FitSugar

Millions of Unemployed Face Years Without Jobs

Roarman — Tue, 23 Feb 2010 08:42:41 -0800

Even as the American economy shows tentative signs of a rebound, the human toll of the recession continues to mount, with millions of Americans remaining out of work, out of savings and nearing the end of their unemployment benefits.

Economists fear that the nascent recovery will leave more people behind than in past recessions, failing to create jobs in sufficient numbers to absorb the record-setting ranks of the long-term unemployed.

Call them the new poor: people long accustomed to the comforts of middle-class life who are now relying on public assistance for the first time in their lives - potentially for years to come.

Yet the social safety net is already showing severe strains. Roughly 2.7 million jobless people will lose their unemployment check before the end of April unless Congress approves the Obama administration’s proposal to extend the payments, according to the Labor Department.

Here in Southern California, Jean Eisen has been without work since she lost her job selling beauty salon equipment more than two years ago. In the several months she has endured with neither a paycheck nor an unemployment check, she has relied on local food banks for her groceries.

She has learned to live without the prescription medications she is supposed to take for high blood pressure and cholesterol. She has become effusively religious - an unexpected turn for this onetime standup comic with X-rated material - finding in Christianity her only form of health insurance.

“I pray for healing,” says Ms. Eisen, 57. “When you’ve got nothing, you’ve got to go with what you know.”

Warm, outgoing and prone to the positive, Ms. Eisen has worked much of her life. Now, she is one of 6.3 million Americans who have been unemployed for six months or longer, the largest number since the government began keeping track in 1948. That is more than double the toll in the next-worst period, in the early 1980s.

Men have suffered the largest numbers of job losses in this recession. But Ms. Eisen has the unfortunate distinction of being among a group - women from 45 to 64 years of age - whose long-term unemployment rate has grown rapidly.

In 1983, after a deep recession, women in that range made up only 7 percent of those who had been out of work for six months or longer, according to the Labor Department. Last year, they made up 14 percent.

Twice, Ms. Eisen exhausted her unemployment benefits before her check was restored by a federal extension. Last week, her check ran out again. She and her husband now settle their bills with only his $1,595 monthly disability check. The rent on their apartment is $1,380.

“We’re looking at the very real possibility of being homeless,” she said.

Every downturn pushes some people out of the middle class before the economy resumes expanding. Most recover. Many prosper. But some economists worry that this time could be different. An unusual constellation of forces - some embedded in the modern-day economy, others unique to this wrenching recession - might make it especially difficult for those out of work to find their way back to their middle-class lives.

Labor experts say the economy needs 100,000 new jobs a month just to absorb entrants to the labor force. With more than 15 million people officially jobless, even a vigorous recovery is likely to leave an enormous number out of work for years.

Some labor experts note that severe economic downturns are generally followed by powerful expansions, suggesting that aggressive hiring will soon resume. But doubts remain about whether such hiring can last long enough to absorb anywhere close to the millions of unemployed.

A New Scarcity of Jobs

Some labor experts say the basic functioning of the American economy has changed in ways that make jobs scarce - particularly for older, less-educated people like Ms. Eisen, who has only a high school diploma.

Large companies are increasingly owned by institutional investors who crave swift profits, a feat often achieved by cutting payroll. The declining influence of unions has made it easier for employers to shift work to part-time and temporary employees. Factory work and even white-collar jobs have moved in recent years to low-cost countries in Asia and Latin America. Automation has helped manufacturing cut 5.6 million jobs since 2000 - the sort of jobs that once provided lower-skilled workers with middle-class paychecks.

“American business is about maximizing shareholder value,” said Allen Sinai, chief global economist at the research firm Decision Economics. “You basically don’t want workers. You hire less, and you try to find capital equipment to replace them.”

During periods of American economic expansion in the 1950s, ’60s and ’70s, the number of private-sector jobs increased about 3.5 percent a year, according to an analysis of Labor Department data by Lakshman Achuthan, managing director of the Economic Cycle Research Institute, a research firm. During expansions in the 1980s and ’90s, jobs grew just 2.4 percent annually. And during the last decade, job growth fell to 0.9 percent annually.

“The pace of job growth has been getting weaker in each expansion,” Mr. Achuthan said. “There is no indication that this pattern is about to change.”

Before 1990, it took an average of 21 months for the economy to regain the jobs shed during a recession, according to an analysis of Labor Department data by the National Employment Law Project and the Economic Policy Institute, a labor-oriented research group in Washington.

After the recessions in 1990 and in 2001, 31 and 46 months passed before employment returned to its previous peaks. The economy was growing, but companies remained conservative in their hiring.

Some 34 million people were hired into new and existing private-sector jobs in 2000, at the tail end of an expansion, according to Labor Department data. A year later, in the midst of recession, hiring had fallen off to 31.6 million. And as late as 2003, with the economy again growing, hiring in the private sector continued to slip, to 29.8 million.

It was a jobless recovery: Business was picking up, but it simply did not translate into more work. This time, hiring may be especially subdued, labor economists say.

Traditionally, three sectors have led the way out of recession: automobiles, home building and banking. But auto companies have been shrinking because strapped households have less buying power. Home building is limited by fears about a glut of foreclosed properties. Banking is expanding, but this seems largely a function of government support that is being withdrawn.

At the same time, the continued bite of the financial crisis has crimped the flow of money to small businesses and new ventures, which tend to be major sources of new jobs.

All of which helps explain why Ms. Eisen - who has never before struggled to find work - feels a familiar pain each time she scans job listings on her computer: There are positions in health care, most requiring experience she lacks. Office jobs demand familiarity with software she has never used. Jobs at fast food restaurants are mostly secured by young people and immigrants.

If, as Mr. Sinai expects, the economy again expands without adding many jobs, millions of people like Ms. Eisen will be dependent on an unemployment insurance already being severely tested.

“The system was ill prepared for the reality of long-term unemployment,” said Maurice Emsellem, a policy director for the National Employment Law Project. “Now, you add a severe recession, and you have created a crisis of historic proportions.”

Fewer Protections

Some poverty experts say the broader social safety net is not up to cushioning the impact of the worst downturn since the Great Depression. Social services are less extensive than during the last period of double-digit unemployment, in the early 1980s.

On average, only two-thirds of unemployed people received state-provided unemployment checks last year, according to the Labor Department. The rest either exhausted their benefits, fell short of requirements or did not apply.

“You have very large sets of people who have no social protections,” said Randy Albelda, an economist at the University of Massachusetts in Boston. “They are landing in this netherworld.”

When Ms. Eisen and her husband, Jeff, applied for food stamps, they were turned away for having too much monthly income. The cutoff was $1,570 a month - $25 less than her husband’s disability check.

Reforms in the mid-1990s imposed time limits on cash assistance for poor single mothers, a change predicated on the assumption that women would trade welfare checks for paychecks.

Yet as jobs have become harder to get, so has welfare: as of 2006, 44 states cut off anyone with a household income totaling 75 percent of the poverty level - then limited to $1,383 a month for a family of three - according to an analysis by Ms. Albelda.

“We have a work-based safety net without any work,” said Timothy M. Smeeding, director of the Institute for Research on Poverty at the University of Wisconsin, Madison. “People with more education and skills will probably figure something out once the economy picks up. It’s the ones with less education and skills: that’s the new poor.”

Here in Orange County, the expanse of suburbia stretching south from Los Angeles, long-term unemployment reaches even those who once had six-figure salaries. A center of the national mortgage industry, the area prospered in the real estate boom and suffered with the bust.

Until she was laid off two years ago, Janine Booth, 41, brought home roughly $10,000 a month in commissions from her job selling electronics to retailers. A single mother of three, she has been living lately on $2,000 a month in child support and about $450 a week in unemployment insurance - a stream of checks that ran out last week.

For Ms. Booth, work has been a constant since her teenage years, when she cleaned houses under pressure from her mother to earn pocket money. Today, Ms. Booth pays her $1,500 monthly mortgage with help from her mother, who is herself living off savings after being laid off.

“I don’t want to take money from her,” Ms. Booth said. “I just want to find a job.”

Ms. Booth, with a résumé full of well-paid sales jobs, seems the sort of person who would have little difficulty getting work. Yet two years of looking have yielded little but anxiety.

She sends out dozens of résumés a week and rarely hears back. She responds to online ads, only to learn they are seeking operators for telephone sex lines or people willing to send mysterious packages from their homes.

She spends weekdays in a classroom in Anaheim, in a state-financed training program that is supposed to land her a job in medical administration. Even if she does find a job, she will be lucky if it pays $15 an hour.

“What is going to happen?” she asked plaintively. “I worry about my kids. I just don’t want them to think I’m a failure.”

On a recent weekend, she was running errands with her 18-year-old son when they stopped at an A.T.M. and he saw her checking account balance: $50.

“He says, ‘Is that all you have?’ ” she recalled. “ ‘Are we going to be O.K.?’ ”

Yes, she replied - and not only for his benefit.

“I have to keep telling myself it’s going to be O.K.,” she said. “Otherwise, I’d go into a deep depression.”

Last week, she made up fliers advertising her eagerness to clean houses - the same activity that provided her with spending money in high school, and now the only way she sees fit to provide for her kids. She plans to place the fliers on porches in some other neighborhood.

“I don’t want to clean my neighbors’ houses,” she said. “I know I’m going to come out of this. There’s no way I’m going to be homeless and poverty-stricken. But I am scared. I have a lot of sleepless nights.”

For the Eisens, poverty is already here. In the two years Ms. Eisen has been without work, they have exhausted their savings of about $24,000. Their credit card balances have grown to $15,000.

“I don’t know how we’re still indoors,” she said.

Her 1994 Dodge Caravan broke down in January, leaving her to ask for rides to an employment center.

She does not have the money to move to a cheaper apartment.

“You have to have money for first and last month’s rent, and to open utility accounts,” she said.

What she has is personality and presence - two traits that used to seem enough. She narrates her life in a stream of self-deprecating wisecracks, her punch lines tinged with desperation.

“See that,” she said, spotting a man dressed as the Statue of Liberty. Standing on a sidewalk, he waved at passing cars with a sign advertising a tax preparation business. “That will be me next week. Do you think this guy ever thought he’d be doing this?”

And yet, she would gladly do this. She would do nearly anything.

“There are no bad jobs now,” she says. “Any job is a good job.”

She has applied everywhere she can think of - at offices, at gas stations. Nothing.

“I’m being seen as a person who is no longer viable,” she said. “I’m chalking it up to my age and my weight. Blame it on your most prominent insecurity.”

Two Incomes, Then None

Ms. Eisen grew up poor, in Flatbush in Brooklyn. Her father was in maintenance. Her mother worked part time at a company that made window blinds.

She married Jeff when she was 19, and they soon moved to California, where he had grown up. He worked in sales for a chemical company. They rented an apartment in Buena Park, a growing spread of houses filling out former orange groves. She stayed home and took care of their daughter.

“I never asked him how much he earned,” Ms. Eisen said. “I was of the mentality that the husband took care of everything. But we never wanted.”

By the early 1980s, gas and rent strained their finances. So she took a job as a quality assurance clerk at a factory that made aircraft parts. It paid $13.50 an hour and had health insurance.

When the company moved to Mexico in the early 1990s, Ms. Eisen quickly found a job at a travel agency. When online booking killed that business, she got the job at the beauty salon equipment company. It paid $13.25 an hour, with an annual bonus - enough for presents under the Christmas tree.

But six years ago, her husband took a fall at work and then succumbed to various ailments - diabetes, liver disease, high blood pressure - leaving him confined to the couch. Not until 2008 did he secure his disability check.

And now they find themselves in this desert of joblessness, her paycheck replaced by a $702 unemployment check every other week. She received 14 weeks of benefits after she lost her job, and then a seven-week extension.

For most of October through December 2008, she received nothing, as she waited for another extension. The checks came again, then ran out in September 2009. They were restored by an extension right before Christmas.

Their daughter has back problems and is living on disability checks, making the church their ultimate safety net.

“I never thought I’d be in the position where I had to go to a food bank,” Ms. Eisen said. But there she is, standing in the parking lot of the Calvary Chapel church, chatting with a half-dozen women, all waiting to enter the Bread of Life Food Pantry.

When her name is called, she steps into a windowless alcove, where a smiling woman hands her three bags of groceries: carrots, potatoes, bread, cheese and a hunk of frozen meat.

“Haven’t we got a lot to be thankful for?” Ms. Eisen asks.

For one thing, no pinto beans.

“I’ve got 10 bags of pinto beans,” she says. “And I have no clue how to cook a pinto bean.”

Local job listings are just as mysterious. On a bulletin board at the county-financed ProPath Business and Career Services Center, many are written in jargon hinting of accounting or computers.

“Nothing I’m qualified for,” Ms. Eisen says. “When you can’t define what it is, that’s a pretty good indication.”

Her counselor has a couple of possibilities - a cashier at a supermarket and a night desk job at a motel.

“I’ll e-mail them,” Ms. Eisen promises. “I’ll tell them what a shining example of humanity I am.”

Source: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/21/business/economy/21unemployed.html?sq=... New Poor&st=cse&scp=1&pagewanted=all

Jimmy Carter's "Malaise" Speech

Yogaforlife — Mon, 15 Feb 2010 10:40:46 -0800

Good evening.

This is a special night for me. Exactly 3 years ago, on July 15, 1976, I accepted the nomination of my party to run for President of the United States. I promised you a President who is not isolated from the people, who feels your pain, and who shares your dreams and who draws his strength and his wisdom from you.

During the past 3 years I've spoken to you on many occasions about national concerns, the energy crisis, reorganizing the Government, our Nation's economy, and issues of war and especially peace. But over those years the subjects of the speeches, the talks, and the press conferences have become increasingly narrow, focused more and more on what the isolated world of Washington thinks is important. Gradually, you've heard more and more about what the Government thinks or what the Government should be doing and less and less about our Nation's hopes, our dreams, and our vision of the future.

Ten days ago I had planned to speak to you again about a very important subject -- energy. For the fifth time I would have described the urgency of the problem and laid out a series of legislative recommendations to the Congress. But as I was preparing to speak, I began to ask myself the same question that I now know has been troubling many of you. Why have we not been able to get together as a nation to resolve our serious energy problem?

It's clear that the true problems of our Nation are much deeper -- deeper than gasoline lines of energy shortages, deeper even than inflation or recession. And I realize more than ever that as President I need your help. So, I decided to reach out and listen to the voices of America.

I invited to Camp David people from almost every segment of our society business and labor, teachers and preachers, Governors, mayors, and private citizens. And then I left Camp David to listen to other Americans, men and women like you. It has been an extraordinary 10 days, and I want to share with you what I've heard. First of all, I got a lot of personal advice. Let me quote a few of the typical comments that I wrote down.

This from a southern Governor: "Mr. President, you are not leading this Nation -- you're just managing the Government."

"You don't see the people enough any more."

"Some of your Cabinet members don't seem loyal. There is not enough discipline among your disciples."

"Don't talk to us about politics or the mechanics of government, but about an understanding of our common good."

"Mr. President, we're in trouble. Talk to us about blood and sweat and tears."

"If you lead, Mr. President, we will follow."

Many people talked about themselves and about the condition of our Nation. This from a young woman in Pennsylvania: "I feel so far from government. I feel like ordinary people are excluded from political power."

And this from a young Chicano: "Some of us have suffered from recession all our lives."

"Some people have wasted energy, but others haven't had anything to waste."

And this from a religious leader: "No material shortage can touch the important things like God's love for us or our love for one another."

And I like this one particularly from a black woman who happens to be the mayor of a small Mississippi town: "The big-shots are not the only ones who are important. Remember, you can't sell anything on Wall Street unless someone digs it up somewhere else first."

This kind of summarized a lot of other statements: "Mr. President, we are confronted with a moral and a spiritual crisis."

Several of our discussions were on energy, and I have a notebook full of comments and advice. I'll read just a few.

"We can't go on consuming 40 percent more energy than we produce. When we import oil we are also importing inflation plus unemployment."

"We've got to use what we have. The Middle East has only 5 percent of the world's energy, but the United States has 24 percent."

And this is one of the most vivid statements: "Our neck is stretched over the fence and OPEC has a knife."

"There will be other cartels and other shortages. American wisdom and courage right now can set a path to follow in the future."

This was a good one: "Be bold, Mr. President. We may make mistakes, but we are ready to experiment."

And this one from a labor leader got to the heart of it: "The real issue is freedom. We must deal with the energy problem on a war footing."

And the last that I'll read: "When we enter the moral equivalent of war, Mr. President, don't issue us BB guns."

These 10 days confirmed my belief in the decency and the strength and the wisdom of the American people, but it also bore out some of my longstanding concerns about our Nation's underlying problems.

I know, of course, being President, that government actions and legislation can be very important. That's why I've worked hard to put my campaign promises into law -- and I have to admit, with just mixed success. But after listening to the American people I have been reminded again that all the legislation in the world can't fix what's wrong with America. So, I want to speak to you first tonight about a subject even more serious than energy or inflation. I want to talk to you right now about a fundamental threat to American democracy.

I do not mean our political and civil liberties. They will endure. And I do not refer to the outward strength of America, a nation that is at peace tonight everywhere in the world, with unmatched economic power and military might.

The threat is nearly invisible in ordinary ways. It is a crisis of confidence. It is a crisis that strikes at the very heart and soul and spirit of our national will. We can see this crisis in the growing doubt about the meaning of our own lives and in the loss of a unity of purpose for our Nation.

The erosion of our confidence in the future is threatening to destroy the social and the political fabric of America.

The confidence that we have always had as a people is not simply some romantic dream or a proverb in a dusty book that we read just on the Fourth of July. It is the idea which founded our Nation and has guided our development as a people. Confidence in the future has supported everything else -- public institutions and private enterprise, our own families, and the very Constitution of the United States. Confidence has defined our course and has served as a link between generations. We've always believed in something called progress. We've always had a faith that the days of our children would be better than our own.

Our people are losing that faith, not only in government itself but in the ability as citizens to serve as the ultimate rulers and shapers of our democracy. As a people we know our past and we are proud of it. Our progress has been part of the living history of America, even the world. We always believed that we were part of a great movement of humanity itself called democracy, involved in the search for freedom, and that belief has always strengthened us in our purpose. But just as we are losing our confidence in the future, we are also beginning to close the door on our past.

In a nation that was proud of hard work, strong families, close-knit communities, and our faith in God, too many of us now tend to worship self-indulgence and consumption. Human identity is no longer defined by what one does, but by what one owns. But we've discovered that owning things and consuming things does not satisfy our longing for meaning. We've learned that piling up material goods cannot fill the emptiness of lives which have no confidence or purpose.

The symptoms of this crisis of the American spirit are all around us. For the first time in the history of our country a majority of our people believe that the next 5 years will be worse than the past 5 years. Two-thirds of our people do not even vote. The productivity of American workers is actually dropping, and the willingness of Americans to save for the future has fallen below that of all other people in the Western world.

As you know, there is a growing disrespect for government and for churches and for schools, the news media, and other institutions. This is not a message of happiness or reassurance, but it is the truth and it is a warning.

These changes did not happen overnight. They've come upon us gradually over the last generation, years that were filled with shocks and tragedy.

We were sure that ours was a nation of the ballot, not the bullet, until the murders of John Kennedy and Robert Kennedy and Martin Luther King, Jr. We were taught that our armies were always invincible and our causes were always just, only to suffer the agony of Vietnam. We respected the Presidency as a place of honor until the shock of Water gate.

We remember when the phrase "sound as a dollar" was an expression of absolute dependability, until 10 years of inflation began to shrink our dollar and our savings. We believed that our Nation's resources were limitless until 1973, when we had to face a growing dependence on foreign oil.

These wounds are still very deep. They have never been healed.

Looking for a way out of this crisis, our people have turned to the Federal Government and found it isolated from the mainstream of our Nation's life. Washington, D.C., has become an island. The gap between our citizens and our Government has never been so wide. The people are looking for honest answers, not easy answers; clear leadership, not false claims and evasiveness and politics as usual.

What you see too often in Washington and elsewhere around the country is a system of government that seems incapable of action. You see a Congress twisted and pulled in every direction by hundreds of well financed and powerful special interests. You see every extreme position defended to the last vote, almost to the last breath by one unyielding group or another. You often see a balanced and a fair approach that demands sacrifice, a little sacrifice from everyone, abandoned like an orphan without support and without friends.

Often you see paralysis and stagnation and drift. You don't like, and neither do I. What can we do?

First of all, we must face the truth, and then we can change our course. We simply must have faith in each other, faith in our ability to govern ourselves, and faith in the future of this Nation. Restoring that faith and that confidence to America is now the most important task we face. It is a true challenge of this generation of Americans.

One of the visitors to Camp David last week put it this way: "We've got to stop crying and start sweating, stop talking and start walking, stop cursing and start praying. The strength we need will not come from the White House, but from every house in America."

We know the strength of America. We are strong. We can regain our unity. We can regain our confidence. We are the heirs of generations who survived threats much more powerful and awesome than those that challenge us now. Our fathers and mothers were strong men and women who shaped a new society during the Great Depression, who fought world wars, and who carved out a new charter of peace for the world.

We ourselves and the same Americans who just 10 years ago put a man on the Moon. We are the generation that dedicated our society to the pursuit of human rights and equality. And we are the generation that will win the war on the energy problem and in that process rebuild the unity and confidence of America.

We are at a turning point in our history. There are two paths to choose. One is a path I've warned about tonight, the path that leads to fragmentation and self-interest. Down that road lies a mistaken idea of freedom, the right to grasp for ourselves some advantage over others. That path would be one of constant conflict between narrow interests ending in chaos and immobility. It is a certain route to failure.

All the traditions of our past, all the lessons of our heritage, all the promises of our future point to another path, the path of common purpose and the restoration of American values. That path leads to true freedom for our Nation and ourselves. We can take the first steps down that path as we begin to solve our energy problem.

Energy will be the immediate test of our ability to unite this Nation, and it can also be the standard around which we rally. On the battlefield of energy we can win for our Nation a new confidence, and we can seize control again of our common destiny.

In little more than two decades we've gone from a position of energy independence to one in which almost half the oil we use comes from foreign countries, at prices that are going through the roof. Our excessive dependence on OPEC has already taken a tremendous tool on our economy and our people. This is the direct cause of the long lines which have made millions of you spend aggravating hours waiting for gasoline. It's a cause of the increased inflation and unemployment that we now face. This intolerable dependence on foreign oil threatens our economic independence and the very security of our Nation.

The energy crisis is real. It is worldwide. It is a clear and present danger to our Nation. These are facts and we simply must face them.

What I have to say to you now about energy is simple and vitally important.

Point one: I am tonight setting a clear goal for the energy policy of the United States. Beginning this moment, this Nation will never use more foreign oil than we did in 1977 -- never. From now on, every new addition to our demand for energy will be met from our own production and our own conservation. The generation-long growth in our dependence on foreign oil will be stopped dead in its tracks right now and then reversed as we move through the 1980's, for I am tonight setting the further goal of cutting our dependence on foreign oil by one-half by the end of the next decade -- a saving of over 4 1/2 million barrels of imported oil per day.

Point two: To ensure that we meet these targets, I will use my Presidential authority to set import quotas. I'm announcing tonight that for 1979 and 1980, I will forbid the entry into this country of one drop of foreign oil more than these goals allow. These quotas will ensure a reduction in imports even below the ambitious levels we set at the recent Tokyo summit.

Point three: To give us energy security, I am asking for the most massive peacetime commitment of funds and resources in our Nation's history to develop America's own alternative sources of fuel -- from coal, from oil shale, from plant products for gasohol, from unconventional gas, from the Sun.

I propose the creation of an energy security corporation to lead this effort to replace 2 1/2 million barrels of imported oil per day by 1990. The corporation will issue up to $5 billion in energy bonds, and I especially want them to be in small denominations so that average Americans can invest directly in America's energy security.

Just as a similar synthetic rubber corporation helped us win World War II, so will we mobilize American determination and ability to win the energy war. Moreover, I will soon submit legislation to Congress calling for the creation of this Nation's first solar bank, which will help us achieve the crucial goal of 20 percent of our energy coming from solar power by the year 2000.

These efforts will cost money, a lot of money, and that is why Congress must enact the windfall profits tax without delay. It will be money well spent. Unlike the billions of dollars that we ship to foreign countries to pay for foreign oil, these funds will be paid by Americans to Americans. These funds will go to fight, not to increase, inflation and unemployment.

Point four: I'm asking Congress to mandate, to require as a matter of law, that our Nation's utility companies cut their massive use of oil by 50 percent within the next decade and switch to other fuels, especially coal, our most abundant energy source.

Point five: To make absolutely certain that nothing stands in the way of achieving these goals, I will urge Congress to create an energy mobilization board which, like the War Production Board in World War II, will have the responsibility and authority to cut through the redtape, the delays, and the endless roadblocks to completing key energy projects.

We will protect our environment. But when this Nation critically needs a refinery or a pipeline, we will build it.

Point six: I'm proposing a bold conservation program to involve every State, county, and city and every average American in our energy battle. This effort will permit you to build conservation into your homes and your lives at a cost you can afford.

I ask Congress to give me authority for mandatory conservation and for standby gasoline rationing. To further conserve energy, I'm proposing tonight an extra $10 billion over the next decade to strengthen our public transportation systems. And I'm asking you for your good and for your Nation's security to take no unnecessary trips, to use carpools or public transportation whenever you can, to park your car one extra day per week, to obey the speed limit, and to set your thermostats to save fuel. Every act of energy conservation like this is more than just common sense -- I tell you it is an act of patriotism.

Our Nation must be fair to the poorest among us, so we will increase aid to needy Americans to cope with rising energy prices. We often think of conservation only in terms of sacrifice. In fact, it is the most painless and immediate way of rebuilding our Nation's strength. Every gallon of oil each one of us saves is a new form of production. It gives us more freedom, more confidence, that much more control over our own lives.

So, the solution of our energy crisis can also help us to conquer the crisis of the spirit in our country. It can rekindle our sense of unity, our confidence in the future, and give our Nation and all of us individually a new sense of purpose.

You know we can do it. We have the natural resources. We have more oil in our shale alone than several Saudi Arabias. We have more coal than any nation on Earth. We have the world's highest level of technology. We have the most skilled work force, with innovative genius, and I firmly believe that we have the national will to win this war.

I do not promise you that this struggle for freedom will be easy. I do not promise a quick way out of our Nation's problems, when the truth is that the only way out is an all-out effort. What I do promise you is that I will lead our fight, and I will enforce fairness in our struggle, and I will ensure honesty. And above all, I will act.

We can manage the short-term shortages more effectively and we will, but there are no short-term solutions to our long-range problems. There is simply no way to avoid sacrifice.

Twelve hours from now I will speak again in Kansas City, to expand and to explain further our energy program. Just as the search for solutions to our energy shortages has now led us to a new awareness of our Nation's deeper problems, so our willingness to work for those solutions in energy can strengthen us to attack those deeper problems.

I will continue to travel this country, to hear the people of America. You can help me to develop a national agenda for the 1980's. I will listen and I will act. We will act together. These were the promises I made 3 years ago, and I intend to keep them.

Little by little we can and we must rebuild our confidence. We can spend until we empty our treasuries, and we may summon all the wonders of science. But we can succeed only if we tap our greatest resources -- America's people, America's values, and America's confidence.

I have seen the strength of America in the inexhaustible resources of our people. In the days to come, let us renew that strength in the struggle for an energy-secure nation.

In closing, let me say this: I will do my best, but I will not do it alone. Let your voice be heard. Whenever you have a chance, say something good about our country. With God's help and for the sake of our Nation, it is time for us to join hands in America. Let us commit ourselves together to a rebirth of the American spirit. Working together with our common faith we cannot fail.

Thank you and good night.

Source:

http://www.eoearth.org/article/Jimmy_Carter%27s_%22malaise_speech%22

The 2007 Solution (Something I did not realize)

Grandpa — Sat, 06 Feb 2010 15:54:35 -0800

The 2007 Solution

Senator LeMieux’s plan for the federal budget

BY Fred Barnes

Republican senator George LeMieux of Florida has done the math. If government spending were reduced to its 2007 level, we’d have a balanced budget (with a $163 billion surplus). Returning to the 2008 level of spending, the budget would be balanced in 2014 (a $133 billion surplus). And in both cases, that’s while keeping the Bush tax cuts across the board and indexing the loathed alternative minimum tax for inflation.“Could we live with what we did in 2007?” LeMieux asks-the “we” a collective reference to Congress, the federal government, and the country. He thinks so. Because of the recession, “most Americans are living with less than they had in 2007.”LeMieux’s ideas on curbing spending haven’t gotten much attention. That’s because of who he is, a 40-year-old appointed rather than elected senator filling out the final 16 months of the term of Mel Martinez, who resigned. He’s not running for election this November. In fact, he’s never been elected to any office. (Nor is he related to Mario Lemieux, the hockey legend.)When LeMieux arrived in Washington last September, he was struck-appalled, really-by one thing. “You come in thinking Washington is out of control,” he says. “And spending is out of control.” But it’s actually much worse than that. After working as chief of staff for Florida governor Charles Crist, then managing a large law firm in Ft. Lauderdale, LeMieux found the spending habits on Capitol Hill “bizarre.”“It stands in sharp contrast to what the real world is like,” he says. For the state government in Florida, “the biggest thing in town” is the quarterly report of how much revenue has been collected. “We could only spend what was coming in.”Not so in Washington. “No one asks what we’re taking in,” LeMieux says. “And no one gauges” how much to spend based on that amount. “After a while you get used to it,” he says. At least he assumes that’s what occurs. LeMieux hopes that doesn’t happen to him. “I haven’t bought in,” he says. He won’t be in Washington long enough to become inured to the spending binge.When he talks to fellow senators about the need to slash spending, LeMieux thinks some of them dismiss his fervor as the result of inexperience. “He’ll learn soon enough we don’t do that kind of stuff here”-that’s the way they regard him, LeMieux suspects. And he’s probably right.He prefers the Florida approach, which is similar to what other states do to meet their balanced budget requirement. In 2007, “storm clouds” of the looming recession began to appear. With diminishing revenue, the state could do three things: cut spending, raise taxes, or find new sources of tax revenue.
The state began to pare its budget, from $73 billion in 2006 to $70 billion in 2007 and even lower to $66.5 billion last year. As the law mandates, there was no deficit. LeMieux cites this as the opposite of the Washington practice. Estimated spending for 2010 is $3.8 trillion based on revenue of $2.2 trillion, leaving a humongous $1.6 trillion deficit.
After four months in Washington, LeMieux is willing to support “anything” to bend the spending curve. Last week, he joined Republican senators Jim DeMint and Tom Coburn in seeking a yearlong ban on earmarks, which fund special projects for individual states or congressional districts. “I’ve made the decision to voluntarily disarm,” he says. He’ll propose no earmarks for Florida.
LeMieux is convinced that earmarks are, as DeMint insists, “the engine that drives the train.” A senator is bound to vote for an appropriations bill, no matter how bloated, if his earmarks are in it. “That’s the way you get 10 percent, 15 percent, 20 percent increases in spending,” he says.
A balanced budget amendment, a constitutional amendment giving the president line item veto authority, legislation to kill duplicative federal programs-the senator is for all of these. He thinks agency heads should submit annual budgets with a 5 percent cut across the board as “a healthy exercise in efficiency.” “I’ll bet you could cut 20 percent out of the budgets of agencies” without any loss in efficiency. Washington would scream.
But something worse could happen if Washington doesn’t get a grip on its spending and debt. LeMieux mentioned it in his first speech on the Senate floor in October. “One of my greatest concerns is that one day one of my children will come to me when they are grown and say that they are moving to another country, perhaps to Ireland or Chile, because they believe the opportunities are greater than the promise and the opportunities of America,” he said.

http://www.weeklystandard.com/articles/2007-solution?page=2

Goals - Some Mountains, Some Molehills

fireandarose — Thu, 21 Jan 2010 22:12:32 -0800

It's not about losing weight for me; I'm always slightly underweight, and it's active work for me to keep weight on. Part of it is due to chronic illness--three of them, actually--that I've been dealing with for over a decade.

There's quote about if you shoot for the moon, at least you'll land amongst the stars. Well, that's great in some ways, but if you crash and burn instead, it can establish a mental block for you. One that keeps you from trying again, or makes the task seem harder than ever before.

So these are my goals for the year, based on necessity, not desire; even if I don't make it to the finish line, I plan to celebrate each leg of the journey I complete.

1) Rebuild strength in left arm. (I had a PICC-line in that arm for the past...nearly a year, and due to pain from it, used my right arm far more. The result was pain in my back and right arm from using it too much, and my left arm weakening. I'm amused that the way I'm starting this out is by using a Nintendo Wii; I'm just holding the controller in my left hand, instead of the right. Even after a few days, I can feel the difference; part of this may have to do that the game(s) I'm using involve a lot of arm movement. My score may not be great in the virtual world--I'm right handed--but it helps in reality.)

2) Start up slow and gentle exercises. Again, the Wii, and Wii Fit Plus will help here. I never thought I'd have a Wii--it seemed a luxury, and medical bills prevent me from indulging in those too often--but a friend offered to pay for half of a used one, which was a lower price. It cost me far less than a gym membership and physical therapist (which I'll still need at some point--but maybe, now, not for as long) would, even if I still have to figure out how to pay for the actual Wii Fit Plus and Balance Board bit.

3) Cut out all sugar and gluten. Done it before, can do it again. The holidays just make it too easy to fall off the wagon.

4) Take ALL of my supplements EVERY day. And that's a lot of pills, gals and guys, but still--every little built helps.

5) Get enough protein in my system. As someone who does not like most meat, and has experienced mercury poisoning once and thus is careful about seafood, it's not easy. But I have found a lot of substitutes already with tofu and various protein sources--I just need to eat them more frequently.

6) Eat more avocado again. Best source of Omega 3 that doesn't come in a pill, AND doesn't have Omega 6 or 9--which cause inflammation, which I need NO more of--in it, iirc.

7) Practice hypnosis twice a day. So many people have their ideas about hypnosis formed from pop culture and Bugs Bunny cartoons, and that's just sad. It's a useful tool, if you have a qualified teacher and good resources, and you are taught to understand it as much as do it.

That's enough for me. Maybe not the normal sort of goals, but they're mine, and what I need to focus on most.

2010 & ready for the new life to begin!

MoonGoddess77 — Mon, 11 Jan 2010 11:34:59 -0800

Last year was not the best for me. So I ended up weighing a bit more than I actually should have & oweing more than I should have! Pity party is over.

2010 may begin with a few doctor bills & some work finishing up some of the healing process, but I know I will make it.
My goals for the year are:
1- Be more positive & connecting with others more in a positive way.
2- PAY OFF MY DEBT!
3- get healthy! Which for me at this point means losing weight for me & getting back into exercising habits, & eating right.
4- Increase my mind by reading more.

So far I have started these goals & am working on them. I detail it more in my blog, MoonGoddess Gets Fit & On Track ( http://moongoddessview.blogspot.com/ ), but basically:
1- I am currently on day 8 of the 29 Days of GIving challenge. This challenges you to take time each day to do something for someone else. It can be simple or more intense. Basically anything from holding the door & greeting a stranger to donating clothes to helping volunteer with a charity. Its been great & the fun of the past week has lead me to believe that its going to continue in a less documented way, past the 29 days.
2- I am bitter sweet about this.   I was STUPID with credit cards in the past & its caught up to me. I have been following Dave Ramsey's Total Money Makeover plan & sloooowly paying things off... & under stress I end up adding on more. I have a game plan & have been focused, & see the light. The bitter part comes from my uncle unexpectedly passing away at Thanksgiving. He is leaving me money that I will get by the end of the month that will help me in achieving this goal much sooner than expected. I appreciate it, but I do miss my uncle!
3- I am currently trying to deal with a broken finger & struggling to learn why it refuses to bend at all. Other than that I am getting over a health scare where I learned that the polyp was begien but I have some fertility issues. Also the broken finger was the result from being attacked by two strangers, who also left a nice reminder as a scar on my ear of the incident. One reason the 29 Days is at the top of my list. I refuse to be a victim & already have a tendency to not trust. I have dealt with anxiety issues since high school & about 2 years ago they started manifesting as agoraphobia. While I never got to the point where I could not leave my house at all, I was confined to work & friend's houses. Anywhere else had to be somewhere I had been before & even then I only lasted about 15 minutes before panic meltdown! I know insane. Thanks to a wonderful therapist, psychiatrist & cocktail of meds, I now lead a pretty normal life.
So one to my health! First I will keep all my doctors appointments & do as instructed! I HATE HATE HATE my psychical therapy since it hurts, but I am doing it! Also I have a treadmill, got a Wii & balance board for Christmas, rescued my best buddy a pug named Baxter soon after & joined a gym last week!   All the pieces are in place, just need to do more. Some of the lifting & yoga is limited by the finger at this point, but I can always walk. That is my favorite thing! I can't wait to get warmer weather that is easier to take Baxter on walks. Til then the treadmill & pedometer are working.
Also I am planning to do the Couch 2 5k plan as soon as the 29 Days Challenge ends. Which will have it planned so I can get back into the habit of working out & the 9 week plan will end a week before a local 5 K - Race for the Planet at North Carolina Aquarium at Fort Fisher. This group run event scares me, but I need to face fears.
4- I have been really bad about spending too much time online & on other things rather than reading. I hope to complete at a minimum 12 books in 2010. At this point I have started 3!   Of Parrots and People by MIra Tweti, the Spark by Chris Downie and Who Ordered This Truckload of Dung? : Inspiring Stories for Welcoming Life's Difficulties by Ajahn Brahm.

So that's my start.

Basically
1- Give each day, 2- save & ay bills off, 3- work out daily in some way, 4- read!

Are You Excited Project Runway Is Returning to NYC?

FabSugar — Fri, 08 Jan 2010 03:00:22 -0800

I admit, I wasn't really into last season's Project Runway. The LA location and mediocre talent just didn't do it for me. You can imagine my excitement when I heard the show decided to head back to NYC for its seventh season - yay! Looking at their portfolios, the new cast boasts a heavy artillery of talent and creativity. The show premieres Jan. 14 on Lifetime, will you be tuning in? Don't forget to join our Project Runway Fanatics group for the latest on all things Project Runway!

Also check out the Wii Project Runway game, where you can design clothes for models, style their hair and makeup, and even walk the catwalk using the Wii balance board - fun!

Photos courtesy of Lifetime

The Manufactured Doubt Industry and the Hacked Email Controversy

stephley — Mon, 07 Dec 2009 13:04:22 -0800

This was even longer, so I cut places (and indicated cuts with ...) where he repeats examples to make a point

In 1954, the tobacco industry realized it had a serious problem.

Thirteen scientific studies had been published over the preceding five years linking smoking to lung cancer. With the public growing increasingly alarmed about the health effects of smoking, the tobacco industry had to move quickly to protect profits and stem the tide of increasingly worrisome scientific news. Big Tobacco turned to one the world's five largest public relations firms, Hill and Knowlton, to help out.

Hill and Knowlton designed a brilliant Public Relations (PR) campaign to convince the public that smoking is not dangerous. They encouraged the tobacco industry to set up their own research organization, the Council for Tobacco Research (CTR), which would produce science favorable to the industry, emphasize doubt in all the science linking smoking to lung cancer, and question all independent research unfavorable to the tobacco industry. The CTR did a masterful job at this for decades, significantly delaying and reducing regulation of tobacco products. George Washington University epidemiologist David Michaels, who is President Obama's nominee to head the Occupational Health and Safety Administration (OSHA), wrote a meticulously researched 2008 book called, Doubt is Their Product: How Industry's Assault on Science Threatens Your Health. In the book, he wrote: "the industry understood that the public is in no position to distinguish good science from bad. Create doubt, uncertainty, and confusion. Throw mud at the anti-smoking research under the assumption that some of it is bound to stick. And buy time, lots of it, in the bargain". The title of Michaels' book comes from a 1969 memo from a tobacco company executive: "Doubt is our product since it is the best means of competing with the 'body of fact' that exists in the minds of the general public. It is also the means of establishing a controversy". Hill and Knowlton, on behalf of the tobacco industry, had founded the "Manufactured Doubt" industry.

The Manufactured Doubt industry grows up (shortened)

As the success of Hill and Knowlton's brilliant Manufactured Doubt campaign became apparent, other industries manufacturing dangerous products hired the firm to design similar PR campaigns...

...Joining the specialized "product defense" firms were the so-called "think tanks". These front groups received funding from manufacturers of dangerous products and produced "sound science" in support of their funders' products, in the name of free enterprise and free markets. Think tanks such as the George C. Marshall Institute, Competitive Enterprise Institute, Heartland Institute, and Dr. Fred Singer's SEPP (Science and Environmental Policy Project) have all been active for decades in the Manufactured Doubt business, generating misleading science and false controversy to protect the profits of their clients who manufacture dangerous products.

The ozone hole battle (deleted to shorten)

The battle over global warming

In 1988, the fossil fuel industry realized it had a serious problem. The summer of 1988 had shattered century-old records for heat and drought in the U.S., and NASA's Dr. James Hansen, one of the foremost climate scientists in the world, testified before Congress that human-caused global warming was partially to blame. A swelling number of scientific studies were warning of the threat posed by human-cause climate change, and that consumption of fossil fuels needed to slow down.

Naturally, the fossil fuel industry fought back. They launched a massive PR campaign that continues to this day, led by the same think tanks that worked to discredit the ozone depletion theory. The George C. Marshall Institute, the Competitive Enterprise Institute, Heartland Institute, and Dr. Fred Singer's SEPP (Science and Environmental Policy Project) have all been key players in both fights, and there are numerous other think tanks involved. Many of the same experts who had worked hard to discredit the science of the well-established link between cigarette smoke and cancer, the danger the CFCs posed to the ozone layer, and the dangers to health posed by a whole host of toxic chemicals, were now hard at work to discredit the peer-reviewed science supporting human-caused climate change.

As is the case with any Manufactured Doubt campaign, a respected scientist was needed to lead the battle. One such scientist was Dr. Frederick Seitz , a physicist who in the 1960s chaired the organization many feel to be the most prestigious science organization in the world--the National Academy of Sciences. Seitz took a position as a paid consultant for R.J. Reynolds tobacco company beginning in 1978, so was well-versed in the art of Manufactured Doubt. According to the excellent new book, Climate Cover-up, written by desmogblog.com co-founder James Hoggan and Richard Littlemore, over a 10-year period Seitz was responsible for handing out $45 million in tobacco company money to researchers who overwhelmingly failed to link tobacco to anything the least bit negative. Seitz received over $900,000 in compensation for his efforts. He later became a founder of the George C. Marshall Institute, and used his old National Academy of Sciences affiliation to lend credibility to his attacks on global warming science until his death in 2008 at the age of ninety-six.

It was Seitz who launched the "Oregon Petition", which contains the signatures of more than 34,000 scientists saying global warming is probably natural and not a crisis. The petition is a regular feature of the Manufactured Doubt campaign against human-caused global warming. The petition lists the "Oregon Institute of Science and Medicine" as its parent organization. According to Climate Cover-up, the Institute is a farm shed situated a couple of miles outside of Cave Junction, OR (population 17,000). The Institute lists seven faculty members, two of whom are dead, and has no ongoing research and no students. It publishes creationist-friendly homeschooler curriculums books on surviving nuclear war. The petition was sent to scientists and was accompanied by a 12-page review printed in exactly the same style used for the prestigious journal, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. A letter from Seitz, who is prominently identified as a former National Academy of Sciences president, accompanied the petition and review. Naturally, many recipients took this to be an official National Academy of Sciences communication, and signed the petition as a result. The National Academy issued a statement in April 2008, clarifying that it had not issued the petition, and that its position on global warming was the opposite. The petition contains no contact information for the signers, making it impossible to verify.

In its August 2006 issue, Scientific American presented its attempt to verify the petition. They found that the scientists were almost all people with undergraduate degrees, with no record of research and no expertise in climatology. Scientific American contacted a random sample of 26 of the 1,400 signatories claiming to have a Ph.D. in a climate related science. Eleven said they agreed with the petition, six said they would not sign the petition today, three did not remember the petition, one had died, and five did not respond...

Lobbyists, not skeptical scientists

...The history of the Manufactured Doubt industry provides clear lessons in evaluating the validity of their attacks on the published peer-reviewed climate change science. One should trust that the think tanks and allied "skeptic" bloggers such as Steve McIntyre of Climate Audit and Anthony Watts of Watts Up With That will give information designed to protect the profits of the fossil fuel industry. Yes, there are respected scientists with impressive credentials that these think tanks use to voice their views, but these scientists have given up their objectivity and are now working as lobbyists. I don't like to call them skeptics, because all good scientists should be skeptics. Rather, the think tanks scientists are contrarians, bent on discrediting an accepted body of published scientific research for the benefit of the richest and most powerful corporations in history. Virtually none of the "sound science" they are pushing would ever get published in a serious peer-reviewed scientific journal, and indeed the contrarians are not scientific researchers. They are lobbyists. Many of them seem to believe their tactics are justified, since they are fighting a righteous war against eco-freaks determined to trash the economy.

I will give a small amount of credit to some of their work, however. I have at times picked up some useful information from the contrarians, and have used it to temper my blogs to make them more balanced. For example, I no longer rely just on the National Climatic Data Center for my monthly climate summaries, but instead look at data from NASA and the UK HADCRU source as well. When the Hurricane Season of 2005 brought unfounded claims that global warming was to blame for Hurricane Katrina, and a rather flawed paper by researchers at Georgia Tech showing a large increase in global Category 4 and 5 hurricanes, I found myself agreeing with the contrarians' analysis of the matter, and my blogs at the time reflected this.

The contrarians and the hacked CRU emails

A hacker broke into an email server at the Climate Research Unit of the UK's University of East Anglia last week and posted ten years worth of private email exchanges between leading scientists who've published research linking humans to climate change. Naturally, the contrarians have seized upon this golden opportunity, and are working hard to discredit several of these scientists.

You'll hear claims by some contrarians that the emails discovered invalidate the whole theory of human-caused global warming. Well, all I can say is, consider the source. We can trust the contrarians to say whatever is in the best interests of the fossil fuel industry.

What I see when I read the various stolen emails and explanations posted at Realclimate.org is scientists acting as scientists--pursuing the truth. I can see no clear evidence that calls into question the scientific validity of the research done by the scientists victimized by the stolen emails. There is no sign of a conspiracy to alter data to fit a pre-conceived ideological view. Rather, I see dedicated scientists attempting to make the truth known in face of what is probably the world's most pervasive and best-funded disinformation campaign against science in history. Even if every bit of mud slung at these scientists were true, the body of scientific work supporting the theory of human-caused climate change--which spans hundreds of thousands of scientific papers written by tens of thousands of scientists in dozens of different scientific disciplines--is too vast to be budged by the flaws in the works of the three or four scientists being subject to the fiercest attacks.

Exaggerated claims by environmentalists

Climate change contrarians regularly complain about false and misleading claims made by ideologically-driven environmental groups regarding climate change, and the heavy lobbying these groups do to influence public opinion. Such efforts confuse the real science and make climate change seem more dangerous than it really is, the contrarians argue. To some extent, these concerns are valid. In particular, environmentalists are too quick to blame any perceived increase in hurricane activity on climate change, when such a link has yet to be proven. While Al Gore's movie mostly had good science, I thought he botched the treatment of hurricanes as well, and the movie looked too much like a campaign ad. In general, environmental groups present better science than the think tanks do, but you're still better off getting your climate information directly from the scientists doing the research, via the latest Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report. Another good source is Bob Henson's Rough Guide to Climate Change , aimed at people with high-school level science backgrounds.

Let's look at the amount of money being spent on lobbying efforts by the fossil fuel industry compared to environmental groups to see their relative influence. According to Center for Public Integrity , there are currently 2,663 climate change lobbyists working on Capitol Hill. That's five lobbyists for every member of Congress. Climate lobbyists working for major industries outnumber those working for environmental, health, and alternative energy groups by more than seven to one. For the second quarter of 2009, here is a list compiled by the Center for Public Integrity of all the oil, gas, and coal mining groups that spent more than $100,000 on lobbying (this includes all lobbying, not just climate change lobbying):

Chevron $6,485,000
Exxon Mobil $4,657,000
BP America $4,270,000
ConocoPhillips $3,300,000
American Petroleum Institute $2,120,000
Marathon Oil Corporation $2,110,000
Peabody Investments Corp $1,110,000
Bituminous Coal Operators Association $980,000
Shell Oil Company $950,000
Arch Coal, Inc $940,000
Williams Companies $920,000
Flint Hills Resources $820,000
Occidental Petroleum Corporation $794,000
National Mining Association $770,000
American Coalition for Clean Coal Electricity $714,000
Devon Energy $695,000 Sunoco $585,000
Independent Petroleum Association of America $434,000
Murphy Oil USA, Inc $430,000
Peabody Energy $420,000
Rio Tinto Services, Inc $394,000
America's Natural Gas Alliance $300,000
Interstate Natural Gas Association of America $290,000
El Paso Corporation $261,000 Spectra Energy $279,000
National Propane Gas Association $242,000
National Petrochemical & Refiners Association $240,000
Nexen, Inc $230,000
Denbury Resources $200,000
Nisource, Inc $180,000
Petroleum Marketers Association of America $170,000
Valero Energy Corporation $160,000
Bituminous Coal Operators Association $131,000
Natural Gas Supply Association $114,000
Tesoro Companies $119,000

Here are the environmental groups that spent more than $100,000:
Environmental Defense Action Fund $937,500
Nature Conservancy $650,000
Natural Resources Defense Council $277,000
Earthjustice Legal Defense Fund $243,000
National Parks and Conservation Association $175,000
Sierra Club $120,000
Defenders of Wildlife $120,000
Environmental Defense Fund $100,000

If you add it all up, the fossil fuel industry outspent the environmental groups by $36.8 million to $2.6 million in the second quarter, a factor of 14 to 1. To be fair, not all of that lobbying is climate change lobbying, but that affects both sets of numbers. The numbers don't even include lobbying money from other industries lobbying against climate change, such as the auto industry, U.S. Chamber of Commerce, etc.

Corporate profits vs. corporate social responsibility

I'm sure I've left the impression that I disapprove of what the Manufactured Doubt industry is doing. On the contrary, I believe that for the most part, the corporations involved have little choice under the law but to protect their profits by pursuing Manufactured Doubt campaigns, as long as they are legal. The law in all 50 U.S. states has a provision similar to Maine's section 716, "The directors and officers of a corporation shall exercise their powers and discharge their duties with a view to the interest of the corporation and of the shareholders". There is no clause at the end that adds, "...but not at the expense of the environment, human rights, the public safety, the communities in which the corporation operates, or the dignity of employees". The law makes a company's board of directors legally liable for "breach of fiduciary responsibility" if they knowingly manage a company in a way that reduces profits. Shareholders can and have sued companies for being overly socially responsible, and not paying enough attention to the bottom line. We can reward corporations that are managed in a socially responsible way with our business and give them incentives to act thusly, but there are limits to how far Corporate Socially Responsibility (CSR) can go...

...So, what is needed is a fundamental change to the laws regarding the purpose of a corporation, or new regulations forcing corporations to limit Manufactured Doubt campaigns. Legislation has been introduced in Minnesota to create a new section of law for an alternative kind of corporation, the SR (Socially Responsible) corporation, but it would be a long uphill battle to get such legislation passed in all 50 states. Increased regulation limiting Manufactured Doubt campaigns is possible to do for drugs and hazardous chemicals--Doubt is Their Product has some excellent suggestions on that, with the first principle being, "use the best science available; do not demand certainty where it does not and cannot exist". However, I think such legislation would be difficult to implement for environmental crises such as global warming. In the end, we're stuck with the current system, forced to make critical decisions affecting all of humanity in the face of the Frankenstein monster our corporate system of law has created--the most vigorous and well-funded disinformation campaign against science ever conducted.

http://www.commondreams.org/view/2009/12/07-1
by Jeff Masters (http://www.wunderground.com/blog/JeffMasters/show.html)

Wed, 31 Dec 1969 16:00:00 -0800

Legislators Push Early Start For Credit Card Rules

Roarman — Tue, 06 Oct 2009 10:05:30 -0700

The new Credit Card Reform Act is supposed to protect consumers against high fees, surprise hikes in interest rates and abusive billing practices.

The law passed in May and is not set to take effect until February. But with the holiday shopping season just weeks away, some lawmakers on Capitol Hill are pushing to move up the start date. They complain that credit card companies have been taking advantage of the lag time: raising interest rates, slashing credit limits and switching customers from fixed-rate to variable-rate cards.

The law will prevent banks from arbitrarily changing the interest rate on a customer's existing balance. It will also bar banks from charging interest on debt that a consumer has paid off on time. Last spring, bankers told Congress they needed time to reprogram computers and get ready for all the new rules.

But now, Barney Frank, chairman of the House Financial Services Committee, wants the new law to take effect on Dec. 1, rather than waiting until early 2010. "Too many in the banking system seem to think they can return to the thrilling days of yesteryear when the lone rangers will ride again unhindered by any kind of regulation."

One Credit Card Customer's Story

Janet Thompson of Chevy Chase, Md., was happy to hear about the legislators' efforts to move up the effective date of the law. She got letters recently from two of her credit card companies. The first bank doubled her interest rate. The second did the same - and when she argued the rate back down, the company slashed her credit limit from $7,000 to $500.

"They're taking advantage and they have made all sorts of money during this time by arbitrarily raising [the interest rate]. We always pay early. We always pay more. You know, we'd like to pay it all off - and we used to do that every year when I was working, but I lost my job," Thompson said.

Thompson doesn't want to close her credit accounts because that would ding her credit score. She and her husband are now retirees carrying two mortgages. They're frustrated with the way they say their banks are treating them.

Industry Advocates And Policy Experts Have It Out

The scenario Thompson describes is exactly why banks are changing rates, according to Scott Talbot of the Financial Services Roundtable. "We are in a recession, and there is a greater increased risk that a customer won't pay their credit card that's spread across the board. So even some customers who haven't done anything wrong, or not missed a payment or not been late, are seeing an increase in their interest rate or decrease in their credit line simply because of the general increased riskiness in our current economy."

Talbot says Dec. 1 is too soon to put that much regulation into action.

But Nick Bourke of the Safe Credit Cards Project at the Pew Charitable Trusts disagrees. "What makes sense is to stop repricing outstanding balances as quickly as possible. Banks can stop doing that right away."

Bourke says some provisions of the law have gone, and should go, into effect as soon as possible to protect consumers. But other parts, like a rule that fees should be "reasonable," need more time, he says. It's going to be up to the Federal Reserve to figure out what terms like "reasonable" actually mean.

"If the Fed doesn't have time to create really strong rules, then I think ultimately consumers will be hurt by that," Bourke says.

Still, the House Financial Services Committee plans to take up the legislation as early as this week. Frank says he is eager to move well before holiday shoppers hit the malls with their plastic.

Source: http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=113506930

Max Blumenthal on Fresh Air

Roarman — Mon, 14 Sep 2009 07:07:07 -0700

I know this is long and a little weird because its in interview format, but I thought this was great when I heard it the other day.

This is FRESH AIR. I'm Terry Gross. The right is trying to de-legitimize the Obama presidency, according to my guest, journalist Max Blumenthal. There's the movement of people who claim Obama isn't even an American citizen, and others who accuse him of being a Hitler or a Stalin. In Blumenthal's new book, "Republican Gomorrah: Inside the Movement that Shattered the Party," he writes that the Republican Party has gone from a big-tent philosophy to being fully in the grip of its right wing. Blumenthal has been covering the Christian right for six years, attending dozens of its rallies and conferences, listening to its radio programs, and sitting in movement-oriented houses of worship.

In his book "Republican Gomorrah," he writes about the people who created the blueprint for the Christian right and the people who have funded it. Blumenthal is a senior writer for the Daily Beast, and has written for the Nation and the Huffington post.

Max Blumenthal, welcome back to FRESH AIR. Your book ends with a scene of Republican congressman Paul Brown of Georgia and two of his friends who are very highly placed in the anti-abortion movement, praying over a door that Obama was about to walk through to take the oath of office. What were they praying about? Set that scene for us.

Mr. MAX BLUMENTHAL (Author, "Republican Gomorrah: Inside the Movement that Shattered the Party"): Well, Paul Brown, who is a congressman from Georgia -he's a born-again congressman who said that he was inspired to become an vangelical Christian by the guy who used to hold John 3:16 signs in sports games, who wore a multicolored wig, who's actually in prison now for kidnapping and stink-bomb attacks - that this image of this character at sports games inspired him to become a born-again Christian.

And he gave special access to two characters, Paul Mahoney and Rob Schenck, who were involved in Operation Rescue during the 1990s, which is the militant wing of the anti-abortion movement, which was at least indirectly connected to several assassinations of abortion providers and attacks on abortion clinics, most recently the assassination of Dr. George Tiller in Kansas.

What they were doing there in the Capitol was, they were planning to anoint the door that Obama would walk through, as he prepared to give his inaugural address, with oil crosses. And the reason that I described this scene and thought that it was important was that it was emblematic of where the movement was going to go, that they were consecrating their planned opposition to the Obama administration at a time when the media and probably the Obama administration believed that they had the good will of even elements that had opposed Bill Clinton in the 1990s, and that this was a new, post-partisan era. And I think that this anointing of the door was symbolic of what was to come. And I think it's bearing out right now in the health-care debate.

GROSS: One of the things Paul Brown has done is to compare Obama to Hitler and Stalin, and he said on his Web site that he was concerned that Obama has a vision that is fundamentally different from the system of limited federal government that our founders established, that he will attempt to destroy the free-enterprise, free-market economic system which has made us the wealthiest nation in the history of the world.

We're hearing a lot about comparisons between Obama and Hitler and Stalin lately. What do you think is behind that?

Mr. BLUMENTHAL: Well, Paul Brown was referring to Obama's plan to implement a civilian force that could help during natural disasters. George W. Bush actually introduced this plan, and Paul Brown and his Republican allies said nothing. But the grassroots right is determined to de-legitimize President Obama, to prove that he was either not born here, that he's not one of us, or that he has totalitarian intentions. And so Paul Brown has compared Obama simultaneously to Hitler and Stalin, two leaders who were opposed to each other.

It seems like a bizarre comparison, but if you tune in to right-wing radio, especially fringe right-wing radio hosts like Alex Jones, you're going to hear warnings that Barack Obama plans to create concentration camps for right-wing dissidents, that he's going to implement mass gun seizures. And this fear is designed to mobilize opposition at a grassroots level to Barack Obama, to the Democratic Congress, and to the progressive agenda in general in order to win more followers to the Republican grassroots and to the right wing, to raise funds. And it's working.

You know, during the Bush years, the right-wing groups lost a lot of money because they function better throwing stones from the outside than they do from the inside, calling shots. Now, their coffers are filling up. So a lot of this rhetoric is designed just to ramp up the debate, and to mobilize forces and elements that have been dormant for eight years because the Republicans were in power.

GROSS: You describe someone named Anton Chaitkin as launching the opening volley of an orchestrated campaign designed to link Obama and his health-care reform proposal to the mass euthanasia of Hitler. Who is Anton Chaitkin, and what was his role in launching that opening volley?

Mr. BLUMENTHAL: Anton Chaitkin has described himself as a historian without disclosing his affiliation with the political empire of extremist cult leader Lyndon LaRouche. And he publicly accused Ezekiel Emanuel, who is the chief bioethicist at the National Institutes of Health and the brother of presidential chief of staff Rahm Emanuel, of creating a plan for Hitlerian death panels based on Hitler's T-4 program. He did this well before anyone in the, you know, conservative right or within the Republican Party suggested that Barack Obama had a Hitlerian agenda with his health-care proposal. And the LaRouche movement began distributing leaflets throughout the town halls of Obama with a Hitler moustache painted on his face. And interestingly, right-wing groups adopted this rhetoric. I can't say they adopted it directly from Lyndon LaRouche, but I was unable to detect any other sign of this rhetoric anywhere else before Anton Chaitkin pinpointed Ezekiel Emanuel as the point man for Obama's Hitlerian agenda.

And subsequently, we've seen mainstream Republican leaders echoing LaRouche rhetoric: For instance, Sarah Palin accusing Barack Obama of planning to implement death panels based on the advice of Ezekiel Emanuel, and Charles Grassley, the senior senator from Iowa, who is in charge of negotiating for the Republican side Barack Obama's health-care reform proposals, said there may be some reason to worry that this plan will include some kind of mechanism for pulling the plug on Grandma. So you see mainstream Republicans echoing the rhetoric of an extremist movement that many people thought had disappeared years ago.

GROSS: And what is Anton Chaitkin's connection to the LaRouche movement?

Mr. BLUMENTHAL: He's a LaRouche staffer for Executive Intelligence Review, which is the political bulletin of the LaRouche organization.

GROSS: Do you see a connection between the Christian right and the claims that Obama bears resemblance to Hitler and to Stalin, that he's leading us in the direction of fascism? Because this is different from the kind of anti-Democratic rhetoric that we're used to, which is more about, you know, family values and, you know, culture wars and abortion. This is like Hitler, Stalin, fascism, communism. So is that, do you think, connected to the Christian right? Where do they come in on that?

Mr. BLUMENTHAL: I think it's ironic that they would level this rhetoric at someone who's really a sort of centrist, consensus-building figure when one of the movement's great inspirations, R.J. Rushdoony, advocated replacing the U.S. Constitution in secular government with a totalitarian theocracy in which disobedient children, adulterers, witches, abortion doctors, women who receive abortions, etc., would all be executed. Rushdoony's son-in-law, Gary North, who is a former staffer for Ron Paul, the Republican libertarian, and who is an economist, advised stoning these evil-doers to death because stones are less expensive.

The Christian right, during the 1980s, advocated putting people with AIDS, particularly homosexuals, in quarantine, in camps. They're on the record saying this. And Mike Huckabee, who campaigned for president in 2008, was among those who advised - who advocated quarantining AIDS patients, and he's refused to recant his advocacy for this sort of policy.

So I think it's ironic that a movement that has authoritarian, if not totalitarian, tendencies, along with this paradoxical anti-government strain, would level these accusations at one of their opponents.

GROSS: The Southern Poverty Law Center released a report about how anti-government rhetoric is spilling over into the mainstream and as examples, they've mentioned some politicians, including Texas Governor Rick Perry, Fox Business Network anchor Cody Willard, who the report quotes as saying: Guys, when are we going to wake up and start fighting the fascism that seems to be permeating this country? Glenn Beck, the example they gave from Glenn Beck is: If this country starts to spiral out of control, and Mexico melts down or whatever, if it really starts to spiral out of control, Americans just won't stand for it. There will be parts of the country that will rise up.

I know as part of your research for your new book, "Republican Gomorrah," you were listening to the mainstream media, and you were listening to more fringe-y media and talk shows of all sorts. Do you agree with this, the conclusions of this report, that a lot of anti-government rhetoric is spilling over into the mainstream?

Mr. BLUMENTHAL: Well, I would simply say that the Republican Party, over the last 20 years, has been subsumed by extreme elements, mainly by the Christian right, and the Republican Party at the same time has been the most dominant party for the last 30 years. So naturally, you know, the extreme rhetoric of the right-wing fringe is going to become mainstream if the major opposition party to the Democrats, who now control Congress and the White House, are echoing it, and Fox News is providing a megaphone for it.

So this is no surprise at all. What also needs to be noted is that many of the radio shows that are projecting this information and broadcasting it - these conspiracy theories about concentration camps for right-wing dissidents, about mass gun seizures, about death panels - are some of the most popular radio shows in the country. James Dobson of Focus on the Family is one of the top five radio hosts in the country. So is Michael Savage, who accused Obama of trying to indoctrinate an Obama youth corps with his speech encouraging public-school students to study hard and stay in school - the same with Sean Hannity.

So all of the people who are introducing these conspiratorial theories about Barack Obama, suggesting that he's either Hitler or Stalin or both, command enormous audiences and are therefore taken seriously by the mainstream media, which attempts, you know, this veneer of balance, of entertaining both sides.

But when one side is completely hysterical, conspiratorial and is leveling baseless attacks, should it be taken seriously? And what are the consequences of taking those attacks seriously in a democracy? I think those are questions that need to be raised.

GROSS: If you're just joining us, my guest is Max Blumenthal. He's the author of the new book "Republican Gomorrah: Inside the Movement that Shattered the Party." Let's take a short break here, and then we'll talk some more. This is FRESH AIR.

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GROSS: If you're just joining us, my guest is Max Blumenthal. He's been reporting on the extreme right for about six years. His writing has been published in the Nation, the Huffington Post, Salon and other publications. And he's a senior writer for the Daily Beast, and he's the author of the new book, "Republican Gomorrah: Inside the Movement that Shattered the Party."

Now, you went to a couple of gun shows in Reno, Nevada, and in Antioch, California, and you write that you came away with a portrait of a heavily armed, tightly organized movement incited by right-wing radio to a fever-pitched resentment of Obama and his allies in Congress.

The Southern Poverty Law Center recently released a report saying that the militia movement, which had strengthened during the Clinton years, organizing against the powers of the federal government, faded out early in this decade with Republicans in power, but it's on the rise again. The militia movement is on the rise again. Did you see evidence of that at the gun shows that you attended?

Mr. BLUMENTHAL: Yeah, absolutely. I think there is a perception, especially within the media, that Barack Obama could avoid inciting the kind of opposition that President Clinton did by implementing a moderate to liberal agenda. And what I was able to witness at these gun shows earlier in the year, before the battle was brewing over health care and the government bailout, was an incipient, extreme opposition to Barack Obama building within the Republican grassroots and on the far right.

And it stemmed from conspiracy theories spread by radio hosts who are not very well-known in the mainstream but are extremely popular, like Alex Jones, that President Obama had a plan to put right-wing dissidents in concentration camps under the Federal Emergency Management Agency, FEMA. And when I spoke to people at gun shows, this conspiracy theory was really popular, the same with, you know, Obama's supposed plan for mass gun seizures.

And so, people were buying as many guns as they could, including high-powered weaponry, like 50-caliber, semiautomatic rifles, which have been shown to be able to down aircraft, you know, sniper rifles that can be easily disassembled and put into a briefcase that's concealable. I showed this in a video I did called "Gun Show Nation."

And the crowd you see at gun shows, I mean, some people are just basic, apolitical gun enthusiasts, but it's a very political gathering. There are Confederate flags. There are even Nazi flags being displayed throughout the conference because it brings in elements that are even considered extreme within the right-wing grassroots, like neo-Nazis.

And it's a gathering place. Gun shows have become a gathering place for people who are the most extreme opponents of Barack Obama's agenda, and they're energized again by the battle over health care. And we're seeing it across the board; it's not just with the extreme, militia-oriented elements. We're seeing it within the Christian right.

A recent poll showed that seven out of 10 white evangelicals are extremely opposed to Barack Obama's proposed health-care reforms. And the Christian right is raising a lot of money, organizing against health care. So it's across the board. The right is growing again. And those who pronounced the death of conservatism, or the death of the Christian right, were premature.

GROSS: You know, you say at these gun shows, you know, in addition to there being conspiracy theories that Obama will put people who oppose him in concentration camps, which would be another Hitler comparison; there's also a lot of people who are convinced that Obama plans to usher in a Marxist dictatorship.

Mr. BLUMENTHAL: There are, and there are also a lot of people, possibly the majority of people I spoke to, who didn't really seem to know the difference between fascism and communism. The goal is to paint Obama as a totalitarian, secret communist, fascist, terrorist, Muslim, whatever they can do, a basic pastiche of right-wing hobgoblins, a multicolored pinata of every evildoer they want to smash in order to de-legitimize him and mobilize as much opposition as possible.

And as I discuss in my book, this began during the rallies after Sarah Palin was nominated as vice president. It began when Sarah Palin said - I'm slightly paraphrasing - that Barack Obama is not one of us. His America is not our America, and he's palling around with terrorists.

And at that point, you began to hear cries from the crowd that Barack Obama is a traitor, that he is treasonous and so on. And the campaign didn't end with Barack Obama's inauguration. Those rallies didn't end. They've extended into the health-care debate, into the debate over the government bailout and into every element of Barack Obama's agenda. And the more time that goes on, the more extreme the rhetoric becomes and the more diffuse the opposition to Barack Obama becomes.

So it's not led by Sarah Palin - or any right-wing, any conservative leader anymore. It's hard to pinpoint where the opposition is coming from, but it's coming from diffuse, right-wing elements that are mostly within the Republican grassroots. It's spreading, and it's growing more and more extreme, to the point where Barack Obama is compared to Hitler, the most evil man in history.

Max Blumenthal will be back in the second half of the show. His new book is called "Republican Gomorrah: Inside the Movement that Shattered the Party." Blumenthal is a senior writer for the Daily Beast. I'm Terry Gross, and this is FRESH AIR.

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GROSS: This is FRESH AIR. I'm Terry Gross, back with journalist Max Blumenthal, author of the new book "Republican Gomorrah: Inside the Movement that Shattered the Party." He writes that the Republican Party has gone from a big-tent philosophy to being fully in the grip of its right wing.

One of the things your book does is kind of give portraits of a lot of the people who help create the right as we know it now. But a lot of people who you profile in the book are people who - whose names, or groups whose names won't be familiar to most Americans because they are people who operated largely behind the scenes and are known to insiders but not to outsiders.

Let's do a little bit of a who's who of some of the people who you write about in your recent history of the right. Let's start with R.J. Rushdoony, who is, I guess who - you would describe him as one of the founders of the extreme end of the Christian right as we know it today.

Mr. BLUMENTHAL: Yeah. I would describe him as the man who gave the Christian right its theocratic blueprint for the society and government it hoped to create in the United States at a time when the movement was moving from the pews into the streets and becoming increasingly radicalized by federal government attempts to integrate public schools and even so-called private Christian schools.

R.J. Rushdoony was a survivor of the Armenian genocide, who came to this country and became a theologian. He's the descendant of six generations of high priests, and he laid out a plan in several tomes for replacing the federal government, the secular government, with a totalitarian theocracy in which functions like road building and medical care and schooling would be provided by the church. The criminal justice system would be turned over to the church and run according to Leviticus case law, so disobedient children, adulterers, loose women, etc., would all be executed.

And, of course, you know, many of the people he influenced didn't take it as literally as Rushdoony did but he, as I said, provided the Christian right with a blueprint of the society they hoped to create.

GROSS: Where do you most see R.J. Rushdoony's influence in the far right today?

Mr. BLUMENTHAL: Well, most of the leaders among the Christian right would deny that Rushdoony has any influence at all on them because of the controversial, radical nature of his work.

However, Marvin O'Lasky, who helped inspire George W. Bush's faith-based initiative, has footnoted and cited Rushdoony in some of his early work. And you see some of Rushdoony's ideas reflected in the faith-based initiative which has replaced government social services with services performed by the church and funded groups, including abstinence-only groups, with taxpayer money.

So, Rushdoony has at least loosely inspired that initiative, which continues into the Obama administration. I also see it in initiatives funded by one of Rushdoony's acolytes, his financial angel who I write about in my book, Howard F. Ahmanson Jr., who's the son of the famous philanthropist Howard Ahmanson, from Southern California. And at age 18, Howard F. Ahmanson Jr. inherited $300 million after his father died. His mother died soon after and he literally went crazy, spending two years in a mental institution.

When he came out of the mental institution, he became a born-again Christian and encountered Rushdoony, who became his - practically his surrogate father. And in return, Ahmanson funded Rushdoony's political empire and then funded some very successful Christian right initiatives. For example, the intelligent design movement - Howard F. Ahmanson Jr. has donated at least $2.8 million to the Discovery Institute in Seattle, which created the intelligent design curriculum.

Howard F. Ahmanson Jr. donated $1 million to Prop 8, the successful ballot initiative in California in 2008 to ban same-sex marriage. In 1985, Howard F. Ahmanson Jr. said: My goal is the total integration of biblical law into our everyday lives. And whether or not he's an avowed follower of Rushdoony anymore, I think that remains the goal of all these initiatives that he's funding - which remain successful, even though some pundits are pronouncing the death of the Christian right.

GROSS: Well, what's another group or funder on the far right that you've been following, that you think is important and powerful but unknown to most people?

Mr. BLUMENTHAL: Well I wouldn't call this individual unknown. He's an important person in American life and in American history, and I'm referring to James Dobson, who's commonly and wrongly referred to by some pundits as Reverend James Dobson when in fact, he's not a religious leader. He's not a theologian. He has no religious credentials - even though he's the most influential leader of a religious movement, the Christian right, and also the most popular.

He is a child psychiatrist, and James Dobson understands that behind the rights' politics of resentment is a culture of personal crisis that he's been catering to and cultivating since he became a public figure in the early '70s. And what Dobson does, and where his strength comes from, is the correspondence department in his organization Focus On the Family, based in Colorado Springs, which rakes in about $150 million every year. The correspondence department there handles so many letters and so many phone calls that they have their own ZIP code in Colorado Springs.

The letters basically are people pleading for advice on basic problems, from their child's bedwetting problem to marital strife. And they will receive, in short order, Dobson-approved advice. But then their person information is entered in a database and they're bombarded with political mailings, telling them that the source of these problems and the source of societal decay is liberalism, is the homosexual agenda, feminism, etc.

Dobson's radio show, which is one of the top five radio shows in the country, operates the same way. And so what Dobson has done, and why he's a central character in my book, is he has helped cultivate the sensibility of the movement that controls the Republican Party, and with these people who view him not just as a political leader or a religious leader, they view him as a magic helper who's helped save them from personal problems.

They will do whatever he commands at election time, and he's been able to set his shock troops against Republican moderates and against vulnerable Democrats. He was credited for helping re-elect Bush in 2004, and I credit him as a major reason why Sarah Palin was named vice presidential nominee in 2008, of John McCain - and has a lot to do with the fact that James Dobson said on his radio show that he would not vote for John McCain unless he named a suitable vice presidential candidate.

GROSS: Which would be Sarah Palin?

Mr. BLUMENTHAL: Which would be Sarah Palin. And when Sarah Palin was named, Dobson gave McCain his full-throated endorsement and began promoting Sarah Palin to the Republican grassroots.

GROSS: My guest is Max Blumenthal, author of the new book "Republican Gomorrah: Inside the Movement that Shattered the Party."

We'll talk more after a break.

This is FRESH AIR.

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GROSS: My guest is Max Blumenthal, author of the new book "Republican Gomorrah: Inside the Movement that Shattered the Party." It profiles the people who created the blueprint for the Christian right.

One of the up-and-coming leaders he profiles is Tony Perkins, president of the Family Research Council. The group is described on its Web site as an organization dedicated to the promotion of marriage and family and the sanctity of human life in national policy.

This evening, the group is hosting a national town hall webcast on health-care reform to discuss what it considers to be the dangers of President Obama's health-care plan. I asked Blumenthal to tell us about Perkins.

Mr. BLUMENTHAL: Tony Perkins comes from Louisiana. He was a state legislator there who wanted to become a senator. He wanted to be in the position that David Vitter is in right now. But because of a scandal in which he signed a check when he was chief of staff for another senatorial candidate, paying the Ku Klux Klan leader David Duke for his mailing list, Tony Perkins was unable to make good on his ambitions.

Tony Perkins, as I reported, also spoke to a white supremacist group, the Council of Conservative Citizens, in 2001 and has refused to disclose what he said there. So he went to Washington, was sort of tapped by Dobson to lead this group, the Family Research Council, after Dobson fell out of favor with his previous lobbyist, Gary Bauer.

And Perkins has emerged as a figure even probably more influential than David Vitter as the person he could have been had he made it into the Senate. He's able to dictate the Christian right agenda to Republican senators who depend on the Christian right grassroots to get re-elected. And he is incredibly involved in the town hall disruptions that we're seeing across the country. The Family Research Council hosts weekly conference calls with hundreds of pastors across the country who are telling their congregations to go out to these town halls to create disruptions, and to voice their discontent with Barack Obama's health-care proposal.

Perkins has also helped introduce the rumor that Barack Obama's health-care proposal contains a mandate for citizens to fund abortion. And they're running commercials, the Family Research Council, making this claim and raising lots of money among their followers to broadcast these commercials throughout the country.

GROSS: You have managed to get into places and report on meetings where the press is not welcome. One example of that was about a year ago, when you went to the church that Sarah Palin had been baptized in, the Wasilla Assembly of God, which is a Pentecostal church in Alaska, and she spent over 20 years there as a member. And you were there one of the days that Bishop Thomas...

Mr. BLUMENTHAL: Muthee.

GROSS: ...Muthee of Kenya was there, and he's somebody who claimed to be able to expel witchcraft from deep within people - I guess exorcisms, in a way. Would you give us a sense of what it was like to be there when Bishop Muthee was there? Was Sarah Palin there that day, too?

Mr. BLUMENTHAL: Sarah Palin was campaigning that day and Bishop Muthee, the self-proclaimed witch hunter from Kenya who had anointed Sarah Palin in 2005 -as she was running for governor - against the spirit of witchcraft, was there at a small house in Wasilla. It was pouring rain outside and I stumbled in, and the entire congregation was speaking in tongues. And I had heard from other reporters that no media would be allowed, that taking notes was forbidden, that filming was strictly forbidden, so I began speaking in tongues. I'd never done it before so I just started rattling off the names of the Jackson siblings.

Mr. BLUMENTHAL: And insinuated myself into the congregation and watched Bishop Muthee as he, you know, referred to Sarah Palin as the biblical Queen Esther and then began leading the crowd in a really intense prayer to cast out the spirit of witchcraft.

Then another pastor came up, took the microphone, and declared that we will put our feet against the heads of the enemy and crush the python spirit by stepping on the enemy's neck. There was - an instructive event to attend, you know, in terms of the theology that animated the congregation that Sarah Palin and her family had belonged to for 20 years and which she was baptized, in the Wasilla Assembly of God.

GROSS: So were you discovered there as actually being a reporter and not a true believer?

Mr. BLUMENTHAL: Well, I couldn't resist pulling out a small digital camera, and so I was sort of discovered. But afterwards, I pulled out another digital camera and concealed it much better, and was able to show some of the episodes that I just described in a video that I have online called, "In the Land of Queen Esther" - along with some interviews I conducted around the Wasilla and Anchorage area but especially in Wasilla, which is considered the Bible Belt of Alaska - with people who considered Sarah Palin to be a biblical figure and believe that - or at least a biblically inspired figure - and believe that Alaska, because it was shaped like a crown, was called upon God to lead the nation and would be a refuge in the end times for everyone from the lower 48 who had escaped the rapture.

GROSS: The church meeting that you went to is just one example of where you've used a hidden camera. Are you, are you 100 percent comfortable with going in on false pretenses and using a hidden camera to document what you see?

Mr. BLUMENTHAL: That would be the only time that I've used a hidden camera. And I - generally, I think I've never entered an event on false pretenses or concealed my identity, which is why I get kicked out of so many places, including violently, as I was tossed out of the College Republican National Convention in 2007, physically, because of my disclosure that I was basically a member of the liberal media. So it's always a risk, but I think it's best to be above board. The only reason why I concealed my camera at Sarah Palin's church was because there was no other means of capturing what was going on.

GROSS: Your book "Republican Gomorrah: Inside the Movement that Shattered the Party" is in part motivated by words said by - or written by Republican President Dwight Eisenhower. Would you leave us with some of what he said that in part inspired you to write this book?

Mr. BLUMENTHAL: While I was writing my book, I discovered a letter by Dwight Eisenhower to a dying veteran of World War II who had terminal cancer. The veteran, Robert Biggs, wrote to Eisenhower that he felt from his recent speeches the feeling of hedging and a little uncertainty, and that he waited for someone to speak for us and we'll back him completely if the statement is made in truth. And it seemed to me - and to Eisenhower - that Biggs was sort of suggesting that he would prefer a more authoritarian leader, at least a more heavy-handed leader, someone more like George W. Bush.

And Eisenhower decided to respond to Biggs when he could've just tossed the letter in the trash can, or he could have just issued a canned response. And Eisenhower's response, I think, was really remarkable and somewhat eerie because at the time, he was under attack from the radical right of his day, the John Birch Society, which had named him and many of his Cabinet members as communist agents - and Joseph McCarthy. And he wanted to guard his Republican Party and its big-tent philosophy against its right flank.

So Eisenhower responded with his vision of the open society, remarking that, you know, the unity that Biggs was asking for was only logical in a military organization, but in a democracy, debate is the breath of life. Eisenhower bemoaned the fact that there were people who had experienced mental stress and burden, who viewed this form of government, democracy, as possibly dispensable because it places too much pressure on them. And he recommended a book called "The True Believer" by Eric Hoffer - really interesting figure who was a self-educated philosopher, who was a dockworker. And the central thesis of Hoffer's book, which is an analysis of the mentality of the true believer, is that faith in a holy cause is really a substitute for lost faith in ourselves. And this book was passed down through the Eisenhower family, and helped inform Eisenhower as he warned against the rise of the radical right and its influence on the Republican Party. And I included this letter in my book because my book shows the Republican Party ignoring Eisenhower's warning and realizing his worst fears.

GROSS: Max Blumenthal, thank you very much for talking with us.

Mr. BLUMENTHAL: Yeah, thanks for having me.

GROSS: Max Blumenthal is the author of the new book "Republican Gomorrah: Inside the Movement that Shattered the Party."

Source: http://www.npr.org/templates/transcript/transcript.php?storyId=112683449