"Pity the Billionaire: The Hard Times Swindle and the Unlikely Comeback of the Right" (2012)

Rating:	★★★★
Category:	Books
Genre:	Nonfiction
Author:	Thomas Frank

In 2003, Thomas Frank (a former writer for "The Wall Street Journal" who contributes to Harper's and other periodicals) previously penned the insightful "What's the Matter With Kansas?" A best-selling tome that traced how one American midwest state changed from being a hot-bed of progressive politics in the 1900's to a bastion of conservatism a century later.

Frank has now written a book to explain one of the knotty problems of recent US politics: how the free-market, hard line de-regulators of corporate capitalism (the GOP) emerged as the dominant party in the 2010 Elections s despite the tremendous losses in the economy just two years earlier under the Bush-Cheney Administration.

Mr. Frank shows in short and snappy prose how the far right revitalized itself and used corporate power to finance a lightning-fast conservative revival with the help of former Bush campaign guru Karl Rove, former Congressman Dick Armey's lobbying prowess and the money from the likes of billionaire Charles Koch and his brother in an alliance to "change the story" of the Wall Street banking crash and the mortgage crisis into a government plot rather than a failure of the heights of investment macro-capitalism and shady schemes like the credit-default swap and toxic securities games that led to the worst downfall in economic US history since the Crash of 1929 and subsequent free-fall.

Frank's book follows the rise of the American Tea Party and its appeal to the simple and accessible heartland-narrative that everything the government does is wrong and all regulations are bad because they hurt "small" business (i.e., multi-national banking and financial speculators and bond and futures traders.) Frank spends a good deal of the book showing the rise of unlikely "populists" like the commentator Glenn Beck and the enduring power of the super-capitalist propaganda writer Ayn Rand to help explain the "intellectual energy" behind the movement.

This book is a very good analysis of how the right wing of America continues to regroup over and over again (for the fourth time in forty years if you count the rise of Richard Nixon's "Silent Majority" in 1968, The Reagan "Revolution" of the 1980s and Newt Gingrich and the "Contract With America" movement in 1994.) Counting the recent upsurge in 2010 and its apparent that, like clockwork, every dozen years or so, a "thunder on the right" campaign emerges from the boardrooms and think-tanks of the American rightward establishment. And, s far, each time said movement is more radical rather than conservative than the last movement. So radical indeed that previous leaders like Nixon and Reagan would be considered too soft to lead the movements they inspired not so long ago.

Here's a portion of Frank's main themes in the book, taken from a analysis he wrote on the "Reuters" website: http://blogs.reuters.com/great-debate/2012/01/12/how-everyone-got-the-right-wrong/

"Rather than acknowledge that they had enjoyed thirty years behind the wheel, they declared that they had never really got their turn in the first place. The true believers had never actually been in charge, the “Conservative Ascendancy” never really existed—and therefore, the disastrous events of recent years cast no discredit on conservative ideas themselves. The solution was not to reconsider conservative dogma; it was to double down, to work even more energetically for the laissez-faire utopia.

"Pure idealism of this sort is unusual in American politics, however, and the jaded men of the commentariat sat back and waited for the system to punish the wayward ones, for the magnetic pull of the “center” to work its corrective magic. But this time the gods didn’t intervene in the usual way. In 2010, a radicalized GOP scored its greatest victory in congressional elections in many decades.

'The simplest explanation for the conservative comeback is that hard times cause people to lash out at whoever is in power. In 2010, that happened to be Democrats. Ergo, their rivals staged a comeback. But surely the two parties are not simply interchangeable, like Coke and Pepsi. They are able to control their own fate to some degree, to differentiate themselves from each other. Besides, history provides enough examples of public sentiment moving consistently in a particular direction to show that it need not always flop aimlessly back and forth."

Yet flop the average "independent voter" who bothered to vote in 2010 did--flopping right back into the main party that led the way (along with pliable semi-conservative Democrats) to the sub-prime mortgage/toxic securitization scams that put us in trouble in the first place!

Oh, well. At least I feel better having read this engaging 187 page book. I now at least understand better how the swindlers operated.

Here's an interview with the author from January.





For access to Thomas Frank's recent essays: http://www.tcfrank.com/essays.php

Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords Talks Violent Attacks, Sarah Palin's "Cross Hairs"

As most people know a 40 year-old three term Congresswoman, Gabrielle Giffords, was shot in the brain and lies in critical condition in a Tucson, Arizona hospital. Others were killed by a shooter, considered too unstable to attend a local community college, who was armed with a 30-round Glock pistol, a gun with a ballistic-capacity even the Tucson police do not carry.

She was a moderate "Blue-Dog" Democrat, one of the few of her kind in the current Congress which had friends on both sides of the aisle. Violence was not new to her campaign. Her opponent, a far-right Tea Party candidate, had invited followers to a "rally" where they could fire automatic weapons, including an M-16 combat firearm.

Former Vice Presidential candidate Sarah Palin had targeted her with a "cross hairs" mark on her district, one of twenty on Sarah's target list.

This is a climate we live in in America. No matter what the shooter's mental state of mind, its clear politics played some role in his mania. If he had just wanted to shoot people, he could have picked many places in Arizona's second largest city to do so. Yet he went to a "Meet Your Congresswoman" event.

Conservatives pundits on Arizona's airwaves immediately went on the air today to dismiss the idea that their toxic rhetoric could have inspired any of this slaughter. A Fox news contributor (and former FBI agent) said on the "Geraldo Rivera" show Saturday that this had "nothing to do with politics".

Hmmmm.

Perhaps it would be best if all pundits took a deep breath the next time they vilify a person whose crime is not agreeing with them.


No politics involved in this shooting? One might ask ask why then did the shooter's first gunshot go into the head of a congresswoman?

(Below: Gabrielle Giffords interviewed in March of 2010.)

California: Dreams of Clean Energy Deferred?

Most people know that California is the largest state by population (37 million and rising) in the United States.  It has often been said that what happens in California will remake the nation.  It has been boasted that "The Golden State" by itself has one of the ten largest economies in the world. 

That's why any major proposition put forward to direct vote of the population can have a major effect on America and the world. The most recent of these is Proposition 23, an effort sponsored by a Texas oil money and supported by the far-right "Tea Party" movement could, if passed, pose a major setback to a cleaner global environment.

A little history: in 2006, California's GOP Governor Arnold Swarznegger, signed AB 32, a bill that would roll back total emissions from the state to 1990 levels by promoting more renewable and "green" technology, by instituting a "cap and trade" energy policy and promote non-carbon solar, biofuel and wind technologies to the point that these alternative fuels wills represent 33 percent of all energy use by 2020.  

 What Proposition 23 would do is to suspend this bill's provisions for cleaner air and reducing climactic impact by petroleum and coal based technology.   It would suspend such laws until the total unemployment rate in the state falls to 5.5 percent (it currently stands at 12 percent). Almost 74 percent of the funding for this proposition comes from out-of-state oil companies Tesoro and Valero, and Flint Hills Resources, a petrochemical company owned by Charles and David Koch, Kansas billionaires who have pumped millions in big money into dozens of political causes this year

Here's Governor Swarznegger's   take on the Brothers Koch.  

They’re not interested in our environment; they are only interested in greed and filling their pockets with more money.

 

 Although the "No" forces have a narrow lead, some polls show this Proposition might still pass,  a serious setback to putting less junk in the atmosphere for kids and elderly people to breathe and making global climate change worse. 

The fact is California's decision here does have an impact on the global future. And it also  sends a message that at least 15 percent of America's population serious about changing the future of our children for the better.    

This is not strictly a "liberal" movement--many Republican leaders including the GOP candidate for governor, Meg Whitman, oppose 23. But the traditional American fear of "government intervention" serves the interests of the oil and gas companies who want to hold back this law from taking full effect.

One can only hope Californians will not let a down economy blind them to a better future.  

Here are some more details on this important measure and the bad effects that will occur if it does pass.  

Here's more on the bill from the Earthjustice website.  

Financed by Texas oilmen, Proposition 23 would suspend A.B. 32, which has put in place the nation's strongest standards governing greenhouse gas emissions. If it passes, this deadly proposition could have impacts that cascade across the state of California, nation and even into the international community. Here's a quick look at what Prop 23 could do if it passes:

• Kill Clean Energy Jobs: More than 500,000 Californians now work in clean tech jobs in the state, and since 2005, California green jobs have grown 10 times faster than other sectors of the state's economy.

• Pollute Our Air, Endanger Our Health: Prop. 23 would let oil companies and other polluters off the hook by suspending requirements to clean up their acts, drastically increasing air pollution and public health risks. 

• Keep Us Addicted to Costly Oil: At the exact moment when California's wind, solar and other renewable energy technologies are starting to reduce our energy costs, Prop. 23 would protect polluters and send a message that the United States cannot keep up with Japan, Europe and China, who are taking the lead in renewable energy production.

• Undermine Environmental Laws: Not only would Prop. 23 indefinitely repeal A.B. 32, it would also threaten dozens of other regulations in California—laws that Earthjustice uses every day to clean up pollution in the state.

U.S. Congressman Challenges Shadowy Opponents

This story concerns Peter DeFazio, a Democrat who represents Oregon's Fourth Congressional District, which encompasses its second largest city (Eugene) and part of its coastal population. DeFazio has not had any serious opposition for re-election (in 2008 he run election for the 10th time with over eighty percent of the vote.) 

His main opponent is Art Robinson, a little-known science professor whose major issue seems to be refuting the idea of human-caused global warming. Oh, and he also came out for abolishing the public school system, the entire system I guess, calling it "socialist education."  Given that Mr. DeFazio's district is  home to one of  the best public education institutions in the Northwest, The University of Oregon, you would think Professor Robinson was waging a quixotic campaign. And it would be a hopeless task for a man so out of touch with this constituency.  But where his ideas might fail him, unlimited money from anonymous sources  are given the challenger a boost. 

Why anonymous sources and why unlimited money you ask?  

After the Democratic Landslide elections of 2008, the Supreme Court of the United States of which a majority of Justices and its Chief Justice were  appointed by conservative Presidents, decided to overturn a 100-year old law banning direct corporate spending in political campaigns.  The decision came from a case called Citizens United v. the Federal Election Commission.

From a news article from National Public Radio: 

"As a result of the Supreme Court's ruling, groups such as Americans for New Leadership and Concerned Taxpayers for America have come out to take advantage of the new rules. Some of these groups are known as 501c4's, which is a tax designation; others are simply referred to as "super-PACS."

"Under the new rules, these groups are not required to say who they are or how they're funded, and it's very difficult to find out any information about them."

So now politicians all over the country whose views are not simpatico with investment bankers, private medical insurance companies, hospitals, and wealthy people who before would have had to declare themselves against  a candidate to donate money  to see his or her defeat are now protected from any scrutiny whatsoever by law. 

Which means the money can come from anywhere--even a foreign country--and no one has a right to know where it came from or who it is behind the funding. 

Which brings us to Concerned Taxpayers for America, the shadow group that just threw  80,000 dollars into a television ad buy against De Fazio.  Much more money is likely to be in the pipeline from "Concerned Taxpayers for America", whomever they are,as the November 2nd Election draws nearer.  

"Is this a corporation? Is it one very wealthy, right-wing individual? Is it a foreign interest? Is it a drug gang?" DeFazio said. "We don't know."The names behind those voices apparently will remain a mystery - at least until the organization has to make a quarterly filing to the FEC in October. (from "The Washington Post").

Determined to find out where this money was coming from, DeFazio, accompanied by reporters from the Washington Post, went to an address in Washington that was supposed to be the headquarters of Concerned Citizens. He personally knocked on the door of the Washington townhouse that had been left on a filing paper for the political action group. 

This is a transcript and part of an article from The Huffington Post, from September 26, 2010:

The Huffington Post, along with a couple of journalists from The Washington Post, accompanied DeFazio on the short walk from the Rayburn House Office Building over to Concerned Taxpayers' headquarters, listed as 10 E St, SE, which turned out to be a small grey townhouse. DeFazio had to ring the doorbell, knock, and yell through the mail slot before someone came to the door. The man identified himself as Mike Omegna and he told the congressman that he had never heard of Miller or Concerned Taxpayers, nor was his voice on the organization's voicemail:

DEFAZIO: You don't know Jason Miller?

OMEGNA: No. No, I don't, sir. ... I rent this place. [...]

DEFAZIO: Did you ever hear of Concerned Taxpayers of America? 

OMEGNA: Nope. [...]

WASHINGTON POST: You're on the [voice] message, aren't you?

OMEGNA: Am I? I shouldn't be.

DEFAZIO: So you know nothing about Concerned Taxpayers for America, and you're not forwarding calls.

OMEGNA: No.

DEFAZIO: You're just a renter?

OMEGNA: Yes.

"These people must be really scared of revealing who they really are, or they wouldn't be having a blind drop and someone who's probably misrepresenting themselves answering the door," DeFazio told reporters after the incident.

 

 http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/09/24/peter-defazio-concerned-taxpayers-ambush_n_738532.html 

Art Robinson for his part says he has no idea where the campaign money is coming from, but they have already spent more money for him than he could raise for himself. One would hope the Federal Election Commission rules will shed some light for the voters of Oregon on just who these donors are.  

But why would anyone or any entity want to spend millions to  take down a relatively obscure Congressman like DeFazio. Well, this speech The maverick Oregon Democrat delivered  in September of 2008, on the eve of the Bush Administration's  700 billion dollar bailout of major investment banks, might have something to do with that. DeFazio bucked both parties leaders in the Congress on this. one.     

It is enshrined in law that people are entitled to a secret ballot; the question is today:  are they entitled to spend millions secretly working against a candidate with modern media ads?  How are the voters supposed to tell where the shadowy interests of these few people (or one person) or company or foreign entity lies---until too late? 

De Fazio is probably--my finger crossed-- going to hold unto his seat.  Oregonians have a tradition of electing Representatives and senators who are always a little out-of-step with their colleagues from BOTH major political parties. 

But with the Republicans running an estimated 7-1 advantage in money raised by these new "Super PACs", what Congressperson in a tough re-election  fight elsewhere is likely to want to investigate a company doing business with the government, let's say, if said company can attack that Representative with the impunity of a cloak of secrecy for much if not all of the campaign season?