None of the Above and Latinos for Reform

During the 2010 U.S. mid-term election campaign, a group of "discontents" emerged, calling themselves Latinos for Reform.  

President Obama had secured most of the Latino vote in 2008, so the group's message was that Obama had let them down.  Given the Republican's anti-immigration policies, LFR knew that voting GOP was not an option, so instead they encouraged Latino voters not to cast a ballot for anyone.

It turned out to be a scam

The founder of this group, Robert de Posada, was the Republican National Committee's director of Hispanic affairs and worked for the Bush administration and a group founded by Tea Party leader Dick Armey.

We learn this week that in the run up to the Ontario election, a group of "discontents" has emerged. Calling themselves the None of the Above, encouraging those weary of the top three, to choose them instead, thereby nullifying their ballot.

It is run by Greg Vezina, a political activist.

A longtime supporter of Mike Harris who he knew from his home town, in 1989 Greg worked to change the Party Constitution from a delegated convention to a one person one vote process. This change was key to Mike Harris winning the Leadership in 1990.

So what is really behind this? Did Mike Harris have a little chat with his home town buddy, knowing that Tim Hudak could be in trouble? Is that why Vezina is putting up Green Party signs to help split the vote?

Remember, Hudak visited the American far-right to help draft his platform, including Tea Party and Heritage Foundation members. The late Paul Weyrich who helped Stephen Harper get elected in 2006, by promising not to reveal his ties to the group, once said:

“Now many of our Christians have what I call the goo-goo syndrome — good government. They want everybody to vote. I don’t want everybody to vote. Elections are not won by a majority of people, they never have been from the beginning of our country and they are not now."

There are three rules in the Neoconservative Handbook on running elections:

1. If you think you can't win - Cheat!

2. If you only have a good chance of winning - Cheat!

3. Ah, hell! Just CHEAT!

Climate Change Deniers Get Caught With Their Carbons Down

Heartland Institute is an oil industry front group, devoted to dispelling the science of climate change.  The bulk of their funding comes from Exxon and the Koch brothers.  The same Koch brothers that Stephen Harper is using our tax dollars to build a pipeline for, so that they no longer have to pay decent Canadian wages.  The jobs will instead be outsourced to Texas.

Recently, Heartland got caught with their carbons down, when sensitive material was leaked to the press.

Astonishingly this leak required no espionage or hacking.  Someone simply contacted the institute for a copy of their budget, and got exactly what they asked for, by a careless (ex?) employee.

Maybe we should try this with the National Citizens Coalition.

But now that names have been named, can Heartland survive?  Several so-called socially conscious corporations are a little red-faced, and may not renew their tax-exempt donations, including General Motors and Microsoft.

Heartland are amateurs though.  Why simply rely on tax-exempt status and court corporations?  In Canada, Stephen Harper found a way to fund similar groups with our money.  Case in point, Canadian Renewable Fuels Association, once run by his former chief of staff Kory Teneckye.

After several of us bloggers blew the whistle on their 2005-06 annual report, filled with images of conservatives from Rhona Ambrose to Gerry Ritz, they pulled it from the internet.  I have a hard copy in my files that I keep meaning to get out and scan.  There is a photo of Harper that I'm sure was photo-shopped.  They probably bought in online as they do with many of their "official" images.

CRFA also tried to use a televised ad that included a speech by Stephen Harper during a campaign stop.

For their efforts, Jim Flaherty's 2007 budget included a two billion dollar grant for research into using Green Giant creamed corn to run your Hummers.  Or something else just as ridiculous.  It's not like they actually research anything.

Another 32 million was given for an ethanol plant in Collingwood, that never did go anywhere.

Stephen Harper even brazenly gave a Senate post to another CRFA employee, JoAnne Buth.  Nice to see that cronyism is alive and well and living inside the conservative bubble.

From Friends of Science to CRFA to the Heartland Institute.  It's all about money, money and more money.  Our money.

Gag the scientists but pay the fuel industry to spout nonsense.

This one's for Larry Miller:

"Our national policies will not be revoked or modified, even for scientists." Adolf Hitler

Americans Fear Their Election Could End up Like Canada's. I Can Help

In the upcoming election, Barack Obama will not be challenged by the Republicans, who frankly have given up on even pretending to be politicians serving the public, but by the Super PACs.  Political Action Committees financed by wealthy corporations,  who are tired of democracy getting in their way.

Remember that leaked 2006 CitiGroup memo that they have worked so hard to suppress?

The World is dividing into two blocs - the Plutonomy and the rest. The U.S., UK, and Canada are the key Plutonomies - economies powered by the wealthy. Continental Europe (ex-Italy) and Japan are in the egalitarian bloc.

They warned that voters could try to change the idea of governing only for the wealthy.

We can see a number of potential challenges to plutonomy. The first, and probably most potent, is through a labor backlash. Outsourcing, offshoring or insourcing of cheap labor is done to undercut current labor costs .... Low-end developed market labor might not have much economic power, but it does have equal voting power with the rich .... the third threat comes from the potential social backlash.

It's like they predicted the Occupy Movement, that could be successful given that the "low-end", without "much economic power" has "equal voting power with the rich".  (Capitalism, a Love Story)

However, Super PACs are setting out to wrong that right.

And the way they are going to do that is with lots of money and telemarketers.  They can't garner more votes, so will instead try to suppress them.  The Koch Brothers are putting up $200 million for this venture, determined to oust Obama. 
 
I don't know how much Stephen Harper cost them, but they are already reaping rewards.  And if we wonder why the Harper government is so committed to outsourcing Canadian jobs, remember that CitiGroup memo.  It's all about cheap labour.  Which is why during the worst of the economic crisis, when Canadians were losing their jobs at record speed, Jason Kenney accelerated the use of migrant workers.
 
Money, Money, Money

Chris Matthews reminded us last week, of where those millions will be going.  To telemarketers who will work like mad to make sure that Democratic voters don't exercise their democratic rights.
 
The last Canadian federal election could serve as a guide to the Super Pacs, as Canadians were telemarketed to the point of madness.
 
In Kingston, Ontario, there were so many such phone calls, that we were ready to leave the country just to escape them.  And while Do Not Call Lists keep the cheap crap purveyors at bay, the rules do not apply to politics.  One call I received was supposedly on behalf of our Liberal candidate, Ted Hsu (now our MP), asking if we wanted a lawn sign.  The caller was so rude, that had I not been suspicious, I might have fallen for it.
 
Soon after, Hsu's office called asking for support and I informed them of the bogus call that I had received.  Others complained of the same thing.  Looking at the Conservative candidate Alicia Gordon's Elections Canada financial records, I learned that she paid Campaign Research more than $25,000 to annoy the hell out of us.  Remember those guys?  Think Rob Ford (but take a valium first)
 
Ironically when our Speaker of the House, Andrew Scheer was asked to investigate the damage done to Irwin Cotler by Campaign Research, it was learned that he himself had used them to assure his re-election.  He should have declared a conflict of interest.  Instead he gave them a free pass.
 
Another example is Joe Volpe, who was telemarketed out of seat.  Joe Oliver paid Campaign Research $12,159.33
 

An investment banker, he has now joined the Koch team to force feed us their XL-Pipeline, contributing to Canada's reputation as a Jingoistic Petro-State, calling environmentalists "radicals" and "terrorists".

 

If the American people want to preserve their democracy and not end up like Canada, with another stolen election, I have some advice.  If you receive one of these calls, you could just tell the caller that you will be voting so "get a life", or maybe "let me speak to David Koch" or "Am I being punked?". 

 

Although I think the best response might be "Where in the hell do you think you are ?  Canada???!!!"

Should We Be Concerned With Those Harper is Passing the Pipe With?

In 1911, the United States Supreme Court broke up Standard Oil, then the largest multinational corporation, because it was simply becoming too big and powerful.  The company's battles with former president Teddy Roosevelt were legendary, as depicted in this 1906 Punch cartoon.

Standard Oil New Jersey has since grown to become Exxon, so unfortunately the action did not stop the continued threat of corporations becoming more powerful than government.

The XL pipeline that Harper plans to build for the Koch Brothers, that will send bitumen to the U.S. for refining, is causing concern on both sides of the border.

However, while the pipeline is an important area for discussion, we should also be looking closely at the company that our government is doing business with.

Not only have the Koch Brothers waged a war against President Obama, but they are also engaged in some troubling international escapades.

Bloomberg ran an in depth story this month: Koch Brothers Flout Law Getting Richer With Secret Iran Sales.

They revealed that the company had been bribing foreign government officials to secure contracts. 

When that story first broke, Koch went into damage mode, firing many who were simply following orders.  Also fired typically was the whistle blower.

However, more troubling was the fact that they were supplying Iran with chemicals, through their foreign subsidiaries, side stepping the sanctions against the country that George Bush included in his "axis of evil". (A term coined by his former speechwriter, David Frum)

Internal company records show that Koch Industries used its foreign subsidiary to sidestep a U.S. trade ban barring American companies from selling materials to Iran. Koch-Glitsch offices in Germany and Italy continued selling to Iran until as recently as 2007, the records show. The company’s products helped build a methanol plant for Zagros Petrochemical Co., a unit of Iran’s state-owned National Iranian Petrochemical Co., the documents show. The facility, in the coastal city of Bandar Assaluyeh, is now the largest methanol plant in the world, according to IHS Inc., an Englewood, Colorado-based provider of chemicals, energy and economic data.

So while funding the Tea Party, who claim to be the only true patriots, Koch is unpatriotically doing business with a deemed enemy, providing them with sensitive materials. 

This used to be called treason.  Now it's called the Free Market.

Of course this is business as usual for the corporate sector.  IBM created a punch card system for the Nazis that helped to categorize all German and European Jews and other minorities.  According to Andrew Marshall in Financing Fascism:  The Military-Industrial Complex and the Rise of Neo-Conservatism

The punch card machines would punch in specific numbers, which would have different meanings, for example, one number would identify the person to whom it is being assigned as a Jew or a Gypsy or a Communist, and so on. Another number would determine the person’s fate, assigning specific numbers to mean slave labour, to be shot or what was termed ‘the special treatment’; gas chambers. These numbers were then tattooed onto the arms of each person interned in concentration camps. When Allied troops entered concentration camps, such as Auschwitz, there inside the camps, they found the punch card machines clearly showing the proud corporate logo of IBM. There are even photos of the CEO of IBM sitting down at a table with Hitler in the early 1930s.

IBM was not the only corporation to profit from the Holocaust.  According to Marshall, GM manufactured many of the vehicles Hitler used in his military campaign, and through their German subsidiary company, Opel helped to build leaded gasoline plants for the dictator.

Other companies profiting from Nazi aggression included Ford, Standard Oil of New Jersey (now Exxon), Chase Manhattan Bank (now J.P Morgan Chase), DuPont, Dow Chemical - the list goes on.

However, there was another Nazi war profiteer that should give us pause.  Prescott Bush, grandfather of George Bush.  He was the director and Vice President of the Union Banking Corporation, that helped to finance many Nazi pursuits.  Another of his business ventures, the Silesian-American Corporation, profited from slave labour at Auschwitz concentration camp. (2)

When it was discovered that Bush was conducting business with the Nazis, he had his assets frozen, but after the war was compensated by the U.S. government to the tune of $1.5 million.  That was how he started the Bush family fortune.  Prescott Bush would go on to become a U.S. Senator, and both his son and grandson, Presidents.  Who said that crime doesn't pay?
 
With Harper and company posturing over Iran, why are they getting into bed with those supplying chemical to the "enemy"?  "The biggest threat to the world?"
 
And they wonder why the necessity of the Occupy Wall Street movement.
 
The closest my father ever got to a cuss word was "cripes", but that word packed a wallup.  So CRIPES why are we allowing corporations to get so big that they can not only push us into war but profit by supplying the other side?
 
Our addiction to oil is going to be our Waterloo.
 
According to retired Army brigadier general Steven M. Anderson:

As the military’s senior logistician in Iraq in 2006 and 2007, I saw the impact of our oil addition in the Iraq combat zone. Our appetite for fuel wastes billions of taxpayer dollars, transfers $1 billion daily in our wealth to the Middle East, and puts our soldiers at risk. The fuel trucks we depend upon provide hundreds of convenient rolling targets for our enemy. My experiences in Iraq convinced me that the greatest threat to our security is our over-reliance on oil and that Americans must immediately take steps to cut our petro-addiction before it’s too late.

The Keystone XL pipeline doesn’t help. This pipeline would move dirty oil from Canada to refineries in Texas and would set back our renewable energy efforts for at least two decades, much to our enemies’ delight. It would ensure we maintain our oil addiction and delay making the tough decisions regarding energy production, management and conservation that we need to start making today.

The $7 billion that Harper is sinking into this project could be better spent

Sources:
 
1. “IBM and the Holocaust: The Strategic Alliance Between Nazi Germany and America’s Most Powerful Corporation”, By Edwin Black, Crown Publishers, New York, 2001

2. "How Bush’s grandfather helped Hitler’s rise to power", By Ben Aris and Campbell Duncan, The Guardian, September 25, 2004.

So Would Stephen Harper Vote for Rick Perry or Herman Cain?

I originally thought that Stephen Harper had more in common with Rick Perry.  Both are strong advocates of the death penalty, guns and the flat tax.

However, Rachel Maddox revealed something on her program this week, that connects him closer to Herman Cain.  Both Cain and Harper are beholden to the Koch Brothers.

On her show Monday night, MSNBC host Rachel Maddow noted that Republican presidential candidate Herman Cain is an avid numerologist who is obsessed with the number 45. She also pointed out numerous links between Cain and the conservative billionaire Koch brothers. For instance, before running for president, he worked for the Koch-funded conservative group Americans for Prosperity.

I mentioned Americans for Prosperity before, not only because they are behind the Tea Party, but because they worked with the Harper government on an ad for U.S. TV, that challenged President Obama's healthcare plan.  You can read about it here.

Sun TV's Ezra Levant spent a summer as a fellow at the Koch Foundation, arranged by Charles Koch himself, and has since written a book Ethical Oil, which should be subtitled The Tarsands Smokescreen.

Stephen Harper is using our tax dollars to build the Koch Brothers a pipeline, which will send all the good jobs in the industry South.

Americans don't want the pipeline, but Obama is under a lot of pressure to accept it, on the basis of job creation.  Having Cain in office would be like having the Koch Brothers in office, and would provide a new BFF for Stephen Harper still moping after losing his Georgie.

The Conservative and Government Websites May be the Same But The Slogan Belongs to Neither

Dan Gardner pointed out today on Twitter that the Conservative Party's and the Government of Canada's, websites were almost identical.

Conservative Site.

Government's

But the slogan they are using Stability, Security, Prosperity; is stolen.

The right-wing European People's Party, have that as their motto, as does the American Tea Party Patriots.

Their version is part of Americans for Prosperity (Koch Brothers) who promote "stability and security".

Americans for Prosperity are helping Harper with his healthcare reform (service will depend on the size of your bank account) and the Koch brothers with the pipelines that will send all the good jobs South.

Still think we're a sovereign nation?

Firefighters Join Protest in Wisconsin While Tea Party Sips Champagne and Eats Cavier

The corporate funded Tea Party is losing ground as the Wisconsin firefighters have joined the protests. The Koch Brothers, who financed a little party to fight the unions, are on the phone to Stephen Harper, hoping he can soothe their evil souls.

Stevie assured them that Canadian taxpayers would still be building their pipeline, that will send all of the good jobs in the oil industry South. They smiled.

Then they killed their cat.

It's Glenn Beck's worst nightmare -- firefighters invading government buildings in a spine-tingling display of union solidarity. Don't they know the Wisconsin protests are a Muslim Brotherhood plot to create a one-world Marxist government? As the on-scene narrator notes -- firefighters are exempt from Gov. Scott Walker's attempt to strip collective bargaining rights from state employees, but that doesn't seem to have split union ranks in Wisconsin.

See that's the difference between conservatives and liberals. Liberals can empathize with others. Conservatives only worry about themselves. Go firefighters. Go Wisconsin.

Stephen Harper, the Tea Party and the Koch Brothers

It has already been established that the Koch Brothers are heavily invested in the Tar Sands, and that the Harper government has deep connections with Americans for Prosperity, the AstroTurf group that finances the Tea Party.

And clearly he shares their views on climate change and commitment to sabotaging any move toward addressing it. And for the Koch brothers, environmental crimes go much deeper. Or maybe I should say getting away with crimes.

In 1995, the U.S. government-mandated limit on benzene releases was six metric tons, but when Koch employee, Sally Barnes-Soliz, measured the benzene releases at one of their sites, she warned management that the plant had released 91 metric tons of benzene, well over the limit.

She later discovered that the report she had submitted did not reflect the data she had collected, so complained to company officials, who allegedly responded by transferring her and giving her a poor evaluation.

And when she complained to authorities, Koch made her life so difficult that she was eventually forced out. A 1997 wrongful termination suit was settled for an undisclosed amount.

Charges were laid against four Koch executives: David Lamp, Vincent Mietlicki, John Wadsworth, and James Weathers Jr. , but when George Bush became president, he made it all go away:

No one called for a congressional investigation of why criminal charges were dropped against Koch Industries, the largest privately held oil company in America, whose CEO and vice president are the brothers Charles and David Koch. In September 2000, the federal government brought a 97­ count indictment against Koch Industries and its four employ­ees—Lamp, Mietlicki, Wadsworth, and Weathers, who were Koch's environmental and plant managers—for knowingly releas­ing 91 metric tons of benzene, a cancer-causing agent, into the air and water, and for covering up the deadly release from federal regulators.

This wasn't Koch's first run-in with the law; it wasn't even their first that year. Earlier in 2000, Koch had been fined $35 mil­lion for illegal pollution in six states. But with the George W. Bush's election "decided," Koch's for­tunes suddenly changed. Koch executives had just contributed some $800,000 to Bush's presidential campaign and other Repub­lican candidates and causes. In January, as John Ashcroft waited in the wings, the government dropped the charges first from 97 to 11 and then to a mere nine.

Koch Industries, however, still faced fines totaling $352 mil­lion. Bush's new administration, now firmly in place, quickly fixed that. In March, they dropped two more charges. Then, two days before the case was to go to court, Ashcroft's Justice Department settled the case. Koch Industries pled guilty to a new charge of falsifying docu­ments, and the government dropped all environmental charges against the company, including all felony counts against their four employees.

Following hard on the heels of their generosity, the Koch executives facing possible prison terms were freed from any pros­ecution. The company itself had all 90 of the serious counts against it dismissed and in the end paid a fine that wiped out the 7 remaining counts. According to the Houston Chronicle, "Koch executives celebrated the conclusion of the case," company spokesman Jay Rosser crowing about how the dropping of charges was proof of Koch's "vindication." (1)

This is why the U.S. and Canada will never have a viable environmental policy under any neoconservative government. People like Koch are far too generous with their money, when it comes to buying politicians.

Sources:

1. Stupid White Men: And Other Sorry Excuses for the State of the Union, By: Michael Moore, Regan Books, 2001, ISBN: 0-06-039245-2, Pg. 198-199