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The Public Eye, Summer 2011 Tea Party, p. 3 TheA PUBLICATION OF POLITICAL R PublicEyeESEARCH ASSOCIATES Summer 2011 • Volume XXVI, No.2 Arizona’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 Wisconsin 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 man 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 New Jersey 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, tax-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 Sarah Palin. 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 the Heritage Foundation, and media outlets such as FOX News 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 “free market.” 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, Massachusetts 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 Barack Obama signed the $787 billion economic stimulus bill into law 1 and one day after the White House announced $75 billion in direct aid to help homeowners refinance troubled mortgages, 2 CNBC commentator Rick Santelli delivered what became known as “the rant heard round the world.” Speaking from the floor of the Chicago 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 Wall Street 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 Federal Reserve 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 Sean Hannity 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 Drudge Report Dick 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 Google 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 The Guardian 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.
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