For the GOP establishmentarians: an unexpected return on investment: Donald Trump takes on Karl Rove, while Michael Bloomberg takes the temperature of American voters ... by gimleteye

The Republican establishment is recoiling in fear of Donald Trump. No Democrat could have pressured GOP standard bearers so thoroughly to cause them to unite in opposition to the poll leader. Listen to this video of Donald Trump taking on the GOP strategist most closely linked with the Republican orthodoxy: Karl Rove.

The likely Republican, primary voter insurgency supporting Trump looks a lot like the Tea Party before the Tea Party was co-opted by the Koch Brothers' oligarchy. This is a revolution from the inside of the Republican Party, and it could never have been started by anyone other than Donald Trump.

Trump appeals to a GOP electorate furious that promises to fix the economy by the party's own candidates, to establish national security abroad and job security at home, have not materialized. They view Jeb Bush as a fake like his brother. Republican voters who support Trump want a president who can deliver a simple message and keep its promise. It doesn't occur to Republican voters that the promise keepers are failing not because of who they are but because of what they believe.

Instead of looking for Republicans with a fundamentally re-tooled message (ie. banish Karl Rove to political Siberia), they are seeking a candidate who delivers even more simplistic messages but brings with him the kind of independence only great wealth can provide.

Donald Trump "can't be bought" -- not like Marco Rubio or Ted Cruz -- , and for Republican voters yearning for their own version of hope and change; that seems to be a prerequisite. Trump has even performed his political ju jitsu on the Koch Brothers' oligarchy; none of its plans are working out.

But if American voters -- not just Republican ones -- want an independent billionaire with proven experience in getting things done without bankruptcy, one is waiting in the wings.

A year ago, Michael Bloomberg concluded that he could not win the presidency. What changed: a revolt against the status quo in both parties.

If Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders are elected to represent their respective parties, Bloomberg might enter the race as an independent. Meanwhile, the American people have already won: Republican Party leaders have done the near-impossible -- they created the political climate for the rise of Donald Trump: the one candidate who distills their messages into Twitter-sized, digestible bites.

Hard as it is to believe, the values of misdirection that Jeb Bush embraced created Donald Trump. That is why Jeb! is so lost in this GOP presidential primary: he and Bush loyalists plowed and sowed the Republican electorate for the rise of Donald Trump. That is an unexpected return on their investment.
Don't see video? Hit this link.

Government by oligarchs: ours is no longer a Democracy: by what name should we call it? … by gimleteye

The roar of the political money vacuum cleaners can be heard if you are listening. After Citizens United, the oligarchs had to build a new vacuum cleaner for the 2016 presidential race.

I KNOW how Democrats feel about the transformation of elections, and I suspect that many ordinary Republicans are as turned off, too.

There are, however, more oligarch Republicans than there are, Democrats. What they are defending is simple enough to understand: they are investing in elections to protect their net worth and privileges in the tax code.

The oligarch's millions in campaign contributions to Super PAC's are pitted against your hundred, two hundred, or five hundred dollar contributions.

Insiders and political cronies have always had closer access to the corridors of power than ordinary people, but there can be no doubt -- none -- that the transformation of democracy constitutes a wholesale metamorphosis for which there is no name in the public eye.

You don't see, for example, the term, "Oligarchy" on network news. Or "Shadow Government".

In Florida and its state capitol, Tallahassee, it has been no simple task to take over the cockpit controls. Big money influence, though, is calculated and cunning.

It found energy in a communications strategy to impose homogeneous conservative values related to limited government through the Moral Majority and the Sagebrush Rebellion in the 1980s. It further promoted its aims by handicapping regulatory agencies by intimidating science staffers; effectively marginalizing dissenters within government ranks. It cultivated the weapon of fear to gin-up resentments against minorities -- always a fertile mother load in the American South -- to ignite the Tea Party in the early 2000s.

GOP candidates for the 2016 presidential campaign are in full force, shaking down the billionaires. Ted Cruz, this week, announced that PACs supporting his run had raised $31 million. A month ago, PACs related to Jeb Bush had been so successful that fundraisers were asked to hold off on million dollar plus donations, for fear that Jeb would be portrayed as the big money candidate too early in the campaign.

On the ground in Florida, you can see the results by looking at the shadows cast on the ground by the sun.

There is the state legislature and Gov. Scott's appointments on the Governing Board of the South Florida Management District giving the finger to civic activists' protests in favor of using Amendment 1 funds to purchase sugar lands for water storage and cleansing marshes; a deal that Big Sugar agreed to only a few years ago. The net result: to solidify the control of Everglades "restoration" by billionaire oligarchs who made their money poisoning people, poisoning democracy, and poisoning the Everglades.

Another shadow on the ground: the state legislature is poised to release Miami-Dade County rock miners -- one of the wealthiest and most secretive oligarchy in Florida -- from a fee designated to protect the drinking water of millions of Floridians from contamination.

Another shadow on the ground, and this one is the most impactful for Miami, perhaps, of all: Munilla Construction Management (MCM), involved in numerous county and municipal construction projects in Miami-Dade and elsewhere in Florida, hired Erik Fresen -- a state legislator -- to be its lobbyist on transportation and highway (MDX) business. Fresen used his state office for his lobbyist registration. It is as though the oligarchs don't even bother to hide their takeover plans. Legal or illegal seems to matter not at all.

The term, "robber baron", is used to lightly describe what has overtaken American democracy. The divisions in American society, particularly separating the .001 percent from the rest, have not been more clearly demarcated than they are today. It is war but, apparently, most Americans are too distracted by daily worries and anxieties to know or care.

Big Sugar Has A Political Problem In Florida, For First Time ... by gimleteye

Big Sugar has operated as a shadow government in Florida for decades, using the heavily protected sugar subsidy in the Farm Bill to buy off incumbents and candidates for public office. The formula has worked extraordinarily well. Legislatures protect Big Sugar's domination of the water supply infrastructure in Florida in return for campaign cash and predictable employment as lobbyists or in the Big Sugar supply chain once they leave office.

For the first time, this election cycle Big Sugar oligarchs like the Fanjul family and descendants of Charles Stewart Mott, owners of US Sugar Corporation, face political uncertainty in Florida. The trigger for its Florida problem began with massive winter rains -- unprecedented -- that exposed the deep flaws in the state's flood control infrastructure supervised by political appointees of the Rick Scott administration at the state's taxing authority; the South Florida Water Management District.

In essence, the huge property tax base on Florida's east and west coasts is being held hostage to pollution caused by policies that favor a single industry: Big Sugar. Put even more simply, taxpayers, residents and visitors supporting Florida's tourism based industries, that depend on clean water, were sacrificed to keep Big Sugar's fields dry. Sugarcane would not be grown in Florida but for corporate welfare cemented into the Farm Bill ("Cronyism in its undiluted, inexcusable majesty", is how GOP leader Grover Norquist describes the sugar subsidy).

Severe flooding caused the worst toxic algae blooms in Florida's history. The algae blooms animated a multitude I've called Florida's Arab Spring. The character of the multitude is qualitatively different from any opposition Big Sugar has faced in the past. For the first time, the opposition to Big Sugar is broad-based and diverse, drawing from the millions of residents and visitors to Florida and not just environmental groups who proved over time to be both limited in terms of diversity and easily marginalized by standard divide-and-conquer tactics.

Groups like Bullsugar.org, Captains for Clean Water, and the SWFL Clean Water Movement used social media to reach hundreds of thousands of viewers, bypassing advertising driven media whose content and opinions largely reflected the interests of Big Sugar.

Worse, for Big Sugar: since the Jeb Bush era -- beginning in the late 1990's -- Big Sugar has doubled down on its political bets on the GOP and its leadership. The oligarchy has spent millions cultivating a Republican majority in the state legislature and in the Florida delegation to Congress. Under normal political circumstances, its bets would continue to pay off. But maybe not this political year.

Big Sugar's first problem is Marco Rubio. Rubio's role in the Big Sugar political alignment is well-documented. As a leader in the state legislature in 2003, he proved his mettle by shepherding a new law to delay Everglades restoration, supported by Jeb Bush. He was called by the oligarchs to run against former Gov. Charlie Crist, who infuriated the Fanjuls by cutting a deal to buy US Sugar lands south of Lake Okeechobee. Rubio's senate seat was bought and paid for by Big Sugar.

Big Sugar's second problem is Donald Trump. The oligarchs locked up not one, but two Republican candidates in the March presidential primary: Marco Rubio and Jeb Bush. Trump badly defeated both, exposing the same deep divisions in the base that had been triggered in key constituencies on Florida's east and west coasts. Although another of Big Sugar's allies is racing to Trump's rescue -- Gov. Rick Scott heads the superPAC supporting Trump -- the GOP nominee is a wild card.

In some ways, Hillary Clinton would be preferable to Big Sugar as president. She is a known quantity: her husband has a enduring, close, and affectionate relationship to Big Sugar through the Fanjul oligarchy and has, in particular, connected through Clinton to Florida's African Americans who really don't need persuasion to vote for Hillary in 2016.

The third problem is the most vexing: US Senator Bill Nelson and Congressman Patrick Murphy. Until this year, Big Sugar could always count on Bill Nelson to walk a centrist line that protected Big Sugar's privileges and authority. By betting so heavily on Gov. Rick Scott -- the most tone-deaf politicians to ever hold the executive office -- Big Sugar gave the Democrat no choice but to deal with his 2018 opponent -- Scott -- now. Senator Nelson recently endorsed the call for eminent domain proceedings to begin, to legally take and compensate Big Sugar for enough lands to finally save the Everglades and the coastal estuaries that have been devastated by this year's toxic algae catastrophe.

Congressman Murphy, who recently signed the NoworNeverglades declaration urging land acquisition where sugarcane is farmed, will defeat Alan Grayson in the upcoming primary and face Rubio in November. Rubio, who will not sign the declaration and only received 15% of the GOP vote in the March presidential primary, a few months ago expressed his determination to leave the US Senate but reversed himself and now supports Trump who belittled him. Marco Rubio is turning into Big Sugar's political death star.

Big Sugar's latest tactic is hedge its bets by currying favor with Florida's African American Democrats. The hedging is not going to play well with the state's Republican leadership either. The tactic worked for Big Sugar in the past. In 1996, Big Sugar effectively killed off the effort by environmental groups to levy a penny-a-pound tax, through a state constitutional referendum; by funding and enlisting Bill Clinton's key African American allies during his re-election campaign.

Big Sugar is attempting to conflate the "Black Lives Matter" movement with "Glades Lives Matter"; pitting coastal residents who number in the millions against poor communities surrounding Lake Okeechobee who have been oppressed by sugar oligarchs for decades. Deploying this tactic, though, is so patently transparent that it could force Donald Trump into the anti-sugar camp. All of Big Sugar's options this election cycle look like parachutes that won't open. And it is all because of the industry's pollution and its refusal to bear the costs in its product pricing of cleaning up the mess it's made.

The bottom line: this election cycle all of Big Sugar's bets are high risk. Still, no one will shed a tear for the industry if it changes course. Big Sugar has banked billions in profits and stands to make even more by selling its lands.

Florida's shadow government has had a long winning streak, but past performance is not a guarantee of future results.

Bring on the American oligarchy: law makers get richer too ... by gimleteye

In "Lawmakers in Tallahassee continue to get richer", the Miami Herald's Michael Auslen reports, "In the wake of the Great Recession, which left the average Florida family struggling to make ends meet, at least one group of people continues to get richer: It pays to be elected to the state House or Senate. Of the 160 lawmakers elected to the state Legislature, 114 have increased their own personal wealth while in office, a Herald/Times analysis of officials’ financial statements found."

Crony capitalism is defined by the unrestricted ability of regulated industries and their top shareholders to manage legislative and governmental purposes that are nominally democratic to their own ends. One of the best examples is the domination of water management infrastructure in Florida by agricultural interests like Big Sugar. It is also a reciprocal relationship. Making sure that elected officials are financially well-off and "taken care of" is a key feature of crony capitalism: one hand washes the other.

U.S. flag flying over the Bridgeport ferry, "PT Barnum"

In a recent interview with Tom Hartmann, President Jimmy Carter pounced on the theme as he has, in the past: "Now it (the United States) is just an oligarchy with unlimited political bribery being the essence of getting the nomination for president or elected president. And the same thing applies to U.S. senators and congress members. We've seen a complete subverstion of our political system as a payoff to major contributors, who want and expect and sometimes get favors for themselves after the election is over."



Along the same lines, the New York Times has investigated IRS filings and Federal Election records to analyze the shocking concentration of political giving by the nation's wealthiest families. In "Small Pool of Rich Donors Dominates Election Giving," the Times writes, "Fewer than four hundred families are responsible for almost half the money raised in the 2016 presidential campaign, a concentration of political donors that is unprecedented in the modern era. The vast majority of the $388 million backing presidential candidates this year is being channeled to groups that can accept unlimited contributions in support of candidates from almost any source. The speed with which such “super PACs” can raise money — sometimes bringing in tens of millions of dollars from a few businesses or individuals in a matter of days — has allowed them to build enormous campaign war chests in a fraction of the time that it would take the candidates, who are restricted in how much they can accept from a single donor."

"A New York Times analysis of Federal Election Commission reports and Internal Revenue Service records shows that the fund-raising arms race has made most of the presidential hopefuls deeply dependent on a small pool of the richest Americans. The concentration of donors is greatest on the Republican side, according to the Times analysis, where consultants and lawyers have pushed more aggressively to exploit the looser fund-raising rules that have fueled the rise of super PACs. Just 130 or so families and their businesses provided more than half the money raised through June by Republican candidates and their super PACs."

While it is fair to say that wealth and power have always traveled hand-in-hand in the United States, the concentration of wealth and of power is having a massive, damaging effect on the majority of Americans who are outside the small circle of cronyism. The devastation is proceeding exactly along the lines of federal AND state control. Voters, largely asleep at the switch, seem hypnotized by message machinery and information delivery systems like Fox News, organized to dull the senses.

It is no simple arithmetic that, according to The Herald, "On average, lawmakers’ net worth has more than doubled from the year of their first campaign through 2014. Their incomes have generally risen, too, by 63 percent on average. For some legislators, years spent in elected office have accompanied multi-million-dollar increases to their net worth." It’s a stark contrast to the reality most Floridians face. The average worker’s pay is higher now than in 2010, but it still falls short of the paychecks Floridians brought home before the 2007 downturn, when adjusted for inflation. Many who saw their home values plummet and 401(k)s shredded have never recovered."

Senate President Andy Gardiner (Republican), one of the clear beneficiaries of crony capitalism, tells the Herald, "The best thing the Legislature and government in general can do is to provide an environment where the free market can thrive,” defining what, in former President Carter's words, "... violates the essence of what made America a great country in its political system.

Pay attention in the first "debate" of the Republican presidential how many times the free market is invoked, because this is not your grandfather's "free market"; this is systematic looting of the public trust in an age of scarcity by insiders who take what they want because voters are too confused to tell the difference.

Climate change impacts, the consolidation of corporate power and national security as a pope in Rome and ordinary people now observe ... by gimleteye

In a Sunday ritual at the Pinecrest Gardens green market I buy a smoothie from LNB Groves (passion and dragon fruit mix, no added sugar from Florida). This Sunday, it melted in record time. Sunday was also the hottest day for the date in Miami.

A few days earlier I had taken my friend, UM geologist Hal Wanless, on a favorite walk along a path near Matheson Hammock Park in Coral Gables. The path was cleared to trace the mangrove shoreline. Hal is one of our thousand points of light in the science community, leading by example in speaking on the imminent, profound impacts of climate change. I wanted to show Hal where mangrove seedlings are migrating quickly upland as sea levels are rising: exactly as scientists predicted.

These observable markers -- melted smoothies, advancing mangroves -- are like imaginary birds clattering out of trees before an earthquake. On the Sunday NY Times OPED page, Laurent Fabius has in view the climate change misery unfolding among populations moving in desperation -- from Yemen, Syria, and Egypt -- homelands made more lawless and desperate by drought.

"Another source of insecurity is the massive displacement of people. By making certain areas uninhabitable, droughts and rising water levels uproot entire populations. They often find refuge in regions that are already overpopulated, creating or exacerbating tensions among countries or groups."

This week at the Vatican, climate change and policy experts are meeting to discuss the global warming crisis in advance of a papal encyclical anticipated later this year. The U.S. anti-global warming faction -- lead by the Koch Brothers and a favorite think-tank, Jeb Bush-friendly Heartland Institute -- are also represented, expecting to dissuade the pope from becoming involved in an "ideological" battle where "nothing is settled".

Nothing is settled for corporate interests until existing profit models are protected, even codified, into law. Never mind that existing profit models -- for industries tied to fossil fuels -- will squeeze the life out of civilization. Pope Francis ought to read the recent peer-reviewed paper, "Managing the Anthropocene marine transgression to the year 2100 and beyond in the State of Florida U.S.A., by Randall W. Parkinson, Peter W. Harlem, John F. Meeder", Climate Change Journal, 2015)

Increasing carbon dioxide from fossil fuel emissions is now the main cause of changes in the Earth’s atmospheric composition and thus future climate (Solomon et al. 2009). A doubling of pre-Industrial Revolution (IR) levels (i.e., 280 ppm) is now likely within the next 20 years and concentrations may pass 1000 ppm by the end of this century (IPCC 2013). Even under a zero emissions scenario, the adverse and irreversible climate changes triggered by elevated anthro- pogenic atmospheric carbon dioxide levels are not expected to be completely neutralized for several millennia (Archer 2005; Solomon et al. 2009; Armour and Roe 2011).

As a moral matter, the notion that our generations are imposing thousands of years of hideous costs on future generations is repelling. It is disgusting and in opposition to the most basic tenets of Christianity, Christ's teachings of compassion and the healing power of faith.

Climate change has that power and more.

Federal protections are needed because the states are being torn apart by a war between legislators who want more for corporate benefactors and insiders who want even more. Take the Florida legislature as just one example. There is no possibility of protecting the public through state laws. With a clear mandate from voters last November to do one thing -- implement Amendment 1 to purchase environmentally important lands to protect the drinking water supply of seven million South Floridians -- the legislature is doing exactly the reverse: protecting its biggest suppliers of campaign cash: Big Agriculture. Another example: "early cost recovery" for electric utilities is allowing the state's major supplier of electricity, Florida Power and Light, to impose on ratepayers a plan to build the nation's largest nuclear plant in sea level: $24 billion in new reactors at FPL's Turkey Point facility. At the very same time, FPL has taken steps to hobble consumer adoption of solar energy in the Sunshine State.

For Grist Magazine, "Why Earth Day Doesn't Matter Anymore", Katie Herzog wrote that "It’s terrifying: Big business may be the perpetrator of much of the world’s pollution, but it could also be the solution." Not likely. Industry is only interested in maximizing profits through grid-scale efficiencies where past performance is the best and highest indicator of future shareholder gains.

For industry, embracing federal regulations to phase out fossil fuels quickly jeopardizes next quarter's profits. That is how key executives and top shareholders are compensated. Those are the birds clattering from the Koch Brother's tree. So the Koch Brothers and their allied apparatus are strongly organized to not just hobble Congress but also make sure that any laws that are passed by the states are friendly, first and foremost, to the principle that whatever government does, business can do better. Whatever do-good'ers think might save the planet can't possibly work compared to the will of man when his profit is at stake.

This reductionist ideology is melting even faster than my Sunday smoothie: that if you want to protect something, give it a value and sell it. It is a horrendous experiment to harness human nature, and one that only very, very cynical people could adopt.

Bloomberg News published this animated graphic last week, "Global Temperature Records Just Got Crushed Again: This has been the hottest year on record", and showing rising temperatures over time. The rise in global temperatures corresponds to the consolidation of corporate power, the rise of the national security state, and the corrosion of meaning in faith.

Fabius, again:

Threats to peace and security will increase in both number and intensity if the rise in temperatures exceeds 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) — and this rise will happen if we fail to act or take insufficient action. A climate-disrupted planet would be an unstable one. There is nothing abstract about these risks.

Indeed, not. Climate change is here now, and so is the global warming revanchism through which democracy will further deform to the will of the Kochs, and the peculiar emergence of an American oligarchy out of the shards of a nominal democracy. Note to the U.S. military: include this point among the "threat multipliers" of global warming.

Watch for these signs because they are the real consequences of climate change: not towards adaptation as reasonable, logical experts may appeal, but towards an inhuman future as ordinary citizens and a pope in Rome can now observe.


The Opinion Pages | OP-ED CONTRIBUTOR

Laurent Fabius: Our Climate Imperatives
By LAURENT FABIUS APRIL 24, 2015

PARIS — Toward the end of this year, France will host the 21st United Nations climate conference. The aim? To reach a universal agreement that will limit the rise in average global temperatures to 2 degrees Celsius, compared to the pre-industrial period, by the end of the century. There is real hope for success, but it is an enormous task.

An appeal to Trump supporters ... by gimleteye

A fascinating report in The New Yorker by Peter Hessler: "How Trump is transforming rural America: In Colorado, the President's tone has started rubbing off on residents." One interviewee said, "What they hate about him, is what they hate about me."

This personalization of opposition to Trump feels foreign and strange, in part because the compression of internet-based cultural influences has stripped the capacity of rational discourse to surmount inchoate anger.

It is not "hate", for example, to have mortal fear for the future of our democracy. I do not "hate", but I do have sorrow and anger for the way many American voters and US senators like Mitch McConnell accepted and stirred the non-stop vilification of President Obama. On what evidence?

Trump has no policy prescriptions beyond a willingness to sacrifice ordinary Americans' welfare to make oligarchs richer, an intent to consolidate political power in the hands of a few, a disregard for basic rule of law and to allow predetermined outcomes to defeat fact and science. He regularly and routinely expresses the chaos and disorganization of an egocentric bully with no prior experience in government, an unwillingness to trust a bureaucracy unless they swear loyalty to him personally, without coherent programs or policies from immigration reform to individual rights, and climate change.

How do any of these objections match up with "hating" Trump supporters? Trump famously quipped, "I love the poorly educated." His supporters cheered. His was theirs "inside joke": that the elites they abhorred looked down on them.

These objections are not about looking down, or, feeling morally superior. There are real, factual and practical points that Trump supporters experience as much as the rest of the nation.

In Salon: Historian Timothy Snyder: “It’s pretty much inevitable” that Trump will try to stage a coup and overthrow democracy.

With Trump, one sees the new variant of this where a candidate can run by saying, “Look, we all know — wink, wink, nudge, nudge — that this isn’t really a democracy anymore.” He doesn’t use the words but basically says, “We all know this is really an oligarchy, so let me be your oligarch.” Although it’s nonsense and of course he’s a con man and will betray everyone, it makes sense only in this climate of inequality.

Trump hard liners in the alternate media universe are already spreading the counter-rumor: that a coup will emerge from the left. It is laughable, given that the left has no practical grasp on the levers of power or politics (except perhaps in the vacuum Trump is in the process of creating).

No. When "the center does not hold", as Yeats wrote a century ago, those closest to power will take as much as they can. It is Un-American at its core. That is what we object to, in Donald Trump, not out of hatred but for love of country.

Gov. Rick Scott channels Flint, Michigan while signing disastrous new state "water policy" bill ... by gimleteye

Public clamor for a veto and against Florida Governor Rick Scott's signing, today, of a new "water policy" bill lands in the governor's bubble like a muted, padded sound. Scott doesn't see and he doesn't hear, except through the filter of political ambition.

Rick Scott wants to be Florida's next US Senator, after Marco Rubio either becomes the next president of the United States or a highly paid lobbyist and Fox News commentator. Adam Putnam, the current Secretary of Agriculture, wants to be the next Florida governor. Facing massive political uncertainty from court-mandated redistricting, fought at every step by the GOP to protect its iron-clad control of the state legislature, special interests -- especially Big Agriculture -- are pushing like mad for maximum leverage over the state's one indispensable resource: water.

They are motivated by the same set of drivers that helped propel Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder to the governor's office in Michigan in 2010: strip environmental rules and regulations that are enforceable and replace them with lawyerly garbage.

Back in 2010, a report published by the University of Michigan assessed the new governor awaiting inauguration:

"Rick Snyder streamlining regulations for Michigan won't be detrimental to the health and safety of the public or to the environment.

Pro-business groups insist they also want to keep protections in place, but they say the way it is now Michigan's regulatory red tape is hurting the state's ability to compete. Russ Harding is with the Mackinac Center for Public Policy. He recently put out a study entitled "Environmental Regulation in Michigan: A Blueprint for Reform."

"There's hardly a week goes by that I don't get calls from businesses that have given up on Michigan."

If those words sound familiar in Florida, it is because they are exactly the same. The identical words permeate the state legislature, under the influence of major business groups like Associated Industries of Florida and the Florida Farm Bureau and emboldened by right-wing think tanks and foundations funded through the Koch Brothers oligarchy.

And so one of the toxic strands of Florida's new water policy bill is abandoning enforceable regulations against polluters. For decades, environmentalists have struggled to hold the Florida Department of Environmental Protection accountable to tough, numeric standards on pollutants. With a swipe of the pen, Gov. Scott will erase that history. The bill has another toxic strand: allowing big water users to shift water around the state at will. This is a Jeb Bush idea, but Bush held his impulses in check because he was strongly opposed by not just environmentalists, but by municipal and county governments. Those entities may turn a blind eye to environmental protection with one exception: when the security of water supply is put into some others greedy little hands.

To put this in more understandable terms: what replaces environmental regulations once they are eviscerated is the ethic of smash-and-grab robbery. Americans learned this lesson decades ago: when water quality is not nailed down, it disappears.

That is what happened in Flint, Michigan. A governor who didn't believe in the rule of environmental law, from a political party that has relentlessly attacked federal authority for enforcement against water polluters, ends up with an entire city of parents and families -- mostly poor people of color -- bathing in bottled water.

Disgusting. The smash-and-grab tactics of special interests with respect to water policy now point Florida in the same direction.

Voters in the 1970's thought that protecting the environment was so important they approved the bipartisan consensus in Congress that created the most important laws protecting the nation's air and water and the US EPA. Ever since, organized opposition from polluters and exploiters has aimed to undermine those laws, and especially regulations related to enforcement by EPA.

Isn't it curious: law enforcement accepts statistical evidence that zero tolerance of petty crimes suppresses violent crime rates but when it comes to protecting the environment, "aw shucks" prevails.

In Michigan, Gov. Rick Snyder is all over television news, "man-ing up" to responsibility for what happened in Flint, Michigan through lead contamination of the city's drinking water supplies. But he and his media team are far from copping to the truth: that a political philosophy opposing strong environmental regulations caused this crisis.

With a pen stroke today, Gov. Rick Scott points Florida to Michigan. But this is a governor who is ignoring evidence of cancer clusters in Florida. The only statistical probability Rick Scott cares about is his chance to be the next US senator from Florida.

New York Times on the American Oligarchy: Why Not Larry Lessig? ... by gimleteye

The New York Times has a great visual representation of "The Families Funding the 2016 Presidential Election".

If all the money, though, sloshing through PAC and superPAC entities were accounted for, the graphics would be even more dramatic, but campaign finance loopholes allow for dark money to flow unimpeded by any examination under legal reporting requirements.

That's why I wrote a (small) check to the Larry Lessig For President Campaign. Take a few minutes to look at Mr. Lessig's website.

"A core corruption of our political system is the concentration of funders of political campaigns," he writes. "That concentration creates extraordinary inequality. The Citizen Equality Act would end that inequality, at a minimum by adopting a campaign funding proposal that is a hybrid between John Sarbanes’ Government by the People Act, and Represent.US’s “American Anti-Corruption Act.” That hybrid would give every voter a voucher to contribute to fund congressional and presidential campaigns; it would provide matching funds for small-dollar contributions to congressional and presidential campaigns. And it would add effective new limits to restrict the revolving door between government service and work as a lobbyist."

Lessig answers the observations by The New York Times' partial depiction of the American oligarchs, and he is right: every corruption in America today ties back to the distortions of campaign finance practices, tolerated by a system of mutual self-satisfaction by big donors and their proxies in public office.

Commentaries: Gov. Rick Scott running for election, courts his critics in GOP territory … by gimleteye

It is finally dawning on American voters that the United States has turned into a nation controlled by oligarchs. In Florida? Not so much awakening yet.

Depending on the state where you live, the names of the oligarchs change but their motives remain pure to the multi decade efforts to brand themselves as freedom loving citizens whose business interests and profit motives coincide with the people's.

Of egregious examples, Florida Gov. Rick Scott is in a class of his own. With no experience in government or public policy beyond the health care system where his significant personal wealth derived -- Scott bought his way to the Governor's Mansion in Tallahassee four years ago. To rank and file Tea Party enthusiasts -- his core supporters --, Scott seemed the epitome of the principle that the less qualified one is for public office, the more one belongs there.

Even GOP stalwarts were shocked at first by the emergence of a neophyte they had never blessed. Although he side-stepped most of them -- arriving in Tallahassee with scarcely a single advisor with any experience in government -- he found a helping hand from those who need government's help most: the community of Florida oligarchs.

In particular, Scott found favor with Big Sugar billionaires. They -- without explaining or even bothering to inform the new governor -- set about to eliminate environmental rules and regulations and land use planning measures that were the result of decades of hard, brass knuckles dealmaking; a process that had always tilted to their favor. It was not enough. They wanted more. For the legion of lawyers, engineers, and lobbyists whose salaries depend on the oligarchs, doing more is their principle motivation.

With Scott -- the most clueless governor in Florida's modern history -- Big Sugar finally got what it wanted: a governor who would do exactly what they wanted, when they wanted. In nearly thirty years I have tracked public policies relating to environmental protection, the political atmosphere in Tallahassee has never been more poisonous to the public interest than it is today.

The irony in terms of water management -- the key factor in Big Sugar's stream of taxpayer subsidized profits -- is that Gov. Scott was informed everything was fine at exactly the moment everything turned to shit.

The problem had been obvious to anyone paying attention. Water management practices favoring Big Sugar had been wrecking marine life and spreading devastating algae blooms for years through gorgeous estuaries and along the coasts.

The destruction began to accelerate thanks to a season of extraordinarily heavy rainfall in 2012/2013. More to the political point, environmental carnage began to energize GOP voters who had been silent on the sidelines as successive terms (Jeb! Bush) of leadership had piled into Big Sugar's corner.

It is an odd fact of human nature that when it comes to the environment, people don't stomp their feet and pound their fists until the rafters shake until they are literally on the receiving end of nature's fury.

So, at last, with a hotly contested election in sight, Gov. Rick Scott took the unprecedented step (for him) of reaching out to environmental critics who have been elevated in the public esteem for the simple reason: they were right.

So Scott went to visit some of his most prominent critics to hear what he had ignored for three years, rolling the dice that he could salvage support among a core group of GOP constituents whose interest sharply diverge from the Big Sugar oligarchy.

For more, read the OPED in the Treasure Coast Palm and comments by an Everglades scientist, Larry Fink, who has emerged as one of the strongest critics of the anti-environmental agenda of state regulators and the Great Destroyers.


Eve Samples: Gov. Scott pays an unusual house call in Martin County | Video

By Eve Samples

Thursday, April 17, 2014

The guest was unexpected, but Maggy Hurchalla played it cool.

Florida's Crooked Universe: Big Sugar sends $100K to NC Senator Richard Burr ... by gimleteye

It is a drop in the Big Sugar bucket, but a drop worth note. In May, the Big Sugar oligarchy sent $100K to a PAC supporting US Senator Richard Burr (R-NC). Burr is a notable recipient of Big Sugar's largesse for many reasons.

Consider: in Florida Big Sugar is funding an initiative to support local communities around Lake Okeechobee, "Glades Lives Matter". Glades being the poor, predominantly African American community of Belle Glade. Big Sugar is using African Americans to front for its profit motives and to fight back against a major voter and taxpayer rebellion that is urging acquisition of Big Sugar lands to save economies, jobs, public health and billions in property values downstream of toxic Lake Okeechobee.

The North Carolina US Senator Big Sugar gave $100K to has an abysmal record on civil rights. Interesting. "Glades Lives Matter" only if you are not paying attention to what Big Sugar does.

The NAACP recent scorecard for Burr is 22%. That grade would send a kid back a year in school. But Burr isn't a kid: he's a Republican who also supports voter suppression laws -- like requiring a photo ID to vote in federal elections -- that a federal court angrily dismissed last week for deliberating targeting African Americans.

"Grow NC Strong, Inc." is the PAC name, and the question is: what business do the oligarchs (Fanjul billionaires and US Sugar Corporation) have in North Carolina that they would contribute within a week of each other?

The implicit answer: Senator Burr is a "for" vote in the US Senate to continue the corporate welfare that keeps Big Sugar's profits intact. No less an authority than GOP champion and anti-tax leader Grover Norquist calls the sugar subsidy; "cronyism in its undiluted, inexcusable majesty".

It is not clear how Norquist views Senator Burr, but this much is clear: without the sugar subsidy, the oligarchs would not be quite so rich, Floridians choking on so much nutrient pollution puking out of Lake Okeechobee, and poor African Americans so completely bamboozled by tactics like "Glades Lives Matter".

Perhaps it is no surprise Florida's Big Sugar is supporting the North Carolina status quo. The state fiercely protected Big Tobacco until its role as a cancer agent could no longer be ignored. Hundreds of thousands died as a result. If Glades lives mattered so much, Big Sugar would not be standing in the shadows behind Gov. Rick Scott who is stonewalling disclosure of data surrounding rare pediatric cancer clusters in Florida, including one in the Lake Okeechobee area identified by six separate reviews by the American Statistical Association.

That should matter to Florida's besieged families, but apparently it is a value that doesn't count in Florida's crooked political universe.

In Florida, The Sham of Campaign Finance Limits ... by gimleteye

Here is an exercise that will have you weeping for our democracy. Spend time on the database on the Florida Division of Elections website, to decode how candidates and campaigns mesh through a) direct political contributions and b) the impenetrable morass of political action committees.

This bifurcated realm of political money proposes contribution limits on one and no limits on the other. The bottom line: in Florida today there are no campaign limits except what large corporations and big political donors decide to spend. The net result isn't fair. It is a nightmare.

The state election website tracks candidates and their individual campaign accounts. State election law requires a firewall to separate candidates from political action committees that serve their interests.

Each is required to meet baseline reporting requirements. The data discloses a system that functions according to rule of law, but that isn't the real take-away. Ours is a campaign finance system that fundamentally harms taxpayers and businesses that create jobs and pay taxes.

A cursory review of the Florida elections database shows alarming potential for abuse. Here is just one of many examples.

The Voice Of Florida Business PAC is chaired by Tom Feeney, President and CEO of Associated Industries of Florida, former Congressman and Jeb Bush ally. The company website lists 20 consultants in its lobbying team.

Voices of Florida Business PAC has raised $5.2 million since 2013. There are no limits on the size of contribution. Its donors are a who's who of Florida's most highly regulated industries.

  Voice of Florida Business Campaign Contributions - Division of Elections - Florida Department of State

Electric utilities, healthcare, real estate, and Big Sugar feature prominently as donors. But the PAC also receives six figure contributions from other PACs and it receives contributions from the same entities it gives money to. For example, The Voice Of Florida Business PAC receives contributions from Floridians United For Our Children's Future but also contributes to Floridians United For Our Children's Future. Why is one PAC acting as a clearinghouse for another PAC? It is a legal form of money laundering.

  Voice of Florida Business Campaign Expenditures - Division of Elections - Florida Department of State

Who benefits from its advertisements on television or mailers in super-sized postcard form? That information is not required by law. Had enough? There's more.

Tom Feeney's Associated Industries of Florida has a PAC under its own name. Since 2013, it has raised $2.3 million. Its major contributors? The same corporations -- prominently featuring Big Sugar and Florida Power and Light -- who contribute to The Voice of Florida Business. And oh, The Voice of Florida Business contributes to the Associated Industries of Florida PAC.

AIF Campaign Contributions - Division of Elections - Florida Department of State

This legal money laundering, in plain view on the state of Florida elections database, offers a glimpse of a political cartel that controls the state legislature. But what about contributors? What is in it, for them?

First, corporations and individuals protect their interests by giving candidates maximum contributions allowable by law. Fair enough. When like-minded corporations put their stamp of approval on a candidate, contributing to the maximum limit, it sends a very clear message.

At the same time, when corporations legally spend unlimited amounts of money to advance their causes, benefiting their chosen candidates for public office, they engage in a pretense of separating their direct contributions from their candidates' campaigns.

The legal line separating contributions to campaigns, to PACs, to industry trade associations, and corporations is meaningless. It is a rigged game. The individual campaign contributor is not just at a disadvantage, he or she has disappeared altogether unless they rematerialize as a wealthy, politically involved corporation or a PAC. Corporations are more powerful than people, and certainly more powerful than the unions who they vilify.

Lobbyists, industry insiders, and corporations are likely to shrug: "What's the big deal?" That is how insiders in Wisconsin reacted when  
the UK Guardian recently exposed ties tangling Gov. Scott Walker and independent expenditure committees.: "Known as the “John Doe investigation”, several Wisconsin prosecutors launched a probe into what they suspected were criminal campaign finance violations by the campaign committee of Walker, a former Republican presidential candidate who dropped out early in the primary race. The prosecutors claimed Walker’s committee operated a coordinated network that involved outside lobby groups, thereby allowing unlimited amounts of corporate money to funnel into a third-party group closely aligned with his campaign. In July 2015, the Wisconsin supreme court halted the investigation."

The same conveyor belt occurs in Florida. The big deal: what comes out of this rigged game is not a democracy. It is much, much closer to an oligarchy.

The way money now filters into politics through unlimited contributions to PACs results in a carefully orchestrated "order"; a pyramid that guarantees at the top, the most highly regulated industries, top shareholders and their captains. In this system, the judiciary also follows the money; the reason the judiciary dismissed the complaints against Gov. Walker in Wisconsin.

If you are a dues-paying member of the Florida Chamber of Commerce, Associated Industries of Florida or, otherwise, a small business person, your chance of influencing the political process through memberships in trade councils or associations is zilch. Zero. Nada.

If you are an incumbent legislator, you fit on the squad until you are term-limited out. Play your position well, and there's a place outside of government waiting. If you can't be a Tom Feeney, the place to be is a political consultant or strategically placed lobbyist, populating the hallways in the state legislature in Tallahassee, helping to keep the system intact.

How cool would it be, though, if Democrats and Republican leaders broadly agreed 1) that the money spent on political campaigns has grown out of control, damaging all involved, and 2) that we really ought to return democracy to its appropriate place by fixing a badly broken campaign finance system.

On the one hand, hell would freeze over first. On the other, you can't dig out of a hole by digging the hole deeper, unless the point of politics is to dig the hole so deep so that no one can escapes except by private or chartered corporate jet.

Koch Brothers On The Campaign Trail ... by gimleteye

The Koch political machine -- committed to spend nearly $1 billion on Republican candidatess and conservative causes this election cycle -- is set to launch a new media blitz to promote the message that the Kochs really care about America's middle class. They will express their heartfelt concern that Democratic policies are putting the middle class at risk. It is an interesting pitch, since the Koch oligarchs are the best examples of concentrated wealth in the United States.

The Kochs are aiming to maintain control of state legislatures, governor's offices, and the US Senate. At the same time that the indiscipline of Donald Trump is pushing GOP leaders to damage control, the Kochs and conservative allies are on the offense. With a virtually unlimited reservoir of dark money, they are moving forward to enforce political orthodoxies like objections to any and all Obama initiatives.

That is the appropriate context to understand US Senator Marco Rubio's block of judicial senate confirmation for a federal judge he nominated: “Clearly, some huge pressure was put on Rubio to put the knife into Judge Flores, and Rubio will not reveal the real reason for this hypocrisy,” Spencer said. “This is precisely why so many Florida Republicans are fed up with Rubio and the corrosive nature of his big money politics."

The Kochs' aim to retain Republican control of the senate also accounts for Rubio's apparent flip flop on his intention to surrender his incumbency. (His awful showing in the Florida presidential primary put a check on his freedom of political and financial movement.) Bottom line: the Kochs don't need Donald Trump to win in November. So long as the GOP maintains control of the US Senate and an iron-grip on state legislatures, and state governor's, the Koch oligarchy will do just fine.

Fox News Is Not Good For America ... by gimleteye

Over the weekend, I had dinner with a friend in the real estate business. He is a staunch Republican, but not overtly political in his private life or our friendship. I respect his business acumen and intelligence but his beliefs about global warming are -- well -- unhinged from reality. More accurately: they mesh neatly with the narrative of one cable TV channel, Fox News.

I am socially liberal, fiscally conservative, and bemoan the loss of the Republican Party to an elite who expertly mastered media and propaganda to energize voters and taxpayers to vote against their best interests. In other words, the agenda of Fox News.

The longer Fox has leaned against fact and science, the more dependent the cable channel has become on fictions like conspiracy theories. That is not good for America.

It doesn't matter when I email my friend scientific data, peer-reviewed assessments of rapid ice-melt and evidence of off-the-chart temperature rise. His answers are straight from the denialist camp at Fox.

Fox -- owned by the Rupert Murdoch family -- is an empire of fiction that found its candidate in Donald J. Trump. The founder of Fox News Roger Ailes, fired for sexual harassment, is linked to the Trump campaign. Sean Hannity, as the New York Times documents today, is also part of the campaign.

The rest of the industrialized world is not buying what Fox is selling with a single exception: Russia. Whether or not intentionally, Fox News has turned into the same agent of a strong-man oligarchy as Russian television.

That is not good for America, as more and more American voters understand.


Sean Hannity Turns Adviser in the Service of Donald Trump
Jim Rutenberg
MEDIATOR AUG. 21, 2016
New York Times

During major inflection points in Donald J. Trump’s campaign, the advisers, family members and friends who make up his kitchen cabinet burn up their email accounts and phone lines gaming out how to get his candidacy on track (and what counsel he might go along with).

But one person in the mix brings more than just his political advice. He also happens to control an hour of prime time on the Fox News Channel.

That person is Sean Hannity.

Mr. Hannity uses his show on the nation’s most-watched cable news network to blare Mr. Trump’s message relentlessly — giving Mr. Trump the kind of promotional television exposure even a billionaire can’t afford for long.

Shooter who targeted liberal foundation staff, inspired by Fox News: news The Miami Herald won't print ... by gimleteye

Last week a heavily armed man in California shot by highway police admitted to be en route to start a massacre at the liberal Tides Foundation. Glenn Beck instigated the shooter, according to Media Matters: a story The Miami Herald should report. Maybe someone could find a parallel example of PBS or NBC or McClatchy instigating hatred against the Cato Institute, AEI or Heritage Foundation. If you haven't had enough of Fox News, you don't want to pay attention. (click 'read more')Tides CEO Statement on 580 Incident
Posted by Drummond Pike in Media, Tides on Jul 21, 2010 | one comment

Statement from Tides CEO Drummond Pike

We are greatly dismayed to learn from law enforcement officials that the man arrested over the weekend following a shootout with the CHP had targeted the Tides Foundation for violence. To the best of our knowledge, this person has never had contact with any Tides organization or program. As there is an ongoing investigation into this incident, we will not speculate as to what his motivations may have been.

We are relieved that no one other than the assailant was hurt seriously in the incident, and we are relieved that he was prevented from carrying out his misguided plans, whatever they may have been.

On occasion, the shadow of violence falls on American civic life and it should never be accepted or tolerated. Often, it is encouraged by partisan voices who label activities of which they disapprove by suggesting they are "anti-American" or some other epithet.

This incident serves to remind us that it should be the obligation of every American, especially those whose voices are amplified by the media, to foster civil discourse and dialogue among those who may disagree about public matters. One does not win an argument by inciting unbalanced people to violence. As Americans, we know we are best at solving problems when we reach broadly across boundaries for the best of ideas. Intolerance that closes our eyes defeats our aspirations.

The Tides organizations support innovative, creative nonprofit work to address social problems. We work for sustainability, better education, solutions to the AIDS epidemic, comprehensive immigration reform, and human rights. We strive to encourage every American to be as involved in public life as they can be, and to resolve differences through the honest exchange of ideas.


MEDIA MATTERS
The CA cop shooter and Glenn Beck: Here's what we know
July 23, 2010 1:32 pm ET - by Matt Gertz

On July 18, Byron Williams, an ex-felon with a history of violent criminal behavior, was pulled over by California Highway Police on I-580. Williams, who was apparently intoxicated, opened fire at the officers as one approached his truck. He continued firing as eight additional officers arrived. More than 60 rounds were reportedly fired during the five to eight minute shootout; two officers were reportedly injured by flying glass after a squad cars window and windshield were shattered by gunfire. Williams was arrested and hospitalized with multiple gunshot wounds.

Williams was reportedly heavily armed with a handgun, shotgun, rifle and body armor. Shortly after the shooting, a CHP sergeant said that "There is no doubt in our mind, given the body armor and the extensive amount of ammunition he had, that he was on his way to do a very serious crime against either someone or a group of people" And indeed, Williams reportedly told investigators that "his intention was to start a revolution by traveling to San Francisco and killing people of importance at the Tides Foundation and the ACLU."

The ACLU is a very well-known entity, but the Tides Foundation, which seeks to "promote economic justice, robust democratic processes, and the opportunity to live in a healthy and sustainable environment where human rights are preserved and protected," is much more obscure.

Williams may have been a disturbed individual who was destined to explode. But the question the media should be asking is why he decided to target Tides.

According to his mother, Williams "watched the news on television and was upset by 'the way Congress was railroading through all these left-wing agenda items.'"

We don't know what Williams was watching, or that television played a role in his decision to target Tides. However, if it did, according to our Nexis searches, the primary person on cable or network news talking about the Tides Foundation in the year and a half prior to the shootout was Fox News' Glenn Beck.

According to our searches, since Beck's show premiered on January 19, 2009, Tides has been mentioned on 31 editions of Fox News programs, 29 of which were editions of Beck's show (the other two were on Sean Hannity's program). In most of those references, Beck attacked Tides, often weaving the organization into his conspiracy theories. Two of those Beck mentions occurred during the week before Williams' shootout.

On July 14, Beck said:

You believe that America is the last best hope for the free world. Boy, was I a moron for believing that. Nope, there are a lot of people that believe that we are the oppressor. This man states it. He states in this book "The purpose is to create mass organizations to seize power." Wow! That almost sounds like the Tides Foundation.
On July 13, Beck said:

Well, they have the education system. They have the media. They have the capitalist system. What do you think the Tides Foundation was? They infiltrate and they saw under Ronald Reagan that capitalists were not for all of this nonsense, so they infiltrated. Now, they are using failing capitalism to destroy it.
By contrast, since January 19, 2009, according to our Nexis search, Tides was not mentioned on ABC, NBC, CBS, CNN, MSNBC, or PBS. Not once. This search is not perfect -- Nexis does not include, for example, MSNBC's daytime coverage. But the contrast with Beck's coverage is stark.

All of Fox News' references in shows covered by the Nexis database to the Tides Foundation since Beck's show premiered are found below the fold.

On his July 14 program, Beck said:

You believe that America is the last best hope for the free world. Boy, was I a moron for believing that. Nope, there are a lot of people that believe that we are the oppressor. This man states it. He states in this book "The purpose is to create mass organizations to seize power." Wow! That almost sounds like the Tides Foundation.
On his July 13 program, Beck said:

Well, they have the education system. They have the media. They have the capitalist system. What do you think the Tides Foundation was? They infiltrate and they saw under Ronald Reagan that capitalists were not for all of this nonsense, so they infiltrated. Now, they are using failing capitalism to destroy it.
On June 24 program, Beck said:

These are the 1963 communist goals, OK? In 1963, I want to give you just a few of them -- you tell me if they failed.

[...]

Thirty-seven: Infiltrate and gain control of big businesses. What do you think the Tides Foundation is?
On his June 22 program, Beck asked

How about Tides? How about indoctrination? Forget God. It's in George Soros we trust.
On his June 21 program, Beck said of philanthropist George Soros

He also helped start the Tides Foundation, which among its many super, super classics are the anti-capitalist "Story of Stuff," indoctrination video. Yes, George Soros money. Isn't that great? Shown in schools all across America to warp your children's brains and make sure they know how evil capitalism is.
On his May 11 program, Beck said:

You know, last week, I couldn't believe that -- that answer I gave on FOX last week about the Miranda rights, that was off the top of my head. I didn't -- I just got up. I mean, I was up for about 20 minutes while I did this episode.

And even the founders of -- the founder of Tides, remember that? The really shady organization that I'm like -- run for your life, it's Drummond Pike!

Drummond Pike wrote this, "Why I love Glenn Beck." He says, "Beck has just done the right thing, and he deserves praise, even from his rhetorical enemies."

Are you kidding me? It's Tides! I mean, I read that one, I'm like, I should rethink this whole thing.
On his April 29 program, Beck said:

Who's again the Joyce Foundation? Started the climate exchange, seed money. They also give money to the Tides Foundation. Remember those guys? They're great. Oh, that's George Soros.
On his April 27 program, Beck said

We've been telling you all this week about people who will actually benefit from the legislation that is happening now, and cap-and- trade is one of them. In 2000 and 2001, the Chicago Climate Exchange received start-up grants from the Joyce Foundation.

I don't have time to go through this all tonight. I just want to recap this and hold this in your mind. This should be on the front page of every paper. It's such a scandal. I mean, it's - we are really creating just a nightmare of a country.

The Joyce Foundation, which gives money to the Tides Foundation -- John Ayers, the brother of Bill Ayers, Wade Rathke. On the board between '03 and '08 was Valerie Jarrett. She is in the White House now. She was also with the Fed in Chicago at the same time she was on this board.
On his April 26 show, Beck said:

By the way, the Joyce Foundation is bigger than the George Soros Tides Foundation. Yes. It's kind of like that, but bigger. In fact, so big, that the Joyce Foundation funds the Tides Foundation.

If you don't know who the Tides Foundation is, look it up, or refer back to an earlier episode.
On his March 17 show, Beck said:

Here's the audio from George Soros' Tides Foundation.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

JACOB HACKER, POLITICAL SCIENCE PROFESSOR: Someone once said to me, this is a Trojan horse for single-payer. And I said, "Well, it's not a Trojan horse, right? It's just right there." I'm telling you, we're going to get there --

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BECK: Got it?

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

HACKER: -- over time, slowly.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BECK: Not a Trojan horse, OK. Tides Foundation, George Soros.
On his March 5 show, Beck said:

Our children are being indoctrinated and it must be exposed. It must end because history has shown us where it can lead. Kids in elementary schools are being taught about cross-dressing, that they shouldn't listen to their parents all the time because their parents don't always know what's best.

They're taught capitalism is evil. Videos like this one are being played in classrooms cross country, made by the George Soros' funded Tides Foundation.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE (video clip): It's the government's job to watch out for us, to take care of us. That's their job.
On his January 25 show, Beck said:

Soros is practically the only investor that is still on board with Obama's bank plan. Why?

Let's follow the circle of influence. The president, our buddy Phil just serving you, Soros -- Soros has the Tides Foundation. He heavily donates to this. It's great. One of the biggest projects in the Tides Foundation that he gives tons of money to is the Apollo Alliance.

The Apollo Alliance, remember him? Creating green jobs -- that's what he did. I mean, we got Jeff Jones here. He's -- well, he was part of the Weather Underground.
On his December 7, 2009, show, Beck said:

Actual coalitions of power. Hello!

And we're counting `em down, all the way up to number 10.

To be successful, we must put in place commitments for hundreds of millions of dollars to be used to finance paid communications and mobilization once the battle is joined. Money, money, money -- the amount of money and number of organizations that they have gathered for this fight is stunning. Tides Foundation. SEIU spend $60 million to elect Obama. HCAN has donated $25 million in the last year to help pass Obama's health care. But they need that money to able to combat the will of the vast majority of the American people.
On his October 29, 2009, show, Beck said:

We've also seen it in the classroom. We've shown it to you night after night, kids are being taught to sing about how Obama is wonderful and how everyone is equal in his sight. Kids are being taught that capitalism is evil and flawed through "The Story of Stuff." It's a video made by the George Soros-funded Tides Foundation.
On his October 5, 2009, show, Beck said:

I don't have a stealthy agenda, but, I'm still called a conspiracy theorist. Isn't that weird? You know, they have a stealthy agenda, but they're not called conspiracy theorists. They're just called community organizers.

How about this? If I had an idea that I cloaked and made it a Trojan horse, I'd be a nutjob or a conspiracy theorist. But when they have a Trojan horse -- no, no, they're not called that. They're called members of the Tides Foundation.
On his October 2, 2009, show, Beck said:

How could you possibly sit on the sidelines when we keep seeing the indoctrination attempts on our children? The anti-capitalist "Story of Stuff" that we showed you this video. It's made by Tides. This audience knows who Tides is.
On his September 25, 2009, show, Beck said:

On top of that, they are now indoctrinating our children. We showed you all kinds of video this week. Start with this one -- "The Story of Stuff."

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Well, let's start with the government. Now, my friends tell me I should use a tank to symbolize the government and that's true in many countries and increasingly in our own. After all, more than 50 percent of our federal tax money is now going to the military. But I'm using a person to symbolize the government because I hold true to the vision and values the government should be of the people, by the people, for the people.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BECK: She followed that with the government's job is to take care of us. No, it's not.

Is telling that to our children, and telling our children that America is a bad place, is paid for by the Tides Foundation and all comes out of Berkeley, California, and it's all over our schools.
On the September 25, 2009, edition of Hannity, Pat Cadell said:

I think it's -- I think it's the most -- I described what it was: cult of personality. It is the same thing driving. We have that video that's been seen by millions of people. The stuff -- you know, the stuff we know or the stuff we learn or whatever. Which is -- which says the country should be represented by a tank, which the Tides Foundation is funding. We had the thing with an NEA. This is not an accident going on.
On his September 24, 2009, show, Beck said:

We don't put our hope in a president, in the individual. We put our hope in God. Now, we're putting it in Obama. He is the only one that can help you, but we're all equal in his sight.

If there wasn't the NEA propaganda, if the Tides Foundation, as we showed you this week, hadn't made an anti-capitalist propaganda video that we showed you - if that wasn't out there, well, then maybe, maybe, maybe, it would just be one crazy teacher.

Fine, I would agree with you. But at what point do we as human beings, as American citizens say, "Wait a minute. What the heck is going on?" This isn't the kind of principles I'm all about. This isn't the kind of principles my neighbors are about.
On his September 23, 2009, show, Beck said:

Now, some of the power that's bringing it all together is an -- is an organization called the Tides Foundation. Their founder is Drummond Pike. He describes the Tides Foundation or Tides Center like this: "Tides was created to provide comprehensive flexible services and tools to those dedicated to lasting progressive social change." "Lasting progressive social change."

And while they do legitimate things, they are also involved in some of the nastiest of the nasty. For instance, these two guys, Wade and Dale. Wade is the founder of ACORN. Dale is the brother. Oh, they're brothers.
On his September 22, 2009, show, Beck said:

I believe, last night, on this program, it was an aha moment for anybody in America that is really trying to just open their mind and figure things out when I showed you this board last night.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

BECK: The Apollo Alliance, OK, oh, look, it's ACORN. ACORN founder Wade Rathke is former chairman of Tides Center. That's weird! Rathke was on the Tides board. ACORN, Tides, Apollo, Van Jones, Jeff Jones, Weather Underground uh-oh!

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BECK: And SEIU is on the other side of that. I mean, ACORN, Tides, SEIU -- all these connections, I mean, and we're seeing now how they're all intertwined. The same people keep popping up over and over again. It's pretty eye-opening, but when you combine that with what is being mobilized, I mean -- what's happening? It is absolutely frightening what it looks like is coming our way. I mean, unless -- you know, unless you like France or something worse.
On his September 21, 2009, show, Beck said:

By the way, Tides, in case you don't know what Tides is -- Tides Foundation is with Soros' -- Tides' Drummond pike, the Tides' CEO, he's the treasurer or was the treasurer of Democracy Alliance, also Soros. Tides -- so you know -- is the one that brings us the Apollo Alliance. The Apollo Alliance, that's the one that wrote the stimulus bill. Oh, Van Jones is on the Apollo Alliance board. Oh.
On his September 18, 2009, show, Beck said:

This is a progressive, George Soros-funded, extreme left-wing organization. It's all funded right through the Tides Foundation. It doesn't appear left-wing because, oh, they have all of these credible organizations with it. But what are their real goals?

Wade Rathke with ACORN. His brother Dale -- where is -- where is Dale? Here is his brother Dale is at SEIU -- we think. We're not sure. He was with ACORN, but nobody will give us a straight answer on where he went after embezzling almost $1 million and then George Soros' people at the Tides Foundation come up with $1 million just to make that problem go away. We think he went to SEIU, but nobody will give us a straight -- a straight answer.
On his September 18, 2009, show, Beck said:

I told you that we were going to talk about these things. We were going to talk about Obama, the Left, internationalists, graft, Acorn-style organizations, revolution and hidden agenda. Oligarh -- one letter is missing. Why did I select these words, because Acorn selects Tides, they all select their words first, and then tie them altogether into one word. Oligarch, the only letter that is missing is Y. I don't know what we're turning into an oligarchy, or what we're turning into, but unless you ask why, we're going to transform into something. Ask questions.
From the August 5, 2009, edition of Hannity:

MICHELLE MALKIN: Well, this is the mother of all smear campaigns by the Democrat National Committee and the White House. And this is the way they play. It's the Chicago way. It's hardball politics. It demonized your opponent, stifle dissent.

And it's laughable coming from an organization and a machine that has done nothing but Astroturf state grassroots in support of ObamaCare. And if you want to talk about K Street, let's talk about 1825 K Street. That is ground zero for the Soros and Tides Foundation-funded operation that has failed to put people on the ground to counter a truly grassroots movement among the tea party activists and counterinsurgency of taxpayer groups.
From the August 4, 2009, edition of Glenn Beck:

BECK: OK. So, let me switch gears. And, Phil, let me -- let me bring you in on something else. I have discovered this great little thing called the Apollo project that we've been talking about here, and this just -- boy, it's like a candy store that just never stops giving. Just candy everywhere.

Let -- I just want to go through this with you. Help me out. The Apollo project was started by the Tides Foundation. If you remember Van Jones, he's our green jobs czar, right?
From the August 3, 2009, edition of Glenn Beck:

BECK: The green jobs czar -- let me give this quote. "I was a rowdy nationalist in April 1992. By August, I was a communist. I met all these radical people of color -- I mean, really, really radical communists and anarchists, and it was, like, this is what I need to be a part of."

He's never taken this back. He is the guy who -- his Apollo project is what designed the stimulus package.

MALKIN: That's right. And as you pointed on your show, the word is getting out there on the Internet, underwritten by far-left radicals, like the Tides Foundation. And that's another problem with these czars is that you have these hard left radicals who have an unlimited amount of power to dole out goodies to their friends and to forge a very frightening agenda.
From the July 28, 2009, edition of Glenn Beck:

BECK: OK. And then we have Wade Rathke -- Wade Rathke, who is the founder of ACORN. He was on the board of directors -- if I'm not mistaken -- of the institution that is funding and paying for Apollo, right?

PHIL KERPEN: Yes. He's on -- he was until this year on the board of the Tides Foundation and the Tides Center, which are the parent organizations that host the Apollo Alliance.

BECK: OK. So, Wade Rathke, ACORN, Tides Center, they decide that they're going to fund and create Apollo. One of the founders is the guy who went to jail -- this is during the Rodney King thing -- he went to jail and he was just a black nationalist. He came out a communist and he also then started looking into the green movement, and he is the guy who said, "Hey, if we tie labor and ACORN and Greenpeace together, we've got a super- powerful group, Apollo."

Is it true Apollo helped design the stimulus package?

KERPEN: They did. They put out a draft stimulus bill last year in 2008. It included almost everything that ended up being in the final stimulus bill. Harry Reid has thanked them for helping design the final stimulus package that was enacted into law. And they brag on their Web site that they helped design this thing and push it through.

[...]

BECK: OK. America, I would like you -- I just like to ask you, Barack Obama keeps trying to separate himself from all of these organizations. He's telling us -- he's giving speeches and saying, "I'm one of you, guys; I really am one of you." But then, these organizations, he'll always distance himself over and over and over again from the individuals.

But let me ask you this -- John Podesta, Van Jones, who is now his green jobs czar, an avowed communist, we've got the SEIU, who's in his office once a week talking about labor. They're the ones who were negotiating with all of the health care industry. He's in the Obama's office all the time. Wade Rathke, former founder of ACORN. It all ties to the Tides Center.
On his June 15, 2009, show, Beck said:

BECK: You know, I have told you, for a while now, that this is -- I mean, did you notice some of the names involved here, especially the Tides Foundation. Tides Foundation -- gee, oh, we know them, because they bailed out ACORN. There are people and forces behind some of these things and it is a completely dishonorable debate because they're not telling you the truth -- I'm sorry. We're not listening to the truth. They are telling us, and you just saw what's coming our way.
On his May 21, 2009, show, Beck said:

So who is Drummond Pike, and what is the Tides Foundation? Well, the Tides Foundation is a major source of revenue for some of the most extreme groups on the left. Tides was set up as a public charity that receives money from their donors to be funneled to the recipients of their choice.
From the May 13, 2009, edition of Glenn Beck:

MATTHEW VADUM: Drummond Pike is the founder -- he is the founder of Tides Foundation, which is a shadowy pass-thru, it's like a donor-advised fund. So, for example, George Soros could write a check for $10 million to Tides Foundation, get the tax deduction for it, and then secretly store the money there and then tell them who to write the checks to. The Tides Center and Tides Foundation do that, and then they hand out the money anonymously.
Copyright © 2009 Media Matters for America. All rights reserved.

Disappearing Democracy (and guess what, it has nothing to do with Obamacare) ... by gimleteye

Maybe even Republicans will get the point (like Senator John McCain does): the Citizens United decision by the Roberts Supreme Court requires a massive overhaul of campaign finance law by Congress because corporations are not people.

Casino mogul Sheldon Adelson who gave $20 million to that idiot Newt Gingrich, keeping alive the primary run of a candidate who never would have passed first base otherwise, is giving $10 million to the 2012 election efforts of the Koch brothers, the Washington Post reports.

The Koch brothers plan to spend about $400 million on the election, but I am guessing that the Republican super PAC money will be closer to $1 billion. I am also guessing the Democrats will raise, for super PAC's, less than $100 million. Maybe much less.

According to the Huffington Post, Adelson has also committeed at least $10 million to the Crossroads Grassroots Policy Strategies, a pro-Republican group advised by Karl Rove, and $5 million each to two groups backing GOP House candidates.

How does that make me feel when candidates come calling, for $100 or $200 or $2500 contributions? Or $20,000 contributions to have a photo taken with the president? Do you think my voice carries as far as Sheldon Adelson or the Koch brothers or any of the other billionaires who are turning the United States into an American version of an oligarchy?

One appropriate response is for voters to refuse to listen to any television advertisements at all and trash all the mailers before opening them. Turn off your TV, become informed on candidate positions through responsible journalism, and do vote!

President Obama is right: Mandatory voting is the only way to counteract the power of money in politics ... by gimleteye

Last March President Obama suggested that the most direct way to get rid of Citizens United is to require mandatory voting by every eligible citizen. The Fox News and conservative commentariat threw an instant hissy fit. But in consideration of what has happened since last spring -- a GOP primary off-the-rails -- wouldn't mandatory voting be the best chance for Republican centrists to fix the problem of a primary that looks to the rest of America like Shriners in miniature cars circling the edge of a parade route?



In response to a question about Citizens United, President Obama said:

Now, here’s the problem. Citizens United was a Supreme Court ruling based on the First Amendment, so it can’t be overturned by statute. It could be overturned by a new Court, or it could be overturned by constitutional amendment. And those are extraordinarily challenging processes. So I think we have to think about what are other creative ways to reduce the influence of money, given that in the short term we not going to be able to overturn Citizens United.

And I think there are other ways for us to think creatively, and we’ve got to have a better debate about how we make this democracy and encourage participation — how we make our democracy better and encourage more participation.

For example, the process of political gerrymandering...

If the New York Times finds it fit to print, why not The Miami Herald? "We Should Be in a Rage" … by gimleteye

It is only an opinion piece but Charles M. Blow's "We Should Be in a Rage" comes as a shock. In the blogsphere, strong language is everywhere.

When Blow invites us to be in a rage about voter suppression, he touches a nerve at EOM. Right along side absentee ballot fraud, voter suppression is a key tactic of those seeking to influence the outcome of elections.

"A vote is the great equalizer, but only when it is cast. The strategy here is simple: Break the spirit. Muddy the waters. Make voting feel onerous and outcomes ambiguous. And make it feel like a natural outgrowth of tedium and bickering, and not a well-funded, well-designed effort. Make us subsist on personality politics rather than principled ones. The greatest trick up the sleeves of the moneyed and powerful is their diabolical ability to render themselves invisible and undetectable, to recede and operate behind a front, one relatable and common. Our politics are overrun with characters acting at the behest of shadows."

So true. The Shadows that Blow writes about are everywhere in South Florida; in fact, "the diabolical ability" of insiders to manipulate political campaigns and policy outcomes has found some of the most fertile earth in the nation, in Florida.

Wouldn't it be special, if the city's only daily newspaper -- The Miami Herald -- would focus its editorial attention on those diabolical abilities and why Miami voters should be in a rage, too.


The Opinion Pages|OP-ED COLUMNIST

We Should Be in a Rage
APRIL 9, 2014
Charles M. Blow
The New York Times

Voter apathy is a civic abdication. There is no other way to describe it.

If more Americans — particularly young people and less-wealthy people — went to the polls, we would have a better functioning government that actually reflected the will of the citizenry.

But, that’s not the way it works. Voting in general skews older and wealthier, and in midterm elections that skew is even more severe.

For FPL Bigwig Jeff Bartel, corporate responsibility is whatever he wants ... by gimleteye

There is nothing more appalling in public life than the way electric utilities force ratepayers to pay for megaprojects costing billions, like new nuclear power at Turkey Point, that put the hammer on local government in ways that distort democracy beyond recognition. Care about wetlands protection, water quality, water supply in South Florida? FPL makes it up, on the spot.

Here is a specific demonstration how FPL executives act like royalty. Last week, FPL Vice President for Compliance and Corporate Responsibility Jeff Bartel strong-armed local city commissioners in Coral Gables to approve, on appeal, a variance for his home in Hammock Lakes. The affluent area has site-specific zoning, but Mr. Compliance got his variance from compliance and approval to double square footage. Most people never have a chance at any variance in the Gables. For me, I'd just like to walk my dog off leash once and a while.

So how did Bartel demonstrate his "responsibility"? He did it by putting five well-known attorneys/lobbyists in the front row at the city commission, facing two city commissioners who are up for re-election, including Greenberg Traurig's black hat land use lobbyist, Lucia Dougherty. Compliance is not in the eye of the beholder: it is in the eye of owner of the beholder. The oligarchy is alive and well in Florida.