In 2003 Rep. Stephen Buyer (Rep., Indiana) founded the Frontier Foundation that reportedly existed to attract donor dollars for education scholarships that were never offered to any student. Congressman Buyer also claimed that he doesn't recall where he got the original capital of $25.000 that he used to establish this group, according to Sharyl Attkisson of CBS news (Can A Donation Buy Legislation?).  The supposed non-profit organization shared office space with Buyer's political campaign office.  Apparently, his campaign manager handled operation of the Frontier Foundation.  The dirt discovered about Buyer, the Frontier Foundation, and top donors got a lot more interesting. The televised report is more detailed about the controversial favors that Buyer was doing as a lawmaker to the lobbyists that donated to the Frontier Foundation.

Apparently, the Frontier Foundation was created to attract lobbyists and donor dollars to Stephen Buyer in exchange for political favors on Capital Hill.

This reminds me of a report that I read years ago in a late 1990's issue of Mother Jones Magazine, titled Co-op Congress.  Members of both political parties were exposed for introducing, endorsing and voting on bills from which they profited in various ways.

Some things never change...

Rome's patron senators used to sit outside with giant pots to encourage the public to drop coins in them. The object was for people to rent a Roman senator's ears where they could tell the patron senator what they needed, or wanted.  If they paid enough money then they had a better chance of their cause being introduced to the senate.

Plutocracy lives on in modern-day governments.  Today, we Americans stand a much better chance of our issues being introduced to the House and Senate and supported by either, or both parties if we pay the politicians and each party enough money to buy their support.

When my grandmother seemed about 100 years old (though in reality she was only a young thing about the age I am now) she would turn to the obituary columns of the morning newspaper first. In the charming way know-it-all teenagers have I would scold her, suggesting that she was being morbid, and that she should be reading the news first, find out what was going on in the world, take an interest in political events, worry about the environment. But she unaccountably ignored my opinion and kept turning to the part of the paper where paragraphs were edged in black. And every so often she would exclaim "oh, so and so's mother has died" or "oh, so and so has died and they were only 62". It was a very practical interest. Her husband had already died, and she was at an age where the parents of friends, and the friends themselves, were starting to die off (in those days with a somewhat lower life expectancy than now), and she needed to know in order to grieve, express sympathy, offer help, attend funerals. She had also lived through two world wars, in one of which a husband and four brothers had served, in another where she had a son and son in law involved. And she was now in a time where her grandson and other people's grandsons had Vietnam looming as either an actual or a theoretical danger.

So an interest in death was a practical matter, information she needed to have to function in her society. But I suspect, looking back from a vantage point of someone about the same age she was then, that there was also a psychological aspect. She was at an age, as am I now, where your own body starts to give you echoes of mortality, near or far. In seeing the black-rimmed announcements of those who had died you were failing to see the ones of those who were still alive. And by implication, if your circle of friends were all still ok, then your family was still ok, still safe and secure, and so were you yourself. But the interest and the reassurance was at a very personal level. She had little interest in the deaths of strangers, why would she? And since all of her friends were behaving in the same way, for the same reasons, the newspaper was providing an obituary page as a service for those searches. Occasionally a death would emerge on the front page, but it would either be of someone important, like a prime minister, or involve some particular tragic circumstance.

This remained the pattern of media representation of death for many years, but in just the last few years a major change has come over the role of death in commercial television news. A typical bulletin now has the first third devoted to death. There will be car accidents, house fires, industrial accidents, people falling down cliffs, murders, drownings, plane crashes, disease, "bashings", sharks, home invasions. Bodies or body parts will be found, corpses will be recognisable or unrecognisable. People will have long "battles" with cancer, or die unexpectedly. The cameras will be there while the police search for bodies, find bodies, and load bodies into ambulances. They will be there when the grieving family chokes back tears to mourn their child or mother, will be in the church where children break down in reading eulogies, will get close ups of teary faces of pall bearers and widows, will be present later at memorial services, will follow up with images of the victim's family in situations where court cases deal with cause of death. We can't be far away from cameras in ambulances, emergency operating theatres, at autopsies, in morgues. In fact the first two are already beginning to happen.

Now this is not a service to viewers in the way the obituary pages are, this is a wallowing in the grief of strangers for the sake of entertainment. The programmers are betting on public necrophilia, that viewers will absorb all the death they are offered, will get, perhaps, some kind of thrill that they are still alive while someone else has died horribly. Will love sticky-beaking at other people's grief. Will love being scared silly by all the disasters that could befall them but haven't yet. Will picture themselves in the position of grieving widow, their children as orphans, their body racked with cancer, their home invaded, their brother stabbed in the street, their car engulfed in a ball of flame, and be glad that it wasn't them.

Programmers have no concern, it seems, for the invasions of privacy, the cheapening of emotion, the deadening of sensibility, the distortion of public policy, that all this exploitation of death involves. They see it as part of modern tv programming, on a par with reality shows that deliberately humiliate and damage contestants, "factually based" series for the glorification of gangsters, television programs in which the level of violence and sheer nastiness continues to escalate. Life it seems, is once again as cheap as it was to the Romans, watching murder and mayhem in the arena; or to the Elizabethans watching public floggings, burnings, hangings, and eviscerations.

Is that really how we want our society to develop? Or should the television front page go back to informing people about the issues that matter?

All David Horton's writing is on The Watermelon Blog.

http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/rupert-cornwell/rupert-cornwell-why-cant-the-us-learn-to-love-its-government-1816868.html

Rupert Cornwell: Why can't the US learn to love its government?

Out of America: Suspicion of rulers dates to the founding of the nation – and even Obama is unlikely to change that

The passions the measure has generated among its Republican opponents have been remarkable. One Republican Congresswoman has declared that health reform was a greater threat to America than Osama bin Laden and global terrorism, while John Boehner, the party's leader in the House, urged the protesters to join Republicans in "defending our freedom".

A neutral observer would not know whether to laugh or cry at this so-called "Super Bowl of Freedom", featuring inter alia a giant banner describing the proposals as "National Socialist Healthcare, Dachau, Germany, 1945". Yes, the tea-party movement, currently touring the country, contains more than its share of cranks and nutters. But the fringes, too, can express political truths. This particular truth is that Americans just can't bring themselves to love government.

When President Barack Obama came to power, the stage seemed set for government activism unmatched in decades. The parallels with the early 1930s were palpable. Talk of a second Great Depression was everywhere, economists were urging a "new New Deal", Franklin Roosevelt was suddenly back in fashion. Nine months on, however, the urgency seems to have vanished. And why this cooling of reformist ardour? True, the economy has improved (though not by much, as evidenced by the news that unemployment last month rose to 10.2 per cent, the highest level in a quarter of a century.) The huge deficits being run up by Washington are also legitimate cause for concern. A more important reason though is America's ancestral suspicion of government.

The governors' elections in New Jersey and Virginia last week, in which Mr Obama's Democrats were soundly defeated, were largely local affairs. But in so far as they sent a message to the party that controls the White House and both chambers of Congress, the message was plain: slow down, the voters said, don't force change down the people's throats. With a young and charismatic President who won power by promising change, it's easy to forget that the US is a conservative country. Mr Obama triumphed in 2008 not by harnessing a vast tide of liberalism, but by persuading the wavering centre that he was a better bet than another four years of discredited Republican policies. In Virginia and New Jersey, exit polls showed, the centrists (moderates, independents, call them what you will) changed their minds and decided to put on the brakes.

A fascinating Gallup survey last month found that despite the Democrats' victories in 2006 and 2008, fully 40 per cent of Americans, more than ever, describe themselves as conservative, while 36 per cent call themselves moderates. Only 20 per cent are avowed liberals. It's not a question of government having failed the country. It's just that Americans aren't comfortable with the beast when its role, as now, threatens to expand – even when the deficiencies of the unfettered free market have never been more glaring.

Mr Obama secured his record-breaking $787bn stimulus package last February, albeit with virtually no Republican support. But that might be it. Yes, the House will probably pass a version of healthcare reform, but the measure could yet founder in the Senate, where party discipline is weaker, and a 60 per cent majority is required to pass anything of significance. If it does fail, it will basically be for fear that the reform amounts to a "government takeover of healthcare". The most contentious part of the bill is the "public option" – whereby a publicly financed scheme would be set up to provide some competition to rapacious private insurers. But that option now hardly dares speak its name. Leading Democrats prefer to speak of a "consumer option".

And health care is but one of three massive public policy issues on the table, beside a green energy programme to combat climate change, and regulation of the financial markets, aimed at preventing a repeat of last year's crisis. But there's no guarantee any of them will get through. For Europeans, all three would be no-brainers: assured health coverage for all (or rather almost all), steps to reduce both pollution and imports of costly foreign oil, and curbs on the excesses of Wall Street. Not so in the US – because each implies a substantial increase in the role of government.

And it has been ever thus. Suspicion of government is as old as the Republic. The movement that turned up on Capitol Hill again last week takes its name, of course, from the Boston Tea Party of 1773. Americans like to see their War of Independence as a revolution against government – back then the far-away government in London that taxed the colonies without allowing them representation – and the habit has never died.

These days, one thing unites every presidential candidate: a readiness to denounce the federal government in Washington and all its works. That the candidate in question might have made a long and comfortable career in that den of corruption and iniquity makes not a scrap of difference. Usually – as now – the sentiment works to the advantage of Republicans, but not always. Sometimes, the beneficiary can be a genuine outsider like the eccentric Texan businessman Ross Perot, who in 1992 came closer to winning the White House than any independent in 80 years. Sometimes it takes on the hyperbolic aspect of the tea-party crowd, and last summer's raucous town-hall protests against health reform. And on occasion it spills over into tragedy, into the raw hatred of Timothy McVeigh, who blew up the federal government building in Oklahoma City in 1995, killing 168 people.

No one is more aware of how distrust of government is part of America's collective political DNA than Mr Obama. Whether he can tame it is another matter.

Dennis Kucinich blasted the voting congressional majority that voted for a bill that they did not bother to read.  That bill was intended to officially declare that when war crimes are committed, they didn't really happen.  The purpose of the bill was intended to protect certain war criminals. 

Any one that attempts to protect one group of war criminals may as well protect them all.

"Today we journey from Operation Cast Lead to Operation Cast Doubt. Almost as serious as committing war crimes is covering up war crimes, pretending that war crimes were never committed and did not exist.

Because behind every such deception is the nullification of humanity, the destruction of human dignity, the annihilation of the human spirit, the triumph of Orwellian thinking, the eternal prison of the dark heart of the totalitarian." - Dennis Kucinich:

Video and transcript of Kucinich's response are on the same page here.

http://www.theaustralian.com.au/business/markets/productivity-soars-as-us-on-the-mend/story-e6frg926-1225794888461

Meantime, the number of US workers filing new claims for jobless benefits fell by more than expected last week to its lowest level since the start of the year, data from the Labour Department showed.

Non-farm business labour productivity rose by an annual rate of 9.5 per cent in the July-to-September period as the economy recovered and employers saved money by slashing staff. Economists surveyed by Dow Jones Newswires had predicted a 7.0 per cent increase in third-quarter productivity.

A rise in productivity is ultimately good for companies, workers and the economy. More productive companies have greater profits, which allow them to pay higher wages. That also allows the economy to grow faster without generating inflation.

But during a difficult time for the economy, a short-term productivity rise can be a sign that companies slash workers faster that they cut output. In other words, stretching existing workers means hiring fewer new ones.

Still, economic recoveries have in the past generally followed a consistent pattern: first productivity grows, then employment rises, and finally wages increase.

Over the past few weeks, economic data have continued to show that the worst recession since the Great Depression appears to be winding down, with clear improvements in manufacturing and the housing sector.

Gross domestic product, a broad measure of economic activity, rose by an annualised 3.5 per cent in the third quarter as the US government's massive stimulus plan boosted consumer spending.

"Message to the Fed: subdued inflation trends it is," said Jonathan Basile, economist at Credit Suisse, in comments on the two latest economic reports.

In its declaration that interest rates would remain near zero for "an extended period," the Federal Reserve yesterday included new qualifiers explaining the conditions that would justify keeping rates low: "low rates of resource utilisation, subdued inflation trends, and stable inflation expectations."

The Fed voted to maintain the target federal-funds rate for interbank lending at a record-low range of zero to 0.25 per cent to bolster the fragile economic recovery.

Productivity is defined as output per hours worked. It rose 6.9 per cent in the second quarter of the year, revised up from a previously estimated increase of 6.6 per cent.

A key gauge of inflationary pressures within the productivity report plunged. Unit labour costs fell 5.2 per cent last quarter at an annual rate. Economists had expected a 4.5 per cent decline.

"Modest unit labour costs indicate that there are few short-term worries about inflation," said Steven Wood, chief economist at Insight Economics.

Big productivity gains are common at the end of a recession or beginning of a recovery. But the increases come at the expense of jobs.

The US employment report for October, out tomorrow (AEDT), is expected to show that the jobless rate stayed close to a 26-year high of 9.8 per cent in September.

In a separate report, the Labour Department said new claims for jobless benefits decreased by 20,000 to 512,000 in the week ended October 31. That is the lowest level since January 3. The previous week's level was revised to 532,000.

Economists surveyed by Dow Jones Newswires had expected a decrease of only 5000 claims.

The four-week moving average of new claims, which aims to smooth volatility in the data, fell by 3000 to 523,750 from the previous week's revised figure of 526,750. That is the lowest level since January 10.

Initial claims still remain at a fairly high level, suggesting the job market has a long recovery ahead.

But some economists still see positive signs in the recent decreases in the four-week-moving average, and the latest 20,000 decrease in initial claims also may suggest an improvement in labour conditions.

Recently, a family member of mine became an Alex Jones and 911 Truth devotee.  Ok, so it may not have been recently and it may have been building over time but it was only recently that I became aware of just how far from reality he has slipped.  He may worry some people but for me, he and his lovely wife are an endless source of amusement!

I was made aware of his new found status as conspiracy theorist/anti-government extremist when a mutual high school friend asked me if my dear cousin had flipped.  Apparently, he was posting an endless stream of "evil government" and "evil rich people" videos from the Alex Jones website.   I was curious about the videos so popped over to "Prison Planet" to see what the fuss was about.   Oh boy was I in for a treat!

I had seen the Truther sites before but Alex Jones was just a font of entertainment!  Apparently, the swine flu was created to kill people so the rich could sit back and gather up all the resources (not sure who will be left to produce the goods to maintain the rich lifestyle.)  Everybody will be tracked via microchip every moment of every day.   We are week away from martial law (in fact some states are already living under it).  the New World Order is out to destroy us all!

Now how do they prove this at Prison Planet?   Well, they take some carefully framed video clips and put them to an ominous soundtrack.  These videos actually make Michael Moore look like an honest, upstanding documentarian!

THEN...you get "expert" testimony in the form of people and youTube videos.   For instance if you want to prove it was thermite that was used to purposefully take down the World Trade Center, you show a youtube video of guys playing with it on a car.  They don't even have to show the science and math behind their "evidence" (it would take 18 thousand TONS of powdered thermite and a miracle burn that sent it horizontally), they just need that one video.  For those people that like the space laser theory for the WTC, a materials engineer that specializes in dental materials seems to be PERFECT **rolling eyes**.  The "experts" and "evidence" gain credibility just by being on the net and on Alex Jones' site!

Personally, I might be interested in one of their "theories" if they were to show their films ETHICALLY by presenting the whole story or with credible evidence/testimony/experts.  However, the proof they offer is more flimsy than a World Daily News piece on "Bat Boy" or "Big Foot".

Now, I did find one area of the site that I enjoyed THOUROUGHLY - the discussion boards.  It only takes a single comment ("Can you show me proof?") for the teeming masses to turn into a rabid mob foaming at the mouth.  It was like throwing a piece of meat into a pit of starving animals.  

Just a lesson people, if you do believe in this stuff - don't foam at the mouth if people ask you to prove your theories.   It makes you look insane.  If you think you have a valid conspiracy, discuss it logically - using your own words, not Alex Jones.   Show the proof.   Show the evidence.   If somebody questions the credibility of your evidence, explain why you think the source does have credibilty.  Otherwise, you sound like a member of the Jones' Cult (Jim or Alex, both are scary). 

My neighbour DoctorD recently had a thoughtful post on where conservatism was heading in the U.S. He also linked to the following article on the Becker-Posner blog on the same theme, which I thought said it all very well.

May 10, 2009

Is the Conservative Movement Losing Steam? Posner

I sense intellectual deterioration of the once-vital conservative movement in the United States. As I shall explain, this may be a testament to its success.

Until the late 1960s (when I was in my late twenties), I was barely conscious of the existence of a conservative movement. It was obscure and marginal, symbolized by figures like Barry Goldwater (slaughtered by Lyndon Johnson in the 1964 presidential election), Ayn Rand, Russell Kirk, and William Buckley--figures who had no appeal for me. More powerful conservative thinkers, such as Milton Friedman and Friedrich Hayek, and other distinguished conservative economists, such as George Stigler, were on the scene, but were not well known outside the economics profession.

The domestic disorder of the late 1960s, the excesses of Johnson's "Great Society," significant advances in the economics of antitrust and regulation, the "stagflation" of the 1970s, and the belief (which turned out to be mistaken) that the Soviet Union was winning the Cold War--all these developments stimulated the growth of a varied and vibrant conservative movement, which finally achieved electoral success with the election of Ronald Reagan in 1981. The movement included the free-market economics associated with the "Chicago School" (and therefore deregulation, privatization, monetarism, low taxes, and a rejection of Keynesian macroeconomics), "neoconservatism" in the sense of a strong military and a rejection of liberal internationalism, and cultural conservatism, involving respect for traditional values, resistance to feminism and affirmative action, and a tough line on crime.

The end of the Cold War, the collapse of the Soviet Union, the surge of prosperity worldwide that marked the global triumph of capitalism, the essentially conservative policies, especially in economics, of the Clinton administration, and finally the election and early years of the Bush Administration, marked the apogee of the conservative movement. But there were signs that it had not only already peaked, but was beginning to decline. Leading conservative intellectual figures grew old and died (Friedman, Hayek, Jeanne Kirkpatrick, Buckley, etc.) and others as they aged became silent or less active (such as Robert Bork, Irving Kristol, and Gertrude Himmelfarb), and their successors lacked equivalent public prominence, as conservatism grew strident and populist.

By the end of the Clinton administration, I was content to celebrate the triumph of conservatism as I understood it, and had no desire for other than incremental changes in the economic and social structure of the United States. I saw no need for the estate tax to be abolished, marginal personal-income tax rates further reduced, the government shrunk, pragmatism in constitutional law jettisoned in favor of "originalism," the rights of gun owners enlarged, our military posture strengthened, the rise of homosexual rights resisted, or the role of religion in the public sphere expanded. All these became causes embraced by the new conservatism that crested with the reelection of Bush in 2004.

My theme is the intellectual decline of conservatism, and it is notable that the policies of the new conservatism are powered largely by emotion and religion and have for the most part weak intellectual groundings. That the policies are weak in conception, have largely failed in execution, and are political flops is therefore unsurprising. The major blows to conservatism, culminating in the election and programs of Obama, have been fourfold: the failure of military force to achieve U.S. foreign policy objectives; the inanity of trying to substitute will for intellect, as in the denial of global warming, the use of religious criteria in the selection of public officials, the neglect of management and expertise in government; a continued preoccupation with abortion; and fiscal incontinence in the form of massive budget deficits, the Medicare drug plan, excessive foreign borrowing, and asset-price inflation.

By the fall of 2008, the face of the Republican Party had become Sarah Palin and Joe the Plumber. Conservative intellectuals had no party.

And then came the financial crash last September and the ensuing depression. These unanticipated and shocking events have exposed significant analytical weaknesses in core beliefs of conservative economists concerning the business cycle and the macroeconomy generally. Friedmanite monetarism and the efficient-market theory of finance have taken some sharp hits, and there is renewed respect for the macroeconomic thought of John Maynard Kenyes, a conservatives' bête noire.

There are signs and portents of liberal excess in the policies and plans of the new administration. There will thus be plenty of targets for informed conservative critique. At this writing, however, the conservative movement is at its lowest ebb since 1964. But with this cardinal difference: the movement has so far succeeded in shifting the center of American politics and social thought that it can rest, for at least a little while, on its laurels.