5 reasons why the American people can't stand the Republican party 

Robert SobelOrlando Liberal Examiner

February 28, 2013

 

The Republican party often has people scratching their heads and it's not just "liberals" who are doing it. With The Republican party splitting into multiple factions, the once proud political party has been thrown into disarray Here are five reasons why the American people can't stand the Grand Old Party.
1. Bush wastes money and American lives-
After the United States was attacked on September 11, 2001, everyone throughout the country felt a variety of emotions. Some were upset, others scared or just plain angry. There isn't a right or wrong answer in how people felt because what happened was so horrific. It's natural to want revenge and that is how George W. Bush and the Republican party were able to get the country into a huge mess while lining their own pockets. Preying on the fear that came with the attacks on 9/11, the Bush administration decided to wage war, but with the wrong country. With his father, George H.W Bush, unable to capture Saddam Hussein in the early 1990s, George W. Bush wanted to finish the job that his father couldn't.
Knowing that Iraq was run by an evil dictator, had plenty of oil and could be a goldmine for companies to rebuild, Bush used the fear that overcame the United States to wage war with a country that had nothing to do with the attacks on that September day. Saddam Hussein was captured less than a year into the invasion of Iraq, but nearly a decade later the United States was still there.
The reason given to the American people for the invasion was that Iraq possessed "weapons of mass destruction," but later Americans were told that Iraq didn't have these weapons and that the United States had received "bad intelligence." Many believe that there were never any weapons in Iraq and that it was an excuse to invade the country. Many companies, such as Dick Cheney's Halliburton, made billions rebuilding in Iraq while others ran off to the bank as well. According to a 2007 report from the Congressional Budget Office (CBO), the war in Iraq would cost $1.9 trillion dollars, or about $6,300 for each U.S citizen. Mix that with the thousands of courageous soldiers who lost their lives or became injured and you have a mess that every American should be mad about.
2. GOP Depression-
Today's economic climate is a scary one. Though the unemployment rate has dropped to 7.9%, there is still only one job opening for every four Americans looking for work. As Ronald Reagan dropped the top tax rate from 70% to 28% during his eight years in office and deregulated big business and the financial sector, the United States was placed on a path of economic destruction. President Clinton stabilized the economy enough that he was able to hand a surplus to George W. Bush in 2001, but all the reckless actions by Wall Street drove the United States to the brink until a taxpayer bailout of the banks was needed in 2008. They say history repeats itself and that is true in this case.
When the economy took a hard down turn in the 1980s and in 2008, if was because the same economic policies were repeated that caused the Stock Market to crash in 1929. The Great Depression was caused by deregulation and bad tax policies, put in place by three consecutive Republican presidents. Starting with Warren Harding in 1921, through Calvin Coolidge and then Herbert Hoover, the United States fell into an economic depression. It took President Franklin D. Roosevelt, his New Deal and World War 2 to help get the United States back on track. Roosevelt had to deal with Republican opposition in congress and a new war, but after years in office, was able to get the job done.
3. Medicare Part D-
Republicans today seem to hate anything that the government does until they need it. Conservatives scream about programs like Social Security and unemployment benefits, but once they enter retirement or lose their jobs, they're quick to hold on to government assistance. Republicans want to privatize programs like Social Security and Medicare by taking them out of the government and putting them into greedy hands on Wall Street. While conservatives are opposed to these programs now, you don't need to go back too far to find Republicans supporting parts of programs like Medicare.
George Bush signed into law the Medicare Prescription Drug, Improvement, and Modernization Act of 2003 (Medicare Part D) which went into effect on January 1, 2006. The program was supposed to subsidize the costs of prescription drugs for those who receive Medicare, but it was never paid for. In the long run, Medicare Part D raised prices, cost taxpayers billions of dollars and while the cost of Medicare Part D has been projected to be less than originally thought, much of the declining cost is due to President Obama's new health care law that was passed in 2010.
4. Sexual Morality?-
The Republican party pounds their chest as the voice of morality, clutching their Bible, fighting back against the LGBT community and abortion and love to bring up that President Clinton cheated on his wife. If people make certain claims, they should learn to look in the mirror first. Former Republican Speaker of the House, Newt Gingrich has been married three times and has a dark history of infidelity. While Gingrich was one of the leading voices against President Clinton in the 1990s, he was actually cheating on his own wife. In fact, while his wife was in remission with cancer, Gingrich served her divorce papers.
The list of Republicans who have engaged in sexual affairs is endless. Former Republican mayor of Waterbury, Connecticut, Philip Giordano, is serving a 37-year sentence in federal prison for sexually abusing two underage girls. Republican congressman and anti-gay activist, Robert Bauman was charged with having sex with a 16-year-old boy he picked up at a gay bar while Republican legislator, Richard Gardner, admitted to molesting his two daughters. This doesn't mean that Democrats haven't done anything like this in the past, they have, but there's an old saying - "those who live in glass houses, shouldn't throw stones."
5. Unions aren't the problem!-
Just the word "union" seems to have a negative connotation these days. Conservatives point their finger at unions for every fiscal issue that the country has closing their eyes to the fact that unions are fighting for the middle class. Whether you're a member of a union of not, you must understand what a union is there for. Unions are a collective voice for workers to make sure that their rights are protected. These rights are not limited to, but include safe working conditions, fair pay, health care and other benefits. As executive pay has risen to an all-time high, wages for workers remain stagnant and are at an all-time low. Unions are put together to make sure that those at the top don't hold back the average middle class worker, but Republicans have tried to destroy the voice of the middle class for decades.
From the time Ronald Reagan fired the Air Traffic Controllers on August 5, 1981 to Republicans trying to push for "right-to-work" laws across the country, the voice of the middle class is starting to become silent. Republicans claim union workers are "lazy" and "greedy," but that is not the case. Are there workers who take advantage of the benefits of being in a union? Of course there are, every system has issues, but the majority are grateful and work hard. If Republicans want to truly be patriotic they should start supporting the middle class, not just the wealthy.

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Media Manufactures GOP 2016 Front-Runner From Abject Failure

Media Manufactures GOP 2016 Front-Runner From Abject Failure

Would you buy a used car from this man?
Is this what an "ideal" president looks like?

Scott Walker will fail miserably on his promise to create 250,000 jobs in Wisconsin -- his austerity agenda, entirely from out-of-state multinational corporate interests, is a documented train wreck.

His job-growth stunt is so out-of-whack, that now Scott Walker is falsely puffing up numbers for business growth -- fraudulently counting nonprofits like girl scout troops, little league baseball, and other service groups as business entities.

Walker's "flagship" economic development agency, Wisconsin Economic Development Corporation, is a fiscal disaster that has lost track of more than $19 million dollars of taxpayers money.  Fully 36% of its loans are uncollectable.  Is WEDC just a failure or is it actually a campaign laundering scam and pay-to-play?

There are multiple criminal investigations into Walker's ascent to power -- at least one, which no one talks about, resulted in the FBI obtaining and executing a search warrant to seize computers and evidence from one of Walker's top associates, Cynthia Archer.

Objectively, Scott Walker can be shown to be a most dishonest and disingenuous politician -- perhaps even making habitual liars like Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan look "truthful" by comparison.

And then there's the fact that Scott Walker positioned himself squarely in the middle of the republican War on Women, signing, over the long 4th-of-July weekend, a vaginal ultrasound bill -- one of the most controversial in the nation.  Women's groups, a vocal voting block, are up-in-arms about it -- Scott Walker proclaims it is unfair to talk about.

Scott Walker dropped out of college after pulling illegal campaign stunts on campus that resulted in Marquette Tribute proclaiming him "unfit for office".  Walker would not only be the first president in modern times to have not earned a degree -- but his peers on campus still remember Walker's disgraceful conduct.  Walker recently lied to Time that that he left college for the birth of his son -- four years before he was born.

But perhaps most disturbing is how Wisconsin's self-proclaimed "divide and conquer" Governor, admitted deceiving the electorate and "dropping the bomb" with extreme and controversial legislation.  On multiple occasions, Walker has admitted considering crimes against our democracy by planting "troublemakers" in crowds of peaceful crowds expressing their Constitutional Rights to seek redress of grievances.

A fiscal conservative? -- HA!  Walker's budgets are not balanced and greatly inflate debt-service taxpayers will be saddled with in the future -- interest and expenses that create the illusion of fiscal responsibility.

So just how does the media snooker the public into falsely believing that a man with this track record, Scott Walker, is an "ideal" presidential candidate?  It takes a lot of propaganda.

Scott Walker is in need of some "big guns" to create and disseminate propaganda -- but have no fear -- the media is here!  A rational & objective analysis of Scott Walker's record in Wisconsin proves he is not presidential timber -- however, no one has told the media yet.

It will take a lot of propaganda, heavy-hittin' propaganda artists, and a massive right-wing media echo-chamber to catapult Gov. Scott Walker across the Badger State and the Nation as a credible presidential candidate.

Putting him in the White House will take another stolen election -- but here in Wisconsin, election irregularities and downright fraud are the norm.  It can be scientifically demonstrated that Scott Walker stole the 2012 recall.

FAIL:  Economic Austerity Crashes Wisconsin Economy

Let's begin with the massive job failure -- and this isn't just about Scott Walker's 2010 signature 250,000 job promise.  Wisconsin is also falling far behind its neighboring states in economic growth -- our economy is one of the worst in the nation -- all after implementing Walker's austerity agenda.

Click to enlarge, source:  Cap Times
Interactive Data -- Job Growth

Maybe turning to radical extreme out-of-state multinational corporate agendas via one-party rule isn't such a good idea after all.

In the coveted private sector manufacturing arena -- Wisconsin has actually LOST jobs (NOTE:  Please read that last link carefully, Journal Communications headline is extremely misleading -- more HERE).

We know why Scott Walker left his job growth promise out of his ghost-written and "not-a-tell-all" book -- by every assessment -- Walker is going to fail to grow the Wisconsin economy and will miss his jobs goal by a huge margin.

In fact, now that they are done promoting Walker's dishonest book, Sunday's New York Times outlines the differences in political philosophies in the Midwest, documenting that, compared to every nearby state, Walker's austerity is an utter failure.

NYT held these facts back until after Walker's book bamboozle tour was over.  Please note that NYT has not yet challenged the false notion that Walker is the "ideal" presidential candidate in 2012.

FAIL:  Business Growth

Lesser known than Walker's signature promise to create 250,000 jobs in Wisconsin during is first term is that he would also create 10,000 new businesses.  We know he is not going to come anywhere close to the 250,000 jobs -- and this does matter, despite Walker's attempts to roll-back those claims.

But Walker is also failing to create 10,000 new businesses -- and don't believe Journal Communications' propaganda artists at PolitiFact.  Not only is Walker falling short, but he (and Journal Communications) fraudulently prop up Walker's deceptive numbers by misusing what Wisconsin Department of Financial Institutions (WDFI) terms "business entities.  These are not all businesses -- not even close.

When Walker saw he was falling almost 6,000 businesses short of his goal, he turned to WDFI to orchestrate a great deception and is now counting Girl Scout troops and Little League teams as new business creations in the state.

FAIL:  Wisconsin Economic Development Agency, Walker's "Flagship"
& Misappropriate of Federal Community Development Block Grants

Wisconsin Economic Development Corporation, will not be able to collect more than 1/3 of the loans it has made, according to the most-recent audit by Schneck SC, which states that WEDC's internal accounting controls over loans were not in place and that loan agreements did not all have required performance reviews.  So what does Scott Walker have to say about?

He claims that having more than 1/3 of WEDC's loans, all taxpayer money, uncollectible is just a "boo-boo" that couldn't have been anticipated and that it's the computer's fault. And when the public found out about this mess, Walker proclaimed:

The vast majority of the people at the WEDC are doing good work. We've just got to make sure that the other things are corrected so that stays the focal point now and in the future.

The Schneck audit identified other "material weaknesses":

• No procedures were established to monitor loans
• Financial transactions were regularly recorded wrong or not at all
• Accounting journal entries were made without any documentation and often entirely without approval.  This may be an indication of fraud and cover up.
• Almost one-quarter of all credit card uses during the year were not approved.

Walker's Department of Administration was forced to respond by announcing that DOA would administer Community Development Block Grants.  H.U.D. had suspended the grant program because WEDC was not in compliance with state and federal statues, rules and regulations.  The law demands that these grants be administered by state agencies.  Since Walker created WEDC as a quasi-private agency to replaced the former Wisconsin Department of Commerce, he was afoul of federal laws.

But even after taking remedial action, Scott Walker and his WEDC are not off the hook, because HUD is investigating previous grants WEDC improperly awarded and reserves the right to demand Wisconsin pay-back any funds that were disbursed inappropriately.  If laws were broken, there could be other repercussions -- is any of this related to ongoing criminal investigations?

FAIL:  Multiple Ongoing Probes into Walker's Ascent to Power

The closed Milwaukee County John Doe probe resulted in 6 people being convicted of 15 felonies and 3 misdemeanors -- those top Walker aides are still in jail. Walker's right-wing supporters and media shills are worried and now screech lies that the whole process is unfair.

We now know that there are multiple ongoing probes -- all stemming from the original Milwaukee County John Doe probe. And we still do not know the results from the Federal search warrant that the FBI used to raid close Walker associate Cynthia Archer's Madison home.

With people currently serving time for felonies and with so many open investigations, how can the media tell us that Scott Walker is an "ideal" GOP candidate for 2016? 

This looks more like a train-wreck than a ticket to the White House.

FAIL:  General in War on Women & Reproductive Rights

Scott Walker is proclaiming to attendees at a recent Christian Science Monitor breakfast that he does not expect the "War on Women" to be an effective line of attack against him in his 2014 re-election campaign.  Christian Science Monitor's report reads like pure propaganda -- all but anointing Walker the next President of the United States.

This despite the fact that Walkersigned one of the Nation's most divisive and extreme vaginal ultrasound bills -- trying to hide it from the public by delaying signing it until the long Fourth of July 2013 weekend.  We know why Scott Walker tells lies -- in this case -- insisting he has no responsibility for taking away reproductive rights and signing into law state sanctioned rape.  Why does the media endlessly repeat these lies?

Reproductive rights are not just a women's issue either -- women and men have a vested interest in being able to determine when the time is right to raise a family.  Walker is thumbing his nose at the majority of Americans of reproductive age -- is this a stepping-stone to the White House?

FAIL:  Disgraceful Electioneering at Marquette University

Scott Walker, a man that can be objectively demonstrated to tell many lies, has a long history of being a political bully and has a track record of dirty campaign tactics & illegal campaigning.  Dr. Glen Barry, a former classmate at Marquette University, spoke out about the recall and Walker's disgraceful political roots which began at that school.  Read more of the sultry details of Scott Walker's life running for Marquette student government HERE.

FAIL:  Divide and Conquer Politics

Scott Walker, in January 2011, was asked by Diane Hendricks, a Wisconsin billionaire who is his largest campaign donor and who paid no state taxes in 2010, if he could make Wisconsin a "right to work state"  (video HERE).  His reply was, speaking in hushed tone was:

Well, we're going to start in a couple weeks with our budget adjustment bill.  The first step is we're going to deal with collective bargaining for all public employee unions, because you use divide and conquer. So for us, the base we've got for that is the fact that we've got – budgetarily we can't afford not to. If we have collective bargaining agreements in place, there's no way not only the state but local governments can balance things out.

Proclaiming to your wealthiest in-state donor that you will fail to serve large blocks of your constituency, declaring intentions to "divide and conquer" them instead, does not qualify one as the "ideal" presidential candidate.  Why does the media consistently proclaim otherwise?

FAIL:  "Drop the Bomb" -- Extreme & Divisive Legislative Agenda,
Hidden from the Electorate

Scott Walker has been lying about the most embarrassing mistake he has made as governor -- getting punked by a prank phone call by blogger Ian Murphy who pretended to be David Koch.  Murphy claims to have been "fairly stoned" when he made the call.  What was Scott Walker's excuse for falling for the prank?

Here's what Scott Walker said:

[…] the Monday right after the 6th. Came home from the Super Bowl where the Packers won, and that Monday night I had all of my cabinet over to the residence for dinner. Talked about what we were gonna do, how we were gonna do it. We’d already kinda built plans up, but it was kind of the last hurrah before we dropped the bomb.

As Governor, Scott Walker declared war on the people he has a sworn oath to serve.  He literally described his strategies as dropping "the bomb" on Badger Citizens.  But it gets worse, much worse.

FAIL:  Admits to Crimes Against Democracy -- Agent Provocateurs.

In that same prank phone call, Gov. Scott Walker admitted that state authorities had “thought about” using troublemakers -- actually agent provocateurs -- to infiltrate the crowds demonstrating against his effort to eliminate collective bargaining rights.

During a press conference that followed, Walker defended these remarks, stating “The bottom line is, the things I said are things I said publicly all along.”

We are talking about serious federal crimes here -- violating laws that go back to the Civil War era and protect citizens from direct attacks by their government -- even admitting thinking about these great crimes against our democracy is criminal. But to potential GOP presidential hopeful, Scott Walker, its all-in-a-days-work.

On February 23, 2011, Walker appeared on Fox News with anchor Greta Van Susteren -- she asked Walker if he and his aides had considered employing agent provocateurs to play “dirty tricks in the crowd.”  Walker openly confirmed -- yes indeed, he had, going so far as to explain: “I even had lawmakers and others suggesting riling things up.”

While Walker said that he rejected the idea, he has never expressed moral concerns about “riling things up”, potentially creating a dangerous situation for the for crowds that included children, elderly folks and people with disabilities. 

How can this episode reinforce Walker's front-runner status as the "ideal" GOP candidate for President of the United States in 2016?

FAIL:  Budget Shenanigans -- Deficits and Massive Debt

In 2011, Gov. Scott Walker needed a crisis to exploit, so he ginned up a budget deficit to enable his attack on public unions.  Then, in In May 2011, the state issued additional debt of approximately $558.3 million, which will cost state taxpayers an additional $156.2 million interest costs.

Gubernatorial opponent, Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett, was correct  when he pointed out Walker's deception -- to help balance the 2011-13 budget, Gov. Scott Walker used "a credit card" approach that "pushed over $500 million in debt onto our children and our grandchildren" costing state taxpayers "more than $150 million in interest."

Even the conservative pro-business journal, Forbes, had to call out his lies on balancing the budget:

In fact, we now know that the Governor is either being untruthful with the good people of Wisconsin on the whole ‘I balanced budget and wiped out the deficit’ thing or he’s been, shall we say, stretching the truth when speaking to Uncle Sam on the same topicv 

In a letter sent by Mike Huebsch, Walker’s Administration Secretary, to the U.S. Department of Health & Human Services just two months ago, Huebsch disclosed that the state of Wisconsin would have an ‘undisclosed deficit’ from January, 2012 through June, 2013.

Kathleen Vinehout points out the myths in the current 2-year budget:

1. The 2013-15 budget spends $4 billion more than the previous one. In fact, state spending is greater than it has ever been in Wisconsin’s history.
2. Walker's 2013-2014 
3. budget spends more than it is projected to collect in revenue.  When spending is greater than revenue, a deficit exists
4. In the 2011-13 legislative session, Gov. Scott Walker did not pay an even larger amount of debt payments coming due. Because debt payments were not made, more money goes to pay off debt in the current budget than ever before.

Scott Walker is not a fiscal conservative.  He is a flim-flam man that panders to a compliant media to generate misleading headlines -- one of his most outrageous shams was loading up the the Badger State's rainy day fund in a publicity stunt that the media promoted.  This borrowed money is not an asset set aside for future use -- it is a liability that taxpayers get stuck with while Walker struts around like a genius.


Fraudulently Creating a Republican "Rock Star"

So how can anyone look at each of these failures and objectively proclaim Scott Walker is a republican "rock star"?  How is Scott Walker the "ideal" candidate for GOP in 2016?  Why did the national media prop Scott Walker up for an entire week to let him promote his misleading and deceptive ghost-written biography?

Pretty powerful propaganda -- but we haven't see the worst of it yet. The media is, after all, anointing Scott Walker as the "ideal" GOPPER for the White House.

Posted by Voices Newspaper Blogat 6:41 PM

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Wisconsin Governor Defends Ban On Same-Sex Marriage As ‘Healthy Balance’ Of LGBT Rights

By Zack Ford on November 25, 2013 at 9:17 am

 

"Wisconsin Governor Defends Ban On Same-Sex Marriage As ‘Healthy Balance’ Of LGBT Rights"

This weekend, Gov. Scott Walker (R-WI) talked to Bloomberg TV’s Al Hunt about the mix of protections and limitations on LGBT rights his state offers, telling the host that the Wisconsin has struck a “healthy balance.” He lauded the state’s nondiscrimination protections for LGBT workers, suggesting the U.S. House should consider the federal Employment Non-Discrimination Act (ENDA), because there have only been “limited problems” with it in Wisconsin. He simultaneously, however, defended its ban on same-sex marriage:

WALKER: In Wisconsin, we’ve had anti-discriminatory laws that are very similar to [ENDA] for more than 30 years and they work quite effectively. We’re also a state that has a constitutional amendment that defines marriage as one man and one woman…
HUNT: So, similar to the Wisconsin bill, the House bill should be something that…
WALKER: Yeah, I mean, we’ve not had problems. We’ve had no problems — I should say, limited problems — with that. At the same time, we still have a constitutional amendment that defines marriage. There’s a healthy balance there.

Watch it (via Raw Story):


In 1982, Wisconsin was the first state to ban discrimination based on sexual orientation in employment, housing, education, credit, and all public accommodations — a law signed by Republican Gov. Lee S. Dreyfus. Upon signing it, Dreyfus remarked, “It is a fundamental tenet of the Republican Party that government ought not intrude in the private lives of individuals where no state purpose is served, and there is nothing more private or intimate than who you live with and who you love.” Despite these protections, one of Walker’s appointees to the state’s Labor and Industry Review Commission ruled that an employee who’d repeatedly been called “fag,” “maricon,” and “my little bitch” in the workplace was not protected from such harassment under law.
In 2004, the state legislature followed Republican precedent across the country to advance a constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriage, which eventually passed in 2006. That amendment banned recognition of any “identical or substantially similar” legal status for same-sex couples, but Wisconsin maintains a domestic partner registry and provides some benefits to same-sex partners of state employees. Walker suggested in March that conservatives have lost the fight against marriage equality.

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Latest Koch Brothers Trickery: Actress Fakes Testimonial in Anti-Obamacare Ad

Latest Koch Brothers Trickery: Actress Fakes Testimonial in Anti-Obamacare Ad 

Not that false advertising bother the rabidly right-wing billionaire brothers.

AlterNet / By Rod Bastanmehr

November 21, 2013    

Koch Brothers ad fake Alaskan.

Americans for Prosperity, the arch-conservative advocacy group backed largely by the Koch Brothers, released their latest attack ad against Obamacare on Wednesday, criticizing Alaskan Democratic Senator Mark Begich for his support of the Affordable Care Act. 
The commercial in question appears to feature an unidentified Alaskan voter, who complains about the betrayal at the hands of both Begich and Obama, while walking leisurely around her kitchen with a cup of coffee. But Connie Bowman, the woman in the video was interviewed  by the New York Times, and she said she's “just an actress,” with a fairly prolific voice-over and commercial career.
And she doesn't live anywhere near Alaska. She lives in Maryland.
“Today’s misleading ad from the Koch brothers is just more evidence that even billions of dollars can’t buy integrity,” Begich spokeswoman Rachel Barinbaum said in a statement. 
The ad comes days after the billionaire brothers announced their $4 million anti-Obamacare advertising campaign, sponsored by the Americans for Prosperity, which plans to target six congressional democrats who supported the Affordable Care Act. Begich is just the first.
Begich, who is currently up for reelection in the red state, described his plans on Tuesday for legislation that calls for creating a new category of insurance plans within Obamacare that would offer citizens lower premiums with higher out-of-pocket costs. 

Rod Bastanmehr is a freelance writer in New York City with a passion for music, film and culture. Follow him on Twitter @rodb.

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BP Oil Refinery Waste Stored At Koch Brothers-Owned Site Polluting Nearby Chicago Neighborhoods

Posted: 10/21/2013 5:31 pm EDT  |  Updated: 10/22/2013 11:35 am EDT

Residents in several lower-income Chicago neighborhoods say a dirty oil byproduct from a nearby BP refinery is creating environmental and health hazards -- and no one is doing enough to stop it.
“Us little people, we’re not millionaires, we’re working stiffs,” East Side resident Frank Caporale, a Chicago garbage truck driver, told the Sun-Times. “We are being overcome by a super company that we don’t have a say in, whether we want it here or not. It’s like it came and we’re stuck with it.”
Dust from petroleum coke or "petrocoke" is produced at the nearby BP refinery in Whiting, Ind. but the oil byproduct is stored in Chicago shipping yards on the city's South Side. Caporale and others say the byproduct blows into neighborhoods like East Side and South Deering to leave cars, windows, streets and buildings covered in a greasy black dust.
Piles of the oil byproduct sit outside and uncovered in the shipping yards. As WGN notes, the storage sites have fewer restrictions than oil refineries.
“I can’t understand why a company is dumping it there and not covering it up,” said resident Jean Tourville, who the Sun-Times notes is a stage-four breast cancer patient. “This is an economically low area. If you don’t have any money, they don’t care what they do to you. We have no influence.”
Resident Lilly Martin, who can see the coke piles from her backyard deck, tells the Tribune: "You can't have a picnic outside because you are going to get a mouthful of black dust. It's so bad we have to power-wash the house every week to wash it off."
Complaints have prompted the Environmental Protection Agency and Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan's office to investigate, though BP officials insisted in a statement to the Tribune the Whiting refinery is "complying with its permit regarding coke handling at the refinery."
Ultimately, BP said it's up to the companies that operate off-site storage terminals to comply with environmental laws. The terminal on the Southeast Side is owned by KCBX Terminals, a company the Tribune notes is controlled by wealthy conservative industrialist brothers Charles and David Koch.
According to WGN, the high sulfur, high carbon waste product is only going to increase as the nearby refinery has plans to triple the amount of petrocoke it stores in Chicago by year's end.
Detroit residents faced a similar hazard with "pet coke" earlier this year as clouds of the waste blew across the Detroit River. Mayor Dave Bing ultimately ordered the piles to be cleared, citing health concerns and community complaints.

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Law Does Apply to the Rightwing and Koch Brothers

Law Does Apply to the Rightwing and Koch Brothers

Americans for Prosperity (AFP) of Wisconsin - AFP
Is the main the main political group run by the Koch brothers.
AFP is 501(c)4; The regulations about IRC 501(c)(4)s provide
that promotion of social welfare does not include participation
or intervention in political campaigns, reads an IRS document.

The MacIver Institute, Wisconsin Reporter, MediaTrackers and the Wisconsin Policy Research Institute are an effective party press for the Wisconsin Republican Party, as they lawyer up.

Hey, just chat, cooperate and talk straight and you won't even need lawyers unless you really went bent the law the last two years, or are a part of politcal dark money.

• MacIver Institute - 501(C)(3)
• The Wisconsin Reporter - a protect of the  Franklin Center for Government and Public Integrity, a 501(c)3 non-profit organization dedicated to promoting rightwing propaganda
• MediaTrackers  - a 501(c)(3( devoted to rightwing propaganda
• Wisconsin Policy Research Institute - a 501(c) Non-Stock Corporation

I care about the people of the Republican Party too much to see them lives of dependence on legal funds and their destiny controlled by attorneys.

So, some free info:

"Under the Internal Revenue Code, all section 501(c)(3) organizations are absolutely prohibited from directly or indirectly participating in, or intervening in, any political campaign on behalf of (or in opposition to) any candidate for elective public office. Contributions to political campaign funds or public statements of position (verbal or written) made on behalf of the organization in favor of or in opposition to any candidate for public office clearly violate the prohibition against political campaign activity," reads an IRS guide.

Palm Beach Press Reporter said in Feb. 2012 interview with David Koch that he took credit
for Republicans maintaining control of the state Senate Wisconsin in recall elections

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Scott Walker: Paul Ryan, Reince Priebus And I Are A 'Cheesehead Revolution'

The Huffington Post  |  By Chris Gentilviso Posted: 11/20/2013 10:34 am EST 

Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker (R) coined a spirited term over the weekend for a trio of high-powered Republicans from the Badger State.
In a Saturday interview with USA Today’s Capital Download, Walker talked about his friendship with Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.). When asked if both he and Ryan could run for president in 2016, Walker said it was an "interesting question," adding that "who knows what the future will bring?"
What he was sure of was the success of three big-name Wisconsin Republicans, remarking how he, Ryan and Reince Priebus all grew up within miles of one another.
"Paul grew up 15 miles to the west of me," Walker said. "Reince Priebus, who’s the RNC (Republican National Committee) chair, grew up about 20 miles to the east of me. There must have been something in the water at the time….We say it’s kind of a Cheesehead Revolution."
With nearly three years to go before the 2016 presidential picture hits its peak, HuffPost Pollster's latest compilation of 27 publicly available polls shows Ryan and Walker both in the mix as potential GOP candidates. Ryan, who served as the party's 2012 vice presidential candidate, netted 11 percent of the hypothetical vote, while Walker earned eight percent.

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You Might Be A Fascist If…

Author: Stephen D. Foster Jr. May 7, 2013 12:01 am

 

Are you a fascist? Many people are fascists and they don’t even realize it. And sometimes, they know it all too well, but hide and deny it. Most of the time though, it’s obvious who the fascists are. For instance, you might be a fascist if…

1. You are obsessed with national power and pride and believe your country doesn’t have to follow the rules and shouldn’t ever apologize for doing things that are wrong. You think your nation can do whatever it wants.
2. You believe in the rule of the few, election rigging, political decisions being made by a select group of officials behind closed doors, embrace the informal and unregulated exercise of political power, arbitrary deprivation of civil liberties, and little tolerance for meaningful opposition.
3. You believe in survival of the fittest, an every man for himself mentality that causes you to believe that poor people and sick people are weak and must be punished. You think rich people are strong because they are wealthy and that they should rule us. You also believe your race is superior to all others.
4. You use the media as a political propaganda machine to target a specific audience and to push your agenda on others. You make sure the media demonizes your opponents and takes your side on nearly every issue. You use your propaganda machine to play on the fears of others.
5. You are obsessed with security, and war. You feed this obsession by spending trillions of dollars building up a large military force and are willing to sacrifice domestic programs your people count on to keep your military huge. You start unnecessary and costly wars and you are paranoid of other nations.
6. You are driven to indoctrinate others into your way of thinking. So much so, that you try to re-write history, change the way school children are taught and you brainwash the ignorant. You use your propaganda machine as a tool to achieve this.
7. You fear and demonize intelligent people who have a higher education because they are the ones who can thwart your effort to brainwash people. You then attempt to prevent others from achieving a higher education because you want the people as ignorant as possible so you can convince them that your way is the right way.
8. You have a deep hatred and fear of communists and you instill your followers with hatred and fear of others by accusing your political opponents of being communists. This gives you an easy scapegoat to blame when things go wrong. Any person or policy you don’t like is branded as communism.
9. You disrespect women and think their place is in the home. You believe women are weak and cannot do things that men do. You believe that sexual harassment or assault is no big deal and that the only thing women are good for is cooking meals and having babies.
10. You strongly align yourself with corporations and you support corporate money and influence in government. You despise government regulations that keep corporations honest because you believe everything should be controlled by the free market and that corporations should be allowed to do whatever they please.
11. You are obsessed with Christianity. You seek to declare a Christian State and to impose religious laws on all the people across the country and the world. You believe other religions are inferior and that those who practice them should either be converted or destroyed.
12. You believe your race is superior and seek to disenfranchise or humiliate other races. You believe in legalized discrimination and fantasize about a return to times when the races were separate or when those of color were enslaved. You use code words in an attempt to hide your racism and you make laws that weaken the influence of those of color. Immigration and voting laws in particular.
13. You absolutely despise unions. To you and those like you, labor unions represent the empowerment of workers. Since you believe corporations can do whatever they want, you see organized labor as a threat because they fight for higher wages, health care, safety regulations, less hours, vacations, sick days, and holidays off. This obviously threatens the amount of money corporations can give to you and your cause so you brand unions as proponents of socialism and make laws that severely weaken them so that corporations can have a cheap, mindless labor force.
14. You are obsessed with crime and a major supporter of punishing those who commit crimes. So much so, that you don’t care about the concept of ‘innocent until proven guilty.’ You are proud of executing people and aren’t bothered if an innocent person is killed. You seek to make harsher laws, especially laws that target specific groups of people such as immigrants, women, and people of color. You also oppose Miranda rights and using humane interrogation tactics and you seek to undermine the independent judiciary.
15. You believe every election should go your way and to reach that goal, you push voting laws that disenfranchise those who traditionally vote for opponents such as people of color, the elderly, college students, and the poor. You even stoop to fixing elections in some cases and complain when your opponents challenge the vote counts.
16. You believe in rewarding your friends with positions when you gain power and you reward those who support you with government contracts and money, especially corporations. You also do your best to aid your supporters in any way you can, such as repealing undesirable pieces of legislation and regulations. You often have something to gain financially from this.
17. You create scapegoats to blame when problems arise. Whether it’s communists, liberals, minorities, homosexuals, the poor, or non-Christians, one thing is for certain. You and your propaganda tool will blame each and every one of those groups for bad things that happen even if you were the cause of the problems in the first place.
18. You take advantage of a national disaster such as an economic collapse or an attack to demonize your opponents and push your agenda. You use these events to strike fear into the population in an attempt to scare people into voting for you and your cause. It’s all about fear and scare tactics.
Sounds just like the Tea Party led Republican Party, doesn’t it?
 

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Dueling 'Unintimidated' books on sale Tuesday : Ct

Dueling 'Unintimidated' books on sale Tuesday : Ct

Dueling 'Unintimidated' books on sale Tuesday

  JESSICA VANEGEREN | The Capital Times | jvanegeren@madison.com

Singers at Monday's Solidarity Sing Along at the Capitol rotunda display the "unintimidated" logo they've appropriated from the title of Gov. Scott Walker's forthcoming book.

Enlarge Photo

Jessica VanEgeren

Jessica VanEgeren joined The Capital Times in 2008, primarily covering Capitol politics and law enforcement. She previously covered business in the Madison area and state government and politics in South Carolina.

Tuesday is a big day for books with the title "Unintimidated."
Gov. Scott Walker’s book, “Unintimidated: A Governor’s Story and a Nation’s Challenge” will be available for purchase, as will “Unintimidated: Wisconsin Sings Truth to Power.”
The use of the same title and Tuesday release date is not a coincidence, as this story explains. The Solidarity Sing Along has met at the Capitol to protest Walker each weekday from noon to 1 p.m. since March 11, 2011, or more than 700 consecutive days.
The singers figure that they've earned the title, having faithfully continued the sing along in the face of mass arrests over the past few months and numerous citations since Capitol Police Chief David Erwin promised to shut them down a year ago.
Written by Ryan Wherley, the book is a collection of photographs interwoven with the personal essays written by sing-along participants. The book documents how people continued to sing “truth to power” despite the Walker administration changing its access rules earlier this year, requiring groups of four or more, as well as anyone with a visual display, to apply for a permit ahead of time.
The Solidarity Sing Along has long held it has no leader, and therefore cannot apply for a permit. Consequently, more than 600 tickets have been issued to sing-along participants from March 2011 to September 2013.
A majority have been issued since Erwin began cracking down on the singers, with 188 citations issued in July and August. For additional facts on the sing along, click here.
A celebration of the book’s release will take place from 4:30 p.m. to 5:30 p.m., Tuesday, in the Capitol rotunda. Wherley will read excerpts from the book and images from the book will be on display.
A launch party will be held from 6 p.m. to 10 p.m. at the Harmony Bar & Grill, where copies of the book will be sold for $29.
The book will be available Wednesday at local retailers including Anthology, A Room of One’s Own, Rainbow Bookstore Cooperative, Frugal Muse-West, Lakeside Press, Paul’s Books, and The University Book Store’s downtown and Hilldale locations.
Proceeds from the book will support the First Amendment Protection Fund. The fund helps to offset legal costs for people who have been cited and arrested at the Capitol while exercising their 1st and 4th amendment rights.
A sing along-produced CD entitled "This is What Democracy Sounds Like" can be purchased in a digital version by visiting the CDBABY website. To obtain a hard copy, leave a written message at the "Solidarity Sing Along" Facebook page. The CD was produced by Steve Gotcher and Sally de Broux of Madison.

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I Punk’d Scott Walker

And now he’s lying about it.

By IAN MURPHY

November 18, 2013

I never thought Scott Walker’s people would be dumb enough to put me through. It was February 2011—the height of the Wisconsin governor’s battle with the public unions, with thousands of protesters filling the streets of downtown Madison—when I called his office posing as Tea Party sugar daddy David Koch.
I told Keith Gilkes, who was then Walker’s chief of staff, that the governor couldn’t return my call because “my goddamn maid, Maria, put my phone in the washer. I’d have her deported, but she works for next to nothing.” (In reality, I was calling with a free Skype number and couldn’t receive calls from a land line at the time.)
In my business, that’s called tipping your hand. All ethical liars do it. It’s the ridiculous, implausible hints that separate the ethical prankster from the confidence man, the satirist from the unrepentant political hack. But they didn’t get the joke, and soon Walker and I were comparing notes on how he could break the backs of those pro-union demonstrators.

On Tuesday, Walker unleashes an epic gag of his own, the book Unintimidated: A Governor’s Story and a Nation’s Challenge. Aimed at duping future historians and contemporary wonks, the 255 pages of political PR—co-authored by former Dubya speechwriter Marc Thiessen—read at times more like Stalin than Sacha Baron Cohen, given their sheer propaganda quotient. But some passages are pretty funny, like the chapter where he says my prank call—which I recorded and posted on YouTube, much to the governor’s dismay and embarrassment at the time—was all part of God’s plan to teach him humility.
If anything, the lesson of Unintimidated seems to be that God is terrible at teaching humility.

***

I had no idea whether Koch and Walker had spoken before, but it was plausible that Koch would call the governor. Americans for Prosperity—the conservative advocacy group Koch founded with his brother Charles—had thrown millions of hard-to-track dollars into pro-Walker advertising and was presently “standing with Walker” via an expensive PR blitz.
I expected Gilkes to question why Koch would personally call the number on their website, suffering through busy signals and endless ringing like a common plebe, and then cavalierly trashing his undocumented maid. “I’m calling from the VOID—with the VOID, or whatever it’s called,” I said, thinking I’d strained credulity too far. “You know, the Snype!” But Gilkes just laughed and told me to call back at 2.
At the appointed hour, Walker and I enjoyed a friendly chat during which I suggested that he physically intimidate his Democratic opposition with a baseball bat, whip up a good counter-protest by dressing hobos in suits and most disturbing: that he ought to plant troublemakers to discredit the pro-union demonstrators.
“[W]e thought about that,” Walker replied, and eventually added, “My only fear would be if there’s a ruckus caused is that would scare the public into thinking maybe the governor has to settle to avoid all these problems.” So it wasn’t morality, but a cynical calculation, that saved the public from that particular ruse.

My most successful gag before the call to Walker had been covering the grand opening of Ken Ham’s Creation “Museum” as a reporter afflicted with “Asperger’s Syndrome By Proxy.” An associate and I set up a fake news website called the Special Times, wherein my alter ego professed his abiding love for cookies, the Transformers, investigative reporting and Our Lord Jesus Christ—daring Ham’s PR hacks to catch on. But the people who believe the universe was pulled from God’s magical arse 6,000 years ago never got wise. Go figure. And I ended up in their midst, clad in sweatpants, Velcro sneakers and fanny pack, crudely mocking everything they consider sacred.
I learned the pranksters’ code—giving the mark a sporting chance—from Matt Taibbi. Before becoming Rolling Stone’s resident scourge of Wall Street, Taibbi founded a biweekly rag in Buffalo, my hometown, called the BEAST. He abandoned the project before I came aboard as a delivery boy. It took me nearly a decade to claw my way to editor-in-chief. Only recently did I step down to spend less time with my family. But the BEAST ethic will always guide me. Its inaugural issue back in 2002 featured a prank involving Buffalo’s then-Mayor Anthony Masiello accepting a poetic, gangster-fraternizing cameo in an episode of The Sopranos. The tell came in the form of a purported HBO producer’s promise to send Masiello a porcelain unicorn signed by James Spader. A highly amusing plan.
The Koch call, though, was totally on the fly. No plan. No chance of success, I thought. I’d been awake for more than 24 hours, delirious, chasing my coffee with scotch and fairly stoned. My only preparation was to scrawl “Coke” on a scrap of paper. On the infinitesimal chance I got through as David Koch, I figured the guy should correctly pronounce his own name.

***

In Unintimidated, Walker says he took the call “after a week or more of insistent pleas” from his staff. False. I called three times in less than three hours.
Walker also writes, “we never—never—considered putting ‘troublemakers’ in the crowd to discredit the protesters.” He now says in his book that he fibbed to appease the co-owner of Koch Industries, parent company to Georgia Pacific Corp., which employs more than 2,000 people in its Green Bay mills. Decent yet disturbing spin. But when the news broke, Walker simply told the local media, “As you’ve heard on the tape, we dismissed that and said that wasn’t a good idea.” It was the same weak talking point he trotted out on Meet the Press. And David Gregory—renowned vanilla sasquatch of the mythological “objective media”—had zero follow-ups, allowing Walker to pivot unchallenged to the “real issue” of the 14 Democratic state senators who’d fled Wisconsin to avoid a GOP quorum.
In fact, it was one of those senators, Tim Carpenter, who’d provided the inspiration for the prank. “He’s just hard-lined—will not talk,” he told Amanda Terkel at the Huffington Post, “will not communicate, will not return phone calls.” Who would Walker talk to, I wondered? My first idea was to pose as Egyptian strongman Hosni Mubarak, who was in the midst of a mass sit-in of his own. I imagined it as a sort of dictator heart-to-heart. But after three hours of practicing the accent, I still sounded like Borat, not Mubarak, so I gave up and posed as Koch instead.
At a press conference after the story broke, Walker said, “The bottom line is the things I’ve said are the things I’ve said publicly all along.” Much to my astonishment, variations of that blatant lie appeared in headlines without reporters calling bullshit.

Read more: http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2013/11/i-punkd-scott-walker-100033.html#ixzz2l7UR6bHo

Journalists rarely invent the lie, though that does happen (see: Armstrong Williams, Stephen Glass, etc.), but often unwittingly pass it along. “There’s a whole industry, the public relations industry, that’s all about getting lies into the media—and they never reveal the hoax,” says the pseudonymous Andy Bichlbaum of America’s preeminent prank troupe the Yes Men. “They’ve sold wars (see Counterfeit Coverage), our deaths (tobacco), and now the death of the whole planet, starting with those who live in the poorest countries.”
Countering lies sometimes requires more lies. In other words, putting truth into the mouths of liars. That’s the Yes Men’s M.O. Their entire shtick is about giving the marks a sporting chance—trawling reporters with over-the-top absurd fake websites and press conferences. (I stole from their playbook when I ran for Congress in 2011, and realized my Republican opponent had not registered her own .org. Bwahaha.)
I became aware of the Yes Men in 2004 when, on the 20th anniversary of the Bhopal disaster, Bichlbaum appeared on BBC World News posing as a Dow Chemical spokesperson to accept full responsibility for the tragic Indian gas leak that caused thousands of deaths and countless injuries. “Our shareholders may take a bit of a hit,” Birchlbaum told BBC after announcing $12 billion in victim compensation. “But I think if they’re anything like me they will be ecstatic to be part of such a historic occasion of doing right by those we have wronged.”

Since then, the Yes Men have pulled numerous successful media hoaxes to satirically poignant effect—Halliburton’s SurvivaBall to protect the on-the-go businessman from any post-apocalyptic hellscape, Dow’s “Acceptable Risk” death calculator and posing as the U.S. Chamber of Commerce to announce the consortium’s noble 180 on climate change, to name just a few.
One of the Yes Men’s best coups was a two-pronged jape aimed at Shell Oil. I teamed up with them for this one. The first prong, a video of a launch party for a new Shell website—during which a miniature liquor-dispensing oil rig sprung an unstoppable leak—blew up the Internet. The second prong, the site itself, ArcticReady.com, offered an interactive function where users generated captions for images of pristine Arctic wilderness and wildlife, sharing them on social media. One example featured an Arctic fox that read: “YOU CAN’T RUN YOUR SUV ON ‘CUTE’. LET’S GO.”
The press initially reported both prongs as massive PR blunders. Business reporters were apoplectic. How could Shell be so dumb? As the man behind the official Twitter account for the fake Shell, I wrote tweets about being drunk and spilling coffee. By the time most journalists caught on, the “damage” was already done. We’d gotten our message across: Drilling for oil in the Arctic is inherently unsafe, a tragedy waiting to happen, not even factoring the release of heat-trapping carbon into Earth’s finite greenhouse. And we had gotten people talking about it in appropriately worried tones.
Birchlbaum once told me that the journalists they dupe usually don’t mind. I suspect that’s because pranksters can force journalists to cover stories they otherwise wouldn’t—or couldn’t—in their capacity as “respected” news people. But I’ve always thought of my pranks as a funny kind of undercover work.
James O’Keefe, the notorious fake pimp who killed the low-income advocacy and organizing group ACORN, doesn’t agree with me on that point. “There is a big difference between pranks and undercover investigative journalism,” he says. “I am and have never been interested in pranks for the sake of trickery or laughs. I am, however, committed to utilizing undercover investigative journalism to expose the truth and improve our society, the goal of most journalists, I believe.”
O’Keefe’s not a credible person. But I grudgingly respect him for his ability to get things done. Well, respect like I do Charles Manson. The undercover videos that led to ACORN’s downfall, wherein O’Keefe dressed as a—totally unfunny, apparently—pimp were deceptively edited, as is much of his work. He never talked to ACORN staffers dressed that way. And he ended having to pay $100,000 in damages to one ACORN worker for completely misrepresenting her as a pimp-loving criminal.
A little snip here, another there, and you can make an NPR executive call the Tea Party “xenophobic” just by leaving out the part where he attributed the description to Republicans he knew. That’s O’Keefe’s M.O. But I felt compelled to ask him some questions for this essay because that’s what I’m told journalists do. Sometimes undercover.
“Sometimes the only way to unearth dirty politicos’ fraud, and more, is to go incognito. This is a tradition with a long history that brings to life very important issues within society,” O’Keefe argues. “Nellie Bly and her famous investigation into mental health is just one example of many famous undercover journalists.”
Undercover reporting aside, the “objective” press asks a guy over here, a guy over there, and they rarely tell the news consumer the factual truth. It’s an institutional sickness. It wasn’t too long ago that the New York Times asked its readers: “Should The Times Be a Truth Vigilante?” Of course it should! That that was a serious question from the “paper of record” goes a long way to understand the coming end of civilization. “Credible scientist A says, ‘Our species is in serious trouble,’ but guy with undisclosed ties to Exxon and the Heartland Institute says, ‘Dude, chillax.’” You decide.
That every malfeasant public figure or PR hack has a valid opinion deserving equal weight next to empirically rooted reality is the deadliest jape of our era—pulling our politics further into the corporate shadows and poisoning our planet beyond repair.
Will God save us, like he did Walker? After taking his “beating” by the press, one of his “toughest days,” he turned to his devotional calendar, according to his new book. That day’s title: “The Power of Humility, the Burden of Pride.” He looked up and said, “I hear you Lord.” Whether that’s honest delusion or just pandering, and whether he truly believes targeting unions is anything other than a way to break the Democratic money base, the governor’s definitely fooling—or trying to fool—someone. And they call me the jokester.
Ian Murphy is a professional weirdo whose work has appeared at AlterNet, Salon, Crooks & Liars, the Daily Beast, Free Inquiry and, most regularly, at the Progressive. Follow him on Twitter @Ian_Murphy.

Read more: http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2013/11/i-punkd-scott-walker-100033_Page2.html#ixzz2l7UFjF2Z

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