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NEWS & POLITICS

AlterNet / By Rania Khalek

Rich Lifestyles of the GOP's Starve-the-Poor Presidential Candidates

With housing foreclosures at an all-time high, the top tier of Republican presidential candidates is living high on the hog.

September 1, 2011 |

With the campaign season for Republican presidential primaries in full bloom, the candidates are falling all over each other in a fierce competition to tout their conservative bona fides. Even as housing foreclosures reach all-time highs, and unemployment in some states climbs into the double digits, Republican presidential contenders remain insistent in their demands for reducing government assistance to those suffering under the weight of economic disaster. So, let's have a look at how the candidates themselves are faring on this dismal economic landscape.

1) Rick Perry

Texas Gov. Rick Perry, the GOP's presidential frontrunner, according to the latest Gallup poll, is hardly an elitist. Born into a farming family of modest means in rural Haskell County, Perry continued farming cotton and raising cattle even after he was elected to the state legislature in the mid-1980s, according to the Texas Tribune, yielding him and his wife a combined income of just $45,000 -- a pittance compared to his current $150,000 annual salary as governor (not to mention the millions he's earned on the side in real estate).

You would think that a past of manual labor would have instilled in Perry a sense of solidarity with the working class, but it's just the opposite. Although Perry wasn't born into wealth, he might as well have been, given the ease with which he became accustomed to a life of privilege, which is currently being funded by the taxpaying residents of Texas.

Based on Perry's tax records, the Texas Tribune's Jay Root reveals that "Perry's biggest income gains have come from buying and selling land" during his 30 years in public office. "Since the early 1990s, when Perry began serving as a statewide elected official, the transactions have helped him earn about $2 million in pre-tax profits," according to Root.

Even with all that money, Perry finds it appropriate to use taxpayer funds to pay for his extravagant and temporary mansion, while he and his family await renovations and repairs to the governor's mansion. (An unknown arsonist practically destroyed the residence in 2008.)

According to a May 2010 Associated Press investigation, Perry "has spent almost $600,000 in public money during the past two years to live in a sprawling rental home in the hills above the capital." Texans are forking up over $10,000 a month to cover Perry's rent, which includes "utilities and upkeep to house Perry in a five-bedroom, seven-bath mansion that has pecan-wood floors, a gourmet kitchen and three dining rooms."

The AP breaks down the costs:

His 6,386-square-foot rental sits on more than three acres and was advertised in 2007 for sale at $1.85 million. Perry's state-paid expenses at the home include $18,000 for "consumables" such as household supplies and cleaning products, $1,001.46 in window coverings from upscale retailer Neiman Marcus, a $1,000 "emergency repair" of the governor's filtered ice machine, a $700 clothes rack, and a little over $70 for a two year subscription to Food & Wine Magazine. Maintenance on the heated pool has cost taxpayers at least $8,400, and the tab for grounds and lawn maintenance has topped $44,000, the records show. All told, taxpayers have spent at least $592,000 for rent, utilities, repairs, furnishings and supplies since Perry moved in.

While charging the Lone Star state a steep fee to maintain his fancy abode, Perry has kept busy slashing funds to public education and the social safety net to solve his state's budget woes. In 2011 alone, he cut $4 billion from public education and $4.8 billion from Medicaid to fill a $27 billion two-year budget gap (even as one in four Texas children are living in poverty).

He also put in place a state tax structure that redistributes wealth from the working class to the rich, a conclusion reached in a recent analysis by the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy.

Meanwhile, Perry complained about "the injustice that nearly half of all Americans don't even pay any income tax" during his announcement of his presidential candidacy, referring to the 50 percent of Americans who earn too little to pay income taxes, or whose tax payments are refunded through programs such as the Earned Income Tax Credit, which is a form of aid to families with children. (All legally employed Americans, however, pay federal taxes for Social Security and other benefits.)

However, Perry was kind enough to "cut back on some luxuries in response to the state's tight finances," a spokeswoman told the AP. She explained that the Perrys have restricted their help to just "one housekeeper, one full-time chef -- although a second chef works part time -- and a mansion administrator who left and was not replaced."

2) Mitt Romney

What former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney lacks in charisma he makes up for in money, with a net worth between $190 million and $250 million. He was born into a wealthy family, which clearly gave him a headstart in life and helped him amass even more wealth as a businessman, demonstrating some truth behind the slogan "the poor stay poor and the rich get rich."

Romney's large fortune wouldn't be such a point of contention if not for his stated desire to raise the retirement age for Social Security and Medicare rather than raising taxes on tax-dodging corporations and the rich. Ian Millhiser of ThinkProgress reported on Romney's June campaign stop in Iowa, where he told his audience that we "should consider a higher retirement age" as opposed to raising taxes on corporations because "corporations are people, my friends."

Since Romney's campaign is funded heavily by Wall Street banks, his willingness to coddle the rich at the expense of senior citizens isn't exactly surprising.

His rhetoric also illustrates how out of touch and disconnected he is from everyday Americans. For example, while millions of Americans struggle with losing their one and only home, Romney owns three homes: a vacation home in New Hampshire, a townhouse in Boston, and a second vacation home in La Jolla, California. Romney recently came under fire after the San Diego Union-Tribune revealed his plans to quadruple the size of his $12 million Pacific beachfront home in La Jolla.

The silver-spoon-fed millionaire is entitled to do with his money as he pleases. Still, it's near impossible to witness such ostentatious materialism by a man who says the following about the plight of society's most vulnerable, without cringing:

"The threat to our culture comes from within. In the 1960s there were welfare programs that created a culture of poverty in our country. Now some people think we won that battle when we reformed welfare, but the liberals haven't give up. At every turn they try to substitute government largess for individual responsibility. They fight to strip work requirements from welfare, to put more people on Medicaid and remove more and more people from having to pay any income tax whatsoever. Dependency is death to initiative, risk taking and opportunity. Dependency is culture killing. It's a drug. We have got to fight it like the poison it is."

Those are Romney's words from a speech he gave at the 2008 Conservative Political Action Conference, which prompted the crowd to burst into cheers and applause. His heartless rhetoric is not only reserved for the poor. Brad Johnson of ThinkProgress reported on Romney's inability to feel compassion for disaster victims, as well, when speaking about government aid for tornado-ravaged communities in the Midwest earlier this year. "We cannot afford to do those things without jeopardizing the future for our kids," Romney said, referring to deficit spending on federal disaster relief for tornado and flood victims. "It is simply immoral, in my view, for us to continue to rack up larger and larger debts and pass them on to our kids, knowing full well that we'll all be dead and gone before it's paid off. It makes no sense at all."

3) Ron Paul

Some laud Rep. Ron Paul of Texas for his vehemently anti-war stance, a position most Democrats refuse to take. He is one of the only members of Congress willing to admit that our worldwide military apparatus is both sucking our treasury dry and creating more enemies for America in the long run.

That being said, Paul has some scary plans for fixing the economy. Here are his views on "entitlements," including Social Security and Medicare, as posted on his official House of Representatives Web site:

"Fiscal conservatives should not be afraid to attack entitlements philosophically. We should reject the phony narrative that entitlement programs are inherently noble or required by "progressive" western values. Why exactly should Americans be required, by force of taxation, to fund retirement or medical care for senior citizens, especially senior citizens who are comfortable financially?"

Paul, born in 1935, is 76 years old, meaning he is eligible for Medicare and Social Security, which he refuses to access because he believes it would be morally hypocritical. While his intellectual integrity on entitlements may be commendable, the congressman's path is eased by his net worth of between $2.25 to $5 million, according to the Center for Responsive Politics.

Public education fares no better in Paul's plan for America; he hopes to one day abolish the Department of Education. In a recent meeting with a group of parents who homeschool their children, Paul displayed his distaste for public schooling (via the Huffington Post):

"The public school system now is a propaganda machine," Paul said, prompting applause from the crowd of hundreds of home schooling families. "They start with our kids even in kindergarten, teaching them about family values, sexual education, gun rights, environmentalism -- and they condition them to believe in so much which is totally un-American."

Ironically, Paul is a product of public schooling, and he's done pretty well for himself. Paul's approach to public education pretty much sums up his approach to all things public: abolish government involvement, let the so-called "free" market fix it.

4) Michele Bachmann

Rep. Michele Bachmann, Minn., may not be the richest of the GOP presidential contenders, but she still remains several hundreds of thousands of dollars wealthier than the average American. Of course, that wealth was earned through her hard work and sweat without any help from the government, right? Well, not exactly….

Not only has Bachmann collected upward of a quarter million dollars in government subsidies to prop up her family farm, an investigative report by NBC News revealed that her husband's Christian counseling clinic -- which appears to offer discredited therapies designed to turn gay and lesbian people into heterosexuals -- has collected $24,000 in federal and state funds in addition to $137,000 in Medicaid payments.

As the Bachmanns accept government money to boost their profit margins and improve their quality of life, Michele Bachmann is famous for decrying public assistance programs, even for the poor, as promoters of a culture of dependence. She has even gone so far as suggesting we "wean" people off of Social Security and Medicare, two programs that guarantee Americans won't die of hunger in their old age.

Kimberly Kimby reported last month in the Washington Post that Bachmann has benefited from one of the government-backed home loan programs offered by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, as well. "Just a few weeks before Bachmann called for dismantling the programs during a House Financial Services Committee hearing, she and her husband signed for a $417,000 home loan to help finance their move to a 5,200-square-foot golf-course home," Kimby wrote.

According to Kimby, the $760,000 home "was custom built with a paneled library, spa and wine cellar for former NFL player Ross Verba in 2005. Verba faced foreclosure after sinking more than $2 million into the property, court and mortgage records show. He originally listed the home for $1.75 million in 2007."

Bachmann didn't do anything illegal; she simply took out a federally subsidized home loan to finance her house. Yet, as Kimby points out, "Bachmann has been the most outspoken critic of the loan programs and other government subsidies among Republican presidential candidates."

Bachmann has made it clear, with both her words and legislative actions, that she is staunchly opposed to government assistance of any kind. That includes help for families struggling with foreclosure as a result of the devastated economy -- some due to the under-regulated subprime mortgage industry -- which has left many homeless. Bachmann opposed the Wall Street reform package passed by Congress in part, according to the Minneapolis Star-Tribune, because it leaves the Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac entities intact.

The Minnesota Independent reports that Bachmann's 6th congressional district takes the lead in the state's foreclosure rates, yet she has voted down all five foreclosure relief bills introduced in Congress. Bachmann believes that providing relief to families about to lose their homes, or even establishing consumer protections against malicious mortgage schemes would be tantamount to "rewarding the irresponsible while punishing those who have been playing by the rules."

With net worth of at least $900,000, according to Politico, Michele Bachmann can afford to back an agenda only a banker could love.

* * * *

As millions of Americans grapple with unemployment, foreclosure and poverty, it's frightening to consider how they would fare under a Perry, Romney, Paul, or Bachmann administration. All four candidates seem determined to enact a far-right agenda that will likely lead to the destruction of the already dwindling government programs that have kept the working class and poor from absolute destitution.

Rania Khalek is a an associate writer at AlterNet. Follow her on Twitter @Rania_ak.

AlterNet.org

AlterNet / By Max Blumenthal

U.S. Right Wing and GOP Presidential Candidates Spreading Paranoid Anti-Muslim Hysteria as Part of Take-Over Strategy

The Islamophobic crusade raging across the country is in line with longstanding goals and methods of conservative organizing, and is being used to further big business's agenda.

September 1, 2011 |

The sudden rise of Islamophobia in the United States is alarming while the movement that advances anti-Muslim resentment seems bizarre and filled with eccentric, even dangerous characters. But when viewed in the context of a new, groundbreaking research document by the Center for American Progress and an obscure, decades-old political memorandum by a long-forgotten former Supreme Court Justice, the Islamophobic crusade raging across the country appears perfectly in line with longstanding goals and methods of conservative organizing, and appears to focused on much more than demonizing Muslims.

In 1971, former US Supreme Court Justice Lewis Powell submitted a confidential memorandum to his friend, Eugene Sydnor, the chairman of the US Chamber of Commerce, an umbrella group representing American big business. Powell, who was serving on the boards of 11 corporations at the time, warned that America was suffering from a surplus of democratic freedom thanks to the legacy of the New Left and the countercultural revolt of the 1960's. He declared, "No thoughtful person can question that the American economic system is under broad attack." Powell warned that "Communists, New Leftists and other revolutionaries" were joining forces with "perfectly respectable elements of society from the college campus, the pulpit, the media, the intellectual and literary journals, the arts and sciences, and from politicians" to bring down American capitalism.

To roll back the surge of democracy that supposedly threatened corporate predominance, Powell urged the Chamber of Commerce to finance the creation of a new political and cultural infrastructure -- a "counter-establishment" capable of unraveling the liberal establishment. The infrastructure would consist of pseudo-scholarly journals, "experts" promoted through speakers bureaus, campus pressure groups, publishing houses, lobbyists and partisan idea factories masquerading as think tanks. He wrote that operatives of the network would have to affect a "more aggressive attitude," leveling relentless personal attacks against the perceived enemies of big business. By the last days of the Nixon administration, Attorney General John Mitchell was boasting that his conservative friends were going to take the country "so far to the right we won't recognize it."

Though still obscure, the Powell memo is one of the most important documents in American political history. It was the blueprint for the creation of the modern American conservative movement, a political contingent that now controls the Republican Party and influences mainstream American opinion in ways Powell could have never imagined. Powell's vision came to life during the late 1970's, when neoconservative godfather Irving Kristol and former Treasury Secretary William Simon gathered together a small group of business tycoons willing to lay down the millions in seed money necessary to raise up a network of conservative think tanks, talking heads, and magazines that would flood the media with right-wing opinions, capture the courts and take control of Congress. Chief among the right-wing sugardaddies was Richard Mellon Scaife, a reclusive billionaire from PIttsburgh, Pennsylvania who controlled much of the Mellon oil fortune.

Through his various foundations, Mellon Scaife helped finance the creation of the pillars of the conservative movement, from the Federalist Society, which spearheaded the right's takeover of the federal court system, to the Heritage Foundation, a think tank that functions as the outsourced brain of the congressional Republicans, to the Media Research Center, a right-wing watchdog group that has helped manufacture the concept of "liberal media bias." The Tea Party, a far-right constellation of pressure groups bankrolled by extraction industry barons like the Koch Brothers, is the latest incarnation of the corporate funded conservative counter-establishment.

Scaife's name turned up again this month in connection with a familiar cabal of right-wing corporate moneymen financing a small and relatively new political network determined to promote Islamophobia throughout America. According to an authoritative 130-page report by the Center for American Progress, a progressive think tank based in Washington, Scaife and other conservative sugardaddies have pumped $42.6 million between 2001 and 2009 into the Islamophobic network. Most of the money has gone to five figures known for bigoted, extremist views on Muslims, Arabs, and people of color. They are: Daniel Pipes, a neoconservative academic who urged Israel to employ methods of terrorism against Palestinian civilians and "raze Palestinian villages;" Frank Gaffney, a rightist national security wonk who has called the practice of Shariah a form of "sedition;" Robert Spencer, a writer and activist who has said that "everyone knows" most or all terrorists are Muslims; Stephen Emerson, a self-styled terror "expert" who blamed Muslims for the bombing of the Oklahoma City Federal Building, which turned out to have been conducted by a right-wing white nationalist terrorist; and David Yerushalmi, a far-right legal activist who has argued that whites are genetically superior to people of color. Behind these figures lies a cadre of equally vitriolic figures like Pamela Geller and Brigitte Gabriel who hype their work. (Read more about the Islamophobic network in my piece, "The Great Fear.")

The Islamophobic network has injected its paranoid vision of a Muslim plot to takeover the United States into the mainstream through the established conservative political apparatus, spreading anti-Muslim hysteria through right-wing radio and heavily trafficked websites like Big Peace, which boasts Gaffney as a key contributor. This year's Republican presidential primary campaign became a platform for Islamophobic conspiracy theories and attacks on Muslim-Americans in general, with candidates http://thinkprogress.org/politics/2011/06/14/244457/gingrich-red-scare/>suggesting on national television that they might demand loyalty oaths for Muslims who want to serve in the federal government. But the Islamophobic crusade has had practical consequences as well. Mosque burnings are becoming a commonplace phenomenon and anti-Muslim attitudes have reached an all-time high among Americans. The most extreme manifestation of the Islamophobic crusade is, of course, the recent terrorist rampage by the Norwegian right-wing activist Anders Behring Breivik, who quoted Robert Spencer, Daniel Pipes and other Islamophobic ideologues scores of times in his manifesto.

While the Islamophobic crusaders are fairly new to most observers of American politics, they are no more than cogs in a well-honed conservative political operation that functions in the top-down style that Powell envisioned. And like Powell, behind their empty rhetoric of freedom lies a deep seated contempt for democracy. The words of Yerushalmi, the extremist legal activist, expose the real sensibility and goals of his movement: "While our constitutional republic was specifically designed to insulate our national leaders from the masses, democracy has seeped up through the cracks and corroded everything we once deemed sacred about our political order," Yerushalmi wrote. "Prior to the Civil War, the electorate, essentially white Christian men, had access to local government. It was here, where men shared an intimacy born of family ties, shared religious beliefs, and common cultural signposts, that representative government was meant to touch our daily lives. With the social and cultural revolution which followed the emancipation, man’s relationship to political order was radically nationalized and democratized. Today, there is simply no basis to resist 'democracy' and the 'open society.'"

The cadre of bigots bankrolled by corporate barons to stir fears of Islam may be focused on stigmatizing Muslims, but they are only a part of a much broader movement whose ultimate target is democracy itself.

Max Blumenthal is the author of Republican Gomorrah (Basic/Nation Books, 2009). Contact him at maxblumenthal3000@yahoo.com.