Florida's use of taxpayer dollars for propaganda against taxpayers must stop ... by gimleteye

In Clearwater yesterday, Gov. Rick Scott answered a few press questions with tired talking points: “Thanks to the support of the legislature, we’ve made a significant investment in our environment … When I first got elected we settled a decades-old lawsuit over the Everglades. We’re investing $880 million to improve the water quality. We’ve also invested significant amounts of money to move water south […] but the federal government needs to do their part. They need to step up, and they need to do more work to fix the dike at Lake Okeechobee."

The Governor avoided the single fact that could eventually solve the crisis of Florida’s estuaries, of Florida Bay, the rivers and Everglades: buy more land in the Everglades Agricultural Area where sugar billionaires extract hundreds of millions in profit annually and pollute state politics.

The political pollution of Florida starts with the governor’s appointees to the boards of the state water management districts.

The South Florida Water Management District in March of this year launched an extraordinary attack on citizens who are organizing to protest state water policies and programs that are putting billions of dollars of coastal real estate at severe jeopardy of pollution from Lake Okeechobee, while preserving the rights and prerogatives of Big Sugar.

As a taxing and revenue authority, the District is one of the most powerful governmental entities in Florida. Although the District has its own public relations program to "educate" the public, it is unprecedented for a taxing agency to attack taxpayers as the District began to do in March.

The first rhetorical mortar assault against taxpayers began on March 11: "News outlets and social media sites continue to falsely report that South Florida's water is polluted and toxic, untouchable and filled with sludge. These allegations cannot be backed up by the facts. So-called "expert sources" are spewing emotion instead of science.”

Two months later, and toxic blue green algae is spewing out of Lake Okeechobee, the diseased heart of Florida.

The missive continued, "As part of Gov. Scott's Restoration Strategies Plan, an additional $880 million is being invested to build more treatment wetlands and water storage capacity to ensure that Everglades National Park will be healthy for decades to come." Gov. Scott improbably claims victory for his Restoration Strategies Plan in 2012. The plan was only the result of litigation brought by Friends of the Everglades and the Miccosukee Tribe through a lawsuit that the state lost and is still being contested by its partner, Big Sugar.

Just days later, on March 15, 2016: "Get the Facts": "Backpumping Media outlets continue to falsely report that rare emergency pumping of water into Lake Okeechobee was orchestrated by farmers.”

The point of civic protesters was inacccurately characterized by the District: Big Sugar billionaire farmers do, in fact, dictate water programs and policies at the District. On March 22nd, the District hammered its critics, again branding them as liars. “Commentators continue to falsely claim that private interests influenced a water management decision to back pump water into Lake Okeechobee during extreme January rainfall, ignoring the fact that SFWMD flood control operations were carried out to protect families and properties surrounding Lake Okeechobee. SFWMD works collaboratively with other public entities to communicate water management issues to the public. Misinformation and agenda-driven campaigns do nothing to inform or educate South Florida's citizens on the complexities of the regional flood control system.”

What is extraordinary about this "pot calling the kettle, black” is that the District is spending taxpayer dollars to wage a blatantly political agenda-driven campaign in service of Big Sugar. Its agenda: to extract the last drop of profit from sugar cane fields until they can build zero lot line housing tracts in the EAA.

What changed is that social media sites like Bullsugar.org and the SWFL Clean Water Movement began attracting hundreds of thousands of viewers, shocked by the visible evidence of District policies through massive fish kills in Brevard County.

March 23, 2016 "Get the Facts: Indian River Lagoon Fish News outlets and social media sites erroneously connect fish kills observed in Brevard County and the northern portions of the Indian River Lagoon with releases from Lake Okeechobee to the St. Lucie River and Estuary in Martin County. Fish kills have been reported in the Banana River and Indian River in Brevard County, nearly 100 miles away from where fresh water released from Lake Okeechobee by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers mixes with brackish water in the St. Lucie River and Estuary. No Brown Tide has been reported in the St. Lucie River.”

At the same time, the District and Big Sugar launched a massive campaign on television news and newsprint claiming that the real problem was not malfeasance at the state but homeowners’ septic systems and the failure of the federal goverrnment to fix the aging dike around Lake Okeechobee. The District began to attack the press as liars, too. On April 14, 2016 "Get the Facts: C-43 Reservoir With an astonishing evasion of the facts, the Fort Myers News-Press published an article incorrectly claiming the C-43 Reservoir will not work for the Caloosahatchee River and Estuary because of algae blooms.” On April 22, 2016 "Get the Facts: Everglades Water Quality A recent article in the Key West Citizen perpetuated erroneous facts about the quality of water flowing into Everglades National Park and Florida Bay.” On May 2nd, "Get the Facts: Everglades Modeling In a recent letter to the Fort Myers News-Press, former Lee County Commissioner Ray Judah inaccurately alleged flawed scientific modeling was used in Everglades restoration planning."

Judah, a Republican, has been an advocate for buying Big Sugar lands south of Lake Okeechobee. He is a well regarded speaker at civic events on Florida's southwest coast. A public servant for decades, Judah was targeted by U.S. Sugar Corporation through a super PAC that plowed nearly $1 million to eject him from the Lee County Commission in 2012.

On May 11, the District published, "Today, the Caloosahatchee River Watch group is holding what was advertised as a public forum to discuss the C-43 Reservoir project. However, this "forum" will consist solely of one-sided detractors in pursuit of an agenda without facts to support it.”

The District added, "Caloosahatchee River Watch did not contact the South Florida Water Management District that designed and is building the reservoir, to invite any of the agency's noted scientists and engineers to explain its benefits. Any complete and fair discussion of this reservoir must include relevant facts.”

It is easy to understand why citizens would not “invite” the District to its meetings: the District governing board has repeatedly ignored the entreaties of citizens — who mounted the Amendment 1 campaign to secure funding for land acquistion — to buy the U.S. Sugar lands. If those lands had been purchased in 2015, the District would be on the way to the only solution that promises to eventually fix the trashing of Florida waterways. Instead of addressing this point, it defaults to half-truths and evasions: "When complete, the C-43 Project will hold approximately 170,000 acre-feet of freshwater from local stormwater runoff and releases from Lake Okeechobee. It is not designed to completely eliminate all lake releases. The reservoir's primary purpose is to store freshwater during the wet season and release it to the Caloosahatchee River Estuary during drier months to help balance salinity.” In other words, your estuarine real estate, parks, and fishing grounds will continue to be polluted.

On May 11, 2016 "Get the Facts: Florida Bay”, the District writes, "The recent Florida Bay seagrass die-off has led to a public discussion about freshwater flows into Florida Bay, with opinions expressed in newspapers by public officials and interested private parties. … The recent seagrass die-off is a result of a 16-month, localized rainfall deficit: From May 2014 through August 2015, the Taylor Slough watershed received 25-35 inches of direct rainfall -- the lowest total for any part of the District's 16-county region. As a result of the rainfall deficit, salinity in parts of Florida Bay was more than twice as high as ocean water.”

Combined with a four to five times average rainfall in January 2016, the drought of 2014/2015 shows that the elasticity in the water management system has vanished. Because there is not enough water storage south of Lake Okeechobee to handle extreme events likely to become more common under climate change conditions, the estuaries and rivers and Everglades will continue to be blasted. There is only one solution, supported in a 2015 letter by 207 scientists to Gov. Rick Scott: buy land south of Lake Okeechobee.

That truth is not reflected anywhere in the water management district’s diatribes against citizen protesters and taxpayers. What these “Get the Facts” show is Florida government walking lockstep with Big Sugar. This District use of taxpayer dollars for propaganda against the best interest of taxpayers is shameful.

Here Comes That Black Swan … by gimleteye

The other day I had correspondence on climate change with a journalist visiting Florida to write about sea level rise. He wrote: "I really don't get it. These execs and government leaders have kids, and grandkids. How can they be so short-sightedly greedy at their own offspring's expense?"

I responded with three quotations.

Upton Sinclair: "It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it."

Sir Nicholas Stern: "Climate change is the result of the greatest market failure that the world has seen."

Jimmy Carter: "America does not have a functioning democracy at this point in time."

One of the observations I've made, connecting political and economic conditions in the United States, is that these are consequences of an age of scarcity.

It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when is his salary depends on his not understanding it and it is even more difficult when fear is heightened, as it has been for decades, by scarcity.

Fear is the leading edge of climate change.

The recent polar vortex brought the radical right wing cries, "See, there's no global warming!" Two days later it was springtime temperatures in the northeast.

What is normal these days; a paralyzed Congress. The degrees of stalemate can be measured by many metrics. The one Floridians should prefer is that US Senator Marco Rubio still has not met with climate change scientists.

The Grover Norquist faction of the right wing GOP may not have succeeded in its mission of shrinking the size of government so it could fit in a bathtub, but it succeeded in its objective -- whether by drowning or by grinding gridlock, the net result is dysfunction.

This is a terrible outcome and what's worse: through the most recent election cycles in 2010 and 2012, unrestricted campaign contributions through dark money channels (ie. undeclared as to origin or donor) have only just finished their test drive of campaign manipulation.

That turns the action to the states. Along this line, listen to a terrific segment on NPR's "Fresh Air": "Why the GOP is winning the state house war". And have a look at the following map of drought conditions in the far west.

While Florida is starting to focus on sea level rise -- even the somnabulists at public television's WPBT have woken up -- the first long-term impacts to the US will very likely be in western regions with a population of 50 million people and a disproportionate share of the technology economy.  Around the world, the weather is oscillating at extreme ends, exactly as climate change scientists have predicted, only faster. If drought conditions increase in proportional frequency but with more intensity than rain events, what happens to the stock markets, then?

Tea Party Wages War on Public Libraries. By Geniusofdespair

We aren't alone on this.

The Radical GOP Right Turns Florida Into A "Sacrifice Zone" ... by gimleteye

Today in the state legislature, the House is preparing to give Big Sugar the biggest prize it has ever obtained: capping its obligation to clean up its pollution of the Everglades. It is an even bigger gift than the Jeb! Bush collapse on the Everglades water pollution standard. In 2003, Bush claimed he was doing the work of Marjory Stoneman Douglas and sent his top environmental official to harangue from the steps of the federal court house in Miami. What Bush did a decade ago was to allow Big Sugar to weasel away from the obligation, written in the Florida Constitution, that holds the Everglades polluters are primarily responsible for cleaning up the pollution they cause.

What the House is planning to do, is to undo years of federal litigation and negotiation that resulted in efforts to hold the Great Destroyers accountable for their costs. It's a sad testimony to the power of the radical right that cast its spell, holding the state in a fog of amnesia.

The House action on behalf of Big Sugar is being stimulated by an army of lobbyists. The public interest has a few of its own, but not many and not likely to influence the outcome. The reason is that Tallahassee is a bubble. It operates as an enclosed political sphere with its own oxygen -- money -- and its own laws. Government has never been more divorced from the people. The result is a state being turned into a "sacrifice zone" for the radical right.

Protecting the rights of polluters is a key agenda of the GOP. That is not, however, how it is pitched to citizens, voters or to the media.

These are "reasonable" businessmen. These are "job creators". These are "men of faith". These qualities are etched in the marketing that pitched Rick Scott to the Governor's Mansion and a host of telegenic young Republicans whose main aspiration is to memorize talking points and deliver them seamlessly so that they, too, can reach and materialize on Fox News like Senator Marco Rubio.

Example A: the recent collapse of the US EPA to enforce nutrient standards across the state and instead bow to Tallahassee, whose proposed rules many environmentalists believe are even worse than what lead to the filthy waters that ring the state. In the St. Pete Times, lead Earthjustice attorney David Guest compared "(the) agreement to a deal to protect henhouses from "the Fox Consultation Council," because "the polluting industries have effective control of the state pollution prevention process in Florida."

Example B: In a recent report, the Orlando Sentinel documented the pollution crippling Florida's rivers. Some good it did, in Tallahassee. "Orlando's Wekiva has gotten sicker. The Indian River - the riverlike lagoon along Florida's east coast - has been rocked by persistent and destructive algae blooms. The Wakulla near Tallahassee is plagued with dark, tannic water. Health authorities warn nearly every year that algae blooms in the Caloosahatchee in South Florida are toxic.
"We have a definite trend toward degrading water," said Rae Ann Wessel, a defender of the Caloosahatchee and member of the Sanibel-Captiva Conservation Foundation." That's just the beginning. We could add Florida Bay and Biscayne Bay to the mix and wouldn't be far off.

These are only two examples showing how Florida has been turned into a "sacrifice zone" for the radical right. We have our political equivalents in Miami-Dade County. Read, below, how County Commissioner Lynda Bell sought to use the commission to carve out exemptions for a few violators in the 8.5 Square Mile Area. It is as though she could undo, single-handedly, the county environmental agency, enforcement, and the law at the same time.

From the point of view of environmentalists, what is unraveling in Tallahassee and power centers like Miami-Dade is nothing less than decades of desperately difficult work, putting in place rules of the road that are continuously undermined by special interests. Government designed to fail is nothing less that contractors being subsidized to blow up roads and buildings that tax dollars then reward them to rebuild.

This wouldn't happen if voters paid attention to what underlies the misdirection of policies arising from the worst economic crash since the Great Depression. The radical right calls it "shrinking the size of government so it can be drowned in a bathtub". What it really is, is a good old fashioned putsch; a government takeover by polluters and the self-righteous radical right who wave the flag of democracy and pages of the Constitution to avoid accountability. Pollute, yes! Regulate, no! Shift wealth to insiders, yes! Let the rest, eat chiccarones. The radical right claims to be winners. What they are winning is the race to the bottom.

You can't have one without the other. By Geniusofdespair

Patriot: one who loves his or her country and supports its authority and interests.- Merriam-Webster 

Button available on line.

Does "Tea Party" and "Patriot" seem like an oxymoron to you?  The Tea Party appears to hate the authority of government. Well, it doesn't really matter because the link is here to stay.  I didn't get the memo but I can read the tea leaves.

From the Miami Herald this morning.

I would bet that it might not just be a link we are looking at, the switch to Patriot from Tea Party might be coming: They are 'patriots' and you, therefore, are not.

Nice to Look At. By Geniusofdespair

Not so nice to look, the Conservative spin:

Tea Party Defined on Newsroom. By Geniusofdespair

Watch it on YouTube.

The Newsroom takes on the Tea Party. Trolls not welcome. Also see Gimleteye's review below.

Final notes on HBO's "The Newsroom" ... by gimleteye

The season finale of "The Newsroom" aired on Sunday night, with millions of Americans riveted to a hurricane disrupting the start of the Republican National Convention. Aaron Sorkin, creator of the HBO series, must have wondered who was upstaging him.

So now we have the series' payoff: a well-researched attack by fictional news anchor, Will McAvoy, against the Tea Party and his own party, the GOP, and stakes made ever higher by the disclosure that his own Rupert Murdoch-like boss had authorized wire-tapping of him and proof that could cost him his job (in which case the series would end!) and the suicide of a NSA official who would have been a whistleblower on the massive intrusion of surveillance on civilian Americans.

"The Newsroom" will live for at least a second season; a credit to Sorkin, lead Jeff Daniels, and a host of real Broadway stars doing their HBO star turns. So here is the bad news.

The saccharine romances linking the principal and secondary characters in a dysfunctional, happy family could scarcely be more irritating. Yet without the drama of highly intelligent people who can solve a Rubik's cube faster than holding each other's hands, the series would fall on the pedantic shoulders of despair at the decline of American political discourse.

So Sorkin cut his deal with the gods of dramatic tension to make the payoff work: a final editorial speech to the fictional TV camera on "The American Taliban", the Tea Party and radical right that hijacked his party, the GOP.

The finale was timed to match up with the Republican National Convention. It works. USA? USA?

As for the series itself, "The Newsroom" gets an A for effort and an A for execution. Still, the idea that there could ever be a "fight" for journalistic integrity within a cable news network or that "The Newsroom" opens up a window on tension between publishers focused like a laser on the bottom line (ie. advertisers who support the radical right) and editors and reporters is science fiction. Entertaining, yes. A "window" on the media elite? Noooo.

That's show business. But I don't want to spill red wine on the carpet. For a payoff that attracted millions of viewers and maybe even some independents voters who could decide the 2012 elections, HBO deserves even more accolades than Aaron Sorkin.

The best that could happen in November is for true GOP voters to stay home from the polls and watch re-runs of "The Newsroom".

Big Sugar: Great Destroyers of Florida Foist Costs of Pollution on Taxpayers ... by gimleteye

One of the repeated claims by the Unreformable Majority of the Miami-Dade County Commission is what good environmentalists, farmers are. Certainly, some are. They are for the most part small organic farmers. At the county commission meeting of Feb 21st (noted, below), commissioners rose up in a throaty support for farmers wrapped around antagonism to regulations protecting wetlands.

The brain-dead, one-sided meeting provided further ammo to take down the county department charged with environmental regulation. "Farmers are the best environmentalists!"

photo taken at Whole Foods, South Miami, FL

Here are a few points that extend well beyond Miami-Dade County borders.

Farming in Florida is not like the good old days when sticking a seed in the ground, keeping the soil not too wet and not too dry, was a formula for profit. Today industrial scale agriculture-- like growing sugar cane in 700,000 acres around Lake Okeechobee -- requires thousands of tons of fertilizer and soil amendments each year to grow (highly profitable) crops in exhausted soil.

So when Miami-Dade and other county commissioners get on soap boxes with how farmers are the best environmentalists, living close to the land and all that, know it may be true for a few but it is largely a bunch of crap to the big farmers who run the Farm Bureau. Its business is to balance the risks of farming against the friction of environmental regulations, the uncertainty of loan repayments based on developable potential, and the future value of land as crappy subdivisions.

The bottom line-- Tea Party pay attention here!-- is that scale farm operations are major polluters who use millions of dollars-- earned through farm bill policies tacitly endorsed by voters through politicians they elect-- to shift billions of dollars of pollution costs to taxpayers.

Now, a reality check: in 1996, nearly 70 percent of Florida voters approved an amendment to the Florida constitution requiring sugar farmers to clean up 100 percent of the pollution they cause in the Everglades. Keep that number in your head. How did that work out for nearly 70 percent of Florida voters who voted for billions of dollars of Everglades cleanup to be assessed where it belongs?

A new study funded by the Everglades Foundation, by independent economist firm RTI, shows that in the past decade Big Sugar has only funded 24 percent of the clean up costs associated with Everglades restoration. Not 100 percent as required by state law. The chemical culprit is the same as that used and overused on lawns: the phosphorous component in fertilizer. Phosphorous in quantities greater than 10 parts per billion -- a few grains in a bucket of sand -- kills the Everglades.

Who funds the rest of the multi-billion dollar cost of land acquisition, treatment marshes, and continuous monitoring and operation? Taxpayers.

Here's another astonishing statistic, to refute the Miami-Dade county commissioners who want to argue who is paying for what.

According to RTI, the cost of treatment marshes and other provisions required to clean up phosphorous once it passes from big sugar lands to public lands is $350 per pound of phosphorous. The cost for "best management practices" that deliver the same benefits if those measures were incorporated by farmers to their farming practices? Only $47 per pound. Think about that, next time you buy a pound of sugar for a couple of bucks. How about them apples?

When farmers say they are good neighbors and complain about excess environmental regulations like those that protect wetlands as harming "jobs", remember who is paying the bill for failing to pay attention. Instead of requiring farmers to keep the phosphorous on their farms and clean it up right there-- requiring them to add $46 to the cost of a pound of phosphorous (the true cost)-- industrial scale farmers figured out a way to get taxpayers to pay 8 times that amount in order to use PUBLIC lands for their sewerage. (You can join Friends of the Everglades, today, fighting these and other inequities and violations of federal law in federal court.)

This leads, then, to another question: why doesn't the state of Florida mandate best management practices that are not only far cheaper but also required both by law and recommended by recent federal court rulings instigated by environmental organizations that protect taxpayer interests? Oooo, there is that word, "mandate"! The GOP hates mandates!

The reason is that farmers-- the best "environmentalists" according to county commissioners in Miami-Dade like Linda Bell and Javier Souto. -- have tied up the Republican majority state legislature in baling wire. (Don't get me wrong: you can count the number of Democrats who have stood up for taxpayer equity and assessing the true costs of pollution on the polluter, on one hand.) Since 1996 the legislature hasn't lifted a finger to enact the specific provisions of what nearly 70 percent of voters approved. If nearly 20 years delay hasn't proved the lie that industry can regulate itself better than government can to public benefit, think again. (You can't defend the Great Destroyers unless the excess mercury caused by Big Ag and running into Florida waters has clouded your thinking processes.)

This would seem an issue ripe for Tea Party involvement. It is not complicated. Failing to protect taxpayers from predatory practices of Big Sugar, the Tea Party badly undermines its own credibility.

So next time you hear county commissioners or anyone else for that matter huff and puff how environmentally friendly Big Sugar is, rub the sleep from your eyes. Thank our small scale, organic farmers: yes. But Big Sugar and its lobbyists turned the climate for environmental regulation into an empty husk, not fit for locusts. 

Rob Stein: The Rise of a Grand New Alliance ... by gimleteye

Attached is a recent essay by Rob Stein, founder of the Democracy Alliance, on the Huffington Post describing what Stein refers to as the "Grand New Alliance" (“GNA”) of Libertarian-Christian Right-Tea Party forces that in the aggregate have a multi-billion dollar organizational infrastructure designed to inform, organize and mobilize 40-50 million of the most passionate right-wing political activists in the country. The backdrop to Stein's thesis is how political money will be raised for the 2012 presidential campaign. President Obama has, so far, a significant campaign war chest in comparison to the GOP candidates. The New York Times recently reported on the bundlers and lobbyists who Obama professed to stay clear of, in the 2008 election. What is clear, though, is that the more important contributors are those who can give unlimited contributions-- including corporations-- to Super Pac's; entities formed in the wake of the Citizens United decision by the US Supreme Court. I believe the Super PAC's will determine the outcome of the 2012 election. This week Politico reported, "THE OUTSIDE- MONEY CHA$E -- "Big Dem donors stiff super PACs," by Kenneth P. Vogel and Robin Bravender: "Initial pitches have been met with skepticism, even hostility, from some of the party's most reliable wealthy backers. ... [T]he apprehension has left Democrats at an early, but significant, fundraising disadvantage to Republican groups, causing widespread concern in liberal circles that if the pace of six- and even seven-figure checks doesn't pick up, the party could be in serious jeopardy of losing the White House and the Senate next year. ... in order for Democrats to come anywhere close to keeping pace with the Rove-linked groups, they're going to need to raise much more from billionaires such as investor George Soros and insurance magnate Peter Lewis. The $275,000 they gave to the super PACs this year pales in comparison to the nearly $40 million they contributed in 2004 to two liberal outside groups that boosted Democrat John Kerry's unsuccessful campaign against then-President George W. Bush." There are many reasons that big Democratic donors are staying away. And on the Democrat side, there is nothing even remotely resembling the Grand New Alliance as Rob Stein outlines here.

 THE RISE OF A GRAND NEW ALLIANCE By Rob Stein

A profoundly significant new political alignment within the right flank of the Republican Party is becoming entrenched in American politics. For the modern, somewhat more mainstream economic and neo-conservative Reagan-Bush-Bush-Cheney Republican Establishment, it is a threat far more dangerous to its control of the Conservative-Right than, in their time, were the rambunctious John Birch Society, the youthful Goldwater Rebellion, or the Lee Atwater upstarts who orchestrated the Reagan Revolution. For Independents, moderate Republicans and Democrats this new alignment should be a wake-up call that the foundations of Democracy are always fragile and the promises of America must never be taken for granted. History ultimately will judge its relevance and impact, but an harmonic convergence – a “grand new alliance” - is occurring among Libertarians, the Christian Right and the disparate legions of Tea Party activists that is transforming politics as we have known it. (For ease of reference, I will refer to this grand new alliance as the “GNA” or the “Libertarian-Religious-Tea Party Alliance”.) Tensions and fissures are clearly visible within this new alliance – for example, around the environment, the legitimacy of Social Security and Medicare/Medicaid, and gay marriage. Naturally deep disagreements exist and not every person or organization in each cohort of the alliance agrees with every tenet of other leaders or groups that comprise the GNA.

The difference between the Tea Party and Occupy Wall Street, Occupy Miami and everywhere else? Fear ... by gimleteye

The Occupy Wall Street'ers around the nation and the world have presented an awkward situation for the Tea Party, now primarily institutionalized as a wing of the GOP. Lawrence Lessig, a Harvard University Law professor, made an interesting comment on the NPR Diane Rehm show yesterday (carried locally on WLRN): that the Tea Party had started out as a movement to end business as usual and to demand improvement in the operation of government but had quickly dissolved to represent the extremist wing of the GOP that wants to eliminate government, regulations, enforcement altogether.

The Tea Party has not made the leap, at least on the institutional level, to question the role of corporate power and authority. That is the bedrock of the OWS'ers protests. Where the OWS'ers tie politics and elections to the abuse of corporate wealth and authority, the Tea Party is silent. Indeed, billionaires like the Koch Brothers (whose profits depend on lax regulatory authority regarding clean air and clean water) are substantially funding the Tea Party, elected officials and its candidates.

Why? Because they are afraid. "Tea Party voters are more likely to fear change and harbor negative attitudes toward immigrants," reads an August AP report of a 4,500 telephone poll conducted with registered voters in North Carolina and Tennessee and presented to the annual conference of the American Sociological Conference. "Tea Party supporters also overwhelmingly viewed President Obama as "not at all" like them and 66 percent of conservatives who support the tea party movement say he is not a Christian.

While there are plenty of OWS'ers who are protesting the policies of President Obama, there are none to observe hating Obama or fearing him. Fear is a great fault line of any economic upheaval. It is proven time and again throughout history. It has also been one of the great achievements of the radical right that now dominate the GOP: the messages of fear have been carefully cultivated through Fox News and its commentators, as well as the entire panoply of paranoid talk show hosts on radio and TV. Fear pulls ratings and voters.

Occupy Wall Street, Miami and elsewhere grasp that "the only thing to fear is fear itself", the words of FDR during the depth of the Depression. It took the Second World War to ignite the US economy, but we are far past that now: our economy is already exhausted by the costs of wars on multiple fronts. We should not be afraid to confront the costs of Reconstruction.