Month: March 2011

Sovereign Citizenry

by digby

Far be it from me to suggest that these ongoing activities might have a political element, but …. they do. And it isn’t liberal:

Five people in the Fairbanks area were arrested Thursday by state and federal law enforcement on charges connected with an alleged plot to kidnap or kill state troopers and a Fairbanks judge, according to the Alaska State Troopers. Francis “Schaeffer” Cox, Lonnie Vernon, Karen Vernon, Coleman Barney and Michael Anderson are accused of conspiring to commit murder, kidnapping, and arson, as well as weapons misconduct, hindering prosecution and tampering with evidence, according to trooper spokeswoman Megan Peters in a written statement late Thursday. An investigation “revealed extensive plans to kidnap or kill Alaska state troopers and a Fairbanks judge,” the statement said. The plans included “extensive surveillance” on the homes of two Fairbanks troopers, the statement said. “Investigation also revealed that extensive surveillance on troopers in the Fairbanks area had occurred, specifically on the locations of the homes for two Alaska state troopers,” the statement said. “Furthermore, Cox et. al. had acquired a large cache of weapons in order to carry out attacks against their targeted victims. Some of the weapons known to be in the cache are prohibited by state or federal law.” U.S. Attorney Karen Loeffler said Lonnie Vernon, 55, was arrested for threatening to kill a federal judge. She said more information about federal charges would be released today Fairbanks Police Chief Loren Zager said the operation involved multiple police actions related to Fairbanks-area members of the “sovereign citizen” movement.

There have been a lot of these “sovereign citizens” in the news lately.

In late May, a father-son pair of so-called “sovereign citizens” shot and killed two police officers in West Memphis, Arkansas after being pulled over on a routine traffic stop. Militia-like “sovereign citizens” take right-wing “tenther” beliefs to their logical extreme, declaring themselves exempt from federal law and from paying taxes, and believing they “don’t have to answer to any government authority.” The FBI lists the movement as a “domestic terror threat,” and as NBC Nightly News reported last night, the West Memphis shooting highlights that this growing anti-government movement may become violent: While the sovereign citizen movement has existed for some time, its popularity appears to be growing in a climate where the anti-government rhetoric of the tea party movement has become commonplace. Former President Clinton, speaking at the Center for American Progress Action Fund in April, “drew parallels” between the anti-government tone that preceded the Oklahoma City Bombing “and the political tumult of today.” Sadly, several recent incidents of right-wing extremist violence — including the West Memphis shootings — suggest he may be right.

It’s true that there have been some radical Muslim plots in the last few years. But there have been just as many, if not more, of these. And I would venture to say that they are just as serious about overthrowing our form of government as the Islamic fundamentalists are.

But when the DHS put this on their radar, this was the reaction from Rush L:imbaugh:

The thing came out last week on April 7th. Roger Hedgecock and a couple people found it, made it public yesterday afternoon. As I said, I got my copy at 2:30 in the afternoon. This is being made and widely disseminated now on the day prior to the tea parties as well. Here’s another excerpt. “Rightwing extremist chatter on the Internet continues to focus on the economy, the perceived loss of US jobs in the manufacturing and construction sectors, and home foreclosures. Anti-Semitic extremists attribute these losses to a deliberate conspiracy conducted by a cabal of Jewish ‘financial elites.'” Right-wing extremist chatter is spreading this kind of stuff around? “These ‘accusatory’ tactics are employed to draw new recruits into rightwing extremist groups and further radicalize those already–”

So you have a report from Janet Napolitano and Barack Obama, Department of Homeland Security portraying standard, ordinary, everyday conservatives as posing a bigger threat to this country than Al-Qaeda terrorists or genuine enemies of this country like Kim Jong Il. They wouldn’t write anything about Jim Jong Il like this. They wouldn’t write anything about Osama Bin Laden like this.

Don’t forget, this is the same bunch that once suggested the speech code in which references to jihad and Islamofascism were to be purged. We were not to discuss terrorism with those words. It was not to be discussed in the country; it was not to be discussed in the government. The same people who wanted to purge references to jihad or Islamofascism are now out with this report, which is a genuine hit job on standard run-of-the-mill, mainstream ordinary Americans. “DHS/I&A will be working with its state and local partners over the next several months to ascertain with greater regional specificity the rise in rightwing extremist activity in the United States, with a particular emphasis on the political, economic, and social factors that drive rightwing extremist radicalization.”

That’s just a portion of it; it’s nine pages long. Homeland security warning of radicals on the right, defined as groups that reject federal authority in favor of state or local authority. Anybody opposed to federal authority, expanding federal authority will now be tagged as a member of right-wing extremist groups.

Needless to say, the administration backtracked.

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Falling For it Again

by digby

I can hardly believe this, but it looks as though Glenn Beck’s website The Blaze, has done some serious analysis of the James O’Keefe NPR tapes and found that they were …. edited.

Shocked? I knew you would be.

1. Muslim Brotherhood connections

Much of the consternation over this video centers on the question of why would NPR executives meet with a group connected to Muslim Brotherhood. Did they know? And if Muslim Brotherhood is mentioned, how are the ties characterized? Is the edited video misleading on these points?

In this first section, the narration describes the players and says the NPR executives were preparing to meet with the members of “Muslim Education Action Center.” The narrator then describes the MEAC as a “Muslim Brotherhood front group.” It does not explain how the NPR executives would have a basis to believe they were meeting with a Muslim Brotherhood front group.

The raw video helps us evaluate how the NPR execs might perceive the men. The men describe themselves as board members but indicate that they are at lower levels in the organization…one of them explaining that he is relatively new to the board…the other saying he works in mostly an “observation basis.” You will see that in this clip.

Further, we compare the edited video with the raw video on the important section of how the actors describe the role/connection of the Muslim Brotherhood to their efforts. The edited video includes a reference to some of the original founders of MEAC being members of the Muslim Brotherhood in America. Is this the only reference and basis for the NPR execs to consider MEAC to have a Muslim Brotherhood connection? The raw video also includes a longer section of description that seems to downplay connections of the MEAC group to the Muslim Brotherhood as popularly perceived.

2.Does Ron Schiller react to “Sharia” mission statement with amusement?

The narrator notes that the MEAC website includes this phrase: “We must combat intolerance to spread acceptance of Sharia across the world.”

Sharia is defined as “the sacred law of Islam.” But the interpretation of that definition has many variations across many Islamic traditions. That alone would not be a firm clue for the NPR executives of the group’s beliefs.

Of greater concern, though, is how the video is edited at this juncture.

So after saying that the MEAC website advocates the “acceptance of Sharia,” the video cuts to the NPR exec saying, “Really? That’s what they said?” The cadence is jovial and upbeat and the narration moves on. The implication is that the NPR exec is aware and perhaps amused or approving of the MEAC mission statement. But when you look at the raw video you realize he was actually recounting an unrelated and innocuous issue about confusion over names in the restaurant reservation.

3. How does Schiller describe Republicans?

Schiller’s negative comments about Republicans and conservatives have gotten a great deal of attention.

He clearly says some offensive things, while being very direct that he is giving his own opinion and not that of NPR. Still — a wildly stupid move!

But you may be surprised to learn, that in the raw video, Schiller also speaks positively about the GOP. He expresses pride in his own Republican heritage and his belief in fiscal conservatism.

4. The “seriously racist” Tea Party

NPR exec Ron Schiller does describe Tea Party members as “xenophobic…seriously racist people.”

This is one of the reasons why he no longer has a job!

But the clip in the edited video implies Schiller is giving simply his own analysis of the Tea Party. He does do that in part, but the raw video reveals that he is largely recounting the views expressed to him by two top Republicans, one a former ambassador, who admitted to him that they voted for Obama.

At the end, he signals his agreement. The larger context does not excuse his comments, or his judgment in sharing the account, but would a full context edit have been more fair? See what you think:

5. Are liberals more educated than conservatives?

You may also have seen a section of the video where Schiller describes liberals as more educated than conservatives. But the raw video shows a section where Schiller is hesitant to criticize the education of conservatives and the other executive, Betsy Liley, is outspoken in her defense of the intellects of Fox News viewers.

Would it have been fair to include the broader range of the executives statements? The impression of the original video, that the execs were only hostile toward Republicans and conservatives, is incorrect.

6. Does NPR need federal funding?

Let’s look now at one of the other sections most featured in news reports about the original video — the comments about federal funding for NPR.

Schiller says that NPR, “in the long run,” would be better off without federal funding and that most of the stations would survive a loss of such funding. The implication is that Schiller does not believe federal funding for NPR is important. In the raw video, however, Schiller explains the risk to local stations in more detail and why NPR is doing “everything we can to advocate for federal funding.”

7. Audio issue number one

In the release of the raw video, there are two sections where the audio becomes an issue.

In this first clip the video (complete with “timecode” stamp) continues to play while the audio goes into some kind of glitchy loop.

This could be an actual glitch, though not one I’ve seen like this in 25 years of working with video editing.

It could also be a “glitch” edited into a loop to cover a section of the recording on purpose.

In any case here it is:

8. Audio issue number two

The video producers “redacted” a 1:24 section of the audio. They explain that this is for the “safety of a reporter illegally in foreign country.”

The implication from the editing is that Betsy Liley is describing the activities of the reporter in question:

The Blaze contacted NPR to see if Liley recalls the nature of her comments here, but thus far they have been unable to accommodate our inquiry.

Conclusion:

Anyone looking at the edited version of the Project Veritas video would be concerned about the conduct and views expressed by the NPR representatives. But should we also be concerned about the deceptive nature of some of the video’s representations? Some will say no — the end justifies any means, even if unethical. Others may be bothered by these tactics and view similar projects with a greater degree of skepticism.

Uh, that’s Glenn Beck’s website saying that. If you don’t believe them, you can view the tapes yourself. This may not be all of it for all I know.

I would have argued before this that Schiller’s views about the Tea Party were no reason for firing him and that there is plenty of evidence to back up his impressions. There most certainly is a racist element in the Tea Party, just as there has always been a racist element in the far right. They are the same.

Think Progress:

Although instances of racist sentiment at Tea Party rallies can be easily found, defenders of the movement argue they are aberrations, if not part of a liberal conspiracy to smear tea partiers.

[…]
National surveys of the Tea Party have found that explicit racist sentiment is a strong component of the tea-party make up, in addition to economic conservatism and strong Republican partisanship. The April, 2010 New York Times/CBS News national survey of Tea Party supporters found that they are:

– More than twice as likely as the general public (25% vs 11%) to believe that “the policies of the Obama administration favor blacks over whites.” – Half as likely as the general public (16% to 31%) to believe that “white people have a better chance of getting ahead in today’s society.” – Almost twice as likely as the general public (52% to 28%) to believe that “too much has been made of the problems facing black people” in recent years.

In a broad study of adults in Georgia, Michigan, Missouri, Nevada, North Carolina, Ohio, and California conducted between February and March, the University of Washington Institute for the Study of Ethnicity, Race, and Sexuality (WISER) asked a number of questions about “racial resentment” — such as whether blacks don’t try hard enough or have gotten more than they deserve. Conservatives are 23 percent more likely to be racially resentful, and Republicans 15 percent more likely than Democrats. However, the institute found that this racial sentiment isn’t simply a byproduct of white conservativism:

[E]ven as we account for conservatism and partisanship, support for the Tea Party remains a valid predictor of racial resentment.

It is untrue, as political commentator Dave Weigel argues, that racism in the Tea Party is merely reflective of its conservatism. The WISER study found that compared to other conservatives, Tea Party supporters are:

– 25 percent more likely to have racial resentment. – 27 percent more likely to support racial profiling. – 28 percent more likely to support indefinite detention without charges.

They also believe that blacks and Latinos are far less hard working, intelligent and trustworthy than other people.

I know that many liberals inside the beltway don’t want to believe that the Tea Party is as motivated by social conservatism and racism as it is by fiscal hawkishness because that means arguments must be waged about issues they find unpleasant. But the Tea Party is the same old, same old far right of the Republican party and they have always been more than fiscal hawks and patriots . You can pretend that it isn’t so, but it won’t change anything.

The damage in this case is is done and it’s worse than people realize. If NPR is able to salvage its funding — and if ACORN is any indication that’s far from assured — NPR will likely be covering the Tea Party with even more reverence than they already did, which was substantial, and other networks will undoubtedly follow. That’s how these things work.

I have a dream that one day when a liberal organization somewhere is “caught” by one of these idiotic stings they will demand to see the whole damned tape before they start firing people. I live in hope.

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Who needs tsunami warnings anyway?

by digby

I was watching the live coverage of the tsunami in Japan last night and could not believe what I was seeing. It was something out of a movie — a movie that I would have thought was somewhat ridiculous until I saw this surge from the birds eye view. Unbelievable.

I’m sitting here now, six blocks from the beach in California, waiting for the wave to hit the west coast. Luckily it doesn’t appear to be dangerous to us at this point.

The good news is that if the Republicans have their way, when one of these things does hit us in this earthquake zone, we won’t have warning:

Thursday night’s massive earthquake in Japan and the resulting tsunami warnings that have alarmed U.S. coasts, seem likely to ignite a debate over a previously little-discussed subsection of the spending bills currently being debated in Congress.

Tucked into the House Republican continuing resolution are provisions cutting the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, including the National Weather Service, as well as humanitarian and foreign aid.

Presented as part of a larger deficit reduction package, each cut could be pitched as tough-choice, belt-tightening on behalf of the GOP. But advocates for protecting those funds pointed to the crisis in Japan as evidence that without the money, disaster preparedness and relief would suffer.

“These are very closely related,” National Weather Service Employees Organization President Dan Sobien told The Huffington Post with respect to the budget cuts and the tsunami. “The National Weather Service has the responsibility of warning about tsunami’s also. It is true that there is no plan to not fund the tsunami buoys. Everyone knows you just can’t do that. Still if those [House] cuts go through there will be furloughs at both of the tsunami warning centers that protect the whole country and, in fact, the whole world.”

The House full-year continuing resolution, which has not passed the Senate, would indeed make steep cuts to several programs and functions that would serve in a response to natural disasters (not just tsunamis) home and abroad. According to Sobien, the bill cuts $126 million from the budget of the NWS. Since, however, the cuts are being enacted over a six-month period (the length of the continuing resolution) as opposed to over the course of a full year, the effect would be roughly double.

I realize that the productive wealthy can’t be taxed but I hope they’re all thinking ahead and employing their own natural disaster experts or they might suffer right along with the rest of us.

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Open Government

by digby

That’s inside the Wisconsin State House. Yup.

H/t to Think Progress

Strange Bedfellows

by digby

Piers Morgan and Andrew Brietbart discuss the future of US journalism:

MORGAN: Andrew, let me turn to you. Is this kind of stunt fair game, do you think?

ANDREW BREITBART, AUTHOR, “RIGHTEOUS INDIGNATION”: Well, of course, it’s fair game. It was a week and a half ago that CNN itself said of a prank that was done on Governor Scott Walker — they named the prankster CNN’s person of intrigue of the day. So the problem here is that James O’Keefe and many other people like Lila Rose are held to a different standard.

Often in the history of journalism you have people like Hunter Thompson, Paul Krazer, Abbie Hoffman, who have been outrageous in trying to get their points across and have used journalism to do so. And they have been given their own wing of the J schools because they have the politically correct left of center view.

James O’Keefe is despised by the liberal culture on — by the coastal elites, you know, media that is based in New York. Media based in New York and Washington despite him and Lila Rose for their politics.

MORGAN: It’s sort of a chicken and the egg, isn’t it? This guy’s opinions wouldn’t have received wider airing if Mr. O’Keefe and his skulduggery hadn’t been at work. You yourself have been up to skulduggery before. You know, you stitched up Shirley Sherrod pretty spectacularly. So it is — I come back to the same question. Is it really fair, this? I don’t come at it from a particular moral point of view. But just is it fair? This guy wouldn’t have said this stuff if he knew he was being recorded, would he?

BREITBART: No, but this is done all the time. NBC and “Dateline” dressed up as Muslims and walked through Nascar to try to get the American people, the Tea Party extremists that Ron Schiller and NPR, you know, allude to, to try and get them to say intemperate things about Muslims. This is done on “To Catch a Predator.” This has been done in the media forever.

As I said, this is because of James — the reason people are talking about the tactics and whether or not they’re correct is because an avowed conservative is using the tactics that the left of center media has used for years.

MORGAN: Forget left or right for a moment, though. Let’s just discuss the tactics. Doesn’t matter to me which side of the political persuasion you come from. Where is the line drawn? I mean, you are an activist, for want of a better phrase.

BREITBART: I’m not.

MORGAN: Well, you are, really, aren’t you?

BREITBART: No more so than Geraldo Rivera — than Geraldo Rivera is.

MORGAN: I would call him an activist, too.

BREITBAT: You’re British. I think we’re moving towards where the British are. I read the “Guardian” in the UK — in the UK and — and I — because I know it’s a left of center paper. And I don’t have a problem with it being a left of center paper. It’s avowedly left of center. And it’s able to tell truths.

I think that we’re ending this era of false objectivity in this country. People have opinions. NPR has a left of center opinion. And it should embrace it.

MORGAN: Where do you draw the line?

BREITBART: If James O’Keefe, who is an independent journalist, comes to me with something that doesn’t sit right with me, I’m going to pass on it. I think that we have to live with our consciences. And what, you know — the public is going to judge whether or not a tactic is over the line. But I don’t think what he did is over the line. It comports with what the mainstream media has been doing for years.

I do so enjoy watching fellow Angeleno Breitbart take on the “coastal elites”

The secret camera is fair game as long as it isn’t edited to completely change the context or what really happened as Giles and O’Keefe have done over and over again and Breitbart himself is being sued for doing in the Shirley Sherrod case.

The question in this situation is why NPR felt they needed to fire someone for saying what he said. Certainly FOX News would have and Andrew Breitbart would have but why an allegedly left of center news organization would have is something someone should ask Breitbart and his ilk.

One wonders what would happen at Fox under similar circumstances, say if an executive said something like this:

“They are, of course, Nazis. They have a kind of Nazi attitude. They are the left wing of Nazism. These guys don’t want any other point of view. They don’t even feel guilty using tax dollars to spout their propaganda. They are basically Air America with government funding to keep them alive.”

Roger Ailes is still working at Fox right? I thought so.

Jay Rosen has much more on this story.

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They don’t call them e coli conservatives for nothin’

by digby

Why isn’t this man running for president?

While many Republicans have taken up the cause of the familiar 100-watt incandescent bulb, Mr.[Ron] Paul said he took the law as a personal affront visited on Americans by “bureaucrats.”

“I’m not against conservation,” Mr. Paul said. “But why not do it in a voluntary way,” rather than force him to adopt the new bulbs with “fines and threats of jail?”

Mr. Paul also drew a pointed parallel with abortion, opening his questioning by asking Ms. Hogan, “I was wondering if you are pro-choice?”

Ms. Hogan said she was “pro-choice in light bulbs.” But Mr. Paul accused her, the Energy Department and Democrats in general of hypocrisy. “You favor a woman’s right to abortion,” he said, but “you’re really anti-choice on every other product.”

He said that department standards on energy-efficient refrigerators and toilets, for example, do not work. “We don’t even save any money,” Mr. Paul said. “We have to flush the toilet 10 times before it works.”

I would say that Paul is full of it (if you know what I mean) but that would lead to some crude imagery that I don’t think any of us want polluting our beautiful minds. Suffice to say that he’s got some issues that have little to do with the efficiency of his toilet.

Update: Who knew? This appears to be a big Tea Party issue:

Sharon Glass with the Santa Rosa Tea Party Patriots told members of the state Senate Environmental & Conservation committee today that no one has proven leaky septic tanks are causing water quality problems. She said the state is discriminating against septic tank owners.

“The Tea Party of Florida is behind the people with these septic tank issues,” said Glass, one of several Tea Party members to speak. “And we’re not going to stand for it.”

The new bill, proposed by Sen. Charlie Dean, R-Inverness, says that local governments could adopt the state’s new model, the details of which are not yet determined. Cities and counties could opt to adopt more stringent requirements. Or they could seek an exemption.

One committee member, Sen. Jack Latvala (R-St. Petersburg) took issue with Glass’ comment that the state was discriminating against septic tank owners.

“It’s all nice and good to be talking about discriminating against people but let me tell you one little story,” he said.

He went on to talk about PascoCounty’s HudsonBeach, a place that is frequently closed to swimmers because of high bacteria levels in the water.

“People cannot swim there because of the septic tanks on the canal,” he said. “So in that case we’re discriminating against completely innocent folks who all they want to do is take their kids to the beach every day.”

If they want a clean beach they can buy themselves one.

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Bookmark This

by digby

Greg Anrig has written a great, succinct myth-busting piece on Social Security. Here are the five main points in a nutshell:

1. Social Security didn’t create the deficit.

2. Social Security benefits are earned; reducing them amounts to confiscation.

3. Social Security is funded until 2037.

4. The trust fund is invested in bonds, the most secure investment in the world. To suggest that the trust fund wouldn’t pay is blatant fear-mongering.

5. Social Security is an easy fix.

Read the whole thing. Keep it available for when the rightwing harpies start shrieking about deficits and you need to remind yourself of reality.

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Control Freaks

by digby

Someone in a position to know once told me that David Plouffe was a super control freak and it certainly looks like he’s making his mark on the administration:

When House Republicans targeted the budget of the National Labor Relations Board last month, the agency shot back, warning that such cuts would force it to largely cease operations for an extended period of time, creating a backlog of thousands of cases. It was one of the few counterattacks from the Obama administration, which was otherwise busy proposing its own cuts and endorsing the Republican call for slashing spending — and it didn’t last long. The White House demanded that the NLRB scrub the statement defending the agency from its website, an NLRB spokesperson told The Huffington Post.

Here’s the problem:

Before the NLRB statement was taken down, Washington Post labor columnist Harold Meyerson used a piece of it in his column connecting the funding attack on the NLRB to the effort to strip collective bargaining rights from public workers in Wisconsin. “In a statement last Friday, NLRB Chairman Wilma Liebman and Chief Counsel Lafe Solomon wrote that it would require the board to furlough all of its 1,665 employees for 55 days between now and the end of the fiscal year. They estimated that it would increase by 18,000 the backlog of cases before the board,” Meyerson wrote.

Reilly, the OMB spokeswoman, said that all federal agencies were asked to allow the White House to respond to the budget cuts rather than responding themselves.

Except, you know, they haven’t been responding. And the natural suspicion is that they haven’t been responding because they want to keep all these things available to deal away in the negotiations. That’s a problem, because it means that nobody is making any kind of case for why cuts shouldn’t be made.

Backroom transactional negotiating is much more convenient when everything’s on the table. The problem is that people’s lives are at stake as well as the ability of the Democratic party to give even a weak voice to the concerns of the middle class in the future. And unfortunately, that may be the crux of the problem — the upcoming race for president will require tens of millions of dollars from wealthy corporations and individuals and they are quite obviously making their requirements known to both parties.

The GOP attempt to defund the NLRB is just one front in a campaign against the agency. The NLRB is handling at least four challenges from Republican lawmakers questioning the agency’s decision-making, enforcement and advertising policies.

This budget battle could very well lead to the President winning the 2012 battle and the Democrats finally losing the larger war once and for all.

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Homegrown Threats

by digby

Eric Cantor sez:

“I don’t think there’s any question about [Peter King’s] credibility. … We have got demonstrable occurrences in this country that show we’ve got a risk of the spread of radical Islam. That’s not within the security interests of the United States and its citizens; it’s something that we really want to work with folks to see if we can stop,” he said.

Asked about his expectations for the hearing and the controversy surrounding it, Cantor responded, “Really, it’s one hearing out of many that he’s having. I think you here in this room have sort of become fascinated with this hearing. And I would say to you it’s pretty obvious where some of the problems have been in terms of terrorist activity.”Asked again to weigh in on the controversy surrounding the hearing, Cantor said that “people are free to react the way they want.””What I can tell you is I believe that we in this country are threatened by the spread of radical Islam, both abroad and at home,” he said.

Yeah, we’re threatened by radicalism in a lot of forms. Some of it more “homegrown” than others. For instance, this appears to be the writing of the man arrested yesterday for planting a bomb at the Martin Luther King Day rally in Spokane Washington:

On December 25, 2009, Snuffy responded to a thread titled: “Italians….Is it me or are 95% of them as bad as Jews and Ni**ers?” “I have come to the conclusion that you go to race war with the Whites you have, not the Whites you want,” Snuffy wrote.

I have a feeling this alleged terrorist would probably be very supportive of Peter King’s hearings. They share a similar cramped view of what threatens America.

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American Democracy

by digby

They will take this to court. Who knows what will happen. But this is just the latest in a line of Republican end runs and undemocratic processes used explicitly for the partisan purpose of weakening and emasculating the Democratic party over the past few years. The impeachment of President Clinton was the first, followed by the stolen Bush election, the recall of Gray Davis, the gerrymandering in Texas etc. It’s distinctly different than the sort of thing you saw when Democrats passed the final health care bill with a majority instead of a supermajority. That was a policy dispute that broke on party lines. These are purely partisan political actions designed to create a political advantage — as the top Republican in the Wisconsin senate openly admitted.

I have written about this a lot over the years. This is one of my favorite little anecdotes that illustrates their thinking:

The new deadline for all recounts to be submitted to Katherine Harris was 5 p.m. Sunday, November 26. Now, that Sunday afternoon you could watch any of the television coverage and see that Palm Beach was still counting. And by late afternoon you heard various officials in Palm Beach acknowledging that they were not going to be finished by five. Now, we maintain that was completely illegal, because the law said you had to manually recount all ballots. [See Village Voice top five outrages for why this is such a slimy position for him to take.]

But as five o’clock approached, we heard that the secretary of state was going to accept the Palm Beach partial recount — even though the Palm Beach partial recount was blatantly illegal. We were told that the secretary of state’s view was that unless Palm Beach actually informed her — in writing or otherwise — that the returns were only a partial recount, she could not infer that on her own.

So we made some calls to a few Republicans overseeing the Palm Beach recount. We told them to gently suggest to the canvassing board that it might as well put PARTIAL RETURN on the front of the returns that were to be faxed up in time for the deadline. The reason we gave was clarity — that the words PARTIAL RETURN would distinguish those returns from the full count that would be coming in later that night. I’m not exactly sure what happened, but I think the Palm Beach board did in the end write PARTIAL RECOUNT on the returns. We all know that the Secretary of State, in the end, rejected them. [By rejecting them, he means that she said that a partial return missed the deadline altogether and all the previously uncounted votes that were counted in the partial recount were never added to the tally. This had the effect of never allowing Gore to take the lead.]

I think the board members probably agreed to write the PARTIAL RECOUNT notation for two reasons. First of all, I think they hadn’t slept in 48 hours, so I think they’d sort of do anything. Second of all, I don’t think they or anybody else would have suspected that it would actually make any difference. Who would imagine that without the simple notation of PARTIAL RETURN the partial count would have been accepted as a complete count by the secretary of state? Even while the television showed them still counting?

But I don’t think it was Machiavellian to suggest to the board that it write PARTIAL RECOUNT, because that is what it was. I think it would have been sort of Machiavellian to suggest to pretend they were not partial returns. [Talk Magazine, March 2001, p. 172

This is a political war about power not policy. The people usually understand that once they engage and they aren’t crazy about it. (They certainly didn’t approve of the impeachment) They really do expect the government to work on their behalf and even if they disagree with the policy they are far more forgiving of politicians who use the power of their office for the good of the people than they are of politicians who use their power purely for partisan advantage. Wisconsin may be one of those situations that gets their attention. They already don’t like the idea of ending collective bargaining and union busting. I would imagine that doing it in this unconventional fashion will not sit well at all.

There are many possibilities for responses being discussed and planned. Recalls, upcoming elections etc., which will undoubtedly be followed up by local activists and their national allies. But they have done something much bigger than just end collective bargaining for public employees in Wisconsin. They’ve raised awareness of the labor movement at a time when the middle class is under stress after years of being exploited. They wanted to deliver a coup de grâce and have inspired a movement instead.

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