Sadly, Family Research Council’s honcho Tony Perkins took to the media today in an attempt to discredit the Southern Poverty Law Center’s accurate assessment of FRC as a hate group, charging that the organization gave shooter Floyd Corkins a license to shoot the security guard at its building in DC.

SPLC responds – with facts:

Yesterday’s attack on the Family Research Council and the shooting of a security guard there was a tragedy. The Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) deplores all violence, and our thoughts are with the wounded victim, Leo Johnson, his family and others who lived through the attack.

For more than 40 years, the SPLC has battled against political extremism and political violence. We have argued consistently that violence is no answer to problems in a democratic society, and we have strongly criticized all those who endorse such violence, whether on the political left or the political right.

But this afternoon, FRC President Tony Perkins attacked the SPLC, saying it had encouraged and enabled the attack by labeling the FRC a “hate group.” The attacker, Floyd Corkins, “was given a license to shoot an unarmed man by organizations like the Southern Poverty Law Center,” Perkins said. “I believe the Southern Poverty Law Center should be held accountable for their reckless use of terminology.”

---

Perkins’ accusation is outrageous. The SPLC has listed the FRC as a hate group since 2010 because it has knowingly spread false and denigrating propaganda about LGBT people — not, as some claim, because it opposes same-sex marriage. The FRC and its allies on the religious right are saying, in effect, that offering legitimate and fact-based criticism in a democratic society is tantamount to suggesting that the objects of criticism should be the targets of criminal violence.

---

As the SPLC made clear at the time and in hundreds of subsequent statements and press interviews, we criticize the FRC for claiming, in Perkins’ words, that pedophilia is “a homosexual problem” — an utter falsehood, as every relevant scientific authority has stated. An FRC official has said he wanted to “export homosexuals from the United States.” The same official advocated the criminalizing of homosexuality.

Perkins and his allies, seeing an opportunity to score points, are using the attack on their offices to pose a false equivalency between the SPLC’s criticisms of the FRC and the FRC’s criticisms of LGBT people. The FRC routinely pushes out demonizing claims that gay people are child molesters and worse — claims that are provably false. It should stop the demonization and affirm the dignity of all people.

Alvin McEwen was ready for FRC’s predicted exploitation of this horrible act of violence by reminding Perkins that you can’t erase what is already floating around the Internet as record of FRC’s repeated lies and professional vitriol. Just a couple of videos that have nothing to do with “protecting the family”: [cont'd.]

(photo: Crane Station / flickr)

Four states have asked the EPA to waive the renewable fuels standard that forces the nation to generate more corn-based ethanol at a time of significant drought and a corn shortage. The states all have Democratic Governors, though two of them come from the South.

The worst drought in 50 years has sent corn prices to record levels, straining meat and dairy producers that use the grain as feed. Governors Mike Beebe from Arkansas and Beverly Purdue from North Carolina sent the requests in letters to the Environmental Protection Agency [...]

The Renewable Fuels Standard, or RFS, which requires 13.2 billion gallons of ethanol to be made from corn this year “has imposed severe economic harm to my state’s swine, poultry, dairy and cattle producing regions,” said the letter from Purdue to EPA head Lisa Jackson.

The Obama campaign has responded by saying that the President is a strong supporter of ethanol as a driver of the economy. The President was speaking in Iowa at the time. But even if you support ethanol – and studies show the corn-based version costs us more in energy to harvest than it’s worth – you cannot deny the economic harm created by the mandate at this time, given the drought conditions. The price spikes have caused a severe hardship for livestock producers in particular who use corn to feed their animals. The head of the UN’s food program, Jose Graziano da Silva, also called for a suspension of the ethanol mandate.

Refiners say they would purchase ethanol regardless of the mandate because they need it to meet clean-fuel requirements in most states. So there’s an argument to make here. But continuing a program that mandates the production of specifically corn-based ethanol at this time borders on the obscene. Maybe a preference could be given to non-corn sources of energy?

In a far better energy development today, the FAA approved the Cape Wind project, the first large-scale offshore wind farm project in the United States.

Department of Justice Lawyers on a Picnic (photo: CocteauBoy / flickr)

And by jury, I mean the candy ass prosecutors at the Department of Justice, who have made an in-house decision that it’s just too hard to indict anyone at MF Global, including friend of Barack Jon Corzine, for stealing billions of customer dollars. It’s just impossible that a friend of Eric Holder’s could be found to be criminally responsible for allowing a company to steal money from its customers to give to its bank, especially when the bank is the much-loved JPMorgan Chase. After all, the Department of Eric Holder is made up of peers of the MF Global crowd, so it’s just like a real trial.

These chicken-shits have been telling reporters from the beginning that there were really high hurdles to prosecution, as if this were some sort of Olympic event. They tell the reporters that “chaos and porous risk controls at the firm, rather than fraud, allowed the money to disappear”. The billions in losses were beyond human control, and nothing can be done, a phrasing which perfectly mirrors DOJ’s passivity in the face of one of the biggest heists in history.

The reporters, Azam Ahmed and Ben Protess of the Dealbook blog at the New York Times, add their own passivity: “But a lack of charges in the largest Wall Street blowup since 2008 is likely to fuel frustration with the government’s struggle to charge financial executives.”

These guys can’t tell the difference between frustration and anger, between irritation and hostility. Their repetition of talking points helps the Obama Administration fuel the sense of impotency among us mere citizens, a sense that nothing we can do makes a difference, and the certainty that the rich and connected do not face the same justice system as the operators of medical marijuana dispensaries and their pathetic clients.

But look over there, a bright shiny object: civil suits! The government won’t lift a finger to support investors whose money was stolen, so they get to spend vast quantities of their own money in the hope that some civil court staffed by George Bush from the ranks of the Federalist society will eventually, in some future decade, give them a few of their dollars back. Good luck with that.

This is one more confirmation of the findings of Fulmer and Knill:

…accused executives whose firms have contributed to political campaigns via a PAC are banned as an officer for three fewer years, serve probation for five fewer years, prison for six fewer years and are 75% less likely to be given both prison time and an officer ban (the most severe form of criminal and civil penalties)…

OpenSecrets provides the data:

MF Global’s employees gave generously to politicians at the federal level — and almost all of that campaign cash benefited Democrats once former New Jersey Gov. Jon Corzine became chief executive of the company.

According to research by the Center for Responsive Politics, MF Global employees have contributed $408,000 to federal candidates and political parties since 2007. That sum includes $38,000 in donations to President Barack Obama, who is the largest recipient of MF Global employee contributions.

It must be really distressing to the customers of MF Global to see that they are just more roadkill for Wall Street hyenas. They probably thought they were in the protected class because they had a few million dollars, but it turns out they were muppets.