Border Violence And Immigration: Arizonans Invert Reality, Turn A Blind Eye To Vigilantes Murdering Latinos

[Cross-posted at Crooks and Liars.]

[Note: Video not really safe for work. But true.]

There was a funny smell to the way Arizona's police-state immigration law was passed -- especially the way factions with ties to white supremacists whipped up the phantom menace of a wave of crime associated with illegal immigration, focusing on the still-unsolved murder of a border rancher named Robert Krentz, even though officially the crime is being laid at the doorstep of Mexican drug cartels -- but even on that score, the truth is unclear at best. Notably, the Arizona Daily star reports that the chief suspect in the crime lives in the USA, not in Mexico.

Moreover, as Sam Seder acidly observes, the entire claim that crime has skyrocketed in Arizona is so much cattle offal. In fact, violent crime in Arizona has been steadily declining in recent years.

It kind of makes you wonder, doesn't it, why Arizonans -- and particularly the Arizona media, not to mention the national media -- never picked up on the case of Shawna Forde and her gang of rogue Minutemen, who invaded the home of a Latino family near the border in Arizona and shot them, killing the father and his 9-year-old daughter in cold blood as she pleaded for her life, and wounding the mother -- who managed to get her own gun and shoot back, wounding one of the killers.

Even more incredible, really, is that this 911 call from the wounded mother received so little attention at the time, much less that it did not become a focus of Arizonans fretting about violent crime:



What brings all this into laser focus is what's actually happening right now on the Arizona border: Latinos (some of them American citizens bearing blood-soaked birth certificates) are being shot and killed, and it's beginning to appear that white vigilantes -- not Mexican drug gangs -- are doing the killing.

The shootings that first raised this likelihood occurred a little over a week ago in Pinal County, where two Latino men who called 911 pleading for help, saying they had been shot, were found dead near a locale where a sheriff's deputy had reportedly been wounded by drug smugglers on the border (though many questions remain about that incident as well).

Initially, as you can see both from the Arizona Republic report above, as well as from the local TV coverage, the crime was blamed on "drug smugglers."

But Jill Garvey at Imagine 2050 reports that something far more insidious may be involved:

In addition to shootings of Latinos by Border Patrol agents, there have been mysterious shootings and even murders in Arizona deserts. Troubling details are emerging that suggest these attacks on Latinos are not drug-related, as often reported, but the work of violent border vigilantes.

In the wake of the uproar over the passage of racist SB 1070 in Arizona, border vigilantes like Barbara Coe and Glenn Spencer, just to name a few, are revving up their anti-immigrant rhetoric. In a trend that has disturbing parallels, several immigrants were targeted by camouflaged gunmen last week. And two Latino men were found murdered in the Arizona desert on June 6. Mainstream media reports pin the cause squarely on drug smuggling; however, bloggers who have followed the story continue to uncover suspicious details surrounding the murders. Foremost of which is that no drugs were found on or near the victims, but an automatic rifle commonly used by border patrol agents was. Also, the murders occurred within close proximity to the high-profile Pinal County shooting involving sheriff’s deputy Louie Puroll. Pinal County’s Sheriff Babeu is rivaling notorious Sheriff Joe in his quest to publicize his unfair vilification of immigrants.

Perhaps the most disturbing incident occurred on June 12, as Dee Perez-Scott at Immigration Talk With a Mexican-American reports:

At 5:00 am on Friday, June 12, five undocumented migrants who had crossed into the United States and were walking through the canyon near Rio Rico, AZ., were shot at with a high powered rifle by two unidentified white males wearing camouflage clothing.

"The victims claimed no demands were made. They were just walking and fired upon,” said Sheriff Antonio Estrada. Estrada said when the group ran away from the shooters, one of the men, Manuel Esquer Gomez, 45, from Nogales, Sonora sustained a gunshot wound to the left forearm. As the group continued to run, the men stumbled upon skeletal remains of what they thought were two people.

Deputies from the Santa Cruz County Sheriff’s Office, along with a U.S. Border Patrol special response team and air support, responded and found the skeletal remains of one man. Documents found on the man identified him as Alberto Donato Lopez, 40, from Puebla, Mexico. Lopez’s body was taken to the Pima County Medical Examiner’s Office in Tucson to determine the cause of death.

“It is unknown at this time if the deceased was killed or died of natural causes,” Estrada said. “There’s always a concern that these people could possibly be victims of violence.” Estrada said the Border Patrol tracked footprints from the scene of the shooting, but no suspects were found. “At this point we don’t know who they are,” said Estrada. “It’s perturbing to hear of people with high-powered rifles and camouflage. It raises some real red flags.”

Just as disturbing -- and almost certainly not coincidentally -- is the news, from Stephen Lemons at Phoenix New Times, that some of Russell Pearce's neo-Nazi pals intend to start patrolling the border with weapons:

Pinal County Sheriff Paul Babeu recently announced that "drug cartels" control the area in his county where deputy Louie Puroll was allegedly shot at, and where two men were recently gunned down.

Now Babeu may be getting some assistance from an unwelcome and unsavory source: Vigilantes led by National Socialist Movement member J.T. Ready.

As I blogged back in May, Ready and fellow neo-Nazi Harry Hughes have been going on illegal alien "patrols" in Pinal County's Vekol Valley, dressed in camouflage and armed with assault rifles.

Now Ready has announced a "Border Ops" alert for this Saturday via his profile on the white supremacist New Saxon site, inviting participants to "bring plenty of firearms and ammo."

"Camouflage or earth tone clothing [is] preferred," according to the announcement. "Bandanas, balaclavas, or other identity concealing items are permissible and encouraged."

Ready's statement promises that, "This is the Minuteman Project on steroids! THE INVASION STOPS HERE!"

Be sure to read the whole thing -- it's frightening and disturbing and important. As our good friend Sara Robinson observes at AmericasFuture.org:

First: this a perfect example of how right-wing vigilantism, once permitted, quickly escalates. The Minutemen weren't uniformed, only casually armed, and careful to cloak their deep racism -- though it tended to leak out at inopportune moments anyway. Now, because we enabled and tolerated that, we've got self-proclaimed Nazis down there in full battle dress, carrying military weapons and telling us quite openly that they're on a mission to cleanse the country of the brown scourge. If Arizona officials -- already overwhelmed by a situation that they're getting no federal help in resolving -- don't find a way to stop these guys, they're creating the conditions for the paramilitary right-wing scene on their border to become the national breeding ground for a full-on armed militia movement -- a movement that could, in time, endanger the whole country.

Second: This is also the next step down the road for the state of Arizona as a whole. They've put the country on notice that they're just fine, thank you, with being the State of Hate -- and in doing so, opened the door to the whole national circus of haters. Ready and his National Socialists are out front of that parade, but you can bet that there's a long line of acts queuing up to come out to the desert and follow them. (Note to Gov. Jan Brewer: be careful what you wish for, for you will surely get it.)

... This is what we know about hate groups: they are an evil that can only flourish where good people do nothing. The State of Arizona is now issuing what amount to official engraved invitations to the country's far-right vigilantes, sovereign citizens, would-be fascists, self-styled "patriots" (we need to take that word back, seriously), and paranoid race warriors. They cannot be surprised when people like J.T. Ready and his New Saxons take them up on the offer.

And their choice demands a response from everybody in the other forty-nine as well. No American state has voluntarily chosen to go down this path since the KKK takeover of Indiana and Oregon in the 1920s. And when hate holds that much state power, the only way it stops is when the voters of Arizona decide they've had enough, and vote the bastards out of office.

(It's a great, thoughtful post -- again, be sure to read it all.)

Arizonans have fundamentally turned the situation on it head by indulging in the lowest form of hysteria: by freaking out about crime caused by Latinos, they have in fact unleashed a wave of vigilante crime against those same people. Even if they don't already regret this spasm, they will.

The Latest Patriot Scam: Move Into Foreclosed Homes, Squat And Claim Them As Your Own

[Cross-posted at Crooks and Liars.]

C&L readers will remember the case of Jerry Kane, the traveling "sovereign citizen" who, with his 16-year-old son in tow, toured the country giving seminars on how to take advantage of the current foreclosure crisis by the usual fantasy-based schemes of Patriot-movement pseudo-legal "constitutionalism".

All that, of course, before he and the boy opened fire on two police officers in West Memphis, Arkansas, after which they were mowed down themselves in a blizzard of police bullets in a Wal-Mart parking lot.

If you watch the video, and the others Kane left behind, you'll see that the scheme he was selling entailed creating "strawman" companies that would enable a "sovereign citizen" to then claim ownership, by virtue of their sovereignty (often defined in divine terms), of whatever properties they set their sights upon. As one account noted:

Seminars of this type usually teach that each person has a real self and a “corporate self” that is a fabrication of the government, and that banks cannot legitimately lend money that belongs to their depositors.

“It’s mumbo jumbo; it’s magic words; it’s abracadabra,” Ms. MacNab said.

You'll note also that Kane had been promoting this scheme in the Seattle area:

Jim Jenkins, a former mortgage broker in Seattle who attended one of Mr. Kane’s seminars in April, said that Mr. Kane had been largely congenial, but that his anger had flared when he recalled a traffic stop earlier that month in New Mexico. Mr. Kane was arrested and jailed on charges of driving while his license was suspended or revoked and concealing his identity.

Well, surprise, surprise: Someone operating under a scheme awfully similar to the one Kane was promoting recently popped up in the news in Seattle. My old friend Danny Westneat at the Seattle Times has the story, involving a woman who appears to have taken up residence in a vacant $5 million mansion in Kirkland, across the lake from Seattle:

That's odd, neighbors thought. The West of Market neighborhood in Kirkland is friendly, easygoing. So one of them called the real-estate agent to ask what was up.

What he said floored them. The house is still for sale for $3.3 million. Whoever is living there had broken in. They're squatters.

"It's blown everybody away around here," said another neighbor, who asked me not to print her name.

"It takes some real guts to just waltz into a house like that, I'll give them that."

We were standing across the street from the six-bedroom, six-and-a-half bath house, dubbed in the ads as "Mediterranean Natural." With its rock exterior and terraces, it looks like a miniature hotel.

"Elevator to the theater, wine cellar & tasting room, game room, recreation room, nanny's quarters, den/library, culinary artist's kitchen, bonus room and the lavish master suite & bath," reads a listing from 2008, when the house was for sale for $5.8 million.

Of particular note was the means by which the squatter has been able to forestall being carted out as a trespasser:

A form posted on the door of the house by its new "tenants" says "all rights, interest and title in said property" has been transferred to something called the "Priority Rose Children's Outreach" in Bothell.

That's a charity that was incorporated only two weeks ago, according to the state Secretary of State's Office. Its purpose is listed as "spiritual training for adults and children in a religious safe environment for the development of all mankind."

That sounds nice. But the phone number for the charity is also the number for a Bothell company called NW Note Elimination that specializes in "eliminating mortgages." It does this by finding flaws with loans or titles and exploiting them to stake outright claims to property.

One of its strategies, according to a primer it posted on Craigslist, is to create a land trust and claim title to a piece of property, then try to challenge the existing mortgages as flawed in hopes the banks eventually will just go away.

"The idea is that with this economy, people are looking for any kind of real-estate loophole they can find," said Sgt. Robert Saloum of the Kirkland Police.

But squatting? In somebody else's home?

I called the charity to ask how moving into a house you don't own promotes the religious and spiritual development of all mankind. Nobody called me back.

Saloum said when Kirkland police went to the house, the woman who answered the door showed a form claiming she owned the house.

"It's up to a court to sort that out," he said.

This is hardly the first time this has cropped up. There have been scattered reports of similar schemes taking place in southern California, where the vacant foreclosures are as common as sagebrush. Here in the Northwest, the scheme has also cropped up in Montana -- unsurprisingly, since we're talking about the Home of the Freemen here.

First there was the case of the California woman squatting in a nice log home in Lolo, south of Missoula:

A California woman who allegedly moved into an unoccupied Lolo home earlier this month and claimed the digs as her own may have been influenced by websites promoting the extremist "sovereign citizens" movement.

Jackiya Dionea Ford, 37, allegedly moved into a Lolo home while it was for sale, then changed the locks and filed a fraudulent lawsuit against the home's builder and rightful owner, Bob Paffhausen.

Deputy Missoula County Attorney Dori Brownlow is prosecuting the case, and said numerous websites provide instructions on how to file such erroneous paperwork, which can clog up the court system if processed.

"There is lots of information online and I assume that's where it's all coming from as a central source," Brownlow said.

... The woman first came onto the radar of local law enforcement when she became disorderly in the Missoula County Attorney's Office and had to be removed. She filed "bogus" lawsuits against several sheriff's deputies, said Lt. Rich Maricelli, and demanded settlements be paid in gold and silver.

"It's been an absolute nightmare," Maricelli said.

Then Ford filed suit against Paffhausen, the builder, who told authorities that the woman showed up to view his house as a prospective buyer. After their initial meeting, Ford delivered paperwork claiming ownership of the house and all the land in a 20-mile radius around it. She offered to drop the lawsuit if Paffhausen paid her $900,000 in pure silver and gold.

On April 14, as the builder worked with Brownlow to remedy the situation, he received a call from NorthWestern Energy saying someone had reported a natural gas leak at the house. Paffhausen went to the house, where he found the locks and garage door codes had been changed and the windows covered up with paper.

Various notices were also posted on the doors saying no one should enter the house without consent of the "authority of our Lord and Savior Yahushua," who had given the house to Ford as a believer.

Looking through an opening in the kitchen window, Paffhausen could see various personal belongings, including a rifle case leaning against the living room wall. Paffhausen called authorities, and as sheriff's deputies were inspecting the home Ford came speeding down the street and pulled into the driveway.

Ford told the deputies that she was a "sovereign citizen of the republic of America" and therefore officials had no authority over her. She said she owned the whole mountainside and that they were on private property.

At the time of her arrest, she had been living in the house about two weeks.

Then came the case of Brent Arthur Wilson, a Patriot drifter who took up residence in a fancy log house near Polson:

His alleged scheme began unraveling late last summer when Polson Realtor Ed McCurdy of Prudential Montana discovered “for sale” signs missing on a log home northwest of Polson he’d been hired to market.

McCurdy’s keys no longer fit the locks, and a piece of paper taped inside a window suggested the home, which was in foreclosure, was now in the possession of someone else.

McCurdy launched his own investigation, and discovered bizarre paperwork had been filed on the home with the county by a Brent Arthur Wilson. It suggested God had transferred title on the home to Wilson, and the legal description of the property location included references to “the third planet from the sun.”

McCurdy also uncovered evidence that Wilson had filed similar paperwork on other area homes, including one Wilson was allegedly living in, and another he had allegedly installed a tenant in.

After Thursday’s court appearance, Cole-Hodgkinson said she would likely charge Wilson in connection with “at least two, and possibly more” home thefts in addition to the three felonies and two misdemeanors he faces on the one house.

“So far we’ve confined everything to the Jette house,” she said, indicating the home McCurdy had listed. “There are other charges, and there are other houses. There will likely be multiple charges per house.”

“It’s very complicated,” Cole-Hodgkinson added, but said it’s important Wilson be able to see and understand all the charges that can, and now will, be brought against him.

Wilson has since accrued some national attention, particularly since he has subsequently engaged in bizarre, classic "Freeman" style behavior in the courtroom, including such antics as refusing to call the judge by anything other than her first name.

There is, of course, a certain amusement value to these antics, because all these poor saps eventually wind up spending jail time because they've succumbed to these belief systems. But sometimes -- as we saw with Jerry Kane and his 16-year-old son -- the outcome is not very amusing at all.

The Heart Of The Immigration Dilemma: Only 5,000 Green Cards To Cover 500,000 Unskilled-labor Jobs

[Cross-posted at Crooks and Liars.]

When reality catches up to Arizonans for their passage of their misbegotten police-state immigration law, it's going to be ugly and unpleasant. If other states really are considering passing similar laws, they will want to watch what happens to Arizona -- and they will inevitably wind up thinking twice.

We've pointed out previously -- as have the nation's police chiefs -- that the law is almost certain to in fact increase violent crime and dilute law enforcement's capacity to deal with it in Arizona.

And that will only be the first consequence (and a decidedly ironic one, since this law was sold as being a means to crack down on violent crime). The longest-lasting and most significant, however, will be the economic one: When the Latino workforce flees Arizona, their economy will suffer a dramatic downturn unlike any they've seen in decades.

It's already starting to happen:

Arizona’s hard-hitting immigration law is driving Hispanics out of the state weeks before the controversial law goes into effect.

Although concrete figures are not available, anecdotal evidence suggests Hispanics, both legal residents and illegal immigrants, are starting to flee.

Schools in Hispanic neighborhoods are reporting abnormal enrollment drops, and businesses that serve Hispanics also report that business is down, according to a USA Today report published Wednesday.

The report suggests that the immigration law is compounding demographic trends that have already significantly curtailed illegal immigration during the past two years. The bad economy has been the primary deterrent to many Hispanic immigrants seeking to enter Arizona, says Jeffrey Passel, a demographer at the Pew Hispanic Center in Washington.

“If you have a bad economy and a hostile environment, then that’s likely to cause people to think twice about coming, and possibly even to leave,” Mr. Passel says.

... Any loss, however, will be a loss for the Arizona economy, [David Gutierrez, a professor of immigration history, at the University of California San Diego] suggests.
“Latinos...are a highly flexible, highly exploitable work force, a buffer to economic downturns,” he says. “Many of the industries here – agriculture, service industries, low-end manufacturing, construction – are massively dependent on undocumented workers.

“If I were able to conduct an experiment and pay all of Arizona’s undocumented workers to not work for two weeks, the economy would come to a screeching, crashing halt instantaneously.”

This brought to mind a video forwarded to me from my friend Jimmy at McCranium, an Eastern Washington blog, of a Pasco immigration attorney named Tom Roach giving an informational talk to group of local citizens in Kennewick on May 29.

The talk is excellent, and I recommend watching the whole thing if you're interested. Because Roach effectively drills down to the heart of our dilemma with immigration -- namely, our current laws are so screwed up they have no chance of meeting the nation's economic needs or effectively dealing with natural immigration pressures that are driven by not just the economy, but the American Dream itself:

Roach: And then at the bottom of the food chain, as you can see, there are low-skilled workers. So those low-skilled workers are farm workers, janitors, chambermaids, busboys, dishwashers, gardeners, nannies, domestics.

Okay, so every year, the government, the U.S. government, hands out green cards to 5,000 people in that category, low-skilled workers, for the entire country. Five thousand a year. And up till about 18 months ago, this economy created something on the order of 500,000 low-skill jobs. Five hundred thousand low-skill jobs, but only 5,000 green cards.

So if you don't learn anything else tonight, take this home, and that cranky next-door neighbor keeps saying, 'I don't understand why the Mexicans just don't get a green card' -- I think it was in the Tri-City Herald today [actually, it ran May 26, there was a letter to the editor: 'Jeez, why don't they just get a green card before they come up?' It's impossible! It's impossible! It's impossible! OK?

Roach goes on to explain in "500 words or less" -- actually, it's a good deal more, but that's OK, because it still makes great sense -- why we now are faced with a situation where we have 10 million undocumented immigrants in this country: namely, the vast majority of those unskilled jobs are not jobs that native-born Americans are willing to do any longer: harvesting agricultural products, landscaping work, janitorial and other services.

I am reminded of a woman I met on the Dreams Across America train in 2007 who ran a landscaping business in northern California. She told me that when she attempted to hire only documented citizens, she received only three applications for 14 positions, and two of the three quit on the first day, and the third quit on the next. She now hires undocumented workers regularly because they're reliable, hard-working, and do excellent work.

I learned this lesson myself at a relatively early age. When I was in high school in the early '70s, I earned my summer college money by working on farms in southern Idaho -- specifically, I used to be part of an irrigation-pipe hauling crew on a potato-wheat-hay farm near Shelley. It was a formative experience in a lot of ways, because it taught me how to work, and imparted a work ethic I maintain to this day. But it was a hard learning experience -- at the beginning of the summer, like most of my workmates, I hated the job (which entailed hauling twenty-two pieces of twenty-foot-long irrigation pipe twenty yards and forming a new line, for which we were paid $1.25). I had to learn how to shut out the distractions and focus on my work, so that I was eventually able to whip out two lines an hour, and ten lines per morning and evening each. It wasn't a lot of money, but it eventually added up.

Still, as a crew, we seriously sucked. We were unreliable -- some of my workmates never really learned how to put their heads down and work, and whined incessantly, and often just didn't show up, leaving the rest of us to pick up their slack. And the quality of our work was equally unreliable; if a line wasn't properly laid, it would burst when filled with water, meaning the boss had to run down the
line and fix it. It seemed he had to do that a lot.

Two years after I graduated from high school, in 1976, I drove out to the farm to visit my old boss. (By then, I had graduated to a high-paying road-construction job for summer college-money work.) I was a little surprised to find that he had replaced his old high-school pipe crews with a crew of Mexican laborers, most of whom I gathered were undocumented. He grinned broadly as he told me how much more reliable they were, how much better workers they were, and how much he enjoyed working with them. It beat spoiled white high-school kids any day.

I understood and sympathized. The reality was that we were relatively spoiled, and were poorly fit for that kind of labor. And we were that way for a reason: because our parents, all our parents, were trying to live the American Dream.

Part of that dream means building a better life not just for yourself but for your children. You want them to have a better life than the one you had, to grow up and get a better job than yours, to move up the ladder just as you have done. So you prepare them to excel in academics and technology and other pursuits -- not in performing hard, low-skill labor. That's the life you want them not to have to lead.

But because we pursue the American Dream, we will always have a need for immigrants, particularly those who perform unskilled labor. As the economy grows, so will the demand for that kind of labor. And we need immigration laws that will help fill that demand rationally and in a controlled way, not through the induced illegality of our current system.

Blaming the immigrants themselves, as the Arizona law does, is not a solution: it only worsens the problem. When Arizona businesses start failing because they cannot obtain a legal workforce under their new regime, the rest of the nation will get to see why just "enforcing the laws we have on the books" is no longer a viable option -- socially, legally, or economically.

Carly Fiorina Goes On Hannity's Show To Grovel Piteously Before The Mighty Sean, Cardinal Of The American Right

[Cross-posted at Crooks and Liars.]

Of course, you knew as soon as you heard that open mike tape of Carly Fiorina dissing Sean Hannity, Meg Whitman and Barbara Boxer -- meow! -- that it would be only a matter of time before we'd see Fiorina on Hannity's Fox News show, purring and groveling abjectly and begging for forgiveness.

Sure enough, Fiorina was on Hannity's show last night. She tried to play the whole incident as a "compliment" -- "You're a tough interview, Sean".

Yeh, right. Anyone listening to the tape could tell that she was talking about the need for California Republicans like Whitman to distance themselves from the wingnuts like Hannity in the general election.

But it's always great for high-schadenfreude amusement value to watch these sneering conservatives grovel piteously before their masters in the right-wing media.

Rand Paul On Mountaintop Removal: "I Don’t Think Anyone’s Going To Be Missing A Hill Or Two Here And There"

[Cross-posted at Crooks and Liars.]

One of the main takeaways from Rand Paul's disturbing musings on civil rights -- as well as his sturdy defense of the indefensible that is British Petroleum -- clearly was, as John put it, that he's a typical out-of-touch country-club conservative Republican -- not to mention that he likewise manages to carry on his dad's tradition of right-wing extremism.

But these also are revealing moments about the limitations of libertarianism as a political philosophy -- because it clearly demonstrates how libertarian "principle" all too often, and all too consistently, essentially gives unbridled permission to behavior and actions that are toxic to our communities and their well-being, and to our democratic institutions as a nation. Which means that libertarianism all too often is often merely used as a pseudo-principled front for the worst impulses in American society, all under the pretense of "freedom".

Well, that very limitation is also readily self-evident when it comes to Paul's position on a subject that directly affects the Kentuckians he wants to represent in the United States Senate: mountaintop-removal coal mining. This issue, perhaps more than any other, reveals Rand Paul, and all the libertarians like him, to be nothing more than the corporate tools they really are.

Here's Rand Paul in an interview from October 5, 2009, via Jeff Biggers:

PAUL: I think people out here would find that I would be a great friend to coal. Not 'cause I come to Eastern Kentucky to pander to coal, but because I believe business should be left alone from government. I think the permit process needs to be made easier from the federal level and the state level. I think we shouldn't have special taxes on their profit. I think we should have lower corporate taxes. Those who create jobs -- I would much more rather lower taxes on the coal industry so they can hire a new hundred new workers than I would say, let's tax the coal industry, send it to Washington, so that we can get a hundred new people digging a ditch that may or may not need to be dug. So yeah, I'm greatly in favor of that. I think coal's a big part of our future because we have a lot of it, still, in the United States, it's fairly readily accessible, and it's where we get most of our electricity. Coal now competes -- you may not know this, a lot of people out here know this -- but about half of our electrical needs come from coal. And it's cheaper than oil and gas, actually, for your electricity.

Q: What about mountaintop removal?

PAUL: I think whoever owns the property can do with the property as they wish, and if the coal company buys it from a private property owner and they want to do it, fine. The other thing I think is that I think coal gets a bad name, because I think a lot of the land apparently is quite desirable once it's been flattened out. As I came over here from Harlan, you've got quite a few hills. I don’t think anybody's going to be missing a hill or two here and there.

And some people like having the flat land. Some of it apparently has become quite valuable when it's become flattened. And I think they do a good job at reclaiming the land, and you know, adding back in topsoil, bringing in help. So the bottom line is, it's not just me pandering to coal. It's me believing in private property.

If they bought the property, they own the property, they can do with that property, as long as they don't pollute someone else's property. And I don't think they want to. If they dump something in the river that goes to the next property, your local judges here will stop them. But I don't think they're doing that. I think what they're doing is what they can do with property they own, and doesn't appear to me to be something the federal government should be getting involved with.

It's harder to get any more afactual and ignorant than that, when it comes to the realities. Indeed, either Paul has just swallowed coal-company lies and propaganda whole, or he's just flatly lying himself.

The facts:

With 95% accuracy, analysis shows that nearly 1.2 million acres (10% of Central Appalachia) have been surface-mined for coal. It also revealed that more than 500 mountains have been severely impacted or destroyed by mountaintop removal coal mining. The study was completed in 2009 by Appalachian Voices based on 2008 aerial and mining permit data.

Over 89 percent of the sites identified in the survey are not being reclaimed. Heckuva job, Paulie!

Wanna see those now-missing "hill or two here or there"? Here's a map of all the hilltop mining operations in the Appalachians. The little green and yellow tabs mark the "reclaimed" sites, while the red ones are for unreclaimed ones:



And here's what a typical mountaintop-removal site looks like without "reclamation" -- this is the Hobet mine in West Virginia, seen from space:



Go here for a before-and-after look at the Hobet mine, just so you can get some perspective of the enormity of this purposeful manmade eco-disaster.

Now multiply that by five hundred, and you'll have a sense of the enormity of what has befallen people living in the Appalachians.

The NRDC's Rob Perks has more:

Of the 500 mountaintop removal sites we examined, we excluded 90 from our survey due to active, ongoing mining activity. That left 410 supposedly reclaimed mine sites, for which we found that:

* 366 (89.3%) had no form of verifiable post-mining economic reclamation excluding forestry and pasture

* 26 (6.3% of total) yield some form of verifiable post-mining economic development

* Only about 4% of mountains in Kentucky and West Virginia, where the vast majority of this mining is occurring, had any post-mining economic activity.

* Virginia had the highest proportion of economic activity on its reclaimed mountaintop removal sites at 20%.

* Tennessee, which has relatively little mountaintop removal compared to the other three states, had no economic activity on the 6 sites examined in that state.

* Overall, economic activity occurs on just 6% to 11% of all reclaimed mountaintop removal sites surveyed as part of this analysis.

The so-called beneficial development projects include:

* industrial parks (4)
* oil and gas fields (3)
* golf courses (3)
* airports (2)
* municipal parks (2)
* hospital (1)
* ATV training center (1)
* county fairground (1)

In addition, commercial agriculture or farming was identified on nine sites, sometimes in conjunction with other land uses such as residential development. The post-mining land use status of all but 18 mountain locations was identified with a high level of confidence. These locations were identified as having “possible” post-mining economic land uses.

This means that some evidence of potential economic reclamation exists on these sites, such as mowed fields or improved structures, but specific land use was not clear. In some cases, it was unclear whether structures were abandoned or directly connected to former or existing mining activity on site or nearby.

What is clear is that mountaintop removal has yielded little economic development on reclaimed mine lands in Appalachia despite the abundance of landscapes with flattened topography available for industrial, commercial, or residential post-mining economic activity.

What was particularly risible was Paul's contention that if these operations polluted their neighbors, why, local judges would surely hold the polluters liable for the damages to their neighbors. Evidently, Paul knows nothing about the history of broad form deeds, which were the legal instrument used by the coal companies to obtain rights to the lands they then leveled without regard to their neighbors:

When coal companies bargained with landowners to buy mineral rights, they commonly negotiated favorable terms for themselves and did not adequately explain the terms to the largely uneducated landowners, who often did not understand the contracts. The companies paid very little for the coal, despite the fact that they reserved the right to use the land surface for coal development.

Most of the mineral rights deeds were made in the late nineteenth century and early twentieth century, when underground mining was common and surface mining was rare. Land owners who signed these deeds never expected that their homesteads would be turned into strip mines. Yet up until the mid-1980’s, courts in Appalachia consistently interpreted broad form deeds to permit surface mining operations even though the grantor had retained the surface rights to the land above the coal seam. Broad form deeds included language that waived mining companies’ liability for surface impacts that were “convenient or necessary” to the mining operation. Based on the turn-of-the-century mining technologies in use during that time period, this language meant that the mining company, which owned only the subsurface mineral rights, could build roads, buildings, coal waste piles, and other structures, as well as harvest timber, on the surface land to facilitate an underground mining operation.

Moreover, they could completely trash neighboring streams without regard to consequence. This is why, as Ashley Judd put it the other day, "Children in eastern Kentucky draw creeks black. They don’t know they're supposed to run clear."

John McQuaid explains that mountaintop removal has already destroyed 1,500 miles of streams in the Appalachians:

The spread of mountaintop removal through central Appalachia in the past 15 years has given scientists the opportunity to study environmental destruction on a previously unthinkable scale: The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) estimates that by 2013 a forested area the size of Delaware will have been destroyed and that more than 1,200 miles of streams have already been severely damaged. As that footprint has grown, so has the evidence, outlined in peer-reviewed scientific papers and ongoing investigations, showing that the damage is far more extensive than previously understood.

Moreover, the health impacts, particularly on children, of this form of mining are both pernicious and widespread -- and have been fully documented.

You see, this is how the real world works: wealthy interests manipulate policy at the state and federal level, and likewise manipulate the law and the courts in their favor, all while the interests of ordinary people are bulldozed. And it's all done under the supposed "principles" of libertarianism -- which really are just convenient way for corporate interests to run amok without regard to the consequences for any of their fellow citizens.

One has to suspect that Rand Paul actually is perfectly aware of this -- and just doesn't care. He has his precious "principles" to run on. He calls them "libertarian". We call him a corporate tool.

Projecting Again: Glenn Beck Says Progressives Are Planning A 'Summer Of Rage' Filled With Violence, Death And Chaos

[Cross-posted at Crooks and Liars.]

The hardest part about trying to follow the increasingly eliminationist -- and dangerous -- wingnuttery of Glenn Beck, beyond the unpleasant work of actually having to watch the entirety of his Fox News shows (so you don't have to), is trying to figure out new ways of saying that he's nuts.

On yesterday's show, he really just continued his freefall into incoherent babble, attacking progressives (again) by claiming that they are planning street violence this summer in order to push President Obama to enact their nefarious agenda.

He found his "evidence" for this by culling clips and Website info on the America's Future Now conference in Washington this past week. John and I were both in attendance, and the only "radicals" we saw in attendance were the Code Pink people who invaded and harassed Nancy Pelosi on Tuesday morning. In other words, they were outsiders. Otherwise, the conference was all about mainstream progressive causes, and largely attracted people who work well with moderates.

Typically -- as he did with Anita Dunn -- he truncated the clips to distort what people actually said. This was especially egregious in this bit:

BECK: The CEO of Green for All, here she is. She's a big player in Crime Inc. She sits on the board of Emerald Cities. She spoke at this America's Future Now. Here's what she had to say when she brought up my name.

ELLIS-LAMKINS [video clip]: When Glenn Beck started talking about me, someone said, "Are you angry?" And what I said to him is, "Absolutely, we have a plot to take over this country. Absolutely we do." It's not a hidden agenda.

BECK: Nope, it's not. It's not. Nope. It's right out in the open. And she's just like you. She is. She's just like you. Yeah. She's just like the American family of the 1950s. See, this is what it is. The crazy people, the people, the people just like you, and the man. See what's happening? They do have a plot, a plan to take over the country. And the mask is coming off. But will anyone join us in this conversation out in the light of day?

Well, as Media Matters points out, Lamkin's remarks in context are very different indeed:

ELLIS-LAMKINS: And so, you know, I thought about, well, who are we? Well, we believe that a coalition of working-class white men, people of color, environmentalists, that we're capable of change. We recognize there's honor in being a coal miner in West Virginia, and we don't blame the coal miner. But we recognize that the needs of the coal miner, of the white West Virginian coal miner, and the black woman working in Chevron in Richmond, that they have the same needs, and an agenda can meet both of their needs. That's who we are.

You know, I have a -- you know, I come out of the labor a moment so I am used to people yelling at me. And so -- members, politicians -- it doesn't hurt my feelings. So when Glenn Beck started talking about me, someone said, "Are you angry? He said you want to take over the world." Like maybe we shouldn't talk about it for awhile. And what I said to him is, "Absolutely, we have a plot to take over this country. Absolutely, we do."

It's not a hidden agenda. It's an agenda that says that all people deserve equality, that white coal miners in West Virginia and black women in Richmond, California, want the same thing. What they want is for us to divide ourselves. What they want is for us to say that one is better than another. That it's immigration versus coal mining, that it's this versus that. And what we say is no, because our vision of America has all of us, not some of us. That when we think about what green is, it is green for all, not for some. That's the difference.

Yeah, that's some daaaaangerous rhetoric there, isn't it?

Beck continued by playing a video of an FBI investigator describing the genocidal views of the Weather Underground, then claiming that these '60s radicals "are the same people that are everywhere in our government and our education system."

He wrapped it up with a bizarre and utterly incoherent rant about the coming "summer of rage" that he thinks progressives are planning. He quoted Robert Borosage urging progressives to follow the example of Martin Luther King and the Civil Rights movement by being "off the reservation" from the White House -- and then urged his audience to likewise take up the MLK mantle. Eh?

Let's just put it simply: The guy is fricking nuts.

In the meantime, while we're awaiting all that looming left-wing violence, isn't it funny that neither Glenn Beck nor anyone else in the media bothered to pay any attention to the most recent right-wing bloodshed out in West Memphis, Arkansas?

Arizona's Immigration Battle Becomes A Major Nexus For White Supremacists And The 'Mainstream'

[Cross-posted at Crooks and Liars.]

Videographer Dennis Gilman attended last weekend's "Phoenix Rising" rally in Phoenix last weekend and made this amazing video. You really have to watch it to believe it.

My favorite moment is the woman who believes there is a "radical Islamic Mexican Catholic movement" that "has been taking over our nation and getting rid of and killing American citizens".

But notice: There are a number of familiar faces here, most notably Sheriff Joe Arpaio and Russell Pearce. These are guys who show up on Fox News, CNN and MSNBC as spokesmen for SB1070, presented nominally as the "mainstream conservatives" who championed the law that they're all defending as having garnered so much popular support, etc. etc.

Of course, as we've noted previously, both Arpaio and Pearce have long histories of playing footsie with neo-Nazis and various other white supremacists and flaming hatemongers.

So it really is not a surprise to see them cavorting about and rubbing shoulders in a perfectly comfortable way with such folks at this rally.

But then, consider that the "Phoenix Rising" rally was actually organized by Barbara Coe, leader of the nativist group California Coalition for Immigration Reform, which led the fight to pass the anti-immigrant Prop 187 back in 1994. You see, CCIR has a sordid history that led to their being designated a "hate group" by the SPLC:

Vitriolic, conspiracy-minded and just plain mean, Coe routinely refers to Mexicans as "savages." She claims to have exposed a secret Mexican plan (the "Plan de Aztlan") to reconquer the American Southwest. Last May, at a "Unite to Fight" anti-immigration summit in Las Vegas, she launched the kind of defamatory rant for which she is infamous. "We are suffering robbery, rape and murder of law-abiding citizens at the hands of illegal barbarians," she warned her cowering audience, "who are cutting off heads and appendages of blind, white, disabled gringos."

More recently, she attacked the new Hispanic mayor of Los Angeles, Antonio Villaraigosa, accusing him of seeking to return Southern California to Mexico.
But the most curious thing about the former police clerk -- whose friends have said she told them she was forced from her job in 1994, after using a city-owned camera to photograph people she thought were illegal aliens -- may be her offhand comments to the Denver Post this November. In a profile of her close friend, U.S. Rep. Tom Tancredo (R-Colo.), the paper said Coe described speaking to and belonging to the Council of Conservative Citizens. That group, which has called blacks "a retrograde species of humanity," has long been listed by the Southern Poverty Law Center as a hate group -- as has Coe's own California Coalition for Immigration Reform.

Even more recently, Coe has attack the current president as well:

Barak [sic] Obama and his anti-American "czars" are taking a page from Hitler's Nazi Germany playbook - only worse, much worse. Be afraid, be very afraid!

This is precisely what Rep. Linda Sanchez was accurately describing last week:

“There’s a concerted effort behind promoting these kinds of laws on a state-by-state basis by people who have ties to white supremacy groups,” she continued “It’s been documented. It’s not mainstream politics. (Legislators) are being approached by folks, who are front organizations for white supremacist hate groups. They propose the language of these bills and get people to carry these bills in the state legislatures.”

Of course, you'll notice that the Fox News freakout over Sanchez's remarks quickly subsided and the issue quietly went away. Maybe because their researchers realized that it Sanchez was right.

Or maybe they had crews out in Arizona last weekend, and discovered the truth for themselves.
[Be sure and visit Gilman's YouTube Channel, which has lots of excellent videos in a similar vein.]

Glenn Beck's 'Overton Window' Ad: Try Not To Laugh. We Dare You.

[Cross-posted at Crooks and Liars.]

We've mentioned Glenn Beck's upcoming book The Overton Window a little bit previously. It appears to be a dumbed-down (in an Ayn Randian way) version of The Turner Diaries, as Will Bunch found:

Bunch reported that Beck told the gathering the story depicts the rise of a citizen’s organization called the Founders Keepers, “a group of people that just won’t give up.” What follows, Beck said, is “a battle and a civil war, and life is upside-down planetwide."

Yep. Pretty much the identical plot as the novel that inspired The Order and the Oklahoma City bombing -- as well as a number of other violent far-right extremists.

Why, we can hardly await the results of Beck's novel.

Already, we get to see the trailer his crackhead team over Glenn Beck Inc. came up with.

Try not to break out in guffaws. I dare you.

No, this is not the Stephen Colbert parody. In fact, he doesn't need to make one. This is self-parody.
FWIW, this isn't Beck-written text. These are lines taken from Rudyard Kipling's poem, "The Gods of the Copybook Headings." (It's a favorite of The Derb's, too.)

Today on his radio show, after the folks at HuffPo observed that this was gobbledygook, Beck noted the early reaction to the trailer. He said the book "will drive the left insane". Really? Or will it just establish yours, Glenn?

Beck went on to explain that it's "art," and the ad gives him a chance to teach us Philistines all about artistic endeavor.

Hooookay.

Native Kentuckian Ashley Judd On Our Other Eco-Disaster, Mountaintop-Removal Coal Mining: The 'Rape Of Appalachia'

[Cross-posted at Crooks and Liars.]

Before the matter of far-right extremism sucked me into its orbit, I was an environmental reporter for many years (indeed, I originally began reporting on militias as part of the extreme backlash against environmentalism). And I've been growing increasingly interested in -- and concerned about -- the growing issue of mountaintop-removal coal mining in the Appalachians.

As a lifetime resident of the West who grew up in Idaho, I'm all too acutely aware of the ways the resource-extraction industry wantonly destroys the natural heritage of rural people. I've witnessed firsthand destruction of the landscape -- and with it people's ways of life -- in the name of minerals and timber, all at the hands of corporate pigs who think nothing of trashing people's homes and then leaving them to clean up the mess and pick up the bill.

Anyone who's ever visited the Berkeley Pit in Butte, Montana knows what I mean. So when I began reading about mountaintop removal back East, it made the hair on the back of my neck stand up, because I could see what it truly is: strip mining on steroids.

That was what Ashley Judd called it yesterday, too, in her speech at the National Press Club (organized by the Natural Resources Defense Council). I was wrapping up some open time at the end of the America's Future Now conference and wanted to hear what she had to say. I have to admit celebrities don't normally do very well speaking out on political issues, but Judd's speech was powerful, in no small part because it was an emotional speech for this native Kentuckian:

But the ache I feel for my mountain home is now more than a bittersweet nostalgia accrued through inimitable generations of belonging. There is a searing tear, a gaping wound in the fabric of my life and the lives of all Appalachians. And it gets bigger with every Appalachian mountaintop that is blown up, every holler that is filled, every stream that is buried, every wild thing that is wantonly and recklessly killed, every ecosystem that is diminished, every job that is lost to mechanization, every family that is pitted one against the other by the state-sanctioned, federal government-supported coal industry-operated rape of Appalachia: mountaintop removal coal mining.

She went on to describe in heartfelt terms the kind of wretchedness -- the environmental devastation and job loss -- the mountaintop removal technique has brought to the Appalachians. Basically, the coal companies don't want to have to mine for the coal anymore: now they just blow up entire mountains to scoop it out with a handful of large machines.

I didn't capture it on video, but she also pointed out that the devastation is occurring on a scale similar to that being wrought by the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. She reads from a thought-provoking and poetic essay by Silas House titled "Sufferings":

I can’t imagine the president doing a flyover of a mountaintop removal site, or holding a press conference about it. And I’ve certainly never seen a mountain blown up on national television—not even once, much less every morning on the Today show.

Yet I would venture to say that mountaintop removal (MTR) is as devastating as the oil spill in the Gulf.

I don’t mean to compare suffering. What I’m saying is actually the opposite of comparison: they’re equally as bad, yet everyone is outraged about the spill while very few people even know about MTR.

Both the oil spill and MTR are environmental, cultural, economic, and health disasters. Both are devastating an entire way of life.

Every time someone says that more than 100 miles of shoreline has been affected by the oil spill, I want to shout that at least 1, 500 miles of waterways have been lost forever in Appalachia.

Every time I think about the spill I also think of the pollution pumping into our creeks and rivers by way of MTR. I think of all the people in the fishing industry whose jobs are threatened by the spill, and then of all the hard-working Appalachians who can’t find a good-paying job besides the mines because we live in a mono-economy created and fostered by the coal industry. I think of how the spill could affect the Gulf so badly that the region’s fishing industry could be wiped out. Immediately I think of how mountaintop removal is hurting all the industries in Appalachia, particularly timber and tourism. New economy doesn’t want to come into a place that has been turned into a war zone with pollution, constant blasting, and intimidation.

NRDC's Rob Perks has more. You can also watch the entire speech over at CSPAN.

Meanwhile, be sure to check out the NRDC's page on mountaintop removal, as well as sites like ILoveMountains.org, which has (among other resources) as great endangered mountains list that gives you a rundown of the scale of what's ahead. You should also check out the work of places like Appalachian Voices.

Harry Reid's GOP Opponent Is A Fan Of The Extremist Oath Keepers. Which Raises All Kinds Of Strange Issues ...

[Cross-posted at Crooks and Liars.]

Harry Reid has to be delighted with the outcome of the Republican primary in Nevada. After all, the onetime frontrunner, Sue Lowden, finally drowned in a sea of chicken feathers and psychotic denials.

In her stead, the winner was Tea Party favorite Sharron Angle. And as TPM's Justin Elliott and Evan McMorris-Santoro reported this morning, Angle is also a fan of the Oath Keepers:

Back in April, Angle told TPMDC she was a member of the Oath Keepers at a press gaggle in Washington. On Monday, we decided to call Angle's campaign to confirm her relationship to the group. Angle's husband, Ted, picked up the phone.

"We support what the organization stands for," he told us. "Sharron does."

Members of Oath Keepers -- whose motto is "Not on our watch!" -- subscribe to a 10-item declaration affirming that they will not, for example, force citizens into detention camps or invade a state "that asserts its sovereignty and declares the national government to be in violation of the compact by which that state entered the Union."

.... Angle's relationship with Oath Keepers hasn't been on the media radar, but she made a little-noticed attempt to woo the group's members at a speaking event last fall, Rhodes told TPMDC Monday.

Rhodes said the event with Angle was organized after she reached out to the Southern Nevada chapter of Oath Keepers. It was held in a clubhouse in Las Vegas. She spoke and "we asked her some pretty tough questions" -- about Hurricane Katrina, gun laws, and the Iraq War, says Rhodes.

"She's got a pretty good track record of being a pretty sincere Constitutionalist," Rhodes tells TPMDC, adding that Oath Keepers does not endorse candidates.

As Elliott and McMorris-Santoro point out, among the things the Oath Keepers believe is that high-ranking officials are secretly plotting to round up conservatives and place them in concentration camps.

But that's not all. C&L was one of the first news entities of any kind to report on the Oath Keepers, and we have a rundown on the things that they believe -- and by extension, beliefs that Angle apparently endorses:

Rhodes and Whittle are eager to portray the core of the Oath Keepers' creeds -- the "ten orders" they "will not obey" -- as involving merely ordinary rights that everyone naturally would stand up for, and in a way, that's true. But only deeply paranoid people would believe there is any reason to be concerned that these rights violations might be looming.

Here they are:

• 1. We will NOT obey any order to disarm the American people.
• 2. We will NOT obey orders to conduct warrantless searches of the American people.
• 3. We will NOT obey orders to detain American citizens as “unlawful enemy combatants” or to subject them to military tribunal.
• 4. We will NOT obey orders to impose martial law or a “state of emergency” on a state.
• 5. We will NOT obey orders to invade and subjugate any state that asserts its sovereignty.
• 6. We will NOT obey any order to blockade American cities, thus turning them into giant concentration camps.
• 7. We will NOT obey any order to force American citizens into any form of detention camps under any pretext.
• 8. We will NOT obey orders to assist or support the use of any foreign troops on U.S. soil against the American people to “keep the peace” or to “maintain control."
• 9. We will NOT obey any orders to confiscate the property of the American people, including food and other essential supplies.
• 10. We will NOT obey any orders which infringe on the right of the people to free speech, to peaceably assemble, and to petition their government for a redress of grievances.

You may also recall Justine Sharrock's superb in-depth report on the Oath Keepers for Mother Jones:

Oath Keepers is officially nonpartisan, in part to make it easier for active-duty soldiers to participate, but its rightward bent is undeniable, and liberals are viewed with suspicion.

At lunch, when I questioned my tablemates about the Obama-Hitler comparisons I'd heard at the conference, I got a step-by-step tutorial on how the president's socialized medicine agenda would beget a Nazi-style regime.

I learned that bringing guns to Tea Party protests was a reminder of our constitutional rights, was introduced to the notion that the founding fathers modeled their governing documents on the Bible, and debated whether being Muslim meant an inability to believe in and abide by—and thus be protected by—the Constitution. I was schooled on the treachery of the Federal Reserve and why America needs a gold standard, and at dinner one night, Nighta Davis, national organizer for the National 912 Project, explained how abortion-rights advocates are part of a eugenics program targeting Christians.

Even more potentially problematic for a would-be United States Senator is the Oath Keepers' view of the role of federal authorities -- which, it seems is taken straight from the Posse Comitatus, a white-supremacist anti-federal movement that dominated the extremist right in the 1980s:

The Oath Keepers are similar to the tea party crowd in that they often disagree what their movement represents. While bred from the libertarian spirit that courses through the West, the Oath Keepers don't have a formal structure beyond the vague principles outlined in the 10 orders.

They say the sheriff is at the top primarily because he is the highest elected law enforcement agent in the land, directly responsible to the voters, and argue the Tenth Amendment gives the voters all power not expressly given the federal government under the Constitution.

The movement has gained traction, including in dozen or more sheriff's races around the West from Orange County, Calif., to the northern border.

"It is time for the sworn protectors of liberty, the Sheriffs of these United States of America, to walk tall and stand up for our Constitution and Bill of Rights," proclaimed Larimer County, Colo., candidate Carl Bruning in his campaign literature.

Someone will have to ask Sharron Angle if she believes that her local sheriff has more real authority under the Constitution than a United States Senator.

Among other things.

Glenn Beck Crosses The Far-right Rubicon, Defends His Promotion Of Nazi Sympathizer

[Cross-posted at Crooks and Liars.]

Glenn Beck has presented Fox News with an interesting dilemma:

Does the cable network hang onto its star tea-partying pundit with the once-stellar (but now rapidly declining) ratings, or does it now give its official imprimatur to a talk-show host who openly promotes the work of a Nazi sympathizer -- and then refuses to apologize for it or even acknowedge that his endorsement was misbegotten?

Because yesterday, faced with the insurmountable fact that he had avidly promoted the work of Hitler apologist/American fascist Elizabeth Dilling, Beck refused to back down, and in fact tried to pretend that it was somehow that fault of liberals that he had done so.

Simon Maloy at Media Matters has the whole sordid story. Here's Beck's response:

BECK: But I'm also getting some amazing mail from the left that now says I'm a Nazi anti-Semite because I quoted a book on Friday -- it was the Red Book, or something like that. It was a who's who, who's in the communist party in 1935. Apparently, I don't know, apparently written by a Nazi sympathizer here in America. Part of the, I'm sure -- I don't know because I didn't look it up -- but I'm sure part of the Father Coughlin, social justice crowd, because this is the choice that progressives give you -- you're either a Nazi or a communist. No, I'm neither. But now -- so now I'm kind of stuck between the place where the left says that I'm a Nazi sympathizer and a Jew lover. So I guess the left can have it all, that I'm a Jew-loving Nazi sympathizer. It's a really interesting place that I don't know if anybody's ever been.

Sorry, but WTF? Beck's understanding of fascism has been so completely polluted by Jonah Goldberg's Newspeak that he is incapable of any kind of coherent understanding of what Americans fascists were all about in the 1930s and afterward.

As Maloy puts it:

First of all, you don't get to play like you don't even really remember what book you were talking about. You told everyone that you spent all of Thursday night reading it, and you were praising it to the skies on Friday as an early example of the sort of communist documentation you yourself claim to be currently undertaking: "This is a book -- and I'm a getting a ton of these -- from people who were doing what we're doing now. We now are documenting who all of these people are. Well, there were Americans in the first 50 years of this nation that took this seriously, and they documented it." I mean, really, Glenn -- you held the book in your hand as you feted it...

MM's Eric Hananoki notes that Dilling actually attended Nazi meetings in Germany.

And if you want to sample Dilling's work for yourself, the text of The Red Network can be found online.

It's really very simple: If Fox News continues to employ Glenn Beck after this, it will forever after be known as a TV network that employs an apologist and advocate for Nazism.

If so, it will have irrevocably proven itself to be not a news organization, but a propaganda organ for the worst kind of racial and ethnic hatred known to man. It's pretty close to that judgment now.

Get The Waaaaaaahmbulance, Stat! Paul McCartney Disses W, And Republicans Have A Hissy

[Cross-posted at Crooks and Liars.]

Sure, Paul may still have to live down "Silly Love Songs." But little moments like these remind us of the puckish rebel of his youth:

McCartney ended the evening taking a baseless cheap shot at former President George W. Bush.

“After the last eight years, it’s great to have a President who knows what a library is,” McCartney quipped.

Republicans seem to have forgotten that The Beatles always had a way of poking fun at conservatives -- and they never were compelled to hold their tongues, either.

Which is why Mr. Tanning Bed, John Boehner, immediately put up a big whine:

“Like millions of other Americans, I have always had a good impression of Paul McCartney and thought of him as a classy guy, but I was surprised and disappointed by the lack of grace and respect he displayed at the White House,” Boehner told HUMAN EVENTS. “I hope he'll apologize to the American people for his conduct which demeaned him, the White House and President Obama.”

Not to mention that it also gave John Boehner a big fat opportunity to completely humiliate himself. Again.

You know, we keep hearing from conservatives that we liberals have no sense of humor. They mostly tell us this when they make jokes about rounding us up in concentration camps or directing terrorist attacks our way. But even the most prim-lipped liberal knows better than to be this dumb.

Gotta wonder what Boehner will do if McCartney declines to apologize. Maybe he and his fellow House Republicans can burn Beatles records on the South Lawn or something.

Now Glenn Beck Loves American Nazi Sympathizers: Promotes Book By Prominent Hitler Advocate Of The 1930s

[Cross-posted at Crooks and Liars.]

Well, Glenn Beck has long had a predilection for promoting the work of far-right extremists like Cleon Skousen, as well as promoting a variety of ideas and theories that originated with the extremist right.

But his latest endorsement is simply beyond the pale. Media Matters has the whole scoop:

On his radio show today, Glenn Beck heralded and promoted the work of Nazi sympathizer Elizabeth Dilling, who spoke at rallies hosted by the leading American Nazi group and praised Hitler. Today, Dilling is heralded by White Supremacists and White Aryans who revere her "fearless" work against Jewish people.

As Media Matters' Simon Maloy noted, Beck had kind words for Dilling's 1934 anti-communist book, The Red Network, saying: "This is a book -- and I'm a getting a ton of these -- from people who were doing what we're doing now. We now are documenting who all of these people are. Well, there were Americans in the first 50 years of this nation that took this seriously, and they documented it." Maloy noted that Dilling has a long history of rabid anti-Semitism, such as calling President Eisenhower "Ike the Kike" and labeling President Kennedy's New Frontier program the "Jew frontier."

Professor Glen Jeansonne and writer David Luhrssen note in the encyclopedia Women and War that Dilling wasn't only anti-Semitic, but a sympathizer and supporter of the Nazis and Hitler:

When World War II began in 1939, Dilling was part of the national network of anti-Semitics, anti-Communists, and Nazi sympathizers such as Father Charles Coughlin, Reverend Gerald L. K. Smith, Reverend Gerald Winrod, and William Dudley Pelley. Material generated by Nazi organizations in Germany to inspire race hated and exploit dissatisfaction in the United States found its way into Dilling's publications. She spoke at rallies hosted by the leading U.S. Nazi organization, the German-American Bund, and had traveled to Germany, pronouncing the country as flourishing under Hitler.

Elizabeth Dillling

Dilling called for appeasing Germany; she blamed the war on Jews and Communists and accused the Roosevelt administration of being controlled by Jewish Communists. ... After Pearl Harbor, Dilling resisted wartime rationing and denounced the Allies.

So Dilling "spoke at rallies hosted by the leading U.S. Nazi organization, the German-American Bund."

Who's the German-American Bund? Let Glenn Beck, Elizabeth Dilling fan, tell you:

BECK: The Bund gathered socially and ran Nazi camps. The camps were advertised as summer retreats where you could escape the city, celebrate German heritage, dance, drink, at places like Camp Nordlund in New Jersey and Camp Siegfried in Long Island. The camps hidden as pro-German/pro- American were attended by adults and families.

On the outside, they looked like any other camp. But the children were indoctrinated in the ideals of Nazism, breeding young Americans to become full-fledged Nazis. They marched, performed drills in Nazi uniforms. And they were taught about their racial superiority, their potential as Aryan youth.

As media scrutiny of the Bund increase, so did anti-Nazi protests, including other Americans who hated the Nazi image and Jewish-American veterans. Instead of quieting down, Bund leader Fritz Kuhn decided to hold the largest rally in their history, Madison Square Garden. These American Nazis showed their true colors, beating a Jewish protester who rushed the stage. Kuhn and other speeches were nothing more than anti-Semitic rants wrapped in the American flag protected by the First Amendment. [Glenn Beck, March 11]

British Professors Christopher Partridge and Ron Geaves wrote that Dilling was a "pro-Nazi anti-Semite" who disseminated Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion. The ADL describes Protocols as "a classic in paranoid, racist literature. Taken by the gullible as the confidential minutes of a Jewish conclave convened in the last years of the nineteenth century, it has been heralded by anti-Semites as proof that Jews are plotting to take over the world."

Dilling's Nazi sympathies have made her a cult hero among Aryan groups and White Nationalists/Supremacists. For instance, the group Women for Aryan Unity features Dilling in a publication whose purpose is "to honour Aryan Women past and Present."

Simon Maloy has even more horrific details.

This isn't just beyond the pale -- it's probably the most significant major-media endorsement of American fascist ideology since the 1930s.

Now, we know that Beck bought whole into Jonah Goldberg's fraudulent Liberal Fascism thesis, and therefore probably believes that these American Nazis were evil "progressives" at heart. So it's likely he had a huge blind spot about the fact that American fascists of the 1930s were far-right ideologues whose favorite pastime was Red-baiting. People like Elizabeth Dilling.

But at least someone on his staff had to be aware of her background. Most likely it was pointed out to Beck and he ignored it.

At the minimum, Beck needs to renounce his endorsement and apologize for making it. If he refuses, Fox must fire him.

Foxheads Freak Out When Rep. Linda Sanchez Points Out The White Supremacists Lurking Behind Arizona's Immigration Law

[Cross-posted at Crooks and Liars.]

All day yesterday on Fox, the talking/shrieking heads were all worked up about some comments from Rep. Linda Sanchez about Arizona's SB1070:

A California congresswoman is pointing the finger at white supremacist groups, who she says have inspired Arizona's new law cracking down on illegal immigrants.

Rep. Linda Sanchez, D-Calif., told a Democratic Club on Tuesday that white supremacist groups are influencing lawmakers to adopt laws that will lead to discrimination.

"There's a concerted effort behind promoting these kinds of laws on a state-by-state basis by people who have ties to white supremacy groups," said the lawmaker, who is of Mexican descent. "It's been documented. It's not mainstream politics."

Oh my God! Somebody tossed a little Baby Ruth of Truth into the swimming pool!

Rick Folbaum told Jon Scott that Sanchez got her information from those notorious dispensers of inconvenient information, a left-wing blogger. (Hey, it coulda been C&L.) Megyn Kelly demanded of Clarissa Martinez of the National Council of La Raza that she denounce these horrendous words. And Sean Hannity didn't even bother to query into whether what Sanchez said might be accurate -- he just ran a quick segment sneering at her "Liberal Lie".

The problem they have is that it's in fact perfectly accurate. Sanchez may have gotten the information from a blogger, but it's more than likely the blog got its information from the Southern Poverty Law Center and the Anti-Defamation League -- both of which have, as Sanchez suggested, fully documented that a number of the leading "respectable" anti-immigration organizations are in fact fronts created by white-supremacist ideologues.

You see, Fox and everyone else has been running commentary from Kris Kobach, a well-paid lackey for the Federation for American Immigration Reform. Kobach has been boasting on Fox and elsewhere that he and his fellows at FAIR are helping to push the Arizona immigration law in other states as well.

Well, FAIR is exactly what Linda Sanchez described. And it's not exactly news, either. Here's the SPLC's rundown on the three main groups involved in promoting the Arizona law:

FAIR, which Tanton founded and where he remains on the board, has been listed as a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center. Among the reasons are its acceptance of $1.2 million from the Pioneer Fund, a group founded to promote the genes of white colonials that funds studies of race, intelligence and genetics. FAIR has also hired as key officials men who also joined white supremacist groups. It has board members who regularly write for hate publications. It promotes racist conspiracy theories about Latinos. And it has produced television programming featuring white nationalists.

CIS was conceived by Tanton and began life as a program of FAIR. CIS presents itself as a scholarly think tank that produces serious immigration studies meant to serve "the broad national interest." But the reality is that CIS has never found any aspect of immigration that it liked, and it has frequently manipulated data to achieve the results it seeks. Its executive director last fall posted an item on the conservative National Review Online website about Washington Mutual, a bank that had earlier issued a press release about its inclusion on a list of "Business Diversity Elites" compiled by Hispanic Business magazine. Over a copy of the bank's press release, the CIS leader posted a headline — "Cause and Effect?" — that suggested a link between the bank's opening its ranks to Latinos and its subsequent collapse.

Like CIS, NumbersUSA bills itself as an organization that operates on its own and rejects racism completely. In fact, NumbersUSA was for the first five years of its existence a program of U.S. Inc., a foundation run by Tanton to fund numerous nativist groups, and its leader was an employee of that foundation for a decade. He helped edit Tanton's racist journal, The Social Contract, and was personally introduced by Tanton to a leader of the Pioneer Fund. He also edited a book by Tanton and another Tanton employee that was banned by the Canadian border officials as hate literature, and on one occasion spoke to the Council of Conservative Citizens, a hate group which has called blacks "a retrograde species of humanity."

Together, FAIR, CIS and NumbersUSA form the core of the nativist lobby in America. In 2007, they were key players in derailing bipartisan, comprehensive immigration reform that had been expected by many observers to pass. Today, these organizations are frequently treated as if they were legitimate, mainstream commentators on immigration. But the truth is that they were all conceived and birthed by a man who sees America under threat by non-white immigrants. And they have never strayed far from their roots.

The SPLC has further details about John Tanton and about FAIR, notably the accumulated record that induced the SPLC to designate it a hate group:

Founded by Tanton in 1979, FAIR has long been marked by anti-Latino and anti-Catholic attitudes. It has mixed this bigotry with a fondness for eugenics, the idea of breeding better humans discredited by its Nazi associations. It has accepted $1.2 million from an infamous, racist eugenics foundation. It has employed officials in key positions who are also members of white supremacist groups. Recently, it has promoted racist conspiracy theories about Mexico's secret designs on the American Southwest and an alternative theory alleging secret plans to merge the United States, Mexico and Canada. Just last February, a senior FAIR official sought "advice" from the leaders of a racist Belgian political party.

It's not just the SPLC that has reached this conclusion. The Anti-Defamation League's assessment falls along similar lines.

Finally, it's worth remembering that the two people most associated with SB1070 in Arizona -- its coauthor, State Sen. Russell Pearce, and the law-enforcement officer whose immigration obsession inspired the law, Maricopa County's Sheriff Joe Arpaio -- themselves in fact have documented associations with Arizona neo-Nazis.

Fox may think they can whip this up, bloody shirt style, in favor of the Arizona law's advocates. I'd wager those same people are wishing they'd just let it quietly drop. Because Linda Sanchez told the truth, and they all know it.

Beck Says Progressives 'Co-opted' The Civil Rights Movement. Seems He Forgot What Conservatives Did.

[Cross-posted at Crooks and Liars.]

Glenn Beck seems to be on a crusade of sorts to try to claim the Civil Rights Movement for conservatives. Lotsa luck with that, big guy.

Yesterday on his Fox News show he opened a segment with this:

Beck: I told you this summer that we are going to concentrate on restoring history. The history of our nation, the founding, the 20th century, the Depression era, um, and the Civil Rights Movement, which has been co-opted by progressives.

Of course, if Beck wants to make this claim, he won't be "restoring" history, unless by "restoring" you mean "utterly falsifying and inverting on its head".

Because, of course, as we've explained several times, the Civil Rights Movement from its very inception was a progressive cause. Beck's favorite Civil Rights icon, Martin Luther King, was a leading advocate of the same "social justice" that Beck now openly despises.

This whole project of Beck's -- built around his August 28 "Restoring Honor" rally on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial -- is more than a little peculiar. It's become evident he wants to claim the mantle of the Civil Rights Movement for he and his fellows on the American Right.

There's only one little problem with all of that: Not only was the Civil Rights Movement a progressive cause from the start, it was the American Right that opposed, attacked, condemned, and undermined the Civil Rights marchers at every turn. It was conservatives, the Glenn Becks of their day, who publicly reviled them and inspired the deadly lynch mobs and Klansmen who committed acts of violence against them.

Indeed, some of their propaganda looks more than a little familiar, don't you think?



This, you see, was a flier that was distributed widely as part of a campaign to discredit King as a Communist. Among the formost leaders in that campaign, especially among Mormons, was none other than the Church's future president, Ezra Taft Benson.

Here are some prime quotes from Benson:

“LOGAN, UTAH-Former Agriculture Secretary Ezra Taft Benson charged Friday night that the civil-rights movement in the South had been ‘formatted almost entirely by the Communists.’ Elder Benson, a member of the Council of the Twelve of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, said in a public meeting here that the whole civil-rights movement was ‘phony.’” (Deseret News, Dec. 14, 1963)

“The Communist program for revolution in America has been in progress for many years and is far advanced. While it can be thwarted in a fairly short period of time merely by sufficient exposure, the evil effects of what has already been accomplished cannot be removed overnight. The animosities, the hatred, the extension of government control into our daily lives–all this will take time to repair. The already-inflicted wounds will be slow to heal. First of all, we must not place blame on the Negroes. They are merely the unfortunate group that has been selected by professional Communist agitators to be used as the primary source of cannon fodder. Not one in a thousand Americans–black or white–really understands the full implications of today’s civil-rights agitation. The planning, direction, and leadership come from the Communists, and most of those are white men who fully intend to destroy America by spilling Negro blood, rather
than their own.

Next, we must not participate in any so-called ‘blacklash’ activity which might tend to further intensify inter-racial friction. Anti-Negro vigilante action, or mob action, of any kind fits perfectly into the Communist plan. This is one of the best ways to force the decent Negro into cooperating with militant Negro groups. The Communists are just as anxious to spearhead such anti-Negro actions as they are to organize demonstrations that are calculated to irritate white people.

We must insist that duly authorized legislative investigating committess launch an even more exhaustive study and expose the degree to which secret Communists have penetrated into the civil rights movement. The same needs to be done with militant anti-Negro groups. This is an effective way for the American people of both races to find out who are the false leaders among them” (Ezra Taft Benson, General Conference Report, Oct. 1967).

See, in order for Glenn Beck to convince his fellow conservatives to claim the mantle of the Civil Rights movement, he essentially has to persuade millions of people who have opposed it with every fiber of their beings for most of their lives to completely reverse course and claim the opposite of their former beliefs.

This is the juncture where Beck's "Civil Rights" campaign runs smack into one of his own long-running threads -- namely, he has doggedly accused the Obama administration of harboring "Marxists" and "Communists": that was, after all, the predicate of his attacks on Van Jones. That happens to be consonant with Beck's running espousal of the works of Mormon leader W. Cleon Skousen -- a man who was in fact a close friend and ally of Ezra Taft Benson's, and shared Benson's belief that Martin Luther King was a secret Communist.

One hopes that, before Glenn Beck mounts the steps of the Lincoln Memorial in August, the leaders of the Civil Rights Movement -- especially those survivors who were present when conservatives were their self-declared enemies and progressives were their only allies -- will speak up and condemn this travesty.