News & Articles

Sen. Minority Leader Mitch McConnell wanted to share his long-repressed feelings about a traumatic event. “It was,” Mitch confided, grim-faced, “the worst day of my political life.”
Was it the day of the 9/11 attacks on America? No, much worse. It was the day 12 years ago when the McCain-Feingold law was approved by the Senate, imposing some limits on campaign donations by super-rich corporate interests. While the vast majority of Americans enthusiastically support such restrictions, Mitch is not one to be swayed by what The People want, so this June, he shared the shame he felt that fateful day at a group meeting in Southern California.
It was a very sympathetic group – more than a hundred right-wing billionaires convened by the Koch brothers to fund a plutocratic takeover of this year’s Congressional elections.
McConnell was the featured act at the three-day Koch-a-palooza, held at the posh St. Regis Monarch Bay resort in Dana Point, and he titillated the elites with the changes that would result from a GOP takeover of the Senate. For one thing, he exulted, “we’re not going to be debating all these gosh darn proposals.” Like what, you ask? “Like raising the minimum wage,” explained the senator from Kentucky, a state with tens of thousands of minimum-wage workers desperately needing a raise.
Poor Mitch. For once, he was being honest, thinking his candor would not be heard outside this closed-door enclave of Koch-heads. But – oops – a recording was leaked to The Nation magazine, and now the voters of Kentucky are learning how put-upon their nearly $200,000-a-year senator feels for just having to talk about those “gosh darn proposals” to lift the roughly $15,000-a-year poverty pay of his minimum-wage constituents.
Keep talking, Mitch – such stuff is what makes politics the Greatest Show on Earth. Or is it the funniest? Or saddest? You choose.
“Exclusive: Inside the Koch Brothers’ Secret Billionaire Summit,” www.thenation.com, June 17, 2014.
“Caught on Tape: What Mitch McConnell Complained About to a Roomful of Billionaires (Exclusive),” www.thenation.com, August 26, 2014.
“Minimum Wage Workers In Kentucky – 2013,” www.bls.gov, April 22, 2014.
“Sen. Mitch McConnell (-Kentucky) - Staff Salary Data,” www.legistorm.com, 2014.

GOP doubles down on fear & loathing of Latino immigrants

Gosh, has it been two whole years since Republican leaders vowed to reach out to Latino voters with “a more welcoming, inclusive message” and “positive solutions on immigration”?
Well, time flies when you’re having elections, and the GOP outreach was on full display by their candidates this year. The general message was: “Elect me, because I’ll lock down the whole Mexican border to protect you good Americans from those illegal hordes of diseased, drug-connected Hispanics and Ebola-carrying Islamic terrorists who’re coming across that border to kill you and live on welfare.”
Tom Cotton of Arkansas, for example, won a US Senate seat in part by fomenting fear of foreigners. Lying right through his teeth, Cotton warned of a murderous mass invasion by two stereotypical boogeymen: “Groups like the Islamic State collaborate with drug cartels in Mexico,” he said excitedly, then delivered his comic punch line: “They could infiltrate our defenseless border and attack us right here in places like Arkansas.”
Yeah, Tom, the secret dream of every Mideastern jihadist is to conquer Pine Bluff. And this guy is in the US Senate? Lord have mercy.
Bad enough to campaign on such twaddle, but a gaggle of right-wing senators actually hope to enact such anti-immigrant, anti-Latino stuff. The President of the Senate Twaddle Caucus, Ted Cruz, recently explained on Fox News that the November election was a referendum on amnesty, “And the American people overwhelmingly said, ‘We don’t want amnesty.’”
Actually, they said no such thing. Exit polls show that 57 percent of voters favor letting undocumented immigrants in the US achieve legal status, rather than being deported. But forget facts – and forget inclusivity – Republican lawmakers have decided that immigrant bashing is good politics.
“Cruz twists election’s message for Obama,” Austin American Statesman, November 23, 2014.
“Midterm immigration ads may hurt GOP in 2016,” www.bostonglobe.com, October 20, 2014.
“Tea Party congressman: Hamas terrorists might infect themselves with Ebola and sneak into U.S.,” www.salon.com, October 17, 2014.

Militarists mire America deeper in Afghan war

Only a few months ago President Obama announced the good news that our combat role in Afghanistan – the longest war in American history – would finally end by January 1.
But put away the champagne, for a flock of screeching war hawks brought heavy political pressure on Obama to reverse himself. So our troops will stay in that war-ravaged, corrupt, bankrupted, ethnically-divided country for at least another year or two. Amazingly, the hawks’ argument was that Obama should not rush the timeline for training Afghan security forces to defend their own country.
Rush? Hello: IT’S BEEN 13 YEARS! “Operation Enduring Freedom,” as this mess of a military mission was named, should be renamed “Operation Endless War.” Here we go again, not merely conducting training exercises, but also continuing to mire our courageous but overstressed military forces in the Afghans’ civil war, including using US ground troops in combat missions against the Afghan Taliban.
How many more Americans will die or be horribly maimed in that hapless land? How many more billions of our tax dollars will be dumped into Afghanistan’s abyss? And why? Why are we there, why are we wasting so many lives and so much of the money we desperately need here at home – and why are We the People not consulted on such a massive and momentous decision? It’s reported that the Pentagon not only wants to keep troops there through 2016, but beyond. How many troops? What are they to achieve? That’s a secret.
When Obama announced last May that the US would have no combat role in Afghanistan after this year, he said, “It’s harder to end wars than to start them.” True, but being “harder” doesn’t mean we can just surrender to those who are turning America into a militaristic state. If he won’t fight them, we must. To help, go to www.peace-action.org.
“In Secret, Obama Extends U.S. Role in Afghan Combat,” The New York Times, November 22, 2014.
“Egged on by the Hawks of Doom, Obama sinks America into a misguided war with the Islamic State,” www.hightowerlowdown.org, November 2014.