The Crushing Blow to Mitt’s Quix-Toxic Quest: ‘Good Samaritan’ or ‘Corporate Bandit’

All secure behind closed doors we have seen and heard you Mitt, chumming with your choice of friendlies - ultra-rich supporters. You told us in Tampa you were a man of goodwill and great benevolence. We know the story of the Good Samaritan… However, now we know you, Mitt… You are not that kind of benefactor. You are the worst kind of Taker not a Giver. Some stories/parables from a Christian’s childhood Bible Stories are indelible and belief driving. The parable of the Good Samaritan is just exactly one of those powerful life teachings.

Good Acts and Civic Good – But Does It Pay? The Parable of the Good Samaritan shows even the ‘unbelievers’ have the capacity for economic-free empathy (Georg Pencz Engraving 1543)

Christ told this illusive story to draw out the real meaning of his ministry and God’s wishes for believers. The truth Christ said is that even a man who practices a “cult” religion (Samaritans were a labeled a “sect” for “unorthodox religious practices” during the time of Jesus and where therefore social outcasts)--is more compassion and understanding about human needs and poverty than the Pharisees and the Sadducees of Christ’s own orthodox Jewish practitioners and leaders at the time. The Good Samaritan parable arose out of a challenge given Jesus by a lawyer who confronted him about his ministry and unorthodox practices (such as eating with prostitutes and tax collectors).

Behold, a certain lawyer stood up and tested him, saying, "Teacher, what shall I do to inherit eternal life?" He said to him, "What is written in the law? How do you read it?" He answered, "You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your strength, and with all your mind “[Deuteronomy 6:5]; and “your neighbor as yourself” [Leviticus 19:18]." He said to him, "You have answered correctly. Do this, and you will live." But he, desiring to justify himself, asked Jesus, "Who is my neighbor?" — Luke 10:25–29, World English Bible

Given this challenge Jesus replied with this parable/teaching story:

Jesus answered, "A certain man was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho, and he fell among robbers, who both stripped him and beat him, and departed, leaving him half dead. By chance a certain priest was going down that way. When he saw him, he passed by on the other side. In the same way a Levite also, when he came to the place, and saw him, passed by on the other side. But a certain Samaritan, as he traveled, came where he was. When he saw him, he was moved with compassion, came to him, and bound up his wounds, pouring on oil and wine. He set him on his own animal, and brought him to an inn, and took care of him. On the next day, when he departed, he took out two denarii, and gave them to the host, and said to him, 'Take care of him. Whatever you spend beyond that, I will repay you when I return.' Now which of these three do you think seemed to be a neighbour to him who fell among the robbers?" He said, "He who showed mercy on him." Then Jesus said to him, "Go and do likewise."

Note who did not intervene or help out: A religious priest, and then a lawyer. However, a Samaritan (a heretic member of a religious sect and outcast in the eyes of Jews to whom Jesus was speaking) was “moved with compassion” and “took care of him.” A “Good Samaritan” cares deeply about “victims.”

Sermonizing some pastor Sunday may obtain or gain insight expanding upon this parable for our times. She or he might skip over to refer also to that other story that expounds upon the relationship of the rich to the poor, The Rich Man & Lazarus. (See McGuffey: "The Blind-eyed Marriage of the Conservative Churches to the Excessive & Corrupt Business Practices") Yet using the Good Samaritan as an anchor, the good pastor can illuminate the power of the parable - educated and able men pass by those who have fallen among thieves and pass along indifferent and unmoved by such, a victim.

Those thieves the pastor may chance to connect with the Koch Brothers. who have stolen the clean air and pure water from those who work in their life threatening and notorious, heavily EPA-fined dirty manufacturing and cancer-causing petro operations/leaking pipeline facilities slung across America, many inflicting death and suffering on both Koch workers and communities surrounding them.

Or the pastor could refer to those clever manipulators of corporatocracy (Corporatist Job Thieves) whose lobbying and bribery (ALEC) for loophole and financial friendly legislation seeks laws and regulations which allow them to “steal” the jobs, livelihoods, and local places of employment from working families in order for their own “harvesting” of such community wealth as Mitt has so successfully done in the name of “free enterprise.” (See the video from the 1980’s were Mitt actually uses the term “harvest” when exalting in his shrewd methodology to his backers). These men are the same cut as the “robbers” in Christ’s parable.

One indication of Romney’s involvement in untoward activity and collaboration in the building Bain Capital includes the following:

“After initially struggling to find investors, Romney traveled to Miami in 1983 to win pledges of $9 million, 40 percent of Bain’s start-up money. Some investors had extensive ties to the death squads responsible for the vast majority of the tens of thousands of deaths in El Salvador during the '80s. The investors include the Salaverria family, [whom] former U.S. ambassador to El Salvador, Robert White, has previously accused of directly funding the Salvadoran paramilitaries. In his memoir, former Bain executive Harry Strachan writes Romney pushed aside his own misgivings about the investors to accept their backing. Strachan writes, quote, ‘These Latin American friends have loyally rolled over investments in succeeding funds, actively participated in Bain Capital's May investor meetings, and are still today one of the largest investor groups in Bain Capital.’"

Source: On Democracy Now the piece “Romney’s Death Squad Ties: Bain Launched with Millions from Oligarchs Behind Salvadoran Atrocities”, August 10, 2012.

Let us not forget that super rich cabal that in 1913 persuaded Woodrow Wilson to allow the federal banking system to be privatized and put into the Federal Reserve System. Those same wealthy manipulators did in fact pull or harvest their “takings” from the 1929 stock market crash just prior to The ‘29 Crash, thus using insider information and skills, protecting their wealth and holdings. But at what horrendous human cost and the sowing of the seeds of WW II, a time of high crime against the entire world.

Let’s return to the meaning found in the narrative of the “Good Samaritan”.

Seeing a badly injured man, the victim of a crime, along the roadside is one thing. But notice what Christ said. Look. See. Who was it that decided to observe and assess the man’s conditions of need and simply pass on indifferently?

The entire point of the GOP National Convention in Tampa would appear to be an attempt to “sell” Mitt Romney as a very generous man. Mitt: the benevolent Mormon Bishop. Mitt: the caring family man, etc. Then came Romney’s 47% damning Revelation:

“All right, there are 47% who are with him, who are dependent upon government, who believe that they are victims, who believe the government has a responsibility to care for them, who believe that they are entitled to health care, to food, to housing, to you-name-it. That that’s an entitlement. And the government should give it to them. And they will vote for this president no matter what… These are people who pay no income tax. … [M]y job is not to worry about those people. I’ll never convince them they should take personal responsibility and care for their lives.” “There are 47% of the people who will vote for the president no matter what."

These, Romney’s closed door revelations, were so shocking that Dr. Gregory Prince, a Mormon Historian and powerful defender of his religion, was compelled to proclaim, “Mitt Romney is not the face of Mormonism.” Dr. Prince:

“The issue of Romney's Mormon faith has never gone away, although its presence has waxed and waned as other issues have come and gone. How -- or if -- he chooses to use his religion as part of his public biography is up to him, but the fact that he is the only Mormon ever to be the nominee for the Presidency of a major political party makes it inevitable that even if people do not judge him because of his religion, they will judge his religion because of him. Given the unfolding news of this week, I regret to say that Mitt Romney is not the face of Mormonism.” (Emphasis Added)

So in his Quixotic Campaign Mitt has now devastatingly failed to redeem his father and has, in-fact, brought irreparable damage to his own precious Mormonism tradition. He’s a disgrace; having lost face in his own America, a nation that has never fully understood his cult religion and its place in society.

 Is it any wonder Wife, Ann Romney, would reveal on CBS that she has become very anxious over Mitt’s mental and emotional abilities to carry out the burdens of office, if elected? A lot has been made over the fact that Mitt is clearly more “centered” and “himself” when he’s campaigning accompanied by Paul Ryan and/or Ann, his wife.

 It is more than abundantly clear Mitt is in a unrelenting bind. He cannot control the radical GOP Apparatchiks (Operatives) “not of grand plans, but of a hundred carefully executed details”] who are determined to elect him to act as a figurehead ready to cooperate with an extremist anti-government agenda. That is, they are determined to elect a Republican if only as a compliant “document signer” for their planned radical legislation ala the American Legislative Exchange Council or ALEC’s nationwide agenda and the checklist of the Tea Party’s anti-government blitzkrieg coup d'etat. Now the “Mormon Candidate”, Mitt Romney, once portrayed as a kind and compassionate “Good Samaritan, ” falls prey to his own greed and duplicity--the dangerous vicissitudes of vicious politics. This is a crushing blow to Romney, a man on a crusade to save and rebuild his beloved father’s broken legacy, elevate, and authenticate in the eyes of the nation and the world his own Mormon Faith and bolster his father’s honor as a political leader well-suited to have been elected U.S. President back in 1968. How personally tragic and very, very sad for Mitt! Ann Romney has every reason to worry over the mental well-being of her Mitt; this man has been on the road to the presidency for six long slogging years, far too long to survive without fissures and stress due to the contortions and reversals of personal beliefs/religious training, and ambitions that such a grueling task exacts from a man whose main purpose in life may well-be to find his own place out from under his father's political shadow and avenge his father’s tragic and ignominious rejection from the 1968 GOP Presidential Nomination.

George Romney Campaign Slogan in 1968 – “Great for 68”

Michigan’s Gov. George Romney was rudely ejected from the process ostensibly because of Gov. G.W.R’s statement that he had been “brainwashed” by military brass that were determined to take the nation further into that horrible Vietnam War. It was a war Gov. George Romney abjured as a high quality Mormon on basic Mormon principles and would have no doubt changed the military execution thereof and possibly withdrawn the U.S. from Vietnam as its Commander-in-Chief:

“Initially, (George) Romney supported the Vietnam War, but after a 1965 trip there, he began to question the mission, feeling he had been ‘brainwashed’ by military officials. In August 1967, he articulated his opposition to the war.”

Source: Wikipedia, George W. Romney Campaign 1968 Mormonism, as a religion, has a conflict with serving in the military writes one Mormon; war and killing:

“…(T)here has always been an uneasy alliance between Mormon attitudes about serving in the military and religious devotion. President Spencer W. Kimball famously taught: "We (Americans) are a warlike people, easily distracted from our assignment of preparing for the coming of the Lord. When enemies rise up, we commit vast resources to the fabrication of gods of stone and steel—ships, planes, missiles, fortifications—and depend on them for protection and deliverance. When threatened, we become anti-enemy instead of pro-kingdom of God; we train a man in the art of war and call him a patriot, thus, in the manner of Satan’s counterfeit of true patriotism, perverting the Savior’s teaching: “Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you, and persecute you; “That ye may be the children of your Father which is in heaven.” - (Matthew 5:44–45)" “For many there is a person who kills for country or a traitorous coward. There are no positive terms for a non-combat hometown warrior, peace soldier, or citizen diplomat.” (Emphasis Added)

The exposure of Mitt’s most intimate thoughts concerning and defining the 47% of Americans whose support he forfeits, which Romney identified in Boca Raton as never voting for his candidacy and, coupled with the insider knowledge that his “cult” status as a Mormon was, and is, blocking his hoped-for plurality in the Deep South. This presents an intransient obstacle to his election. From a Brooking Institution Study titled “Does Mitt Romney have a ‘Religious Problem” in May 2012:

“Decades of polling has shown that Mormon candidates face steep obstacles in the American electorate. Roughly one in five Americans say they would not vote for a generally well-qualified nominee for their party who happened to be a Mormon according to Gallop surveys going back to 1967.”] , where “white” Evangelicals [by wide margins according to the Brookings Study make sure “Things are worse in the South, a region with especially high shares of Evangelical Christians. Romney lost Evangelicals (in the 2012 primaries) by 35 points in Louisiana, 33 points in Georgia, 24 points in South Carolina, and 16 points in Tennessee, carrying none of these states).”

Apparently there is a big problem here for Mitt. Southern far-right-religious will not back Mitt and in protest against his “cultist” status –they may “sit this one out”, may refuse to vote for president all together, despite the efforts of the Southern Baptist Convention via Dr. Richard Land’s attempts to assuage his some sixteen million SBC members to see Mormonism as a noble Fourth Abrahamic Religion-not a unique and suspect American Nativist non-Christian Cult, and vote, not for Romney but, directly against a “Black” Barack Obama (believing they are “saving American Exceptionalism” from a Socialist). Actual context of Dr. Land’s Statement:

“As controversy over Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney’s Mormon faith continues to stir among conservatives and other candidates ahead of tomorrow night’s debate, some have questioned whether Mormons can be considered true Christians. “According to Richard Land, President of The Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission, the answer is no. “Most Evangelical Protestants and most conservative Catholics would say no, it is not,’ Land told NBC’s Andrea Mitchell on MSNBC, refuting the notion that Mormonism is a Christian faith. ‘It is another religion. It does not have an orthodox view of the Trinity and the full and complete deity of Jesus Christ.’” He continued: “Perhaps the best way to look at Mormonism is it is the fourth Abrahamic religion. Joseph Smith playing the role of Muhammad, and the Book of Mormon playing the role of the Quran.”

That rancorous old political street fighter and cultural warrior, Pat Buchanan, has weighed in the following manner, in direct reference to the role race plays in the Southern Baptist Convention and the nostalgic Deep South. Joan Walsh, on July 25, 2012 in Salon:

“Remember that Pat Buchanan has compared the Tea Partiers to “George Wallace voters,” and bragged that he won them over to Nixon. Buchanan and [FOX’s Roger] Ailes are trying to do it again, and having a black Democrat in the White House makes them think it will be even easier this time. “Honestly, it won’t be easier. There are too many people of every race who are genuinely not racist, or open to naked racial appeals. I truly believe the vast majority of American voters will judge Obama on his accomplishments or lack thereof in 2012, not the color of his skin. But older white voters scared by social change are a small but reliable base for [FOX’s] Ailes and Buchanan to rely on.”

In another Salon Piece on February 2, 2010, Joan Walsh reported this bit of background:

“I reminded Buchanan that I covered a local tea party last year and worked hard to acknowledge the economic populism and anti-corporate-bailout sentiment animating some of the demonstrators. Whatever. But my favorite part of the debate was when Buchanan bragged about capturing the George Wallace vote for his boss, Richard Nixon, and I called that the “racist” vote. (For the kids, George Wallace was the Alabama governor who preached “segregation now, segregation tomorrow and segregation forever” and stood in the doorway at the University of Alabama to prevent black students from entering in 1963. He ran for president as an independent in 1968 and won five Southern states; Nixon and Buchanan clawed many of his supporters back in 1972, after an assassination attempt put Wallace in a wheelchair.) “Calling the Wallace vote ‘racist’ enraged Buchanan too, and he countered that those racists had voted for Lyndon Johnson in 1964. I acknowledged many of them did: Johnson lost them when he signed the Civil Rights Act of 1964, and he probably knew it at the time, famously remarking (although I can’t find a reliable source for the famous remark) that he’d delivered the South to the Republicans for a long time. Right about then Matthews called time on our segment. “You can dismiss this as dumb cable TV chatter, or ancient history, and that’s your right. But I would urge you not to do either. By bragging about his success in winning the racist Wallace vote for Nixon way back when, Buchanan is (perhaps unconsciously) admitting the through-line from that racist GOP segment through the birthers and extreme anti-Obama tea partiers of today. It’s a remarkable admission. We should pay attention to it.”

How exasperating and angering it must be for so many of those nativist Americans-who still hold racial prejudice and intolerance for Mormonism--a religion outside “born again” Christianity—who have only two major choices in their interpretation of the choices for president in November 2012: Vote for a Cultist or vote against a Black! Historic race between a “Sect-ist” Romney and a “Black” Barack Obama raises a very bifurcated dilemma for the Southern Evangelical American voter . Southern Baptists in particular can vote either against their settled doctrine condemning “sects” or express their “racism” by voting against America’s first black president. Again Brookings:

“Those supposedly anti-Romney voters are among the least supportive of the president. Only one in four, Evangelical Christians has favorable opinions of Obama. (FOX News-Roger Ailes-Racist) Indeed, among Republicans who do not think of Mormons as Christians—that is, the subgroup believed most predisposed against Romney—fully 92% have unfavorable opinions of Barack Obama.” *

*Note: This information is as of May 2012, some of that opposition to Pres. Obama may be changing due to the Romney/Ryan full-frontal attacks on Social Security.  

Guest commentary cross-posted with permission to Kos.

On the Reader:
See the VIDEO of Mitt Romney while at Bain Capital talking  about 'harvesting' profits or read the analysis from the Brookings Institution on Mitt Romney's religion and politics
“Does Mitt Romney have a ‘Religious Problem'”.

Related Slates:
Middling Mitt Romney Not of His Fathers' Sterling Civic Michigan Mettle (Gaskell & George Romney) (June 2012) - Mitt Romney: America’s Nascent Holy “god” & Possible President? (February 2012) - Welcome to Planet Willard: Michigan's Wayward Son Mitt Romney to Rule His Own World (January 2012) and more on Mitt Romney and his father George Romney on the Gazette.

Tea Party Pot Bellies: Michigan's Tea Partiers - What's in their Kettle?

Whistling from their ears, full of steam piped in from the boilers of Koch Petroleum, these angry men and women are pawns of the first order.

Dunces with dulled intellects and greedy with selfish desire to hold on to what little their corporate masters, have deigned to allow them to retain of all their years of work, labor, and endless toil, "Steamed" Tea Party Pot Bellies are in a manipulator's manufactured rage. It's actually one of the saddest stories to be told; it spells out how the public can be conned, hornswoggled, beguiled, into working exactly against what has always been in their best interests, futures, and well-being.

Centers of Civil Discourse Drown Out: American conversation on local concerns in the
corner of the hardware or general store replaced by Big Media and AFP Money
(General Store in Haysi, VA National Archives 1938)

The Michigan TeaPublican (Tea Party Republican) Super Majority back inside the Capitol, all comfy in their leather swivel chairs, faces lit by taxpayer provided laptops, saw an opening to their advantage. True to form,
GOPer's took the easy path: stick to the Corporatist scripts and rad right discipline: Put the burden of revenue off on children, the elderly, the pensioner, the poor, the public servant. By all means protect the business and corporate community!

If only these Republicans strove to serve the real needs of the public as much as they pride themselves in being errand boys/"buds" to business!

What a nunce Snyder is! Says he was "hired" by Michigan to be their "CEO"! Find that in your state constitutions, you uber-strict constitutionalists. It's not there.

Michigan Americans for Prosperity Propaganda Troupes for Senior Citizen as Shock Troops:
Michigan TP'ers at AFP / Mackinac Sponsored Rally in Lansing, MI April 14, 2011 (DailyKos)

Taking a reach-back look at the Lansing Capitol Rally of the Michigan Chapter of Americans for Prosperity (led by Scott Hagerstrom) last spring, one sees photos of row after row of ball capped, balding older white males, supported by carefully placed courtesy folding chairs. They are angry and frustrated waving provocative signs to prove it's just right to be ginned up for projecting anger and blame on someone else and advantage the Rovian Backroom Boys. Steampotters are ripe for backing the blacklash, then when their handlers have taken all the advantage they can, Tea Party Pot Bellies will be toast!

Staring at the ongoing effects of the worst economic catastrophe of our time, the ruinous, failed Bush regime and its unbearable and destructive rampage of eight years (misdirected wars, unprecedented debt, and unequal taxation) was bad enough; not seeing a clear way out, still forced to confront the seemingly intractable flaws and effects of G.W. Bush cataclysm, has left the worried public to sip the bitter dregs resulting from his bad judgment.

Steampotters are forced to stare at a resultant, potential economic and political collapse worldwide. That's too much for a potbellied TeaPartisan under duress and stress. They're ready for a brawl. But with whom? Their neighbors, their grandchildren, the first responders? The cause of their troubles which has them in a kink? They are supporting the very Corporatist interests that have been eroding their nest eggs and killing their democracy. How odd!

Steampotters are damn mad at the demise of their retirement assets stolen by Wall Street and speculators, the trouble their children are enduring, and the loss of their home equity value-stripped as it was in the Bush Bust of 2008. THEY NEED SOMEONE TO BLAME. They are ready to led by the Kochs MEGA-cash-campaigning. As chance would have it, Koch Brothers had shipped in that unsavory character, Dick Morris - and didn't fetish Dick strut his stuff?

Steaming potbellies are addicted to Right's Noise Machine and Rupert Murdock's pap-and-slap
Actually more than 70% of Republicans with cable access watch FOX News exclusively. Nothing satisfies an angry depressed curmudgeon more than more anger and depression. Bad news fuels fear, resentment and aggression.

As dailies, such as the Detroit News and the Grand Rapids Press, slide down the waste pipes, FOX News enriches itself and its Machiavellian owner. An alien with "bought" power and influence. It's a place of influence and profit FOX and Rupert do not deserve.

This is possible because of these same gullible discontents-the more they are depressed the more they want someone else to ante up and bear their far share of load. Many citizens from out the past paid for the infrastructure that was the life-long support of these Tea Party Pot Bellies-now whiners and malcontents.

The whole attitude is: I've got my "little bit" and I'm scared witless it will be lost to someone else. Their mantra: Me, my son John, his wife and my wife, us four and NO MORE. This kind of self-centered selfishness leaves behind both Christianity and neighborhood democracy.

Given permission to lash out and accost others, goaded on by Svengalis re-pleat with talking point books designed to manipulate and exploit exaggerated blame; as long as it distracts the November voters from the Bush Depression (still in bubble wrap) the danger plays right into the hands of the negativists who inhabit both the Detroit News and the dank dens of the deceitful enemies of public life and service.

Warming the Factories of Manufacturing and the Middleclass: Garland Stove Company's
World's Largest Stove, Postcard Detroit MI 1893 (Michigan Historical Archives)

Amway's Richard M. DeVos Sr. and the Brothers Koch are thought to be Depression proof. However, if they can manipulate the TeaPartisans to do the heavy lifting to lobby to remove regulations, and overturn customer protections, and collective bargaining rights, etc. to greatly benefit them and the other greedy Corporatists - this would be perfect timing.

And to assuage the pent-up anger and the angst tearing at the gut of Tea Potbelliers, what do the current Rad Republicans offer?

Actually Harry Truman laid out the genuine GOP "offers" best:

• Republicans approve of the American farmer, but they are willing to help him go broke.
• They stand four-square for the American home - but not for housing.
• They are strong for labor - but they are stronger for restricting labor's rights.
• They favor minimum wage - the smaller the minimum wage the better.
• They endorse educational opportunity for all - but they won't spend money for teachers or for schools.
• They think modern medical care and hospitals are fine - for people who can afford them.
• They consider electrical power a great blessing - but only when the private power companies get their rake-off.
• They think American standard of living is a fine thing - so long as it doesn't spread to all the people.
• And they admire of Government of the United States so much that they would like to buy it.

Harry T. enjoyed the blunt truth of strongly brewed black coffee in a big cup, not a steamy tea made with the deadly Kool-Aid of the Koch Bros. subversions, et. al. served up in a Koch Industries-made throwaway paper cup.

On the Reader:
History on the Garland Company Giant Stove and what happened to this Michigan landmark.
Gazette posts on the Americans For Prosperity run Tea Party Rally April 14, 2011 pictured above in "Greedy Bros Koch-Bought & Paid for Visi-Galts: The Randian Libertarian Spawn - Gleefully Storm the Gates of the People’s House in Lansing, MI" and "Americans for Prosperity’s Cotton Head Grump Out, High on Motrin 800, Fizzles.

Related Posts:
In Detroit: Resentment, Malice & Roaring Opportunism Ride a Wave of Harsh Tea Party Ideology (April 2012) - Revisit Occupy Detroit: the Tea Party is Different – Hank Payne’s Myopic View (November 2011) - The Occupy Wall Street Activists & Grassroots Tea Party Activists Have a Lot in Common (October 2011) - It Was No Frenzy Island: Neanderthals & the Nerd (Republican Leadership Conference on Mackinac Island) (September 2011) - Teaparty leader: The More We Pay Attention - The More Hopeless it Can Seem, Political Parties Only Exist to Get and Keep Power (February 2011) - Saint Ayn - Extolling Great Evil - Used As Source of Tea Party Political Punch Lines

Original.

De onversneden Filistijnen: Pernicious and Pugnacious Michigan Tea Party Philistines Assert a Self-Righteous Tsunami of Testosterone

There's a Southwest Michigan Dutch Hollander expression for the "enemy" unworthy of praise "De onversneden Filistijnen" meaning loosely in Dutch - the uncut Philistines - translation: "the uncircumcised" or out-group in moral and cultural terms-from whom the Hollanders actively separate and religiously abjure. The arch-conservative or "zwarte kousen"- the "black stocking" people of Southwest Michigan and environs use this foreign phrase to define their enemies. Zwarte Kousen, the radical religious extremists of Southwest Michigan, are not-at-all typical of the greater population of the Netherlands.

The Dutch Revolt - Decades of Battling for Religious Freedom (1568-1648): Dutch Protestants resisted the domination and perceived tyranny of the Spanish occupying Catholic Church (Engraving by Frederik Muller 1569)

The Dutch of Europe are:

"Long known as the bastion of liberalism and tolerance, the Netherlands has now been declared home to the least prejudiced people in Europe."

Unsavory Rogues: Well-Dressed Male Legislative Bullies & Bellicose Blockheads
A huge portion of the impulse and projection of overly zealous power of Michigan's TeaPublicans (Tea Party Republicans) arises from this unsavory group of male bullies and blockheads, men who find themselves in a super majority and cannot and/or will not limit themselves from over-boarding their perception of God's gift of power and influence is bestowed upon themselves: power and moral fitness make them "righteous." This group of men has dominated West Michigan politics and business for a long period.

These radical Republicans are sponsored in large part, and paid into politics: sustained, bought, and buoyed, by the nouveau riche Amway Clan -- the Richard M. (Rich) DeVos Sr. and Jay Van Andel families-at-large. These Amway scions, have been enriched by billions plucked from the "dead-end dreams" of suckers - (recruits churned into seeking a fortune from soap selling in a MLM/product-based pyramid scheme-where over 98% fail miserably and pay a heavy personal cost).

The Amwayites (founders of Amway/Alticor) believe themselves on a mission from God. They are the self-appointed members of the "hounds of Heaven" out to purge the state and its laws of all things offensive to their narrow and short-sighted tastes. (while enhancing in every way their grip on mega-wealth and the final say in all things business related.) As spokesperson Betsy DeVos put it, "We expect a return on our investment." Over the years the "returns" from shrewdly placed political investments has paid off for Amway, big time, they milk the game fully!

Now, amid this orgy of "rightness," the Tea Party faction in the Michigan GOP has placed US Representative Dave Agema in the top political post of the party, GOP National Committeeman. Agema will go on to "infect" the larger body politic with his special brand of self-importance and superiority. Nasty political snobbery will be his trademark and calling card.

Agema, a Frisian, is a member of a specific sub-culture originating in a ill-famous lowland province of the Netherlands. It's a Dutch sub-culture of which former Congressman Pete Hoekstra is also a prominent member-and more importantly-a direct child immigrant from that special area of Holland.

Frisians are known to members of the Michigan Dutch Community for their special characteristics which distinguish them as a sub-group (tribe): super-stubborn and opinionated, extremely hardheaded, specifically limited socially, hardly tolerant, and certainly not liberal in a religious or cultural sense.

The recent flareup against two members of the legislature who are ladies reflects a deeper and more pernicious affliction amongst this group of men, highly influenced by West Michigan's "black stocking" faction -- angst and mistrust. Theirs is an outright fear of women and female power to move agendas and influence decisions many of these "old world" / paternalistic-minded males (governing people in a fatherly manner, especially by providing for their needs without giving them rights or responsibilities.) They believe God gives them preemption over women, government is a realm left only to men.

The George Lakoff image of "strict father" - master disciplinary of his house - lay out the most appropriate and descriptive model for the TeaPublican talking-points approach to politics. "Harsh discipline" and "complete male-control morals" fits the present atmospherics in the Lansing Capitol to a "T," what with the on-going "V" revolt!

Michigan’s self-righteous tsunami of testosterone projects just the right set of overweening evil drives and vengeance on to destroy the quality of life in our state

Much of the ongoing theatrics and rudeness of behaviors in the torrent of conservative savage attacks on women and their status, their jobs, their retirement, and their health care (in larger terms) in the Michigan state legislature comes from the pre-New Testament concepts rooted in the Genesis account given in the Old Testament. This permission to override female judgment and opinion, the choices and goals of women, comes directly from the continuing belief (however quaint and mythical) that the "fall of man" comes directly from the fault of a woman (think St. Augustine).

Elaine Pagel in her book "Adam, Eve, and the Serpent" (New York: Random House, 1988) explained it for John R. Mabry, who writes:

"A recent study I did on St. Augustine of Hippo convinced me that the starting point for guilt as a staple of Christian life began with him. As Elaine Pagels points out in her marvelous book Adam, Eve, and the Serpent, what the Jews and early Christians had read for centuries as 'a story of human freedom became, in [Augustine's] hands, a story of human bondage.' Instead of being a story about the gift of moral freedom, as St. John Chrysostom proclaimed, Augustine taught that 'Adam's sin not only caused our mortality but cost us our moral freedom, irreversibly corrupted our experience of sexuality... and made us incapable of genuine political freedom.'"

(Emphasis Added)

Does this sound silly or unbelievable to you? And what place does this theological contrivance have in modern, legitimate civic affairs?

Mayhap you are not attuned with the deeper theolotics behind and invasive in the present fanaticism and outrage going on in many churches (Christian Dominionists, Michigan's Citizens for Traditional Values - a well-known member: State Representative Tom McMillin (R - Rochester, MI) and in the hidden corners of the Opus Dei Vatican and Michigan's Tom Monahan (Read “Tom Monaghan becomes national power broker for GOP Catholic candidates” that appeared in the Naples News in September 2008.

Testosterone Fear Runs Wild in Evangelical Circles
Things have grown so out of hand , so irreverent and absurd, that Christianity Today has a cover story entitled “Forever Young: The Juvenilization of the American Church, the inside story: When Are We Going to Grow Up? The Juvenilization of American Christianity” by Thomas Bergler.
Amazon Book Notes expands:

“(Thomas) Bergler shows too how this "juvenilization" of churches has led to widespread spiritual immaturity, consumerism, and self-centeredness, popularizing a feel-good faith with neither intergenerational community nor theological literacy.”

Meanwhile in the real world of pain and gain: Pernicious and Pugnacious Philistines are in complete control of the political direction of Michigan-Michissippi is on a tsunamic crest. 

Those the conservative Southwest Michigan Dutch Hollanders diss as the "De onversneden Filistijnen" they themselves have become "concubines," as it were, to another set of rogue Dutchmen: the Koch Brothers and their powerful lobby the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) - the Koch's effective and secret way to legislative directly into corporate advantage.

Those the conservative Southwest Michigan Dutch Hollanders may diss the "De onversneden Filistijnen" yet it is they themselves who have become the neo-Philistines playing Animal House - a consequence of their own overblown evil ambitions and greed.

On the Reader:
Read the book "Adam, Eve, and the Serpent: Sex and Politics in Early Christianity" by Elaine Pagels (Vintage 1989) or an interview with George Lakoff on language and 'reframing' in "Framing the issues: UC Berkeley professor George Lakoff tells how conservatives use language to dominate politics" (Berkley News 2003).


Related Slates:
The Blind-eyed Marriage of the Conservative Churches to the Excessive & Corrupt Business Practices (April 2012) - Mitt Romney: America’s Nascent Holy “god” & Possible President?

More on theolitics or the role of religion in politics under "Christian Values" on the Gazette.

The Original Post was CENSORED and DELETED by the editorial staff at the Detroit News and Michigan View.

What the Frack Fellas? Morality and Michigan's Environment - Back When & Now Then

In response to recent hydro-fracking enabling legislation, ad campaigns and spin led by ALEC and Big Oil surrogates in the Midwest (Michigan & Ohio).

"To waste, to destroy, our natural resources, to skin and exhaust the land instead of using it so as to increase its usefulness, will result in undermining in the days of our children the very prosperity which we ought by right to hand down to them amplified and developed."
- Theodore Roosevelt, in a Speech to Congress on December 3, 1907

"[Conservation] is the chief material question that confronts us, second only and second always to the great fundamental questions of morality."
- Theodore Roosevelt, Proceedings of a Conference of Governors in the White House, May 13-15, 1908

You Gotta Love Teddy: The Bull Moose Who Went to Bat
for America's Natural Treasures (Theodore Roosevelt National Achieves c.1910)

Memorial Day and its participants, those steadily declining visages of past conflicts like the Spanish-American War of Teddy's day to today's World War II veterans who have been hailed as the Greatest Generation, remind us all that a precious and hard won victory over oppression and an evil corporate-run government in the hands of foreign tyrants was secured by a stupendous act of redemption-not only for America, but the entire world.

One writer has lamented the deterioration of that honor, the tarnishing of heroic valor, the death of that victory, due to the excesses of the corporatist control of all levels of state and federal governance, the sorry state of affairs we now face:

"Back when people were actually almost "free" (immediately after WWII), when public education was not just another empty promise - and the trend in life was toward a better tomorrow for everyone - at that time 'control' was in retreat, and progress was the theme of every hour. Now what we have is control of every idiotic facet of everyday existence - rules for every waking act, every thought that is not controlled is seen as the enemy of the state (the corporatocracy).

"Our entire way of life has been stolen and shall never return to the lazy and hopeful days of living and loving, of joy and promise, with the possibility for doing real and meaningful things with one's own life - not to mention being able to envision a better world for more and more people - whose lives were so far below the levels we enjoyed.

" Instead of that promise, instead of that possibility - what we have now is the outright worship of Mistrust, of Fear, and of Paranoia - along with obscene profits for those who have purchased all the politicians, and who control every facet of this once nearly free society.

"If American life were a sporting event - today's game would be one in which all the officials and the referees had all been pre-purchased by what would obviously be the winning team. Now companies 'police' their own activities, deciding for themselves when they've gone too far - or stolen too much. The original point behind government providing a watchdog over industry - was to keep the playing fields equal - between players and owners."
(emphasis added)

The writer is on the right scent.

Take the following example from a Nation of Change article entitled "ALEC Slips Exxon Loophole into New Ohio Law":

"Wake up and smell the frack fluid. But don't ask what's in it, at least not in Ohio, cause it's still not your right to know. Ohio is in the final stages of making an Exxon trojan horse on hydrofracking into state law, and it appears that the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) connected Exxon's lawyers with co-sponsors of Ohio Senate Bill 315: at least 33 of the 45 Ohio legislators who co-sponsored SB 315 are ALEC members, and language from portions of the state Senate bill is similar to ALEC's 'Disclosure of Hydraulic Fracturing Fluid Composition Act.'...disclosure of fracking fluids? On behalf of ExxonMobil?

Frack fluids include unknown chemicals that gas drillers mix with sand and large amounts of water. The mixture is pumped underground at high pressure in order to retrieve gas and oil by fracturing shale formations. These are the chemicals that have caused widespread concern among residents near gas fracking operations; concerns echoed by doctors who don't know how to treat patients harmed by exposure to chemicals that oil companies keep secret. Oil companies like XTO Energy, a subsidiary of ExxonMobil, the first company lined up to drill in Ohio's Utica shale."

(emphasis added)

Milking Mother Michigan: Fracking (Shale Sands) Map
of the Lower 48 US States (US Energy Information Agency May 2011)

The blatant use of power and immense amounts of cold, secret cash to push aside the welfare and rightful concerns of the population in order to accomplish whatever is in the Corporatists' self-interest is best shown in the ongoing activity of the Koch Brothers cabal comprised chiefly of the Americans for Prosperity and The American Legislative Exchange Council.

It has become exposed and shown to the public that things so dastardly are being rammed through blindsided/defenseless state legislatures by A.L.E.C. members in those bodies, and ALEC's fellow travelers, that many premiere brands, former sponsors and supporters of ALEC, have bailed out of this corporate-owned and operated 'plug and play' Rad Right legislative mill.

What a blow to ALEC to have Walmart, Coke, Blue Cross and so many other familiar brands and corporations pull out of the Koch Bros. American Legislative Exchange Council. Yet here in Michigan A.L.E.C. powers on. The Mackinac Center for Public Policy joyfully and recently submitted in its own suggested boilerplate legislation, developed here in Michigan, to be promoted by ALEC nationwide.

US Rep. Dave Agema, a Michigan ALEC member and a Rad Right Screaming Eagle, succeeds, with the backing of the Koch's crowd, becoming Michigan's upstart male National Republican Committee member. Little wonder, when over 100 past or present members of the Michigan Legislature are /or have been complainant ALEC members.

Business Trumps Nature Leaving Just Stumps: When Michigan Big Business gets it all - Statewide Clear Cutting of Millions of Acres in the 1880-90's (Upper Peninsula Lumbering Operations Anon c.1880)

How do you suppose Michigan Koch-Heads will handle our fracking questions when the time comes to regulate (OR NOT) the fracking permits and permissions so intensely sought by Koch oil and other such interests? Last century rich investors left the face of Michigan a stubble of stumps, but the fact is nobody knows what toxic fluids flow through far flung fracking pumps.

Michigan families and their many out state guests have enjoyed its wealth of nature, pure beauty, fertile soils, and its bounty and plenty.

Who cares? We care!

Our state, with its tremendous water resources, must care; it's our wonderland heritage won and protected by heroes and workers, farmers and tradesmen, now so blatantly threatened by the overweening Corporatocracy and the greed of the rich and powerful 1%.

What the Frack? Will the Koch Brothers blast TDR off Mt Rushmore too?

On the Reader:

• Michigan grassroots movement website "Ban Michigan Fracking" and Michigan Petition Drive website "Let's Ban Fracking" 
• Key articles on Fracking in The World in "Burning water, contamination and natural gas 'fracking'" (16 May, 2011) and details about the relationship between ALEC and Heartland Institute in "Heartland Institute and ALEC Partner to Pollute Classroom Science" (March 30, 2012) and more MAPS on Oil Spills and Fracking Accidents across the country and in Michigan.
• Teddy Roosevelt and history of "Conservation as Morality" by Jessica Sheffield (January 2011)

Related Slates:
More of Teddy Roosevelt and ALEC in the Gazette.

Original.

Rick Snyder & the American Legislative Exchange Council’s (ALEC) Corporatist “Disaster Capitalism” on the Prowl in Michigan

Behold the Nerd Snyder's brass knuckled attacks on public education and local democracy; they are more brazen and destructive than former Gov. Engler's legendary ham-fisted assaults. Über-Ugly is on the rise, again.

Michigan Governor Rick Snyder is utilizing the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) crib notes, a recall offense. The “Nerd” Governor can't make a move without employing ALEC models & policies and support from Michigan’s long history with ALEC and a long list of ALEC members.

Foremost in his attacks is his beefed up Emergency Manager Law and Emergency Managers in Michigan (EM) through Michigan Republican sponsored (led by the EM controlled Benton Harbor's own Phil Pavlov who championed the bill) EM dictatorial powers given Snyder appointed one-man rule set against the rights of local government under Michigan's long revered and respected "local control".

Also, TeaPublican Snyder continues to lead systemic Republican attacks on teachers and public schools (in all categories) and aggressively seeks to take down the very foundations of Michigan Public Education (rules, operations and imposition of privatization).

Lastly many, many areas of Michigan’s laws, rules and regulations are being “adjusted” at a furious pace to fit the whims of the Michigan Chamber of Commerce, The Mackinac Center for Public Policy (spin-off of the national arch-conservative Heritage Foundation), and Americans for Prosperity (AFP) - heavily backed by the Koch Bros. and mega-wealthy families like Michigan's own DeVos & Van Andel clans.

It’s a virtual, spiral corporate feeding frenzy!

Corporate Coups d'état: How ALEC is creating Corporatocracy
across the Nation state-by-state, bill-by-bill, Legislator-by-Legislator

Michigan has become an infamous "Mean TeaPublican" Battleground State

Scott Hagerstrom, the Director of the Koch-funded Michigan Americans for Prosperity (AFP) makes it clear, that it is the Kochs, working directly through ALEC, that have provided the AFP plans to the Michigan Tea Party, to eliminate all organized resistance from the political sphere, and as Scott says, they are aiming to "take the unions out at the knees." This belligerence started in Wisconsin and now it's spreading across the country.

Snyder and crew have sought to make their attacks “below the radar” using methods that accomplish virtually the same things Wisconsin’s Gov. Scott Walker (attempting to raise money in Michigan to fight his recall) has attempted, but doing so in a backhanded way.  Walker’s M.O. has been replacement legislation, Snyder has used "substitution" and "amendments" to settled legislation to accomplish his “re-invention.”

Snyder's in a world of trouble. Snyder's causing the kids of this state, our kids, to go into panic. Their schools, bus transportation, art & music, sports programs, band and field trips, advanced placement classes and/or ability to take a class at a near by college or university (while still in high school) - all this and more, much more is on the cutting table.

The concepts that are the core of the Snyder program (to reinvent by destroying what we have, to rebuild in the mode Rick dictates) use the metrics and formulas of ALEC as found in its fabricated playbook of data and theories in “Rich States, Poor States”.

The American Legislative Executive Council is a heretofore unknown far right, Koch Bros. et. al. think tank - controlled and funded by major corporations which have found a way to force feed the various state legislative bodies with legislation and resolutions championing and directly benefiting their specific needs.

The following is a partial list of ALEC's other corporate backers, those we know of, from Wikipedia:

• Amway
• American Nuclear Energy Council
• American Petroleum Institute
• Coors Brewing Company
• Exxon Mobil
• The National Rifle Association
• Pharmaceutical Research & Manufacturers of America
• Philip Morris
• R.J. Reynolds Tobacco
• Texaco
• VISA
• and others.

Groups critical of ALEC claim that the organization is controlled by the entities that fund it’s operations and confabs, subsequently promote these donors' agendas and goals, along with making carefully crafted attempts to advance legislation which favor and advantage their interests.

The American Legislative Exchange Council is a political/ideological powerhouse, second to none. It calls corporate-serving shots nationwide. Most recently the power of ALEC has been laid bare in Wisconsin, Michigan, and Ohio, although ALEC subterfuge and "mainlining" of "just-fill-in-the-blanks" corporate written and approve legislation for states has been brought to the public's attention.

Little attention has been paid up until now as to the key early members were, those who set the tone and greased the skids for what has come to follow.

More than 30 years ago, a small group of state legislators and conservative policy advocates met in Chicago to implement a vision:

“A nonpartisan membership association for conservative state lawmakers who shared a common belief in limited government, free markets, federalism, and individual liberty. Their vision and initiative resulted in the creation of a voluntary membership association for people who believed that government closest to the people was fundamentally more effective, more just, and a better guarantor of freedom than the distant, bloated federal government in Washington, D.C.”

At that meeting, in September 1973, state legislators, including:

• then Illinois State Rep. Henry Hyde,
• conservative activist Paul Weyrich, leader of the New Traditionalist movement
• Lou Barnett, a veteran of then Gov. Ronald Reagan’s 1968 presidential campaign

“(These men) together with a handful of others, launched the American Legislative Exchange Council.”

Among those who were involved with ALEC in its formative years were:

• Robert Kasten and Tommy Thompson of Wisconsin
• John Engler of Michigan
• Terry Branstad of Iowa
• John Kasich of Ohio

“(A)ll of whom moved on to become governors or members of Congress.”

Congressional members who were active during this same period included:

• Senators John Buckley of New York,
• Jesse Helms of North Carolina, and
• Congressmen Phil Crane of Illinois
• Jack Kemp of New York.

Source: The American Legislative Exchange Council’s home site in “About ALEC”.

Anyone with a smidgen of knowledge about the power and thrust of the Far Right, or what Grand Rapids native former President Jerry Ford called the “Hard Right,” knows the power, impact and influence the above mentioned group of “reactionaries and revolutionaries” on the outer fringe of radical conservatism have had.  Observers also know the great and course-changing impact these men had, and continue to have, on today’s governance.

ALEC's activities are very widespread and endemic to the lawmaking processes of state legislatures across the country, and for that reason, their activities have been accepted through ignorance of the secret and underlying purposes and objectives they promote.  The public finds it hard to believe such a group exists. But they do. Consider: "ALEC has approximately 2,000 legislative members representing all 50 states, as well as more than 85 members of Congress and 14 sitting or former Governors who are considered 'ALEC alumni'" (Source: Wikipedia, CMD and VLTP who has reported on ALEC in most levels of US Courts as well).

The ALEC Koch Trade in Michigan
Thus, as Snyder attempts to roll out his jaundiced version of what's good for your child in Michigan's public schools it is only fair that we accelerate  the process of ferreting out who's underwriting these "re-inventive" concepts and in coughing up the statistics of the kind that Snyder uses to make his full-frontal, brutal raid on our neighborhood schools.

If you love outsiders dictating to Michigan (who, what, when and where about your child or grandchild's education) you will want to follow the revelations coming about Snyder's the sources behind Rick's snide attacks on schools and the teachers who teach.

As ALEC purposefully puts Michigan schools in the worst light possible, Snyder accepts that flawed data. His response, "It's a fact." No, governor, it's as filtered and reported by ALEC and staff doing the insidious work of the anti-public schools crowd.

The 2008 ALEC Education Report barked our Michigan public schools, placing them at the near bottom with the right-to-work paradises, the Gulf states, such as Alabama, Mississippi, and Georgia. These are states with significant minority student populations. ALEC reports highlights states on the boarder with/or closer to Canada to the north: Minnesota, New Hampshire, South Dakota, Montana, where minority students are far less concentrated; these states are ranked highest. No genus is needed to find an important factor in those findings.

ALEC employed ideological bully William Bennett to head up its annual education report.  (He's the harsh critic of public education, whom Reagan put into the Carter established Department of Education to obfuscate and destroy as much as possible of this far right-hated federal cabinet post). Bennett also runs a for-profit business. K-12 Inc is Bennett's idea of what he would like to do to profit from public education, especially through the means of privatizing as much of its functions as possible. Bennett covets a major economic windfall from the potential passage of Snyder’s radical "Cyber Schools" legislation (through his stake in K-12 Inc.) being interjected into Michigan’s education system.

K-12 Inc. also has had among its shareholders those well-known parochiaid/voucher mavens, Dick & Betsy DeVos.

See also: “The Truth About Cyber Schools” on Blogging for Michigan January 23, 2012 and long history of ALEC and Right-Wing orgs like Heritage involvement in education - “School Choice”, Charter Schools and Public School Privatization.

Michigan Pieces in Place: Snyder as the Pawn of the Kingpin
Koch Bros, Scaife, Olin and DeVos Family ALEC  Corporatocracy

Snyder's vision, informed and directed by The American Legislative Exchange Council and the Wealthy Elite, is another brazened attempt at an radical right-wing coup in Michigan, the same one all Americans are facing across the Nation. 

It isn't the re-invention ideal as Snyder proclaims: it's retro-pursuit of the long-standing disenfranchising goals designed to destroy America's great institution, free public education. In this process the harsh critics have found a willing pawn in Snyder. Combine this too, with the creation Snyder's Jim Crow EM Plantations in multiple Michigan cities, the latest target being Detroit, and the destruction of basic principals of democracy, representation of elected officials, perhaps the pawn, is really "castling" all Michiganders, king to rook.

ALEC's long march goes on, as the public will see
For the DeVos’ and in particular Betsy DeVos, the Koch Brothers (backers and funders of ALEC) and the mom & pop family-business-killers-the Waltons of Wal-Mart - public education is a target of great opportunity for quick profit and power lust.

The next major attack is already underway; again funded and cheered on by Betsy DeVos. It's her dismemberment and undermining of public universities and colleges.

Who would believe anyone, much less today’s radicalized Republicans, would literally stoop so low as to turn government and the taxpayers against our local schools so much a part of our state like in Ovid, White Pine, Monroe and Alpena, communities where and kids matter so much.  Republicans cannot hate teachers and professors and at the same time hold a dishonest honest claim to care about students.

The Michigan TeaPartisan's (Michigan Tea Party Republicans) radical and aggressive punishment attacks on educators are a clear indication of a very low-class mentality, festooned with haranguing diatribes, and the extremely rude conduct on the part of select TeaPartisans during education hearings in Michigan's legislature; all centered on crashing down on education and educators. Such is the sorriest of sights.

Snyder's ALEC centered education plan is a tragic loss - loss for Michigan's kids. And a tragic loss for taxpayers supporting neighborhood public schools. Killing local option and local government via the dictatorial EM regime is just plain evil and unacceptable.

Suppressing the right to vote and taking away the power of elected officials in units confiscated by Snyder can only be described as totalitarian in spirit.

The public must step up and fight back.  Not tomorrow, Today!

On the Reader:
Read a detailed SERIES on Betsy DeVos organizations attacking Public Education across the county by Rachel Tabachnick:
Part One: Voucher Advocate Betsy DeVos, Right-Wing Think Tanks Behind Koch-Style Attack on Public Schools 
Part Two: Pro-Voucher Astroturfing:  Campaigns Across Nation Coordinated by DeVos, Funded by a Few Mega-Donors 
Part Three: Betsy DeVos Announces PA Governor Tom Corbett Will Keynote Pro-Voucher National Policy Summit

Further reading on the American Legislative Exchange Council:
Investigate more about ALEC and read ALEC model legislation on the ALECexposed.org portal.
Read a Report on ALEC connections to Congress and the Federal Courts.
Read a early series of articles on ALEC in the Nation.
See how many ALEC bills and laws in US States identified so far.
Read a list of US and Multinational ALEC Corporate Members identified.
See what ALEC investigators and researchers have uncovered in State Reports on ALEC:
Arizona (Supplement) - Maine - Missouri - Michigan - New Hampshire - New Jersey - Ohio - Pennsylvania - Texas - Utah - Virginia - Wisconsin or find more information on your State.

Related Slates:
First piece focused on ALEC Disaster Capitalism on the Gazette:
Rick’s Re-Invention: A.L.E.C.’S Corporatist “Disaster Capitalism” on the Rise (April 2011)
Piece on Betsy Devos, ALEC and Education on the Gazette:
Betsy DeVos & The Amway Clan’s Abject Failure to Reach High Moral Ground via “Corporate Social Responsibility” (December 2011)

Best of ALEC posts on the American Legislative Exchange Council on the Gazette:
No Brainer Legislation & No Brain Legislators who slavishly deliver for the Corporatocracy (via ALEC) inside Michigan’s Legislature (July 2011)
Our Guides to the Bottomless Pit: Wolfram, Von Hayek, Lewis F. Powell, & A.L.E.C. (September 2011)
Smart A.L.E.C. in the Michigan: The secret is There is No Secret… But Oh Yes, There Is! (July 2011)
Who needs the Koch Brothers? We’ve Got Rick Snyder, ALEC and his “Buffo” Team of Privatizers! (July 2011)
Michigan ALEC State Chair Sen. Tonya Schuitmaker: A Cheery Face & A Fake Defense  promoting corporatist direct access to Michigan lawmaking (August 2011)

More on the American Legislative Exchange Council (tag) and the Emergency Management issue series in EM Plantation/Jim Crow on the Gazette.

Rick Snyder's 'Reinvention": Not the Answer, but Now the Growing Problem

Rick Snyder has exercised disturbing authoritarian means to get to control and inflict re-invention on all things Michigan.

We are now living in Michissippi.

Our great state has been taken down one fragment at a time by the Business Leaders for Michigan, The Mackinac Center for Public Policy, the Michigan Chapter of the Koch Bros.' Americans for Prosperity, and the Michigan Chamber of Commerce.

Rick Snyder in a caricature by Henry Payne Editor of
the MichiganView.com (Detroit News March 2012)

"Nerd" Snyder has been especially adept at extensive use of procedural sleight of hand to ram through his über-corporatist agenda. The amount of shift to business gains over citizen loss has been unprecedented.

Certainly, the hamfisted and conniving John Mathias Engler never reached this level of "revolution," though God knows he tried. Yet it is the format of Englerism that laid the groundwork for this coupe de tat that Snyder has pulled.

Snyder and companies have rammed though a long list of A.L.E.C  (Corporate designed and perfected 'model' legislation in many fragments-backed in large part by the Koch Bros.) directly and swiftly into legislative tax changes, tax increases, deregulation, and give-backs that are already undermining Michigan.

Did anyone notice that tax revenues were reportedly down by $75 million in the most recent cycle...? Just as predicted by this commentator; the removal of over $2 billion in new taxes pension and annuities, the removal of "individual item" pricing at retailers (resulting in loss of jobs and consumer protection), and other reductions in services, salaries, and safety net supplements to children, etc. has broken down the vital chain of customer demand in Michigan.


Snyer's reinvention is not the cure, the answer, formula for deliverance for an ailing Michigan economy in a "one state depression." No, Rick Snyder Reinvention is the PROBLEM!

Snyder's reinventive, revolutionary unconstitutional Enhanced Emergency Manager scheme set up and run by crafty legal corporations and bean counters will show itself to be rife with unbelievable chicanery and potential for white collar corruption.

The central control of Snyder's new "We know best" socialist regime is enough to make even the New York Times' Thomas Friedman jealous.

Friedman has looked at the Red Chinese in the People's Republic and pined aloud. Quoth Hank, Friedman " has been openly jealous of Chinese Communist rule as a way of quickly imposing societal makeovers that force green technologies," or so writes Payne in his personal blog.

Payne sees the sliver in the eye of Friedman, and denies the existence of a rail tie in his own optic.

Michissippi is on the super highway to nowhere and Snyder Inc. has paved the way.

Related Slates:
Rick Snyder’s Relentless Positive Action (RPA) Has Devolved Into Pitiless Regressive Aggression & Trespass (PRAT) - "Tricky Rick & His 'Nerd Herd' Play Dangerous Economic Game in Michigan" - "Nerd Snyder: Nada Jobs "- "Discover Michissippi’s (Michigan's) Corporate Bosses: The Elites Who Now Run Snyder & the GOP Super Majority Legislature" - "The Free Fire Kill Zone: Snyder’s War on Michigan’s Real People"

More on Rick Snyder and Rick Snyder Policy and the term "Michissipi" on the Gazette.

Original.

Nerd Snyder: Nada Jobs (Governor Rick Snyder: No New Jobs for Michigan)

Michissippians are increasing feeling mounting pressures in their personal financial stress and nervousness about their futures; not only their own futures, but those of their children and grandchildren. They are frustrated and angry with Rick Snyder, who promised to be a quick and thorough solution to the state's economic downturn and its one state depression.

Snyder promised moderate and reasonable re-inventive, pro-active scenarios designed to cure our economic ills and now for one entire year, the one MAJOR area of greatest concern: JOBS, Snyder has been purposefully neglected. Meanwhile, anti-family, anti-worker, anti-public service mavens carve out entire sections of our economy for private gain.

WE GET IT NOW
Let things go south/go sour as far as possible, then come in with radical disaster capital style-solutions. We got the Wild West of American Legislative Exchange Council Corporate "put and take" legislation: Everything business wants, nothing for the 99 % who are essentially all of us.

2011 was the year of the TeaPublicans and Snyder played both ARSONISTS AND FIREMEN with the economy and the general welfare of our citizens. They ravished and defiled democratic principles.

NO JOBS and attendant UNSUSTAINABLE LEVELS OF UNEMPLOYMENT face the nervous populace and Nerd Snyder smirks at us; just wait he has a plan! We have been promised on jobs and an upsurge in manufacturing, yet the Nerd is NADA on progress in this area!

The TeaPublican SuperMajority in Lansing is on a vicious rampage; delivered in large part by outside forces: Dick Armey, Charles and David Koch (KOCH, DAVID (NY), donated $988,604 to MI GOP related PAC's) pushed the Americans for Prosperity, its efforts headed up by Ruppert's/ FOX's infamous Dick Morris. Capitalizing on angry people, who would come out to shout and banish side arms, gin up their neighbors at the breakfast bar or the local dive-they succeeded in pulling off a classic astroturf rebellion-the Michigan legislative elections of 2010. This was and is a one time event!

These TP/ non-participating Libertarian-leaning curmudgeons in biker garb and beer caps are a natural extension of ABATE and fans of the aging, amoral, obscene/punk/pundit /rocker, Ted Nugent. Their Bagger Themes: We Got Ours! We fight all taxes. Just leave us alone. Michissippi: A state inhabited by these types and some nearly three dozen radical, armed, extremist militia groups is headed in a hellacious and destructive direction.

Allowing TeaPartisans who pander and pony up to the Corporatocracy has not brought relief from unemployment nor has it resulted in new industry, manufacturing and or jobs. In fact, one of the corporations represented on the Board of Directors for Business Leaders for Michigan, American Axle, is pulling up, leaving a gapping hole in Michigan's manufacturing base and with the loss of 500 jobs (on Snyder's ticket) that's a move that has a multiplier of at least 6 additional jobs lost elsewhere in the economy. That's as many as 3,000 Michigan JOBS GONE!


Original.

If Only Michissippian TeaPartisans Would Stand Up to the Bullies at the Michigan Chamber...

Those like The Mackinac Center for Public Policy, and the Koch Bros.’ Michigan Chapter of the Americans for Prosperity’s Ranting Rabble

If only Alexander Hamilton could have foreseen the ravishes and rashness of vengeful TeaPartisans in the ruinous TeaPublican led extension of the musty and dank Engler Revolution (the 2011 Legislative Session), bitter partisanship now headed up by a myopic and weak Nerd Beancounter who thinks he owns the right to dictate to citizens of this state following his evisceration of many state programs and budget responsibilities.

But alas!

"We may safely rely on the disposition of the State legislatures to erect barriers against the encroachments of the national authority."

-- Alexander Hamilton-The Federalist Papers Federalist No. 85

Who can save us from a radicalized TeaPublican state legislature reeking havoc on all its enemies, a bully-boy super majority, out of control and disrespectfulof all minority rights?


Original.

Charles Koch & High Rollers Who Bought Michissippi’s TeaPublican Legislature’s 2011 Anti-Public School Rampage

Top Individual Donors to Michigan's Republican Party Related PACs

• Snyder, Richard & Sue (Self-supporting for Campaign)    $5,943,702
• DeVos, Richard, Sr. & Helen (FL) (Rich)    $1,199,904
• Lynas, Robert & Joyce     $1,007,000
• Perry, Bob (TX)    $1,000,000
• KOCH, DAVID (NY)    $988,604
• Singer, Paul (NY)     $783,400
• Cohen, Steven (CT)     $482,604
• Jandernoa, Michael & Susan     $416,655
• Weiser, Ron & Eileen     $418,247
• Johnson, Ruth (Self-supporting SOS Campaign)     $354,834
• Mills, Ted     $339,500
• Meijer, Frederick & Lena    $339,000
• DeVos, Richard, Jr. & Elisabeth (Dick & Betsy)     $334,754
• Moroun, M.J. & Nora     $333,225
• Nicholson, James & Ann     $302,704

Source: Michigan Campaign Finance Network - Citizen's Guide (2010)


Original.

Revisit Occupy Detroit: the Tea Party is Different – Hank Payne’s Myopic View

This is in Response to Michigan View's Henry Payne's piece "Occupy Detroit: The Tea Party Difference" in Michigan View / Detroit News on October 14, 2011, which was reposted in the National Review on October 16, 2011.

An analysis of Hank Payne's put down of Occupy Detroit comes up short and defective; Payne's bias rules fact.

Here is a breakdown of Henry Payne, Detroit News, Friday Oct 14, 2011, and his wobbly apology for Tea Partyism over and against Occupy Wall Street protests.

HANK: "Detroit, Grand Circus Park - Desperate to show the Left's grassroots, the MSM [Main Stream Media] has taken to comparing the Occupy movement with the tea party. THERE IS NO COMPARISON."
(Emphasis Added)

ANALYSIS: Everywhere comparisons are being made; and the central role of Americans for Prosperity (AFP) fronted by the notorious KOCH BROTHER'S stick puppet, DICK MORRIS, and other backers and paid provocateurs are being outted and discussed.

HANK: "The 99 Percenters are professional protesters. There is nothing new here. Survey the Occupy Detroit crowd and for the most part it is the usual suspects: anti-war protestors, racial grievance activists, left-wing students, unionists. Activism is their avocation - only the theme changes. In 2006 they protested the Iraq War. In 2007, global warming at Live Earth. In 2010, racist cartoons in the New York Post. This spring they protested public sector union reforms in state capitals. Now they protest corporations. They are supported by the usual names: Al Sharpton, Michael Moore, Bob King, UAW, SEIU. They know how to organize - and just as importantly - the MSM sympathizes with them and covers their every move."

ANALYSIS: The Occupy Protests are moving toward a lasting movement, and a movement that will have a significant impact on not only Wall Street, but alter the political universe centered on K Street and in the smoke-filled caucuses of hamstrung politicos.

Cartoonist Hank Payne Warps and Manipulates His Carefully Chosen Materials to Put Down Occupy's Impact

ANALYSIS: Video from the Detroit News on Occupy Detroit (chosen by Payne) is replete with a black woman with classic racial features, (purposefully-the first frame of the set " placed thus, done for maximum racial impact); especially when Hank uses this kind of slanted material as a compare-and-contrast impact piece with the commentary on the Tea Party-business strip protest-at Birmingham, MI.

HANK: "By contrast, what makes the tea party such a compelling story is that it is not your standard protest. It is a true grassroots movement."

ANALYSIS: Hank must CERTAINLY know better! Across the country the Occupy activity has taken hold in the conversations of the 99%ers. They know things are not as they ought to be-not right by any standard, and they want regress of their grievances with the System.

HANK: "Indeed, as it first took shape, the MSM barely gave it a look. Compare the extensive pre-Occupy Detroit coverage in Michigan's media this week to the nearly non-existent coverage of (the larger) tea party protests in Congressional districts in the summer of 2009."

Hank Payne tries to make a logical conclusion, and fails to grasp the factual details of TP vs. Occupy Wall Street dust-up.

BIRMINGHAM TEA PARTY PROTEST

HANK: "In part this was because the liberal MSM is out of touch with the middle class, conservative voter (as the videos above show, these are two very different protestor demographics). But also it was because the tea partiers were new to the protest game. They were soccer moms, they were doctors, and they were retirees who had never protested anything before. They weren't backed by special interest groups."

ANALYSIS: This Payne assertion is patently untrue and a proven misstatement:

1.) The Koch Brothers political machine Americans for Prosperity (AFP) is a group fronting special interests started by oil billionaire David Koch and Richard Fink (a member of the board of directors of Koch Industries). AFP has been accused of funding astroturfoperations but also has been fueling the "Tea Party" efforts. AFP's messages are in sync with those of other groups funded by the Koch Family Foundations and the Koch's other special interest groups, included is A.L.E.C. The American Legislative Exchange Council with upwards of 200 past and former members in the Michigan Legislature.

2.) Karl Rove operations - "Rove is the embodiment of everything the tea party resents. He supported Bush's decision to bail out the banks in 2008, a major bone of contention with deficit hawks. And it was Rove, as White House political adviser, who pushed for some of the most expensive Bush programs, like the  Medicare-prescription-drug bill, the passage of which cornered the troublesome State of Florida for Bush in 2004 but has already cost more than $1 trillion. The national debt nearly doubled under Bush, from $5.7 trillion to $10.6 trillion. Rove knew he had to inoculate himself against tea-party insurrectionists if he was to keep his footing in the party." Source: The New York Magazine, March 2011

3.) Dick Armey's group - Freedom Works - "(L)et us be clear about one thing: The tea party movement is not seeking a junior partnership with the Republican Party, but a hostile takeover of it." Source: the Wall Street Journal in 'The Tea Party Manifesto" on August 17, 2010.

4.) Central to the TP movement: endless promotion of and for the Tea Party - giving time and place and (adding promotional hype) by Rupert's FOX media empire, made/makes the Tea Party a national force.

HANK: "But suddenly faced with a power-hungry, Obamacare-forcing, Democratic Socialist Washington political class intent on poaching their liberties, they rose 'to take back America.'"

ANALYSIS: TPer's organized to defend the Corporate/Congressional/Wall Street status quo, THESE MEGA-MONIED/SPONSORED 'RABBEL' ARE DEFINITELY NOT TAKING AMERICAN FORWARD.

HANK: "They are well on their way to doing so with the tsunami election of 2010 - and now have their eyes on the ultimate prize: the presidency."

ANALYSIS: Take a sharp look at the Republican primary candidates as they go down one pin at a time " the public is not "buying" their extremism and lack of fundamental knowledge of the issues and foreign affairs, and especially their dance away from Wall Street and Financial reform and proscriptive regulations to prevent more fraud and in-your-face abuse.

HANK: "The tea party agenda, however, endangers the special interests of professional protestors. Not surprisingly, they are striking back."

ANALYSIS: Actually the strength and power of the Tea Party has dwindled and been diminished/fractured THE MORE THE 99%ERS SEE THE TEA PARTY IN CLOSE-UP THEY MORE THEY REJECT THEIR ATTITUDE, ANGER, STICK PUPPET LOGIC. The more the people at the real grassroots learn about these angry protesters; pumped by savage, cynical media, the more they distance themselves from those TP types; some of whom showed up at rallies with loaded weapons at-the-ready.

HANK: "That's the meaning of the 99 Percenters. They aren't a liberal grassroots answer to the tea party. They are the Big Government special interests that are threatened by it."

ANALYSIS: Would Hank know a "special interest" if he met one? Everyone, and imagine the size of the 99%ers numbers hundreds of millions of Americans - who are expressing: personal interest in jobs, freedom from oppressive student loans, foreclosures, anger at their inability to obtain small business loans, credit card interest at historic levels labeled "usury", and seeing the huge ($2 trillion corporate and 1%ers hold-out of capital from the marketplace) CAN BE LUMPED INTO A "SPECIAL INTEREST".

SEE ALSO: Hank Payne's Suggested Video posted on YouTube in August of 2009, with the title "Tea Party Protest Birmingham Michigan" - Introduced BTW by the former Head of the MacComb County Republican Party (circa 2004-2006) saying "... this is another legitimate 'grassroots' gathering...."


The OWS events are morphing into a significant social and political movement across America and into all parts of the world. Michael Moore's "Capitalism: A Love Story" has come into its own, as a model for what must be dealt with:

"WE WANT OUR MONEY DOMINATED POLITICAL SYSTEM BACK, AND WE WANT IT NOW!"

"WE WANT SCORES OF SLEAZY FINANCIAL FRAUDS AND CRIMINALS TO GO TO JAIL!"

"WE WANT 'PLAIN ENGLISH' TO BE THE STANDARD FOR INVESTMENT INSTRUMENTS, BUSINESS PRACTICE, AND PROBITY IN FINANCE AND INVESTMENT INSTITUTIONS!"

These Occupy Wall Street (OWS) issues and many more have grabbed the attention of the general population, whom polling shows side, not with Hank Payne or the TP, but with the OWS protests. Even with the recent removal of Occupy from the Wall Street, NYC park, the polling shows that 58% of New York State supports their movement over and against the establishment. 

Occupy Wall Street proclaims today:

"We are here because we believe a better world is possible. We are willing to endure mistreatment, if by doing so WE CAN HELP RE-ENFRANCHISE THE 99% AND RECLAIM OUR DEMOCRACY FROM THE STRANGLEHOLD OF WALL STREET AND THE TOP ONE PERCENT." 
(emphasis added)

Original Part 1 and Part 2.