Nation editor: Obama ‘feeding zealots’ by not standing up to right-wing media, The Raw Story, July 23, 2010, by David Edwards and Daniel Tencer, used with permission, quoted verbatim:

The Shirley Sherrod controversy has shown that the White House needs to stand up to conservative media attacks, or risk “feeding the zealots” in America’s political debate, says the editor and publisher of a leading progressive magazine.

The Nation editor Katrina vanden Heuvel told NBC’s Today Show Friday that the Obama administration needs to “get a spine.”

“This White House needs to institute procedures, as President Obama said, and get a spine because it is feeding the zealots of our system by not standing tall and confronting the forces of hate and fear in a country that has a lot of economic pain,” vanden Heuvel said.

She described the controversy as “a testing moment for America … Are we going to be an America that learns from Shirley Sherrod’s tale of reconciliation, overcoming prejudice? … Are we going to be a media system which is vetting and upholding standards, or are we going to be bullied as a country by a right wing media which peddles fears and slanders to, really, destroy President Obama’s presidency?”

Host Matt Lauer interrupted vanden Heuvel to point out that “in the past it’s worked in both directions. Biased media is nothing new.”

Vanden Heuvel responded by saying the issue wasn’t about media bias, but media credibility. It’s about “the mainstream media — with a few exceptions in this case — accepting Andrew Breitbart, a journalist who’s known to have no credibility.”

Watch a relevant video is from NBC’s Today Show, broadcast July 23, 2010, here.

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Cornyn unable to name one GOP fiscal policy change since Bush era, The Raw Story, July 18, 2010, by Daniel Tencer, used with permission, quoted verbatim:

Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX) couldn’t find a straight answer to give Sunday when he was asked how Republican fiscal policies today differ from their policies during the Bush era.

“What does distinguish the Republican Party of today from the Republican Party under President Bush’s rule with regards to spending, which is where it got out of control — under Republican rule,” asked host David Gregory on NBC’s Meet The Press.

“Let’s look at a few facts — thank you for the opportunity, because I want to respond to what Chris said. The last year that President Bush was in office, 2008, the deficit was 3.2 percent of the gross domestic product. Today it’s ten percent. We just hit the $13 trillion cap on national debt,” Cornyn said.

“Where did some of that debt come from?” Gregory asked. “The President of the United States was George Bush when they passed a huge TARP, which was to bail out the banks. I mean that’s what ran up a lot of debt as well. Are you saying a Republican was somehow different?”

“You’re ignoring the stimulus that … failed according to the president’s own standards,” Cornyn replied. “He said he was supposed to keep unemployment to eight percent.”

But Gregory persisted in his original question. “So my question is still: What is the distinction of the Republican Party of today versus the Bush record that you’re defending?”

“Well, I think what people are looking for, David, are checks and balances,” Cornyn said. “They’ve had single-party government and it’s scaring the living daylights out of them, and it’s keeping job creators on the sidelines rather than investing and creating jobs. That’s why the private sector isn’t creating jobs.”

“In other words,” comments the AlterPolitics blog, which posted the Cornyn interview online, “they intend to resume Bush’s policies of increasing the national debt to pay for deeper tax cuts for the rich, to bail out Wall Street fat cats, and to wage more endless and unnecessary wars.”

Cornyn’s lack of detail will give ammunition to critics of Republican policies who argue the party is determined to roll ahead with the same policies that some economists now blame for the economic meltdown — things such as the Bush tax cuts, which some argue contributed to the federal government’s debt burden and resulted in a greater share of wealth being concentrated in the hands of a few.

Many critics point to the GOP’s campaign to extend the Bush tax cuts as proof of this. Last week, Arizona Republican Sen. John Kyl came in for heavy criticism when he argued that the extension of the Bush tax cuts — unlike health care reform and jobless benefits — shouldn’t be offset by spending cuts. It’s estimated that extending the tax cuts, which expire at the end of this year, would cost the US $2.2 trillion. Extending only the part applying to people earning over $250,000 would cost $678 billion.

On Saturday, President Barack Obama took an aggressive stance against Republican tactics and policies, saying the party was harming the unemployed to look fiscally responsible.

“They say we shouldn’t provide unemployment insurance because it costs money,” Obama said during his weekly radio address. “So after years of championing policies that turned a record surplus into a massive deficit, including a tax cut for the wealthiest Americans, they’ve finally decided to make their stand on the backs of the unemployed.”

The following video was broadcast on NBC’s Meet The Press Sunday July 18, 2010, and uploaded to YouTube by DemRapidResponse.

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The World’s Craziest Conservatives?, Campaign for America’s Future, July 15, 2010, by Terrance Heath, used with permission, quoted verbatim:

Note by Evans Liberal Politics owner Paul Evans: Here’s is Terrance Heath’s collection of some of the worst conservative statements and beliefs since June began from around the web. Right now we at Evans Liberal Politics are having some issues with display of videos on our site and we appreciate your patience about this. Hopefully we will have this problem fixed soon…. but some of these conservative statements and the articles they are in really boggle the mind. Thanks to Terrance Heath for permission to republish his articles on an ongoing basis. Here’s what he found out:

It would be funny, if only it wasn’t reality. That’s what I thought when I came across this while perusing videos on my iPhone recently.

It’s a pretty good compilation of the recent insanity. It’s good political satire. If it was an obvious parody, I could laugh. But it’s not. And as good as it is, the video doesn’t begin to capture the breadth and depth of the present political insanity. (After all, there’s only so much one can cram into three minutes or less.)

There’s no shortage of this stuff. Case in point: there’s been even more insanity, in the few days between watching this video and publishing this post. In fact, there’s enough material for a television show kind of like The Smoking Gun’s “World’s Dumbest.” (It could even be a kind of jobs program, that does for has-been, D-list conservatives pols what the Smoking Gun series has done for entertainment-world celebrities of the same varieties.)

Here’s what I was able to compile.

Watch The Right Wing Unhinged!

As you can see, there’s no end to this stuff. I finally had to stop gathering it if this post was ever going up, even though I know there’s stuff I didn’t include.

Here’s what I couldn’t capture on video:

• The Taliban have sharks with lasers attached to their heads.
• Serial Butt-Biting GOP Operative Sinks Teeth Into Texas Race
• Bachmann calls for constitutional conservative takeover to free ‘nation of slaves’
• Right-wing machine attacks Michelle for focusing on childhood obesity
  
• How American Right-Wing Christians Are Waging ‘Spiritual Warfare’ in Northern Iraq
• Conservative Pastor Wants You to Know Jesus Wasn’t a Sissy
• Republican senator says he backs birther lawsuits
• Extremist Christians Aim to Create Armed Militias Against “Godless” Federal Government
• Headless bodies and other immigration tall tales in Arizona
• Corbett says some would rather get unemployment checks than work
• GOP Rep. Dean Heller claims extending unemployment benefits is creating ‘hobos.’
• When Life Gives You Lemonade, Conservatives Make Lemons
• GOP: “We don’t need any more monuments”
• Don Young: Gulf spill ‘not an environmental disaster’
• MN GOP’s Emmer: Cut Minimum Wage For Waiters
• FLASHBACK: GOPer Angle Spoke Out Against Fluoride In Water Supply
• Republicans Take Brave Stand Against “Tan Tax”
• End the Liberal Bias Against Slavery
• The little-know but sinister link between socialism and fear of opposable thumbs
• Republicans Take Brave Stand Against “Tan Tax”
• Republican Senate wants homeless vets’ families to stay homeless
• Rand Paul Passes When Asked About The Age Of The Earth
• Gun Proponents Take Aim at Domestic Violence Survivors
• GOP Sen. Bob Bennett Says His Own Party Is Short On Policy Ideas
• John Boehner: Raise Retirement Age To 70; Wall Street Reform Is Like ‘Killing An Ant With A Nuclear Weapon’
• Sharron Angle’s energy plan: Deregulate the ‘mining industry,’ as well as the ‘oil and petroleum industry’
• “Blacks Don’t Own Martin Luther King”
• Is U.S. Now On Slippery Slope To Tyranny?
• Widespread GOP Comfort With Sowell’s Hitler Comparison….
• Rand Paul at Christian Homeschoolers Conference: Schools and Hospitals Now Part of Our ‘Welfare State’
• Obama still a furriner, say 24%
• Conservatives Castigate Public Infrastructure Spending, BP Escrow Fund, as Nazi-Inspired
• Joe Barton Touts A Defense Of His BP Comments, Minutes After Apologizing To GOP For Them
• When It Doubt, the Right Goes With the Hitler Comparison….
• Ron Paul calls $20 billion BP escrow fund a ‘PR stunt,’ ‘suspicious’
• Rand Paul: ‘I Don’t Think The 14th Amendment Was Meant To Apply To Illegal Aliens’
• Republican Admits GOP Plan: Protect Corporations, Take Down the President
• GOP Nutcase Steve King’s Immigration Solution: Deport Liberals
• The BP Party: GOP Stands Behind Congressman Who Apologized to BP
• The Right Celebrates The End Of The American Dream
• The Right-Wing Lie Behind Haley Barbour’s BP Talking-Point
• The Constitution Party: Delusional Religious Fanatics Pushing for Christian Tyranny
• Jim DeMint, ‘Biblical Law’ Christians Unite in Fundraising for Angle
• GOPer’s Groveling Apology to BP CEO Sets Off Firestorm — Florida Republican Tells Him to Resign
• Sarah Palin Blames Environmentalists For Gulf Oil Disaster
• Boehner Wants You to Pick up the Tab

There. That gets us as far back as the beginning of summer — the point at which I drew an arbitrary line, because I couldn’t keep going indefinitely. (If I had the time, I could. The material is there.)

The point of compiling all of this isn’t to continue the “Stupid Republicans” meme, or to be dismissive of tea party types. Quite the opposite, actually. The point is that they should be taken seriously, as they are quite serious about what they believe, and all of the above is a mere preview of what we can expect if this brand of radicalized conservatism wins in November.

The point is: This is how they will govern.

Progressives — us complicated people who believe in “creating a world that works for everyone” — need to remember this much, no matter how frustrated, disappointed, or even angry we are about reforms that aren’t everything that they should be and that the country needs them to be. The inmates haven’t just taken over the asylum. They have breached its gates, organized, and are now threatening to take over the government.

What’s changed is that the nutcases on the right are capable of beating a sane Republican incumbent by 42 points if they step out of line. Believe me, every member of the GOP in Congress is aware of this fact. They have to eat chicken dinners with these people and ask them for money. Arlen Specter knew his goose was cooked as soon as he saw the reaction to Sarah Palin. In fact, it was the selection of Sarah Palin to be a vice-presidential candidate that put this Tea Party movement into overdrive. Up to that point all their energy was being put into Ron Paul’s delegate-deprived run for the presidency. McCain made the single most irresponsible political decision since a lame-duck James Buchanan sat silently while half the country seceded from the Union.

But I’m getting off my point. My point is that, while Scher is correct to point out the Tea Party is merely the latest incarnation of the right’s rage at being governed by a Democratic President, and to point out their overall numbers are small, he’s wrong to give the impression that we’re not dealing with something extremely dangerous. Because, if you haven’t noticed, the Republicans are voting in absolute lockstep, and they’re dancing to the Tea Partiers tune. They are terrified of opposing them. And even when they do oppose them we see outcomes like Rand Paul crushing the establishment candidate in a socially conservative (i.e., not a libertarian) state.

I’ve never seen a fringe movement take control of a party’s soul and mind like this before. I was hoping that the governance of Dick Cheney, George W. Bush, and Karl Rove was the worst the right could offer, but it’s not even close. The Republicans have been cynical so long that they’ve been taken over by the duped.

Actual Republican congresspeople (with a handful of exceptions) have no interest in the Tea Party’s priorities. Want proof? Read the Mission & Platform just passed by Maine’s GOP. It’s cuckoo land. And that might be the saving grace for this country, because the establishment GOP doesn’t intend to become the party of Rand Paul. They just want to use that energy to get back into power and take the gavels back from the Democrats. But, first of all, we just saw what ‘reasonable’ establishment Republican politics can do to our country, so we can’t take much solace from the fact that that establishment is taking their cynicism to eleven by playing footsie with these people. Secondly, a bunch of the new Republicans elected this November are going to be certifiably Michele Bachmann-insane. And just like with the Republican Class of 1994, sixteen years later some of the people will be governors and senators.

They might just be the “world’s craziest conservatives,” but they could be “coming soon to a Congress near you,” if progressives — out of frustration, despair, or a lack of enthusiasm — decide to “sit this one out.” Because I can guarantee you, the tea-party types and the far right fringe won’t. As Bill pointed out, the current overheated right-wing fringe movement called the Tea Party has deep roots.

Was GOP Sen. Lindsey Graham correct when he told the New York Times Magazine that the Tea Party would “die out” because “they can never come up with a coherent vision for governing the country”?

It would be nice if that were the basis on which political parties and movements survived or collapsed. But the Republican Party did not have a coherent vision for governing the country between 2001 and 2008, and it is still around. (Michael Steele notwithstanding.)

The Tea Party can easily survive on blind hatred for responsive government, revulsion of shared responsibility, rampant misinformation and conspiracy theories.

How do I know? Because it has survived for decades.

The Tea Party is nothing new. It is merely the latest incarnation of the right-wing fringe that predictably overheats whenever a left-of-center reformer is elected to the presidency. It was the John Birch Society and the National Indignation Convention in the early 1960s, the Moral Majority and other “New Right” groups in the late 1970s, and Rush Limbaugh’s “dittoheads” and the militia movement in the 1990s.

The name has changed, along with a few other details, but the movement is the same one that rises up every time we take a step closer to “a world that works for everyone,” the same movement that “stands athwart history yelling stop” every time a progressive movement brings America closer to living up to all it promises to be on paper for all of its citizens.

That the same old movement has reared its head again suggests we’ve had more victories than perhaps we’re inclined to acknowledge, due to a progressive tendency to always seek more justice, more inclusion, more equality, etc. Clearly we’re not “there” yet, but we’re close than we were and we have an opportunity to get even closer.

Unless. Unless we throw our hands up in frustration at the winding route and painfully slow pace and decide not to make the trip at all.

That would separate us from previous progressive movements that made it possible for someone like Barack Obama to be president, and someone like Hillary Clinton to make 18 million cracks in the glass ceiling that will someday shatter — taking with it another barrier between us and “there,” our destination of “a world that works for everyone.” None of which would have happened if our progressive forebears had given up when they set out for “a world that world for everyone” and ended up with a piece of the world that worked a bit better for some than it did before.

In short, we wouldn’t be at this juncture if they had abandoned their fellow citizens and future generations — us — to an opposition that declare “no further” and promised to push back what gains had been made. Can we, in good conscience, abandon those whose lives will be made worse if today’s reactionary conservative movement grabs the reins and turns their battle cry of “Hell no” or “Hell, no you can’t” into policy. Can we in good conscience abandon 15 million unemployed Americans to the will of a movement and politicians who withhold the unemployment benefits they need for basic necessities, to score political points?

We’re dealing with a movement that is as dangerous as it was generations ago — and not in terms of violence, threats of violence, or justification of both — but in terms of what it means for Americans now and for generations to come if todays radicalized, reactionary conservative movement succeeds in grabbing power in the midst of a crisis, bringing more pain to more Americans, and inflicting likely permanent damage on our economy, culture, and society.

All that’s required, to borrow (ironically) a quote from “the father of modern conservatism,” is for us to do nothing.

This November, I’ll probably go to the ballot box with the words of my late father ringing in my ears. He and my mom stressed to us the importance of voting, of taking part in the political process — however frustrating and dispiriting it may be at times — and not “sitting it out.” They knew whereof they spoke, because they saw their country change from an America where they could not vote to one that enshrined their right to vote in law, and they knew the long fight required to get there.

I reach voting age in the 1980s, having grown up in the Reagan era, and seen the south where I grew up turn a deep shade of “red.” So, I knew what my father meant when he said to me, “Always vote. If you can’t find someone to vote for, find someone to vote against, but vote.” That was how he’d managed to keep going back to the polls, by framing his choice in terms of which candidate or which policies might do the least harm, if not the most good.

But this year I’m going to frame my vote (my volunteer activities and donations) as support for “the world as it should be” or “a world that works for everyone” and the candidates and policies that will get us, if not all the way there, then closer than we were before 2008 and closer than we are now — instead of framing my vote against “the world’s craziest conservatives.”

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Tea Party groups fail to get health reform repeal measure on Ohio ballot, MedCity News, June 23, 2010, by Brandon Glenn, excerpt quoted verbatim:

An Ohio group affiliated with the Tea Party movement acknowledged that it has failed to get a measure that would reform the federal healthcare overhaul onto the state ballot in November.

A member of the Ohio Liberty Council told the Columbus Dispatch that his group didn’t have enough time to collect the 402,275 signatures needed to get the proposed constitutional amendment in front of voters. The deadline to turn in the signatures is next week.

Specifically, the proposed amendment would’ve prohibited the government from compelling Americans to buy health insurance, the so-called “individual mandate” that many opponents of the overhaul have sought to cast as unconstitutional. The amendment also would’ve prohibited the federal government from imposing fines on those who choose not to buy health insurance.

But just because the groups failed this year, doesn’t mean they’re giving up. Supporters said they hope to get the ballot on the measure next year.

The extra year will give health reform opponents more time to collect money, but time may not be on their side. Recent polls have showed the law gaining popularity, including a Gallup poll out yesterday in which 49 percent of respondents called the reform law “a good thing,” while 46 percent said it was bad. That’s a reversal from April, when 45 percent said the law was good, while 49 percent said it was bad. While the changes are slight, the numbers suggest the tide may be turning against reform opponents – particularly if the trend continues.

Read the full article, here.

See Health-care repeal won’t be on Ohio ballot, but farm-animal amendment remains on track, Columbus Dispatch, June 23, 2010, by Mark Niquette and Alan Johnson.

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Barton Does It Again, Daily Kos, June 23, 2010, by Jed Lewison, used with permission, quoted verbatim:

Earlier today, Joe Barton once again apologized to BP, Tweeting an article defending his apology under the header “Joe Barton was right.” And just like last time, he swiftly retracted the apology, deleting the Tweet and retracting the reapology. This time, Barton’s spokesman is taking the blame, telling Greg Sargent that the office never meant to publicly promote the article on Twitter.

Without thinking about it much, I added a headline from one of the daily news clips to a website that is, in turn, linked to the congressman’s Twitter account. I won’t be doing that again.

The site in question is http://repjoebarton.amplify.com/, a public website that promotes Joe Barton and his policy views. So even if Barton’s office never intended to push the article defending his apology on Twitter, it’s obvious they were publicly promoting it at on Barton’s amplify.com site. And just like last time, now that it’s gotten attention, Barton’s office is trying to control the political damage.

It’s yet more evidence that Joe Barton meant what he said when he apologized to BP and that his retraction was about politics. And coming on the same day that House Republicans voted to keep Barton as the top GOPer on the energy committee, it’s a reminder that most congressional Republicans agree with him.

See How Joe Barton’s apology to BP saved President Obama’s week, The Washington Post, June 23, 2010, by Chris Cillizza.

See House GOP Retains Barton as Energy Panel’s Ranking Member, The New York Times, June 23, 2010, by Josh Voorhees and Mike Soraghan.

Also see Haley, Jindal and America’s new religious litmus test, The Washington Post, June 23, 2010, by Dr. Aseem Shukla.

The Party of BP, And Proud Of It, Campaign for America’s Future, June 22, 2010, by Terrance Heath, used with permission, quoted verbatim:

Andrew Reinbach is right. Deservedly or not, the political gods continue to smile on the Democrats, gifting them with an opposition so predictable and caricatured — from punishing the unemployed, to defending Wall Street — as to be right out of central casting. Now, the GOP has morphed into the party of BP. Except that after Rep. Joe Barton’s apology to BP, you’d think they would worry about being cast as “the Party of BP.” Instead, they’re embracing the role.

David Broder says that Barton’s comments only “highlight the GOP’s propensity for gaffes.” That alone may earn Broder a nomination for the Peggy Noonan Award for Sanity in Conservative Commentary. But here’s the thing. Barton just stuck too closely to the script. He only said what114 of his fellow caucus members, and fellow conservatives already believe. In fact, Barton is starting to gain supporters.

Does this remind anybody but me of the time that the vice president shot a guy in the face, only to have the guy apologize for apparently walking in front of the BP’s buckshot? Why didn’t Barton just say, “We are deeply sorry we had that Gulf down there (along with the industries and ecosystems it supports) getting in the way of your oil”?

Basically, as Robert Creamer put it, Barton merely said was (slightly) more sophisticated members of his party know better than to say in public.

The way the Republicans reacted to Congressman Joe Barton’s “apology” to BP at the hearing of the House Energy and Commerce Committee reminds you of what happens when a group of teenagers find out that a member of their “secret club” has revealed the secret handshake to the school principal.

Barton had the audacity to say out loud a secret that everyone else in the Republican fraternity knows very well — that the Republicans are a Party of, by and for Big Oil. From Cheney’s secret oil executive populated “Energy Taskforce” to “drill baby drill” — and for decades before – the oil industry has held the Republican puppet strings.

Except that a In fact, Barton was a day late. The Republican Study Committee beat him to it, issuing a statement that

Republican Study Committee Chairman Tom Price (R-GA) issued the following statement after the White House announced it had reached a deal with BP to require the oil company to place $20 billion into an escrow fund to pay claims filed against the company in the wake of the Gulf oil spill.

“We all agree that BP should be held fully responsible for its complicity in the oil tragedy in the Gulf,” said Chairman Price. “In fact, BP has already begun paying claims. Any attempt by the company to sidestep that responsibility should be met with the strongest legal recourses available. However, in an administration that appears not to respect fundamental American principles, it is important to note that there is no legal authority for the President to compel a private company to set up or contribute to an escrow account.

“BP’s reported willingness to go along with the White House’s new fund suggests that the Obama Administration is hard at work exerting its brand of Chicago-style shakedown politics. These actions are emblematic of a politicization of our economy that has been borne out of this Administration’s drive for greater power and control. It is the same mentality that believes an economic crisis or an environmental disaster is the best opportunity to pursue a failed liberal agenda. The American people know much better.”

The rest of the story is well known. Barton’s remarks set off a firestorm, including calls for his resignation as ranking member on the Energy and Commerce Committee, a demand from House Republicans that Barton apologize for his apology or lose his committee seat, and finally ending with Barton’s apology for his apology.

But here’s the thing: What did Joe Barton say that the Republican Study Committee didn’t say? Or for that matter, what did he say that Michelle Bachman, Rush Limbaugh, Jane Norton, (Colorado Republican Senate candidate), Dave Westlake and Ron Johnson (Wisconsin Republican Senate candidates) didn’t say?

In fact, the rhetoric has only heated up since then. Conservative economist Thomas Sowell has essentially joined the ranks of right-wing extremists who see the Gulf oil disaster as part of a covert government plan to evacuate some 50 million people from the Gulf and house them in FEMA trailer camps. Sowell stops short of some of the specifics of the FEMA plan (which includes alien hybrids masquerading as U.S troops), but does declare that holding BP accountable to the people of the Gulf region is a step on the slippery slope to tyranny.

Meanwhile commentators and bloggers on the right stand with Joe Wilson, supporting the legal limits of BP’s liability, invoking the rule of law, citing a “kernel of truth” in Barton’s comments, saying that he merely said the right thing at the wrong time, and calling on him to take back the apology for the apology.

Conservative talk-radio host Rush Limbaugh is taking aim at Republican leaders for rushing to demand Texas Rep. Joe Barton retract his controversial apology to BP CEO Tony Hayward during last week’s congressional hearing.

On his radio show Monday, Limbaugh suggested the GOP leadership likely agrees with Barton’s sentiments, but are driven by recent national polls which suggest the majority of Americans support President Barack Obama’s push for BP to set aside $20 billion for future liability claims.

“It was a shakedown pure and simple,” said Limbaugh, echoing the words for which Barton later apologized. “And somebody had the audacity to call it what it was and now everybody’s running for the hills.”

Let’s start by getting our terminology straight. This is not a “spill,” or even an “accident” that just “happened.” The oil seeping into the Gulf isn’t the result of unforeseeable events. It’s not an “act of God.” (Nor for that matter is it the work of “environmental wackos.”) It’s is not a “natural disaster” caused by forces of nature we can’t always accurately predict, let alone control It is a disaster, alright, but one caused by negligence, a lack of oversight, a absence of accountability, and a conservatism that not only enables all three, but would abandon every day Americans to deal with the consequences of a corporation guilty of all the above.

Now, let’s review. BP’s Deepwater Horizon rig in the Gulf of Mexico exploded on April 20, killing 11 workers and spilling oil into the Gulf at a rate of (we’re now told) 35,000 to 60,000 barrels per day. But the April 20th explosion was the last in series of events driven by corporate neglect and conservative failure. Back in May, I blogged about the scandal in the Department of Interior’s Minerals Management Service, reported by the New York Times in September 2008, in a story of an industry literally “in bed” with the industry is was supposed to regulate.

As Congress prepares to debate expansion of drilling in taxpayer-owned coastal waters, the Interior Department agency that collects oil and gas royalties has been caught up in a wide-ranging ethics scandal — including allegations of financial self-dealing, accepting gifts from energy companies, cocaine use and sexual misconduct.

In three reports delivered to Congress on Wednesday, the department’s inspector general, Earl E. Devaney, found wrongdoing by a dozen current and former employees of the Minerals Management Service, which collects about $10 billion in royalties annually and is one of the government’s largest sources of revenue other than taxes.

“A culture of ethical failure” pervades the agency, Mr. Devaney wrote in a cover memo.

The reports portray a dysfunctional organization that has been riddled with conflicts of interest, unprofessional behavior and a free-for-all atmosphere for much of the Bush administration’s watch.

The numerous reports of BP’s corporate irresponsibility are too many to quote here. So, I’ll summarize them in order to include them.

• ProPublica has covered how MMS was flooded with oil ties, under Dick Cheney’s influence, and agency’s role in the Deepwater Horizon disaster. That role included bending to industry objections over regulation, such as a proposed requirement to use a $500,000 safety device used in other countries, and that might prevented the present disaster.
• The Wall Street Journal, in May, published a devastating account of Deepwater Horizon, and the events leading up to it. The article suggested that BP ignored multiple warnings about safety procedures on the rig, and failed to run necessary tests that might have revealed potential dangers. (A final test that of the well’s integrity on that day, was run by an engineer whose experience was mostly with land drilling and who was on the rig “to learn about deep water.”)
• A Congressional investigation identified risky cost-cutting measures by BP that appear to have increased the risk of a blowout, including: making decisions for economic reasons that violated industry guidelines, ignoring warning from its own employers and contractors to deploy a “lockdown sleeve” that would have prevented the blowout.
• In an April 14th email, BP engineer Brian Morel called Deepwater a “nightmare.”
• A New York Times article reported last month that BP documents showed serious problems and safety concerns on the rig far earlier than the Company described to Congress. The article said documents showed that the company was struggling with a loss of “well control” in March of this year, and that the company’s engineers had warned 11 months earlier that a metal casing BP wanted to use might collapse under high pressure. (The company went ahead with the casing, seeking its colleagues’ blessings, even though it violated the company’s own safety standards.)

  The same article on at least three occasions, BP records indicate, the blowout preventor was leaking — something the manufacturer said would limit it’s ability to operate properly. Neither the company nor regulators questioned whether drilling should commence. Instead, BP asked to delay a federally mandated test of the blowout preventor, and MMS approved the request, after denying it just a day earlier.

  The blowout preventor device was then tested at a lower pressure of 6,500 pounds per square inch, far less than the 10,000 pounds per square inch it was tested under on the previous day. It tested at the lower pressure until the explosion.

• A recent BBC report on the $20 billion compensation fund notes that the blowout prevention device failed on that fateful day. Workers noticed a leak and reported it to management weeks before the explosion. To repair the device would have required halting drilling work on a rig that was already well behind schedule and costing BP $500,000 per day to operate.

Since then the stuff has destroyed livelihoods, devastated wildlife and begun lapping at the shores of several states with Republican governors. It has devastated wildlife in the Gulf, and threatens the survival of hundreds of species. The hidden long-term environmental and ecological impact may eventually reveal even greater losses. It has into 65 miles of coastline, and is working its way into the region’s wetlands.

It has cost some Gulf coast residents their livelihoods, and threatens the livelihoods of millions more. Gulf Coast businesses, state and local economies, already hard hit by the recession, will likely suffer further losses.

It’s in this context, and during Tony Hayward’s abysmal appearance before a congressional subcommittee that Barton delivers his sincerest apologies to BP. It’s in this context that the Republican Study Committee, GOP candidates, right-wing bloggers commentators send a message to the millions of Americans staring this growing disaster in the face: You are on your own.

Basically, Gulf area residents should be abandoned to deal with this disaster as best they can. Government can and should do little to help them.

The rhetoric on the right has made reasoned discussion of what should be done about the problem next to impossible, by appealing to the most extreme factions, relying on simplistic slogans, and employing lies and paranoia to keep a raised pitch. The tactic is an effective way to cloud the issue the way that the rising plumes of oil cloud the water in the Gulf, so that conservatives’ complicity and conservatism’s fingerprints can’t be seen all over this disaster.

It also effectively clouds the “kernel of truth” in conservatism’s message. Put plainly, the GOP is siding with BP over the people of the Gulf region whose lives and livelihoods are awash in oil.

Certainly conservatives are likely to say that aggrieved Gulf residents can and should “sue the bastards,” and take BP to court for damages. That’s why they cite the “rule of law” and defend BP’s limited liability. Of course, all but the most naive understand that it would be difficult for the average person to take on a company the size of BP, with pockets as deep as BP’s, in court, let alone people who awoke on April 20th, to find that they had no more livelihoods, and no way of supporting themselves, let alone mounting a legal case.

Gary Gross, blogging at Let Freedom Ring, in his defense of Barton writes:

Let’s be perfectly clear. I’m not proposing to let BP off the hook. It’s quite the opposite. I’m just opposed to letting a political appointee dole out $20,000,000,000 based on anything other than established law.

Men are corruptible. The courts aren’t…

But, it is incredibly easy for a company with BP’s deep pockets to keep a case out of court, or keep a case from going to trial with a series of legal motions and maneuvers, while waiting for a plaintiff to finally be too “tapped out” to afford further legal fees, or finally worn down settling for far less than being made whole. Ask Brian O’Neill and his clients, the 2,600 fishermen and others affected by the Exxon Valdez spill.

After the Exxon Valdez oil tanker crashed in Prince William Sound in 1989, O’Neill headed straight to Alaska.

The Minnesota-based attorney had an interest in environmental issues and wanted to help because, as he put it, “there were an awful lot of hurt people.”

He soon represented 2,600 fishermen and others affected by the spill. What he thought would be a two- or three-year “adventure” is still the biggest thing on his plate, one-third of his life later.

O’Neill successfully argued the 1994 trial after which a jury ordered Exxon to pay $5.3 billion in punitive damages to O’Neill’s clients and others affected by the spill.

Exxon appealed almost two dozen times and O’Neill was there through it all.

In 2008, the case reached the U.S. Supreme Court, where a 5-3 majority finally set punitive damages at $500 million.

It was a significant blow to O’Neill and his clients.

BP is already maneuvering to have all Gulf-related lawsuits against the company heard in the courtroom of a judge with strong ties to the oil industry. Naturally the company would want the cases heard by a judge well-versed in the industry and its issues. While it’s not certain that the judge in question would base his rulings on anything other than the law, some lawyers were surprised that BP is seeking to select its own judge in both state and federal courts, where cases are usually assigned to judges randomly. Meanwhile, it’s unlikely that Gulf area residents would have an equal opportunity to select a judge who is well versed in how the disaster impacts their families and communities.

It’s unlikely that Gulf area residents would even have the ability to decide when and where they will seek justice, let alone who would preside.

But this is one of those things government can do, and should do, that people can’t do for themselves: Get the justice they deserve from a corporate entity that can buy all the justice it can afford, which is far more than many Gulf residents can afford.

That’s the difference between progressives and conservatives.

Conservatives would rather see the people of the Gulf coast go through what the people affected by the Exxon Valdez went through; a long wait, for far less than a just result.

Don’t take my word for it. Conservatives themselves have said as much.

And they aren’t the least bit sorry.

Terrance Heath is the Online Producer at Campaign for America’s Future. Prior to his current position he worked as a Blogging and Social Media Consultant for a number of organizations and agencies, as an outgrowth of his work as Blogmaster for EchoDitto, Inc. He stumbled into blogging and social media after starting his own blog, The Republic of T., but cut his teeth as an activist working on LGBT equality and HIV/AIDS issues. In that capacity he worked for the Human Rights Campaign and the National Minority AIDS Council. Terrance has kindly allowed Evans Liberal Politics to publish his works on an ongoing basis. He sums himself up: Black. Gay. Father. Vegetarian. Buddhist. Liberal.

Coming to Terms With Equality and Diversity: America’s Ongoing Culture Wars, Truthout OpEd, June 16, 2010, by Cary Fraser, photo of “Reggae schoolroom” from Flickr, notladg, republished under Creative Commons license, quoted verbatim:

The recent decision by the Texas School Board of Education to revise the curriculum in the state to reflect a more “conservative” approach to social studies and history has highlighted the ongoing debate about the role of education in American society and culture.

The explicit desire by the conservative majority on the Texas School Board to impose an ideological orientation in elementary and secondary education – including a shift of focus away from the civil rights movement and slavery, an emphasis upon ensuring that students be taught that the idea of the separation of church and state is not in the Constitution and promotion of the need to safeguard

American sovereignty from threats posed by organizations such as the United Nations – is a barometer of the increasing uncertainty that has overtaken the conservative factions in American society. The election of Barack Obama as the first African-American president, on the basis of a well-executed campaign that demonstrated the increasing electoral influence of multi-ethnic coalitions in American politics, has served as a catalyst for reactionaries of all stripes to seek ways to reverse the movement of American society toward a greater openness and engagement with the wider world, including the diverse communities of color within the country. A recent article in the Wall Street reports that recent statistics suggest that population growth among minority groups in the United States will exceed growth rates among whites in the near future.(1) If that demographic shift takes place, the United States will become a country where there is no single ethnic group or race that will constitute a majority within the population. The promise of greater cultural and ethnic diversity in the American population is a guarantee of the erosion of the white-supremacist ethos that has defined American society over the course of its history.The already visible shift in America’s demographic composition and its sensibility has provoked unease among conservative constituencies made uncomfortable by these changes. Thirty years ago, the election of Ronald Reagan had inspired the conservative resurgence that revitalized the politics of white supremacy in American life. The launching of Reagan’s election campaign in 1980 in Philadelphia, Mississippi – the site of the murders of three civil rights workers in 1964 – consolidated the image of the Republican Party as a big tent for conservatives. After the death of Nelson Rockefeller, the former New York governor and vice president during the Ford administration, who had long represented the pro-civil rights constituency in the Republican Party – the Reagan campaign wholeheartedly embraced Southern conservatives increasingly disenchanted with Jimmy Carter and his willingness during his presidency (1976-80) to follow in Lyndon Johnson’s footsteps in opening the political system for communities of color. Thus, the Texas School Board decision should be recognized as part of the long-running backlash among Southern conservatives who were disturbed by the civil rights movement and its success in dismantling the “Jim Crow” regime in American life and politics. The decision to reduce the focus in the Texas curriculum upon issues such as slavery and civil rights speaks to the ambivalence about these issues in both Texan and American history.(2) Apparently, for some American conservatives, the bliss of amnesia is best reached through the path of obfuscation in the education system. As the country becomes more diverse in terms of the origins of its many communities, the struggle over the content and structure of the curriculum will intensify as schools are confronted with the need to address the complexity and changing complexion of the country’s history and culture.

In fact, many conservatives today articulate a profound desire to preserve the ethos and politics of white supremacy that has defined American life from the founding of the American republic. One way of understanding the emergence of the “birther” movement in 2009, which challenged Obama’s birth in Hawaii and the earlier questions about the significance of his middle name, Hussein, as well as the efforts to depict him as a Muslim during the 2008 election campaign, is that many conservatives find it difficult to accept the reality of an African-American as president. The desire of others to “reclaim their government” is but another manifestation of the legacies of slavery and segregation in American life – the idea that African-Americans are inferior to their white compatriots. This sentiment was brilliantly captured by the African-American author, James Baldwin when he wrote in “My Dungeon Shook: Letter to My Nephew on the One Hundredth Anniversary of the Emancipation”: “You were born into a society which spelled out with brutal clarity and in as many ways as possible, that you were a worthless human being. You were not expected to aspire to excellence: you were expected to make peace with mediocrity.”(3) Obama’s election victory shattered that illusion and opened the way for Americans of all persuasions to imagine a future in which white supremacist politics could be relegated to history.

However, it would seem that a new front has been opened in the “culture war” between progressive and conservative factions in American life. The search by conservatives for control over the curriculum – even as the level of segregation in the K-12 education system today is suggestive of a return to the era before the Brown v. Board of Education decision – is a reminder of America’s inability to escape its history of unequal education. While racially segregated public education was deemed to be a violation of the Constitution in 1954, the reality is that the segregation of whites from other sections of the society – in education, in housing, and in other areas of social life – remains a powerful norm in American culture. This contradiction between law and reality on matters of racial segregation makes for schizophrenic debates about education and the advocacy of change, since 1954, has had little significant impact upon the society’s capacity to deliver equal access to education for all its citizens.

Racial segregation is pathological in a society ostensibly based upon human equality, but it is a pathology that has been normalized across the society. The Texas School Board’s decision to de-emphasize the focus upon slavery and the civil rights struggle in the curriculum helps to illustrate the workings of that pathology. Segregated education in the United States today perpetuates the inequality of access and the structural patterns of disadvantage that defined the “Jim Crow” era in the 20th century – a depressing reminder that, the more things change, the more they remain the same.(4) While the civil rights movement of the mid-20th century delegitimized the legal principles that underpinned the Jim Crow order, the culture of segregation remains deeply embedded in the social fabric. Despite its image as a progressive and dynamic society over the course of the 20th century, the legacy of racist beliefs and practices continues to define American life.

For example, in the first half of the 20th century, slavery continued in American society despite its legal abolition after the Civil War.(5) May 17, 1954, the date of the Brown v. Board of Education decision, is seen as a definitive turning point in American history as it brought an end to the constitutional imprimatur that had been given to the Plessy v. Ferguson decision of 1896, and provided momentum for the burgeoning challenge to the Jim Crow order. However, the conviction on May 14, 1954 – three days prior to the Brown decision – of two brothers from Alabama for holding African-Americans as slaves was an ironic counterpoint to the Brown decision.(6) The continuing evidence of slavery in 1954 was reminder of the fact that its legacies had yet to be expunged from both custom and culture in America. Thus, it should not be surprising that segregation – outlawed, but still practiced – has followed a similar course in the late 20th and early 21st centuries. In the matter of racial inequality, the United States has yet to find a way to escape its historical legacies and their capacity to shape contemporary politics.

The reactionary impulses that triggered the decision to pursue an overt ideological agenda within the curriculum adopted by the Texas School Board cannot be seen solely as a response to the increasing racial/ethnic diversity of American society. It should also be seen as an expression of the persistent phenomenon explored by Richard Hofstadter in his seminal work – “Anti-Intellectualism in American Life.” In that book, published in the early 1960s, Hofstadter argued:

Again and again, but particularly in recent years, it has been noticed that intellect in America is resented as a kind of excellence, as a claim to distinction, as a challenge to egalitarianism, as a quality which almost certainly deprives a man or woman of the common touch. The phenomenon is most impressive in education itself. American education can be praised, not to say defended, on many counts; but I believe ours is the only education system in the world vital segments of which have fallen into the hands of people who joyfully and militantly proclaim their hostility to intellect and their eagerness to identify with children who show the least intellectual promise.(7)

In effect, the effort to suppress the use of the educational process to widen the avenues of cultural and functional literacy among American students is reflective of the anti-intellectual currents that course through American life and which is often manifested as racism and xenophobia in the wider social and political context.

The initiative by the Texas School Board was replicated in Arizona where the governor signed legislation that seeks to prevent the teaching of ethnic studies in the K-12 system in that state. The legislation was actively championed by the state superintendent of public instruction, Tom Horne, who wrote an open letter in June 2007 in which he claimed, “The evidence is overwhelming that ethnic studies in the Tucson Unified School District teaches a kind of ethnic chauvinism that the citizens of Tucson should no longer tolerate.”(8) Horne, a Republican, is reportedly running for the office of state attorney general and his championship of this issue suggests the way in which the hostility toward exploring the increasing cultural diversity of American society has become a political football in the age of Obama. Anti-Latino sentiment and Republican exploitation of that sentiment for political gains, was also evident in the recent decision by the Republican Governor of Arizona, Jan Brewer, to sign a new immigration enforcement law in that state which has provoked serious concern about increased ethnic profiling of minority Americans by law enforcement agencies.

As in Texas, the fear of ethnic studies in Arizona reflects both the advent of a multi-cultural America and a crude search for political advantage by conservative and reactionary forces in a thinly disguised campaign to reverse that development. According to a spokesman for the Arizona governor: “[she] signed the bill because she believes and the legislation states, that public school students should be taught to treat and value each other as individuals and not be taught to resent or hate other races or classes of people.”(9) Brewer, a Republican, had been elevated to the governor’s office by virtue of the decision Janet Napolitano, her predecessor and a Democrat, to accept the appointment as Homeland secretary in the Obama administration in 2009. Brewer will need to run for election on her own account, and her willingness to sign these bills should not be discounted as part of a political strategy to court conservative voters in the effort to return to the governorship in the next election. Among many others who exploited unrest over schooling, were Orval Faubus and George Wallace, who had embraced opposition to school desegregation in election campaigns in Arkansas and Alabama in the wake of the Brown v. Board of Education decision.

In many ways, the current initiatives in Texas and Arizona reflect the long-standing discomfort among conservatives with the changes unleashed by the Brown decision, particularly its affirmation of the equality of citizenship as the cornerstone of the American constitutional project. According to the decision:

Today, education is perhaps the most important function of state and local governments. Compulsory school attendance laws and the great expenditures for education both demonstrate our recognition of the importance of education to our democratic society. It is required in the performance of our most basic public responsibilities, even service in the armed forces. It is the very foundation of good citizenship. Today it is a principal instrument in awakening the child to cultural values, in preparing him for later professional training and in helping him to adjust normally to his environment. In these days, it is doubtful that any child may reasonably be expected to succeed in life if he is denied the opportunity of an education. Such an opportunity, where the state has undertaken to provide it, is a right which must be made available to all on equal terms.(10) [Emphasis added.]

Brown eviscerated the idea of white supremacy, which had defined American constitutional life since the founding of the country, and opened the way for America to reconceive itself as a society in which the tyranny of a racial majority could be moderated by the affirmation of equality for ethnic and racial minorities in the society. In asserting the link between education and “good citizenship,” the Supreme Court had also asserted the importance of education as a fundamental right that should “be available to all on equal terms.” It was a bold step in the direction of restructuring American society. As a relatively rare unanimous decision by the Supreme Court, it would be difficult for any successor court to overturn the Brown decision and, as a consequence, conservatives have had to seek alternative strategies to find ways of reversing the consequences of the 1954 decision, if not the decision itself.

Today, Brown is looked upon as, at best, a decision that offered change, but which has failed to deliver on that promise. However, it may be important to recognize that in making a radical break with the ideological cornerstone of American life and law – white supremacy – Brown served as a catalyst for the civil rights movement and the culture wars that have shaped American life since 1954. The reverberations of that decision continue to affect the Supreme Court and, for the retired Supreme Court Justice David Souter, the Brown decision has provided a basis for his apparent repudiation of the doctrine of “original intent” that has been championed by conservatives who opposed the influence and legitimacy that the Brown decision continues to exercise in American jurisprudence and political life.(11)

The debates over “original intent” as constitutional doctrine gained increased currency in 1987 when Ronald Reagan nominated the well-known Robert Bork, a member of the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia, to a seat on the US Supreme Court. Bork was seen as an appointment that would both secure a conservative majority on the Supreme Court and contribute to the legacy of Reagan as the architect of the conservative resurgence that sought to redefine American life and politics. In a 1985 speech at the University of San Diego Law School, Bork had asserted:

I intend to speak to the question of whether a judge should consider himself or herself bound by the original intentions of those who framed, proposed and ratified the Constitution. I think the judge is so bound. I want to demonstrate that original intent is the only basis for constitutional decision and I wish to meet objections that have been made to that proposition.(12)

Given the commitment to slavery embodied in the 1787 Constitution, it was remarkable indication of the quality of American intellectual life that, two decades after the passage of the Civil Rights and Voting Rights Acts and more than a century after the end of the Civil War in 1865, a sitting judge felt comfortable advocating that the “original intention” of the Americans founders provided solid ground from which to adjudicate cases coming before the courts in the late 20th century. Reagan’s nomination of Bork in 1987, in the bicentennial year of the original Constitution, was perhaps tribute to the nostalgia revealed by the judge in his desire to validate the wisdom of the founders.

In his Harvard address, Souter indicated that he was going to address “a particular sort of criticism that is frequently aimed at the more controversial Supreme Court decisions: criticism that the court is making up the law, that the court is announcing constitutional rules that cannot be found in the Constitution and that the court is engaging in activism to extend civil liberties.” Arguing that the Constitution is a complex document containing “values that may well exist in tension with each other, not in harmony” Souter said the “explicit terms of the Constitution, … can create a conflict of approved values and the explicit terms of the Constitution do not resolve that conflict when it arises.” In Souter’s view: “The court has to decide which of our approved desires has the better claim, right here, right now … So much for the notion that all constitutional law lies there in the Constitution waiting for a judge to read it fairly.” Souter then explored the significance of the Brown decision and its repudiation of the Plessy v. Ferguson decision of 1896 that had given sanction to the “separate but equal” formula that underpinned the Jim Crow order in 20th century America. For Souter, the 1954 decision was based upon the recognition by the judges that “the record of enforced segregation … carried only one possible meaning: It expressed a judgment of inherent inferiority on the part of the minority race. The judges who understood the meaning that was apparent in 1954 would have violated their oaths to uphold the Constitution if they had not held the segregation mandate unconstitutional” – unlike the court majority in 1896 which had argued that segregated railcars were not “a badge of inferiority.”(13)

Souter’s defense of the Brown decision in 2010 is a remarkable statement about the unresolved tensions about racial equality, and the persistence of debates about the logic and culture of white supremacist thought in contemporary American life. As Texas and Arizona also illustrate, the conservative search for a return to a “lily-white” America remains a powerful force that will continue to shape American political debates as the society becomes increasingly multi-ethnic and culturally pluralistic. Race and racism remain defining features of an American landscape shaped by the politics of uncertainty.

Footnotes:

1. Conor Dougherty, “U.S. Nears Racial Milestone: Whites Are on Verge of Becoming a Minority Among Newborns in Long-Expected Shift,” The Wall Street Journal, June 11, 2010.

2. Martin Luther King Jr. in his last presidential address to the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, said: “The tendency to ignore the Negro’s contribution to American life and the strip him of his personhood is as old as the earliest history books and as contemporary as the morning’s newspapers. To upset this cultural homicide, the Negro must rise up with an affirmation of his own Olympian manhood.” See Martin Luther King Jr., “Where Do We Go from Here?” In James M. Washington (ed.), “The Essential Writings and Speeches of Martin Luther King, Jr.,” (New York: Harper Collins, 1986) p. 246.

3. James Baldwin, “The Fire Next Time,” (New York: Dell, 1964) p.18.

4. According to Giroux, “… the current crisis of American democracy can be measured in part by the fact that too many young people are poor, lack decent housing and health care and attend decrepit schools filled with overworked and underpaid teachers.” Henry Giroux, “Youth in a Suspect Society: Democracy or Disposability?,” (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009) p. 141.

5. Pete Daniel, “The Shadow of Slavery: Peonage in the South, 1901-1969,” (Urbana: The University of Illinois Press, 1972); and, Douglas A. Blackmon, “Slavery by Another Name: The Re-enslavement of Black Americans from the Civil War to World War II,” (New York: Doubleday, 2008).

6. Len Cooper, “The Damned,” June 16, 1996 – The Washington Post.

7. Richard Hofstadter, “Anti-Intellectualism in American Life,” (New York: Vintage Books, 1963) p. 51.

8. Tamar Lewin, “Citing Individualism, Arizona Tries to Rein in Ethnic Studies in School,” in The New York Times, May 13, 2010.

9. Ibid.

10. Brown v. Board of Education, 347 US 483 – Supreme Court 1954

11. Text of Justice David Souter’s speech | Harvard Gazette Online.

12. www.fed-soc.org/resources/id.53/default.asp

13. Text of Justice David Souter’s speech | Harvard Gazette Online.

MSNBC: Texas School Board
Rewrites History Textbooks With A Conservative Bent

*****

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