Not anymore. [...]]]> Welcome to the United States of Scam-erica. Or Griftopia, as Matt Taibbi calls it in his book on the Wall Street meltdown. “There are really two Americas,” Taibbi writes. For the grifter class, government is “a tool for making  money,” while “in everybody-else land, the government is something to be avoided.”

Not anymore. Here is the lesson Americans gleaned from the financial meltdown on and bailout of Wall Street: If the feds won’t prosecute ‘em, join ‘em. Corruption has trickled down.

Now the government haters have their hands out, too. One Georgia Christian school, for example, instructs parents in how to use a state scholarship program to launder their taxable income and turn it into tax-free tuition money. Georgia’s private school scholarship program launched in 2010 diverts about $50 million a year from state school budgets by giving “dollar-for-dollar tax credits” of up to $2,500 a couple for donations to nonprofit scholarship organizations that help needy students access private schools. As the New York Times reports:

That was the idea, at least. But parents meeting at Gwinnett Christian Academy got a completely different story last year … A handout circulated at the meeting instructed families to donate, qualify for a tax credit and then apply for a scholarship for their own children, many of whom were already attending the school.

Once the scholarship bill passed, the Times continues, “parents of children in private schools began flooding public school offices to officially ‘enroll’ their children.” To enroll, but not to attend. Rep. David Casas, one of the bill’s sponsors, explained why in a YouTube video (the video has been taken down; transcript by the Southern Education Foundation):

“Some people felt a little bit weird about that; felt it was a little dishonest that they would take their child, enroll them in a public school and not have them actually attend, but all of a sudden they actually qualify for a scholarship. I’m telling you, we deliberately put the wording in there for that.”

Georgia House Bill 325 is a reverse Robin Hood, a legal document worthy of the pay-day loan industry. Even Casas’ audience for the video worried that his scheme was a scam, but the Georgia Department of Education accepts his interpretation. Nevertheless, Johnathan Arnold, headmaster of Covenant Christian Academy in Cumming, Ga. views using the program to discount tuition for existing private school students “unethical.”

Similar back door voucher programs like Georgia’s are already in place in eight states, and recently approved in Virginia. Of course, these bills owe their parentage to the American Legislative Council (ALEC), and draw heavily on its model bill, The Family Education Tax Credit Program Act. Most of the private schools are religious, according to the Times, receiving what public school officials consider “poorly disguised state subsidies.” Because Georgia’s student scholarship organizations (SSOs) have been slow to award scholarships, money has piled up to be rolled over to future years. The Southern Educational Foundation found that instead of saving the state money in the short term, “the state government incurred an additional cost of $7,510 in financing a partial scholarship in a private school above and beyond what it would have paid in 2009 for the education of the same student in a public school.” That is, assuming all students who receive SSO scholarships had actually moved from struggling public schools to private ones (presumably better, but often not).

The Southern Education Foundation found that the low-income students are not the ones being helped by Georgia’s SSO scholarships. The highest growth in Georgia’s private school enrollment is in the 1/3 of schools located in rural areas. SEF concludes that “most of the private schools currently working with SSOs to receive tax funds to finance student scholarships are in the five counties that also have Georgia’s higher performing public high schools.” The report further suggests that most of the students receiving scholarship money to attend private schools had followed Casas’ strategy and had not actually transferred from public schools. Between 2007, the year before enactment, to 2009, the first full year of implementation, “private school enrollment increased only by about 1/3 of one percent in the Georgia metro counties where more than two out of every three private schools affiliated with an SSO are located.” And because they were already in private schools, these students are costing the state money it was not spending on them before.

North Carolina is preparing to join Georgia, Arizona, Florida, Indiana, Iowa, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, Virginia and Rhode Island. The Asheville Citizen-Times reports this week that North Carolina House Majority Leader Paul Stam, R-Wake introduced a bill that would give state corporations a tax credit worth up to “their entire yearly state tax debt” in exchange for contributions to funds run by nonprofit scholarship-funding organizations. Scholarships of up to $4,000 per year are allowed for pupils attending private schools. If passed, the law would allow the tax credit to be spread out over five years. Up to $40 million in credits are allowed starting in 2013, potentially increasing by 35 percent following each year in which donors claim 90 percent of the previous year’s credits. If successful, the program in theory could expand by 35 percent per year until consuming North Carolina’s entire state revenue stream for funding K-12 education. That makes State Board of Education Chairman Bill Harrison’s description of the bill as “the latest effort to dismantle public education” a modest understatement.

WRAL Raleigh observed that the U.S. Supreme Court “validated that middle-man approach” to funding vouchers in a ruling last year “against an Arizona lawsuit claiming violation of constitutional church-state separation requirements.” Scholarship funds avoid church-state separation issues by having donations collected and disbursed by the nonprofit groups. The money never passes through state hands.

At a rally organized to support the bill, Stam told several hundred people, “It is a beginning and it will be funded by corporations that believe in educational access for everyone.”

There’s the money quote. If you believe corporations contribute because they believe in “educational access,” watch how many turn up as investors in for-profit private schools, charters and virtual schools — partaking of both the middle-man profits and the corporate tax breaks. Now that’s the kind of government reform conservatives can get behind.

In confirmation, the Times recounts how over the past three years, working through the Bridge Educational Foundation, XTO Energy donated $650,000 in Pennsylvania — “as much as 90 percent” underwritten by taxpayers — to ingratiate itself with Pennsylvanians concerned about its hydraulic fracking operations and with politicians that regulate them. In Pennsylvania, Georgia and Arizona, it is industry lobbyists, politicians and staffers, not educators, running the largest scholarship funds. Because it is not about education reform, it is about the money.

Reagan taught that government is the problem. In post-financial meltdown America and in the absence of Wall Street prosecutions, with presidential candidates and major corporations hiding profits offshore to avoid taxes, with tech billionaires renouncing their U.S. citizenship rather than pay theirs (and being hailed as heroes in the financial press for doing it), scamming the taxpayers to subsidize your child’s private education seems like pretty acceptable behavior, even for churches. But it is not arising from dogmatic anti-governmentism. Small-time players have simply discovered what the big-time grifters already knew — that government is the enemy only so long as public tax dollars are going into someone else’s pockets. Thus, conservatives, fundamentalists and others have gotten behind the movement to “reform” public education by diverting public tax dollars into their own pockets in the name of providing more choices for the underprivileged.

Rep. Paul Stam, too, is selling his proposal as a way to help children from low-income families. Yet, one of his supporters at the rally, Michael Pratt, principal of Victory Christian Center School in Charlotte reports that his operation is suffering from low income of its own. The vaunted free market? Not so forgiving. Enrollment is off by 17 percent and contributions towards tuition are down in this recession. So as in other states with similar scholarship programs, North Carolina private schools with and without affiliated churches are looking to dip Scotch-taped fingers into the public collection plate, fishing for tens and twenties.

(Cross-posted from Scrutiny Hooligans.)

Omnipotent: In a kind of reverse transubstantiation The Market transmutes all things once holy into items [...]]]> In March 1999, Harvey Cox of Harvard Divinity School wrote of the emergence of a new “Supreme Deity, the only true God, whose reign must now be universally accepted and who allows for no rivals.” — The Market.

Omnipotent: In a kind of reverse transubstantiation The Market transmutes all things once holy into items for sale. Like land. “It has been Mother Earth, ancestral resting place, holy mountain, enchanted forest, tribal homeland, aesthetic inspiration, sacred turf, and much more. But when The Market’s Sanctus bell rings and the elements are elevated, all these complex meanings of land melt into one: real estate.”

Omniscient: “The Market, we are taught, is able to determine what human needs are, what copper and capital should cost, how much barbers and CEOs should be paid, and how much jet planes, running shoes, and hysterectomies should sell for.” Fickle as the gods of old, The Market’s every mood swing – apprehensive, relieved, nervous, uncertain, jubilant – gets reported by the seers of Wall Street and a breathless financial press.

And omnipresent: “The Market is not only around us but inside us, informing our senses and our feelings … it pursues us home from the mall and into the nursery and the bedroom.” Yet The Market itself must also be pursued, writes Cox. It “strongly prefers individualism and mobility. Since it needs to shift people to wherever production requires them, it becomes wrathful when people cling to local traditions.” Your human need for home, family, community must make obeisance to The Market. All men become rootless transients in one global marketplace. For this First Cause shall a man leave father and mother, and shall cleave to The Market: and the two shall be one flesh.

On the fiscal and Christian right, and among New Democrats and Third Way centrists, the new cosmology of The Market has been largely unchallenged. In fact, it is embraced. The stenographer press repeats econologians’ (Cox’s term) priestly pronouncements about The Market’s will so uncritically that a large swath of the public here and abroad accepted the new faith as dogma. Bill McKibben wrote of the Christian right, “by their very boldness [they] convince the rest of us that they must know what they’re talking about. They’re like the guy who gives you directions with such loud confidence that you drive on even though the road appears to be turning into a faint, rutted track.”

Across Europe, country after country followed the econologians’ bold promises that austerity would assuage The Market’s uncertainty and lead to economic recovery. Yet, Britain has gone down a rutted track to its first double-dip recession since the 1970s. Across Europe, there are few signs of the promised economic recovery. But now, The Market’s supposed beneficence looks more like the vulture capitalism Naomi Klein warned of — a chance for a well-heeled few to snap up taxpayer assets at fire-sale prices, as Russian oligarchs did after the Soviet Union collapsed. Europe is doubting the econologian catechism. In Ireland. In France and The Netherlands. In Greece, in Spain, Romania and in Portugal, people are awakening from the Austerians’ trance. Angela Merkel’s Germany appears “increasingly isolated.”

As Elijah challenged the prophets of Baal, it is time to challenge the econologians’ faith in The Market and in the Austerian gospel. A priest friend once had this shtick he used whenever someone presented some bold, unsupported assertion as fact. “Oh, yeah? Name five,” he demanded. Another friend (and another preacher’s kid) would rear up in his seat and, like the Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come, extend his arm full length, aim a finger at the offender and shout, “Defend that!”

It is past time that the press and liberal leaders displayed the cojones to do the same.

(Cross-posted from Scrutiny Hooligans.)

It’s ironic. The conservative [...]]]> Have you heard about Zombie ACORN? The conservative media is a-twitter with ACORN sightings over a year and a half after the right wing succeeded in killing off the voter-registering, community organizing group. Behind the 99% in the Occupy movement is ACORN, did you hear? They just won’t die.

It’s ironic. The conservative “pimp” with the video camera wore the outrageous outfit, but it’s Zombie ACORN conservatives report seeing everywhere like Elvis. (Elvis isn’t really dead, you know.)

Conservatives must have been the inspiration for the “Halloween” movies. For one, because of what Siskel and Ebert called the Calvinism berserko world view. That is: think about having sex and die. And two, because you can’t kill the Boogie Man.

Half a century after the Red Scare, American conservatives are still looking for Reds under their beds before they crawl beneath their sheets.

Two decades after the Berlin Wall came down and they declared that Saint Ronald of Reagan won the Cold War, conservatives are still fighting it. They’re still looking for commies in the woodpile.

Not even the Chinese are commies anymore. Have you seen Shanghai? They must have cornered the free market in concrete, glass and steel skyscrapers and the cranes to build them. They sure as hell cornered the market in capitalist jobs. And still, conservatives can’t get their heads out of their anti-communism.

They’re always resurrecting dead enemies, and rallying around the flag to fight things like the Boogie Man. Things that aren’t there.

Forty years after the Summer of Love, conservatives are still looking to punch hippies who aren’t there for wearing love beads that aren’t there, and for sticking daisies in gun barrels. Some memories are timeless, I guess.

The Bushies spent upwards of $1 trillion dollars that wasn’t there to look for weapons of mass destruction in Iraq that weren’t there because Saddam Hussein had an al Qaida connection that wasn’t there, in a war that wasn’t there until they invaded.

Now conservative legislators are rewriting election laws all across the country to prevent so-called voter fraud that isn’t there, obstructing Congress and slashing state budgets to ensure jobs aren’t there for millions of Americans, all so they can put a Marxist president who isn’t there out of a job.

The party of ideas that aren’t there would have you believe they are the only people prepared to lead America forward in the 21st century. Fourteen million Americans are out of work, desperate, and looking to their leaders for help. And where is the party of the 1% when the 99% needs them?

They aren’t there.

#OWS: Let Me Tell You Wall Street

Asshats a Little Something About

Hippies

One of the attack memes for right wingers and know nothings is that the Occupy Wall Street movement is merely the wacky [...]]]> We had to repost this gem from hippie One Pissed Off Liberal at Daily Kos:

#OWS: Let Me Tell You Wall Street

Asshats a Little Something About

Hippies

One of the attack memes for right wingers and know nothings is that the Occupy Wall Street movement is merely the wacky doings of hippies, or aging hippies, or dirty fucking hippies.

Now I don’t want to make this all about hippies…because it isn’t. The #OWS movement is a phenomenon all to itself. Blaming it on hippies is just typical weasel behavior from the champaigne-sippin’, caviar-dippin’ greedheads of Wall Street crowd – you know, the ones who got us into this mess in the first place. It’s just their way of avoiding responsibility, and boy howdy are they good at it.

But hippies, young and old, are involved…and that’s a damned good thing.

Let me tell you something about hippies. Hippies didn’t export anyone’s jobs, hippies didn’t lie us into an immoral war, hippies didn’t conspire to steal anyone’s pension funds, hippies didn’t order anyone tortured, hippies didn’t steal so much that it crashed the economy of the entire world, and hippies don’t go on national tv and spew nonsense and propaganda for a very nice living.

So go ahead and blame hippies for everything…as if they had ruled us for decades. We should be so lucky. But we weren’t that lucky – not by a long shot. Instead, we got you.

So if the hippies have some advice for you Wall Street assholes, maybe you should listen. You could do worse. You did do worse. You did a lot worse.

Hippies told you to mind your planet. Hippies told you to make love not war. Hippies told you to not let greed grab you. But did you listen?

No. You and your minions in Congress and elsewhere turned your backs on responsibility. You abandoned the people and sold your souls to the highest bidders. Consequences be damned.

You should thank what gods may be that there are still hippies, that there are still people who put humanity over corporate profits, that there are still those who insist that we do the right thing rather than the profitable thing. We just may save the planet from assholes like you.

Meanwhile, our bought-and-paid-for politicians can’t do shit:

Global warming? Sorry.

Unjust wars? Nope, nothing to be done.

An oppressive and unjust Military Industrial Complex? C’est la vie.

Class warfare by the 1% against the 99%? It’s only class warfare when we say it is.

The disastrous drug war? Whatcha gonna do?

Loss of precious civil rights? Quit yer bitchin’.

Mercenaries on the streets of America? What’s to worry about?

Corporate takeover of the country? Yawn.

No, our bought-and-paid-for politicians can’t do anything that doesn’t involve shoveling cash into the coffers of the already filthy-fucking-rich. And by their inaction they would doom us all.

You greed-deranged fools who have done these things to us had better hope that the dirty fucking hippies come riding to the rescue. Otherwise we are all going to suffer a fate that only you deserve.

I don’t care what anyone says, there is something sweet and pure about old hippies like Ben Masel and others. People who still retain their principles and ideals and are still willing to stand up for humanity in the face of unrelenting tyranny. They deserve respect not scorn. Bless them all.

Hippie photo gallery at dKos.

Something Happened

Between the time ten years ago when we had big surpluses and were paying off the debt and now when we are told the “Obama [...]]]> Just ten years ago this country was running huge surpluses and paying off its debt. But then we elected Obama and all hell broke loose. Oh, wait…

Something Happened

Between the time ten years ago when we had big surpluses and were paying off the debt and now when we are told the “Obama spending and deficit” mean we have to cut back on the things We, the People do for each other, something happened. Something changed. The things that happened, the things that changed, are being ignored in the current DC discussion about what we need to do to fix things.

Separation From Reality

This DC/Tea Party argument over deficits and the Reagan/Bush debt is completely separated from facts and history. And it is completely separated from what the public wants. There are things that we are supposed to just not remember and which seem to be taboo in the national media. There are things that are “off the table” for discussion, and certainly for solving our problems.

But here is some reality anyway, even if we’re not supposed to see it. Just ten years ago we were paying off debt at a rate that would have completely paid it all off by now. But under George W. Bush we cut taxes for the rich and more than doubled military spending. We deregulated and stopped enforcing laws. We let the big corporations run rampant. Our federal budget turned from huge surpluses to massive deficits, and Bush said it was “incredibly positive news” because it would lead to a debt crisis they could use to shock people into letting the corporate right privatize and thereby profit.

And then, under and because of Bush, our economy collapsed.

Deficits From Tax Cuts And Military Spending

Once again: the deficits are the direct result of tax cuts for the rich, and huge increases in military spending. Then that huge jump in already-large deficits up past the trillion-dollar level that occurred in Bush’s last budget was the result of the Bush-caused financial collapse. The economy collapsed and the government stepped in with hundreds of billions, even trillions, to rescue the wealthy, with “bailouts,” while doing little, even cutting back, on what our government does for We, the People. That all happened in Bush’s last budget year, not Obama’s first.

To Fix The Damage, Undo The Cause

The way to fix deficits is to undo the damage Bush did, by raising taxes on the rich, and cutting back the huge, bloated, extreme, massive, astonishing, incredible, stratospheric military budget. And we have to boost the economy by investing in rebuilding our infrastructure to get people employed. We have millions of jobs that need doing, while millions are looking for jobs. Then those people will be paying taxes instead of collecting unemployment and food stamps. And the infrastructure improvements will bosst our economy’s competitiveness. This is all so simple and obvious that only DC insider types could miss it.

Taxes And Spending = Democracy

Cutting spending doesn’t cut the need, it shifts the burden. Cutting government spending does not cut the costs to society and the overall economy of meeting those needs. Cutting government spending just shifts — or privatizes — those costs onto the backs of people who can’t afford to spend that money. That need and cost is still there in the economy, except without government — democracy — handling it, doing it for all of us, less expensively. Cutting government’s role opens those functions up to private profit, instead of We, the People taking care of and watching out for each other — and making the decisions.

Do you really think that if you phase out Medicare, that old people won’t still need the medical care? Of course they will still need it, but the government won’t be negotiating cost-savings for them, they’ll be on their own, up against the giant insurance monopolies.

In the 1950s the top tax rate was 90%, and the country’s economy worked a lot better for a lot more of us. We didn’t have big deficits. We certainly weren’t piling up huge debt. With high tax rates at the top, predatory, sell-the-farm business models didn’t make sense. We were investing in infrastructure, and that infrastructure made us competitive in world markets. We as a people were doing better every year, paying our bills, getting educated and becoming more civilized. This empowerment led to demands for equal rights for all of us.

Ignored By Media

The “both sides do it” major media is simply ignoring the majority of the public. But people aren’t fooled. Poll after poll (did I already say that?) shows that the public “gets it.” Poll after poll shows that the public wants our government to address jobs, not deficits, to restore top tax rates, to invest in America’s infrastructure, to leave Social Security and Medicare alone (or increase them,) and to put more money into education. Poll after poll.

The Public Wants Jobs

The public gets it. Poll after poll shows that Americans want their government focused on jobs, not deficits. The latest, from CNN, taken August 5-7, shows 49% of Americans think unemployment is the biggest issue facing the country, while only 27% say deficits. Only 16% say the deficit is the country’s biggest problem.

Rebuild The Dream

The The American Dream Movement is rolling out their Contract for the American Dream. The Tea-Party-fascinated press is largely ignoring this, but this movement represents the majority of the public, and can’t be ignored for long. I’ll be writing more about it later.

Also the Take Back the American Dream conference is coming up on Oct. 3. Click through and learn more.

This post originally appeared at Campaign for America’s Future (CAF) at their Blog for OurFuture. I am a Fellow with CAF.

Sign up here for the CAF daily summary.

There will be no guns allowed in this bar, even though Ohio’s GOP Governor John Kasich signed a bill into law this week that allows Ohio gun owners to carry concealed weapons [...]]]>

Ohio’s Capitol building is adding a bar that will sell beer, wine, and liquor, and feature “private happy hours” for Ohio lawmakers.

There will be no guns allowed in this bar, even though Ohio’s GOP Governor John Kasich signed a bill into law this week that allows Ohio gun owners to carry concealed weapons into bars.

What? You think your politicians want to get shot while tying one on? Ha!

The Columbus Dispatch reported on Friday that the Columbus statehouse will add its first ever full-scale bar within the next month that will be located where the existing coffee restaurant is on the building’s lower.

An Ohio agency that oversees the Statehouse said that the bar will be stocked with beer, wine, liquor, multiple flat-screen televisions and will hold “private happy hours” for state lawmakers and at certain as yet unspecified times, to the public. Suuuuure it will.

The new Statehouse bar really shouldn’t be too shocking to Ohioans. Afterall, Gov. Kasich’s economic recovery plan for Ohio is centered around alcohol:

Kasich last week unveiled his state budget proposal, which includes a plan to lease the state’s liquor distribution operation — which of late has drawn record profits — and use the cash to fund his private economic development machine.Since floating the idea earlier this year, the Republican governor says there have been plenty of potential takers. In fact, Ohioans’ propensity to consume more than ever, according to recent figures, has influenced the governor’s idea most.

“Over the years people drink more. It’s just a natural revenue stream,” Kasich said last Tuesday while outlining his proposal, drawing a smattering of laughter from reporters. “So, everybody wanted to buy it. Everybody was interested in it.”

But the governor says he isn’t making the liquor sales operation available to the open market. Instead, he’s keeping it in-house. Kasich has created JobsOhio, a private economic development corporation that will eventually replace the Ohio Department of Development and take over that agency’s main role of job recruitment and retention.

Now if you happen to be spending your last dimes drowning your sorrows after your Ohio home is foreclosed upon by wealthy bankers — or your job is outsourced to a foreign country in order to save even more money for the super-rich who make up the top 1% of the nation (The ones who are supposed to create jobs, which is the reason the GOP says we don’t dare touch their tax breaks!) you, too, can be helping Ohio’s floundering economy recover.

Perhaps if you’re lucky…Kasich’s brilliant jobs program can get you a job as a barista?

-Cross-posted at DailyKos.