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Home , American Majority, Carl Paladino, Chip Berlet, Chris Christie, Firedoglake, Jane Hamsher

Tea Party, p. 3

TheA PUBLICATION OF POLITICAL R PublicEyeESEARCH ASSOCIATES Summer 2011 • Volume XXVI, No.2 ’s Anti- Immigrant Law SB1070 Where Did It Come From, Where Is It Going?

By Lauri Lebo isericordia .The word washes across Mthe congregation at the tiny church, carried by voices singing in Spanish. Mercy.

b Young girls, their long, shiny black hair u h S covered in sheer white doilies, sit close to n e l l

E each other in the pews at Surprise Apos - © tolic Assembly in suburban Phoenix, Ari - Boston demonstrators support public employees, February 2011 zona, chattering and giggling into their hands. Mothers and grandmothers, their hair covered in scarves of black lace, lean over and gently shush them. A handsome The Attack on Unions young with baby-smooth skin and Right-Wing Politics and Democratic Possibilities glistening hair neatly parted at the side steps forward to the pulpit. Steve Montenegro, By Abby Scher servatives what they could do once they the youth minister, beckons to the con - The November 2010 Republican were in charge: how deeply they could cut gregation’s children, who gather at his Sweep government, and how successfully they feet. He praises the little ones for their inno - ore than a million people watched on could go after union “bosses,” even with a cence as their mothers snap photos from MYoutube as Governor Democratic legislature. Elected only in the pews. Chris Christie sneered at a public school 2009, Christie quickly became an inspi - Steve’s father, José Roberto Montene - teacher who had the temerity to ask him at ration for the Right, as he went full throt - gro, the church’s pastor, delivers the sermon tle in blaming unions for the grossly a September 2010 town meeting how his SB1070 continues on page 12 policies would help the middle class when underfunded state pension system and the $11 billion deficit he inherited. so many teachers had been laid off. 1His IN THIS ISSUE response? He wasn’t to blame—union chiefs After the midterm elections of Novem - ber 2010, he had a lot of company in forced the layoffs and were responsible. Editorial ...... 2 Young conservatives cheered his take-no- statehouses across the nation. Aided by a prisoners style, though only a few months potent, antilabor alignment of grassroots The Tea Party: The New Populism . . 3 groups, legislators, and conservative insti - later, Christie’s high approval ratings, par - Book Review ...... 26 ticularly among women, tanked. 2 tutions, Republicans enjoyed a sweep of Reports in Review ...... 29 Still, the voucher-loving, -hating state legislatures not seen since 1928. governor seemed to show free-market con - The Attack on Unions continues on page 19 Eyes Right ...... 31

THE PUBLIC EYE 1 SUMMER 2011 The Public Eye

EDITORIAL ThePublicEye Publisher Beware ALEC Tarso Luís Ramos Although we didn’t exactly plan it this way, the articles in this issue of The Public Eye Editor speak to one another. Whether the topic is immigration, antilabor organizing, or theTea Amy Hoffman Party, the same players on the Right constantly rear their heads, to paraphrase . Design/layout Hird Graphic Design Of course, this has been true for a long time. Funders such as the Koch brothers, think Printing tanks such as , and media outlets such as are involved Red Sun Press in a multitude of issues. Editorial Board

However, one organization that appears both in Lauri Lebo’s account of the forces that Chip Berlet • Pam Chamberlain came together to pass Arizona’s anti-immigrant law, SB1070, and in Abby Scher’s analy - Thomas Cincotta • Frederick Clarkson sis of the current antilabor backlash, although highly influential, is less well-known: ALEC, Amy Hoffman • Gillian Kane Jean Hardisty • Tarso Luís Ramos the American Legislative Exchange Council. A nonprofit, 501(c)(3) organization,

ALEC members are state legislators and representatives of corporations. ALEC’s mission, PRA Political Research Associates as paraphrased on its press releases, “is to promote free markets, individual liberty, and federalism through its model legislation in the states.” (See www.alec.org.)Thus, SB1070 Founder and President Emerita Jean V. Hardisty, Ph.D. had its origins in ALEC; its wording is almost identical to legislation proposed by an ALEC task force in 2008.The task force itself included as members Arizona state Senator Rus - Staff Tarso Luís Ramos, Executive Director sell Pearce, the bill’s sponsor, and representatives of private prison corporations who, as Chip Berlet, Senior Analyst Lebo explains, will profit nicely from locking up those arrested under the law.That’s how Pam Chamberlain, Senior Researcher ALEC’s “individual liberty” works. Thomas Cincotta, Project Director Amy Hoffman, Editorial Director ALEC also plays a role in developing laws that weaken unions and impede organiz - Kapya Kaoma, Project Director ing, Scher documents. Funded by the Koch brothers (them again!), ALEC teams have Cindy Savage-King, Operations Manager created model, so-called right-to-work and paycheck-protection laws—one of which was Charles Ocitti, Finance Director just passed in Arizona (there again!). That’s the “.” Jean Smith, Development Associate Maria Planansky, Program Associate Aramis Tirado, Data/Web Master •••

Interns I’m sad to announce that this issue of The Public Eye will be the last that I edit. I hope Hannah Gallo to continue to work with the wonderful team at Political Research Associates from time Dan DeFraia to time, but other life reponsibilities (I also edit Women’s Review of Books ) have “reared Dan Foster Ryan Katz their heads,” making it difficult for me to continue to devote the amount of time nec - Dennis Matanda essary to The Public Eye. Julie Silva –Amy Hoffman Board of Directors Maria Elena Letona, Chair Katherine Acey Janet Jakobsen Pardis Mahdavi Supriya Pillai Marcy Westerling

The Public Eye is published by Political Research Associates, 1310 Broadway, Suite 201, Somerville, 02144-1837. 617.666.5300 fax: 617.666.6622 PRA is a nonprofit, tax-exempt organization. All donations are tax-deductible to the extent permitted by law. © Political Research Associates, 2011. Website: www.publiceye.org All rights reserved. ISSN 0275-9322 ISSUE 70

THE PUBLIC EYE 2 SUMMER 2011 The Public Eye The Tea Party: The New Populism

By Arun Gupta

“The Rant Heard Round the World” n Feb. 19, 2009, two days after Pres - Oident signed the $787 billion economic stimulus bill into law 1 and one day after the announced $75 billion in direct aid to help homeowners refinance troubled mortgages, 2 CNBC commentator delivered what became known as “the rant heard round the world.” Speaking from the floor of the Mercantile Exchange in his role as a financial analyst for the business news channel, Santelli excoriated the govern - b u h ment for “promoting bad behavior” by S n e l l

“subsidiz[ing] the losers’ mortgages” instead E of rewarding “the people that could carry © One demand comes to represent the whole: “We Are All Wisconsin” the water instead of drink the water.” Cry - ing “This is America … the silent major - ity” to the cheering, White male traders their own events, ultimately allowing” the around him, Santelli announced, “We’re group “to compile a list of thousands ofTea 3 thinking of having a Chicago Tea Party.” Party contacts across the country.” 8 A movement was born. It mattered lit - “How many of you people In many ways, Santelli only sparked the tle that Santelli was mum about the gov - abundant tinder of right-wing outrage. ernment’s many bailouts of want to pay for your After all, despite Barack Obama’s historic firms. (Financial analyst Nomi Prins esti - victory, Republican presidential candi - mates that by November 2008, direct and neighbor’s mortgage [when date John McCain garnered nearly 60 indirect support from the million votes, just 2.1 million short of the to the financial sector had already climbed he] has an extra bathroom number George Bush received in his 2004 4 to $6.39 trillion. ) Instead, Santelli— re-election win. 9 Additionally, almost directing his wrath at the mortgage-refi - and can’t pay the bills?” ninety percent of McCain voters were nancing program that would presumably White; around seventy percent made more aid the “losers”—asked, “How many of you than $50,000 a year; a majority identified people want to pay for your neighbor’s tive talk radio programs like the Rush Lim - as conservative; most were male; and they mortgage that has an extra bathroom and baugh Show and the Show. 6 skewed older. 10 As indicated by various 5 can’t pay their bills?” Within hours, San - The same day, FreedomWorks, an outfit polls, this is the heart of the Tea Party telli’s rant was featured favorably on right- chaired by former House Majority Leader demographic. 11 wing websites such as the Armey, 7 “put up a website with tips But many commentators, dazzled by (www.drudgereport.com), and conserva - on how to hold a tea party, then a Obama and the Democratic sweep of Con - map of events,” according to the NewYork gress, ignored this data. They declared Arun Gupta is the editor of The Indypen - Times. The Times said that, as “more peo - that the Republicans were in a “death spi - dent and a former editor of ple found the map on Web searches, they ral,” “shrinking,” “increasingly constricted, Newsweekly. e-mailed FreedomWorks information on with little space for growth,” and might “go

THE PUBLIC EYE 3 SUMMER 2011 The Public Eye the way of the 1936 GOP, which didn’t izations and prominent right-wing media. spent freely on political campaigns that have reclaim the White House until 1952.” 12 A debate has thus ensued over whether the flopped, some of which were brazenly Even those who hedged their bets, such as is genuinely grassroots, Astroturf. For example, in 1980, David the NewYorkTimes columnist Paul Krug - which I define as a bottom-up political Koch ran for vice president on the Liber - man, who saw a future for the Republican process marked by relatively autonomous tarian Party ticket. He spent $1.6 million Party, albeit as “a haven for racists and local formations, or Astroturf, which the in television advertising, which garnered reactionaries,” 13 were unable to imagine the website SourceWatch defines as “appar - him a whopping one percent of the national stunning comeback it would make just two ently grassroots-based citizen groups or vote. 21 In 1995, the Post-Gazette years later, fueled by the Tea Party move - coalitions that are primarily conceived, reported on Citizens for the Environment, ment. created and/or funded by corporations, a spin-off from the Koch-funded group, The same pundits often interpreted the industry associations, political inter - Citizens for a Sound Economy, which had race-based falsehoods tossed about during ests, or public relations firms.” 19 received $7.9 million from the Koch foun - the campaign—that Obama was a Muslim, As evidence for the Astroturf argument, dation between 1986 and 1993 and was the that (in the words of Sarah Palin) he was critics often point to Charles and David precursor of both FreedomWorks and “palling around with terrorists,” that he was . Citizens for the not a natural-born U.S. citizen—as the last Environment, said the Post-Gazette, “has cry of a dying right-wing species. Yet the no citizen membership of its own”; instead, rumor-mongering only gained a firmer Progressives find the “Oil, auto, timber, and chemical compa - foothold as the Tea Party gained momen - nies finance its inside-the-- tum. In August 2007, seven percent of the Tea Party perplexing, Beltway activities.” 22 In 2008, Americans public thought Obama was Muslim. By for Prosperity, which had received $5.2 mil - October 2008, twelve percent held this because the mass-based lion from Koch foundations since 2005, belief. By August 2010, it was up to eight - kicked off a Tour to oppose legis - een percent, including 31 percent of all movement also appears lation addressing climate change. 23 During Republicans (with another 39 percent the next year, it made 75 stops around the responding “don’t know”). 14 As hysteria to be marching to U.S., 24 but uncov - peaked later that August over the proposal ered the tour’s Astroturf nature, including to build the so-called Park 51 mosque in the tune of top-down a lobbyist who forged letters to members downtown —an issue pushed of Congress. 25 In 2008, the Journal reported by FOX News and Tea Party figures such organizations and on another fizzled effort linked to the as Sarah Palin and Sharron Angle, the Koch brothers: the FreedomWorks Angry Republican candidate for ’s senate right-wing media. Renter campaign, which was meant to stir seat 15 —a Time magazine poll found that 46 up opposition to federal programs that percent of Republicans believed that helped homeowners refinance troubled Obama was Muslim. 16 Similarly, in April mortgages. 26 2010, 92 percent of Tea Party supporters Koch, oil-industry magnates with a com - In the few weeks between Obama’s said Obama’s policies “were moving the bined fortune of $44 billion, who control inauguration and Santelli’s rant, the same country more toward .” 17 (While various foundations and political organi - top-down forces were at play, at that point the Tea Party is not identical to the GOP, zations linked to theTea Party, such as Free - with little effect. In February 2009, demon - it overlaps with it significantly. A New domWorks. A New Yorker profile of the strations against the Obama administra - York Times -CBS poll of Tea Party sup - brothers by Jane Mayer describes them as tion’s stimulus plan took place in , porters in April 2010 found that 66 per - “out to destroy progressivism.”They have Washington; , Colorado; Mesa, cent “usually” or “always” vote Republican, pumped more than $250 million into Arizona; and Ft. Myers, . Most as opposed to a scant five percent who said conservative political causes—of money were timed to protest visits by Obama, and that about the Democrats. 18 ) that can be traced. Americans for Prosperity, all benefited from support or promotion a nonprofit founded by in by the Right.The term used at these events Can Billions Buy a Movement? 2004 that reportedly sought to spend $45 to disparage the stimulus, “porkulus,” was any progressives find the Tea Party million during the 2010 election cycle, has coined by . 27 Freedom - Mperplexing, because a mass-based become a prominent player in the Tea Works claimed credit for the Ft. Myers movement motivated by reactionary pop - Party Movement. 20 protest. Pundit gave the ulist beliefs also appears to be marching to But even for billionaires, buying a move - protests a national platform, boasting that the tune of well-funded, top-down organ - ment is not easy. The Koch brothers have KFYI radio, part of the right-wing Clear

THE PUBLIC EYE 4 SUMMER 2011 The Public Eye . d e

Channel media empire, was “taking the v r e s e lead” in promoting the Mesa demonstra - r s t h g i tion. Americans for Prosperity and the r l l A

Independence Institute, which is funded . p u o by the ultraconservative Coors family, r G t s

28 i organized the Denver rally. And John n o o t r

Hendrix, a “Tampa-based consultant who a C e h organized” an anti-stimulus protest in t d n a

Tampa, Florida, says he got the idea from . c n I , “FreedomWorks field coordinator Tom y m

29 m i

Gaitens.” The Seattle protest, called by r G f school teacher and Young Republican Keli o n o i s s Carender, appears to have been genuinely i m r e spontaneous, but FOX News radio was p e h 30 t h quick to promote it. That nearly all these t i w d

“local” protests were organized from above e s U . and received plenty of play from the right- c n I , y

wing media underlines how massive the m m i conservative apparatus has become, bulked r G 1 1 up by decades of funding from right-wing 0 2 philanthropists. 31 But all the resources, © money, and media did not guarantee success. The protests were scattered, and organizers of the local events are actually way to dismiss it,” says Peter Bratsis, an none appeared to draw many more than the lobbyist-run think tanks Americans for observer of theTea Party movement and a 100 people. Prosperity and FreedomWorks. The two professor of political theory at the Uni - groups are heavily staffed and well-funded, versity of Salford in the United Kingdom. From the Bottom Up and are providing all the logistical and “The important thing is the degree of sup - uriously, what has arguably become the public relations work necessary for plan - port the Tea Party movement has. The CTea Party movement’s nerve center— ning coast-to-coast protests.” 36 Citing intensity of passion is quite acute. … It’s a FOX News—was slow to react. Not until much of the same evidence, , social movement that is very widespread.” a second round ofTea Party protests slated the founder of the progressive fire - One need look no further than the for April 15, 2009, began to gather steam November 2010 elections, which were an did FOX News start heavily promoting, unambiguous victory for theTea Party.The endorsing, and providing organizing sup - Democratic Party was “thrashed,” as Pres - port 32 . OnTax Day, some 750 separateTea Even for billionaires, ident Obama admitted, losing six seats in Party protests were reportedly staged around the Senate, 63 in the House, six governor - the nation. While ABC, CBS, and the New buying a movement is ships, and numerous state legislatures. 38 Of York Times all cited this number without the House seats the Republicans flipped, attribution, the protests were undoubt - not easy. “Tea Party-endorsed candidates accounted edly widespread. 33 Statistician for 28 of those pick-ups,” according to tallied up press and police reports from 126 , and nearly one-quarter of the protests and found that about of Republicans in the House currently 112,000 people attended, with 47 cities doglake.com, rejected the idea that “right- belong to the . 39 At the reporting crowds of 1,000 or more. 34 wing infrastructure” was exploiting a polls, an astonishing 41 percent of voters Still, many liberals interpreted the grow - grassroots movement. 37 identified asTea Party supporters. 40 TheTea ingTea Party movement as mere smoke and Yet labeling the Tea Party “Astroturf” Party gained enough strength during the mirrors. Krugman called the demonstra - does not explain its strength or its explo - 2010 midterm elections to enable the tions “Astroturf events.” Pointing to sive growth. While opponents may find it Republican Party to define the national involvement by FreedomWorks, he noted comforting to claim the movement doesn’t issues going forward: maintaining the that “the parties are, of course, being pro - have much real support, this notion is Bush-era tax cuts; cutting social services, moted heavily by FOX News.” 35 dubious. “Saying it’s inauthentic, it’s fake, unemployment insurance, public educa - of ThinkProgress.org said “the principal it’s being manipulated by elites is an easy tion, and healthcare; and waging war on

THE PUBLIC EYE 5 SUMMER 2011 The Public Eye

TALKINGTOTHETEA PARTIERS I met Barry Silverman at a gathering of the Rockland County Tea During the meeting Silverman had declared, “The government is Party/Coffee Party at the New City Public Library, about twenty stealing our wealth.” During our conversation he elaborated, miles north of City, in January 2011. 79 explaining that the government subsidizes the poor.

I arrived after the Pledge of Allegiance had been recited. Ten “How?” I asked. attendees were discussing their first order of business, supporting a Republican presidential candidate for the 2012 election. Silverman Silverman’s face jutted forward, his eyes bulged with incredulity, was quick to speak up when Bruce Weinfeld, the chair, asked partic - and he sighed at having to suffer a fool like me, before ticking off the ipants to list the qualities they look for in a presidential candidate. evidence on his fingers. “They get welfare, food stamps, healthcare, Silverman announced, “If the Republicans nominate only RINOs unemployment, housing.” [Republicans In Name Only] in 2012, they’ll be finished. They’ll go I pointed out that unemployment is an insurance system: you have the way of the Whigs.” It was a prediction he would state repeatedly. to work to qualify, and it excludes many categories of workers—but During the meeting Silverman, a retiree who appeared to be in his to no avail. To Silverman, it was a taxpayer-funded subsidy to the sixties, said he had worked for a “Fortune 50 company.” He is a undeserving and a form of theft. leader in the Rally for America Tea Party and has been a featured “Name one government program that is effective and efficient,” public speaker at Tea Party events. 80 After the meeting, I struck up a Silverman demanded. conversation with him and a few other participants, including Larry Rosner, who handed me a card describing himself as the founder of “The interstate highway system,” I responded, but he immediately The Society Project website, whose motto is “Control the Govern - denounced that as inefficient. The topic came up again later, and ment Not the People.” I did not identify myself as a reporter, just when I suggested the Veterans Administration he became visibly as someone who was curious about the Tea Party movement. angry, labeling the agency “corrupt” and “scandal ridden.”

Silverman and his colleagues all expressed radical right-wing politics. I declined to point out that a recent study determined that the VA They don’t believe change can come through existing institutions, healthcare system outperformed the for-profit healthcare system which they believe need to be restructured or even eliminated. across seven different categories. 82 I also didn’t mention that the When I asked them if the food stamp program should be termi - meeting and our conversation were taking place in a free public nated, they cried, “Cut it!” The same cry greeted the mention of space paid for by taxpayers. The evidence was irrelevant. No matter Medicare, Medicaid, and unemployment insurance. They saved how well a government program worked, it could never compete their greatest ire for Social Security: “Social Security is a fraud,” with Silverman’s utopian vision of the free market, which, in his they said. words, would always be more “effective and efficient.”

“It’s a pyramid scheme. The trust fund doesn’t exist.” The political scientist Peter Bratsis recommends that to understand the Tea Party, we start with the group’s name. “By evoking the “Stealing from us in is unconstitutional and immoral.” ,” he explains, “the movement is both referencing “The government isn’t allowed to tax us.” the national founding and celebrating patriotic pleasure and sacri - fice.” He adds, Silverman explained that Obama’s election had led to his political awakening. “I was asleep for thirty years. I woke up because of “Tea Party supporters think that things have gone awry precisely Obama. It was the bailouts and stimulus and healthcare. It was because Americans are driven by the nihilistic pursuit of self- socialism.” He added that he felt isolated until he attended a interest. … If greedy bankers and labor unions, corrupt and protest in Washington, D.C., in the summer of 2009 and found servile politicians, and free-riding law-breaking immigrants thousands of kindred spirits. “I had thought I was the only one behaved in a more disciplined and principled manner, then we yelling at my TV.” would finally be able to enjoy our own lives and the could go back to its former greatness.” 83 Borrowing a line from libertarians, who make up a significant seg - ment of the Tea Party movement, Silverman told me, “Equality of For Silverman, as I suspect for many Tea Party supporters, the rhet - opportunity does not guarantee equality of outcome.” A young oric and imagery of a national refounding tap into heroic ideals. We woman, the only African American in attendance, sat nearby texting live in a society suffused with banality, in which people are pushed on her cell phone during our discussion, often nodding approvingly at every turn to overcome their dissatisfactions through shopping at Silverman’s remarks. She spoke up only a few times, twice telling and eating, spectator sports, television, and cruises. In contrast, the me to read Uncle Sam’s Plantation by Star Parker 81 to learn how the Tea Party offers a heroic narrative that lends meaning to a middle- welfare system keeps poor people in a state of dependency. class, consumerist lifestyle by uplifting unfettered individualism and the free market as the paths to restoring the country to its former glory.

THE PUBLIC EYE 6 SUMMER 2011 The Public Eye unions, particularly in the public sector. • “Here is the message Obama and rallies 54 ; there was an outpouring of Tea Libertarian beliefs about limited gov - Congress are sending: work hard, Party-backed Islamophobia during the ernment, personal responsibility, opposi - pay your bills on time, and you summer of 2010 55 ; leader tion to the downward redistribution of will be penalized by having your MarkWilliams vented founts of racist dia - wealth, and the market as the source of lib - hard-earned money reward those tribes long before his racist “satire” of the erty and democracy 41 have defined the who wallow in irresponsibility and NAACP led to his resignation 56 ; and high U.S. Right since the 1930s, according to have a total disdain for those who percentages of Tea Party supporters regu - Invisible Hands:The Businessmen’s Crusade play by the rules.” larly claimed that Obama was a Muslim or Against the New Deal (2009), by Kim was not born in the United States. 57 Phillips-Fein. 42 In Roads to Dominion: • “Obama & Biden are very com - Polling conducted in 2010 among Right-Wing Movements and Political Power passionate with other peoples’ Whites in , Georgia, , in the United States (1995), Sara Diamond money …This is not the role of the Missouri, Nevada, , and provides a succinct definition of the Right government (redistribution) & it’s by the University of Washington that fits the Tea Party movement: “To be not their right to do it with my Institute for the Study of Ethnicity, Race, 48 right-wing means to support the state in its money!” & Sexuality found that support for or capacity as enforcer of order and to oppose opposition to the Tea Party movement the state as distributor of wealth and power was an accurate predictor of racial resent - downward and more equitably in society “Saying [the Tea Party] ment.The survey found that among strong [emphasis in original].” 43 supporters of the Tea Party, 73 percent Thus, Santelli struck a nerve because he is inauthentic, it’s fake, believed, “Blacks would be as well off as was expressing what many Americans Whites if they just tried harder,” while already thought: that their hard-earned it’s being manipulated only 33 percent of strong opponents of the money should not go to subsidize “losers.” Tea Party movement believed this; 56 per - Shortly after his rant, CNBC asked visitors by elites is an easy way cent of strong supporters believed, “Immi - to its website, “Would you join Santelli’s grants take jobs from Americans,” as ‘ChicagoTea Party?’” About 170,000 peo - to dismiss it.” opposed to 31 percent of strong opponents; ple responded within one day, with 93 per - and 72 percent of Tea Party backers dis - cent saying “yes,” according to Hamsher. 44 agreed that decades of and dis - A CNBC spokesperson said the number of crimination made Blacks’ economic respondents was “much higher” than nor - Tea Party Racism situations difficult, while only 28 percent 45 58 mal for a CNBC poll. Within eleven roducerism is intertwined with racism, of opponents disagreed. days, the rant video was the most-watched Pand various Tea Party factions are no Recent assaults on social welfare pro - clip ever on the CNBC website, with strangers to racist rhetoric. Curiously, grams and the passage of laws criminaliz - nearly 2 million views and another 855,000 because of such racism, some left-wing ing undocumented immigrants, especially 45 hits on YouTube. Santelli’s distinction observers have dismissed the idea that the in states with activeTea Party movements, between those who “carry the water” and Tea Party could become a powerful politi - are part of a racist backlash—and the those who “drink the water” is what soci - cal movement—even though they also demographics of theTea Party may explain ologists term classic “producerism.” recognize that racism is a potent force in why. For instance, just 23 percent of Tea Researchers Chip Berlet and Matthew N. U.S. society and politics. 49 Racism is a Party supporters in an April 2010 NewYork 47 Lyons define producerism as pitting “the factor in the movement’s success, and many Times /CBS poll were under age 45, as so-called producing classes,” who work Tea Party leaders, candidates, and sup - opposed to 50 percent of all respondents. hard and create wealth, “against ‘unpro - porters have been guilty of it 50 : Kentucky Only five percent of the total said they were ductive’ bankers, speculators, and monop - Senator inveighed against the Black, Asian, or of Hispanic descent or ori - olists above—and people of color below.” 1964 Civil Rights Act during his 2010 gin, indicating that the movement is about 59 Many of the people who commented on campaign 51 ; New York Republican guber - 95 percent White. the CNBC website in response to Santelli natorial candidate Carl Paladino sent out expressed producerist resentments such as racist emails with doctored photographs of The Role of Populism these: Michelle and Barack Obama 52 ; crowds of here remains the problem of how to • “Why are the very people who never Tea Party supporters reportedly yelled “nig - Tmake sense of the many apparently seem to do the right things being ger” at Black congressmen during the conflicting aspects of the Tea Party move - rewarded with my tax dollars? ” healthcare bill debate in March 2010 53 ; ment. Top-down elements with organiza - racist signs regularly appeared at Tea Party tional, financial, and media resources, such

THE PUBLIC EYE 7 SUMMER 2011 The Public Eye as the Koch brothers, Sarah Palin, FOX side, says Laclau, while on the other is It’s “useless,” says Laclau, to explain News, , FreedomWorks, and the “the oppressed underdog”—“the ‘people,’ people’s attraction to populist movements Tea Party Express (a front for Republican the ‘nation,’ the ‘silent majority.’” 64 “The by claiming that they are being manipulated operatives) play prominent roles in theTea people” is less than the whole of society, he from the top. “The most it would explain,” Party movement. Yet there is clearly broad notes, although it would like “to function he says, “is the subjective intention of the support for theTea Party and its positions, as the totality of the community.” 65 The leader, but we would remain in the dark as as evidenced by polling data, the 2010 enemy, which is also a construct, is illegit - to why the manipulation succeeds.” Pop - midterm elections, the variety of organiza - imate and must be excluded. ulism, he adds, tions, their ability to turn people out on the Viewing the Tea Party as a populist can start from any place in the socio- streets, and their ideological continuities movement explains why it came into being institutional structure: clientistic with other modern right-wing movements. so fast, and why the grassroots/Astroturf political organizations, established The Tea Party movement thus appears debate misses the point. The elements of political parties, trade unions, the to have both genuine grassroots and Astro - the movement took shape during the 2008 army, revolutionary movements, etc. turf elements. However, saying this does - presidential race. While Obama’s cam - “Populism” does not define the actual n’t explain much. Whether the movement paign astutely crafted him as a symbol politics of these organizations but is is orchestrated or spontaneous, whether into which liberals, progressives, and many a way of articulating their themes— that matters, and how the elite interacts moderates could pour their hopes and whatever those themes may be. 69 with the base are still unanswered questions. ideals, he was also being shaped by his oppo - Ernesto Laclau’s essay, “Populism: What’s nents as an enemy Other: a foreign-born, TheTea Party’sVulnerabilities in a Name?,” and his 2005 book, On Pop - Muslim socialist. 66 Following Obama’s ulist Reason 60 provide useful perspectives on election, forces on the Right began to hree characteristics of theTea Party are the issues, although his theories are con - make a series of demands, opposing the Talready diminishing its support. First, troversial. 61 stimulus bill, deficits, social spending, theTea Party is what Laclau calls an “empty Laclau says that populism is a “political bailouts, and government intervention in signifier”: it unifies a wildly heterogeneous logic” that begins with “social demands.” the market. 67 The demand of debt reduc - reality, but only by “reducing to a minimum 70 If a series of demands remains unfulfilled, tion rose above all the others, linking them [each element’s] particularistic content.” then the various groups making the together in what Laclau calls an “equiv - As Devin Burghart and Leonard Zeskind demands may begin to see themselves as alential chain”: that is, debt reduction show in their study, Tea Party Nationalism, having something in common. At first, began to represent all the demands.Thus, those drawn to theTea Party include liber - there “is a vague feeling of solidarity,” the movement explained its opposition to tarians, evangelicals, nativists, constitu - writes Laclau. 62 To use a non-Tea Party social programs, bailouts, and government tionalists, Islamophobes, militia members, 71 example, in Wisconsin in early 2011, after regulations with the imperative of debt and White nationalists. These disparate Republicans tried to take away the right of reduction: social welfare and bailouts groups can unite under the Tea Party ban - public-sector workers to bargain collec - increase the debt, while regulation and ner even if they don’t all support a partic - tively, an outpouring of people from vari - government spending sap the market of its ular demand such as charter schools, ous sectors—teachers, students, liberals, ability to generate wealth. banning , or cutting Medicare. government employees, religious groups, While the lavishly funded right-wing The larger the number of demands the socialists, union members, progressives, media and networks were having little suc - movement encompasses, the less it is sports stars, hackers—protested. cess in building a mass movement based on attached to any one of them. The movement then enters a second “porkulus” protests, Santelli’s rant broke Many people who claim to speak for the stage, says Laclau, in which “an individual through because it suggested a populist movement advocate particular causes, demand … acquires a certain centrality,” identity and at the same time, constructed which other factions within the move - and becomes “the representation of an an enemy. As Laclau would say, the Tea ment do not support.Tea Party groups have impossible whole.” 63 In Wisconsin, the Party discourse brings the “people” into devolved from focusing on universal claims plight of unionized public workers came to being; it’s not an already existing group.Tea to focusing on particular ones with less sup - represent everyone’s plight; the movement’s Party rhetoric is full of this notion of a legit - port. In some cases, the Tea Party has slogan became, “We are all Wisconsin.” imate “people.” “We the people” are con - brought into being opposing equivalential A new identity is constructed: “the peo - trasted with various Others—Obama, chains and populist identities that have 72 ple”: those whose demands are not met.The unions, welfare recipients, undocumented stolen its thunder, as in Wisconsin. AsTea people can be known only in relation to the immigrants—who, according to Laclau’s Party groups have become embroiled in Other, the enemy. “The ‘regime,’ the ‘oli - theory, “cannot be a legitimate part of the specific battles over cutting funding for edu - garchy,’ the ‘dominant groups’” are on one community.” 68 cation and social programs, and limiting

THE PUBLIC EYE 8 SUMMER 2011 The Public Eye the bargaining power of public-sector Both major parties endorse policies that the Home Mortgage Crisis,” February 18, 2009, accessed April 24, 2011, whitehouse.gov/the_press_office/ unions (whose members administer social undermine civil liberties, squeeze social wel - Remarks-by-the-President-on-the-mortgage-crisis;The programs), the Tea Party’s negative rat - fare, wage multiple wars, preserve huge mil - White House, “Homeowner Affordability and Stability Plan, Executive Summary,” , Febru - ings have leaped. In March 2011, 47 per - itary expenditures, criminalize ary 18, 2009, accessed April 24, 2011; graph - cent of respondents to a CNN poll had an undocumented immigration, cut wages ics8.nytimes.com/packages/pdf/politics/20090218factshe unfavorable opinion of the Tea Party, up and pensions for public-sector workers, et.pdf; Nick Timiraos, “Views of Life After Fannie, Freddie,” the Wall Street Journal, February 12, 2011, from 26 percent in January 2010. 73 thwart policies to reduce global warming, accessed April 24, 2011, online.wsj.com/article/ Second, when the political system assim - and support Wall Street bailouts and his - SB10001424052748703786804576137942242796306. html. ilates a populist movement, the move - torically low tax rates for the wealthy. Nev - 3 “CNBC’s Rick Santelli’s Chicago Tea Party,” YouTube, ment loses the system as its enemy Other, ertheless, there are rhetorical differences uploaded February 19, 2009, accessed April 24, 2011, and it begins to lose strength. This may between the two, and they disagree on .com/watch?v=zp-Jw-5Kx8k; “Rick Santelli: Tea Party,” full transcript, February 19, 2009, accessed already be happening to the Tea Party. Its wedge cultural issues such as gay marriage April 24, 2011, freedomeden.blogspot.com/ victories in the November 2010 election and rights.Tea Party networks will 2009/02/rick-santelli-tea-party.html. showed that the system could accommo - probably remain a potent force, at least 4 By June 2009 the sum of all U.S. government bailouts, overwhelmingly to support financial markets and cor - date the movement, making it harder to through the 2012 presidential election, porations, totaled $13.31 trillion. Nomi Prins and claim plausibly that “real” Americans were since the Right can use them to mobilize Kristzina Ugrin, “BailoutTally Report,” June 30, 2009, being oppressed or excluded. A measure of resentment against Others and to organ - accessed April 25, 2011, nomiprins.squarespace.com/ storage/reports/bailouttally063009-1.pdf. theTea Party’s declining support is theTax ize opposition to Obama and the Demo - 5 Ironically, of $50 billion allocated under the Home Day rallies. ThinkProgress noted that the cratic Party. Affordable Modification Program for “incentives to pri - website listed only 145 The overriding error of Tea Party crit - vate lenders, servicers, and homeowners,” at least $16.7 billion was scooped up by subprime mortgage lenders rallies on April 15, 2011—down from ics is a crude material reductionism: to implicated in the burst housing bubble. While the White 638 in 2010. And in many instances, think that funding signifies control or that House claimed the program would “reach up to 3 to 4 74 million at-risk home owners,” by March 2011, the pro - turnout “was down precipitously.” In a racist reaction against the Other is just a gram had only resulted in 586,916 “active permanent July, BruceWeinfeld of the Rockland County, defense of the wages of Whiteness. There modifications.” “Rick Santelli: Tea Party,” full tran - script; John Dunbar, “Who’s Behind the Financial Melt - New York,Tea Party/Coffee Party, told me are varying degrees of truth to these propo - down?”,The Center for Public Integrity, August 25, 2009, that his group and many others had stopped sitions, but the real issue is the the ability accessed April 25, 2011, publicintegrity.org/investiga - meeting. Weinfeld said it was a waste of of theTea Party (and the Right in general) tions/economic_meltdown/articles/entry/1629; “Home - owner Affordability and Stability Plan, Executive time and energy when only “three or four to craft politics suffused with psychologi - Summary”; “Making Home Affordable: Program Per - people were showing up at meetings.” 75 cal and material appeals, which combine formance Report Through March 2011,” U.S. Depart - ment of theTreasury, May 6, 2011, accessed May 8, 2011, Finally, some Tea Party supporters are negative and positive emotions. Certainly treasury.gov/initiatives/financial-stability/results/MHA- having second thoughts.They had called for Tea Party members are motivated by fear Reports/Documents/March%202011%20MHA%20Re reducing the federal budget deficit at any and some by hate; nevertheless, they see port%20FINAL.PDF 6 “Rick Santelli – The Rant Heard ‘Round the World,” cost, only to confront the reality that this themselves as a positive force.They are the streetinsider.com, February 19, 2009, accessed April would mean cutting social welfare pro - ones who will save America and return it 25, 2009, streetinsider.com/Insiders+Blog/Rick+San - telli+-+The+Rant+Heard+Round+the+World/4419854. grams that they themselves depended on. to its former greatness. It may be a fantasy, html; Mark Whittington, “Rick Santelli’s Anti-Obama An April 2011 poll found that seventy per - but it’s a powerful one that has captured the ‘Rant Heard Around the World,’” Yahoo Contributor Network, February 19, 2009, accessed April 25, 2009, cent of Tea Party supporters opposed cuts imagination of millions of people and re- associatedcontent.com/article/1494220/rick_santel - to Medicare and Medicaid “to deal with the defined national politics, something the lis_antiobama_rant_heard.html?cat=9. federal budget deficit.” 76 Another showed Left has failed to do for generations. I 7 FreedomWorks formed in 2004 from the merger of Citizens for a Sound Economy and Empower America. that “Tea Party supporters, by a nearly 2- FreedomWorks, SourceWatch, accessed April 28, 2011, to-1 margin, declared significant cuts to sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=FreedomWorks. Social Security ‘unacceptable.’” 77 By now, Endnotes 8 Kate Zernike, “ShapingTea Party Passion into Campaign however, deficit reduction has already been 1 Laura Meckler, “Obama Signs Stimulus Into Law,” the Force,” the New York Times, August 25, 2010, accessed Wall Street Journal, February 19, 2009, accessed April 24, May 4, 2011, nytimes.com/2010/08/26/us/politics/ fully incorporated into the country’s polit - 2011, online.wsj.com/article/SB1234879510337 26freedom.html. ical discourse, as demonstrated by the fact 99545.html. 9 The American Presidency Project, UC Santa Barbara, that both congressional Republicans and the 2 The White House plan called for $75 billion to aid home - accessed May 11, 2011, presidency.ucsb.edu/showelec - owners and $200 billion to aid Fannie Mae and Freddie tion.php?year=2008; http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ Democratic White House are gunning for Mac (the White House and congressional Republicans showelection.php?year=2004. Social Security and Medicare—all the while have subsequently proposed restructuring or phasing out 10 According to CNN, the number of respondents was trying to blame the other side for cuts. 78 As the two government-backed entities). Sheryl Gay Stol - 17,836. “President National Exit Poll 2008,” CNN.com, berg and Edmund L. Andrews, “$275 Billion Plan Seeks undated, accessed May 17, 2011, .com/ELEC - the Tea Party fulfills its agenda, it may to Address Housing Crisis,” the NewYorkTimes, Febru - TION/2008/results/polls/#USP00p1. ary 18, 2009, accessed April 24, 2011, wither away into obscurity, but it will leave nytimes.com/2009/02/19/business/19housing.html; behind vast social wreckage. President Barack Obama, “Remarks by the President on

THE PUBLIC EYE 9 SUMMER 2011 The Public Eye

11 For example, see “National Survey of Tea Party Sup - 20 Jane Mayer, “Covert Operations:The billionaire broth - news/news/2009/feb/27/tampa-tea-party-pour-scorn- porters,” the New York Times CBS News Poll, April 5- ers who are waging a war against Obama,” the NewYorker, stimulus-package-ar-116088; Brian Beutler, “Free - 12, 2010, accessed May 6, 2011, documents. August 30, 2010, accessed April 28, 2011, domWorks’ Long History ofTeabagging,”TPM, April nytimes.com/new-york-timescbs-news-poll-national- newyorker.com/reporting/2010/08/30/100830fa_fact_ 14, 2009, accessed April 29, 2011, tpmdc.talking - survey-of-tea-party-supporters?ref=politics. mayer?currentPage=all; Profiles of and pointsmemo.com/2009/04/freedomworks-long- David Koch, Forbes.com, March 2011, accessed April history-of-teabagging.php; Brendan Steinhauser, 12 , “The Specter of Republican Marginal - 28, 2011, forbes.com/profile/charles-koch, FreedomWorks blog, February 19, 2009, accessed April ization,” the New York Times, April 28, 2009, accessed forbes.com/profile/david-koch; Clare O’Connor, “The 29, 2011, .org/blog/bstein80/freedom - May 5, 2011, krugman..nytimes.com/ Billionaires Bankrolling the Right,” Forbes.com, Octo - works-tom-gaitens-on-fox-news. 2009/04/28/the-specter-of-republican- ber 21, 2010, accessed April 28, 2011, 30 marginalization/; Bob Herbert, “Out of Touch,” the Hamsher, “A Teabagger Timeline: Koch, Coors, Newt, forbes.com/2010/10/21/billionaire-politics-donors- New York Times, May 1, 2009, accessed May 4, 2009, There from the Start.” republicans-koch-murdoch-trump-wealth.html. nytimes.com/2009/05/02/opinion/02herbert.html; Joe 31 21 There are extensive studies and research detailing the con - Conason, “How did that realignment work out for Bill Winter, “David Koch – Libertarian,” Advocates for servative philanthropists who have poured billions into you, Republicans?”, Salon.com, November 10, 2008, Self-Government, accessed June 12, 2011, server.the the . For example, cal - accessed May 5, 2011, salon.com/news/opinion/ advocates.org/celebrities/david-koch.html. culated in 1999 that the Scaife family foundations joe_conason/2008/11/10/realignment; Frank Rich, 22 D. Hopey, “Groups ‘green’ names fade under scrutiny,” alone had contributed “at least $340 million to conser - “The Moose Stops Here,” the Novem - NewYorkTimes, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, February 28, 1995. vative causes and institutions.”The right-wing media is ber 16, 2008, accessed May 5, 2011, nytimes. more complex, including outlets that are heavily subsi - 23 “ Secretly Funding the Climate Denial com/2008/11/16/opinion/16rich.html. dized by conservative foundations or right-wing bil - Machine, Greenpeace, accessed May 17, 2011, 21. 13 Paul Krugman, “The Republican Rump,” the NewYork lionaires or are for-profit enterprises, such as Rush Times, November 3, 2008, accessed May 5, 2011, 24 Kate Sheppard, “How do you say ‘Astroturf’ in Danish?”, Limbaugh’s. Robert G. Kaiser and Ira Chinoy, “Scaife: nytimes.com/2008/11/03/opinion/03krugman.html. motherjones.com, December 3, 2009, accessed May 14, Funding Father of the Right,”The Washington Post, May 2011, motherjones.com/mojo/2009/12/afp-rolls-out- 2, 1999, accessed May 8, 2011, washingtonpost.com/wp- 14 The Pew poll was conducted before the Park 51 con - astroturf-denmark. srv/politics/special/clinton/stories/scaife - troversy became a national issue. “Barack Obama and main050299.htm; Also see the National Committee for the 2008 election,” CBS News Poll, August 15, 2007, 25 Russell Gold, “Astroturfing the Climate Bill,” Wall Responsive Philanthropy, ncrp.org, SourceWatch, accessed May 8, 2011, cbsnews.com/htdocs/ Street Journal, August 17, 2009, accessed April 24, sourcewatch.org, and Publiceye.org, publiceye.org/ pdf/081507_obama.pdf; “Growing Number of Amer - 2011, blogs.wsj.com/environmentalcapital/2009/08/17/ research/sites.html#Funding. icans Say Obama is a Muslim,”The Pew Forum on Reli - astroturfing-the-climate-bill; Keith Johnson, “Fake Out: gion and Public Life, August 18, 2010, accessed May 8, Forged Letters Urged Congressman to Vote Against Cli - 32 “‘Fair and balanced’ Fox News aggressively promotes ‘tea 2011, pewforum.org/Politics-and-Elections/ mate Bill,” Wall Street Journal, July 31, 2009, accessed party’ protests,” Media Matters for America, April 8, Growing-Number-of-Americans-Say-Obama-is-a- April 24, 2011. 2009, May 8, 2011, mediamatters.org/reports/ Muslim.aspx#1. 26 Michael M. Phillips, “Mortgage Bailout InfuriatesTen - 200904080025. 15 While agitating against the Islamic center ran counter ants (And ),” Wall Street Journal, May 16, 33 Rick Klein and Kate Barrett, “Anti-Tax ‘Tea Parties’ to Tea Party movement principles of private property 2008, accessed April 25, 2011, online.wsj.com/ Protest President Obama’s Tax and Spending Policies,” rights, personal freedom and constitutionally limited gov - article/SB121090164137297527.html. April 15, 2009, accessed April 28, 2011, abc - ernment, one movement leader readily admitted “it is 27 “Porkulus,” the NewYorkTimes blog, February 8, 2009, news.go.com/Politics/story?id=7337117&page=1; Brian clear from our travels across America that tea party mem - accessed May 8, 2011, ideas.blogs.nytimes.com/ Montopoli, “Tax Day Brings Out ‘Tea Party’ Protestors,” bers believe it is wrong to put a mosque anywhere near 2009/02/08/porkulus/ April 15, 2009, accessed May 24, 2009, ground zero.” Kenneth P. Vogel, “Mosque debate strains www.cbsnews.com/stories/2009/04/15/politics/main49 tea party, GOP,” , August 18, 2010, accessed May 28 Devin Burghart and Leonard Zeskind, “Tea Party 46264.shtml; Liz Robins, “Tax Day Is Met WithTea Par - 6, 2011, dyn.politico.com/printstory.cfm?uuid= Nationalism,” Institute for Research & Education on ties,” April 15, 2009, accessed April 28, 2011, the New 834FE579-18FE-70B2-A89B46FE4A2A8330; Media Human Right, Fall 2010, accessed April 28, 2010, tea - York Times, www.nytimes.com/2009/04/16/us/poli - Matters for America, mediamatters.org/ partynationalism.com/pdf/TeaPartyNationalism.pdf; tics/16taxday.html. Michelle Malkin, “‘Yes We Care!’ Porkulus Protestors research/201008230041. 34 Nate Silver, “How Many Attended theTea Parties? ”, April 16 Holler Back,” February 17, 2009, accessed April 28, “Time Poll Results: Americans’ Views on the Campaign, 2011, michellemalkin.com/2009/02/17/yes-we-care- 15, 2009, accessed April 28, 2011, FiveThirtyEight.com, Religion and the Mosque Controversy,” Time, August porkulus-protesters-holler-back, “Stop the Stimulus www..com/2009/04/how-many-attended- 18, 2010, accessed May 6, 2011, time.com/time/poli - protest in Ft. Myers, FL tomorrow,” February 9, 2009, tea-parties.html. tics/article/0,8599,2011680,00.html; Josh Gerstein, accessed May 9, 2011, michellemalkin.com/ 35 Paul Krugman, “Tea Parties Forever,” the NewYorkTimes, “Poll: 46% of GOP thinks Obama’s Muslim,” Politico, 2009/02/09/stop-the-stimulus-protest-in-ft-myers-fl- April 12, 2009, accessed July 13, 2011, August 19, 2010, accessed May 6, 2011, tomorrow, “The next anti-porkulus protest: Mesa, Ari - nytimes.com/2009/04/13/opinion/13krugman.html. politico.com/blogs/joshgerstein/0810/Poll_46_of_GOP zona,” February 17, 2009, accessed May 10, 2011, 36 Lee Fang, “Spontaneous Uprising? Corporate Lobbyists _thinks_Obamas_Muslim.html. michellemalkin.com/2009/02/17/the-next-anti- HelpingTo Orchestrate Radical Anti-ObamaTea Party 17 porkulus-protest-mesa-arizona; Brendan Steinhauser, “Palin: Obama pals around with terrorists,” AP, Octo - Protests,”ThinkProgress, April 9, 2009, Accessed May FreedomWorks blog, February 9, 2009, accessed May ber 4, 2008, accessed May 6, 2011, usato - 4, 2011, .org/2009/04/09/lobbyists-plan - 9, 2011, freedomworks.org/blog/bstein80/freedom - day.com/news/politics/election2008/2008-10-04-palin- ning-teaparties. obama_N.htm; Jim Rutenberg, “The Man Behind the works-plans-to-protest-obama-in-fort-myers-; Megan Whispers About Obama,” the New York Times, Octo - Boehnke and Gary Nelson, “With Signs in Hand, Pro - 37 Hamsher, “A Teabagger Timeline: Koch, Coors, Newt, ber 12, 2008, accessed May 5, 2011, testors Await President’s Arrival in Mesa,” the Arizona Dick Armey There from the Start.” nytimes.com/2008/10/13/us/politics/13martin.html? Republic, February 18, 2009, accessed May 8, 2011, 38 “Election Results,” New York Times, undated, accessed hp; “The Origin of the Birthers, The Week, April 29, azcentral.com/community/mesa/articles/2009/02/18/20 May 6, 2011, elections.nytimes.com/2010/results/sen - 2011, accessed May 6, 2011, theweek.com/ 090218prez-protest0218.html; Alex Brant-Zawadzki ate; Kenneth R. Bazinet and Corky Siemaszko, “Obama article/index/214677/the-origin-of-the-birthers; “Amer - and Dawn Teo, “Anatomy of the Tea Party Movement: Takes Responsibility for Midterm Election Losses,” icans’ Beliefs about Obama’s Birth,” Gallup, April 27, FreedomWorks,” HuffingtonPost, December 11, 2009, November 3, 2010, accessed June 25, 2011, Daily 2011, accessed April 30, 2011, pollingmat - accessed May 8, 2011, huffingtonpost.com/alex-brantza - News, usnews.com/news/articles/2010/11/03/obama- ters.gallup.com/2011/04/americans-beliefs-about- wadzki/anatomy-of-the-tea-party_b_380575.html; Jane takes-responsibility-for-midterm-election-losses. obamas-birth.html; “National Survey of Tea Party Hamsher, “A Teabagger Timeline: Koch, Coors, Newt, 39 Supporters,” the New York Times CBS News Poll. Dick ArmeyThere from the Start,” HuffingtonPost, April Tom Moroney andTerrence Dopp, “Tea Party Election 15, 2009, accessed May 11, 2011, huffington - Results Diluted in Highly Populated States,” Bloomberg 18 “National Survey ofTea Party Supporters,” the NewYork post.com/jane-hamsher/a-teabagger-timeline- News, November 5, 2010, accessed May 11, 2011, CBS News Poll. Times koch_b_187312.html. bloomberg.com/news/2010-11-05/tea-party-results- 19 diluted-in-high-density-states-as-christie-fades-at- “Astroturf” definition, SourceWatch, accessed April 29 Christian M. Wade, “ ‘TampaTea Party’ Pours Scorn on 28, 2011, sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Astroturf. home.html; bachmann.house.gov/News/Document Stimulus Package,” Tampa Bay Online, February 27, Single.aspx?DocumentID=226594 2009, accessed April 29, 2011, beta2.tbo.com/

THE PUBLIC EYE 10 SUMMER 2011 The Public Eye

40 Maya Srikrishnan et al., “Which Tea Party Candidates 55 Burghart and Zeskind, “Tea Party Nationalism,” p. 69- nifiers float because they do not inscribe any specific social Won?”, ABCNews.com, November 3, 2010, accessed 70; Joe Conason, “Coalition of Fear:Tea Party, the reli - demand. Laclau, “Populism: What’s In a Name?” 42. May 5, 2011, abcnews.go.com/Politics/2010_Elec - gious right and Islamophobia,” Salon, September 19, 73 “CNN Opinion Research Poll,” CNN. tions/vote-2010-elections-tea-party-winners- 2010, accessed June 24, 2011, salon.com/news/opin - losers/story?id=12023076 ion/joe_conason/2010/09/19/conason_values_voter. 74 Alex Seitz-Wald, “Analysis:Taxed Enough Already?Tea

41 56 Party Rallies Significantly SmallerThis YearThan Last,” See “National Survey of Tea Party Supporters,” the Burghart and Zeskind, “Tea Party Nationalism,” p. 55- ThinkProgress, April 19, 2011, accessed June 10, 2011, New York Times CBS News Poll; Lisa Lerer, “Poll: Tea 56; Max Read, “The Embarrassing Racist ‘Satire’ ofTea thinkprogress.org/politics/2011/04/19/159516/ Party Economic Gloom Fuels Republican Momen - Party Leader Mark Williams,” Gawker, July 16, 2010, tea-party-rallies-getting-smaller. tum,” Bloomberg, October 14, 2010, accessed May 6, accessed June 24, 2011, gawker.com/5588556/the- 2011, bloomberg.com/news/2010-10-14/tea-party-s- embarrassing-racist-satire-of-tea-party-leader-mark- 75 Phone Interview, July 14, 2011. economic-gloom-fuels-republican-election- williams. 76 David Weigl, “Poll: 70 percent of ‘Tea Party Support - momentum-poll-says.html; 57 Prof. Christopher Parker, “2011 Multi-state Survey on ers’ Oppose Medicare Cuts,” Slate, April 19, 2011, 42 Kim Phillips-Fein, Invisible Hands:The Businessmen’s Cru - Race & Politics,” University of Washington Institute for accessed July 15, 2011, slate.com/blogs/weigel/ sade Against the New Deal, (New York: W.W. Norton, the Study of Ethnicity, Race & Sexuality, undated, 2011/04/19/poll_70_percent_of_tea_party_support - 2009). accessed June 24, 2011, depts.washington.edu/ ers_oppose_medicare_cuts.html uwiser/Obama_facts.pdf. 77 43 Sara Diamond, Roads to Dominion: Right-Wing Move - Neil King Jr. and Scott Greenberg, “Poll Shows Budget- ments and Political Power in the United States, (New York: 58 Prof. Christopher Parker, “2010 Multi-state Survey on Cuts Dilemma,” the Wall Street Journal, March 3, 2011, The Guilford Press, 1995), 9. Race & Politics,” University of Washington Institute for accessed July 12, 2011, online.wsj.com/ the Study of Ethnicity, Race & Sexuality, undated, article/SB10001424052748704728004576176741120 44 Jane Hamsher, “Rick Santelli, Angry White Male 2.0,” accessed June 24, 2011, depts.washington.edu/ 691736.html#project%3DWSJPDF%26s%3Ddcid%2 , February 20, 2009, accessed May 8, 2011, uwiser/mssrp_table.pdf; Christopher Parker, “Race and 53D110302233016-962e97512a5b45d7b64c022c firedoglake.com/2009/02/20/rick-santelli-angry-white- the Tea Party: Who’s right?”, Salon, May 3, 2010, 35d65248%257Cfile%253Dwsj-nbcpoll male-20. accessed June 24, 2011, salon.com/news/feature/ 03022011%26articleTabs%3Darticle. 45 Phone interview Amy Zelvin, Vice President Media Rela - 2010/05/03/race_and_the_tea_party 78 As argued, “Obama both believes in tions CNBC, May 13, 2011, nbcumv.com/media 59 “National Survey ofTea Party Supporters,” the the corporatist agenda he embraces and assesses it to be village/networks//contacts NewYork Times CBS News Poll. in his political interest to be associated with it. If it means 46 David Bauder, “Rick Santelli Not Connected toTea Party ‘painful’ entitlement cuts for ordinary Americans at a time 60 Laclau notes, “A persistent feature of the literature on Website: CNBC,” AP, March 2, 2009, accessed May 14, of massive unemployment, economic anxiety and populism is its reluctance – or difficulty – in giving the 2011, huffingtonpost.com/2009/03/02/rick-santelli- exploding wealth inequality, so be it.” Glenn Greenwald, concept any precise meaning.” He singles out the early not-connect_n_171239.html. “Reports: Obama pushing for cuts to Social Security, work of Margaret Canovan as being typically imprecise Medicare,” Salon, July 7, 2011, accessed July 11, 2011, 47 Chip Berlet and Matthew N. Lyons, “The Producerist and lacking “any coherent criterion around which its dis - salon.com/news/opinion/glenn_greenwald/2011/07/07/ Narrative in Repressive Right Wing Populism,” Politi - tinctions are established.” Ernesto Laclau, On Populist social_security. cal Research Associates, undated, accessed May 11, Reason (London: Verso, 2005), 3-6. 2011, publiceye.org/tooclose/producerism.html. 79 http://newcity.patch.com/articles/new-city-library- 61 There is a spirited debate over Laclau’s theory. For Also see Right-Wing Populism in America: Too Close for budget-approved-3-trustees-re-elected example, see “Against the PopulistTemptation,” Slavoj Comfort (2000), by Chip Berlet & Matthew N. Lyons. 80 Zizek, 2006, accessed May 14, 2011, lacan.com/zizpop - RFA Tax Day Tea Party Rally, Rockland County, NY 48 “What CNBC.com Users are Saying About Santelli’sTea ulism.htm 4/15/2010, April 16, 2010, accessed July 14, 2011, Party,” CNBC.com, February 20, 2009, accessed April www.youtube.com/watch?v=va7pNcSxP78. 62 Laclau, On Populist Reason, 117, 93. 29, 2011, cnbc.com/id/29303112. 81 63 Uncle Sam’s Plantation: How Big Government Enslaves 49 Paul Krugman’s work displays this contradiction, describ - Laclau, On Populist Reason, 95, 80-81. America’s Poor and What We Can Do About It, by Star ing the Republican Party as “a haven for racists and reac - 64 Laclau, On Populist Reason, 87. Parker. Nashville, TN: Thomas Nelson Publishers, tionaries” and theTea Party as “Astroturf,” while stating 2003. 65 Laclau, On Populist Reason, , 81. “the white backlash against the civil rights movement” 82 http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/features/ 66 Laclau writes that “the internal frontier can only result was “the central role … in the rise of the modern con - 2005/0501.longman.html servative movement.” Krugman, “The Republican from the operation of the equivalential chain.” I am not Rump”; Krugman, “Tea Parties Forever”; Paul Krugman, following his schematic strictly because Obama was 83 Bratsis, “Viagra for an Impotent America.” “Republicans and Race,” the New York Times, Novem - already the enemy for many on the right prior to stim - ber 19, 2007, accessed July 13, 2011, nytimes.com/ ulus existing even as a plan. Of course, one can argue the 2007/11/19/opinion/19krugman.html. Tea Party’s real enemy is government itself, but for the movement it has been personified in Obama. In any case, 50 Burghart and Zeskind, “Tea Party Nationalism,” p. 51- Laclau’s concepts provide useful frames for analyzing the 72;Tony Pugh, “There’s no denying Obama’s race plays Tea Party, whether or not one follows exactly the process a role in protests,” McClatchy Newspapers, September he outlines. NOW AVAILABLE 18, 2009, accessed July 6, 2011, mcclatchydc.com/ 2009/09/18/75694/theres-no-denying-obamas- 67 “Republicans strongly oppose Obama stimulus plan,” race.html the WashingtonTimes, January 27, 2009, accessed May Defending Reproductive Justice 24, 2011, washingtontimes.com/news/2009/ 51 Joan Walsh, “Rachel Maddow Demolishes Rand Paul,” Defending Reproductive Justice , jan/27/paul-warns-inflation-depression. Salon, May 19, 2010, accessed June 22, 2011, PRA’s easy-to-browse activist salon.com/news/opinion/joan_walsh/politics/2010/05/1 68 Laclau, On Populist Reason, 86. resource kit, is a mix of primary doc - 9/rachel_maddow_demolishes_rand_paul 69 Laclau, On Populist Reason, 99; Laclau, “Populism: 52 “NY Gubernatorial Candidate Carl Paladino’s Racist and What’s In a Name?” 44. uments from the Right and articles Sexist Email History,” WNYmedia.net, April 12, 2010, 70 Ernesto Laclau, “Populism: What’s In a Name?” In analyzing current trends. The kit is accessed June 24, 2011, wnymedia.net/paladino/. Populism and the Mirror of Democracy, ed. Francisco now updated and available for FREE 53 William Douglas, “Tea party protesters scream ‘nigger’ Panizza, (London: Verso, 2005), 40. online, offering insight to strategists at black congressmen,” McClatchy Newspapers, March 71 Burghart and Zeskind, “Tea Party Nationalism,” 20, 2010, accessed June 22, 2011, mcclatchydc.com/ and scholars alike. 2010/03/20/90772/rep-john-lewis-charges- 72 This is actually what Laclau refers to by “floating signi - protesters.html fiers,” which just means signifiers that can float easily from ...... 54 Left to Right or back. For example, popular Tea Party Visit www.publiceye.org/ark/ “Tea Party’s Most Offensive & Racist Signs,” Midweek ideas like Freedom, Liberty andTyranny could easily be Politics, September 17, 2010, accessed June 23, 2011, adopted by a left-wing populist movement. These sig - reproductive-justice/ youtube.com/watch?v=nCpwjvVaqyE.

THE PUBLIC EYE 11 SUMMER 2011 The Public Eye SB1070 cont’d from page 1 in Spanish, as the son translates, switching U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals upheld big government spending. So today we send easily between the two languages. “Train District Court Judge Susan Bolton’s July government a message: don’t mess with my up a child in the way he should go: and 2010 injunction against the enforcement liberties, don’t mess with my faith, and don’t when he is old, he will not depart from it,” of certain provisions of SB1070, including mess with my wallet.” 7 the older Montenegro says, quoting from those that require immigrants to carry That a Spanish-speaking immigrant the book of Proverbs. their papers at all times and police officers and Latino church leader is a major sup - In the early 1980s, when Steve was only to check suspects’ immigration status.The porter of SB1070 says much about the dis - a baby, the Montenegro family fled from 9th Circuit concluded that there was suf - parate elements that came together to pass El Salvador to the United States. With ficient evidence that these parts of the law the most restrictive anti-immigration law help from the Apostolic Assembly, the infringe on federal jurisdiction. Pearce has in the country—an unhealthy brew of refugees applied for and received asylum on vowed to appeal the decision to the U.S. Wall Street greed, political opportunism, the basis of their religion, making it pos - Supreme Court. 4 Despite the injunction, and nativist fears. sible for Steve to become a U.S. citizen. 1 the law’s impact has been widely felt, across In 2008, Steve Montenegro was elected the state and nationally. Other states are The Mexican Financial Crisis, to the Arizona state house with strong preparing similar legislation, and immi - U.S. Banks, and the Private conservative support. 2 Last spring, he grants with legal papers and without are liv - Prison Industry became the only Latino lawmaker to cast ing in fear. oday’s debates about U.S. immigration a vote in favor of the Support Our Law Pentecostal observers say that the Mon - Tpolicy have roots in the December Enforcement and Safe Neighborhoods tenegros’ Apostolic Assembly denomina - 1994 Mexican financial panic. On the Act, otherwise known as SB1070, the tion, with its large Hispanic membership, heels of NAFTA, Mexico emerged nearly notorious state law that requires state and includes individuals of questionable doc - bankrupt because of bond debt to Wall local police officers to check the immigra - umentation, who would pay a heavy price Street banks.The peso was devalued by forty tion status of anyone they arrest or suspect for their spiritual brother’s support of SB percent.The U.S. government pushed the is in the country illegally.The law places the 1070. 5 International Monetary Fund to give Mex - burden of proof on those questioned by the Yet, like hisTea Party colleagues, Mon - ico money so it could put together a pack - police to prove they are in the country tenegro has been an active sponsor of a series age to pay its creditors, most of which were legally; if they can’t, they will be arrested and of recently rejected anti-immigration bills, the Wall Street banks. 8 The IMF then con - charged with trespassing. Known infor - which critics say were even more dracon - tracted out the bailout loan to the U.S. mally as the Show Me Your Papers Law or, ian than SB1070. He was also the prime Treasury. 9 Mark Fineman of the Los Ange - more derisively, Driving While Brown, sponsor of Arizona’s latest anti-abortion law, les Times reported, “Three weeks after it SB 1070’s stated purpose is to crack down signed by Brewer in March, which makes started receiving one of the biggest and most on the state’s estimated 460,000 undocu - it a crime to get an abortion because of the controversial credit packages in U.S. history, mented immigrants. As Arizona’s senate race or gender of the fetus and requires the Mexican government has spent a fifth president and the bill’s primary sponsor, minority women to sign a document of the $20 billion in promised U.S. loans Republican , wrote on his explaining their reasons for seeking the pro - to pay off American insurance companies, website, cedure. 6 mutual fund investors,Wall Street broker - age houses, Mexican banks and the richest The fact is Arizona’s motto is “Attri - When I interviewed him in September of Mexico’s rich.” 10 tion by Enforcement” and 90% will regarding his support for SB1070, Mon - To meet its crushing debt to Wall Street, self-deport. …[T]hose who say we tenegro declined to discuss how he was able the Mexican government increased inter - need reform (code word Amnesty), to reconcile his votes with his religious est rates at the behest of the U.S.Treasury. because we can’t deport them all, beliefs and his church. “We don’t mix reli - The rates on business and farm loans rose [are] saying come on in illegally, we gion and politics,” he told me. “If you’re from an average of eleven percent to 56 per - don’t intend to enforce our laws. 3 working on a story about what the religious experience has to do with [the law], I don’t cent.Those on credit-card debt went from April 23 was the anniversary of Gover - think that’s fair.” He added that he and his seven percent to 61 percent. The rates on nor Jan Brewer’s signing of SB1070. Just family came to the United States legally, and home loans increased from an average of a few weeks before that, on April 11, the that people who accuse him of being hyp - five percent to 75 percent. 11 ocritical are stereotyping him. At aTea Party The impact on Mexican citizens was Lauri Lebo is a writer and reporter whose rally Montenegro summed up his position: devastating.Thousands of farms and busi - latest book is The Devil in Dover: Dogma “The fact that I can speak in Spanish does - nesses, both large and small, went bankrupt. v. Darwin in Small-Town America (2009). n’t automatically make me a protax, open Jobs disappeared, and people could no She is working on a second book about the border liberal hopelessly addicted to longer support their families. The eco - Great Depression travels of Ernie Pyle. THE PUBLIC EYE 12 SUMMER 2011 The Public Eye nomic hardships prompted a wave of mass migration, as millions of men, women, and children crossed Mexico’s northern border seeking work.

The Private Prison Companies Get Involved n December 2006, more than a thousand Imen and women were arrested and detained in Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) raids at meat-packing plants across the U.S. Instead of being r e d

charged with misdemeanors such as the mis - o Y e k use of a social security number—the U.S. i M practice since 1995—they were charged © with crimes that carry lengthy prison sen - Kris Kobach campaigns for Kansas Secretary of State tences, such as falsifying documents or identity theft. The charges marked a sig - profited from the Mexican financial crisis Kobach uses it to justify the authority of nificant shift in the enforcement of federal of the 1990s, such as JP Morgan and the local law enforcement in immigration immigration policy. 12 , are now investing heav - matters. In a May 18, 2010, article, the As Peter Cervantes-Gautschi, the exec - ily in the private prison industry, enabling Washington Post wrote that “ [Kobach] … utive director of Enlace, a group that helps them once again to profit from those who has cited the authority granted in the 2002 low-wage workers develop and strengthen lost their jobs and businesses following the memo as a basis for the legislation,” 21 and their organizations, wrote in an analysis for Mexico bailout .17 he is behind the anti-immigration laws that the Americas Program think tank, the shift have started popping up in towns across the spelled good news for the for-profit prison Kris Kobach, CrusadingAttorney country, writing them and then defending industry. Although the United States has n 2002, Kris Kobach was a 33-year-old them in court. the highest incarceration rate in the world, Iadvisor to U.S. Attorney General John He has had limited success, however, in across the country, crime rates were down. 13 Ashcroft, working in the Department of Jus - selling his arguments to judges. In 2007, Private prison corporations, no longer able tice’s Office of Legal Counsel.There, he was he was brought in to defend a law in Hazle - to keep their jails filled, had lost contracts “intimately involved,” he says, in writing a ton, , in a case that heated up and shuttered doors. 14 Now, however, wrote memo arguing that local and state police the national anti-immigrant climate. Hazle - Cervantes-Gautschi, have the power to arrest undocumented ton’s municipal ordinance made it a crime immigrants for civil violations of immi - for landlords to rent to undocumented This single change in enforcement of gration law. 18 Kobach’s memo directly con - immigrants and required all tenants to existing law created a potential “mar - tradicted opinions issued by his office in register with the city. As Hazleton Mayor ket” of over 10 million new felons 1989 and 1996, which stated that only fed - Lou Barletta said at the time, Kobach almost overnight, multiplying the eral agents have that power, and his memo intended to make the law “legally bullet - lucrative incarceration market for never became official policy. proof.” 22 Nevertheless, in 2007, a federal the private prison industry and send - In 2003, he left the department, and a district court judge struck it down as ing a shock wave through immi - year later, he was hired as senior counsel to unconstitutional. In September 2010, the grant-related communities across the Federation for American Immigration 3rd Circuit Court of Appeals agreed with the country. 15 Reform (FAIR), an organization that works the lower court’s ruling that immigration A report by the Corrections Corpora - to curtail immigration, which the South - law falls under the jurisdiction of the fed - tion of America, the country’s largest for- ern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) has iden - eral government. Hazleton has appealed the profit prison company, noted that tified as a White nationalist hate group. 19 decision to the U.S. Supreme Court, which “[e]xecutives believe immigrant detention In its report, SPLC cites John Tanton, has remanded it back to theThird Circuit. is their next big market.” CCA, said the FAIR’s founder, who wrote that a clear “Mr. Kobach’s experiments in pushing report, was expecting to bring in “a signif - “European-American majority” is needed immigration enforcement to states and icant portion of our revenues” from Immi - to protect American culture. 20 municipalities has real-world consequences, 16 gration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). Although Kobach’s Department of fueling xenophobia and pitting neighbor Many of the same banking institutions that Justice memo never went anywhere, against neighbor,” said the Legal Director

THE PUBLIC EYE 13 SUMMER 2011 The Public Eye of the Pennsylvania American Civil Lib - makers, ALEC’s membership includes 200 erties Union (ACLU), Witold Walczak, corporations, who pay tens of thousands who argued the case. 23 of dollars for the privilege of gaining access Last fall, Kobach was elected Kansas sec - to the state officials. Both CCA and Geo retary of state, running on a pledge to end Group, another large private prison com - immigrant voter fraud—even though he pany, are corporate members of ALEC. 31 provided no credible evidence that this Pearce is an ALEC lawmaker-member problem exists. He cited one case, in which and serves on the council’s Public Safety and he claimed that someone who had died in ElectionsTask Force—which also includes 1996 had voted in August 2010. However, CCA representatives. Pearce admits that he Arizona State Senator Russell Pearce (with folder the Wichita Eagle found the “dead” man submitted a draft to the task force of the and without cowboy hat) outside his house raking leaves. 24 bill that would become SB1070 in Decem - ber 2009. 32 Kobach says he helped draft a eral authorities for removal from the Russell Pearce, FAIR, and ALEC version of the law, likely the version that United States. 34 oth nativists and the private prison Pearce brought to ALEC. 33 In March, Pearce introduced a bill industry were at the center of devel - B into the Arizona state legislature that oping and passing SB1070; Arizona’s Sen - was practically identical to ALEC’s model ator Pearce has ties to both. legislation. His connections to FAIR go back to at A report by the For its part, CCA donated to the cam - least 2004, when he was the co-chairman paigns of thirty of the bill’s 36 cosponsors of the campaign for Proposition 200, a Corrections Corporation and hired a lobbyist to work the state capi - voter-approved law that cut off benefits to tol on the bill’s behalf. Two of Governor undocumented immigrants. 25 The ballot of America, the country’s Brewer’s top advisors, Spokesman Paul initiative marked FAIR’s first foray into Senseman and Campaign Manager Chuck Arizona politics, for which the organization largest for-profit prison Coughlin, are former lobbyists for the pri - spent $500,000 in the public. 26 vate prison industry. 35 Certainly, FAIR and Kobach finger - company, noted, prints are all over SB1070, with its refer - Tapping theTea Party ences to pressuring undocumented “Executives believe ven though the forces that came immigrants to “self deport” and to “attri - together to pass SB1070, such as the tion through enforcement,” which come E immigrant detention is private prison industry and ALEC, are directly from FAIR’s talking points. 27 Dan powerful, neither group alone would have Pochoda, the legal director of the Arizona their next big market.” achieved such success.The prison industry’s American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), lobbying efforts have been behind the points out that the enforcement strategy, scenes—in fact, it denies any lobbying at also embraced by the ArizonaTea Party, is all. Obtaining grassroots support was at the heart of all of Kobach’s cases. 28 Still, A month after Pearce presented the crucial, and FAIR focused on generating Kobach’s previous ordinances had “only draft to the task force, the January-Febru - it, tapping into Arizona’s motivated Tea fiddled around” with giving local police ary edition of Inside ALEC published a list Party movement. enforcement responsibility, says SPLC of the model legislation the council had FAIR set the stage for SB1070 with the Director of Research Heidi Beirich. “SB approved at its December States and Nation Proposition 200 campaign. Frank Sharry, 1070 was a big innovation,” she notes. 29 Policy Summit, including this: the executive director of America’s Voice, Kobach did not return phone calls for Resolution to Enforce Our Immi - which lobbies for comprehensive immi - requests for an interview. gration Laws and Secure Our Borders gration reform, said the legislation restrict - Pearce also has close connections to the Calls on states to enforce immigra - ing public benefits to those who could prison industry, due to his membership in tion laws and end sanctuary policies. not prove their immigration status, was in the American Legislative Enterprise Coun - fact symbolic. “Few undocumented work - cil (ALEC), a nonprofit, private member - Calls on law enforcement officers to ers collect benefits, but [FAIR’s] strategy ship organization that develops “model execute their authority to arrest any was to mobilize their base,” Sharry said. “In legislation” dedicated to advancing “free person guilty of hiring, harboring, or some ways [it became] the predecessor to markets” and “” for transporting illegal immigrants and the Tea Party. [FAIR] used online organ - state lawmakers. 30 In addition to the law - to turn over illegal immigrants to fed -

THE PUBLIC EYE 14 SUMMER 2011 The Public Eye izing to build a pretty formal cadre of “Given all that, with the local ordi - and blamed undocumented residents for activists around the country…. The anti- nances held up in the courts, I suspect they “home invasions and murders.” 43 immigration movement has been able to figured, ‘Hey we’ve got strong support in “This is less a policy issue than it is a front stir up the Republican base so that the Arizona,’” Sharry said. “Prop. 200 sowed on the culture war and in the partisan Republicans are scared of them in low- the seed for SB1070, because FAIR had got - political war,” Sharry said. turnout elections.” 36 ten to know Pearce at the time. They had TheTea Party, emerging in the wake of FAIR invested a half-million dollars in gotten the Republican establishment this anti-immigration fervor, embraced the campaign, hiring signature gatherers behind them.” He continued, FAIR’s talking points and ran with them. and mobilizing support with a misinfor - There has been a significant demo - Politicians like Montenegro curried favor mation strategy, claiming (falsely) that graphic change in America.TheWhite with this motivated constituency. undocumented immigrants cost the state majority is getting increasingly fearful Tea Party support has not waned. In Feb - $1.3 billion a year. (To produce this num - that they have lost control and [Repub - ruary, the Tea Party Patriots, a national ber, a FAIR study included $810 million licans] have tapped into that fear. Cal - umbrella group, held a so-called policy the state spends on educating the children ifornia is already multi-ethnic. Arizona summit in Phoenix. In its invitation, the 37 of immigrants who are US citizens. ) is next door and next up. The White group wrote, “It will also be our opportu - The referendum campaign fanned the majority population there thinks it’s nity to support the citizens of Arizona in flames of anti-immigrant fears. “The Min - losing out to the growth of the His - their current political battles that carry so 44 utemen vigilantes have diverted the atten - panic community and are reacting in many national implications.” tion of the public and the media while their a very tribalistic way. FAIR and these counterparts, sporting suits and ties in the groups are pretty skillful at blowing the The Prison Industry Cleans Up state capitol, promote racist laws,” said Luis dog whistle of demagoguery without ven now, before SB1070 has gone into Herrera, an organizer with the St. Peter’s being overtly racist. 42 Eeffect, there are twelve for-profit, Housing Committee in . “A private prison and detention facilities in the war against immigrants and people of state of Arizona. CCA holds the federal con - color has been declared in Arizona.” 38 tract to house detainees in Arizona who are Margot Vernes, a community activist The anti-immigration suspected of violating immigration laws. and volunteer with Corazon del Tucson, When someone is arrested on suspicion of said that the White progressive community movement has been being in the country illegally, the state or was reticent about the racist motivations county must notify ICE, which then has 48 of the White nationalist movement, which able to stir up the hours to determine the detainee’s status. helped the anti-immigrant movement in Each day that CCA holds a detainee in one the long-term, setting the stage for the SB Republican base so that of its facilities means an additional payment, 1070 showdown. 39 whether from the state, county, or federal Proposition 200 passed with 56 percent the Republicans are government. According to Cervantes- of the vote. 40 Gautschi, CCA currently bills the Depart - For the next few years, as Prop. 200 faced scared of them in ment of Homeland Security $11 million per legal challenges, FAIR’s legal arm, the month. “[CCA’s] stated goal is to make as Immigration Reform Law Institute, headed low-turnout elections. much money as they can off detained immi - by Kobach, spent its time and resources try - grants,” he says. 45 ing to institute anti-immigration policies SB1070 would expand the private at the local level. After losing several high prison industry’s market, effectively turn - As evidence of the anti-immigrant profile cases such as the one in Hazleton, ing state and local police officers into its very groups’ success, Sharry points to the rever - in 2009, Kobach and FAIR turned their own taxpayer-funded sales team.The new sal of U.S. Senator John McCain (R-AZ) attention back to Arizona. Governor Janet trespassing offences created by the law on immigration reform. In 2005, McCain Napolitano had just been appointed Sec - carry a maximum of twenty days in jail for worked with Senator Ted Kennedy (D- retary of Homeland Security. Lieutenant a first offense and thirty days for a second MA) on a bipartisan plan that would have Governor Jan Brewer, a staunch conserva - offense. (The main difference between the increased border security but also granted tive supportive of anti-immigration ALEC model legislation and the bill pre - amnesty to illegal workers already in the legislation, became the new governor, and sented to Arizona legislators was that in the country. By 2008, in response to anti- Pearce moved into the powerful position ALEC version, there was no maximum immigration activism, he changed his posi - of head of the Senate Appropriations limit on how long a person could be tion and endorsed strict border crackdowns Committee. 41 detained.) Private prisons would profit

THE PUBLIC EYE 15 SUMMER 2011 The Public Eye handsomely from these sentencing guide - ment intrusion, but what they’re endors - which Kobach proudly takes credit for lines—for which the state would be ing is the ultimate intrusion.” 49 writing. 53 Missouri and Pennsylvania are required to pick up the tab. debating similar legislation. 54 Although Pearce asserts that the law SecondThoughts Meanwhile, the FAIR-linked group will reduce prison overcrowding, even the uring the past few months, various State Legislators for Legal Immigration Arizona legislature’s own fiscal analysis Dsegments of the electorate have (SLLI), led by Pennsylvania Republican predicts that it will bring greater numbers expressed concern that perhaps things have State Representative Daryl Metcalfe, has of prisoners into the system, increasing gone too far.The economic boycott, started been developing model legislation for state costs. The analysts admit, however, that by the National Council of La Raza and challenges to the notion of birthright cit - they cannot put a dollar figure on the cost widely endorsed by other civil liberties izenship, which would prevent children of increase, because no one knows how many organizations after the passage of SB1070, undocumented immigrants—so-called people will be rounded up. 46 has already cost the state dearly. In the first anchor babies—from automatically In absence of any credible figures, many six months after the bill’s signing, the con - receiv ing U.S. citizenship. The goal is to are turning to a study done by the Yuma vention industry lost $141 million. 50 trigger a U.S. Supreme Court review of the County Sheriff’s Department in 2006, in “On top of that, there is all the negative 14th Amendment. In March, though, response to a bill similar to SB1070 that publicity,” said Democratic State Senator Arizona rejected its anti-birthright- would have rounded up suspected undoc - , who is pushing for a repeal citizenship bill. umented immigrants, but that never made of the law. “It’s going to take years to get Additionally, in May, the U.S. Supreme it into law. Yuma is one of Arizona’s fifteen out from under this black cloud.” Because Court ruled in a different Arizona case that counties, with a population of about states do have the right in some instances 200,000. Sheriff Ralph E. Ogden esti - to set immigration law, raising questions mated that county law-enforcement agen - about judicial review of SB 1070. 55 Oppo - cies would have to spend an addition A war against nents had argued that such state and local $775,880 to $1,163,820 under the law. anti-immigration legislation interfered Increased processing expenses and jail costs immigrants and people with the jurisdiction of federal govern - would be between $21,195,600 and ment to enforce immigration. 56 $96,086,720. 47 of color has been Meanwhile, Pearce still claims that the With these kinds of increased costs to law’s economic impact on the state has been the taxpayer, SB1070 clearly conflicts with declared in Arizona. positive. His website says, the Tea Party’s demand for smaller gov - Arizona has become a national leader ernment. Yet, the majority of theTea Party in the restoration of the , candidates don’t seem to recognize this.The Arizona is developing a reputation for with over 100,000 illegal aliens hav - alliance between CCA and FAIR typifies racial discrimination, he said, “We’re being ing left the state since 2007, saving over the ironies surrounding SB1070, since called the Mississippi of the Southwest.” 51 $350 million in K-12, a huge reduc - FAIR reaches out to Tea Party activists Some business leaders are pushing back. tion in violent crimes as high as 30% who profess to want to stop illegal immi - In March, nearly sixty CEOs signed a let - in some cities and the first time in Ari - gration; while the CCA’s financial survival ter to legislators opposing Arizona’s most zona history a declining population in is directly linked to its continuation. recent round of anti-immigration legisla - our Prisons, reduction in social serv - “They (Tea Party supporters) don’t tion.The letter referred to the “unintended ices cost and jobs for Americans, etc. 57 know because they don’t listen to us,” Cer - consequences” of the state’s “going it alone” His assertions are dubious—the statis - vantes-Gautschi said. “The argument that on the immigration issue. “It’s all based on tics do not take into account the impact of this eases overcrowding of prisons is utter their own self interests,” Pochoda said. the 2008 collapse of the U.S. economy and nonsense.” 48 “They lost money. But we’ll take it.” the skyrocketing unemployment rate on Beirich called the attempts ofTea Party Nonetheless, FAIR and the private reducing overall immigration. The num - politicians like Montenegro to reconcile prison industry continue their lobbying ber of undocumented residents nation - their support of SB 1070 with smaller efforts. After a lull in support, the forces ally has declined eight percent since 1997, government “absolute balderdash.” “They behind SB 1070 are now seeing some suc - according to a Pew Hispanic Center study. 58 haven’t been forced to reconcile it,” she said. cess spreading similar legislation to other “To their base, they play up this red-meat, states. In May, Georgia’s governor signed The Sanctuary Movement culture war issue. To the press, they insist into law a bill based on the ALEC model they’re just for limited government.They’re legislation. 52 In June, passed an n the early 1980s, the Southside Presby - supposed to be for liberty, less govern - even more stringent anti-immigration law, Iterian Church inTucson, Arizona, initi -

THE PUBLIC EYE 16 SUMMER 2011 The Public Eye ated the sanctuary movement, when it 13 FBI Uniform Crime Reports, http://www.fbi.gov/about- 35 NPR, Prison Economic Help Drive Arizona Immigra - us/cjis/ucr/crime-in-the-u.s/2010/preliminary-crime- tion Law, Oct. 28, 2010 http://www.npr.org/tem - sheltered thousands of people fleeing Cen - in-the-us-2009 plates/story/story.php?storyId=130833741 tral American death squads.The Rev. John 14 NPR, Private Prison LeavesTexasTowns inTrouble, John 36 Interview with Frank Sharry, America’s Voices, June 6, Fife hung banners outside the church: Burnett, March 28, 2010, http://www.npr.org/ 2011 2011/03/28/134855801/private-prison-promises-leave- “This is a Sanctuary for the Oppressed of 37 Counterpunch, Xenophobia in the Desert, Veranes and -towns-in-trouble Navarro Central America,” and “Immigration: Do 15 America’s Program, Wall Street and the Criminalization 38 Ibid. not Profane the Sanctuary of God.” 59 The of Immigrants, Cervantes-Gautschi 39 Interview with Margot Veranes, June 13, 2011 sanctuary movement was based on the reli - 16 NPR, Prison Economic Help Drive Arizona Immigra - 40 gious concept that we are to show our tion Law, Oct. 28, 2010 http://www.npr.org/tem - Ibid. plates/story/story.php?storyId=130833741 41 neighbors mercy: “Which now of these Arizona Central, Russell Pearce to be next 17 Ibid. President, AP three, thinkest thou, was neighbor unto him 18 Southern Poverty Law Center’s Intelligence Report, 42 Sharry interview that fell among the thieves? And he said, He The Man: A Biography of Kris Kobach, Heidi Beirich, 43 ABC News, John McCain Border Shift: ‘Complete Dan - that showed mercy on him.Then said Jesus Jan. 20, 2011, http://www.splcenter.org/get- ged Fence,’ Russell Goldman, May 11, 2010, http://abc - informed/publications/when-mr-kobach-comes-to- unto him, Go, and do thou likewise” (Luke news.go.com/Politics/john-mccain-immigration-reversal- town/the-man-a-biography-of-kris-kobach complete-danged-fence/story?id=10616090 10:36-37). SB1070 would target such sanc - 19 Southern Poverty Law Center’s Intelligence Report , Win - 44 Newsweek,Tea Party Patriots to Convene in Arizona, Jan. tuaries by prohibiting “any municipal, ter 2007, The Teflon Nativists, Heidi Beirich, 4, 2011, http://www.newsweek.com/blogs/the-gag - county or state policy from hampering the http://www.splcenter.org/get-informed/intelligence- gle/2011/01/04/tea-party-patriots-to-convene-in- report/browse-all-issues/2007/winter/the-teflon-nativists arizona.html ability of any government agency to com - 20 Southern Poverty Law Center’s Intelligence Report, 45 Private Prisons Might Gain from New Immigration Law, ply with federal immigration law.” The Communities:The Cost of Nativist Legislation, Jan. KPHO TV, 2010, http://www.kpho.com/news/ 20, 2011, http://www.splcenter.org/get-informed/pub - 24362212/detail.html Misericordia. Perhaps it’s a forgotten lications/when-mr-kobach-comes-to-town/the-man-a- 46 concept. I biography-of-kris-kobach Fiscal Analysis of SB 1070, http://www.azleg.gov/ legtext/49leg/2r/fiscal/sb1070.doc.pdf 21 Southern Poverty Law Center’s Intelligence Report, 47 The Man: A Biography of Kris Kobach, Heidi Beirich, American Immigration Council, Implementation Costs Endnotes Jan. 20, 2011, http://www.splcenter.org/get- of SB 1070 to One Arizona County, April 23, 2010, 1 Visit to Surprise Apostolic Church and interview with informed/publications/when-mr-kobach-comes-to- http://www.americanimmigrationcouncil.org/ Rep. Steve Montenegro, Phoenix, Arizona, Sept. 12, 2012 town/the-man-a-biography-of-kris-kobach newsroom/release/implementation-costs-sb-1070-one- arizona-county 2 22 Interview with Witold Walczak, legal director for Amer - State of Arizona Official Canvas http://www. 48 azsos.gov/election/2008/General/Canvass2008GE.pdf ican Civil Liberties Union of Pennsylvania, April 14, 2011 Interview with Peter Cervantes-Gautschi, April 5, 2011 49 3 Russell Pearce website http://www.russellpearce.com/ 23 Ibid. Beirich interview 50 4 Arizona Daily Star, Court Keeps Block on Parts of Arizona 24 Wichita Eagle, Commentary: Kobach Needs to ProvideVoter Center for American Progress, The Economic and Fiscal Immigration Law, Howard Fischer, April 11, 2010, Fraud Evidence, March 2, 2011, 02/109710/commen - Consequences of Conference Cancellations Due to SB 1070, http://azstarnet.com/news/local/govt-and-politics/ tary-kobach-needs-to-produce.html Marshall Fitz and Angela Maria Kelly, Nov. 18, 2010, http://www.americanprogress.org/issues/2010/11/az_tou article_0a60baf6-6461-11e0-9ead-001cc4c002e0.html 25 Arizona Central, Russell Pearce to be next Arizona Senate rism.html 5 President, , Nov. 3, 2010, http://www. Religion Dispatches, http://www.religiondispatches.org/ 51 archive/politics/2528/arizona_is_the_hispanic_alabama/ azcentral.com/news/election/azelections/articles/2010/11 Interview with Sen. Steve Gallardo, April 12, 2011 Arizona is the Hispanic Alabama, Anthea Butler, May 3, /03/20101103arizona-senate-president-pearce.html 52 Progressive News, Prison Lobbyists Help Spread 2010; Anonymous interviews with national Apostolic 26 Counterpunch, Xenophobia in the Desert, Margot Anti-Immigration Laws to U.S. South, Inter-Press Serv - Assembly Church administrator on Sept. 11 and Sept. 12 Veranes and Adrian Navarro, June 7, 2005, http://www. ice, May 26, 2011, http://www.atlantaprogressive - 2010 counterpunch.org/veranes06072005.html news.com/interspire/news/2011/05/26/(ips)-prison-lobb 6 yists-help-spread-anti-immigrant-laws-to-us-south.html Arizona Republic, Arizona Outlaws Based on 27 FAIR web site http://www.fairus.org/site/News2? 53 Race, Sex, Ginger Rough, March 30, 2011, page=NewsArticle&id=22725&security=1601&news_iv Politico, Swing States Face Immigration Fight, Reid J. http://www.azcentral.com/arizonarepublic/local/arti - _ctrl=1741 Epstein, June 13, 2011, http://www.politico.com/news/ cles/2011/03/30/20110330arizona-abortions-race-sex- stories/0611/56857.html 28 Interview with Dan Pochoda, legal director of American crime.html 54 Civil Liberties Union of Arizona, March 30, 2011 Ibid. 7 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fSghdUwNsMo 55 29 Interview with Heidi Beirich, Southern Poverty Law Cen - Times, Supreme Court Upholds Arizona 8 Americas Program, Wall Street and Immigration: Finan - ter, April 5, 2011 Immigration Law Targeting Employers, David Savage, cial Services Giants Have Profited from the Beginning, 30 May 26, http://articles.latimes.com/2011/may/26/ Peter Cervantes-Gautschi, Feb. 11, 2008, http://enla - American Legislative Exchange Council web site nation/la-na-court-immigration-ruling-20110526 ceintl.org/news/old-news/wall-street-and- http://www.alec.org/AM/Template.cfm?Section=About 56 Ibid. immigration-financial-services-giants-have-profited-fr 31 In These Times, Corporate Con Game: How the private 57 Russell Pearce website, http://www.russellpearce.com/ 9 Ibid. prison industry helped shape Arizona’s anti-immigrant law, Beau Hodai, June 21, 2010, http://www.inthese - 58 ABC News, Study: Illegal Immigrant Population Shrinks, 10 Center for Research on Latin America and the Caribbean, times.com/article/6084/corporate_con_game/ Crossings Down Sharply, Devin Dwyer, Sept. 1, 2010, Mexican Meltdown: NAFTA, Democracy, and the Peso, 32 http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/illegal-immigration- Maxwell Cameron, Jan. 1996, http://www.yorku.ca/cer - Ibid. numbers-plummet-2005-study-finds/story? lac/documents/Cameron.pdf 33 New YorkTimes Op-Ed, Why Arizona Drew a Line, Kris id=11524552 11 Americas Program, Wall Street and Immigration: Finan - Kobach, April 28, 2010 http://www.nytimes.com/ 59 Arizona Daily Star, Churches in New Sanctuary Movement, cial Services Giants Have Profited from the Beginning, Cer - 2010/04/29/opinion/29kobach.html Stephanie Innes, June 13, 2008, http://azstarnet. vantes-Gautschi. 34 Inside Alec newsletter, Jan./Feb. 2010 https://docs. com/lifestyles/faith-and-values/article_fb879efc-91e0- 12 America’s Program, Wall Street and the Criminalization google.com/viewer?url=http://www.alec.org/am/pdf/Insi 56b8-bd71-60001be5caea.html of Immigrants, Peter Cervantes-Gautschi, June 10, 2010, deALEC/InsideALEC_Jan-Feb2010.pdf http://www.cipamericas.org/archives/3304

THE PUBLIC EYE 17 SUMMER 2011 The Public Eye THE ATTACK ON UNIONS continued from page 1 Twenty states now have both Republican- The usual deep-pocketed suspects were organizations sent out roughly 278,000 dominated legislatures and Republican involved in the Republican sweep and the pieces of targeted mail identifying the governors, in contrast to the previous ses - anti-union policies that followed: wealthy forced-unionism positions of state legislative sion, when only eight states were all GOP. 3 conservatives like the Koch brothers, who incumbents and challengers.” 7 [italics in the Wisconsin, Michigan, and Maine flipped funded the campaigns of some governors, original]. from totally Democratic to totally Repub - such as Wisconsin’s Scott Walker, directly As soon as the election was over, the lican, and all three governors are aggressively and others indirectly with a $1 million- union-busters got busy. In Indiana, a right- anti-union. 4 Tea Party-supported Repub - plus donation to the Republican Governors’ to-work bill was submitted on the very first licans now occupy top leadership spots in Association; political action committees day of the legislative session—though the Maine and other northern states. With the (PACs), like ’s American Cross - National Right to Work Committee was help of independents, the Republican base roads, which channel millions from wealthy soon sputtering that the state’s Republican elected businessmen such as Michigan donors to political campaigns; and business Governor Mitch Daniels wasn’t doing any - Governor Rick Snyder, who campaigned lobbies like the U.S. Chamber of Com - thing to enact it. New Hampshire’s Repub - as a moderate, and Florida Governor Rick merce and the free market Club for lican legislators passed right-to-work bills Scott, who carried their anti-union views Growth. 5 in February and April, but without a veto- from the private sector into office. proof majority they faced a skeptical Dem - And here’s a key point: these new Repub - ocratic governor. Missouri’s divided licans are ideologically more conservative Republican legislature tried but failed to than those who came before them. Prola - New Jersey Governor pass right-to-work legislation. bor Republicans—and there still are The antilabor legislation isn’t limited to some—have been picked off, year by year, Chris Christie quickly right-to-work bills. Also introduced into in primary challenges.TheTea Party insur - state legislatures were bills repealing proj - gency, backed by right-to-work and other became an inspiration ect labor agreements—requirements that corporate money, added rocket fuel to the contractors on publicly funded projects be trend, as primary voters ejected those they for the Right, as he guided by collective bargaining agreements deemed RINOs—Republicans in Name with unions laying out the terms of work— Only. went full throttle in and prevailing wage laws, requiring con - What’s at stake is more than the liveli - tractors on such projects to pay their hoods of union members. These conser - blaming unions for the workers what are essentially union rates. vatives want government to operate on a These laws, which benefit construction “business model” that dismantles public grossly underfunded unions, help set standards of work and keep education, privatizes government func - all wages from spiraling down. ’s tions—leaving retirees to fend for them - state pension system. new law banning project labor agreements selves, among other things—and abolishes is now snarled in the courts. But the main collective bargaining, the right of workers battlegrounds are the heavily union states to negotiate as a group over the conditions While unions later complained that the in the North, including , Min - of their work. Unions are a right-wing tar - candidates ran stealth campaigns, keeping nesota, Wisconsin, Missouri, Indiana, get because they form a bulwark against mum about their anti-union politics, plenty Michigan, Ohio, and Pennsylvania, as well such privatization, and they and their of candidates and groups were perfectly as not-so-union states like New Hampshire, members fight against a winner-takes-all frank. Virginia Governor-elect Bob and Maine. 8 Important fights are taking economy that leaves less and less for the McDonnell maintained while campaign - place in Florida andTennessee, too. Accord - poorer 98 percent. Using language right out ing, “The secret to success in Virginia is ing to the AFL-CIO, 26 states are on the of the right-wing populist playbook, con - this—you keep taxes, regulation and liti - over prevailing-wage laws. The servatives smear public-sector unionists gation low and you keep strong Right to Wall Street Journal called the state legisla - in particular as “elite” workers enjoying Work laws, and if you do that, the free tive sessions that ended in May and June “special privileges”—which their “good enterprise system will thrive.” 6 The so- test runs for battles this year. 9 government” reforms will eliminate. called right-to-work laws to which he’s referring allow workers benefitting from Keep PRA Healthy Abby Scher is a sociologist and the former union bargaining units to refuse to join the editorial director of PRA. She is an associate union or pay union dues. In Indiana alone, DONATE NOW crowed the National Right to Work Com - fellow of the Institute for Policy Studies Pro - www.publiceye.org gram on Inequality and the Common Good. mittee, local and “national Right to Work

THE PUBLIC EYE 18 SUMMER 2011 The Public Eye

Collective Bargaining Detroit’s school system are Snyder’s test Why the Right Opposes Unions Challenged cases. This law too sparked a lawsuit and hile unions and their supporters are fter the Republican sweep, public-sec - a recall campaign of the governor and Wwaging a vigorous counterattack, Ator workers braced themselves for some legislators, with 800,000 signatures there is no denying that the Republican struggles in nineteen states, mostly in the needed by August 5. 12 takeover of the states was a hard-fought vic - Midwest, over their ability to bargain as a Although it attracted far less national tory for three overlapping, antilabor ele - group over wages and benefits.The media attention, on April 1, Ohio’s Republican ments of the free-market Right: turned its attention to this issue during the Governor signed a law, SB5, 1. Corporate-minded conserva - uproar in Wisconsin in January and Feb - that imposes limits on collective bargain - tives such as the Koch brothers, the ruary, when Democratic legislators fled ing even broader than Wisconsin’s. SB5 National Right to Work Com - the state rather than give newly elected includes police and firefighters’ unions, mittee, and the U.S. Chamber of Governor Scott Walker the quorum he which Walker left out. Like the Wisconsin Commerce. They hate unions needed to pass legislation curtailing the col - law, SB5 bans strikes and allows the nego - because they view profits as right - lective-bargaining rights of public-sector tiation only of wages, not of benefits such fully belonging to business own - unions, barring state and municipal gov - as health insurance, sick time, or pensions. ers and see union demands for ernments from collecting dues for unions, wage and benefit hikes as extor - and requiring annual recertification elec - tion.They want total control over tions for unions. Standoffs between Tea working conditions, wages, and Party activists and union supporters became Twenty states now benefits, because their main goal the paradigmatic media images of the sea - is raising the bottom line. son. 10 After weeks of prolabor demonstra - have both Republican- 2. Moralists, seen most vividly at tions by teachers, unionists from the private Tea Party rallies. Because of their sector, public-sector workers, and progres - dominated legislatures vision of rugged individualism, sives, the Republican-dominated legislature they oppose any collective used procedural manipulations to pass the and Republican endeavor—whether by unions or limitations—only to find them snarled in by government—in the name of court battles.The law finally took effect in governors, in contrast the common good. They pit vir - late June even as pro-union activists cam - tuous taxpayers against “taxeaters” paigned to recall the senators who voted in to the previous session, and deride unionism as a form of favor of it; they needed to get rid of just three authoritarian socialism imported of the eight Republicans they are targeting when only eight states straight from the Soviet Union. to regain control of the state senate in elec - FOX News broadcaster Glenn tions scheduled for early August. were all GOP. Beck played a big role populariz - Also facing a fall recall vote because of ing this vision, which was once his support for antilabor legislation is confined to marginal Patriot Michigan Governor Snyder, whom pro - movement activists and the far gressives hold accountable for a so-called It also eliminates automatic pay increases Right. emergency financial managers law, under in favor of merit raises. Ohio, the birthplace 3. Technocratic conservatism , asso - which the state is consolidating munici - of the American Federation of Labor (AFL) ciated with Wisconsin Congress - palities, bypassing elected officials, and and the site of the rubber and steel strikes man , think tanks like appointing “crisis managers” who have that launched the Congress of Industrial the Cato and Manhattan Insti - the power to rip up contracts and end col - Organizations (CIO), is now ground zero tutes, and state legislators organ - lective bargaining in school districts. 12 The in the counterattack. Union radicals there ized through the nonprofit majority-Black town of Benton Harbor and have pulled together in a new, national American Legislative Exchange Emergency Labor Network, 13 while locally, Council (ALEC). These groups Ohio unions and their allies collected a claim—contrary to the evi - The Reproductive Rights record number of signatures, almost 1.3 dence—that “limited govern - million, to force a referendum on Novem - ment” works better than a Activist Resource Kit ber 8 to repeal SB5.The successful petition regulatory, social-welfare state in is now available online at drive put the law on hold until after the creating jobs, building the incomes 14 www.publiceye.org! vote. of everyday people, and enriching the middle class. 15 For the tech -

THE PUBLIC EYE 19 SUMMER 2011 The Public Eye

nocrats, unions are bad because Chamber of Commerce led the charge. 18 mittee claims, referring to Florida, Virginia, they are “job killers” in the private More recently, these powerhouses have andTennessee, “RightTo Work states lead sector and demand inefficient been joined by the public relations expert in economic prosperity and personal costs in the public sector. 16 They Rick Berman, whose firm is notable for set - income growth.” 20 see private businesses as the pro - ting up antilabor and anti-environmental Tea Party candidates and their sup - totype for how public institutions front groups, with names like the Center porters have picked up on the venerable should run and push for the pri - for Union Facts and the Employee Freedom rhetoric about unions as Communist vatization of government services, Action Committee, to flog his clients’ mes - threats that would create a big govern - most notably schools. 17 sages. 19 The convergence of the economic ment unsupportable by the tax base. Like crisis, underfunded public pensions, and Congressman Paul Ryan, the Republican Anti-Union Rhetoric, the Tea Party insurgency has created the Party’s point man on privatizing govern - New and Old moment they’ve all been waiting for. ment functions such as Social Security he billionaire Koch brothers fund all and Medicare, the new Republicans feel no Tthree anti-union manifestations with need to compromise on their embrace of their petrochemical fortune: the corporate the free-market mantra. To them, indi - conservatives through the Heritage Conservatives want viduals who band together to negotiate Foundation, Cato, and Manhattan Insti - their wages and working conditions are tutes, as well as the lesser known Mercatus government to operate destroying not only businesses’ ability to Center at George Mason University; the create jobs but the entire moral order. moralist-eclectic Tea Partiers through on a “business model” Ryan says, “The attack on democratic cap - Americans for Prosperity; and the tech - italism, on individualism and freedom in nocrats through ALEC and campaign that dismantles public America, is an attack on the moral foun - donations to politicians such as Wisconsin dation of America.” 21 This kind of think - Congressman Paul Ryan and Wisconsin education, privatizes ing is emotionally supported by a belief Governor Scott Walker. system known as “producerism,” in which The brothers are important players, but government functions, the middle class feels that its hard work is they have the backing of a longstanding, exploited by the lazy rich above it and the deep bench.The free-market notions that and abolishes collective freeloading poor below. 22 unions kill jobs and are bad for the econ - In contrast to this extreme individu - omy have been promoted for decades by bargaining alism, unions point out that theirs are other right-wing funders, such as the Lynde democratic institutions that enable work - and Harry Bradley Foundation, the Wil - ers to fight exploitation, improve work - son Family Foundation, the Sarah Scaife ing conditions, protect wages, and win Foundation, the John M. Olin Foundation, The long-established anti-union mes - social reforms like the forty-hour work and the Castle Rock Foundation. After sage presented by the think tanks and cor - week, which benefit all workers. Union World War II, as some corporations made porate-funded advocates has four elements: participation in corporate governance an uneasy truce with their workers, cor - 1. Union leaders are undemocratic can actually democratize enterprises. Of porate-funded groups such as the National thugs. course, like all democratic institutions, Right to Work Committee and the U.S. 2. Unions restrict individual choice. unions need oversight and accountabil - 3. Union workers are unproductive. ity, so that officers who exploit their 4. Unions interrupt the law of supply power don’t get away with it. But con - NOW AVAILABLE and demand by setting wages, thereby servative media such as the undermining free enterprise. and Rick Berman’s websites feature cor - Platform for Prejudice: According to this reasoning, unions are rupt union officials to signal that any col - How the Nationwide Suspicious both immoral and damaging to business lective action is illegitimate. Activity Reporting Initiative Invites Racial Profiling, Erodes Civil Liberties, and the economy. Weakening unions will and Undermines Security jumpstart wage growth during the reces - The Right-Wing’s Antilabor By Thomas Cincotta sion, argues the National Right to Work Strategists Committee: “Right to Work and Lower n good technocratic fashion, in early A Publication of Political Research Associates Taxes appear to deliver a one-two punch in IMarch 2011, the U.S. Chamber of Com - V..is.i.t.w..w.w..p.u.b.l.i.c.e.y.e..o.r.g . states’ fights against unemployment and merce released a comprehensive blueprint personal income decline. In fact,” the com - for reversing proworker rules at the state level

THE PUBLIC EYE 20 SUMMER 2011 The Public Eye in order, it said, to create jobs. Its propos - als include reducing state and local mini - “TheTrouble with Public Sector Unions” mum and living-wage requirements when Journalist Steven Greenhut of the Pacific Research Institute set off the current debate over these exceed the federal levels; cutting the public-sector unions with his 2009 book Plunder: How Public Employee Unions are Raid - length and rates of unemployment insur - ing Treasuries, Controlling our Lives and Bankrupting the Nation , in which he labeled pub - ance and workers’ compensation; reducing lic employees a new elite and accused them of exploiting taxpayers for cushy benefits. In Spring 2010, Steven Malanga, a Manhattan Institute fellow and adviser to New Jersey leave, rest, and overtime levels that exceed Governor Chris Christie, published a fiery article in his think tank’s quarterly called “The the federal minimums; promoting right-to- Beholden State: How public sector unions broke California,” following that up with his work laws; and banning the payment of book, Shakedown: The Continuing Conspiracy Against the American Taxpayer. He writes, unemployment benefits to locked out work - How public employees became members of the elite class in a declining Califor - 23 ers. The liberal think tank the Economic nia offers a cautionary tale to the rest of the country, where the same process is Policy Institute points out that in the decade happening in slower motion. The story starts a half a century ago, when Cali - after Oklahoma became a right-to-work fornia public workers won bargaining rights and quickly learned how to elect state in 2001, its unemployment rate dif - their own bosses…The result: unaffordable benefits for civil servants; fiscal fered little from its neighbors. 24 Neverthe - chaos in Sacramento and in cities and towns across the state; and angry taxpay - ers finally confront the unionized masters. 42 less, a chamber press release insisted that its plan for “streamlining government” would Adding intellectual heft to the idea that public-sector unions are illegitimate was an article create “746,462 net new jobs nationwide.” by City College of New York Political Science Professor Daniel DiSalvo, the son of a union carpenter, called “The Trouble with Public Sector Unions,” published in the Fall 2010 Such unfounded claims are enticing stuff issue of . 43 Picked up by the conservative blogosphere, as well as by the for a nation in the midst of a recession. Economist , magazine blogger Andrew Sullivan, and most potently the New The chamber is aided in its antilabor York Times columnist David Brooks, DiSalvo says that public-sector unions are big cam - push by the American Legislative Exchange paign spenders, which gives them unseemly power to chose those with whom they bargain. Council (ALEC), an organization claim - Arguing that these unions organize politically to increase the size of the governments that ing as members “more than 2,000” state employ their members, he criticizes a 2009–2010 referendum in Oregon that raised taxes on wealthy individuals and corporations. The unions, says DiSalvo, create a distorted labor lawmakers who say they want limited gov - market and weaken public finances because of the pension obligations they require govern - ernment, as well as a so-called Private ments to incur. And alliances among public-sector unions and community groups dimin - Enterprise Board with representatives from ish democracy, he claims, because public-sector unions negotiate on issues of public policy, major U.S. corporations, including Exxon such as the number of charter schools or for teachers, removing such issues from Mobil, WalMart, and Coca Cola. 25 ALEC the legislative realm, where they belong. teams legislators with member-lobbyists to By June 2011, the New York Times was telling a similar story, in an article that focused on a craft model legislation such as right-to-work California lifeguard who retired after thirty years, at the top of the state’s pension system. laws, and laws repealing minimum-wage The Times fails to mention that California’s system is not in the red: some states responsi - hikes and prevailing-wage requirements. 26 bly funded their pension systems while others, like , “borrowed” from pension pay - ments, eventually pushing their systems into crisis. Nor does it note that many states made ALEC teams also promote so-called pay - irresponsible cuts to the business and other taxes they needed to fulfill their obligations. check-protection laws; called “paycheck And like most articles about public workers’ pensions, this one fails to explain that many deception” by unions and sought for government workers don’t pay into Social Security, so their pensions are all they have in decades by their opponents, these laws retirement. Finally, while the article highlights apparently crazy pension rules, nowhere require explicit from union mem - does it mention that the average state or local public pension benefit in the U.S. is $22,653 bers before their dues can be directed a year, according to the U.S. Census. The California pension system website reports that 44 toward political activities. 27 Arizona passed 74 percent of its pensions are under $36,000. such a law in its last session. 28 And across the country, powered by a network of leg - Why Attack Public-Sector The usual suspects do not seem to have islators organized by ALEC, states are seek - Workers? crafted the most potent justifications for the ing, in the name of austerity, to follow Utah, he attack on unions is old hat. New, latest attack on the public-sector unions. which shifted its public workers out of tra - Thowever, are the number of Republi - ALEC, the Chamber of Commerce, and ditional, defined-benefit pensions, in which can-dominated legislatures giving anti- the National Right to Work Committee retirees receive a predictable amount each union bills a chance of passage; theTea Party, have not traditionally distinguished month, to 401(k)-style, defined-contri - which gives the sentiment a popular base; between types of unions. Republicans had bution plans, in which workers invest in the new politics of austerity created by the been gun-shy about going after public-sec - funds directly and receive whatever the mar - Right to engage with the economic crisis; tor unions after a 2005 California ballot ini - ket is paying at the moment. and the attack on public-sector unions, in tiative curbing the unions’ use of dues for particular. politics was roundly defeated (although in

THE PUBLIC EYE 21 SUMMER 2011 The Public Eye the same year, Indiana Governor Mitch guished between public- and private-sec - Collective bargaining also politicizes Daniels met with success when he bypassed tor unions: “With organized labor, look, the the civil service. Government unions the legislature and removed state workers’ public-employee unions, particularly the negotiate contract provisions that collective bargaining rights with an exec - teachers union, you know how I feel about force workers to join and subsidize utive order 29 ). In January 2010, the Her - them,” Kasich said. (He doesn’t like them.) their fundraising. These subsidies itage Foundation had merely called on “But for the unions that make things, I’m have made them the top political government to “reject union calls for higher going to sit down with them. And I’ll tell spenders in the country.They use that taxes [and] reject proposals to increase you what, they’re going to become part of money to lobby for higher taxes and union membership in the government.” the solution, not part of this problem.” protect their inflated compensation. 33 FreedomWorks, the beltway group through Similarly, on the FOX News Hannity pro - Over at the U.S. Chamber of Com - which former House Majority Leader Dick gram, the conservative shock-pundit Ann merce, Glenn Spencer, head of the Work - Armey mobilizes Tea Partiers, has long Coulter distinguished between “steel - force Freedom Initiative, put it this way: attacked teachers’ unions in its effort to dis - workers who should have unions” and “Public-sector unions have a guaranteed 31 mantle public schools. But even it only public-sector workers, who shouldn’t. source of revenue—you and me as tax - launched a broad campaign against pub - payers.” 34 lic-sector unions in March. Attacks on public-sector workers, like A major push seems to have come from attacks on “tax-cheating” welfare queens local Tea Party tax protesters, notably in Free-market notions that in the past, give the debate a (sometimes California, regional think tanks like the unconscious) racist tinge, since public- free-market Manhattan Institute and Cal - unions kill jobs and are bad sector workers are disproportionately peo - ifornia’s Pacific Research Institute, and ple of color. 35 Census data shows that Republican politicians and strategists like for the economy have been African Americans are “thirty percent Christie.The underfunding of some state more likely than other workers to be pensions and a few large payouts to retirees promoted for decades by employed in the public sector,” says Steven gave conservatives a big bat with which to Pitts, a labor policy specialist at the beat public sector unions.The Republican right-wing funders. University of California Berkeley Labor Governors Association gathering in San Center; indeed, he argues that public Diego in November 2010, right after the employment helped create the Black election, was abuzz with Wisconsin Gov - middle class. 36 ernor-elect Scott Walker’s campaign In attacking public-sector unions and remark, “We cannot and should not main - In a backgrounder on public-sector their contributions to political campaigns, tain a system where public employees are unions published on September 1, close to the Right presents itself as a good-govern - 32 the ‘haves’ and the taxpayers footing the bill the elections, the Heritage Foundation ment champion with a simple message: 30 are the ‘have-nots.’” Public-sector unions now implied that private sector unions unions are bad for government. Karl Rove’s were becoming a political football. are legitimate while “government Government Union Reform Action Cen - The quoted Ohio unions”—a phrase promoted by the ter, which operates out of Crossroads GPS, Governor-elect John Kasich, the son of a Republican pollster Frank Luntz because champions Christie as a good-government public-sector worker himself, as he distin - it polls badly—are not. “Collective bar - hero for issuing an executive order barring gaining by unions takes place very differ - public-employee unions from lobbying ently in government than it does in the the politicians they bargain with. Cross - private sector,” wrote Senior Policy Ana - roads GPS itself is promoting the GOP’s Help PRA and The Public Eye lyst in Labor Economics James Sherk. Public Employee Pension Transparency Private-sector unions have competi - Act, which would require states to use a dif - Expose the Right! tors and bargain over the profits they ferent method for calculating how large help create.The government earns no pension holdings should be—one that Donate $30, $60, $100 profits. Government unions have a would make the state-pension crisis seem or whatever you can! legal monopoly and bargain for a even worse...... greater share of tax dollars. Collective bargaining in government means Labor Fights Back Visit www.publiceye.org that voters’ elected representatives n mid-February, at the Washington, must agree on tax and spending deci - ID.C., Marriott Hotel, representatives sions with union representatives. from the National Right to Work Com -

THE PUBLIC EYE 22 SUMMER 2011 The Public Eye mittee, the Heritage Foundation, and other enterprises eager to destroy labor were busy States Where Labor is Under Attack setting up booths for the Conservative The 22 Right-to-Work states: Alabama, Arizona, Arkansas, Kansas, Florida, Political Action Conference. Youngsters in Georgia, Idaho, Iowa, Louisiana, Mississippi, Nebraska, Nevada, North Carolina, dark suits created displays of reading mate - North Dakota, Oklahoma, South Carolina, South Dakota, , Texas, Utah, rial about the free market. Virginia, and Wyoming. At the same time, in a nearby ballroom, 600 United Steel Worker activists were dis - The sixteen states challenging public-sector unions’ collective bargaining rights: cussing ways to fight state efforts to weaken Arizona, Colorado, Florida, Idaho, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Michigan, both public- and private-sector unions. , Nebraska, New Hampshire, Nevada, New Jersey, Ohio, Oklahoma, United Steel Workers International Pres - Oregon, Tennessee, and Washington. ident Leo Gerard offered brilliant school - ing in popular economics: trade policy, Chinese currency, tax policy, the financial Wisconsin, Gerard addressed a rally at sector—you name it. He was giving his Steel Worker Union headquarters in Pitts - troops ideological weapons for the fight of burgh: “The recent wave of attacks on their lives. “The rich took the anger of our Conservative pundit Ann public employees is not the fault of the people and turned it against them [in the workers but the result of giving enormous Tea Party],” he said. “We have a responsi - Coulter distinguishes between tax breaks to the rich and the ultrarich,” bility to invite you into the battle. And you he said. “Public-sector unions are being have a responsibility to get in.” “steelworkers who should vilified, used as the scapegoats as budget “We lost 100,000 members in the shortfalls are, pure and simple, being economic collapse,” added International have unions” and used as political fodder to turn Americans Secretary-Treasurer Stan Johnson. “They’re against organized labor.” 38 not here because they can’t be.” And things public-sector workers, Polls show that many Americans agree will get worse, he warned. “Best guess,” with him. A March 2011 national Johnson told his audience, “twenty percent who shouldn’t. Bloomberg survey found that 63 percent of the union will leave under Right to of respondents “don’t think states should Work. It will destroy the finances of your be able to break their promises to retirees.” local union, and the national, and impede Respondents split over whether governors our ability to fight.” Wages are much lower we’re the choir directors. We have to show truly “aim to balance their budgets or in the country’s 22 right-to-work states, what the union dollar does for the com - weaken unions that back Democratic foes.” where unions don’t have the power to bar - munity. When we make 28 percent more Seventy-two percent view public employ - gain up the rates, than in others—an aver - a week, we spend more money in our com - ees favorably, and about half say that “gov - age of $5,538 lower, to be exact, said munity … Let people know we’re working ernors are unfairly targeting unions.” 39 Gerard. So, the fight is not just for union to protect Social Security.” The Steel Yet conservatives had reason to believe members but for all workers. Worker leadership, along with that of the their attacks on unions would go over The Steel Workers are well-aware that AFL-CIO, takes it for granted that unions well. Even in the Bloomberg poll, pro- some of their neighbors soak in FOX News have a responsibility to fight for laws that union sentiment outpolled anti-union sen - and its anti-union messages. 37 The unions’ regulate wages and hours, and benefits timent by only nine points, 49 to 40 defense of “big-government” programs such as Medicare and Social Security, which percent. Americans’ support for unions makes them targets of theTea Party, as well help everyone. “If they disable us, and we started drifting downward in 2007 as the as of their traditional corporate adver - never get a pay increase, what’s it going to National Right to Work Committee and saries. In a state breakout session, one do for the nonunion people?” the regional the U.S. Chamber of Commerce spent tens regional leader said, “We’re the coaches, leader said. “This is one of the things we of millions of dollars on anti-union ads, in can tell the nonunion people.” a successful effort to defeat federal legisla - The Steel Workers and other industrial tion that would have made union organ - Keep PRA Healthy unions are determined that the Right will izing easier. 40 The advertisements brought not succeed in dividing them from their the anti-union messages that the Right DONATE NOW public-sector brothers and sisters. A few usually pumps out to its supporters to the www.publiceye.org weeks after the Washington meeting, in general public, as well as to workers targeted the midst of the labor uprising in by organizing campaigns.The propaganda

THE PUBLIC EYE 23 SUMMER 2011 The Public Eye becomes more effective as union density w_low_110298.html http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000142405274870481 shrinks; only twelve percent of Americans 3 Josh Goodman,” Republicans win most legislative seats 0504576305642336428176.html?mod=ITP_pageone_1 in generations,” stateline.org, November 3, 2010. 10 Tea party activists blog about union thugs, for instance now belong to unions. Fewer and fewer http://www.stateline.org/live/details/story?con - here, http://rightwingnews.com/videos/union-goon- people know anything about unions first tentId=525539 attacks-tea-party-protester-at-sacramento-labor-rally/ and here http://habledash.com/index.php?option= hand, or even know someone in a union. 4 Pew Center on the States, http://www.stateline.org. Note Pew viewed Michigan’s Snyder as a moderate in his race com_content&view=article&id=1163:labor-union- The idea that unions fight for a living against the union-backed Democrat. Melissa Maynard, thugs-transcend-wisconsin-to-protest-tea-party-sarah- wage and rights for all workers is almost “Moderate Republican candidate swims against party tide palin&catid=47:latest-news&Itemid=65 . Unionists complain the handful of tea party protestors wins the wholly unknown. in Michigan,” stateline.org October 4, 2010. http://www. stateline.org/live/details/story?contentId=517938 media attention, not their much larger ranks. The outlook is not completely bleak, 11 5 Justin Elliot, “Billionaires give 91 percent of funds for Sarah Jaffe, “Shock Doctrine: ‘Emergency Finance Man - however. Prolabor Republicans have slowed Rove-tied group,” Salon, 20 September 2010. agers’ and the Right-Wing’s Power Grab,” Alternet, June 26, 2011. http://www.alternet.org/story/151428/ the sweep in Florida, where the governor http://www.salon.com/news/politics/war_room/2010/09 /20/rove_group_more_millionaire_donations/index.html shock_doctrine:_’emergency_finance_managers’_and_th was unable to bar automatic payroll deduc - e_right-wing’s_power_grab?page=entire tion of dues by public sector unions; in Col - 12 “Gov. Snyder Recall Petition Language Approved,” clickondetroit.com, April 18, 2011. http://www.clickon - orado, where a bill failed that would have detroit.com/politics/27585295/detail.html ratified a four-year-old executive order “The recent wave of 13 Emergency Labor Network, http://www.laborfight - barring collective bargaining by public back.org/ sector unions; and in Missouri, where attacks on public 14 Jim Provance, “Record 1.3 Million Back Vote toTorpedo SB5,” Toledo Blade, June 30, 2011. http://www.tole - Republican legislators questioned whether doblade.com/State/2011/06/30/Record-1-3M-back- a right-to-work push would really create employees is not the vote-to-torpedo-Senate-Bill-5-2.html jobs. 41 15 An excellent resource tracking how rightwing think Shrinking unions have learned that they tanks promote free market economic theories that even fault of the workers conservative academics can’t stomach is Jonathan Chait’s can’t win this fight alone, and are strength - The Big Con: The true story of how Washington got hood - ening their relationships with small-busi - winked and hijacked by crackpot economics (New York: but the result of giving Houghton Mifflin, 2007). James Galbraith is a liberal ness, women’s, immigrant-rights, Black, academic who shows the fallacy of “free market” theo - and Latino groups. As inequality worsens, enormous tax breaks ries in The Predator State: How Conservatives Abandoned the Free Market andWhy Liberals ShouldToo (New York: and obscene Wall Street paydays get more The New Press, 2008). Dollars and Sense magazine and attention even as unemployment festers, to the rich and the New Deal 2.0, a blog of the Roosevelt Institute, are forums for a range of academics thinking about how government they propose a moral vision, calling for and the economy shape one another. More popular Americans to build a more egalitarian ultrarich.” resources include Paul Krugman’s NYTimes column and nation. Groups such as Interfaith Worker Joshua Holland’s The Fifteen Biggest Lies about the Econ - omy: And Everything Else the Right Doesn’t Want You to Justice provide platforms where people Know about Taxes, Jobs, and Corporate America. 6 can ask fundamental questions about how Dr. Frank Lutz, “Election Advertising: Lessons of 2010,” 16 Laborunionrepot.com is a one stop source for op eds the economy works, why Americans don’t The Word Doctors, p. 3. written by the technocrats. 7 talk about class, why big companies don’t “Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels Sabotages Right to Work 17 Larry Cuban, The Blackboard and the Bottom Line:Why Law, National Right to Work Committee, May 1, 2011. Schools Can’t Be Businesses (Cambridge, MA: Harvard pay taxes, and why the top one percent are http://www.nrtwc.org/indiana-gop-leaders-sabotage- University Press, 2004); Diane Ravitch, “The Myth of the only ones who are doing better. By tying right-to-work-drive/ Charter Schools,” NewYork Review of Books, November 8 moral insights together with technical “Union Density in the United States, 2010,” The 11, 2010. Center of Labor Education and Research, 18 Nelson Lichtenstein, “The Long History of Labor Bash - knowledge about how an egalitarian econ - http://clear.uhwo.hawaii.edu/density.html ing,” The Chronicle of Higher Education , March 6, 2011. omy would work, and how fair labor and 9 Kris Maher and Amy Merrick, “BillsTry to Curb the Reach http://chronicle.com/article/The-Long-History-of- tax rules would be structured, unions and of Unions,” Wall Street Journal, May 9, 2011. Labor/126555/ the Left can regain momentum and remake I our world. Read the best analysis of the on

Endnotes Talk2Action.org! 1 “Governor Christie Responds to Teacher During Town Talk2Action is a group blog led by The Public Eye writer Hall,” September 8, 2010. http://www.youtube. com/watch?v=PkuTm-ON904 and editorial board member Frederick Clarkson. Read weekly 2 Victor Lee, “Who is Chris Christie? Why is he the new patron saint of Conservatism?” Newlyconservative.com, contributions from Fred, Political Research Associates February 28, 2010. http://newlyconservative.com/who- researcher Chip Berlet, and the rest of the best thinke rs is-chris-christie-why-is-he-the-new-patron-saint-of- conservatism/ ; Caitlin Huey-Burns, “Chris Christie’s about the Christian Right. Approval Rating Hits New Low,” realclearpolitics.com, Visit Talk2Action.org June 21, 2011. http://www.realclearpolitics.com/arti - cles/2011/06/21/chris_christie_approval_rating_hits_ne

THE PUBLIC EYE 24 SUMMER 2011 The Public Eye

19 http://www.bermanexposed.org/facts 30 Tony Perry, “Republican GovernorsTake Aim atTeach - archives/2011/0511albelda.html 20 http://www.nrtwc.org/prosperity-reigns-in-right-to- ers Unions, Other Public Employee Unions,” LATimes, 36 Steven Pitts, “Black Workers and the Public Sector,” UC work-low-tax-states/ November 18, 2010. http://www.cleveland.com/nation/ Berkeley Center for Labor Research and Education, index.ssf/2010/11/republican_governors_take_aim.html 21 April 4, 2011. For a brilliant and brief take on this, see Frederick Clark - 31 son and Frank Cocozzelli, “The Randian Fault That You can find the clip from March 9, 2011 on 37 Tracked daily by mediamatters.org . http://www.mediaite.com/tv/ann-coulter-turns-her- Could Shake Conservatism,” Talk2Action.org, May 2, 38 back-on-wi-republicans-for-losing-media-war-in-union- “Saving the Middle Class: Hundreds Rally at USW 2011. http://www.talk2action.org/story/2011/5/2/ Headquarters for Workers in Wisconsin, Country,” 153226/0967/Front_Page/The_Randian_Fault_That_C debate/ 32 usw.org, February 24, 2010. http://www.usw.org/media_ ould_Shake_Conservatism James Sherk, “The New Face of the Union Movement: center/news_articles?id=0708 22 Government Employees,” Heritage Foundation, Kim Phillips-Fein tracks how big business regrouped 39 September 1, 2010, http://www.heritage.org/Research/ “William Solway, “Americans Oppose Republican Attack around this argument after World War II in Invisible Reports/2010/09/The-New-Face-of-the-Union- on Unions in Poll Divided Over Benefits,” Bloomberg, Hands: The Making of the Conservative Movement from Movement-Government-Employees An American March 9, 2011. the New Deal to Reagan (New York: Norton, 2009). Enterprise Institute scholar argued unions were too 40 23 “Favorability Ratings of Labor Unions Fall Sharply,” Pew “The Impact of State Employment Policies on Job weak to diminish free market dynamics, Research Center for People and the Press, February 23, Growth: A 50-State Review,”The U.S. Chamber of Com - 2010, http://pewresearch.org/pubs/1505/labor-unions- merce, March 2, 2011. http://www.workforcefree - support-falls-public-now-evenly-split-on-purpose-power; dom.com/sites/default/themes/wfi/images_wfi/CH-10-0 Abby Scher, “Still Looking for the Union Label: A Mak - 247_Book-Combined_M6.pdf#page=1 “U.S Cham - ing Contact Radio Investigation,” September 2, 2009. ber Study Shows States Could Create Nearly 750,000 http://www.radioproject.org/2009/09/still-looking-for- Jobs and 50,000 New Business By Streamlining Gov - “The attack on democratic the-union-label/ ernment Regulation,” U.S. Chamber of Commerce, March 2, 2011. http://www.workforcefreedom.com/ 41 David A. Lieb, “Efforts to curtail private-sector unions media-info/us-chamber-study-shows-states-could- capitalism, on individual - faltering,” Associated Press, May 9, 2011; ; Mary Ellen create-nearly-750000-jobs-and-50000-new- Klas, “Senators reject Rick Scott’s pitch to fight unions,” businesses-st Miami Herald, April 27, 2011. http://www.miamiher - 24 ism and freedom in ald.com/2011/04/27/2188918/senators-reject-rick- Gordon Lafer and Sylvia A. Allegretto, “Does ‘right-to- scotts-pitch.html#ixzz1Kpoo4PJL work’ create jobs? Answers from Oklahoma,” Economic Policy Institute, February 28, 2011. http://www. America, is an attack on 42 Steven Malanga, “The Beholden State: How public-sec - epi.org/publications/entry/bp300 tor unions broke California,” City Journal, Spring 2010. 25 “About,” American Legislative Exchange Council. 43 Personal interview, May 9, 2011; “TheTrouble with Pub - http://www.alec.org/AM/Template.cfm?Section=About the moral foundation lic Sector Unions,” National Affairs , Fall 2010. “Private Enterprise Board Members, as of December http://www.nationalaffairs.com/publications/detail/the- 2010” http://www.alec.org/AM/Template.cfm?Sec - trouble-with-public-sector-unions tion=Private_Enterprise_Board&Template=/CM/HTM of America.” 44 Iris Lav, “Testimony: Iris Lav on the Transparency and LDisplay.cfm&ContentID=15553 Funding of State and Local Pensions Before the House 26 The Commerce, Insurance, and Economic Development Ways and Means Committee, Subcommittee on Over - Committee circulates these bills, listed on ALEC’s web - sight,” Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, May 5, site. http://www.alec.org/AM/Template.cfm?Sec - 33 James Sherk, “Time to Restore Voter Control: End the 2011. http://www.cbpp.org/cms/index.cfm?fa=view& tion=Commerce_Insurance_and_Economic_Developm Government-Union Monopoly,” Heritage Foundation, id=3486 ent&Template=/TaggedPage/TaggedPageDisplay.cfm& February 25, 2011. http://www.heritage.org/ TPLID=4&ContentID=5668 Research/Reports/2011/02/Time-to-Restore-Voter- 27 Beau Hodai, “PublicopolyExposed,” In These Times, Control-End-the-Government-Union-Monopoly . Over July 11, 2011. http://www.inthesetimes.com/main/ at the Heritage Foundation, visiting fellow Jonah Gold - article/11603/ berg laid out the same argument. ,

28 “Public Unions Must Go,” Los Angeles Times, Febru - TheTransport Workers Union offered a handy summary ary 22, 2011. http://www.aei.org/article/100315 of bills passed and not passed in the spring. http://work - 34 ersrights.twu.org/post/6049734687/the-2011-right- Brody Mullins and John D. McKinnon, “Campaign’s Big INTERNS WANTED! wing-war-on-workers-how-is-the-workers Spender,” Wall Street Journal, October 22, 2010. 35 29 “Steven Nelson, “Indiana’s labor fight similar to, but dif - Randy Albelda, “Teachers, Secretaries and Social Work - The Public Eye ferent from Wisconsin’s,” , February 23, ers: The New Welfare Moms?” Dollars and Sense, 2011. May/June 2011. http://www.dollarsandsense.org/ The Public Eye welcomes interns to join us in producing PRA’s quarterly magazine . Manufacturing the Muslim Menace Political Research Associates The newest report from Political Research the parent think tank of The Associates details the systematic failure of federal Public Eye, offers a research government to regulate the highly prejudiced content of publicly funded counterterrorism internship, and a communica - training for first responders and others. tion and development internship. Manufacturing the Muslim Menace exposes the myths promoted in some training firms’ curricula. To apply, just email a letter and resume identifying the internship Find the full report online at http://www.publiceye. that interests you to org/liberty/training/project-home.html or order a [email protected] . print version by calling our offices at 617-666-5300.

THE PUBLIC EYE 25 SUMMER 2011 The Public Eye Book Review WHAT ASTROLOGY IS TO ASTRONOMY

Boiling Mad In Boiling Mad, veteran NewYorkTimes reporter Kate Zernike takes Inside Tea Party America us behind the scenes of the Tea Party movement, tracking its growth By Kate Zernicke from a handful of small, grassroots protests to a nationwide sensation New York: Times Books, 2010, 256 pp., $25.00, hardcover in American politics. Her reporting brings us face to face withTea Party activists. A lively The Whites ofTheir Eyes read, the book humanizes a movement many progressives have viewed, from afar, as a bunch of angry White guys with poorly spelled signs The Tea Party’s Revolution and the Battle Over American History condemning President Obama as a socialist and demanding that gov - By Jill Lepore Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2010, 224 pp., $19.95, hardcover ernment keep its hands off Medicare. Zernike encounters a group of dedicated activists who had seen their economic security slip away and Among theTruthers the world around them change in frightening ways.Yet, she says, their movement is less a manifestation of the times than it is an expression A Journey Through America’s Growing Conspiracist Underground of long-standing conflicts within the U.S. polity. “TheTea Party move - By Jonathan Kay New York: Harper Collins, 2011, 368 pp., $27.99, hardcover ment,” she writes, “went to the heart of conflicts that have bedeviled Americans for more than two hundred years and reflected anxieties that Americans had been expressing for generations.” Reviewed by Joshua Holland Perhaps Boiling Mad’ s most important contribu - he notion that there exists widespread “rot at the tion—especially for those who have followed theTea Ttop,” as corrupt elites grind hard-working, Party phenomenon only casually—is the help it “real” Americans under their boot heels, is deeply offers in untangling the movement’s apparent con - embedded in the American psyche. It’s spawned tradictions. For example, the movement is touted by dozens of populist movements on both the Left and its proponents as a “leaderless” outpouring of citizen the Right, some that have resulted in important frustrations—over such issues as the deficit, George political and social reforms, and others that have taken W. Bush’s bank bailouts, and the inability of Wash - on a less savory character, giving rise to conspiracism ington to create jobs and address the foreclosure cri - and even violence. sis—yet its various “leaders” are all over the media. In the wake of the attacks of 9/11 and two painful Zernike describes the Tea Party as a franchise of economic crashes separated by less than a decade, sorts—a movement of small, local groups whose against a backdrop of several protracted conflicts organizers are fiercely suspicious of “elites.” At the same abroad, Americans’ trust of not only the government time, high-profile conservative groups such as Free - but also of large corporations, the news media, and domWorks, led by veteran Washington insiders and international organizations may be at a historic low. backed by corporate money, lend the nascent move - An Associated Press poll conducted in late 2010 ment far more reach than it would otherwise enjoy found that Americans have become cynical about our by providing training and guidance on messaging, pro - major institutions: not one of the eighteen pollsters motion, and infrastructure. asked about got high marks from a majority of respondents. “Glum and Zernicke visits the Freedomworks offices, where she finds that “the distrusting, a majority of Americans today are very confident in— real work of spreading theTea Party brushfires was done by a small knot 1 nobody,” conclude the pollsters. Perhaps as a result, populist movements of about twenty take-no-prisoners young conservatives” working with are flourishing. Three recent books examine some of the most promi - “the Red Bull-and-beer spirit of a fraternity.” These young operatives nent theories, as well as the political environment that nourishes them. are hard-core libertarians, whose ideology doesn’t look fondly on such safety-net programs as Medicare.Their worldview has been embraced Joshua Holland is an editor and senior writer at AlterNet.org, and by a minority ofTea Partiers who have dedicated themselves to the cause, the author of The 15 Biggest Lies About the Economy: And some quitting jobs and putting their lives on hold to join what they Everything else the Right Doesn’t Want You to Know AboutTaxes, see as an existential fight for America’s future. Jobs and Corporate America (2010).

THE PUBLIC EYE 26 SUMMER 2011 The Public Eye

But the far-larger majority ofTea Party supporters—those who for - ••• ward the emails, sign the petitions, and occasionally attend the rallies— are a different story. For them, writes Zernike, “fiscal responsibility meant nTheWhites ofTheir Eyes , historian Jill Lepore delves into those claims, not bailing out the car companies or the people who had taken out mort - Ifinding that “theTea Party’s view of American history [bears] almost gages they couldn’t afford. It meant cutting waste and earmarks.” no resemblance” to the subject she studies and teaches. The Tea Party Couched in the rhetoric of patriotism and “freedom,” such ideas were has adopted the mantle of the , but as Lepore writes, incredibly attractive, explains Zernike, but “What was curious about the Tea Party’s revolution... was that it was - n’t just kooky history, it was anti-history.” It’s a strength of the book it wasn’t clear that [theseTea Partiers] understood that the strict that her horror doesn’t come through in her writing; instead of mock - Constitutionalist approach would eliminate benefits for the eld - ing theTea Partiers for their confusion, she lays out the complex, decid - erly, subsidies for students who could not afford college on their edly not-neat history of the founding of the Republic in an entertaining own, laws that made sure banks couldn’t disappear with peo - and readable way, bouncing between today’s Tea Party meetings in ple’s savings overnight. Boston and the Tea Parties that took place almost 250 years ago. The idea of “limited government” has always polled well in the The reality eludingTea Partiers is that the Founders didn’t share any abstract, but when it comes down to specifics, people like what gov - one set of beliefs beyond the idea that they should enjoy self-determi - ernment does—and that is as true forTea Party foot-soldiers as it is for nation. Between 1761, when the first signs of discontent with Eng - anyone else. land became apparent in the colonies, and 1791, when the Bill of Rights Thus, a movement whose leaders have a laser-like focus on fiscal was ratified, leading Americans debated an “ocean of ideas,” notes Lep - conservatism actually consists of people whom polls reveal to be more ore, from which “you can fish anything out.”TheTea Partiers have set - likely than the population as a whole to identify with the Christian Right. tled on a narrative of consensus among the Founders—that they all The young, tech-savvy libertarians behind theTea Party infrastructure believed in limited government, states’ rights, and don’t care about banning gay marriage or mounting pub - according to many, the primacy of Christianity. If only lic displays of theTen Commandments.The movement, U.S. history were so neat. In fact, it includes epic strug - says Zernicke, “depend[s] on the blurring of ideologi - gles to define the role of of the public sector, the rela - cal differences,” which she likens to “an older man tionship between the states and the federal government, ignoring that he had no music or cultural references in and the proper place for religious faith in public life. common with his young trophy wife.” As Lepore notes, claiming the mantle of the Revo - The Tea Partiers have been accused of being moved lution is nothing new in American politics. “Beginning to action by racial animus, which many vehemently deny. even before it was over,” she writes, “the Revolution has That narrative is based on the fact that the Tea Partiers been put to wildly varying political purposes. Federal - didn’t emerge while George Bush was doubling the ists claimed its legacy; so did anti-Federalists. Supporters national debt but only when America’s first Black pres - of Andrew Jackson’s Democratic Party said they were ident took office; the frequent accusations that Obama the true sons of the Revolution. No, Whigs said: we are.” is “foreign”; and the tradition of using states’ rights argu - During the Civil War, both sides claimed to be fight - ments, beloved of Tea Party libertarians, to oppose ing for the the values that originally defined the United integration and federal civil rights law. According to States, as embodied in the Constitution. Zernike, this gets the causality wrong: White supremacists have long Today’s Left has ceded ground on this argument. Lepore tells of the been attracted to pushes for states’ rights, and they happily jumped on New Left’s campaign to launch a People’s Bicentennial in 1976, using theTea Party bandwagon because of its mainstream gloss. Zernike talks rhetoric surprisingly reminiscent of that employed by theTea Parties. toTea Partiers who are appalled by the fringe characters who show up “We are faced today with the corruption, rot, arrogance and venality at their events with signs portraying Obama as an African witch doctor. that our forefathers protested,” said one leader of that movement in The Tea Party is clearly a magnet for confused, angry people, but the early 1970s. Lepore recounts how they gathered at the site of the it isn’t only that. Liberal critics have consistently missed the sense of original BostonTea Party: “‘Dump Nixon, not tea’ read one sign in the community it has created. Activists, writes Zernicke, say that “the most crowd. The National Organization for Women was there, picketing: rewarding aspects of theTea Party work is ‘friendship’ and ‘fellowship.’” ‘Taxation without Equal Rights isTyranny.’ Another banner read, ‘Gay For all of its emphasis on individualism, “activists believed in this fel - American Revolution.’”These “protests by the left,” writes Lepore, would lowship, of belonging to something greater.” eventually give way to the “reactionary—and fanatical—version of While the Tea Party “meant different things to different people,” American history” that prevails among Tea Partiers today. Zernike notes that it “borrowed its language and its ideology from However, Lepore does not bemoan the Left’s absence from this age- earlier conservative uprisings.” Indeed, if there is one thing that unites old battle. For her, appealing to the authority of long-dead historical disparate Tea Partiers, it is their professed fealty to the Constitution figures does them a disservice by neglecting the complexities of the issues and the original intent of the “Founders.” they wrangled with in their own era. Ultimately, theTea Partiers’ claim

THE PUBLIC EYE 27 SUMMER 2011 The Public Eye of fealty to the Constitution is a form of religion rather than analysis. That, and Kay’s frequent references to the “liberal media”—he says “,” Lepore writes, “looks like history, but it is not; it’s his - the “birthers are a product of the liberal media that now heaps abuse torical fundamentalism, which is to history what astrology is to astron - on them”—foreshadow the final section of the book, which unfortu - omy, what alchemy is to chemistry, what creationism is to evolution.” nately devolves into a grab bag of Kay’s ideological grievances. He devotes quite a bit of real estate to the conspiratorial aspects of what he terms ••• a “cult of political correctness” promulgated by insulated intellectuals who inhabit their own epistemic universe. He spends an inordinate hat kind of fundamentalist belief system is unshakeable, and it amount of time on the belief system of an “ultraradical feminist,” whom Tleads to what Jonathan Kay calls a “sort of intellectual Yugoslavia— he acknowledges doesn’t confuse her theories with actual fact—unlike a patchwork of agitated [groups] screaming at one another in mutu - others he interviews—and he devotes a notably lazy chapter to what ally unintelligible tongues.” But Kay, a conservative columnist with he terms “shrill anti-Zionism” (Kay uses “anti-Zionism and “anti-Semi - Canada’s National Post, isn’t writing about theTea Parties per se; he spent tism” interchangeably) among liberal critics of . two years delving into the world of American conspiracism, and Kay says of his journey that it has “taught me to be careful of my Among the Truthers is the of his labors. own ideological commitments as well.” But after arguing that Naomi Kay’s journey takes him across the country to visit Klein’s “increasingly radicalized hunt for corporate with all manner of conspiracy theorists, from demons launched her into the realm of full-fledged “Truthers,” who believe the attacks of 9/11 were a gov - conspiratorial fantasy,” and accusing New York ernment operation launched to create a casus belli for Time s columnists Paul Krugman and Frank Rich of the Iraq invasion, to “Birthers,” who believe that embracing the “paranoid character of the blogos - Barack Obama was born in Kenya and is therefore phere” in their criticisms of the Bush administration, ineligible to serve as president of the United States. it becomes clear that Kay is not as cautious about mix - Trust in the institutions that shape our society, he says, ing ideological assumptions with hard-headed analy - is in short supply. He notes that this follows a pat - sis as he believes himself to be. tern; conspiracism, writes Kay, “is more likely to blos - As someone who has frequently tangled with con - som when great tragedies or national traumas—the spiracy theorists of varying stripes, I was especially French Revolution, World War I, the assassination interested in Kay’s concluding chapter, in which he of JFK, 9/11, the 2008 financial crisis—rupture proposes a strategy for battling paranoid worldviews. society’s intellectual foundations, and shatter citizens’ But his solution—schools should offer classes in con - faith in traditional authority figures.” spiracism—seems half-hearted and tacked on, while Kay expresses some surprise that many of his inter - his views on what does and does not constitute viewees are articulate and well-educated.Through a acceptable discourse betray the flaws inherent in his series of conversations, some quite engaging, he proposal. offers a sort of typology of conspiracy theorists: the “midlife crisis case,” While acknowledging in a pro forma way that bizarre political the - the “damaged survivor,” and the “failed historian,” to name a few. ories often hold a “kernel of truth,” none of these works dig into the Although some of his historical and sociological analysis is problem these worldviews represent in our public discourse. Conspiracy of earlier works—he devotes a chapter to how the Internet lowered the theories are indeed a way of explaining away the contradictions inher - barriers to entry in the marketplace of ideas and led to an explosion of ent in modern democracies—the frequent disconnect between the ideal self-referential conspiracy sites—he provides a useful geography of con - of transparency and the exigencies of actual governance. But in the end, spiracist territory. they distract from a deeper analysis of those structural inconsistencies But conspiracy theories span the political spectrum, and the breadth rather than shed light on some nefarious actors pulling the strings behind of Kay’s undertaking forces him to sacrifice some much-needed depth. the scenes. Ultimately, they represent a failure of critical thinking— Ultimately, he seems to believe that the United States is a perfect mer - a commodity that’s already in short supply. itocracy. “Life’s losers,” he concludes, “have no one to blame but them - selves. And so the conceit that they are up against some all-powerful 1 http://www.presstelegram.com/breakingnews/ci_16094598 corporate or governmental conspiracy comes as a relief: It removes the stigma of failure, and replaces it with the more psychologically man - ageable feeling of anger.”

THE PUBLIC EYE 28 SUMMER 2011 The Public Eye ……Reports in Review……

REPORT OF THE MONTH Unconstitutional and Costly: The High Price of Local Immigration SB1070 law, encouraged communities across the country to put Enforcement these similar policies in place. His fees are just one of the municipal - By Gabe Martinez ities’ expenses. He was elected Kansas Secretary of State in 2010. Center for American Progress, 2011, 26 pp. http://www.american - Legal challenges to the constitutionality of these ordinances became progress.org/issues/2011/01/unconstitutional_and_costly.html major drains on local coffers. Lawsuits against each community have The effects of Hispanic immigration can be felt across the coun - cost more than $1 million and climbing. In Farmer’s Branch, Texas, try in different ways, but anti-immigrant backlash in small towns has where city officials are still appealing earlier decisions, the bill has reached resulted in expensive legal battles, lost tax revenue, and a blight on local four times that amount. economies, reports the Center for American Progress (CAP). Look - Immigrants have a powerful economic impact, as residents of River - ing at five communities fromTexas to New Jersey, this well-documented side, New Jersey, learned the hard way. About half the businesses in and persuasively written chronicle exposes the various financial con - town closed when 75 percent of the immigrant residents moved away sequences of enacting anti-immigrant ordinances. after an anti-immigrant ordinance was put in place. Demographic changes often create fear. Small-town residents in the Other towns have observed and learned. Summerville, South Car - communities studied expressed concern that their way of life was threat - olina, tabled its proposed ordinance in 2010, with one of its town coun - ened by newcomers. Knee-jerk reactions fed false claims that immi - cillors saying, “I just cannot with good conscience risk potentially grants were noisy, criminal, undocumented, and tax cheaters. All five spending millions in taxpayers’ dollars just to make a point.” communities enacted anti-immigrant policies between 2005 and While one might hope that moral arguments against anti-immi - 2010. Hazelton, Pennsylvania, for example, with Riverside, New Jersey, grant policies would be persuasive, Unconstitutional and Costly demon - following, imposed fines on landlords who rented to “illegal aliens.” strates that in small-town America, among other places, money talks. The copycat nature of the ordinances was no coincidence. Anti- –Pam Chamberlain immigrant activist lawyer Kris Kobach, who helped Arizona draft its

Other Reports in Review

Disappearing Parents: A Report on child can be in foster care before the state seeks lawyers, social workers, and judges—all of Immigration Enforcement and the Child a permanent placement, away from the par - whom struggle without benefit of written Welfare System ent. Sometimes these children are U.S. citi - guidance.The report recommends the devel - by Nina Rabin. University of Arizona, Tuscon, zens. Detention centers typically have few opment of mechanisms to deal with ‘disap - May 2011. 36 pp. social services, rendering detainees worse off peared’ parents with the Department of http://www.law.arizona.edu/depts/bacon_ than they would be in some jails or prisons, Homeland Security, the child welfare sys - program/disappearing_parents_report.cfm and parents have little to no support for tem, and the Department of Justice. It calls on This is a tragic story of the unintended con - applying for reunification. On top of this, a Congress to end mandatory detention and to sequences that occur when two or more climate of fear, exacerbated by SB 1070, Ari - free up legal services funds to represent bureaucracies collide. For all practical pur - zona’s unjust immigration statute, prevents detainees with U.S. citizen children. poses, undocumented parents who are family members from stepping up to care for While this is a story about Arizona, it detained in immigration detention centers children of detainees. exposes a problem and suggests remedies that “disappear” into the Immigration and Cus - A consortium of University of Arizona can be useful to child and immigration advo - toms Enforcement (ICE) system and lose programs commissioned this study to uncover cates in most other states. contact with their children. In Arizona, as else - the extent of the problem, which they found –Pam Chamberlain where, the state Child Protection Services to be so frequent that their recommendations agency assumes custody of children whose par - carry a tone of urgency. Since no formal poli - ents or relatives are unable to care for them. cies exist to untangle the knot of red tape, the The unpredictable timelines for immigration resolution of each case depends on the indi - cases, often months long, exceed the time a vidual personnel involved, which include

THE PUBLIC EYE 29 SUMMER 2011 The Public Eye

Unearthing Latina/o Voices on Family, icymakers of ways this model can be funded. counterterrorism tactics from the standpoint and Reproductive Justice, Unearthing Latina/o Voices is an excellent of whether they work to prevent terrorism. By Ena Suseth Valladares and Marisol Franco example of a survey designed by a community Given the weight of evidence against the California Latinas for Reproductive Justice, to uncover the actual beliefs and attitudes of effectiveness of controversial tactics, people Los Angeles, 2010, 20 pp. http://www.califor - its members, as opposed to a generic health - promoting their use the burden of prov - nialatinas.org/research/wp- care information tool that does not dig deep ing their efficacy. This report found that the content/uploads/2011/06/CLRJ-Unearthing- to answer questions about a particular group’s most effective counterterrorism measures are Latina-o-Voices.pdf issues and concerns. It should be a model to also the least controversial, including denying In June 2011 California Latinas for Repro - other states and advocacy groups about how terrorists safe haven, drying up funding chan - ductive Justice (CLRJ)released the results of to give those usually unheard a chance to nels, establishing multiple layers of port and a groundbreaking survey of 900 Latinas/os in express their concerns and values. border security, and preventing access to their state. Although Latinas/os will be the –Pam Chamberlain weapons of mass destruction. The authors majority of California residents by 2050, warn that intelligence agencies are flooded with inadequate information exists to inform advo - Targeted and Entrapped: Manufacturing information to analyze. Controversial tactics cates and policymakers about Latinas/os’ atti - the “Homegrown Threat” in the United like data-mining, secret searches, and tudes towards health, education, and family States racial/religious profiling increase the volume issues.This report highlights immigrant voices Center for Human Rights and Global Justice of useless background noise or decrease the vol - and reveals a strong, values-based set of atti - (New York: NYU School of Law, 2011). ume of terrorist signals. Data mining to pre - dict who will engage in terrorist activity is not tudes and beliefs about sexual health and Targeted and Entrapped examines three likely to be helpful. reproductive issues that may surprise some high-profile terrorism prosecutions in which The authors make a strong argument readers. One assumption is that Latinas/os do government informants devised terrorism plots against government programs such as Suspi - not support access to abortion services. that were then prosecuted.This report informs cious Activity Reporting, because there is lit - Another busted myth is that Latinas/os do not the debate about the human toll of the FBI’s tle reason to believe that terrorists openly believe that talking about sexuality with their pre-emptive counterterrorism strategy. It illu - engage in measurable behaviors that are both children is important. minates cases where informants held themselves substantially related to terrorism (that could out as Muslims who looked to incite other Mus - Report highlights include: be used to establish a signal, for example) and lims to commit acts of violence. 1. Overwhelming support among families are clearly distinguishable from the common In the Newburgh Four and the Fort Dix for communication about sexuality. behaviors of billions of nonterrorists. Five cases, informants pushed ideas about More than eighty percent of those sur - While the 9/11 Commission recom - violent jihad and actually encouraged the veyed “strongly agreed” that parents mended reorganizing and centralizing the defendants to believe it was their duty to take should talk to their children about sex - government’s fifteen or more intelligence action against the United States. Through uality and that women should have the agencies to promote efficacy, it did not rec - interviews with the defendants’ family mem - right to decide when to have their chil - ommend more surveillance tools. New tools bers, the authors document the human and dren. Many indicated that adolescent like warrantless national security letters have societal cost of the FBI’s dangerous policy of pregnancy and parenting were the result not led to the discovery of plots. Rather, cit - paying informants to concoct and foil plots. of a lack of family communication and izen informants, well-deployed undercover Family members lost their sons, husbands, access to sexuality education. agents, and tips from foreign intelligence brothers, or fathers and suffered stigmatiza - 2. The belief that everyone in the com - agencies are largely responsible for successful tion and economic harm. munity should have access to services terrorism investigations since 9/11. The report calls for a prohibition on using such as contraception, preventive health, Because the government depends on coop - informants to induce terrorism and implores pre-natal care, and medically accurate erative community relations to undermine ter - the FBI to abandon “preventative” policing information about pregnancy termina - rorists recruitment efforts, disrupt their that facilitates the criminalization of those who tion. networks, and foils their plans, the Break - “act Muslim,” rather than policing criminal 3. The feeling among respondents that through Institute suggests that security agen - cultural barriers affect the quality of activity. –Thomas Cincotta cies re-examine programs that risk escalating healthcare more than language issues. the unhelpful stereotyping of Muslim Amer - icans and chilling their support. In keeping with CLRJ’s commitment to Counterterrorism Since 9/11: Evaluating the Efficacy of Controversial Tactics –Thomas Cincotta advocacy, the report includes recommendations that call for the enforcement of existing laws, Nick Adams, Ted Nordhaus, and such as the requirement that sexuality educa - Michael Shellenberger tion be medically accurate and bias free; it (New York: Science of Security, 2011). endorses a model of community healthcare for The Breakthrough Institute’s study, Coun - Latinas/os called Promotores and reminds pol - terterrorism Since 9/11, evaluates questionable

THE PUBLIC EYE 30 SUMMER 2011 The Public Eye

Although the Quiverfull movement may WESTERN CIV seem marginal, the Marriage Vow and Repub - In June, the right-wing group Youth for lican signatories such as Bachmann and San - Western Civilization (YWC) held its first Eyes torum are dragging its misogynist message national conference in Washington, D.C. RIGHT into the mainstream. Although the group has about ten chapters around the country and has received media TAKE OFFTHOSE HIGH-TOPS coverage on MSNBC, the conference itself THE SIGNIFICANCE OF AN “I” In 1997, the radical filmmaker Michael attracted only 25 participants. However, In July, Republican presidential contenders Moore made the Nike athletic wear corpo - said YWC president and founder Kevin and ration infamous for exploiting its workers and DeAnna, the conference, and the group’s infuriated Democrats by signing The Mar - exporting jobs. In his film The Big One, activities until that point, are “just pro - riage Vow: A Declaration of Dependence on Moore confronted Nike CEO Phil Knight, logue.” Marriage and Family. The vow is promoted who told him, “Americans don’t want to The YWC website described the confer - by The Family Leader, which the reproduc - make shoes.” After years of protest by labor ence as “highly successful.” Participants tive justice blog RH Reality Check and human rights advocates, in 2001, Nike received training in campus organizing, (www.rhrealitycheck.org) describes as a “fed - agreed to stop its sweatshop practices and media relations, creating student publica - erally funded public advocacy organization instituted standards for its factories abroad. tions, and right-wing activism from “top associated with .” In According to the Associated Press (AP), political minds,” said the website. One of the addition to requiring signatories to be faith - Nike has usually met these standards in pro - most important lessons: “Unless you are ful spouses and to take political positions such duction of its brand-name products.This is politically feared, you will not be politically as supporting the Defense of Marriage Act, not the case, however, with Converse sneak - respected.” the vow outrageously asserts that a Black child ers, which Nike took over in 2003. DeAnna founded YWC in 2001 together born into slavery was “more likely to be Indonesian workers who make the sneak - with Joseph Epstein, while both were students raised by his mother and father in a two-par - ers, “say supervisors throw shoes at them, slap at the College of William and Mary. They ent household,” and is thus better off than a them in the face, and call them dogs and were trained by the , a Black child today. It also goes out of its way pigs”—deep insults in the majority-Muslim conservative organization that once trained to condemn what it calls “Sharia Islam.” country, says AP. And that is the least of it. Karl Rove and Jack Abramoff. While in col - The Family Leader’s logo capitalizes the Some Converse contractors’ treatment of lege, the two put most of their effort into a organization’s name—except for the “i” in their workers amounts to torture. At the PT series of articles denying the reality of gen - FAMiLY.This is not just a typographical trick, Amara Footwear factory near Jakarta, “a der discrimination and campus , for says RH Reality Check writer Vycki Garri - supervisor ordered six female workers to The Remnant, a right-wing newspaper. In son. A footnote on the Family Leader’s web - stand in the blazing sun after they failed to 2007, Epstein was convicted of a hate site explains that the lower-case “i” in its logo meet their target of completing sixty dozen crime for attacking a Black woman in Wash - symbolizes the group’s position that “self-cen - pairs of shoes on time. ‘They were crying and ington, D.C. He was phased out of the organ - tered adult egos and agendas in American allowed to continue their job only after two ization, but only two years later, in 2009 . families must be subordinated to the long- hours under the sun,’” Ujang Suhendi, a YWC chapters have brought speakers to term interests of American’s children.” In fact, warehouse worker the factory, told AP. An campus such as the White nationalist Richard the “egos” to be subordinated are women’s. internal investigation by Nike, released to AP, Spencer, and the group has close ties to right- The Marriage Vow includes a clause stating discovered “serious and egregious” abuse. wing figures ranging from Spencer to the that “robust childbearing and reproduction “Nearly two-thirds of 168 factories making anti-immigrant, former congressional rep - is beneficial [italics in the original]” to the U.S. Converse products worldwide fail to meet resentative . In May, Taylor This language and the small letter “i” signal Nike’s own standards for contract manufac - Rose, from the Liberty University chapter of support of the Quiverfull movement, which, turers,” says the report. YWC, represented the organization at the the says Garrison, “calls upon submissive wives Nike claims it cannot do much about the March for Freedom, an international anti- to stay at home to conceive and birth large situation, because the arrangements with Muslim demonstration held in Cologne, quantities of ‘foot soldiers for Jesus’ to advance the contractors predate the corporation’s Germany. “It would only make sense that a the Kingdom of God on earth.” Garrison her - takeover of Converse, and because the con - nation that stands for freedom would have self is a former Quiverfull mother who had tractors themselves subcontract the work to a representative there, cheering on the advanc - seven children in her “biblical family.” others. ing movement of the new European right- wing,” he said.

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