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    Senior Member JohnDoe2's Avatar
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    Tea Party Quitter DeMint Cashes In, Exposing DC's Dark Side

    Tea Party Quitter DeMint Cashes In, Exposing DC's Dark Side

    Posted: 12/06/2012 11:06 pm

    They say "walk before you run," but for politicians like Jim DeMint it's the other way around. First you run, then you walk -- walk out, that is, on your commitment to serve.

    But DeMint's performed one public service by abandoning his post: He's given us a glimpse of a half-hidden Washington where leaders don't lead, think-tankers don't think, and the house always wins.

    Always Be Closing

    DeMint's leaving to run the Heritage Foundation, a right-wing Reagan-era "think tank." Is he a policy expert, a problem solver, a "thinker"? What was DeMint's professional background before he entered politics?

    Sales. DeMint ran a small marketing group (one to four employees, according to business databases) in Greenville, South Carolina.

    That's not as incongruous as it sounds. The Heritage Foundation is a marketing organization, founded by billionaires and corporations to provide cogent-sounding arguments -- sales pitches, really -- for policies which favor them at the public's expense.

    "Join Rush Limbaugh and nearly 700,000 other conservatives as a Member of The Heritage Foundation today," chirps the "think tank's" website -- presumably because the first name that comes to mind when Americans hear the word "thinker" is Rush Limbaugh.

    DeMint's new job will undoubtedly consist of promoting far-right ideas, lobbying his fellow politicians, and raising money from millionaires, billionaires, and corporations.

    (De)Minting Money

    That last part should come naturally. DeMint's collected more than $17 million in campaign contributions, raising four times as much as the average Senate candidate during the last two campaign cycles alone. His donor list includes defense contractors, megabanks, and the ubiquitous Koch Brothers.

    DeMint's also raised more than $20 million in the last two years for his Tea Party PAC. You remember the Tea Party, don't you? That's the "people's revolt" against powerful Washington interests.

    Good luck with that.
    DeMint should feel right at home at an organization co-founded by right-wing beer magnate Joseph Coors. According to Right Wing Watch other corporate donors include General Motors, Ford, Proctor and Gamble, Chase, Dow Chemical, Mobil Oil, and Smith Kline pharmaceuticals.

    The job pays more than a million dollars a year.

    Call Them Irresponsible

    DeMint's following the new, growing practice of walking out whenever a better offer comes along. First came trendsetter Sarah Palin, who quit halfway through her first term to pursue lucrative personal and television appearances. Rep. Jo Ann Emerson of Missouri followed in the Demi-Governor's footsteps this year, announcing she'd be leaving Congress less than a month after winning re-election.

    Emerson's "better offer" came from a group which lobbies for not-for-profit electric utilities. She refused to disclose how much she'll make at her new job as its president. "I am not leaving Congress because I have lost my heart for service," she added. "To the contrary," she added. "I see a new way to serve."
    Right.

    Bipartisan Betrayal
    Most of these cash-and-carry quitters seem to be Republicans -- but not all. Democratic Senator Evan Bayh announced his decision not to seek re-election just one day before the filing deadline for his state's primary, a denying Democratic voters the right to choose their own nominee.

    That left Bayh with a $10 million trove of campaign cash. Some said that would come in handy for a future lobbyist, but Bayh insisted he had nobler aspirations. "I want to be engaged in an honorable line of work," said the sanctimonious solon, who accompanied his departure with a self-righteous outburst about the evils of "partisanship."

    Instead, as Ezra Klein noted, Bayh joined a lobbying group which says its "principal clients" include "national energy companies, foreign countries, international manufacturing companies, trade associations and local and national businesses." He also hooked up with an investment group and -- like fellow walkout Sarah Palin -- got a gig with Fox News.

    Bayh's Senate career was distinguished only by his effectiveness in watering down important legislation on behalf of corporate interests. His new gig just made the role official.

    Wine Dark Washington

    DeMint's resignation exposes a seamy web of influence which includes politicians, ex-politicians and lobbyists, along with a flotilla of ""senior vice presidents," "advisors," board members, "commissioners," and other well-fed possessors of vague sinecures.

    (I'm looking at you, Alan Simpson.)

    Big-money minions always make money. Take health reform: A key provision in the health bill -- its most unpopular -- is the "individual mandate" forcing people to buy overpriced and inadequate insurance from private insurers. It would have been much better policy to include a "public option" which offered the alternative of buying Medicare coverage. That idea was extremely popular, supported even by a narrow majority of Republicans.

    But it was killed during closed-door negotiations. The lobbyists delivered for corporate America during those negotiations, and in return the money flowed like wine.

    So, undoubtedly, did the wine.

    The Game

    The public option was delayed by filibuster threats from Senators like Jim DeMint, then suffocated by corporate Democratic "centrists" like Evan Bayh. That left no alternative to the despised "individual mandate,"first proposed in 1989 -- by the Heritage Foundation.

    See how it all fits together? And just yesterday a key player in health reform announced she was leaving government to become a drug company lobbyist.
    The beat goes on.

    The Producers

    Now, as Politico reports in an excellent piece, the same crowd's making millions from the "fiscal cliff" talks, a bonanza for players like "Fix the Debt's" Maya MacGuineas.

    "It's springtime in Washington in January," said a DC lawyer who probably didn't intend to evoke this song. But his words matched the melody perfectly.

    Those talks, like those over health reform, are being held where this seamy web of insiders works best: in the dark.

    Virtual Democracy

    How many politicians want to vote against big-money interests when they know there's a pot of gold at the end of the political rainbow? Some can't wait and cash out early, like DeMint.

    And who knows? Maybe a creative "think tank" is working on a new system that lets them skip the dreary work of governing altogether. Then they can just make their sale with the voters, turn their voting proxy over to their sponsors, and head straight for the cashier's window.

    Heritage co-founder Paul Weyrich was forthright about his feelings toward democracy. "Our leverage in the elections quite candidly goes up," he said," as the voting populace goes down." Who knows? Maybe someday they'll eliminate voters altogether. In the meantime they need their DeMints and Palins and Bayhs.

    These politicians aren't leaders. They're corporate America's sales force.

    "Will You Help Save the American Dream?" asks the Heritage Foundation website.

    But that's just another sales ploy. These politicians have already cashed in on their dreams -- by selling yours.

    http://www.huffingtonpost.com/rj-eskow/tea-party-quitter-demint_b_2254684.html
    Last edited by JohnDoe2; 12-07-2012 at 02:04 AM.
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    Senior Member JohnDoe2's Avatar
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    Super Moderator Newmexican's Avatar
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    Tea Party Quitter DeMint Cashes In, Exposing DC's Dark Side

    Posted: 12/06/2012 11:06 pm
    This is the rhetoric that I have come to expect from the Huffington Liberal mouthpiece. Snarly and demeaning State run media, just like Pravda used to be.......JMO
    Last edited by Newmexican; 12-07-2012 at 08:32 AM.
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    Super Moderator Newmexican's Avatar
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    Thugs, JMO

    HUFFPO PUBLISHES THREAT TO CONSERVATIVE SITE

    'I've got friends and they've got friends ... enough to cause a computer meltdown'

    AARON KLEIN
    December 7, 2012




    Writing in the Huffington Post, a senior fellow at a George Soros-funded radical think tank with close ties to the Democratic Party seemingly threatened the Discover The Networks website.

    Discover The Networks, launched by former radical turned conservative David Horowitz, is a central database that maps out left-wing agendas, activists and causes.

    “I’ve got friends, too – and they’ve got friends, and they’ve got friends, and they’ve got friends … enough to cause a computer meltdown at Discover The Networks,” wrote Richard Eskow, senior fellow at Campaign for America’s Future, or CAF.
    The veiled threat was issued in a Huffington Post blog piece responding to a WND article reporting how the CAF had launched a new website urging politicians and activists to wage class warfare.


    The new website, WageClassWar.org, also hailed what CAF called a new era in politics – the use of class warfare to win elections.
    The WND article quoted from Discover The Networks about the ties of the Eskow’s CAF to so-called progressive Democrat politicians.
    In his Huffington Post piece, Eskow also attacked WND as a “leading source for those tinfoil-hat ‘birther’ theories about President Obama.”

    Democrat operatives launch class-warfare website

    WageClassWar.org was launched two weeks ago by the CAF.
    CAF’s co-director, Robert Borosage, explained the need for such a website.
    “America’s growing diversity and its increasingly socially liberal attitudes played a big role in this election. But looking back, we are likely to see this as the first of the class warfare elections of our new Gilded Age of extreme inequality,” he wrote in a statement.
    “More and more of our elections going forward will feature class warfare – only this time with the middle class fighting back. And candidates are going to have to be clear about which side they are on,” he wrote.
    Continued Borosage: “In 2012, candidates who supported the economic interests of the many over the few won their elections. Populism was the voice, but economic opportunity was the message. The pundits may wring their hands, but in the future it won’t be values voters, angry white men or soccer moms that win elections. It will be class war.”
    The website does not feature a mission statement and is unclear about exactly how the group will go about attempting to wage class warfare.
    The site explains how Obama’s 2012 campaign utilized class warfare and set the stage for the deployment of such tactics in future elections.
    “Obama’s campaign built its message on class war battles that broke out in the Republican primary, as challengers sought to bring down ‘the main from Bain,’ Mitt Romney,” notes the site.
    “In the end, the keys to Obama’s reelection were his calls for raising the taxes of the wealthy and his support for reinvesting those revenues in education and jobs to rebuild the middle class and to protect programs like Medicare from cuts.”
    The site hails how Obama repeatedly portrayed Romney as a “walking example of the out-of-touch elite, an opponent of the auto industry bailout that saved an entire manufacturing sector, and a 1 percenter who would jeopardize social programs, education, and Medicare in order to cut taxes on his rich friends.”
    CAF writes that Obama’s reelection now sets the stage “for class warfare as a potent and necessary tool to promote rebuilding the economy from the bottom up, rather than perpetuate the right wing’s failed trickle-down policies.”
    Occupy, Soros, Democratic Party

    WND previously reported how CAF has partnered with Occupy.

    CAF is funded by Soros’ Open Society Institute as well as by the Soros-funded Tides Center, which channels funding to hundreds of progressive and far-left groups.
    Tides has been connected to the Occupy movement since its beginning.
    Another grantee of Tides is Adbusters magazine, which is reported to have come up with the Occupy Wall Street idea after “Arab Spring” protests toppled governments in Egypt, Libya and Tunisia. The Adbusters website serves as a central hub for Occupy’s planning.
    MoveOn.org, which has joined Occupy, is funded by Tides. CAF’s board of directors includes MoveOn.org President Eli Pariser.
    CAF’s co-founder and director Roger Hickey, who also co-founded the Soros-funded Economic Policy Institute, was reportedly heavily involved in crafting the foundations for President Obama’s health-care law.
    CAF campaigns for universal health care, immigration reform and progressive education initiatives.
    CAF is deeply tied to progressive politicians from the Democratic Party, many of whom routinely are featured at CAF events.
    Just last year, Nancy Pelosi was the featured speaker at CAF’s “America’s Future Now” conference in Washington, D.C.
    In 2008, Rep. Jan Schakowsky, D-Ill., was honored at CAF’s annual dinner for her “advocacy in Congress,” noted Discover the Networks.

    Read more at HuffPo publishes threat to conservative site
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    Senior Member JohnDoe2's Avatar
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