Category Archives: Right Wing

labor, Right Wing, Youth and students

Our Egypt Beginning? 12,000 Workers & Students Hit the Streets in Madison

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Thousands Gather at Wisconsin Capitol

to Protest Gov.Walker Anti-Union Bill

By CLAY BARBOUR
Beaver county Blue via Wisconsin State Journal

Feb 16, 2011 – In one of the largest protests in recent memory, thousands of angry union supporters gathered at the state Capitol on Tuesday to oppose a bill by Gov. Scott Walker that would greatly weaken organized labor in Wisconsin.

More than 12,000 protesters gathered in two separate rallies outside the Capitol, many of them carrying signs and chanting "Recall Walker" or "Kill this bill." Thousands more crowded inside the rotunda and watched TV monitors broadcasting a public hearing on the governor’s proposal.

Capitol Police officers, Department of Natural Resources wardens, UW police and state troopers provided beefed-up security, but the crowd remained peaceful — if loud.

Cheers erupted every time someone in the hearing voiced opposition to the governor’s bill, aimed at erasing a $137 million deficit in the current budget. Unveiled Friday, Walker’s plan would remove collective bargaining rights for most of the 175,000 state and local government employees, allowing most workers to negotiate only over salary.

Continue reading Our Egypt Beginning? 12,000 Workers & Students Hit the Streets in Madison →

Banks, Right Wing

If the Banksters Are Worried About Deficits, Let Them Close up the Gap

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No Mr. Boehner, America is Not ‘Broke’

By Robert Creamer
Progressive America Rising via Huffington Post

Feb 15, 2011 – Once again on the Sunday news shows, Republican Leader John Boehner declared that "America is broke" — his premise for why we "can’t afford" important investments that are critical to America’s future.

In fact, of course, America is far from "broke". It is the largest economy in the world. After collapsing as a result of the recklessness of the big Wall Street banks — and Republican economic policies in late 2008 — the economy has, in fact, grown for six consecutive quarters. The stock market has almost doubled since the crash — regaining most of its value. Corporate profits are soaring. And American corporations are now sitting on close to two trillion dollars in cash.

What’s more, we still have the same highly-skilled, productive labor force and the same stock of plants and equipment that we did before the financial meltdown — the same ability to create the goods and services that are the real measures of economic wealth.

The problem isn’t that America is "broke." The problem is that economic growth is not being shared with most Americans. The problem is that the very rich are wealthier than ever and everyone else is falling behind. Not only does that mean that the massive store of wealth that we create today is not widely shared. It also means that — taken together — we have less wealth as a nation because so many Americans who could be creating goods and services are unemployed, creating nothing.

Continue reading If the Banksters Are Worried About Deficits, Let Them Close up the Gap →

Media, Right Wing

Fox: The Twisted Source of News for Most in Beaver Country Exposed as Dangerous Sham

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FOX NEWS INSIDER: ‘Stuff Is Just Made Up’

By Eric Boehlert
Media Matters

Feb 10, 2011 – Asked what most viewers and observers of Fox News would be surprised to learn about the controversial cable channel, a former insider from the world of Rupert Murdoch was quick with a response: “I don’t think people would believe it’s as concocted as it is; that stuff is just made up.”

Indeed, a former Fox News employee who recently agreed to talk with Media Matters confirmed what critics have been saying for years about Murdoch’s cable channel. Namely, that Fox News is run as a purely partisan operation, virtually every news story is actively spun by the staff, its primary goal is to prop up Republicans and knock down Democrats, and that staffers at Fox News routinely operate without the slightest regard for fairness or fact checking.

“It is their M.O. to undermine the administration and to undermine Democrats,” says the source. “They’re a propaganda outfit but they call themselves news.”

And that’s the word from inside Fox News.

Note the story here isn’t that Fox News leans right. Everyone knows the channel pushes a conservative-friendly version of the news. Everyone who’s been paying attention has known that since the channel’s inception more than a decade ago. The real story, and the real danger posed by the cable outlet, is that over time Fox News stopped simply leaning to the right and instead became an open and active political player, sort of one-part character assassin and one-part propagandist, depending on which party was in power. And that the operation thrives on fabrications and falsehoods.

Continue reading Fox: The Twisted Source of News for Most in Beaver Country Exposed as Dangerous Sham →

Community, Right Wing

Take the Rag Away From Your Face Dept: Triggers Today Are Being Pulled by the Right

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Right-Wing Terrorism:

Murders Grow on the Far Right

Four Decades After

Martin Luther King Jr.

By Stephan Salisbury
Progressive America Rising via Tomdispatch.com

Jan. 16, 2011

The landscape of America is littered with bodies.

They’ve been gunned down in Tucson, shot to death at the Pentagon, and blown away at the Holocaust Museum, as well as in Wichita, Knoxville, Pittsburgh, Brockton, and Okaloosa County, Florida.

Total body count for these incidents: 19 dead, 26 wounded.

Not much, you might say, when taken in the context of about 30,000 gun-related deaths annually nationwide. As it happens, though, these murders over the past couple of years have some common threads. All involved white gunmen with ties to racist or right-wing groups or who harbored deep suspicions of “the government.” Many involved the killing of police officers.

In Pittsburgh, three police officers were shot and killed, while two were wounded in an April 2009 gun battle with Richard Poplawski, a white supremacist fearful that President Obama planned to curtail his gun rights. In Okaloosa County, Florida, two officers were slain in April 2009 in an altercation with Joshua Cartwright, whose abused wife told the police that her husband “believed that the U.S. Government was conspiring against him” and that he was “severely disturbed that Barack Obama had been elected President.”

Continue reading Take the Rag Away From Your Face Dept: Triggers Today Are Being Pulled by the Right →

Right Wing

Violence in Politics: Right Wing Tries to Hide from Its Own Demagogy

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Rights Come with Responsibilities:

The Right Shirks Theirs

Leo W. Gerard
International President, United Steelworkers
Beaver County Blue via Huffington Post

Five years ago, a 47-year-old Missouri woman began a duplicitous on-line courtship through MySpace with a 13-year-old neighbor who once had been friends with the woman’s daughter.

The adult, Lori Drew, flirted with the 13-year-old, Megan Meier, through the guise of a fictitious, 16-year-old character named Josh Evans. Suddenly, “Josh” broke up with Miss Meier, writing to her, “the world would be a better place without you.” Just hours later, Miss Meier hung herself in her bedroom.

Words have consequences.

Drew wasn’t charged with the child’s death. In fact, a judge reversed her conviction on computer fraud charges, saying the law was intended to deal with hacking, not murder. But for most Americans, there is something deeply disturbing, something morally, if not criminally, wrong with deliberate torment, with predatory viciousness. Drew eluded accountability the same way conservatives are seeking to evade culpability after their irresponsible speech may have provoked the delusional to violence.

It’s hard to draw a line directly from Drew’s cruel words to the noose around Miss Meier’s neck. Similarly, it’s difficult to directly link violent political rhetoric like Sarah Palin’s illustration showing gun sight cross hairs on U.S. Rep. Gabrielle Giffords’ Arizona district to the shattering of Giffords’ office door after her vote for health insurance reform last March or Jared L. Loughner’s shooting spree last weekend that left six dead and Giffords and 13 others wounded.

What is clear, however, is that vile and threatening communication that becomes so repetitive that it’s routine has the effect of sanctioning an atmosphere of violence.

Continue reading Violence in Politics: Right Wing Tries to Hide from Its Own Demagogy →

Banks, Right Wing, trade unions

Why Finance Capital Is Making You Sick of Voting

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What To Do Nov 2?

Follow the Money…

By Robert Creamer
Huffington Post

In the movie version of the story of Watergate — “All the President’s Men” – the Nixon administration source who met Bob Woodward in the underground garage to provide him clues — “Deep Throat” — famously tells Woodward to “follow the money.” Apparently those lines were never uttered in real life, but it’s good advice in politics nonetheless.

The other day, California’s Arnold Schwarzenegger – with whom I rarely agree – said something that should be repeated over and over between now and the mid-term elections. Schwarzenegger was referring to oil company financial support for California’s Proposition 23 that would shelve the state’s four-year-old climate legislation until the state’s unemployment rate hits 5.5% when he said:

“Does anyone really believe that these companies, out of the goodness of their black oil hearts, are spending millions and millions of dollars to protect jobs?” He continued. “….It’s not about jobs at all, ladies and gentlemen. It’s about their ability to pollute and thus protect their profits.”

Continue reading Why Finance Capital Is Making You Sick of Voting →

Banks, Right Wing

Tea Party: Pawns in the Bankster Game

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[Note from Editor: With the caveat that people vote BOTH on facts and emotions, this is a fairly good analysis on the topic]

5 Ways the Tea Party Agenda

Screws Tea Party Supporters

By Adele M. Stan
AlterNet,September 4, 2010
If people could be counted on to vote in their own best interests, there would be no Tea Party movement, for if the economic agenda embraced by Tea Partiers — a vastly pro-corporation, government-killing plan — Tea Partiers would find themselves among the people most hurt by it.

To hear Tea Party activists tell it, they seek to save future generations from the crushing demands of big government. Yet the agenda they advocate, dictated by the big-money players behind the muscular interest groups that keep the movement growing, will likely render the Tea Partiers themselves the economically squeezed subjects of a corporate state, one in which the elderly will be left to scrounge for crumbs, small businesses will be crushed by lack of capital, and their own ground-level online organizing supplanted by the networks built by giant, corporate-funded astroturf groups.

As George Lakoff and Drew Westen remind us, people don’t vote on the facts: they vote on emotion, according to Westen, and their notion of morality, according to Lakoff. The resentment of Tea Partiers toward liberals, East Coast elites, the poor and people who don’t look like them has been effectively marshaled in service of a “free market” ideology cleverly packaged as “freedom.” Never mind that free markets are anything but free for ordinary people. The packaging strikes the necessary emotional and moral chords: Free markets = freedom = liberty = endowed by the Creator, as written in the Declaration of Independence by the founders. It’s the perfect exploitation of the worldview of conservative middle-class white people — all in the service of enriching the super-rich at the expense of their unwitting, patriotic ground troops.

Continue reading Tea Party: Pawns in the Bankster Game →

Economy, labor, Right Wing

Grab the Pitchforks, It’s the Workers and the Unemployed vs. Glen Beck, the GOP and the Banksters

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USW Pres. Leo Gerard

Jobless Organize to Remove

Republican Royalists From Their Jobs

By Leo Gerard
President, United Steel Workers

Aug. 25, 201 – Glenn Beck made it official on Fox News last week: He’s seeking the office of 21st Century Marie Antoinette.

The queen of France, beheaded during the revolution, attained infamy for insensitivity toward hungry peasants. Glenn Beck, the Fox talk show host, achieved celebrity for his callousness toward unemployed Americans.

Beck leads a pack of royalist Republicans who have spent the summer mocking, vilifying and denigrating the nation’s 14.5 million unemployed workers. It is the moneyed class smacking down the working class in an attempt to disempower and disenfranchise them. Dispirited workers are less likely to vote – which could give Beck and his gang of royalist Republicans control of Congress.

The unemployed, like France’s 18th Century peasants, are fighting back, however. The Union of the Unemployed and Working America are organizing the jobless to vote this fall and to demand help from lawmakers. They’re not out to behead Beck and the royalist Republicans, just dethrone them.

Continue reading Grab the Pitchforks, It’s the Workers and the Unemployed vs. Glen Beck, the GOP and the Banksters →

Economy, labor, Right Wing

Unemployment Problem Solved Dept: Tea Party Candidate Wants to Bring Back ‘The Poor House’ and Expand Prison Jobs

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Oliver Twist Asks for ‘More’

Tea Party Candidate Says Move The Poor To Prison

From The Raw Story and the AP

via Beaver County Blue

[ Note from John Leonard: When I was growing up for many years, Pleasant Drive in Potter Twp. Beaver Co.  Pa was  called Poorhouse Run Road because the Poorhouse was located on what is now the property of Horse Head Industries.   Looks like some Republicans want to resurrect some bad parts of history.  Their families should be the first to enter into the new ideas they seek. ]

If elected governor of New York, Tea Party Republican Carl Paladino wouldn’t criminalize being poor, per se.  That would be unconstitional.  He’d just rather see them “voluntarily” move into state prisons where they could work on improving, among other things, their “personal hygiene”.

Paladino is competing for the Republican nomination with former U.S. Rep. Rick Lazio.  The primary is Sept. 14th and Paladino has campaigned hard to the right of Lazio.  He’s routinely argued that New York’s social services encourage illegal immigrants and the poor to come to live in New York. 

According to Paladino his poor-to-prison plan is modeled after the Civilian Conservation Corps, a federal program that paid young unemployed men during the Great Depression to plant trees, build roads and develop parks.  Paladino’s program would be open to long-term welfare recipients and to people who had lost their jobs during the recession. 
Paladino is proposing to consolidate prison facilities and using the vacant ones into dormitory style housing where they could work for the state in some military or public works capacity in exchange for a receipt of benefits.

Continue reading Unemployment Problem Solved Dept: Tea Party Candidate Wants to Bring Back ‘The Poor House’ and Expand Prison Jobs →

Economy, labor, Right Wing

‘Cheap Labor Conservatives’ – A Proper Label for Blue Dogs, the GOP and the Tea Party

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Defeat the Right Wing in Three Minutes With

Truth in Labeling and the ‘Cheap Labor’ Frame

By Conceptual Guerilla

Have you got three minutes. Because that’s all you need to learn how to defeat the Republican Right. Just read through this handy guide and you’ll have everything you need to successfully debunk right-wing propaganda.

It’s really that simple. First, you have to beat their ideology, which really isn’t that difficult. At bottom, conservatives believe in a social hierarchy of “haves” and “have nots” that I call “corporate feudalism“. They have taken this corrosive social vision and dressed it up with a “respectable” sounding ideology. That ideology is pure hogwash, and you can prove it.

But you have to do more than defeat the ideology. You have to defeat the “drum beat”. You have to defeat the “propaganda machine”, that brainwashes people with their slogans and catch-phrases. You’ve heard those slogans.”Less government“, “personal responsibility” and lots of flag waving. They are “shorthand” for an entire worldview, and the right has been pounding their slogans out into the public domain for getting on forty years.

So you need a really good slogan – a “counter-slogan” really, to “deprogram” the brainwashed. You need a “magic bullet” that quickly and efficiently destroys the effectiveness of their “drum beat”. You need your own “drum beat” that sums up the right’s position. Only your “drum beat” exposes the ugly reality of right-wing philosophy – the reality their slogans are meant to hide. Our slogan contains the governing concept that explains the entire right-wing agenda. That’s why it works. You can see it in every policy, and virtually all of Republican rhetoric. And it’s so easy to remember, and captures the essence of the Republican Right so well, we can pin it on them like a “scarlet letter”.

Continue reading ‘Cheap Labor Conservatives’ – A Proper Label for Blue Dogs, the GOP and the Tea Party →