The Inside Story of The Harvard Dissertation That Became Too Racist For Heritage
thinkprogress.orgThe idea that some racial groups are, on average, smarter than others is without a doubt among the most discussed (and debunked) taboos in American intellectual history. It is an argument that has been advanced since the days of slavery, one that helped push through the draconian Immigration Act of 1924, and one that set off […]
Postmortem of the GOP National Security debate
Of course the debate had to kick off with introductions. Like we had no clue who these people on stage were or why they were there…
My first thought: I cannot believe anyone but Huntsman has a serious chance. My second thought: There’s no way anyone but Huntsman should be anywhere near the nuclear football. Shit, Huntsman is the only one who can properly pronounce “nuclear” with consistency.
Herman Cain got hardly any questions, and completely, utterly boned the questions that he did answer. So much for the Cain train, folks. Cain claimed our national security has been downgraded. Obama sighed and reminded Cain about this one dude named Bin Laden. He claimed we couldn’t bomb Iran because it has mountains(?), and that if we left Afghanistan, they’d suddenly become BFFs with Iran. Further, he said we must cut off foreign aid to Africa unless we see results. Not too controversial until you place it in context - he was talking about foreign aid for prevention and treatment of HIV. He also managed to fumble Wolf Blitzer’s name, calling him “Blitz.” In short, he knows nothing about national security, places with mountains can’t be bombed because reasons, and fuck people with AIDS in Africa.
Michele Bachmann went off again about the ACLU controlling CIA interrogations under Obama. Rep. Bachmann, the ACLU would like to have a word with you. Then she launched into a strange point about terrorists and technology changing. Basically, when we first thought about terrorism, phones were attached to the wall with wires and now terrorists have cell phones. Whatever that means. She then claimed Pakistan and the Middle East have seen six attempted terrorist attacks on nuclear facilities. Bachmann also called Perry naive and claimed Obama is threatening national security by canceling the Keystone Pipeline. It’s not cancelled - the U.S. State Department ordered a new route be found for it. Plus, the governor of Nebraska called for the delay, not Obama. Yep. She kept babbling about magnets in regards to immigration.
Shorter Bachmann: Magnets. How do they work? Fuckin’ miracles. On Iraq, she claimed “We need to remember, we won the peace in Iraq. And now President Obama is intentionally choosing to give that peace away.” Uh-huh. Her true gem was when she said she knows all about existential threats. I’m sure Bachmann knows all about existential threats. I question her existence as a serious candidate often.
Jon Huntsman came out strong. He was emphatic that the military buildup overseas and defense budget we are currently running is unnecessary and repeated that any nation building must first begin at home. Huntsman also said strengthening the PATRIOT Act is not the best national security policy because it involves forfeiture of liberties at home - a point introduced by Ron Paul. He called for negotiation with both allies and enemies. Huntsman also ripped Romney a new one after Romney accused Huntsman of wanting America to fail because he suggested drawing down troops in Afghanistan and Iraq. According to Huntsman, indefinite war is expensive and makes us no friends. Who knew? Essentially, his opinions were well-reasoned, thought-out policy positions versus talking points, and he’ll never succeed in the polls with the current GOP. He has the best quote of the night:
“I have to say that our biggest problem is right here at home. And you can see it on every street corner. It’s called joblessness. It’s called lack of opportunity. It’s called debt, that has become a national security problem in this country. And it’s also called a trust deficit, a Congress that nobody believes in anymore, an executive branch that has no leadership, institutions of power that we no longer believe in. How can we have any effect on foreign policy abroad when we are so weak at home? We have no choice. We’ve got to get on our feet here domestically.”
Newt Gingrich bloviated whenever the camera was on him. His speech was slurred and he lost his train of thought a few times, but compared to Perry, etc. he was put together. Personally, I thought Newt looked exhausted or ill. He finally found his pet moderator, Wolf Blitzer. Blitzer kissed his ass several times, with questions like, “Mr. Speaker, I remember you and Reagan did x…” and turned to Newt for historical “fact” - until Blitzer led him into the minefield of immigration. Suddenly, friends off. Gingrich posited a fairly reasonable solution (compared to others) in regards to immigration, though after reactions from other candidates, he became slightly incoherent. His idea was that immigrants found to be undocumented, who have close ties to the U.S., would not necessarily be deported. Slightly less radical than Cain’s electric fence. The other candidates pushed him off the moment of compassion, and as soon as CNN started their post-debate coverage, he was all about take-backs with his immigration stance. He also made an odd point about defeating Nazis with our natural resources like oil and our confidence. Gingrich called Ron Paul “my friend” and I think Paul nearly came over the podium.
Ron Paul continued his powerful performance in the debates. He unequivocally opposed the extension of the PATRIOT Act and said we need to get out of the conflicts we’re involved in due to expense and the fact that we’re not directly threatened by any countries with which we’re currently engaged. Paul stated the PATRIOT Act undermines liberty and when several candidates endorsed profiling Muslims (really) Paul just about lost it. He emphasized white people, specifically, American white people, have committed acts of terrorism as well. Remember Timothy McVeigh? Ron Paul does. He also refused to pander to the pro-Israel folks, saying Israel can stand on its own and if it attacks other countries, it should pay the price like any other nation. Paul also said we should end the war on drugs immediately, particularly for medical marijuana patients. Too bad his compassion doesn’t extend farther. Say what you will about Paul, at least he’s consistent. Then he went all Grampa Simpson and said we should export the free market to Africa. We did. It’s called exploitation.
Rick Perry got little airtime. He had the same night Cain did. Perry kept harping about sanctioning Iran’s bank, which the Obama administration stopped just short of doing recently. He criticized the Obama administration for being ineffective, yet praised “our security forces” in regards to stopping recent terroristic threats. Apparently, he’s forgotten Obama is still the commander-and-chief. He finally said that intelligence under the Obama administration has been a failure, apparently forgetting about Osama bin Laden. Perry wants to make TSA more effective by privatizing it, because TSA’s main problem is unions. He endorsed racial profiling like nearly every other candidate. He also said Obama’s debt committee failure was because of the trigger (a republican measure - remember Boehner said they got 98% of what they wanted). His explanation:
“So the idea that you can’t sit down and work with people on both sides of the aisle, but just to, you know, throw us into — into that briar patch at this particular point in time and say, what would you do — we would never have gotten into that situation if I were the president of the United States. I’d have been there working day in and day out so that we had a budget that not only — I’ve laid out a clear plan to — flat tax of 20 percent; cut the spending; and put a 20 percent corporate tax rate in. And, as a matter of fact, they ought to make the legislature, the Congress, part-time, and that would make as big an impact in this city as anything I can think of.”
So yeah, if you can parse that, more power to you.
Mitt Romney was slicker than usual. He didn’t have the tousled hair of a few debates ago. He looked like a presidential Ken doll. Romney suggested TSA needs to be more efficient with pat downs and that some folks could go through faster than others. Oh, and maybe we don’t need to do pat-downs but whatever, sure, next talking point. This caught my attention (emphasis mine):
We need tools when war is waged domestically to ensure that as president of the United States you can fulfill your first responsibility which is to protect the life, liberty and property of American citizens and defend them from foes domestic and foreign. That means yes we’ll use the constitution and criminal law for those people who commit crimes but those who commit war and attack the United States and pursue treason of various kinds we will use instead a very different form of law which is the law afforded to those who are fighting America.
What law? That’s called the Geneva Convention first off - and Romney’s endorsed torture. This is some serious pandering. What about Americans suspected of terrorism? Is that the same as treason? Scary shit, folks. Romney also mispronounced “modernity” multiple times and I feel that says a lot about the GOP. He pointed out America’s approval rating in Pakistan is 12% and we should work with them. I don’t see why Romney is too worried - that’s three points above Congress in a recent CBS/New York Times poll.
Rick Santorum is batshit. Period. I’ll just give a sample of what he said…
On profiling: “Well, the folks who are most likely to be committing these crimes. If you look at — I mean, obviously, it was — obviously, Muslims would be — would be someone you’d look at, absolutely. Those are the folks who are — the radical Muslims are the people that are committing these crimes, as we’ve — by and large, as well as younger males. I mean, these are things that — not exclusively — but these are things that you profile to — to find your best — the most likely candidate.”
On holy war: “We are not fighting a war on terrorism. Terrorism is a tactic. We’re fighting a war against radical Islam.”
On redefining geography: ”Africa was a country on the brink. On the brink of complete meltdown and chaos, which would have been fertile ground for the radical Islamists to be able to — to get — to get a foothold.”
On alliances: ”Well, I’ve spent a lot of time and concern — and Rick mentioned this earlier — about what’s going on in Central and South America. I’m very concerned about the militant socialists and there — and the radical Islamists joining together, bonding together. I’m concerned about the spread of socialism and that this administration, with — time after time, whether it was the delay in moving forward on Colombia’s free trade agreement, whether it was turning our back to the Hondurans and standing up for democracy and the — and the rule of law. And we took the side with Hugo Chavez and Fidel Castro for a corrupt President. We’ve sent all the wrong signals to Central and South America.”
Winners: Jon Huntsman, Ron Paul, Magnets, the ACLU, Barack Obama
Losers: Brown people who wish to fly without being profiled, liberty, Americans living in poverty, Herman Cain
Here’s my comments during the debate:
Louie Gohmert: Aurora Shootings Result Of 'Ongoing Attacks On Judeo-Christian Beliefs'
huffingtonpost.comRep. Louie Gohmert (R-Texas) said Friday that the shootings that took place in an Aurora, Colo. movie theater hours earlier were a result of “ongoing attacks on Judeo-Christian beliefs” and questioned why nobody else in the theater had a gun to take down the shooter.
During a radio interview on The Heritage Foundation’s “Istook Live!” show, Gohmert was asked why he believes such senseless acts of violence take place. Gohmert responded by talking about the weakening of Christian values in the country.
“You know what really gets me, as a Christian, is to see the ongoing attacks on Judeo-Christian beliefs, and then some senseless crazy act of a derelict takes place,” Gohmert said.
“Some of us happen to believe that when our founders talked about guarding our virtue and freedom, that that was important,” he said. “Whether it’s John Adams saying our Constitution was made only for moral and religious people … Ben Franklin, only a virtuous people are capable of freedom, as nations become corrupt and vicious they have more need of masters. We have been at war with the very pillars, the very foundation of this country.”
Ernest Istook, the host of the show and a former Oklahoma congressman, jumped in to clarify that nobody knows the motivation of the alleged Aurora gunman. Gohmert said that may be true, but suggested the shootings were still “a terrorist act” that could have been avoided if the country placed a higher value on God.
“People say … where was God in all of this?” Gohmert said. “We’ve threatened high school graduation participations, if they use God’s name, they’re going to be jailed … I mean that kind of stuff. Where was God? What have we done with God? We don’t want him around. I kind of like his protective hand being present.”
Gohmert also said the tragedy could have been lessened if someone else in the movie theater had been carrying a gun and took down the lone shooter. Istook noted that Colorado laws allow people to carry concealed guns.
“It does make me wonder, with all those people in the theater, was there nobody that was carrying a gun that could have stopped this guy more quickly?” he asked.
4 Bogus Right-Wing Theories About Poverty, and the Real Reason Americans Can’t Make Ends Meet (Hard Times USA) | Alternet
alternet.orgWhen is a secret not at all secret? Consider the fact that one in three Americans are poor, if we define it as struggling to cover the basic necessities of life. That’s according to a Census Bureau analysis, and it was reported in the New York Times, but I have yet to hear a politician or pundit make reference to this eye-opening reality of our vaunted “new economy.”
n 2011, the Census Bureau took a new look at the “near-poor” – Americans with incomes between 100 and 150 percent of the poverty line. They found that this group, most of whom earn paychecks and pay taxes, represented a whopping one in six U.S. households – a figure that was almost twice as high as had previously been thought.
When those under the poverty line are added, Census found that a stunning 33 percent of the population was struggling to make ends meet in 2010. Analyzing the Census data, the Working Poor Project suggested that the number of near-poor, which they define as those making between 100 and 200 percent of the poverty line, continued to inch up in 2011 as many returning to work in this sluggish recovery have been forced to settle for lower-paying service jobs.
For these conservative think-tankers, pundits and politicians, obscuring America’s grinding poverty and spiraling inequality is an exercise in service of a status quo that works pretty well for them, but not for most families.
1. But the poor have color TVs.
Consider the boilerplate conservative column about how many wondrous household appliances the average low-income household owns. Back in the 1930s, this argument goes, poor people didn’t have running water, but now they have color TVs, so life is good.
As I write this, my local Craigslist offers multiple televisions, a dining set, several treadmills, a mountain bike, an oven (with hood), a blender, a coffeemaker, a slew of couches and beds, a piano, a hot-tub (needs repair) and a complete stereo system, all free to anyone who will pick them up. We live in a consumer economy that creates an abundance of surplus and rapidly obsolete goods, and people who struggle to put food on the table can nonetheless get their hands on all manner of electronics for nothing.
2. The poor have lots of room to enjoy poverty.
A similar argument holds that in the United States, poor people have more living space, on average, than low-income households in other developed nations. As the Wall Street Journal was eager to point out, “The average living space for poor American households is 1,200 square feet. In Europe, the average space for all households, not just the poor, is 1,000 square feet.”
Perhaps that’s true, but it’s also divorced from context. There is a simple matter of population density at work: in the core states of the European Union, there are 120 people per square kilometer; in the United States, we only have 29 people per kilometer. And the average is a bit misleading as it includes the rural poor – low-income households in tightly packed urban centers don’t tend to have 1,200-square-foot apartments.
3. The poor are actually rolling in money.
A new and equally distorted argument entered the conservative discourse just recently. It holds that poor families receive $168 per day in government benefits – more than the median weekly income in this country. If that were true, low-income households in the United States would enjoy quite comfortable living standards.
But as I noted last month, that number is inflated by around eight-fold. The claim originated with Robert Rector at the Heritage Foundation and then underwent some revisions on its journey to Republican congressional staffers, and finally to the conservative media. It gets to that number by counting things like federal aid to rebuild communities after natural disasters as “welfare,” including programs that assist the middle class and the wealthy and then dividing the costs of all these programs by the number of households under the poverty line, despite the fact that many more families benefit from them.
4. It’s just how they are.
And then there are the ever-popular cultural explanations for poverty. This is a storyline based on confusing correlation with causation – a rookie mistake in any introductory college class.
The Heritage Foundation, for example (it’s Robert Rector again), sees a lot of poor, single-parent households, and would have you believe that “the main causes of child poverty are low levels of parental work and the absence of fathers.”
But this gets the causal relationship wrong. The number of single-parent households exploded between the 1970s and the 1990s, more than doubling, yet the poverty rate remained relatively constant. In fact, before the crash of 2008, the poverty rate was lower than it had been in the 1970s. So, as the rate of single-parent households skyrocketed, poverty declined a little bit. Saying single-parent homes create poverty is like claiming the rooster causes the sun to rise.
As I’ve noted in the past, this is an essential piece of the “culture of poverty” narrative, and it is nonsense. Jean Hardisty, the author of Marriage as a Cure for Poverty: A Bogus Formula for Women, cited a number of studies showing that poor women have the same dreams as everyone else: they “often aspire to a romantic notion of marriage and family that features a white picket fence in the suburbs.” But low economic status leads to fewer marriages, not the other way around.
In 1998, the Fragile Families Study looked at 3,700 low-income unmarried couples in 20 U.S. cities. The authors found that 90 percent of the couples living together wanted to tie the knot, but only 15 percent had actually done so by the end of the one-year study period. And here’s the key finding: for every dollar that a man’s hourly wages increased, the odds that he’d get hitched by the end of the year rose by 5 percent. Men earning more than $25,000 during the year had twice the marriage rates of those making less than $25,000.
Writing up the findings for the Nation, Sharon Lerner noted that poverty itself “seems to make people feel less entitled to marry.” As one father in the survey put it, marriage means “not living from check to check.”
Why People Are Really Poor
During a period of less than 20 years beginning in the early 1980s, the American economy underwent dramatic changes. It was a period of policy-driven de-unionization and the offshoring of millions of decent manufacturing jobs. The tax code underwent dramatic changes, as CEO pay sky-rocketed and the financial sector came to represent a much larger share of our economic output than it had during the four decades or so following World War II.
And our distribution of income changed dramatically as well. During the 35 years prior to Ronald Reagan’s election, the top one percent of U.S. households had taken in an average of 10 percent of the nation’s income. When Reagan left office in 1988, those at the top were grabbing 15.5 percent of the pie, and by the time George W. Bush took office in 2000, they were taking over 20 percent of the nation’s income.
We can either believe that this shift was a result of changes in public policy (combined with new technologies), or that in just two decades there was some sort of rapid cultural decline among everyone but those at the top of the economic heap.
All of the false narratives are intended to distract from the structural causes of poverty and inequality, and they ignore two simple and indisputable truths. First, contrary to popular belief, we don’t all start out with the same opportunities. The reality is that in the United States today, the best predictor of a newborn baby’s economic future is how much money her parents make.
It also ignores the fact that living in an individualistic, capitalist society carries inherent risk. You can do everything right – study hard, work diligently, keep your nose clean – but if you fall victim to a random workplace accident, you can nevertheless end up being disabled in the blink of an eye and find yourself in need of public assistance. You can end up bankrupt under a pile of healthcare bills or you could lose your job if you’re forced to take care of an ailing parent. Children – innocents who aren’t even old enough to work for themselves – are among the largest groups receiving various forms of public assistance.
The reality, despite the spin from the conservative movement, is that poverty in America is very real, and it’s anything but fun.
h/t: AlterNet
The Heritage Foundation would like you to know that "Conservative feminism is not an oxymoron".
blog.heritage.orgOh yes, it’s as good awful as it sounds.
My favorite part?
“What constitutes this “intellectual colonialism” that is such a threat to progressive multiculturalism? It’s the spread of the unique ideas upon which America was founded: ideas hailed as universal and immutable truths, stemming from that first declaration “that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.” What could be more empowering than the simple declaration that all people, women and men, are entitled to the respect of their basic human dignity?”
It’s my favorite thing when folks forget that applying the word “man” to mean “men, women, everyone in between” is male dominated language, especially when they actually, literally only meant men at the time “man” was used in that statement. HISTORY, WHY YOU GOTTA BE SO INCONVENIENT.
And of course, the racism inherent in anything produced by the Heritage Foundation is always fun horrific.
My political blog, which makes no secret about being very liberal, is being followed by The Heritage Foundation, an organization which is open about being very conservative.
The United States has the 52nd lowest income tax rate in the world.
When income tax (both corporate and personal) is measured as a percentage of Gross Domestic Product (GDP), the United States pays the 52nd lowest tax rate in the entire world.
Lower than Switzerland. Lower than Namibia.
In other words: we’re already a bunch of deadbeats. But hey, lets be really greedy. Lets pay even less of our income, let’s let the infrastructure fall apart and let’s cancel our grandparents’ Medicare to pay for some rich guy’s summer house in the Hamptons.
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SOURCES: Conservative policy think tank The Heritage Foundation; http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_tax_revenue_as_percentage_of_GDP
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#conservative hypocrisy
Conservative Group FreedomWorks: "VAWA Deprives Men Of Constitutional Rights" | TPMDC
tpmdc.talkingpointsmemo.comThe conservative grassroots is pushing lawmakers to vote against the Senate’s reauthorization of the Violence Against Women Act, which has 62 cosponsors and is slated for a final vote early this week.
Heritage Action and FreedomWorks, two well-financed right wing activist groups, are lobbying to scuttle the reauthorization. In short, they lament the expanded provisions, which beefs up funding for local law enforcement to prosecute domestic abusers while expanding coverage to gays, illegal immigrants and Native Americans. They claim VAWA hasn’t proved to be effective and argue that federal funding for law enforcement is both redundant and unconstitutional.
In a blog post, FreedomWorks criticized the cost of the legislation — $660 million — and pointed out that domestic violence is “already illegal in all 50 states.” It added: “Supporters of the VAWA portray women as helpless victims - this is the kind of attitude that is setting women back.”
Heritage Action is scoring VAWA as a “key vote” in determining a lawmaker’s conservative credentials.
Claiming that the reauthorization would expand the definition of domestic violence to include “emotional distress,” Heritage declared that the “expansive and vague language will increase fraud and false allegations, for which there is no legal recourse.”
FreedomWorks also worried that the legislation would be unfair to men.
“The newest version of the VAWA, S.47, contains very vague and broad definitions of domestic violence,” the organization wrote. “A man that raises his voice at his partner, calls her an offensive name, stalks her, causes her any emotional distress, or simply just annoys her can potentially be prosecuted under the VAWA. Calling your spouse a mean name is not advised or polite, but it isn’t the same thing as violence towards her.”
In response, the National Task Force to End Sexual and Domestic Violence Against Women (NTF) — a coalition of more than 250 national, tribal and local advocacy organizations — called Heritage’s claims “egregious” and accused it of “misrepresent[ing] the truth.”
NTF’s Response To Heritage Action On VAWA by
h/t: Sahil Kapur at TPM
