The Rigged Presidential "Debates"

Secret Collusion Between The Two Parties, Funded By Corporations, Run By Lobbyists

By Glenn Greenwald,

The way the two major parties control the presidential debates is a perfect microcosm of how political debates are restricted in general. Though typically shrouded in secrecy, several facts about this process have recently come to light and they are quite instructive.

I was on Democracy Now this morning along with George Farah discussing the ways these debates, designed to cast the appearance of fostering vibrant exchanges, are actually intended to constrict the range of debated views as much as possible. My segment (and the transcript to it) can be seen here, but it was the commentary of Farah - who is a genuine expert in the history of presidential debates - that I found revealing.

He described how the two political parties in the 1990s joined forces to wrest control over the presidential debates away from the independent League of Women Voters, which had long resisted the parties' efforts to shield their presidential candidates from genuine surprise or challenge. Now run by the party-controlled Commission on Presidential Debates, these rituals are designed to do little more than " eliminate spontaneity" and "exclude all viable third-party voices". Citing a just-leaked 21-page "memorandum of understanding" secretly negotiated by the two campaigns to govern the rules of the debates, Farah recounted:

"We have a private corporation that was created by the Republican and Democratic parties called the Commission on Presidential Debates. It seized control of the presidential debates precisely because the League was independent, precisely because this women's organization had the guts to stand up to the candidates that the major-party candidates had nominated. And instead of making public these contracts and resisting the major-party candidates' manipulations, the commission allows the candidates to negotiate these 21-page contracts that dictate all the fundamental terms of the debates."

Gawker's John Cook has an excellent breakdown of the 21-page memo. In his piece, entitled "Leaked Debate Agreement Shows Both Obama and Romney are Sniveling Cowards", Cook details how the rules imposed on these debates demonstrate that, above all else, "both campaigns are terrified at anything even remotely spontaneous happening."

Under this elaborate regime, the candidates "aren't permitted to ask each other questions, propose pledges to each other, or walk outside a 'predesignated area.'" Worse, "the audience members posing questions aren't allowed to ask follow-ups (their mics will be cut off as soon as they get their questions out). Nor will moderator Candy Crowley." The rules even "forbid television coverage from showing reaction shots of the candidates".

All of this means, as Farah put it:

"The town hall debate we're going to see tonight is the most constrained and regulated town hall debate in presidential debate history. The first town hall debate was introduced in 1992, and no one knew what anyone was going to ask, none of the audience members were going to ask. The moderator could ask any follow-up questions. It was exciting, and it was real.

"Well, President George H.W. Bush stumbled in response to an oddly worded question about the federal deficit, and the candidates - the campaigns have panicked and have attempted to avoid that kind of situation from happening again. In 1996, they abolished follow-up questions from the audience.

"In 2004, they began requiring that every single question asked by the audience be submitted in advance on an index card to the moderator, who can then throw out the ones he or she does not like. And that's why the audience has essentially been reduced, in some ways, to props, because the moderator is still ultimately asking the questions.

"And this election cycle is the first time that the moderator herself is prohibited from asking follow-up questions, questions seeking clarification. She's essentially reduced to keeping time and being a lady with a microphone."

Making matters worse still, the Commission is run by lobbyists and funded by large corporations. As Zaid Jilani writes today, the two Commission co-chairmen are former GOP Chairman Frank J. Fahrenkopf, Jr. and former Clinton spokesman Michael D. McCurry. Fahrenkopf is one of the nation's leading lobbyists for the gaming industry, while McCurry advises a long list of corporate clients including the telecom industry.

The debates are paid for by large corporate sponsors, including Anheuser-Busch Companies. As Jilani writes, "in the past, the tobacco industry, AT&T, and others have all been sponsors." And as Farah describes, with all that sponsorship comes the standard benefits:

"FARAH: 'First, the just nice advertising, of course. They get to - you know, Philip Morris sponsored one of the presidential debates, paid $250,000 and got to hang its banner in the post-debate spin room that was seen throughout the country. But more importantly, they get access, and they get to show support for both major parties.'

"AMY GOODMAN: 'The major parties on their podiums have Bud Light on the podium?'

"FARAH: 'Not yet. We're getting there. We're getting there, Amy. But they get to show support for both major parties. How often can corporations find a way to make a single donation that strengthens both the Republican and Democratic parties and get a tax deduction for that kind of donation? So it's a rare contribution. And it also gives them access. They get to go to the actual debate themselves and rub shoulders at private receptions with the campaigns and their staff.'"

Meanwhile, the moderators were selected to ensure that nothing unexpected is asked and that only the most staid and establishment views are heard. As journalism professor Jay Rosen put it when the names of the moderators were unveiled, using terms to describe those views that are acceptable in Washington media circles and those which are "fringe":

"In order to be considered as a candidate for moderator you have to be soaked in the sphere of consensus, likely to stay within the predictable inner rings of the sphere of legitimate controversy, and unlikely in the extreme to select any questions from the sphere of deviance."

Here then, within this one process of structuring the presidential debates, we have every active ingredient that typically defines, and degrades, US democracy. The two parties collude in secret. The have the same interests and goals. Everything is done to ensure that the political process is completely scripted and devoid of any spontaneity or reality.

All views that reside outside the narrow confines of the two parties are rigidly excluded. Anyone who might challenge or subvert the two-party duopoly is rendered invisible.

Lobbyists who enrich themselves by peddling their influence run everything behind the scenes. Corporations pay for the process, which they exploit and is then run to bolster rather than threaten their interests. The media's role is to keep the discourse as restrictive and unthreatening as possible while peddling the delusion that it's all vibrant and free and independent and unrestrained. And it all ends up distorting political realities far more than illuminating them while wildly exaggerating the choices available to citizens and concealing the similarities between the two parties.

To understand the US political process, one can just look to how these sham debates are organized and how they function. This is the same process that repeats itself endlessly in virtually every other political realm.

Via: "The Guardian"

Collusion Between The New York Times and CIA

Mark Mazzetti's emails with the CIA expose the degradation of journalism that has lost the imperative to be a check to power

Glenn Greenwald reports in "The Guardian",

The rightwing transparency group, Judicial Watch, released Tuesday a new batch of documents showing how eagerly the Obama administrationshoveled information to Hollywood film-makers about the Bin Laden raid. Obama officials did so to enable the production of a politically beneficial pre-election film about that "heroic" killing, even as administration lawyers insisted to federal courts and media outlets that no disclosure was permissible because the raid was classified.

Thanks to prior disclosures from Judicial Watch of documents it obtained under the Freedom of Information Act, this is old news. That's what the Obama administration chronically does: it manipulates secrecy powers to prevent accountability in a court of law, while leaking at will about the same programs in order to glorify the president.

But what is news in this disclosure are the newly released emailsbetween Mark Mazzetti, the New York Times's national security and intelligence reporter, and CIA spokeswoman Marie Harf. The CIA had evidently heard that Maureen Dowd was planning to write a column on the CIA's role in pumping the film-makers with information about the Bin Laden raid in order to boost Obama's re-election chances, and was apparently worried about how Dowd's column would reflect on them. On 5 August 2011 (a Friday night), Harf wrote an email to Mazzetti with the subject line: "Any word??", suggesting, obviously, that she and Mazzetti had already discussed Dowd's impending column and she was expecting an update from the NYT reporter.

A mere two minutes after the CIA spokeswoman sent this Friday night inquiry, Mazzetti responded. He promised her that he was "going to see a version before it gets filed", and assured her that there was likely nothing to worry about:

"My sense is there a very brief mention at bottom of column about CIA ceremony, but that [screenwriter Mark] Boal also got high level access at Pentagon."

She then replied with this instruction to Mazzetti: "keep me posted", adding that she "really appreciate[d] it".

Moments later, Mazzetti forwarded the draft of Dowd's unpublished column to the CIA spokeswoman (it was published the following night online by the Times, and two days later in the print edition). At the top of that email, Mazzetti wrote: "this didn't come from me … and please delete after you read." He then proudly told her that his assurances turned out to be true:

"See, nothing to worry about."

This exchange, by itself, is remarkably revealing: of the standard role played by establishment journalists and the corruption that pervades it. Here we have a New York Times reporter who covers the CIA colluding with its spokesperson to plan for the fallout from the reporting by his own newspaper ("nothing to worry about"). Beyond this, that a New York Times journalist – ostensibly devoted to bringing transparency to government institutions – is pleading with the CIA spokesperson, of all people, to conceal his actions and to delete the evidence of collusion is so richly symbolic.

The relationship between the New York Times and the US government is, as usual, anything but adversarial. Indeed, these emails read like the interactions between a PR representative and his client as they plan in anticipation of a possible crisis.

Even more amazing is the reaction of the newspaper's managing editor, Dean Baquet, to these revelations, as reported by Politico's Dylan Byers:

"New York Times Managing Editor Dean Baquet called POLITICO to explain the situation, but provided little clarity, saying he could not go into detail on the issue because it was an intelligence matter.

"'I know the circumstances, and if you knew everything that's going on, you'd know it's much ado about nothing,' Baquet said. 'I can't go into in detail. But I'm confident after talking to Mark that it's much ado about nothing.'

"'The optics aren't what they look like,' he went on. 'I've talked to Mark, I know the circumstance, and given what I know, it's much ado about nothing.'"

There is so much to say about that passage.

First, try though I did, I'm unable to avoid noting that this statement from Baquet – "the optics aren't what they look like" – is one of the most hilariously incoherent utterances seen in some time. It's the type ofmeaningless, illiterate corporatese that comes spewing forth from bumbling executives defending the indefensible. I've read that sentence roughly a dozen times over the last 24 hours and each time, it provides me with greater amounts of dark amusement.

Second, look at how the New York Times mimics the CIA even in terms of how the newspaper's employees speak: Baquet "provided little clarity, saying he could not go into detail on the issue because it was an intelligence matter". In what conceivable way is Mazzetti's collusion with the CIA an "intelligence matter" that prevents the NYT's managing editor from explaining what happened here?

This is what the CIA reflexively does: insists that, even when it comes to allegations that they have engaged in serious wrongdoing, you (and even courts) cannot know what the agency is doing because it is an "intelligence matter". Now, here we have the managing editor of the Newspaper of Record reciting this same secrecy-loving phrase verbatim– as though the New York Times is some sort of an intelligence agency whose inner workings must be concealed for our own safety – all in order to avoid any sort of public disclosure about the wrongdoing in which it got caught engaging. One notices this frequently: media figures come to identify so closely with the government officials on whom they report that they start adopting not only their way of thinking, but even their lingo.

Third, note how Baquet proudly touts the fact that he knows facts to which you are not and will not be privvy:

"I know the circumstances, if you knew everything that's going on, you'd know it's much ado about nothing."

Isn't the function of a newspaper supposed to be to tell us "everything that's going on", not to boast that it knows the circumstances and you do not?

Baquet's claim that this was all "much ado about nothing" did not, apparently, sit well with at least some people at the New York Times, who seem not to appreciate it when their national security reporter secretly gives advanced copies of columns to the CIA spokesperson. Shortly after Baquet issued his ringing defense of Mazzetti's behavior, a spokesperson for the paper not only provided the details Baquet insisted could not be given, but also made clear that Mazzetti's conduct was inappropriate:

"Last August, Maureen Dowd asked Mark Mazzetti to help check a fact for her column. In the course of doing so, he sent the entire column to a CIA spokeswoman shortly before her deadline. He did this without the knowledge of Ms Dowd. This action was a mistake that is not consistent with New York Times standards."

It may be "inconsistent with the New York Times standards" for one of its reporters to secretly send advanced copy to the CIA and then ask that the agency delete all record that he did so: one certainly hopes it is. But it is not, unfortunately, inconsistent with the paper's behavior in general, when it comes to reporting on public officials. Serving as obedient lapdogs and message-carriers for political power, rather than adversarial watchdogs over power, is par for the course.

The most obvious example of this is the paper's complicity with propagating war-fueling falsehoods to justify the attack on Iraq – though, in that instance, it was hardly alone. Just last month, it was revealed that the NYT routinely gives veto power to Obama campaign officials over the quotes from those officials the paper is allowed to publish – a practicebarred by other outlets (but not the NYT) both prior to that revelation andsubsequent to it.

Worse, the paper frequently conceals vital information of public interest at the direction of the government, as it did when it learned of George Bush's illegal eavesdropping program in mid 2004 but concealed it for more than a year at the direction of the White House, until Bush was safely re-elected; as it did when it complied with government directives toconceal the CIA employment of Raymond Davis, captured by Pakistan, even as President Obama falsely described him as "our diplomat in Pakistan" and as the NYT reported the president's statement without noting that it was false; and as it did with its disclosure of numerous WikiLeaks releases, for which the paper, as former executive editor Bill Keller proudly boasted, took direction from the government regarding what should and should not be published.

And that's all independent of the chronic practice of the NYT to permit government officials to hide behind anonymity in order to disseminate government propaganda – or even to smear journalists as al-Qaida sympathizers for reporting critically on government actions – even when granting such anonymity violates its own publicly announced policies.

What all of this behavior from the NYT has in common is clear: it demonstrates the extent to which it institutionally collaborates with and serves the interests of the nation's most powerful factions, rather than act as an adversarial check on them. When he talks to the CIA spokesperson, Mazzetti sounds as if he's talking to a close colleague working together on a joint project.

It sounds that way because that's what it is.

One can, if one wishes, cynically justify Mazzetti's helpful co-operation with the CIA as nothing more than a common means which journalists use to curry favor with their sources. Leave aside the fact that the CIA spokesperson with whom Mazzetti is co-operating is hardly some valuable leaker deep within the bowels of the agency but, in theory, should be the supreme adversary of real journalists: her job is to shape public perception as favorably as possible to the CIA, even at the expense of the truth.

The more important objection is that the fact that a certain behavior is common does not negate its being corrupt. Indeed, as is true for government abuses generally, those in power rely on the willingness of citizens to be trained to view corrupt acts as so common that they become inured, numb, to its wrongfulness. Once a corrupt practice is sufficiently perceived as commonplace, then it is transformed in people's minds from something objectionable into something acceptable. Indeed, many people believe it demonstrates their worldly sophistication to express indifference toward bad behavior by powerful actors on the ground that it is so prevalent. This cynicism – oh, don't be naive: this is done all the time – is precisely what enables such destructive behavior to thrive unchallenged.

It is true that Mazzetti's emails with the CIA do not shock or surprise in the slightest. But that's the point. With some noble journalistic exceptions (at the NYT and elsewhere), these emails reflect the standard full-scale cooperation – a virtual merger – between our the government and the establishment media outlets that claim to act as "watchdogs" over them.

From "All the news that's fit to print" to "please delete after you read" and cannot "go into detail because it is an intelligence matter": that's the gap between the New York Times's marketed brand and its reality.

* * * * *

UPDATE: The Times' Public Editor weighed in on this matter today, noting his clear disapproval for what Mazzetti did: 

"Whatever Mr. Mazzetti's motivation, it is a clear boundary violation to disclose a potentially sensitive article pre-publication under such circumstances. This goes well beyond the normal give-and-take that characterizes the handling of sources and suggests the absence of an arm's-length relationship between a reporter and those he is dealing with."

While Mazzetti himself expresses regret for his behavior -- "It was definitely a mistake to do. I have never done it before and I will never do it again" -- both he and Executive Editor Jill Abramson insist that he had no bad intent, but was simply trying to help out a colleague (Dowd) by having her claims fact-checked. Like Baquet, Abramson invokes secrecy to conceal the key facts: "I can't provide further detail on why the entire column was sent."

The question raised by these excuses is obvious: if Mazzetti were acting with such pure and benign motives, why did he ask the CIA to delete the email he sent? This appears to be a classic case of expressing sorrow not over what one did, but over having been caught.

On a different note, Politico's Byers, in response to my inquiry, advises me that Baquet did indeed say what Byers attributed to him -- "he could not go into detail on the issue because it was an intelligence matter" -- and that his exact quote was: it "has to with intel."

Lobbying For War

By Philip Giraldi, 
March 15, 2012 
Courtesy Of "Anti-War"

There has been considerable discussion of the meaning, or lack thereof, of the apparent difference of opinion between the United States and Israel over both the desirability and the possible timing of going to war with Iran. Those Americans who still revere the Constitution and the advice of the Founding Fathers should rightly be appalled that a war is even being considered on behalf of a small client state with which the United States has no treaty obliging such intervention. War with Iran would undoubtedly follow the usual pattern, being authorized by the White House without the constitutionally mandated declaration of war by Congress and likely developing out of an evolving situation in which Israel is being given a free pass to initiate the conflict.

That the United States is in such a parlous condition is directly due to the effective work of Israel’s principal lobby in Washington, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), which has just completed its annual convention. Consider what AIPAC and its friends in Congress and the media have accomplished: Understanding that the truth about Iran would not support their case, they have completely skewed the narrative about the threat posed by that country. Iran has no nuclear weapon, has not made a decision to acquire one, and may not even have the technical ability or financial resources to do so even if its government decides to move in that direction. Yet, AIPAC has succeeded in convincing the American public that Iran is already a nuclear power and is somehow a threat to the United States, all despite the fact that Iran, far from being an aggressor,  has been on the receiving end of covert operations run by Washington and Tel Aviv that have killed scores of Iranians. President Barack Obama has unhesitatingly endorsed the AIPAC line, emphasizing in his speech to that organization on March 4 that Iran is a security problem for the United States and the entire world, an elaboration straight out of Israel’s playbook that was noted approvingly by no less than Tom Friedman of The New York Times. Friedman asks “whether he [Obama] is the most pro-Israel president in history or just one of the most.”

AIPAC has also been effective in lining up Capitol Hill in its support. One third of Congress attended the AIPAC conference, and a number of individual legislators have been actively promoting the lobby’s line. Sen. Carl Levin is now calling for a military blockade of Iran, a clear act of war. Thirty-two senators, including Lindsey Graham, John McCain, and Joe Lieberman, are supporting legislation that will essentially authorize taking military action against Iran because it has the “capability” to create a nuclear weapon, a line that has already been crossed by Tehran as well as by other states in the region, including Turkey, Egypt, and Saudi Arabia. Why pick on Iran? Because that is what Israel wants (Israel, one might add, has, unlike Iran, attacked a number of its neighbors in recent years). Israel also possesses its own secret nuclear arsenal, giving it a combination of political recklessness and potentially cataclysmic military power that apparently causes no heartburn in Congress.

It is being argued in some circles that Obama has been resisting the Israeli drive to go to war because his defense and intelligence chiefs insist that the “red line” with Tehran is the actual possession of a nuclear weapon, but is that really true? He has muddied that apparent position by insisting that he will “prevent” the Iranians from obtaining the bomb. Prevention means preemption, possibly based on the same type of fabricated intelligence Americans saw in the lead-up to Iraq. To be sure, the Pentagon and the intelligence community are undeniably cool on the prospect of a new war in the Middle East, understanding clearly that the unintended consequences after the last bomb is dropped could be devastating to the economy and to the sustainability of the remaining American presence in places like Afghanistan. Joint Chiefs Chairman Martin Dempsey has been active in trying to persuade the Israelis to defer action,stating both that Iran is a “rational actor” and that a war right now would serve no one’s interest. For his pains, Dempsey has been called everything short of an idiot and his judgment has been denounced by strategic geniuses such as Rick Santorum and Newt Gingrich. In truth, Iran has been demonized to a point where it is difficult to imagine any nonviolent way out of the current contretemps.

Would that Obama had stood firm behind Dempsey, but he did not. Instead, in hisinterview with The Atlantic’s Jeffrey Goldberg that preceded his speech at AIPAC, he does little more than pander to the Jewish community by offering bromides and assurances. He told both Goldberg and AIPAC that the United States has “Israel’s back” and that the U.S. commitment to Tel Aviv’s security is unquestioned while assiduously avoiding the fact that Israel pays little regard to Washington’s regional and global interests. There is no nuance in statements like those made by the American president. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who repeatedly and hyperbolically calls Iran a threat to the whole world, has the whip hand in the relationship and he knows it, even if Obama thinks that he might have contrived some wiggle room. Steve Clemons correctly describes it as “the emotional and political leverage that Netanyahu has engineered over Obama.” Ironically, it creates one of those exceedingly rare moments in which one might wish for the return of George W. Bush. Bush, for all his manifest failings, told Israel not to attack Iran, and the Israelis respected or feared him enough to desist.

Or, to make the same point in another way, if Israel attacks Iran next week and Iran retaliates, a virtual certainty, then the United States will inevitably become involved in the conflict, with Congress and the media leading the charge, just as they did against Iraq. On March 9, 86 Republican members of Congress demonstrated how it will work, sending a letter to Obama pledging “unwavering support” for Israel and concluding that the White House must “make our offer of support and assistance to Israel crystal clear if Israel finds it necessary to take action against Iran.” So Israel is empowered to make the decision whether America goes to war or not, at least for those 86 Republicans, who would almost certainly be joined by numerous Democrats. Given that reality, if someone can come up with an alternative scenario in which automatic American involvement does not take place, it has yet to be explained plausibly. Will Obama simply refuse to play? In an election year? Not likely. Many are convinced the war is coming, including White House senior staff.

So what can the rest of us do when the war comes? Very little. The only man who can conceivably stop it, President Obama, is clearly thinking of timing. If the fighting starts too soon and goes sour, which it will, he will lose the presidency. If it happens just before elections, he can pitch in to help brave little Israel and ride to victory as the latest in America’s unforgettable series of wartime presidents. If there is no war at all, Obama wins because he kept the peace. So the timing must be right if there is a war, and this is another thing that the Israelis understand. They and AIPAC can make or break Obama, and the president can do little to derail the process. Will Bibi want to continue with the man he dislikes and distrusts in the White House or will he feel more comfortable with Mitt Romney, a man who has already stuffed his foreign policy team with the same neoconservative Israel-firsters who brought about Iraq and who genuinely do have Netanyahu’s back come hell or high water? Stay tuned.

US Democracy Being Bought and Sold

How Corporations, Unions and Political Action Committees Are Shaping The Candidate Pool. 

Courtesy Of "Al-Jazeera"

Has money corrupted US politics beyond repair? The landmark Supreme Court case Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission ruled that individuals working through corporations, unions, or independent political action committees, known as SuperPACs, could make unlimited campaign contributions. Now, candidates can depend on a handful of the wealthy in America to fund their campaigns even when they lack strong grassroots support.

In this episode of The Stream, we speak with Buddy Roemer, a Republican presidential candidate and former Governor of Louisiana, about the 2012 election. Also joining the show is Dylan Ratigan, host of The Dylan Ratigan Show and author of “Greedy Bastards.”

What do you think? What impact do these large donations have on US democracy? Send us your thoughts and comments on Facebook or Twitter using hashtag #AJStream.

On February 1, Super PACs were required to disclose the identities and dollar amounts of those who contributed to them through the end of 2011. Restore Our Future, the Super PAC that supports Mitt Romney, has raised by far the greatest amount at $30.2 million. Winning Our Future, the Super PAC that supports Newt Gingrich, has raised $2.1 million through 2011. After the reporting period ended, however, the Super PAC received an additional $10 million from multi-billionaire casino mogul Sheldon Adelson.

Karl Rove, former senior advisor and deputy chief of staff to former President George W. Bush, has a Super PAC named American Crossroads which raised $18.4 million in 2011. The Federal Election Commission files reveal that 10 billionaires contributed to the Super PAC. American Crossroads also has an affiliate organization called Crossroads GPS which does not disclose its donors.

This New York Times infographic gives a detailed outline of all the ways that campaign funds can be given, received, and used.

Robert Reich, former US Labor Secretary and chairman of the nonpartisan citizen lobby Common Cause, explains how the Citizens United ruling allows corporations and wealthy individuals to donate unlimited funds and influence elections.

This infographic shows the political clout of the richest one one-hundredth per cent of Americans, who contribute a quarter of all the funds given to federal political campaigns. 




Dylan Ratigan hosts his own television show on MSNBC where he frequently criticises the relationship between corporations and the government. He was formerly a managing editor at Bloomberg LP and host of CNBC's Fast Money. He left both posts after what he believed to be the US government's mishandling of the 2008 global financial crisis. Ratigan frequently criticises the government's banking, trade, and tax policies and expresses solidarity with the Occupy Wall Street movement. This video shows him addressing the Occupy crowd in New York City during the early weeks of the movement.





Ratigan labels the relationship between outside money and politics as an "unholy alliance." He highlights parts of the political process that need reform, such as closed primaries and gerrymandering, and offers his solution to the problems.




Ratigan is vocal about his desire for a constitutional amendment that bans outside money from entering politics. He also proposes Congress pass a 100 per cent tax on campaign funds until the amendment passes. 




Ratigan is currently spearheading a campaign called Get Money Out. The website asks citizens to sign an online petition to show their support in removing all outside money in politics. The map below shows the locations of the 250,000+ Americans who have signed the online petition as of February 1.




Outside spending on political ads in the current Republican primary is up 1,600 per cent compared to 2008, largely due to the Super PACs which funded almost half of the ads. This animated ad is sponsored by the pro-Gingrich Super PAC Winning Our Future, which tries to equate Mitt Romney's policies with Barack Obama's.





Winning Our Future also produced a short documentary entitled "Blood Money," which has a considerably sinister tone. The documentary highlights the connection between Bain Capital, a company co-founded by Mitt Romney, and Damon Corporation, a company found guilty of Medicare fraud.

Pro-Romney Super PAC Restore Our Future has produced its own set of negative campaign ads. This particular ad is not by a Super PAC but directly from Mitt Romney's camp, highlighting Gingrich's monetary gain from the home foreclosure crisis in Florida. 





The Sunlight Foundation, a nonpartisan, nonprofit organization that promotes greater government transparency, created a scathing video condemning the Citizens United ruling and what the organization believes will result in a marred 2012 election as a result.





A protester at Occupy Philadelphia voices his thoughts on why money should not intermingle with politics and calls for "a separation of business and state."





A survey by the Princeton Survey Research Associates International reveals only half of Americans are aware of the Citizens United ruling that allows for unlimited independent expenditures to Super PACs. The majority of those who are aware of the ruling see it as a negative influence.




The majority of those polled, across all political party affiliations, agree that the Citizens United ruling allowing for Super PACs have a negative effect in the political campaigning process.








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Confessions Of A Recovering Weapons Addict

By William J. Astore and Tom Engelhardt, 
January 25, 2012 
Courtesy Of "Anti-War"

The 21st century hasn’t exactly been America’s greatest moment. Still, there remain winners, along with all the losers you might care to mention. If, in fact, you were to sum up the first decade-plus of the next “American Century” in manufacturing terms, you might say that — Steve Jobs aside — this country has mainly been successful at making things that go boom in the night. Start with Hollywood. Its action and superhero films — the very definition of what goes boom in the night — continue to capture eyeballs and dominate global markets in ways that should impress and that have left national movie industries elsewhere in the proverbial dust. And then, of course, there’s that other group of winners, the arms-makers of the military-industrial-homeland-security complex. They’ve had the time of their lives these last boom years (so to speak), with national security budgets soaring annually beyond all imagination.

Even now, in the toughest of tough times and despite the headlines about gigantic Defense Department spending cuts, President Obama recently reassured arms-makers (and the rest of us) that the Pentagon budget would, in his words, “still grow, because we have global responsibilities that demand our leadership. In fact, the defense budget will still be larger than it was toward the end of the Bush administration.” In response, his Republican opponents lambasted him as weak on defense for promising so little. Which tells you just who the winners of the last decade were and who the winners of the next one are likely to be.

Of course, in any situation there are always winners and losers, but it is striking that our losing wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have proven a gold mine for a small set of crony corporations and weapon-makers, producing a group of real winners at home with names like Lockheed Martin, KBR, and General Dynamics.

TomDispatch regular and retired Air Force Lt. Col. William Astore points, for instance, to the end results of our debacle in Iraq: the new Iraqi government is planning to purchase $11 billion in American weapons (and training), including F-16 fighter jets. A little history of American dreams for the Iraqi Air Force might be in order. When the Bush administration launched its invasion in 2003, it imagined an American-garrisoned Iraq for decades to come and a reconstituted Iraqi military “lite,” a force of perhaps 40,000 lightly armed troops “without an air force,” who would patrol the borders of their part of an American-dominated Middle East. In those halcyon days, there were no plans to recreate an Iraqi Air Force (though Saddam Hussein’s had once been one of the biggest in the world). Or rather, U.S. planners saw no need to do so because the “Iraqi Air Force” already existed and was settling into Balad Air Base north of Baghdad. It was, of course, the U.S. Air Force.

Consider it now a sign of defeat that almost the last military link between Iraq and the U.S. military will be the delivery of those new weapons and the years of training and support that will go with them. We didn’t win in Iraq, but someone here did! Let Astore tell you all about it. (To catch Timothy MacBain’s latest Tomcast audio interview in which Astore discusses the thrill of weaponry in pop culture and how it faded for him, click here, or download it to your iPod here.) Tom

Weapons ‘R’ Us

Making Warbirds Instead Of Thunderbirds 

By William J. Astore

Perhaps you’ve heard of “Makin’ Thunderbirds,” a hard-bitten rock & roll song by Bob Seger that I listened to 30 years ago while in college. It’s about auto workers back in 1955 who were “young and proud” to be making Ford Thunderbirds. But in the early 1980s, Seger sings, “the plants have changed and you’re lucky if you work.” Seger caught the reality of an American manufacturing infrastructure that was seriously eroding as skilled and good-paying union jobs were cut or sent overseas, rarely to be seen again in these parts.

If the U.S. auto industry has recently shown sparks of new life (though we’re not making T-Birds or Mercuries or Oldsmobiles or Pontiacs or Saturns anymore), there is one form of manufacturing in which America is still dominant. When it comes to weaponry, to paraphrase Seger, we’re still young and proud and makin’ Predators and Reapers (as in unmanned aerial vehicles, or drones) and Eagles and Fighting Falcons (as in F-15 and F-16 combat jets), and outfitting them with the deadliest of weapons. In this market niche, we’re still the envy of the world.

Yes, we’re the world’s foremost “merchants of death,” the title of a best-selling exposé of the international arms trade published to acclaim in the U.S. in 1934. Back then, most Americans saw themselves as war-avoiders rather than as war-profiteers. The evil war-profiteers were mainly European arms makers like Germany’s Krupp, France’s Schneider, or Britain’s Vickers.

Not that America didn’t have its own arms merchants. As the authors of Merchants of Death noted, early on our country demonstrated a “Yankee propensity for extracting novel death-dealing knickknacks from [our] peddler’s pack.” Amazingly, the Nye Committee in the U.S. Senate devoted 93 hearings from 1934 to 1936 to exposing America’s own “greedy munitions interests.” Even in those desperate Depression days, a desire for profit and jobs was balanced by a strong sense of unease at this deadly trade, an unease reinforced by the horrors of and hecatombs of dead from the First World War.

We are uneasy no more. Today we take great pride (or at least have no shame) in being by far the world’s number-one arms-exporting nation. A few statistics bear this out. From 2006 to 2010, the U.S. accounted for nearly one-third of the world’s arms exports, easily surpassing a resurgent Russia in the “Lords of War” race. Despite a decline in global arms sales in 2010 due to recessionary pressures, the U.S. increased its market share, accounting for a whopping 53% of the trade that year. Last year saw the U.S. on pace to deliver more than $46 billion in foreign arms sales. Who says America isn’t number one anymore?

For a shopping list of our arms trades, try searching the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute database for arms exports and imports. It reveals that, in 2010, the U.S. exported “major conventional weapons” to 62 countries, from Afghanistan to Yemen, and weapons platforms ranging from F-15, F-16, and F-18 combat jets to M1 Abrams main battle tanks to Cobra attack helicopters (sent to our Pakistani comrades) to guided missiles in all flavors, colors, and sizes: AAMs, PGMs, SAMs, TOWs — a veritable alphabet soup of missile acronyms. Never mind their specific meaning: they’re all designed to blow things up; they’re all designed to kill.

Rarely debated in Congress or in U.S. media outlets is the wisdom or morality of these arms deals. During the quiet last days of December 2011, in separate announcements whose timing could not have been accidental, the Obama administration expressed its intent to sell nearly $11 billion in arms to Iraq, including Abrams tanks and F-16 fighter-bombers, and nearly $30 billion in F-15 fighter jets to Saudi Arabia, part of a larger, $60 billion arms package for the Saudis. Few in Congress oppose such arms deals since defense contractors provide jobs in their districts — and ready donations to congressional campaigns.

Let’s pause to consider what such a weapons deal implies for Iraq. Firstly, Iraq only “needs” advanced tanks and fighter jets because we destroyed their previous generation of the same, whether in 1991 during Desert Shield/Storm or in 2003 during Operation Iraqi Freedom. Secondly, Iraq “needs” such powerful conventional weaponry ostensibly to deter an invasion by Iran, yet the current government in Baghdad is closely aligned with Iran, courtesy of our invasion in 2003 and the botched occupation that followed. Thirdly, despite its “needs,” the Iraqi military is nowhere near ready to field and maintain such advanced weaponry, at least without sustained training and logistical support provided by the U.S. military.

As one U.S. Air Force officer who served as an adviser to the fledgling Iraqi Air Force, or IqAF, recently worried:

Will the IqAF be able to refuel its own aircraft? Can the Iraqi military offer adequate force protection and security for its bases? Can the IqAF provide airfield management services at its bases as they return to Iraqi control after eight years under US direction? Can the IqAF ensure simple power generation to keep facilities operating? Will the IqAF be able to develop and retain its airmen?… Only time will tell if we left [Iraq] too early; nevertheless, even without a renewed security agreement, the USAF can continue to stand alongside the IqAF.

Put bluntly: We doubt the Iraqis are ready to field and fly American-built F-16s, but we’re going to sell them to them anyway. And if past history is a guide, if the Iraqis ever turn these planes against us, we’ll blow them up or shoot them down — and then (hopefully) sell them some more.

Our Best Arms Customer

Let’s face it: the weapons we sell to others pale in comparison to the weapons we sell to ourselves. In the market for deadly weapons, we are our own best customer. Americans have a love affair with them, the more high-tech and expensive, the better. I should know. After all, I’m a recovering weapons addict.

Well into my teen years, I was fascinated by military hardware. I built models of what were then the latest U.S. warplanes: the A-10, the F-4, the F-14, -15, and -16, the B-1, and many others. I read Aviation Week and Space Technology at my local library to keep track of the newest developments in military technology. Not surprisingly, perhaps, I went on to major in mechanical engineering in college and entered the Air Force as a developmental engineer.

Enamored as I was by roaring afterburners and sleek weaponry, I also began to read books like James Fallows’s National Defense (1981), among other early critiques of the Carter and Reagan defense buildup, as well as the slyly subversive and always insightful Augustine’s Laws (1986) by Norman Augustine, later the CEO of Martin Marietta and Lockheed Martin. That and my own experience in the Air Force alerted me to the billions of dollars we were devoting to high-tech weaponry with ever-ballooning price tags but questionable utility.

Perhaps the best example of the persistence of this phenomenon is the F-35 Lightning II. Produced by Lockheed Martin, the F-35 was intended to be an “affordable” fighter-bomber (at roughly $50 million per copy), a perfect complement to the much more expensive F-22 “air superiority” Raptor. But the usual delays, cost overruns, technical glitches, and changes in requirements have driven the price tag of the F-35 up to $160 million per plane, assuming the U.S. military persists in its plans to buy 2,400 of them. (If the Pentagon decides to buy fewer, the cost-per-plane will soar into the F-22 range.) By recent estimates the F-35 will now cost U.S. taxpayers (you and me, that is) at least $382 billion for its development and production run. Such a sum for a single weapons system is vast enough to be hard to fathom. It would, for instance, easily fund all federal government spending on education for the next five years.

The escalating cost of the F-35 recalls the most famous of Norman Augustine’s irreverent laws: “In the year 2054,” he wrote back in the early 1980s, “the entire defense budget will [suffice to] purchase just one aircraft.” But the deeper question is whether our military even needs the F-35, a question that’s rarely asked and never seriously entertained, at least by Congress, whose philosophy on weaponry is much like King Lear’s: “O, reason not the need.”

But let’s reason the need in purely military terms. These days, the Air Force is turning increasingly to unmanned drones. Meanwhile, plenty of perfectly good and serviceable “platforms” remain for attack and close air support missions, from F-16s and F-18s in the Air Force and Navy to Apache helicopters in the Army. And while many of our existing combat jets may be nearing the limits of airframe integrity, there’s nothing stopping the U.S. military from producing updated versions of the same. Heck, this is precisely what we’re hawking to the Saudis — updated versions of the F-15, developed in the 1970s.

Because of sheer cost, it’s likely we’ll buy fewer F-35s than our military wants but many more than we actually need. We’ll do so because Weapons ‘R’ Us. Because building ultra-expensive combat jets is one of the few high-tech industries we haven’t exported (due to national security and secrecy concerns), and thus one of the few industries in the U.S. that still supports high-paying manufacturing jobs with decent employee benefits. And who can argue with that?

The Ultimate Cost of Our Merchandise of Death

Clearly, the U.S. has grabbed the brass ring of the global arms trade. When it comes to investing in militaries and weaponry, no country can match us. We are supreme. And despite talk of modest cuts to the Pentagon budget over the next decade, it will,according to President Obama, continue to grow, which means that in weapons terms the future remains bright. After all, Pentagon spending on research and development stands at $81.4 billion, accounting for an astonishing 55% of all federal spending on R&D and leaving plenty of opportunity to develop our next generation of wonder weapons.

But at what cost to ourselves and the rest of the world? We’ve become the suppliers of weaponry to the planet’s hotspots. And those weapons deliveries (and the training and support missions that go with them) tend to make those spots hotter still — as in hot lead.

As a country, we seem to have a teenager’s fascination with military hardware, an addiction that’s driving us to bust our own national budgetary allowance. At the same time, we sell weapons the way teenage punks sell fireworks to younger kids: for profit and with little regard for how they might be used.

Sixty years ago, it was said that what’s good for General Motors is good for America. In 1955, as Bob Seger sang, we were young and strong and makin’ Thunderbirds. But today we’re playing a new tune with new lyrics: what’s good for Lockheed Martin or Boeing or [insert major-defense-contractor-of-your-choice here] is good for America.

How far we’ve come since the 1950s!

William J. Astore, a retired lieutenant colonel (USAF), is a TomDispatch regular. To listen to Timothy MacBain’s latest Tomcast audio interview in which Astore discusses the thrill of weaponry in pop culture and how it faded for him, click here, or download it to your iPod here. He welcomes reader comments atwjastore@gmail.com.