is expected to win again (unfortunately; Hoogendyk would be a snap for Waltz to send to the bottom of the sea). But we're hoping that the bloody primary will turn off enough Republicans to help Waltz win in November. If the DCCC would support him with funding, it would be a breeze. He's a grassroots progressive so, of course, they won't. He has, however, already raised more money than any other Democrat who has run against Upton. Obama won 57% of the vote in 2008 and has already invested heavily for 2012. Upton, whose family shipped all the jobs in the district overseas (he's an heir to the Whirlpool fortune), is extremely unpopular with both the right and the left; he has no base outside of his countryclub cronies and a bunch of lobbyists. It's interesting to see that only a week after Fred Endorsed Romney, Mittens support in Michigan has collapsed-- losing every county in MI-6 in the latest PPP poll. Whomever comes out of the tea party primary in August will be badly bloodied and positioned far to the right with just a little over two months to bring it back to down to Earth for General Election voters.

Waltz is a blue collar Navy veteran, a populist who's beliefs were shaped by growing up in a union household-- his father was a UAW member for thirty years. This, of course, is not something the DCCC leadership under corporate shill Steve Israel could or would ever understand.

Fred Upton (R-MI)-- Strong Contender For Congress' Most Corrupt

With all those hundreds of Members of Congress-- and so many of them in thrall to lobbyists and willing to prostitute themselves to corporate interests-- it says a lot about Fred Upton that he was singled out as the #1 worst enemy of the earth. The ad (below) is a response by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, a detestable right-wing attack machine that values Upton as one of its primary corporate tools in Congress and they started running it this week. Why? Because Upton has never had a serious challenger before. Ignored by the DCCC, he has been able to skate by without having to explain himself and without having to be held to account by western Michigan voters. This time a fighting progressive, war vet John Waltz, is giving him a run for his money-- and his corporate allies' money. [Blue Amerida is backing Waltz-- with great enthusiasm-- and you can contribute to his campaign here at our Blue America ActBlue page.]

For two days in a row, congressional crime-busters, Republic Report, have hammered Upton on his apparent corrupt practices. Wednedsay Lee Fang caught him pimping for industrial boilers, hours after the boiler-makers lobbyists poured cash into his campaign war chest, a perfcet example of the worst and most blatant kind of Inside-the-Beltway pay-to-play bribery.

Later today, Rep. Fred Upton (R-MI), chairman of the Energy and Commerce Committee, is hosting a hearing about the purported negative effects of Environment Protection Agency’s (EPA) MACT rules. The new rules, which apply to industrial boilers, would place stricter limits on mercury, dioxin, particulate matter, hydrogen chloride, and carbon monoxide-- environmental pollutants known to cause infant brain damage and cancer, among other problems.

But before his hearing, Upton is holding a fundraising breakfast with lobbyists seeking to weaken the EPA rules. A copy of the invite to the breakfast shows that Trent Lott, the former Senator who now works as a corporate lobbyist, is part of the host committee for the event. Patton Boggs attorney Ben Ginsberg, an attorney for Mitt Romney, is also listed as an event host.

Lott happens to represent a major client on issues relating the EPA’s MACT rules. According to disclosures reviewed by the Republic Report, Lott’s firm has been paid at least $240,000 by the American Association of Railroads, a group that opposes the new rules, to lobby Congress on the proposed regulation.

The hearing starts at 10:30am today, only two hours after the beginning of the fundraiser, which is hosted by Lott’s partner lobbying firm, Patton Boggs. Luckily, the Energy and Commerce Committee hearing is a short taxi ride away from Patton Boggs’ office near Georgetown.

Fang followed up yesterday with another revelation, this one involving Upton's sudden Wednesday endorsement of Mitt Romney, just as Rick Santorum is starting to surge.

The announcement-- which can be found here on the Romney website-- omits an important, yet behind the scenes detail.

The morning of the announcement, Ben Ginsberg, an attorney with the mega-lobbying firm Patton Boggs hosted a fundraiser for Upton. Ginsberg is Romney’s campaign lawyer.

“In order to enact the change we are fighting for in Washington, we must change the Administration,” said Upton in his endorsement statement. The change Upton was fighting for, at least during his fundraiser, cost $500 per individual to attend.

His Chamber of Commerce reward for carrying their water:



Oh... and this is the "outside special interests" that the Chamber of Commerce is railing about in the Upton ad:

The Mad Dash For Cash-- Fred Upton, Aubrey McClendon And Big Gas Vs. Big Oil

Fred Upton (R-MI) and Aubrey McClendon are attempting to commandeer the natural gas market. Aubrey is the CEO of the largest shale oil interest in the world, Oklahoma City-based Chesapeake Energy; Fred is the Chairman of the House Committee on Energy and Commerce. No records of them meeting have been found, despite their relation.

Aubrey's wife is Fred's cousin-- the shared Whirlpool heiress Kate Upton. Fred and Aubrey have been neighbors, more or less, for 30 years. Most recently, Aubrey persuaded Jack Nicklaus to build a course on their land and beyond... he convinced the PGA Tour to play an event in their backyard starting in 2012.

Even more recently Fred bought more stock in Aubrey's company-- a half million dollars in 2010.

Fred has said that he would be more than open to the requirements for disclosure regarding his position. But is he really? Or is he sticking with Cantor, Boehner, Ryan and McKeon in watering down insider trading disclosure?

In September of 2011 Fred commissioned his committee to produce a video that was pro natural gas and one that is pro-Aubrey, one that mirrors the thoughts of Chesapeake Energy and Aubrey McClendon.

Aubrey McClendon is spending over 5 million dollars this year to lobby for H.R. 1380, The Natural Gas Act-- this does not include campaigns money-– hard and soft dollars.

Fred Upton will be contested by Big Oil in a primary funded by Grover Nordquist and the Tea Party, who are running right-wing fanatic Jack Hoogendyk. The money that funds this primary against Fred will come from Big Oil and the extreme right. Fred will counter this with natural gas money.

HR 1380 will cover the cost of operations, expansion, and otherwise provide incentives to the American trucking industry to transition from diesel fuel and to begin using their natural gas product.

The Club for Growth and other far right elements of the Republican Party are financed in part by Big Oil. Fred Upton has built a "conservative-consensus" coalition that is based on H.R. 1380 and that appears to have the votes to pass this bill; yes, Upton's pal Aubrey McClinton has outspent everyone. Passage of this bill will serve as a transcendent moment as our transportation industry moves from petroleum to natural gas-- and as a fight-to-the-death between traditional big oil and natural gas and on the surface, between interest groups.

Aubrey has bet long on Chesapeake Energy, and another IPO or two that he has tossed around on--record to the press-- are positioned to make him one of the richest men in the world. Aubrey is one of the top one hundred land owners in America. Aubrey is so confidant in this deal that he has set up his own futures market.

The legislation provides:

• A tax credit for up to 80% of the incremental cost of buying a natural gas vehicle, with a maximum value ranging from $7,500 for a light-duty passenger vehicle to $64,000 for the heaviest trucks. Recognizing the innovations in vehicle engine technology, the bill includes incentives for both bi-fuel vehicles-- those that run on either natural gas or gasoline-- and dual fueled vehicles-- where there is a mixture of small amount of diesel fuel with the natural gas. There are no vehicle tax credits in place today.

• A 50-cent per gallon fuel tax credit that is in place in 2011.

• An infrastructure tax credit of 50% of the cost up to a maximum tax credit of $100,000 per station. For stations built in 2011, there is an existing infrastructure tax credit of 30% with a maximum credit of $30,000. These credits cover only a small portion of the cost of building a station. This credit would also extend to home refueling units, where purchases would be eligible for a $2,000 tax credit.

• A tax credit to the manufacturer for the production of natural gas vehicles.

The bill also includes other provisions that will facilitate the production and use of natural gas vehicles. And remember this from last week? About the DC super lobbyist Michael Bloomquist as General Counsel for the House Committee on Energy and Commerce? Bloomquist was the chief lobbyist for McClendon's American Natural Gas Association. Another reason Blue America is so serious about helping John Waltz replace Upton in Congress. If you can, please consider a contribution, here at the Blue America ActBlue page.

Do Congressmen Cheat When It Comes To Stock Transactions? Oh, Yes

Jim Himes (D-CT) hasn't exactly been Mr. Populist, let alone an enemy of Wall Street, since being elected. But even he admitted that "Sometimes, Representatives and Senators are privy to information about a bill or contract that the general public does not know. The thought that public servants could use that information to buy or sell stocks is repulsive; it's like a dagger in the heart of our democratic ideals." Indeedy-do. "This is clearly unethical behavior, and it should be illegal," he continued and, man, is he right!

As you probably know by now, This week banking industry whore Richard Burr (R-NC- $3,879,228) tried filibustering a bill to stop this abuse. Burr failed; in fact, he found only one reactionary retrobate, Tom Coburn (R-OK), to join him. And then Thursday the Senate passed the bill by a whopping 96-3, General Burr, again rushing to defend the honor of those who are in bed with the Wall Street banksters. Right after it passed, President Obama reminded everyone that he's been waiting.

In my State of the Union Address, I laid out a blueprint for an economy built to last, where everyone gets a fair shot, everyone does their fair share, and everyone plays by the same set of rules-- especially those of us who have been sent here to serve the American people.
 
Last week, I called on Congress to pass a bill that makes clear that Members of Congress may not engage in insider trading. No one should be able to trade stocks based on nonpublic information gleaned on Capitol Hill. So I’m pleased the Senate took bipartisan action to pass the STOCK Act. I urge the House of Representatives to pass this bill, and I will sign it right away. 
 
And while this is an important step to rebuild the trust between Washington and the American people, there is much more work to be done, like prohibiting elected officials from owning stocks in industries they impact, and prohibiting people who bundle campaign contributions for Congress from lobbying Congress, an idea that has bipartisan support outside of Washington. These are straightforward proposals that will help eliminate the corrosive influence of money in politics.

Yes, and "prohibiting elected officials from owning stocks in industries they impact" will pass when the Republicans and Blue Dog Democrats are cut down to a point where their yipping and yapping is just a minor inconvenience and of no real consequence. The STOCK Act has a better chance to pass the House now that the Senate has acted. But will it? Powerful Members, like GOP Majority Leader and diminutive House Financial Services Committee attack dog Patrick McHenry, have been blocking it. Jim Himes is one of dozens of Members urging them to allow a vote.

If the STOCK Act becomes law, it would end insider trading in the halls of Congress. It would also require me and every other Representative and Senator to publicly disclose details about each transaction within 30 days. I have always believed in full disclosure and transparency, and I am eager to make sure that the law says Congress must play by the same rules as the American people. I welcome the STOCK Act and have co-sponsored it in the House.

...[I]n typical stonewalling fashion, the Republican leadership in the House of Representatives has blocked its progress. In December, Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R, VA) “indefinitely postponed” committee work on the bill, dooming it to languish in legal limbo... He knows there is bipartisan support for the STOCK Act. He knows the President will sign it.

... Frankly, I find it embarrassing that there's a question this bill should become law. And this week, we fought back on the House floor. Yesterday, as the Senate was passing the bill, I signed what's called a "discharge petition." If enough members of Congress sign it, we can force a vote on this important measure in the House.

Fun fact: Under House rules, lawmakers can pursue a discharge petition for legislation that has been pending before a committee for 30 legislative days. If a majority of the House sign the petition, the bill can immediately advance to the House floor for consideration. The STOCK Act falls into this category... A majority of House lawmakers, including 92 Republicans, have signed on as co-sponsors of the STOCK Act.

Senator Sherrod Brown (D-OH) introduced the amendment to prohibit Senators and staff from owning stocks (or short selling) in companies that they oversee. It failed Thursday, 73-26, most of the most personally corrupt Members of the Senate-- from John McCain, Joe Lieberman, Roy Blunt, Ben Nelson and John Cornyn to Jim DeMint, Chuck Schumer, Miss McConell, Marco Rubio and, of course, Dick Burr-- voting NO. Senators would have had to divest themselves of all individual stocks, or put their assets in blind trusts. Brown made it clear that it is important that Members are not voting out of their own economic self-interest. “The STOCK Act really only deals with insider trading-- that’s a small number of people,” Brown says. “I want to see us go further. Why should members of the Senate vote on issues that affect the oil industry while owning oil industry stock? This is pure, it’s simple, it’s clean, it’s direct.”

The Motley Fool tackled the problem this week as well. Their point is that Members of Congress of far richer than the mere mortals who elect them to represent their interests-- about half are millionaires and the median net worth of a senator is $2.6 million-- and that "many voters are wondering whether some of that wealth was built by trading stocks based on insider information that Congress members received because of their position in Washington."

A perfect example of what we're concerned about was on full display during the financial meltdown at the end of 2008. In September of that year, the crisis hit a fever pitch and Washington was front and center, pulling levers left and right in the financial sector to head off a full-blown collapse.

Here's a reminder of just a few of the major government actions during the month:

• On Sept. 7, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were put into conservatorship.

• On Sept. 16, the Federal Reserve swooped in with an $85 billion bailout of AIG.

• On Sept. 19, the SEC imposed an emergency ban on short-selling.

• Also on Sept. 19, the Treasury announced that it would insure money market funds.

• From Sept. 21 through the eventual signing on Oct. 3, Congress debated and eventually passed the $700 billion Troubled Asset Relief Program that funneled tens of billions to financial companies like Citigroup, Bank of America, JPMorgan Chase, and Wells Fargo.

• On Sept. 21, the Federal Reserve allowed Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley to convert to bank holding companies.

And I could go on.

The bottom line is that during this period, there was a significant amount of nonpublic information that lawmakers in general could have been privy to. In particular, members of the Senate Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs and the House Committee on Financial Services would have had more access than most to information that was poised to significantly impact the share prices of certain financial companies.

During a period of intense and extensive legislation like this, one might think-- or at least hope-- that Congress members would be extra prudent, avoiding any appearance whatsoever that they were trading based on material information that they may have had access to. The data show just the opposite.

From Sept. 1, 2008, through Oct. 3, 2008 (the signing of TARP), Congress members traded $6.7 million worth of financial-company shares. That compares to $1.7 million of financial-company shares traded during the same period of the prior year. That tally came as those lawmakers made a total of 318 trades in such companies, a big leap from the 115 trades that were made in the same period of 2007. And that only includes trades for which there was a specific date entered in the disclosures-- and there were plenty that didn't include specific dates.

And what of the most-informed House and Senate committees? Laudably, it appears that members of the Senate Banking Committee showed prudence and had little, if any, financial-stock trading activity during this period. On the other hand, members of the House Financial Services Committee made a total of at least 28 trades worth nearly $650,000 in total.

In 2008, Rep. Spencer Bachus, R-Ala., was the ranking minority member of the House Financial Services Committee. That would have put him right in the middle of many of the crucial discussions that had the potential to seriously swing stocks in the financial industry.

Looking back at Bachus' personal accounts during 2008 reveals that while the most serious chapter of the financial meltdown was unfolding, he was pocketing thousands by trading General Electric options. Many investors will remember that GE was right in the middle of the financial-meltdown scrum thanks to its giant finance arm.

Between Sept. 10, 2008, and Sept. 19, 2008, Bachus traded $25,217 worth of GE options through 13 transactions. Those trades earned him $5,240. Not a bad take in just over a week.

Bachus did not return our requests for comment.

Also on Thursday, I got a letter, not unrelated-- at least if you have Capitol Hill corruption in your mind (as you should)-- from Blue America candidate John Waltz, who's running against one of Washington's most egregious culprits, one-percenter Fred Upton.

Much like Punxsutawney Phil, Fred Upton has promised us all a much longer winter today with his appointment of Washington DC super lobbyist Michael Bloomquist as General Counsel for the House Committee on Energy and Commerce.

Who is Michael Bloomquist? Recently, he was the chief lobbyist for the American Natural Gas Association (ANGA). ANGA is an organization formed by Aubrey McClendon, T Boone Pickens, and other industry powerhouses who are pushing the House Committee on Energy and Commerce, Fred's committee, to provide them with billions of dollars in subsidies and deregulation by passing the Natural Gas Act.

As I have told you in the past, Fred owns millions of dollars of stock in the natural gas industry and he just can't stop using his position as Chair of Energy and Commerce to make himself and his friends richer. Fred's number one objective is to pass the Natural Gas Act which will put our nation's transportation fleet on natural gas.

I believe that we need to continue to use our fossil fuels in combination with renewables like wind and solar. This will protect our environment and help break our dependence on foreign oil. Fred's plan relies on dangerous hydraulic fracking to mine unproven reserves, and it will create a monopoly for him and his buddies-- it will also likely create another financial bubble once the reserves are proven worthless and the environmental dangers are fully acknowledged.

 
Waltz has already vowed to Michigan voters to "never accept a dime from the special interests and [to] never hire a lobbyist to work for me in Congress." And while lobbyists are filling Upton's campaign warchests, believe it or not, not one single lobbyist has given a cent to John Waltz. Want to help Blue America try to make up for that so he can run an effective campaign? Here's the place where we beat self-entitled social parasites and cockroaches like Fred Upton.

Southwestern Michigan-- Caught Up In The Upton Whirlpool Money Sucking Machine

John Waltz is one of the most outstanding candidates for Congress running anywhere. He's a blue-collar New Deal Democrat who has one overarching political goal: to represent the regular working families in this country who are ignored or even disdained by the fat-cat political insiders-- from Mitt Romney to the Establishment Inside the Beltway Democrats who have sold their souls to K Street.

As Montana state Rep. Franke Wilmer said in response to Mitt Romney's assertion that only the independently wealthy should run for office:

We have a representative democracy, but who does it represent? I think it is time we have representatives that represent the middle class, real people who live real lives... It's hard to think of anything more undemocratic than suggesting that personal wealth is a qualifier to run for public office. This is just one more example of how out of touch so many of our political leaders are. So many members of Congress have no idea what it is like to pay a mortgage, or not to be able afford health care, or having to sacrifice just to be able to put your child through college.

She could well have had Waltz's opponent, Fred Upton, poster boy for the plutocracy, in mind. We've tried to explain Upton's treacherous dual role: hereditary self-styled aristocrat of western Michigan and representative in Congress of the interests of the one percent. Prominent Michigan blogger Chris Savage did a much better job of it this week with Whirlpool Corp-- A Michigan Job Creation "Success Story": Dodging Taxes & Profitiing From Poverty. Starting with the story of what Whirlpool and Upton's family did to Benton Harbor, it's almost a treatise on why it is so crucial to replace Fred Upton with John Waltz.

Whirlpool’s exploitation of the situation in Benton Harbor likely goes back more than a decade, but we can start with the turn of the millennium. A former official with the Southwest Michigan (SWM) Airport board recently told me that Whirlpool benefited significantly from a connection with U.S. Congressman Fred Upton:

I am a former elected and appointed official from Stevensville who was on the SWM airport board. While I appreciate that you expanded the facts for Rachel Maddow’s show, there is much more. During the time I was serving, I had a considerable number of flights in and out of that airport. It is not well known that Northwest airlines received a ticket subsidy for every seat in and out of the airport. That lasted for two years, which is just the time the airport serviced the public commercially. It was required to service commercially in order to receive federal funding for the airport’s runway extensions and electronic navigation aid updates. Of course, this coincided with Whirlpool’s purchase of a new jet which required a longer runway and new navigation electronics. The person who supported the bill to subsidize the tickets? Fred Upton.

You mention the upgrade of local property values, and do not mention the Upton’s property in close proximity (2 blocks).

While nothing is illegal about these things, I just felt that the focus has been on benefiting Whirlpool and Whirlpool’s heirs, and not the general population. I [have connections] with the Uptons in northern Virginia, so this is not a personal attack, just an observation. For so long in Congress, I am really surprised at the fiscal conservatism applied to the constituents and not the person or the corporate beneficiary.

Indeed, in addition to the ticket subsidies, the SWM Airport received an earmark for fiscal year 2011 as part of a nearly $1 billion allocation in discretionary grants, which coincides with the expansion of the runway.

Whirlpool is also an integral part of a development group in Benton Harbor known as the Cornerstone Alliance. In fact, many would argue that Cornerstone Alliance is Whirlpool. Non-profit, investigative reporting site TruthOut.org reported in May 2011: “To keep a clean public image, Whirlpool funds and largely controls a nonprofit in Benton Harbor called the Cornerstone Alliance, which has a revolving door with Whirlpool and the Whirlpool Foundation for its staff members and employees. Cornerstone has long served the interests of Whirlpool in Benton Harbor, creating a façade through which the company can pass off its actions as being in the interests of ‘the community.’”

Cornerstone Alliance has been aggressively developing whatever property it can procure in Benton Harbor. The company is the developer of the Harbor Shores luxury golf community that has received a great deal of attention, in part because developers convinced city officials to lease part of Jean Klock Park to them.

Jean Klock Park was deeded to the city in perpetuity but with the help of a city attorney who later went to work for Cornerstone, they secured a decades-long lease for three holes of their Jack Nicklaus Signature golf course. In the process, acres of shoreline dunes were deforested for a golf course where the annual fee exceeds the average annual income of Benton Harbor residents. An interactive panoramic of the area affected can be seen HERE. Before and after pictures can be seen HERE (courtesy of Protect Jean Klock Park.)

In exchange for this precious piece of public land (which is the primary reason Harbor Shores can be called “Shores”) the city exchanged land later found to be highly contaminated with industrial waste.

...Whether or not Jonathan Mahler is right about Whirlpool being the salvation of Benton Harbor remains to be seen. What is clear is that, if they are, it will be because they have very deliberately used the city’s desperate situation, in part caused by Whirlpool’s outsourcing of manufacturing jobs to other countries, to direct taxpayer monies into their own bank accounts. If Whirlpool saves Benton Harbor, it will likely because they were able to steal Benton Harbor from the largely black, poor residents who live there-- a scam underwritten, in part, by taxpayers.

Maybe they’ll rename the town Upton Harbor.

There isn't a more despicable Member of Congress than Fred Upton. That's part of the reason the L.A. Times just named him Congress' biggest enemy of the Earth. Western Michigan needs to come to grips with the fact that they've been fooled for years and years and years and have been sending a toxic representative to Washington to help plot their downfall and enslavement. They're lucky to have someone like John Waltz to turn to today. The district has been turning away from the Republicans in recent years, and after giving Bush solid wins in 2000 and 2004, the residents there turned out in record numbers to give Obama a 54-45% win over McCain.

The next step is for them to rid themselves of Upton. It won't be easy, and of course the DCCC refuses to lift a hand against him. The DCCC doesn't have anything against Waltz, but DCCC Chair Steve Israel founded something called the Congressional Third Aisle Caucus, a conservative bipartisan operation that pledges to never engage in political campaigns against fellow members... like Upton. What the hell was Pelosi thinking when she assigned Israel the DCCC chair? Anyway, if you'd like to help Waltz oust Upton-- and he will need all the help he can get-- you can do it here. Here's part of a letter he sent to residents of the Kalamazoo area district:

It's all but certain that Fred will have a Tea-Party backed primary challenge.

Jack Hoogendyk has said that he will hold a press conference next week to reveal his plans. It seems likely that he will run considering he will have the backing of Freedom Works and other Koch Brother funded Tea Party organizations. The Club for Growth is already airing ads in district calling out Fred for his “liberal” beliefs.

Pundits and right-wing groups would like for us to believe that this primary is about ideological beliefs, but I challenge anyone to find any position, social or otherwise, that Fred and Jack differ on. The only one, the one that is causing Fred to be primaried, is natural gas.

Fred is Chairman of the Energy and Commerce Committee. He is a proponent of natural gas and aims to pass the Natural Gas Act, which will provide billions of dollars in subsidies to transition our nation's transportation fleet to natural gas. Lobbyists from Chesapeake Energy, a company that Fred owns millions of dollars of stock in, authored the proposed legislation.

Fred's energy policy is to trade one monopoly for another-- one that will benefit him personally and create a bubble by driving up the price for natural gas then crashing once they come clean about the supplies. Sound familiar? The one thing we should have learned from the last economic crash is that we cannot build our future on speculative bubbles.

Like everything else Fred does, this bill is completely driven by special interests and we might even be able to overlook that if it meant breaking our dependence on foreign oil with a safe and plentiful alternative. This does no such thing-- the supplies are being exaggerated and safety issues are well documented.

The problem is that Big Oil gets cut out of the loop. They are digging in and putting their money where their mouths are by backing candidates across the country with front groups like Freedom Works and the Club for Growth to beat incumbents that would vote to eliminate their monopoly. In this case, they are backing Jack Hoogendyk.

Now I'm no fan of Big Oil and once I make it to congress I will vote to use a responsible balance of renewables and fossil fuels. This will make us more efficient, environmentally responsible, and safer by not having to rely so heavily on foreign suppliers.

Happy New Year-- And Now The Fight For Congress Starts For Real

If you've ever contributed to a candidate or signed a petition, you were probably inundated with desperate pleas for helping dozens of candidates beat their deadlines-- midnight yesterday-- for campaign fundraising. We'll have plenty more deadlines between now and the crucial 2012 elections in November. Many of the races pit a worthless corporate Democrat against an even more worthless corporate Republican. Blue America has endorsed, and will continue finding, progressive candidates who do not fit into that catastrophic mold. Our candidates are fighting for ordinary working families and defending them against the special interests that have virtually bought up both political establishments. That willingness by our political elites-- I should say "that eagerness"-- to sell themselves to corporate bidders is the real DC "bipartisanship" ... and the root of everything that's wrong in our political system today.

I want to share an e-mail one of our most dedicated blue-collar, New Deal candidates, John Waltz, sent to voters in his Kalamazoo-based district yesterday. He offered five reasons why people who can afford to should consider contributing to his campaign. It'll give you a better idea of the kind of men and women Blue America is backing:

1. I am an Iraq and Afghanistan veteran. As we wind down these wars, we need to have more members of Congress that have served so that the VA is properly funded and we do not repeat any of the mistakes we made post-Vietnam.

2. Fred Upton has been in Congress for over 20 years. He was a back-bencher until recently when he aligned himself with special interests in DC. He is the number 1 enemy of the Earth, according to the Los Angeles Times, and has taken more money from lobbyists than anyone else in Congress.

3. My dad worked at GM for 30 years; I'm a UAW baby. I am from Kalamazoo and I know the people. We are Democrats; Barack Obama won with 60 percent of the vote in 2008.

4. Fred can't get it done. In the limited time he has been in "leadership," he starred on the failed "super-committee," and Congressional approval has dropped below 10 percent to almost zero under his "leadership." Now he's taking another starring role on some sort of genius committee to decide whether or not to raise taxes on working people. Fred needs to go.

5. It's time we elect people to Congress that will go to Washington DC with the express purpose of passing legislation that will move our country beyond this self-imposed period of futility. It will take someone with a clean slate; someone that is not bought and paid for by special interests. I will make you proud.

So, Happy New Year! Be safe, be wise, eat some black-eyed peas, and help me beat Fred Upton. Please contribute whatever you can to make that happen! We are only $5,000 shy of meeting our quarterly goal with less than 24 hours to make it happen. With your help I know this goal will be easy to beat.

Blue America had a goal for John's campaign too-- and we were only $200 from it. Can you help us get beyond that one? And we don't really care about any arbitrary deadlines except the first Tuesday in November, 2012. Here's the place.

Reid picked Kerry for the Super Committee despite his great wealth. Boehner chose Upton because of it. Both had their tasks, and, thank God, both failed. The Super Committee was a super bad idea, another brick in the road our elites are using to pave a road to Austerity for us. As David Atkins pointed out on New Year's Eve, Austerity may be a terribly ineffective policy if you want to reduce deficits, "as it weakens the middle-class tax base and long-term economic growth. But as a way of raking more money out of the middle class and into the pockets of the super-wealthy parasitic brigands, it's fantastic policy." Fortunately for us, Kerry and Upton and the rest of the congressional cutthroats couldn't agree exactly how to screw the middle class, so the whole thing fell apart... this time.

The Center for Responsive Politics did an analysis of the personal wealth of the dozen appointed members, whose median net worth is $1.2 million-- nearly 13 times larger than the net worth of the average American family. They were charged with deciding which programs should be axed so that their own class-- and the even higher classes who finance their careers-- can continue to enjoy scandalously low tax rates and loopholes.

As a whole, the Democratic members of the supercommittee are less wealthy than their Republican counterparts, according to the Center's research-- with the exception of Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.), who is the richest member of the U.S. Senate.

Kerry, who is married to philanthropist Theresa Heinz, had a minimum net worth of $183 million in 2009, the most recent year for which data is available. Lawmakers are only required to disclose their assets and liabilities in broad ranges, so he might be worth as much as $295 million.

The median American family, meanwhile, had a net worth of $96,000 in 2009, according to the Federal Reserve Board.

Rep. Fred Upton (R-Mich.), who was the 25th richest member of the U.S. House of Representatives in 2009, ranks as the wealthiest GOP politician among those on the debt supercommittee. His minimum net worth in 2009 was $7 million and his maximum net worth was $26 million, according to the Center's research.

Upton's career has always focused on exactly one thing: special privileges for the very wealthiest in society, like his own family, the western Michigan plutocrats who inherited Whirlpool and offshored and outsourced almost all the jobs to low-wage countries, destroying much of the Midwest industrial base as they did so. That's who John Waltz is going to beat next November-- with our help.

How Much Longer Will Republicans Keep The Wealthy From Paying Their Fair Share? Let's Ask Multimillionaire Congressman Fred Upton (R-MI)

Hard to imagine the congressional Republicans are clueless enough-- just on a political survival level-- to force payroll taxes up for millions of Americans-- taking money out of the pockets of people who spend it. Even Boehner and McConnell are starting to realize how insane and out of control their respective caucuses are. That's what the radical Republicans who are now running the asylum are going to force to happen on December 31. Boehner says he'll get his psychos under control in time. But when McConnell tried last week, he failed-- twice. It amounts to $119.6 billion but the Republicans are determined to use it as a bargaining chip to keep the wealthy from paying their fair share of taxes. Even a confused airhead like John Thune (R-SD) was arguing on the floor for the extension one minute and then voting against it the next.

Most of the Republicans who oppose the payroll tax cut extension-- for every working family in America-- say they're against it because the Democrats want to pay for it with a tiny surtax (tiny and getting tinier by the day as the Democrats bend over backwards to compromise with the party of the 1%) on income over a million dollars a year. In other words, if your net income is a million dollars, you pay nothing. If your net income is $1.1 million, you pay the tiny tax only on the $100,000. Al Hunt cornered GOP rat Fred Upton (MI), the heir to the Whirlpool outsourcing fortune and one of the SuperCommittee saboteurs, and asked him to explain why he keeps falsely insisting that
taxing the rich amounts to taxing small business owners and job creators, considering that more jobs were created under the Clinton administration and its higher taxes on the rich than were created following the Bush tax cuts. Upton admitted that “I don’t know specifically the answer to that question,” nonsensically pointing to Friday’s jobs report instead of trying to argue the premise of Hunt’s question:

HUNT: Why under those pre-Bush tax cut tax rates did the economy do so well in the ‘90s? And why under the Bush tax rates, less for the wealthy, to do so poorly in this decade?

UPTON: Well, a couple things. One, spending went up, Al, the wars. I mean, that’s trillions of dollars. And also there was no change in the entitlements. And we also know...

HUNT: But that shouldn’t hurt the economy. That shouldn’t hurt economic growth.

UPTON: Yeah, but that impacts the debt and the deficit.

HUNT: But I’m asking, why did the economy grow a lot? Why were more jobs created in the previous decade under higher taxes than in this decade under lower taxes?

UPTON: I don’t know specifically the answer to that question. I can-- I can maybe merit a guess. But, I mean, in large part is because our job-– we lost jobs. I mean, look at the jobs report that came out this last week, three-hundred- some-thousand people actually stopped looking for jobs.

Upton has never had a serious opponent and he's treated his congressional district as though his grandfather's hard work and good luck entitles him to a feudal estate. He sits in Congress protecting the entitlements of heirs to great wealth, like himself. This cycle he'll have to contend with a real populist Democratic candidate who isn't about to give him any slack, Afghanistan and Iraq war vet John Waltz. This morning Waltz sent me a quote from William Jennings Bryan-- "If the people perform their civic duties, there will be no plutocracy ruling in the name of the dollar." And, more than many candidates, "plutocracy" is exactly what Waltz is facing in his campaign. If you'd like to make sure he has that shot needed to rid the country of useless waste like Upton, please consider contributing through ActBlue.

Fred Upton Has To Decide-- Is He More Incompetent Or More Corrupt?

K Street's sleaziest lobbyist, Gary Andres (l), found the perfect home with Fred Upton

For all I can I can tell, economist and author David Korten may have never heard of Michigan plutocrat Fred Upton. I haven't noticed that he's mentioned Upton in his newest book, Agenda For A New Economy. But I did notice that in a subchapter, "Winning The Class War," he couldn't have done a better job in describing Upton's political career. The fortunate son of the family that founded Whirlpool generations ago, Upton has devoted his political life entirely to the service of the one percent. Korten doesn't flinch from describing characters like Upton as being engaged in a brutal class war against the rest of us.

Wall Street has been engaged in class warfare pure and simple. It uses its control of the money supply and its political influence to ensure that Wall Street players capture virtually all the benefits of productivity gains in the Main Street economy as interest, dividends, and financial service fees...

This effort to achieve an upward redistribution of wealth was so successful that, from 1980 to 2005, the highest earning 1 percent of the U.S. population increased its share of taxable income from 9 percent to 19 percent. Most of that gain went to the top tenth of 1 percent and came from the bottom 90 percent. In 2007, the top 400 U.S. tax returns reported an average annual income of $345 million; $12.7 million was the average for the top 427 returns in 955, adjusted to 2007 dollars.

The measures used to achieve this remarkable outcome included managing monetary policy to maintain a target level of unemployment, managing trade and tax policies to facilitate the corporate outsourcing of jobs to low-wage economies, suppressing labor unions, limiting the enforcement of law against hiring undocumented immigrant workers, and using accounting tricks that understate inflation to suppress inflation-indexed Social Security increases.

<--- Yep, that's Fred Upton. And just as the NY Times was reporting that this year wage and salaries as a percentage of American GDP hit a new low: 43.7%-- the lowest since 1929-- the Kalamazoo Gazette opened Upton up to a whole new line of criticism. Upton is front and center in one of the most grotesque instances of revolving door corruption in modern American history. Meet Gary Andres, the Solyndra lobbyist-- one of K Street's sleaziest operators-- who Upton persuaded to take a $235,500 a year paycut to go from working at Dutko (for $418,000 annually) to the House Energy and Commerce Committee (as chief of staff for $172,500 annually).

And Upton knew exactly the kind of slimy operative he was engaging.

Upton said in his new role, Andres will take a lead role on the Republicans' efforts to repeal the White House's healthcare bill. The GOP is also expected to fight any new climate change regulations, and the committee should serve as ground zero for those confrontations.

"For over two decades, Gary has been a leading voice in Republican policy, always seeking solutions to advance our principles to limit the size and scope of government," Upton said in a statement.

"Gary knows how to focus like a laser beam to get the job done. He is one of the most respected, most knowledgeable individuals in Republican policy who has advised Presidents and Republican Leaders through the years and has the demeanor and relationships to help advance our agenda."

Andres previous served as deputy assistant for legislative affairs to the first President Bush and was an adviser to President George W. Bush's transition team. He currently services as vice chairman of public policy and research at the lobbying firm Dutko World Wide.

Andres has contributed over $100,000 to Republican politicians-- including Upton-- since 2008, particularly to Members of Congress with suspect ethical standards who were in positions to further the special interests of his clients, like Boehner, Upton, Roy Blunt (R-MO), Richard Burr (R-NC), Connie Mack (R-FL), Saxby Chambliss (R-GA), Dave Camp (R-MI), Rob Portman (R-OH), Joe Barton (R-TX), Orrin Hatch (R-UT), Mitch McConnell (R-KY), Pete Sessions (R-TX), and John McCain (R-AZ). Previous to that-- from 1990 to 2006-- he contributed over a quarter million dollars to the same calibre of corrupt congressmen willing to sell out their constituents for a few thousand dollars. He donated tens of thousands of dollars to right-wing PACs and thousands directly to a rogues gallery of corrupt Republicans from Tom DeLay (R-TX), Don Young (R-AK) and John Ensign (R-NV) to George Allen (R-VA), J.D. Hayworth (R-AZ) Ed Schrock (R-VA), and Mark Foley (R-FL), each of whom has been involved in shocking-- even by Washington standards-- ethics scandals. Most of the biggest recipients of his legalistic bribes have been driven from office for their criminal and/or ethical conduct. And, now he works for Upton.

Upton... the guy who has, along with career criminal Darrell Issa, made trying to blame Solyndra's bankruptcy on Obama. I wonder why he's so hysterical about it-- or I used to wonder. Now I think I know why... that old subterfuge of getting people misdirected and off the scent. Yeah, I forgot to mention: Upton's boy Andres was a top Solyndra lobbyist. And now Upton has to decide if he's going to plead incompetence or corruption when he's investigated about why he hired someone as conflicted as Andres. Of course, Upton's pretty conflicted himself... always has been. In fact, while he was criticizing the administration for the Bush-initiated failed loan guarantee to the firm Solyndra, he pressured the Energy Department to approve funding assistance for a Michigan solar company, United Solar Ovonics, that said last week it's halting operations.

The loan was never approved by the Energy Department, but Upton’s advocacy for United Solar stands in contrast to his recent skepticism about the government’s clean-energy loan guarantee program.

“It is not the role of government to pick winners and losers,” Upton said in a statement in September regarding Solyndra. “Let’s learn the lessons of Solyndra before another dollar goes out the door.”

In 2009, Upton had also signed letters asking the Energy Department to provide financial assistance to automakers, a wind turbine maker, a biofuels refinery, a smart-grid project, a battery company and a water wave energy firm.

The Energy Department’s “job is to scrutinize applications and identify the best participants, and that’s what the Michigan delegation asked them to do,” said Alexa Marrero, a spokesman for Upton. “Many in Congress questioned whether the stimulus would produce the promised jobs. At the same time, members on both sides of the aisle wanted to see jobs created and folks put back to work, especially in Michigan.”

Congressional Republicans and the administration have sparred for weeks over Solyndra, with many lawmakers charging that the government has been wasting millions of taxpayer dollars funding businesses that never stood a chance.

Last September the Huffington Post reported on Andres' glaring conflict of interest which Upton completely ignored. Early this morning the Kalmazoo Gazette and the Huffington Post broke the story about the Upton/Andres shenanigans. I'll let you know when the House Ethics Committee gets to work on Upton. It's clear that federal prosecutors should also be made aware of the movements involving both Upton and Andres to determine if their actions warrant criminal conspiracy charges. Andres denies knowing Dutko was lobbying for Solyndra; Upton refuses to discuss anything about it with the press (suddenly.) Waltz's comment to the Gazette:

“Congressman Upton knows that Gary Andres was a lobbyist for Solyndra. He has not disclosed that nor has he asked Andres to recuse himself from leading investigations into this matter. We feel that Congressman Upton is guilty of a house ethics violation and should be investigated.”

Meanwhile, though, I want to be clear that Blue America endorsed John Waltz because of who he is, not because of how terrible is opponent is. Sure we've pointed out Upton's cascade of flaws all year, but the reason Blue America continues urging people to contribute to Waltz's campaign is because John is an ideal candidate for ordinary working families. He'll never be part of the conservative consensus of transpartisan corporate shills that have run the country into the ground on behalf of their 1% paymasters... like Fred Upton. Remember, Waltz was the only candidate endorsed by Blue America who "ex"-Blue Dog/DCCC Chair Steve Israel didn't invite to a candidates' forum in Washington last month. Israel's power flows from his ability to aggregate dirty cash from Wall Street, K Street and the institutions of the 1%. He probably doesn't feel especially comfortable when Democrats say things like what Waltz told us about OccupyWallStreet:

"What started out with a handful of folks on a windy day in Kalamazoo ended up growing into a protest with over 200 people as part of the Occupy Wall Street movement. Talking to several folks I could tell that they were frustrated that the top one percent of this nation is being coddled while the rest of us are getting trampled on. I heard concerns that ranged from economics to education and they were focused on making a difference.

"It was an honor to take part in this day of action in Kalamazoo. While we marched the streets with the sound of chants and drums there were several folks who were honking in support. It appears that the sleeping masses have awoken and there is a sea change coming. Question is whether this can be sustained and the answer I heard was a resounding yes."

You won't hear anything like that from the Fred Uptons or the Steve Israels of the world.

Band Of Brothers? That Isn't How Republican 1%-ers See It

I asked David Mcavoy from Blue Arkansas to help me get my heard around the story breaking in his state regarding reactionary 1%-er Rep. Steve Womack and his bizarre attack on a former enlisted man-- a decorated active duty former enlisted man-- who, as one point, served under him. That ex-soldier is Ken Aden, Blue America's most recently endorsed Democratic candidate for Congress. David agreed and here's the post he put together over the weekend which brings everyone up-to-date:

Sleazy 1% Womack Attacks Progressive Democrat Ken Aden And His Military Record

-by David Mcavoy

“If Ken was a dynamic leader and outstanding soldier in every respect, I probably would have had reason to have crossed paths with him during that deployment, but honestly I don’t remember him,” said Womack.

Aden said they did cross paths and spoke to each other on several occasions.

“He had to cross paths with me because I was on the Force Skills team,” said Aden. “He knew who I was.”

When asked about the Force Skills Competition, the congressman compared it to “intramural sports” that gave the soldiers something to do.

“Bless his heart, Ken Aden does not need to over-embellish being a member of the Force Skills Competition,” said Womack, who at 54, is 20 years older than Aden.

“The primary mission over there was not related to what I call kind of an intramural sport. … It’s surprising that anyone would try to make some hay out of being on the Force Skills team,” said Womack.

The background on this, if you didn’t already know, was that Aden served under Womack at one point in his extensive military career. Womack could have simply said that he met a lot of people and didn’t remember Aden, but he couldn’t resist going the extra distance and dissing Aden’s service as a soldier. What’s more, Aden wasn’t touting the Force Skills Competition as service, he was just saying that’s where he shook hands with Womack. So yeah, Steve Womack is a dick. I’m sorry, that’s just the only way to say it.

So I placed a phone call to Aden today and asked him a little bit more about his service and recognition from the military. The first thing he said was:

I didn’t want to get into this as I think there are more important issues facing this district, but if this is the hand I’m dealt then I’m going to play it and win.

From there, I asked him to detail his military service, and learned that he’d received:

A Combat Infantry Badge, which you only get when you’re shot at on three separate occasions.

Airborne Wings for jumping out of planes.

4 Army Commendation Medals.

3 Army Achievement Medals.

3 Overseas Service Ribbons

2 National Defense Service Medals 

1 Army Service Ribbon
 
A Global War On Terrorism Expeditionary Medal

Iraqi Campaign Service Medal 

A Global War on Terrorism Service Medal

An Armed Service Reserve Medal

A Multinational Forces Observer Medal

3 Good Conduct Medals

An Arkansas Federal Service Ribbon

2 NCO Professional Development Ribbons, which you only get if you have troops under your command.

A Military Outstanding Volunteer Service Medal

A Presidential Unit Citation Award

A Joint Meritorious Unit Award
Regimental Affiliation with the following units 5/73 Cav and 39th Inf Brigade 

I was taken aback by all this, especially as Aden had to sit down and double check the list to make sure he’d gotten everything. On top of all that, Aden said he had performed a number of jobs in the military including airborne infantry, airborne reconnaissance, special forces weapons sergeant, peace keeping in Sinai, and, my personal favorite, airborne mortar-man, which from the way Ken described it amounts to jumping out of a plane with a big cannon strapped to your body.

Sounds pretty remarkable to me. But seriously, what kind of a Judas do you have to be to swiftboat someone you served in the military with like this? Now to be fair I’m sure there’s no way Womack could know about all of Aden’s accomplishment after their service together ended, but did he really have to go that extra mile and attack Aden’s service like that? Of course he didn’t, but he’s a miserable excuse for a human being and so he couldn’t resist doing what was uncalled for.

So, if you think that attacking a veteran’s service is the most rotten thing on the planet and should disqualify anyone who goes that route from public service, donate to Ken’s campaign either on ActBlue or through his website. This kind of thing has no place in our politics, and if Womack wants to pick this fight then we’ll show him that he’s bit off more than he can chew.

I’m thinking Steve Womack probably regrets opening up his mouth and dissing Aden’s military service.

In response to Womack’s diss Ken Aden’s campaign released documentation showing that he was not only awarded while he served under Womack, but that Womack personally signed off on it.

According to documents released by the campaign, Womack approved the awarding of an Army Achievement Medal to Aden. According to the commendation documents, Aden was recognized for his leadership that “motivated others by setting the example,” and for being “a vital asset to Alpha Company.” The Army Achievement Medal is awarded for outstanding achievement or meritorious service and is generally awarded to junior Army personnel.

Womack’s office is now backpedaling as fast as they can on the military service smear.

More from Beau Walker after he talked to Womack. He said Womack signed a large number of commendations as the officer at the top of the chain of command and doesn’t remember all those either. He reiterated that it would not be unusual not to remember someone except for an unusual reason. “He did not intend to belittle or condescend,” Walker said. “He served his country. That’s an honorable thing. He didn’t mean to demean his service.”

Bullshit! How the hell is this not belittling or condescending?

“If Ken was a dynamic leader and outstanding soldier in every respect, I probably would have had reason to have crossed paths with him during that deployment, but honestly I don’t remember him,” said Womack.

Aden said they did cross paths and spoke to each other on several occasions.

“He had to cross paths with me because I was on the Force Skills team,” said Aden. “He knew who I was.”

When asked about the Force Skills Competition, the congressman compared it to “intramural sports” that gave the soldiers something to do.

“Bless his heart, Ken Aden does not need to over-embellish being a member of the Force Skills Competition,” said Womack, who at 54, is 20 years older than Aden.

“The primary mission over there was not related to what I call kind of an intramural sport. … It’s surprising that anyone would try to make some hay out of being on the Force Skills team,” said Womack.

If there’s anything to take away from this, it’s that Womack sees a reason to attack Aden. Last year, I don’t think he ever even vaguely alluded to David Whitaker. Hell, for all intents and purposes, Womack’s campaign ended after he won the nomination against Cecile Bledsoe. For that matter, I don’t recall Boozman ever getting into the mud with one of his opponents. In other words, Aden has managed to get under the invincible Mr. Womack’s skin enough that he felt the need to attack him.

What’s more, he picked the worst possible thing he could hit Aden with and lost the scuffle. And that is a better bit of news than we’ve gotten out of the third district in a long time. So throw Ken Aden some change on ActBlue. No one, no matter how “safe” their seat is deemed to be, should be allowed to get away with this kind of rotten smear. And if Ken can best Womack like this in their first scuffle, imagine what he can do if he ends up with the resources to run a fully charged campaign. Contribute!

There was a lot of stuff that disgusted me about Womack’s attack that his staffer swears wasn’t an attack on Ken Aden’s military service. But I want to draw your attention to one of the many revolting aspects of it:

When asked about the Force Skills Competition, the congressman compared it to “intramural sports” that gave the soldiers something to do.

“Bless his heart, Ken Aden does not need to over-embellish being a member of the Force Skills Competition,” said Womack, who at 54, is 20 years older than Aden.

“The primary mission over there was not related to what I call kind of an intramural sport. … It’s surprising that anyone would try to make some hay out of being on the Force Skills team,” said Womack.

Keep in mind, that’s in addition to claiming Aden must have been a mediocre soldier or Womack would have remembered him. But anyway, following that attack and Womack’s non-apology that he didn’t even have the guts to deliver himself, this image from Womack’s 2010 campaign was brought to my attention:

Now look, I have never once in the past taken a shot at Womack’s, Griffin’s, Crawford’s, or anyone else’s military service, and I never will, nor will I allow anyone that writes or may someday write for this blog to do so. It’s wrong, pure and simple. I have gone after Tim Griffin for running on his service after working to disenfranchise soldiers serving overseas and I have gone after all three of our GOPer congressmen for voting to protect their pay in the shutdown but not that of troops serving overseas (Crawford pretty much called me a liar for that one. But what’s that the teabaggers shrieked about last cycle? Oh yeah, read the damn bill, Congressman.) But in those cases, it wasn’t their service I was attacking, but their treatment towards soldiers while waving their own uniforms at us.

See, Womack, to my knowledge, was pretty much a part time soldier who’s overseas service amounted to his six month trip to the Sinai Peninsula in 2001 where Ken Aden served under him.

That’s still admirable service and I’m not attacking him for it. (And if I inadvertently said something uncalled for or untrue I’d own up to it and not send La Voix running out to cover for me the way Womack hid behind his staffer.) But Womack started this by dissing Aden’s service, and after suggesting that Aden, a decorated veteran who saw combat in two countries, was exaggerating his service to get votes, you’ve got to admit that it’s pretty hypocritical of Womack to have run on “the courage to lead” based on his short stint in Egypt and then dis Aden for supposedly exaggerating his service. Again, any service is admirable, but trying to attack a decorated combat vet for supposedly exaggerating his service.


UPDATE

Like Ken, John Waltz fought in both Iraq and Afghanistan. And like Ken, he's running for Congress against a ruthless 1%-er. in his case, Fred Upton, the Whirlpool heir, one of America's worst job outsourcers. Waltz is a longtime veteran's rights advocate. I sent him some of the reporting on Womack's insult to veterans and early this morning he send me this statement:

It is bad enough when someone disrespects a veteran considering the slap in the face they get from the underfunded Veterans Administration, but from a sitting Congressman? Quite frankly he is not fit for office if this is the disrespect he holds for veterans.

You can find Ken and John on the same ActBlue page... if you're so inclined. Even $5 and $10 contributions go a long way towards building effective grassroots campaigns against two characters with loads of corporate money flowing in and with big donations from the Koch brothers and their front groups.

What Happens When The 1% Goes On A Jihad Against America-- And They Do It From INSIDE Our Government?

Michigan Republican Fred Upton is a worthless multimillionaire who inherited everything he's got from his grandfather. Not only is he an unaccomplished, spoiled creep, he's one of the ten richest members of Congress and a very close ally of John Boehner and of the Koch brothers. Boehner made him chair of the House Energy and Commerce Committee and put him on the SuperCommittee-- in both cases to make sure the interests of the 1% would be 100% protected. That has always, after all, been Upton's key roll in Congress. This morning's Washington Post took a somewhat related look at Upton's grotesque political opportunism.

The Upton family fortune comes from their multinational company, Whirlpool, still headquartered Benton Harbor in Upton's very hard-pressed southwest Michigan district. Upton refuses to divulge exactly how much of the company he still owns, but his IRS forms indicate that it's between $1 million and $5 million worth of stock, as well as millions of dollars-- between himself and his wife-- in shares of Exxon Mobil, Stryker Corp., Pfizer, AT&T, BP, Dow Chemical, General Electric, IBM, News Corp., Philip Morris, Verizon and other companies that have benefited gigantically from his services-- and have repaid those services by financing his climb to power within the Republican caucus.

Can anyone protect us from these 1%-er predators who have used their inherited wealth to build political power and grab greater and great shares of the national wealth? Whirlpool is one of the most notorious companies for devastating the American jobs market, particularly in Michigan, Ohio and Indiana-- but (as we'll soon see) everywhere in America-- by shipping tens of thousands of good manufacturing jobs overseas to low wage hellholes. Upton has always led the fight to reward American companies-- particularly the ones he has an ownership stake in-- for offshoring and outsourcing. We'll come back to Michigan in a moment, but Whirlpool made a big mistake by tangling with Arkansas this month. We've introduced you to Ken Aden, a progressive blue collar Democrat and young Iraq and Afghanistan war vet who's running for Congress against 1%-er Steve Womack in northwest Arkansas. He was the one who responded to reports of Democrats on the SuperCommittee putting Medicare and Social Security on the bargaining table by saying that too many Members of Congress had "completely sold out to corporate interests. Now more than ever we as citizens must educate ourselves when it comes to the corporate prostitutes who claim to represent us and our families. We will be able to identify them by their works and voting record. Whether you have a D or R before your name... if you back attempts to cut Medicare and Social Security, you are nothing but a criminal." Yesterday Blue Arkansas broke the story of Aden going after Whirlpool, reiterating that "[t]his his is the kind of Democrat we need running in every district in Arkansas." They contrasted Ken's press release on Whirlpool selling their Fort Smith factory down the river to that of incumbent Steve Womack's. Ken:

The news yesterday that Whirlpool will be closing it’s plant in Fort Smith is horrible, but it’s hardly a surprise. Whirlpool has been shifting jobs out of that facility for years. In 2006, the plant employed 4600 people in the Fort Smith area. Today it employs none. To those who lost their jobs, I can offer only my heartfelt sympathy for you and your families. Whirlpool’s decision years ago to shift more and more of it’s production to Mexico is a direct result of the kind of disastrous trade deals that keep exporting middle class jobs to other countries-- and are supported by my opponent.

I think it’s important to keep this closure in mind when you look at the increase in revenues and profits, year over year, that Whirlpool reported today. This wasn’t an issue of an unprofitable plant, this was an issue of squeezing more profit out of cheaper labor overseas. This is, of course, wildly inconsistent with the company’s statement that the reason for closing the plant was lack of demand-- leading some to question whether the move was really about sales or about the slightly higher costs of skilled American labor. Count me among those asking that question and doubting seriously that this was anything other than a large manufacturer abandoning the people who’ve made it successful for decades.

While Whirlpool won’t admit it, the real issue is reducing manufacturing costs and the easiest, most tax beneficial way, is to take advantage of manufacturing outside of the US. It’s hard not to excuse Whirlpool for taking advantage of loopholes granted to them by Congress and members of Congress like Steve Womack. All that’s left for the people of Fort Smith is getting rid of the people who put those loopholes in place in the name of free-- not fair-- trade.

My opponent’s recent vote for three more of President Obama’s job-killing free trade agreements was one of the most inexcusable of his short tenure in Congress, given the desperate employment situation in his own district with manufacturing employment down more than 36% since 2000. While his constituents suffered, Womack voted to make it easy for their employers, some of whom were contributors to his campaigns, to move their jobs. He then talked about all the cheap goods that free trade brings, without mentioning the difficulty the unemployed have in buying products-- like refrigerators-- without an income from a job.

The people of the 3rd District are already hurting. Their best option at this point is to make sure they do the only thing left to them: fire Rep. Womack next year. They need to remember when they go to the polls his stand with the President and against this district on job-killing free trade agreements, and his desire to continue to give massive tax breaks to his millionaire friends and donors, while doing nothing for his constituents. The people of this district must finally realize that when Steve Womack had the opportunity to really create and save jobs in Northwest Arkansas, he put partisan politics above people.

Womack, who is a zombie-vote for every Republican trade and economic policy that encourages Whirlpool behavior-- in his own district and beyond-- sounded... just like Fred Upton: "I am disappointed with Whirlpool’s announcement, and my heart goes out to the employees and their families. Despite the news, I consider the Fort Smith region one of America’s most attractive areas for economic development. It is ideally situated with incredible infrastructure and a quality of life second to none in the country. With a qualified workforce and the supporting institutions, I am confident we’ll find another corporate partner who believes in Fort Smith and the enormous opportunities it offers." What a freak! Ken Aden is the newest addition to the Blue America list of endorsed candidates. John Waltz, like Ken, a committed blue collar, New Deal Democrat-- and an Iraq and Afghanistan vet-- is also on that Blue America page. And he and Ken are on another page together as well. John sent me this e-mail today in response to Ken's press release:

This is certainly not unexpected coming from Michigan's Sixth District where Whirlpool is "headquartered" and how they have bled jobs from this country for years. Of course, this has been done with the enabling by the Whirlpool heir and corrupt swindler Fed Upton who has repeatedly touted bad trade deals like NAFTA as great for this country. More like good for the pockets of his wealthy pals and himself. 

Adding insult to injury usually these jobs are shipped away for slave labor, but in one instance it was the opposite. Whirlpool is currently paying German workers to make washers and dryers for $35 an hour... I am sure folks here in America would be happy with making $25 an hour. Unfortunately many politicians like Upton do not get it because they have been bought and sold just like our jobs have been.

Electing this kind of Democrat-- not the 1% wannabes the DCCC is always looking to recruit-- is how we move the 1% Movement from Zuccotti Park into the U.S. Congress. I hope you'll help candidates like Ken Aden and John Waltz here at Blue America.

John Waltz-- Not The Kind of Democrat Who Embraces The Status Quo

Occupy The DCCC

On Wednesday the DCCC invited dozens of candidates from across the country to a big powwow in DC. As we saw last week, the DCCC is pimping the anti-Choice, anti-gay, anti-progressive Blue Dog Caucus, along with normal Democratic groups, to the new recruits. But they didn't invite all candidates. They've been scurrying around like nasty little sorority girls telling Democratic donors that Michigan blue collar progressive John Waltz isn't running. That's obviously untrue but even after they were corrected, they still didn't invite him to their shindig. He's the only Blue America candidate not invited. I dedicated some resources to finding out why. And, sure enough, "ex"-Blue Dog Steve Israel or one of his cronies, who just never feel comfortable with blue collar candidates, found a less progressive person to try to shove on the ballot, Mike O'Brien.

Maybe Israel doesn't feel comfortable with Waltz's involvement with OccupyWallStreet. Israel's power flows from his ability to aggregate dirty cash from Wall Street, K Street and the institutions of the 1%. He probably doesn't feel especially comfortable when Democrats say things like what Waltz told us last week:

"What started out with a handful of folks on a windy day in Kalamazoo ended up growing into a protest with over 200 people as part of the Occupy Wall Street movement. Talking to several folks I could tell that they were frustrated that the top one percent of this nation is being coddled while the rest of us are getting trampled on. I heard concerns that ranged from economics to education and they were focused on making a difference.

"It was an honor to take part in this day of action in Kalamazoo. While we marched the streets with the sound of chants and drums there were several folks who were honking in support. It appears that the sleeping masses have awoken and there is a sea change coming. Question is whether this can be sustained and the answer I heard was a resounding yes."

I called Waltz and asked him if he knew anything about the DCCC trying to bum-rush his race with a business-oriented candidate. He didn't but he told me that "[t]his news does not come as a surprise to me. I am not the type of guy who will go along to get along and follow the status quo. Folks in Michigan's Sixth and across this nation are tired of establishment candidates who are not willing to step on a few toes to get things done. As one of the ninety-nine per centers I know exactly what folks are going through, which is why I will not be serving corporations, organizations, or my party. I will only serve and be held accountable to my constituents. I am sure this attitude does not fit well in the establishment's agenda, but I am proud to be a fighter."

The other day Digby wrote about how OccupyWallStreet was able to fend off demands from very factions-- some just naive, some apparently hoping for a violent revolution-- that the movement completely reject the American political system. What's the alternative to democracy, even one as flawed as our own-- and please remember who has the guns... and the stomach to use them. And now there's a website dedicated to criticizing OccupyWallStreet from... I guess the left.

Our political system is rigged and it is working very well for the moneyed interests who rigged it. As such, our ability as citizens to influence core policy is very limited. Their power structure is well insulated. Paradoxically, though, for it to continue its smooth run, it is instrumental that the educated classes entertain illusions of influence. Elections serve that purpose, and when those cease to produce the desired result, or promises are broken, the disappointed can replenish their optimism in protest movements that are eventually co-opted by their proximate establishment party. Accordingly, OWS currently doesn’t pose much of a threat to the corporate-government consortium. This, ironically, has much to do with the protesters belief in their own ability to influence and reform the system.

Sure... but John Waltz isn't Steny Hoyer or Debbie Wasserman Schultz or Steve Israel. Anyone know if kids these days still listen to old Beatles songs?