Conservatives' Proclivity for Working Against Their Own Self-Interests

I've long felt that conservatives, especially those with a libertarian bent, tend to work against what's best, in the long run, for their own kind, not to mention the U.S. in general. I don't recognize this tendency in liberals, at least nowhere near the extent that I have in conservatives.

A snap judgment, and one I'm prone to make, is that labels like "conservative," "libertarian," Christian," "free-market advocate," and "fiscally conservative" are just a cover-up for those that work the Big Grift, by which I mean the loosely organized machine that is actually motivated to get what they can while they can. That explains why their policies almost exclusively favor the rich at the expense of the middle and lower classes.

The rich then reward them handsomely, while not a few middle- and lower-class suckers are swept up around the margins of the grift. Yeah, fuck Socialist Obama! Here's $5!

Former House majority leader Dick Armey says he took an $8 million consulting deal
in return for leaving the conservative organization FreedomWorks because the group
was "dishonest" and because he "couldn't leave with empty pockets." The arrangement,
he says, will allow him to "never have to work again forever." (courtesy ABC News)

Dick Armey is a classic example of the Big Grift, only he ain't working against his own self-interests. None of the Big Grifters are, see Karl Rove, Glenn Beck, Sarah Palin, Jim Demint, Dick Morris, etc., etc.

Looking away from the Grift and to the movement's true believers, or at least at the political actors that day in and day out maintain that the conservative/libertarian ideology is superior and good for the country, we first have to come to grips with why it is that any of them would think it's good for the country.

Before I go too far, I have to confess that even those Republicans not obviously on the Grift always appear to me to believe helping the rich will "trickle down" to them, and let's face it, it does. While direct party fundraising is surprisingly even, outside money, greatly increased by the Citizens United SCOTUS decision, redounds to the benefit of conservatives by about a 2-1 margin. Hence, the Big Grift being dominated by conservatives. But even those not actively participating in the money grab still depend greatly on it.

Giuliani and Robertson: Two conservatives who have perfected the Big Grift.

And don't think I don't notice that the Democrats play similar games, if not nearly so large or obvious. You only have to watch someone like New York senator Chuck Shumer -- who we can depend on as a consistent supporter of liberal causes -- when it comes to banking and Wall Street. Shumer will always play to his base, the banksters; he makes up for it by not cutting the crap out of welfare.

So there you are. Now, why would conservatives take the stands they do (money grubbing and grifting notwithstanding)? Here's what I think conservatives should be for:

• The environment. It's not called "conservation" for nothing.
• More efficient transportation, whether it be cars, trains, planes, and ships. If that leads to the shrinking of the fossil-fuel industry, great! Fossil fuels make us beholden to foreign influence. Conservatives don't like that.
• Better oversight of banking and Wall Street. Demanding higher reserves, more cautious lending, and lower levels of leveraged investment would seem the more fiscally conservative approach.
• More efficient, leaner armed forces. Wouldn't that trim the budget?
• Food stamps. This money can only be spent by the economically disadvantaged on food. Who does that directly advantage? For the most part, American farmers, distributors, and retailers.
• Free birth control. It would -- and, under Obamacare, will -- greatly reduce abortions.
• Immigration reform will be GOOD for business. Seriously. Conservatives, own immigration reform before it owns you!

You get the drift. Fact is, though, conservatives are not for those things. Why?

• Environmentalism is viewed as bad for business.
• More efficient transportation smacks of socialism and runs against fierce individualism. Bubba must have his big-ass pickup! And there's not a lot of coal and oil/gas in blue states except maybe CA.
• The prevailing belief among bankers and Wall Streeters is that free markets rule. Uh, they don't, but try telling that to the grifter class! I get that it's easier to make big money around the margins of financial chaos, i.e. bubbles are great! (Until they pop.)
• The military-industrial complex makes piles of money and is wide open for corruption. Why shut that gravy train down just because it kills people?
• Food stamps are for poor, hungry people and we hate them.
• White Christian males want to control women, and it's easier when they're pregnant, so no pill for you, and sex on my timetable!
• Can't support immigration because those immigrants, well, they're brown and eat too much corn.

And so on. I didn't even bring up income inequality, which in the long wrong will wreck the economy. Fact is, Christian conservatives should hate income inequality (What would Jesus do?), but they don't because it proves that winners are winners and losers go to Hell because God sez so.

Crystal Cathedral in Southern California has gone bankrupt.
What would Jesus do? Cut food stamps? Beg for double-tithing?
Rev. Schuller did. What would Dick Morris do? Donate his email
list for a cut of the take? Oh yeah.

Left in all this mess are the middle- and lower-class white Christian conservatives who think if they pray hard enough, their taxes will go down and their bank account will go up. It doesn't work that way, but don't hold your breath waiting for Fox News, Glenn Beck, Bill O'Reilly, Sean Hannity, John Boehner, Paul Ryan, Mitch McConnell, John Cornyn, or Reince Priebus to tell them.

Fun factoid: The Crystal Cathedral Ministries went broke anyway, despite Rev. Schuller's pleas for double-tithing. So, the Roman Catholic Diocese of Orange bought the Crystal Cathedral for over $57 million and gave the Ministries an old Catholic church, St. Callistus, that's about a zillionth the size. My only question is: Who has Christ's ear on this one?

The Crystal Cathedral Ministries' new home at the former St. Callistus
Catholic Church. The Ministries have decided to keep the "Hour of Power"
name from their old TV show. The dream never dies!

Sorry my storyline went off the rails a bit. Hey, it's Saturday, and anyway, Orange County, the home of this Christian drama, is as conservative as it gets. Well, at least until the Hispanics take over...

The Nub of the Leaks Debate

Obligatory Edward Snowden pic:

I chose the one that makes him look like a bath salts abuser.

The leaks debate has been an interesting one, with lots of different opinions around the good guy/bad guy divide. There are Edward Snowden detractors on both the left and the right, as well as the usual hatchet jobs by the Beltway press corps behaving as the government stenographers they are.

There are exceptions to the rule, such as TPM's Josh Marshall's thoughtful contrarian view -- for a blogger from the left -- that we're members of the club called the U.S.A. and sometimes need to begrudgingly side with our fellow club members for better or for worse:

My reaction to Snowden isn’t tied to my being a journalist. If anything it’s in spite of it. It’s as part of this national community, as someone who buys into its basic structures, for all their problems. I’m a part of this club. And I try to keep that in mind whether I like what the club is doing at a given time or not. As I wrote in the first piece, I don’t like everything the US military does. But I do think there should be a US military. I also think it requires a significant amount of secrecy to operate. So I don’t think I can just wash my hands of it and say it has nothing to do with me just because I’m not part of the chain of command. When innocent civilians are killed in Pakistan or Yemen, I’m on the line for that just as I benefit from its protection in numerous ways.

I'm not with you on this one, Josh, even as you craft the most eloquent defense of our realpolitik. It's thoughtful, and I must say I'd rather be in your "club" than not. Except I prefer the rabble-rousing Glenn Greenwald's approach that says "you want some journalistic bright lines, I'll give you some bright lines and capitulating to beltway stenographers is contemptible. I'm not in that club, sir!"

Yeah, me neither. But, in the end, Josh Marshall's stance is a defensible one. But here's the rub. This ain't ping pong, or T-ball, or what-have-you. The government is smacking us around on this one, and it takes a keen mind to understand its ramifications. As in many cases, I found the nub of the debate over at digby's Hullabaloo, with two vital posts, one written by digby herself and the other by her fellow Hullabaloo writer, David Atkins. First Atkins:

The U.S. intelligence apparatus is selectively leaking material that it finds "appropriate," using secret judgments none of the rest of us are privy to, while condemning leaks from outside the system. That makes a mockery of the universal rule of the law. Either all leaks are OK, or none are. There's a debate to be had about that question, but intellectual consistency demands taking one side or the other. One simply cannot support these government-sanctioned leaks while opposing Snowden's without falling back on plainly totalitarian logic that justifies whatever the government does in the name of national security. There's no space here between the Peter King right and the pro-Administration pseudo-left if one does not roundly denounce the government's selective leaks.

If someone denounces Snowden and Greenwald but claims to be to the left of Peter King, they must also denounce the government's selective leaks and demand prosecution of those involved, or lose all credibility and claims to intellectual consistency. To selectively defend or extol lawbreaking behavior depending on who is in office and what issue is being defended, is the worst sort of political hackery and hypocrisy.

That's it, right there. You can stick your "rule of law" if that's the way you play the game. Now digby hits it from a slightly different angle, talking about Colorado senator Mark Udall and his anger at government leaks -- that show the government is a good light -- from a congressional study on the CIA that Udall can't make public:

With all the hoopla over Edward Snowden's narcissism and Glenn Greenwald's student loan debt, (as well as lots of handwringing about whether we are good citizens if we question the government's policies on matters pertaining to national security and surveillance of its own citizens) I cannot help but wonder why people who think that a grave injustice has been done to our country by these radicals "with an agenda" don't turn their wrath on this fellow: Senator Mark Udall of Colorado, who has been raising hell about such things for years. [...]

Mark Udall is not some lowly blogger or nutty computer geek. He's a US Senator and he's he's saying outright that your government is lying to you. Worse, it is lying to your face through ongoing leaks, even as it has declared war on anyone who leaks in ways that are unflattering. [...]

I suppose it's always possible that they do believe that  Mark Udall is some kind of radical freak right along with that alleged fanatic Greenwald and looney-tunes Snowden. In fact, you pretty much have to believe that if you are willing to discount what he is saying here.

What we are dealing with is the fact that government believes leaks are just fine as long as they show the government in a good light. And that is what is otherwise known as propaganda:  people in this country should know only what the government wants it to know. And it is ruthlessly punishing anyone who deviates from prescribed authorized leaking. Is that really necessary to keep the nation secure from terrorists?

That's it, again, right there. The Obama administration can leak all it wants when it supports the government view, but they'll lock you up if you leak something negative. Sounds pretty fascistic to me.

Speaking of fascism, I flagged this story from David Atkins' Twitter feed. They hate us for our freedom, really? Oh, but maybe not in the U.S. Army:

The Army admitted Thursday to not only restricting access to The Guardian news website at the Presidio of Monterey, as reported in Thursday's Herald, but Armywide.

Presidio employees said the site had been blocked since The Guardian broke stories on data collection by the National Security Agency.

Those poor, itty-bitty soldiers. They want the truth? They can't handle the truth!

We'll censor your Internet and you'll like it, grunts!

I'll say this about Josh Marshall's view: I don't like what's happening to my club, and the leaks "debate" illustrates the problem in the starkest way. And that's why we'll have our Edward Snowdens and why we desperately need our Glenn Greenwalds. And, of course, digby.


Update. Apparently the censorship -- plus a mix of intimidation -- is broader. Read about it at firedoglake.

Red States Moving to Restrict Voting

Didn't take long. But why only red states? Oh, yeah, Republicans can't win if they play fair:

Less than 48 hours after the Supreme Court struck down Section 4 of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, six of the nine states that had been covered in their entirety under the law’s “preclearance” formula have already taken steps toward restricting voting.

In a 5-4 decision, the Court’s five conservative justices ruled Tuesday that the formula, which required states with a history of racial discrimination to “preclear” changes to their voting laws with the Department of Justice or a federal judge before enforcing them, was unconstitutional. Since then, these six states have already started moving on restrictions, many of which have adverse effects on the abilities of minorities, young people, and the poor to exercise their right to vote.

Which states?

• Texas.
• Arkansas.
• Virginia.
• South Carolina.
• Mississippi.
• Alabama.

Sound familiar?

You know what would be interesting? What if some people never gave up on the Confederacy? Wait, there are some people here, here, and here.

Let's get our Civil War on. It was so much fun the last time. All the songs about it are so happy.

Is Dixie on the mend? Depends on what the meaning of "mend" is.

Republicans "React" to New Political Landscape

Was the divided reality of U.S. politics and culture roiled by the Supreme Court decisions, coming as they did in the middle of the immigration debate.

Let's do a survey of white-wing not-so-much reactions as a combination of re-uppings, restatements, and regressions:

First, remember how the Republican Party will languish nationally if they aren't at least perceived as being a little bit Latino friendly? Well, not if Alabama senator Jeff Sessions can help it:

WASHINGTON -- Day after day, Sen. Jeff Sessions argues against an immigration overhaul bill that GOP party leaders, and a sizable share of his Republican colleagues, say is critical to any chance of a national comeback for the party out of power in Washington.

The legislation headed for passage in the Senate would cost the nation jobs and depress wages, Sessions says in the Judiciary Committee, on the Senate floor, in hallway interviews and to just about anyone who asks. It's not paid for, he argues. Nor, Sessions adds, would it guarantee better border enforcement.

Lawmakers don't really know what the bill does, seeing that it consumes 1,100 pages, according to Alabama's junior senator.

The 66-year-old former prosecutor used a similar approach to help defeat an immigration overhaul in 2006 and 2007, when a president of his own party, George W. Bush, declared it a priority. Now that Democrat Barack Obama has it atop his domestic agenda, Sessions is again the face of Republican opposition to a path to citizenship for millions of people living in the U.S. illegally. The playing field has changed since then, but the path toward a bill actually becoming law is no clearer than it was six years ago now that a sizable tea party faction holds sway in the House.

 As for Republican support for the gay, which after today are no longer the pariahs they were twenty or thirty years ago, let alone just yesterday, don't expect the straight-wing Republicans to hop aboard the love-who-you-want love train:

New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie (R) blasted the Supreme Court ruling on the Defense of Marriage Act, calling it "wrong."

"I don’t think the ruling was appropriate," Christie said Thursday on his "Ask the Governor" radio show, according to Politico. "I think it was wrong."

Christie criticized the justices, calling Kennedy's opinion "incredibly insulting" to President Bill Clinton -- who signed DOMA into law in 1996 -- and to the "340-some members of Congress who voted for the Defense of Marriage Act."

"[Kennedy] basically said that the only reason to pass that bill was to demean people," Christie said. "That’s heck of a thing to say about Bill Clinton and about the Republican Congress back in the ‘90s. And it’s just another example of judicial supremacy, rather than having the government run by the people we actually vote for."

In February 2012, Christie rejected a bill allowing same-sex marriage in New Jersey, vetoing the measure and renewing his call for a ballot question to decide the issue.

Great. Chris Christie, the new, pugnacious, pragmatic "face" of the Republican Party actually feels Bubba's pain. That's rich. And putting it on the ballot? Sounds democratic, but it'll never happen, and, uh, Chris, you'd get your butt kicked anyway. And if you did get it on the ballot and win, boy, will that get you cred on the national stage, where it's already over. Real smart for a guy wanting to run in 2016. Or does he?

As for voting rights, the white-wing Republicans aren't wasting any time going after "voter fraud." With the ink barely dry on the Voting Rights Act decision, red states get ready to keep it that way, with voter ID laws set to be rammed through now that no one can "scrutinize" them:

With the Supreme Court's ruling Tuesday on the Voting Rights Act, Mississippi and Texas announced they're ready to move forward with their controversial voter identification laws.

Eleven states in the past two years have approved laws that would require voters to show identification at voting booths. But Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act required some of those states with a history of voter discrimination to get "precleared" by the federal government before making any changes to voting laws.

A separate part of the law known as Section 4 relies on a federal formula to determine which states would be covered under that "preclearance" regime.

Requests by Texas and Mississippi for clearance in their voter ID laws were pending with the federal government when the high court struck down the constitutionality of the act's Section 4 on Tuesday, which also appears to have nullified Section 5.

I wonder how many of those eleven states set to pass new laws or declare their old attempts to now be established law are red states. All of them would be my guess. Just why is that? No voter fraud in blue states? (Hint: no voter fraud anywhere.)

As for the gay marriage issue, the straight-wing Republicans have a problem:

Both House Speaker John Boehner of Ohio and House Majority Leader Eric Cantor of Virginia signaled that they believed the debate now moves out of the purview of Congress and to the states.

"While I am obviously disappointed in the ruling, it is always critical that we protect our system of checks and balances," Mr. Boehner said in a statement. "A robust national debate over marriage will continue in the public square, and it is my hope that states will define marriage as the union between one man and one woman."

Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky had no comment on the rulings. A spokesman said only that he supports "traditional marriage."

To date, three of the Senate's 46 Republicans support gay marriage, with all of them having shifted to that view in recent months.

Right on cue, we've got the first Republican -- from Kansas, no less -- coming out for a constitutional amendment to ban same-sex marriage:

The Supreme Court ruling Wednesday that the federal Defense of Marriage Act is unconstitutional isn't stopping Rep. Tim Huelskamp (R-Kansas) from trying to block same-sex marriages through another route: by amending the U.S. Constitution.

Huelskamp said he plans to introduce the Federal Marriage Amendment later this week, a measure that would define marriage as between one man and one woman. DOMA did the same thing, but was a federal law, not a constitutional amendment. As such, the Federal Marriage Act is more far-reaching but also a tougher climb. It requires the support of two-thirds of the House and Senate, and ratification by three-fourths of the states, or 38 states.

"This would trump the Supreme Court," Huelskamp told The Huffington Post.

Good. Let's just trump that mean ole (conservative) Supreme Court.

Josh Marshall of TPM puts the Voting Rights Act Republican conundrum in perspective:

Of course, maybe I’m wrong. But how many Republicans want to vote against “the Voting Rights Bill” in the Senate. I think very few. So maybe it dies there. But at the cost of a lot of pain for the GOP. I’m not even sure they’d need 60 votes. And I suspect they’d get a lot more.

So now we have “the Voting Rights Bill” passed out of the Senate and lands over at the House. Does Boehner invoke the Hastert Rule and refuse to bring it to a vote because a majority of his caucus doesn’t support it? Quite possible. But again, toxic politics.

I strongly suspect that you’d have a lot of GOP elites - and by that I just mean professional Republicans at the national level who are concerned about winning national elections - really not liking that outcome. And I also suspect there’d be a non-trivial number of Republican representatives who’d be saying, hey I don’t want to be part of this, for a mix of political reasons and reasons of simple belief. At the same time you’re going to have a lot of members from the South who are going to have a hard time putting their state legislatures back under the review of the dread ‘Obama Regime Justice Department.’ Taken together it puts the sectional divisions within the GOP under real pressure.

One thing I’m certain of is that it’s a situation the GOP really really wants to avoid.

So to come back to the beginning, I’m not saying this or the next Congress will be able to resurrect section 4 of the VRA. On balance, I figure it doesn’t happen. But if the attempt is made, every step along the way is going to be acutely painful for the GOP.

Very true, Josh.

 I just found this video of Stephen Colbert explaining all this with the help of Slate's Emily Bazelon. Let's let them have the last word:

We should just let Stephen Colbert run the country. He'd make the zaniest dictator. He just might be able to straighten us out. He could appoint Jon Stewart to the Supreme Court. That would sure straighten them out.

Update. Boy, do the Supremes need some straightening out. Right on cue, they toss the blocking of the Texas Voter ID law as well as the nullification of the anti-minority Texas redistricting, both of which then could immediately become law, pending lower-court review. This is going to be some wild ride. Watch the red states for signs of whiplash.

The Disunited States of America

Feeling dysfunctional? Don't worry, the Supreme Court feels your pain.

The Supreme Court has in its latest rulings divided America into the free states (mostly blue) and the unfree states (mostly red). It's also divided our political system into the white-wing Republican Party and the multi-colored-wing Democratic Party. It's also divided us into the discriminatory states and the non-discriminatory states, which will essentially track the red-state/blue-state divide. Also tracking this divide will be whether a state is gay-friendly or gay-unfriendly, is women-friendly or women-unfriendly. A side effect will be that the divide also tracks Obamacare support or Obamacare non-support, which also creates a poor-friendly/poor-unfriendly divide. They also strengthened, with their business-friendly decisions, a nationwide divide between workers and businesses.

What we now have is the start, or re-start, of a new, long, seething Civil War.

Way to go Supremes! In the Fuck Up a Reasonably Decent Country Olympics, you've won five gold medals.

Citizens United in Favor of Racism: Roberts Court Legacy 101

Right. Fuck.

Yes, We Have No Surveillance State (Shh, Pass It On...)

Today various news stories combine to show the sorry state of our federal government, proving the useful rule that you don't have to be paranoid to believe that people are out to get you. Because, it truth, they are, especially if you're in government.

Story one, from McClatchy via Digby at Hullabaloo:

Even before a former U.S. intelligence contractor exposed the secret collection of Americans’ phone records, the Obama administration was pressing a government-wide crackdown on security threats that requires federal employees to keep closer tabs on their co-workers and exhorts managers to punish those who fail to report their suspicions.

President Barack Obama’s unprecedented initiative, known as the Insider Threat Program, is sweeping in its reach. It has received scant public attention even though it extends beyond the U.S. national security bureaucracies to most federal departments and agencies nationwide, including the Peace Corps, the Social Security Administration and the Education and Agriculture departments. It emphasizes leaks of classified material, but catchall definitions of “insider threat” give agencies latitude to pursue and penalize a range of other conduct.

 Great. We're turning our entire government workforce into snitches. That's going to be real fun. We could all go to the bar after work and vote on who to rat out next. Wait, no we couldn't. That might be considered sedition, and we'd all be required to turn each other and ourselves in. Good grief.

Story two, from the Washington Post:

The National Security Agency’s recently revealed surveillance programs undermine the purpose of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, which was established to prevent this kind of overreach. They violate the Fourth Amendment’s guarantee against unreasonable search and seizure. And they underscore the dangers of growing executive power.

This is from Laura K. Donohue, a professor at Georgetown University Law Center and director of Georgetown’s Center on National Security and the Law. Looks like she got it right, though I'd hate to find out what Antonin Scalia might think.

And finally, story three, in video form:

And this tidbit at the end of the interview:

Some country we've got here.