by Liz Behler

January 7, 2010

The NAACP is suing US Airways, accusing the airline of discriminating against African American Philadelphia airport employees by assigning them to less desirable gates, which employees refer to with racially loaded nicknames, like "Compton" and "The Ghetto."

The suit was filed on Tuesday, and claims that both managers and lower level employees openly use derogatory terms to refer to the terminals where a majority of African American employees work, according to an article by The Philadelphia Inquirer on January 7th.

The lawsuit was brought forward by the NAACP, along with three former airline employees.

According to the complaint, Terminal C was nicknamed both "Compton", a Californian city known for violence, and "Camden", another crime-ridden city located near Philadelphia. Terminal F, a remote terminal that has fewer amenities, is perceived to have more minority passengers, and which also houses US Airways, is referred to as "The Ghetto."

Additionally, parts of the airport with mostly white employees are named after typically-white Philadelphia neighborhoods, like "Frankford" and "South Philly". Sections of main terminals A and B were nicknamed "King of Prussia," after a nearby suburb known for its wealth.

The NAACP also claims that African American workers were given less popular shifts than white workers, and that the shifts were referred to with the derogatory nicknames.

"We take discrimination very seriously," Suzanne Boda, the senior vice president of airport customer service, international and cargo for US Airways, told The Philadelphia Inquirer. "We have a very strong commitment to diversity and to nondiscrimination."

Boda, who had not previously heard the nicknames, told The Philadelphia Inquirer that terminal and shift assignments were based purely on seniority.

"You bid for whatever shift you want to work and where you want to work."

The suit seeks damages for all African American employees and the reinstatement of the three employees named in the suit. An immediate ban on "racial code words" is also called for, as well as the placement of a civil-rights monitor to supervise all US Airways operations in Philadelphia.

by Robert Cruickshank

As progressives on and offline continue to debate the future of the health care reform bill, attention is finally shifting to the underlying factors that have gotten us into this mess in the first place: namely, the mistakes of the White House. Meteor Blades at Daily Kos asks the right question - why is it that progressives are getting blamed for this? Others reply that Obama does the best he can, and that to avoid a collapse in the 2010 elections, Democrats and progressives need to "point out all the good" that Obama has done so far.

But that isn't enough. The fact is that Democratic electeds, the president first and foremost, have completely misunderstood American politics in 2009. I'm not talking just about the failed and senseless efforts at bipartisanship, though Obama's underestimation of the level of control Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck, and the teabaggers have over the Republican Party hasn't helped.

Instead I'm talking about the inability of the White House to understand the changing nature of the American left. The late 20th century experience of a marginalized and weak left has been replaced during the 2000s by a much more powerful and popular movement. The White House's unwillingness to treat that movement as an equal partner is damaging not only the health care bill, but the political fate of Democrats in 2010 and, potentially, 2012.

The collapse of support for the bill reveals a deeper and growing divide, an unwillingness of most Americans to embrace a flawed process. In particular, progressives - activists and voters - need a clear, signal victory in order to avoid complete 1994-style demoralization. Something big and bold, something clearly progressive that forced moderates and conservatives to concede something important, something that will give more people a reason to rally to Obama's defense when he is in a difficult place.

Comprehensive immigration reform along the lines of the Grijalva proposal would achieve this. Repeal of Don't Ask, Don't Tell would achieve this (and repeal of DOMA would be a grand slam). Firing Geithner and Summers would achieve this. Breaking up some of the big banks would achieve this. And yes, a public option of some kind would have achieved this.

Instead we have a White House and a Senate Democratic leadership that still believes we live in the 1990s, where the "left" is weak and has little popular support. They've not understood the transformative effect of the 2000s and Bush in particular, who helped create a genuine American left with real and widespread popular support for the first time in 40 years.

The White House does not view progressives as equal partners, as people who have legitimate concerns and priorities that need to be included in any deal. They still take the Clintonian view that the "left" can be appeased either through a few nice words in a speech, and if that fails, can be crammed down by being told they're wreckers, being told this is the best progressives can get, being told that progressives are irrelevant (even while the WH's defensive actions show they're anything but irrelevant).

The White House hasn't yet grasped that some basic and timeless rules of politics still apply: that you have to deliver something to your supporters to keep them on board. Something that excites them, something that gets them motivated. Ever since 1993 Democratic presidential Administrations have assumed those rules are in abeyance, where supporters will stay on board out of fear of Republicans, unwilling to act on their beliefs or frustrations out of an internalized belief that America is a conservative place hostile to progressive values.

The Bush years destroyed those internalized frustrations. Congressional Democratic support for the Iraq War destroyed what existed of progressive acceptance of that Clintonite strategy, and freed the left to actually feel confident in asserting its own values regardless of what the Democratic leadership says, because any trust in that leadership was destroyed in 2002. Obama understood this out of necessity during the primary, when he had to embrace this to defeat Hillary Clinton. But once that was achieved, he went right back to the old Bill Clinton strategy of appeasing the center-right and assuming progressives would simply go along with it - and once elected, Obama surrounded himself with old Clinton hands who espoused the same basic view of politics.

There were a number of instances in 2009 that showed Obama doesn't quite grasp political realities, and the snowballing collapse of health care reform is just one element of that misunderstanding.

Until he sees progressives as genuine partners, Obama will face declining political fortunes. That's his problem, something he and his team should and eventually will address. For our part, progressives should concern ourselves with how to further build up our own institutions and power, instead of wasting time trying to prop up a weak president who views us and our views and our work with contempt.

Conservative media figures demanding ACORN investigation opposed, downplayed investigations of Bush scandals
Conservative media figures including Glenn Beck, Rush Limbaugh, Bill O'Reilly, and Newt Gingrich have called for an investigation of ACORN's activities and its supposed link to President Obama and Democrats, often while spreading misinformation about ACORN. However, these same media figures opposed or downplayed investigations into scandals involving the Bush administration, including the controversial firing of nine U.S. attorneys in 2006, the outing of the identity of Valerie Plame, and alleged torture and prisoner abuse by U.S. officials. Read more at the MediaMatters website.

Fox hosts let GOP Rep. Issa attack ACORN over embezzlement, but ignored NRCC embezzlement
In separate interviews, Fox News hosts Bill Hemmer and Greta Van Susteren allowed Rep. Darrell Issa (R-CA) to attack the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN) on the grounds that in 1999 and 2000, one of its leaders embezzled from the group. However, at no point did either Hemmer or Van Susteren note that in 2008, the National Republican Congressional Committee (NRCC) stated that its treasurer had embezzled more than $600,000 from the organization over the course of several years. Read more at the MediaMatters website.

In recent days, The Washington Post, The New York Times and other major news outlets have recounted the "troubled" history of the poor people's advocacy group ACORN, but left out the five-year anti-ACORN campaign led by White House adviser Karl Rove and other Republican operatives.

Dropped down the memory hole is the fact that ACORN was at the center of the so-called "prosecutor-gate" scandal, when the Bush administration pressured US attorneys to bring indictments over the grassroots group's voter-registration drives, then fired some prosecutors who resisted what they viewed as a partisan strategy not supported by solid evidence.

The latest furor over ACORN was touched off by conservative filmmaker James E. O'Keefe III and a right-wing columnist who posed as a couple planning to buy a house for use as a brothel and getting advice from a few ACORN employees, rather than being turned away.

The pair filmed their meetings at ACORN offices with a hidden camera, producing a video that brought to a fever pitch the long-simmering Republican war against ACORN. The video was trumpeted by Fox News and other right-wing news outlets, starting a stampede in the mainstream press and in Congress, where a majority of panicked Democrats joined the herd in approving legislation to strip ACORN of federal funds.

The stampede, which trampled ACORN and its mostly black and Hispanic organizing staff, soon pulled in President Barack Obama, who often has touted his work as a community organizer in his youth. In an interview last Sunday on ABC's "This Week," Obama told host George Stephanopoulos that ACORN "deserves to be investigated."

Yet, while bending to Republican demands to speak out against a poor people's group, Obama continued to resist the notion that powerful Republicans from the Bush administration deserved to be investigated for authorizing the use of torture against prisoners in the "war on terror."

In an interview with CBS's "Face The Nation," Obama downplayed the seriousness of an investigation authorized last month by Attorney General Eric Holder into several cases where CIA officers allegedly exceeded Justice Department guidelines during interrogations.

"I have said consistently that I want to look forward and not backward when it comes to some of the problems that occurred under the previous administration, or when it came to interrogations," Obama said. "My understanding is it's not even a criminal investigation at this point."

That juxtaposition is a stark example of how Republicans - aided by the giant megaphone of the right-wing media - continue to keep Democrats on the defensive, while evidence of Republican guilt gets little sustained attention except at a handful of Internet sites.

That pattern holds true even for issues connected to ACORN.

For instance, much less media interest followed the House Judiciary Committee's August release of Bush administration emails related to the role that Rove and other Bush administration officials played in the firings of nine US attorneys amid a Republican effort to target ACORN's voter-registration work during the 2004 presidential election.

Two of the nine US attorneys who were fired in 2006 were targeted because they refused to bring criminal charges against individuals affiliated with ACORN. The firing of another US attorney was due, in large part, to his refusal to convene a grand jury and secure a voter-fraud indictment against individuals, some of who were affiliated with ACORN.

A May 2, 2005 email from Rove deputy Scott Jennings to Tim Griffin, another Rove protégé, said that in the fall of 2004, Bernalillo County's Republican Sheriff Darren White and New Mexico Republican Party operatives Pat Rogers and Mickey Barnett turned over hundreds of "suspected fraudulent voter registration forms" handled by ACORN workers. The email was also forwarded to Leslie Fahrenkopf, Bush's associate counsel.

In 2004, New Mexico was considered a swing state in the Bush-Kerry race and Bernalillo County had been targeted by ACORN for a major grassroots effort to register voters, which resulted in about 65,000 newly registered voters, many of who were low-income people and minorities - groups that tend to vote for Democrats.

Sheriff White challenged the integrity of some of the names on the voter registration rolls, according to then-New Mexico US Attorney David Iglesias in his book, "In Justice: Inside the Scandal That Rocked the Bush Administration." White held a press conference along with other Republican officials in the county to call attention to the matter.

"The purported examples that were then produced included a woman who had correctly filled out two different registrations with slightly different signatures and another in which a husband, with his wife's permission, had signed her name to the form," Iglesias wrote. "It was demanded that I take action against what was perceived as rampant abuse of the system."

Iglesias said he established an election fraud task force in September 2004 and spent more than two months probing claims of widespread voter fraud in his state. In testimony before a Senate committee in 2007, Iglesias said the task force received about 108 complaints of alleged voter fraud through a hotline over the course of about eight weeks.

"Most of the complaints made to the hotline were clearly not prosecutable - citizens would complain of their yard signs being removed from their property and de minimis matters like that," Iglesias testified.

"Only one case of the over 100 referrals had potential. ACORN had employed a woman to register voters. The evidence showed she registered voters who did not have the legal right to vote. The law, 42 USC 1973 had the maximum penalty of 5 years imprisonment and a $5,000 fine.

"After personally reviewing the FBI investigative report and speaking to the agent, the prosecutor I had assigned, Mr. [Rumaldo] Armijo, and conferring with [a Justice Department official] I was of the opinion that the case was not provable. I, therefore, did not authorize a prosecution.

"I have subsequently learned that the State of New Mexico did not file any criminal cases as a result of the" election fraud task force.

Iglesias said Republican officials in his state were far less interested in election reforms and more intent on suppressing votes. He wrote in his book that the Justice Department issued a directive to every US attorney in the country to find and prosecute cases of voter fraud in their states during the height of hotly contested elections in 2002, 2004 and 2006, even though evidence was thin or nonexistent.

During this period, ACORN had stepped up its voter registration efforts and boasted in press releases about registering tens of thousands of first-time voters.

Iglesias said that in late summer 2002 he received an email from the Justice Department suggesting "in no uncertain terms" that US attorneys should immediately begin working with local and state election officials "to offer whatever assistance we could in investigating and prosecuting voter fraud cases."

Pressure also came from congressional and state Republicans. In New Mexico, Barnett, Rogers and White were among Republican operatives who complained directly to Rove at the White House and to officials in Bush's Justice Department that Iglesias would not prosecute ACORN employees. These unhappy Republicans demanded that Iglesias be replaced.

According to a report by the Justice Department's inspector general released last year, "In a March 2006 email forwarded to [Craig] Donsanto in the [Justice Department's] Public Integrity Section, Rogers complained about voter fraud in New Mexico and added, 'I have calls in, to the USA [U.S. Attorney] and his main assistant, but they were not much help during the ACORN fraudulent registration debacle last election.'"

In June 2006, Rogers sent Iglesias's Executive Assistant US Attorney Rumaldo Armijo an email which said, "The voter fraud wars continue. Any indictment of the Acorn woman would be appreciated.... The ACLU/Wortheim [sic] democrats will turn to the camera and suggest fraud is not an issue, because the USA would have done something by now. Carpe Diem!" [Carpe Diem is translated, "seize the day."]

Despite positive job reports, Iglesias was fired in December 2006 as part of a purge of nine federal prosecutors who were deemed not to be "loyal Bushies," or had other supposed shortcomings.

Last August, Rove went on Fox News to downplay his role in Iglesias's firing, but acknowledged that he did pass on complaints to the Bush Justice Department about "the performance of the US attorney in New Mexico, that he failed to go after ACORN in clear cases of vote fraud."

The Republican war against ACORN didn't stop with Iglesias.

In Missouri, former US Attorney Todd Graves was another federal prosecutor who fell into disfavor with the Bush administration because of alleged inaction on ACORN and voter fraud issues.

Graves would not file criminal charges of voter fraud against four employees of ACORN, according to documents later released by the Justice Department in connection with the fired-prosecutors probe.

Graves also resisted pressure from Bradley Schlozman, head of the Bush Justice Department's Civil Rights Division, to file a lawsuit against Robin Carnahan, Missouri's Democratic Secretary of State, on charges that Carnahan failed to take action on cases of voter fraud, Graves testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee in 2007.

Graves was forced to resign in March 2006 and was replaced by Schlozman as Missouri's acting US attorney. Schlozman then filed the civil suit against Carnahan.

The case was later dismissed by a federal court judge who ruled,
"The United States has not shown that any Missouri resident was denied his or her right to vote as a result of deficiencies alleged by the United States. Nor has the United States shown that any voter fraud has occurred."

Schlozman also filed federal criminal charges of voter fraud against members of ACORN only days before the November 2006 midterm elections. The case was later dismissed and Schlozman came under criticism for breaking with longstanding Justice Department policy against bringing voter fraud charges close to an election.

Schlozman testified before a Senate committee in 2007 that he received approval to file the voter fraud charges from a Justice Department ethics official. The Justice Department recently declined to prosecute Schlozman on allegations that he perjured himself during his Senate testimony related to politicized hiring decisions.

Though the Republican war against ACORN contributed to the "prosecutor-gate" scandal, GOP operatives carried the fight into the 2008 presidential campaign, seizing on some ACORN employees who apparently were padding their registration numbers by submitting bogus forms with fake names like "Mickey Mouse."

For its part, ACORN has insisted that its own quality control flagged many of the suspicious registration forms before they were submitted to state officials and that state laws often require outside registration groups to submit all forms regardless of obvious problems.

Independent studies also have shown that phony registrations rarely result in illegally cast ballots because there are so many other safeguards built into the system.

For instance, from October 2002 to September 2005, a total of 70 people were convicted for federal election-related crimes, according to figures compiled by The New York Times last year. Only 18 of those were for ineligible voting.

That figure - 70 people - appears in a misleading report released July 23 , a little more than a month before the ACORN videos were broadcast on Fox News. The report was prepared by Rep. Darrell Issa, R-California, the ranking Republican on the House Committee on Government Oversight and Reform.

The report - entitled "Is ACORN Intentionally Structured As a Criminal Enterprise?" - cites, among other material, several dozen published reports from right-wing commentators and news organizations, including Fox News's Glenn Beck, and Breitbart.com, whose proprietor, Andrew Breitbart, worked closely with Beck and the filmmakers of the ACORN video to demonstrate the organization's involvement in widespread criminal acts related to voter fraud, tax evasion and racketeering.

In the report, Issa asserts that all 70 people he cites worked specifically for ACORN and were convicted of crimes. However, an in-depth search on Google and Lexis to support this claim does not turn up evidence; it produces only incarnations of the claim itself, which went viral and was picked up by the right-wing echo chamber of news organizations, talk radio and bloggers.

The actual conviction numbers Issa cites in his report don't add up to 70, and those cases weren't all convictions. Additionally, Issa cites employees who were charged or arrested on suspicion of registering bogus names on voter registration cards but it's unclear whether they were ever convicted.

According to an Oct. 18, 2008 report in FactCheck.org, "Neither ACORN nor its employees have been found guilty of, or even charged with, casting fraudulent votes," although "several ACORN canvassers have been found guilty of faking registration forms and others are being investigated. But the evidence that has surfaced so far shows they faked forms to get paid for work they didn't do, not to stuff ballot boxes."

Indeed, the cases suggest that ACORN was the intended victim of the attempted fraud, in that the phony registration forms were part of an effort by employees to exaggerate their work product.

"No evidence has yet surfaced to show that the ACORN employees who submitted fraudulent registration forms intended to pave the way for illegal voting. Rather, they were trying to get paid by ACORN for doing no work. Dan Satterberg, the Republican prosecuting attorney in King County, Wash., where the largest ACORN case to date was prosecuted, said that the indicted ACORN employees were shirking responsibility, not plotting election fraud."

The FactCheck.org report was prepared after Republican presidential candidate John McCain jumped on the anti-ACORN bandwagon, citing it at the third presidential debate. He declared ACORN "is now on the verge of maybe perpetrating one of the greatest frauds in voter history in this country, maybe destroying the fabric of democracy."

The McCain-Palin campaign put out a web ad titled "ACORN," which carried the verbal endorsement of McCain.

The ad asked, "Who is Barack Obama? A man with 'a political baptism performed at warp speed.' Vast ambition. After college, he moved to Chicago. Became a community organizer. There, Obama met Madeleine Talbot, part of the Chicago branch of ACORN. He was so impressive that he was asked to train the ACORN staff.

"What did ACORN in Chicago engage in? Bullying banks. Intimidation tactics. Disruption of business. ACORN forced banks to issue risky home loans. The same types of loans that caused the financial crisis we're in today.

"No wonder Obama's campaign is trying to distance him from the group, saying, 'Barack Obama Never Organized with ACORN.' But Obama's ties to ACORN run long and deep. He taught classes for ACORN. They even endorsed him for President.

"But now ACORN is in trouble."

The motive of Republicans in escalating the war on ACORN was suggested by a line in Rep. Issa's report - to delegitimize Obama. On page five, the report states: "Documents provided by former ACORN employees and contained in this report demonstrate the degree to which ACORN and ACORN affiliates organized to elect President Barack Obama in 2008."

In both today's ACORN attacks and those of the 2008 campaign, the major US news media has mostly ignored the connections to the "prosecutor-gate" case. Last year, the press focused on anecdotes like Dallas Cowboys quarterback Tony Romo's name showing up on one registration form.

The McCain campaign's attempt to politicize ACORN - and hype the danger of voter fraud - also paralleled the allegations made by Republicans during the final days of Campaign 2004.

In October 2004, Marc Racicot, chairman of the Bush-Cheney 2004 presidential campaign, called on Democratic presidential nominee Sen. John Kerry to demand that ACORN and other voter registration groups stop engaging in voter registration fraud. Racicot said these registration efforts would "ultimately paralyze the effective ability of Americans to be able to vote in the next election."

Two weeks before the 2004 presidential election, Republican National Committee Chairman Ed Gillespie and Ohio Republican Party Chairman Bob Bennett announced the formation of a media campaign to counter what they claimed was voter registration fraud in nine Ohio counties.

"The reports of voter fraud in Ohio are some of the most alarming in the nation," Gillespie said on October 20, 2004.

The attacks on ACORN for allegedly signing up phony voters served as a cover for Republican efforts to purge real voters from the voting roles, a tactic that became infamous in the battleground states of Florida and Ohio.

In Florida, another battleground state in 2004, President Bush's brother Jeb was governor, and the state's Department of Law launched a statewide probe into voter registration fraud just two weeks before the presidential election. A press release from the Department of Law cited ACORN, which registered more than 212,000 new voters in the state.

In the two weeks before Election 2004, GOP officials raised similar concerns in Colorado, Minnesota, New Mexico and Pennsylvania.

Now, having finally succeeded in dealing a severe blow to ACORN with the undercover videos, Republicans are trying to expand the stain to Obama. In a speech on the House floor on Thursday, Rep. Steve King, R-Iowa, called Obama "the star of ACORN, the lead, chief organizer.... He walks with them all the way through."

King then demanded that every House committee launch an investigation into ACORN and criticized "a lame little announcement" that the Justice Department would look into the group's activities.

At least two Democratic lawmakers, however, want to find out how the congressional backlash against ACORN will impact the low-income families and individuals the organization assists.

In a two-page letter sent Wednesday to Daniel Mullhollan, director of the Congressional Research Service (CRS), the investigative arm of Congress, House Judiciary Committee Chairman John Conyers and Rep. Barney Frank, chairman of the House Committee on Financial Services, requested that the CRS "research and issue a comprehensive report concerning proposed and pending Congressional and other activity related" to ACORN.

"Because of the recent charges and countercharges that have been leveled at ACORN and various proposals for action, we believe it is important that CRS conduct a careful and objective analysis of a number of issues concerning ACORN," the letter says.

Specifically, Conyers and Frank want CRS to provide details about the "pending and proposed [civil, criminal, congressional and internal] investigations" into ACORN, as well as requests for probes by lawmakers; details about the federal funds ACORN has received from various government agencies over the past five years; a description "of all instances, if any where ACORN violated the terms of its federal funding"; and the extent to which ACORN has helped place homeless and low-income families into homes.

Additionally, Conyers and Frank want the report to include details about the impact on elections from phony voter registration forms ACORN employees have filled out, and whether the undercover videos taken earlier this year at a few ACORN offices violated federal and state wiretapping laws.

Lastly, CRS was asked to determine whether the "Defund ACORN Act," an amendment sponsored by Issa that passed the House last week and other pieces of legislation aimed at specifically stripping ACORN of federal funds are unconstitutional or "represent an unlawful bill of attainder."

The claim that the "Defund ACORN Act" represented a bill-of-attainder violation was mentioned by Rep. Jerrold Nadler, D-New York, last week after the passage of the amendment.

"The Constitution says that Congress shall never pass a bill of attainder," Nadler said during a floor speech after last week's vote. "Bills of attainder, no matter what their form, apply either to a named individual or to easily ascertainable members of a group, to inflict punishment. That's exactly what this amendment does.

"It may be that ACORN is guilty of various infractions, and, if so, it ought to be vetted, or maybe sanctioned, by the appropriate administrative agency or by the judiciary. Congress must not be in the business of punishing individual organizations or people without trial."

by Greg Sargent (The Plum Line)

In a letter delivered to the White House moments ago, the two leaders of the bloc of House progressives bluntly told President Obama that they will not support any health care plan without a public option in it — and demanded a meeting to inform him face to face.

The not-yet-released letter — the first joint statement from progressives since news emerged that Obama might not address the public option in next week’s speech — is their sharpest challenge yet to the president, given the extraordinary sensitivity of this political moment. The letter urges him to mention the public option in his speech.

“Any bill that does not provide, at a minimum, a public option built on the Medicare provider system and with reimbursement based on Mediare rates — not negotiated rates — is unacceptable,” reads the letter, which was sent over by a source. It was signed by Reps. Lynn Woolsey and Raul Grijalva, the two leaders of the Congressional Progressive Caucus.

“A health reform bill without a robust public option will not achieve the health reform this country so desperately needs,” the letter continues. “We cannot vote for anything less.”

“We look forward to meeting with you regarding a robust public option in any final health reform bill and request that that meeting take place as soon as possible,” the letter says.

Last month, five dozen House liberals wrote a letter to Nancy Pelosi ruling out support for any bill without the public option. While today’s letter doesn’t bear all those signatures, it signals that House progressive leaders intend to try to maintain a united, potentially confrontational front even as the president prepares to make his case in a major, make-or-break address to Congress.

Should Obama jettison the public option, progressives will come under tremendous pressure to back the plan anyway. White House advisers will likely insist that liberals mustn’t deny the president a historic victory and enable a defeat that could cripple the first African-American presidency.

August 28, 2009 by Faiz Shakir, Amanda Terkel, Matt Corley, Benjamin Armbruster, Nate Carlile, and Zaid Jilani
ECONOMY Stimulating Hypocrisy

Earlier this year, Congress passed the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 without a single Republican vote in the House of Representatives and with the support of only three Republicans in the Senate. This stimulus bill, which included $552 billion in spending and $275 billion in tax cuts, has provided much-needed support to state and local economies across the country. Cognizant to this fact, conservatives have jumped on the chance to personally deliver stimulus money to their cash-strapped states and districts, while conveniently brushing past their original opposition. A two-faced approach to the stimulus debate has become routine for many Republicans, with many GOP lawmakers who are standing against the stimulus in Washington, D.C., but touting it when they travel home to their constituents.

CONGRESSIONAL HYPOCRITES: Several House Republicans who opposed the Recovery Act quickly returned to their districts to tout projects that it funded. Stimulus opponent Rep. Joseph Cao (R-LA) met with New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin (D) and Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood recently to solicit stimulus money for streetcar expansions and road repairs. Cao proudly boasted that he is looking "at federal monies that the state has and channeling more of that money to the district." Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-KY) earlier this month asked for stimulus funds to be diverted into paying down the deficit rather than paying it out to states. But the same day he took credit for the construction site at Blue Grass Army Depot in Madison County, Kentucky -- a project that was funded in large part by the Recovery Act. One of the most brazen acts of hypocrisy came from House Minority Whip Rep. Eric Cantor (R-VA), who has repeatedly claimed that the stimulus is "failing" to create jobs. Earlier this month, Cantor appeared at a job fair in Midlothian, VA, to demonstrate how he is working on "long-term solutions that will put...Virginia workers back on the path to financial stability." But scores of jobs advertised at the jobs fair were created by the stimulus, and Chesterfield County, where the fair was being held, will receive more than $38 million in stimulus funding over the next two years.

HYPOCRITICAL GOVERNORS: Republican governors lined up to attack the Recovery Act and oppose its passage as well. Gov. Bobby Jindal (R-LA), said if he was still a member of Congress he would've voted against the stimulus and wrote an op-ed in Politico lambasting the Recovery Act's effect, calling it the "stimulus that has not stimulated." Yet the very next day, he appeared with constituents in Louisiana to present a jumbo-sized check of federal grant money authorized under the Recovery Act to residents of Vernon Parish. He later toured the state in a "Louisiana Working" tour, handing out millions of dollars of stimulus money while simultaneously attacking "Washington Spending." Similarly, Gov. Mark Sanford (R-SC) wrote an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal last year titled "Don't Bail Out My State," proudly boasting about being the only governor to travel to Washington to lobby against the stimulus package. Yet after the legislation was passed, Sanford changed his mind and told reporters that being against the Recovery Act "doesn't preclude taking the money." In April, Sanford became the last governor to seek economic recovery funds.

THE STIMULUS IS WORKING: The Council of Economic Advisers, in a report released earlier this month, called the Recovery Act the "boldest countercyclical fiscal stimulus in American history" and concluded that the stimulus added nearly 500,000 jobs to the economy in the second quarter of 2009 that would not have been there without it. Sen. Olympia Snowe (R-ME), one of the few Republicans who voted in favor of the stimulus, noted last March that even "those who were opposed to the stimulus spending will see some of the projects that are underway in their communities as they've initiated." Snowe said she believes that the effect of the spending has been to create an "amazing" number of projects in her home state. Many conservatives who opposed the stimulus or the idea of Keynesian spending in general have started to line up to defend the Recovery Act. On Aug. 7, Douglas Holtz-Eakin, who served as Sen. John McCain's (R-AZ) chief economic adviser during his 2008 campaign, told reporters that "no one would argue that the stimulus has done nothing." Three days later, Niall Ferguson of the conservative Hoover Institution said the Recovery Act "has clearly made a significant contribution to stabilizing the US economy."

As you may know, right-wing talk show hosts have been bringing race-based fear mongering into the mainstream, but FOX's Glenn Beck just took it to another level. On Tuesday, Beck said:


This president has exposed himself as a guy over and over and over again who has a deep-seated hatred for white people... this guy is, I believe, a racist.
It's part of a larger argument Beck has been making: that President Obama wants to serve the needs of Black communities at White people's expense. This kind of talk stirs up fear, hate, and it can lead to violence.

I've joined ColorOfChange.org's effort to stop Glenn Beck. ColorOfChange is already putting calls into Beck's advertisers, asking them if they want to be associated with this kind of racist hate and fear-mongering. When the advertisers see that tens of thousands of us are behind that question, I believe they'll move their advertising dollars elsewhere, and his show and platform will be history.

Will you take a stand and be counted, and invite your friends and family to do the same? It takes just a moment:

http://www.colorofchange.org/beck/?id=1790-114613

Glenn Beck is appealing to the worst in America. Of course, some Americans refuse to accept the fact that our president is Black or the idea that he could truly serve all Americans. But the only way these views fade away is if they're not reinforced by mainstream society. Instead, folks like Glenn Beck, Lou Dobbs, and Rush Limbaugh are exploiting racism and race-based fear to bump their ratings, stirring up racial discord in the process.

The dangers of these tactics are real. We saw the same dynamic during the presidential race: By the end, the McCain/Palin campaign was unable to control the violent energy whipped up by their race-baiting. It resulted in an unprecedented number of threats on Obama's life, a rise in the number of hate groups, and an increase in the number of threats and crimes against immigrants and Black people.

FOX has a horrible track record on pushing racist propaganda, but Glenn Beck appears to be taking the network to an even lower standard. He's trying to divide and distract America when we should be coming together and talking about issues that really matter--like health care and the economy.

The good news is that we have the power to stop this. All major media is funded by advertising. And advertisers care more than anything what consumers think. If we want to change what's happening and put an end to folks like Glenn Beck having a platform, we can do it.

It's up to us, and it can start now. Please join me:

http://www.colorofchange.org/beck/?id=1790-114613


Thanks.

Here are some links to more info:

"Beck: Obama has 'exposed himself as a guy' with 'a deep seated hatred for white people'"
http://mediamatters.org/mmtv/200907280008

"Glenn Beck: Obama agenda driven by 'reparations' and desire to 'settle old racial scores'"
http://mediamatters.org/mmtv/200907230040

"MSNBC's Deutsch encourages viewers to demand advertisers on Beck's show spend money elsewhere"
http://mediamatters.org/mmtv/200907290037

"On Television and Radio, Talk of Obama's Citizenship"
http://tinyurl.com/mb467j

by Andy Ostroy

The Republican party's love affair with former President Ronald Reagan took on Mark Sanford-like Argentinian proportions after eight miserable years of George Bush. To conservatives today, Reagan is God. To Democrats, he's an overrated myth who tripled the deficit and doesn't deserve the hype. But, he was a masterful politician who brilliantly asked Americans during a 1980 televised debate with then-incumbent Jimmy Carter, "Are you better off than you were four years ago?" The rest is campaign history.

With the country still reeling from the impact of the worst financial crisis not seen in 80 years, perhaps it's time that that other masterful politician, President Barack Obama, defend his nascent administration's fiscal policies by revisiting and re-phrasing that legendary question: Is the economy stronger now than when Bush left office? It's a really simple question, and one that cuts right through the rampant partisan rhetoric polluting the airwaves today.

So here's a little test for our Republican friends to help them decide the status of the nation's economy. I dare them to answer these questions truthfully, as Americans first, and not as transparent partisan stooges:

1. Is the stock market stronger today than when Bush left office?
2. Is the banking industry stronger than when Bush left office?
3. Are Wall Street companies (JP Morgan Chase, Goldman Sachs, etc) doing better today than when Bush left office?
4. Are the credit markets doing better than when Bush left office?
5. Is the auto industry doing better than when Bush left office?
6. Are the housing markets doing better than when Bush left office?
7. Are retailers doing better than when Bush left office?
8. Is the technology industry doing better than when Bush left office?
0. Are monthly jobless claims lower than when Bush left office?
10. Is consumer confidence higher than when Bush left office?

Of course, the answer to every single one of these black and white questions is yes. Conclusion? It's abundantly clear that President Obama's stewardship of the economy has resulted in tremendous improvement from the near-abyss the nation fell into last Fall at the end of Bush's presidency. While Republicans can vehemently criticize Obama's stimulus plan and disingenuously declare its failure all they want, the facts speak for themselves.

Nice work, President Obama. Keep it up. While Republicans may never thank you, their businesses, jobs, homes and savings will.


On another note, we could use your help at The The Adrienne Shelly Foundation. We're a 501 c 3 tax-exempt, non-profit organization dedicated in my late wife's honor, and with a simple mission: supporting women filmmakers. Adrienne, who wrote, directed and starred in the hit film WAITRESS, was killed November 1, 2006. Through the Foundation, her commitment to filmmaking lives on. We've established scholarships, grants, finishing funds, screenwriting fellowships and living stipends at NYU's Tisch School of the Arts/Kanbar Institute of Film; Columbia University; American Film Institute; Women in Film; IFP; the Nantucket Film Festival; the Tribeca Film Institute; and the Sundance Institute. Your generous contribution will go a long way towards helping us achieve this very important mission. Please click here to make a donation. Thank you.

by Jeremy Scahill

A former Blackwater employee and an ex-US Marine who has worked as a security operative for the company have made a series of explosive allegations in sworn statements filed on August 3 in federal court in Virginia. The two men claim that the company's owner, Erik Prince, may have murdered or facilitated the murder of individuals who were cooperating with federal authorities investigating the company. The former employee also alleges that Prince "views himself as a Christian crusader tasked with eliminating Muslims and the Islamic faith from the globe," and that Prince's companies "encouraged and rewarded the destruction of Iraqi life."

In their testimony, both men also allege that Blackwater was smuggling weapons into Iraq. One of the men alleges that Prince turned a profit by transporting "illegal" or "unlawful" weapons into the country on Prince's private planes. They also charge that Prince and other Blackwater executives destroyed incriminating videos, emails and other documents and have intentionally deceived the US State Department and other federal agencies. The identities of the two individuals were sealed out of concerns for their safety.

These allegations, and a series of other charges, are contained in sworn affidavits, given under penalty of perjury, filed late at night on August 3 in the Eastern District of Virginia as part of a seventy-page motion by lawyers for Iraqi civilians suing Blackwater for alleged war crimes and other misconduct. Susan Burke, a private attorney working in conjunction with the Center for Constitutional Rights, is suing Blackwater in five separate civil cases filed in the Washington, DC, area. They were recently consolidated before Judge T.S. Ellis III of the Eastern District of Virginia for pretrial motions. Burke filed the August 3 motion in response to Blackwater's motion to dismiss the case. Blackwater asserts that Prince and the company are innocent of any wrongdoing and that they were professionally performing their duties on behalf of their employer, the US State Department.

The former employee, identified in the court documents as "John Doe #2," is a former member of Blackwater's management team, according to a source close to the case. Doe #2 alleges in a sworn declaration that, based on information provided to him by former colleagues, "it appears that Mr. Prince and his employees murdered, or had murdered, one or more persons who have provided information, or who were planning to provide information, to the federal authorities about the ongoing criminal conduct." John Doe #2 says he worked at Blackwater for four years; his identity is concealed in the sworn declaration because he "fear[s] violence against me in retaliation for submitting this Declaration." He also alleges, "On several occasions after my departure from Mr. Prince's employ, Mr. Prince's management has personally threatened me with death and violence."

In a separate sworn statement, the former US marine who worked for Blackwater in Iraq alleges that he has "learned from my Blackwater colleagues and former colleagues that one or more persons who have provided information, or who were planning to provide information about Erik Prince and Blackwater have been killed in suspicious circumstances." Identified as "John Doe #1," he says he "joined Blackwater and deployed to Iraq to guard State Department and other American government personnel." It is not clear if Doe #1 is still working with the company as he states he is "scheduled to deploy in the immediate future to Iraq." Like Doe #2, he states that he fears "violence" against him for "submitting this Declaration." No further details on the alleged murder(s) are provided.

"Mr. Prince feared, and continues to fear, that the federal authorities will detect and prosecute his various criminal deeds," states Doe #2. "On more than one occasion, Mr. Prince and his top managers gave orders to destroy emails and other documents. Many incriminating videotapes, documents and emails have been shredded and destroyed."

The Nation cannot independently verify the identities of the two individuals, their roles at Blackwater or what motivated them to provide sworn testimony in these civil cases. Both individuals state that they have previously cooperated with federal prosecutors conducting a criminal inquiry into Blackwater.

"It's a pending investigation, so we cannot comment on any matters in front of a Grand Jury or if a Grand Jury even exists on these matters," John Roth, the spokesperson for the US Attorney's office in the District of Columbia, told The Nation. "It would be a crime if we did that." Asked specifically about whether there is a criminal investigation into Prince regarding the murder allegations and other charges, Roth said: "We would not be able to comment on what we are or are not doing in regards to any possible investigation involving an uncharged individual."

The Nation repeatedly attempted to contact spokespeople for Prince or his companies at numerous email addresses and telephone numbers. When a company representative was reached by phone and asked to comment, she said, "Unfortunately no one can help you in that area." The representative then said that she would pass along The Nation's request. As this article goes to press, no company representative has responded further to The Nation.

Doe #2 states in the declaration that he has also provided the information contained in his statement "in grand jury proceedings convened by the United States Department of Justice." Federal prosecutors convened a grand jury in the aftermath of the September 16, 2007, Nisour Square shootings in Baghdad, which left seventeen Iraqis dead. Five Blackwater employees are awaiting trial on several manslaughter charges and a sixth, Jeremy Ridgeway, has already pleaded guilty to manslaughter and attempting to commit manslaughter and is cooperating with prosecutors. It is not clear whether Doe #2 testified in front of the Nisour Square grand jury or in front of a separate grand jury.

The two declarations are each five pages long and contain a series of devastating allegations concerning Erik Prince and his network of companies, which now operate under the banner of Xe Services LLC. Among those leveled by Doe #2 is that Prince "views himself as a Christian crusader tasked with eliminating Muslims and the Islamic faith from the globe":

To that end, Mr. Prince intentionally deployed to Iraq certain men who shared his vision of Christian supremacy, knowing and wanting these men to take every available opportunity to murder Iraqis. Many of these men used call signs based on the Knights of the Templar, the warriors who fought the Crusades.


Mr. Prince operated his companies in a manner that encouraged and rewarded the destruction of Iraqi life. For example, Mr. Prince's executives would openly speak about going over to Iraq to "lay Hajiis out on cardboard." Going to Iraq to shoot and kill Iraqis was viewed as a sport or game. Mr. Prince's employees openly and consistently used racist and derogatory terms for Iraqis and other Arabs, such as "ragheads" or "hajiis."

Among the additional allegations made by Doe #1 is that "Blackwater was smuggling weapons into Iraq." He states that he personally witnessed weapons being "pulled out" from dog food bags. Doe #2 alleges that "Prince and his employees arranged for the weapons to be polywrapped and smuggled into Iraq on Mr. Prince's private planes, which operated under the name Presidential Airlines," adding that Prince "generated substantial revenues from participating in the illegal arms trade."

Doe #2 states: "Using his various companies, [Prince] procured and distributed various weapons, including unlawful weapons such as sawed off semi-automatic machine guns with silencers, through unlawful channels of distribution." Blackwater "was not abiding by the terms of the contract with the State Department and was deceiving the State Department," according to Doe #1.

This is not the first time an allegation has surfaced that Blackwater used dog food bags to smuggle weapons into Iraq. ABC News's Brian Ross reported in November 2008 that a "federal grand jury in North Carolina is investigating allegations the controversial private security firm Blackwater illegally shipped assault weapons and silencers to Iraq, hidden in large sacks of dog food." Another former Blackwater employee has also confirmed this information to The Nation.

Both individuals allege that Prince and Blackwater deployed individuals to Iraq who, in the words of Doe #1, "were not properly vetted and cleared by the State Department." Doe #2 adds that "Prince ignored the advice and pleas from certain employees, who sought to stop the unnecessary killing of innocent Iraqis." Doe #2 further states that some Blackwater officials overseas refused to deploy "unfit men" and sent them back to the US. Among the reasons cited by Doe #2 were "the men making statements about wanting to deploy to Iraq to 'kill ragheads' or achieve 'kills' or 'body counts,'" as well as "excessive drinking" and "steroid use." However, when the men returned to the US, according to Doe #2, "Prince and his executives would send them back to be deployed in Iraq with an express instruction to the concerned employees located overseas that they needed to 'stop costing the company money.'"

Doe #2 also says Prince "repeatedly ignored the assessments done by mental health professionals, and instead terminated those mental health professionals who were not willing to endorse deployments of unfit men." He says Prince and then-company president Gary Jackson "hid from Department of State the fact that they were deploying men to Iraq over the objections of mental health professionals and security professionals in the field," saying they "knew the men being deployed were not suitable candidates for carrying lethal weaponry, but did not care because deployments meant more money."

Doe #1 states that "Blackwater knew that certain of its personnel intentionally used excessive and unjustified deadly force, and in some instances used unauthorized weapons, to kill or seriously injure innocent Iraqi civilians." He concludes, "Blackwater did nothing to stop this misconduct." Doe #1 states that he "personally observed multiple incidents of Blackwater personnel intentionally using unnecessary, excessive and unjustified deadly force." He then cites several specific examples of Blackwater personnel firing at civilians, killing or "seriously" wounding them, and then failing to report the incidents to the State Department.

Doe #1 also alleges that "all of these incidents of excessive force were initially videotaped and voice recorded," but that "Immediately after the day concluded, we would watch the video in a session called a 'hot wash.' Immediately after the hotwashing, the video was erased to prevent anyone other than Blackwater personnel seeing what had actually occurred." Blackwater, he says, "did not provide the video to the State Department."

Doe #2 expands on the issue of unconventional weapons, alleging Prince "made available to his employees in Iraq various weapons not authorized by the United States contracting authorities, such as hand grenades and hand grenade launchers. Mr. Prince's employees repeatedly used this illegal weaponry in Iraq, unnecessarily killing scores of innocent Iraqis." Specifically, he alleges that Prince "obtained illegal ammunition from an American company called LeMas. This company sold ammunition designed to explode after penetrating within the human body. Mr. Prince's employees repeatedly used this illegal ammunition in Iraq to inflict maximum damage on Iraqis."

Blackwater has gone through an intricate rebranding process in the twelve years it has been in business, changing its name and logo several times. Prince also has created more than a dozen affiliate companies, some of which are registered offshore and whose operations are shrouded in secrecy. According to Doe #2, "Prince created and operated this web of companies in order to obscure wrongdoing, fraud and other crimes."

"For example, Mr. Prince transferred funds from one company (Blackwater) to another (Greystone) whenever necessary to avoid detection of his money laundering and tax evasion schemes." He added: "Mr. Prince contributed his personal wealth to fund the operations of the Prince companies whenever he deemed such funding necessary. Likewise, Mr. Prince took funds out of the Prince companies and placed the funds in his personal accounts at will."

Briefed on the substance of these allegations by The Nation, Congressman Dennis Kucinich replied, "If these allegations are true, Blackwater has been a criminal enterprise defrauding taxpayers and murdering innocent civilians." Kucinich is on the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform and has been investigating Prince and Blackwater since 2004.

"Blackwater is a law unto itself, both internationally and domestically. The question is why they operated with impunity. In addition to Blackwater, we should be questioning their patrons in the previous administration who funded and employed this organization. Blackwater wouldn't exist without federal patronage; these allegations should be thoroughly investigated," Kucinich said.

A hearing before Judge Ellis in the civil cases against Blackwater is scheduled for August 7.

PRA's Right Web neither represents nor endorses any of the individuals or groups profiled on this site.

In late July 2006, the Democratic Leadership Council (DLC) held a three-day conference in Colorado during which it unveiled a policy manifesto, presented by Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-NY), aimed at recapturing the White House and Congress. According to the Los Angeles Times: "Clinton wielded a red-white-and-blue bound copy of the group's initiative and used a measured tone to paint a grim portrait of the last five years under President [George W.] Bush. 'Americans are earning less while the costs of a middle-class life have soared,' she said. 'College costs, up 50% in the five years. Healthcare, 73%. Gasoline, more than 100%.'" Although the conference, which was attended by four likely Democratic presidential contenders-Clinton, Iowa Gov. Tom Vilsack, Sen. Evan Bayh of Indiana, and New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson-as well as some 400 elected leaders from the local and state levels, covered everything from college tuition to healthcare, the Iraq War "was scarcely mentioned" (Los Angeles Times, July 25, 2006).

But it is the war in Iraq and the Bush administration's heavy-handed war on terror, both largely supported by DLC leaders, that are at the center of a growing debate among Democrats about the future direction of the party. Instead of addressing the debate head on, Clinton argued that the party "will not let the president and the Republicans off the hook for the mistakes they've made and the disastrous policies they have followed abroad. We'll hold them accountable every bit as much for national security and homeland security as for their failure to provide Americans with economic security." About Iraq, Clinton managed to say that a Democratic-led Congress "would investigate no-bid contracts, the role oil companies are playing in Iraq, and supply problems that have plagued U.S. combat troops" (Los Angeles Times, July 25, 2006).

The DLC is a nonprofit corporation organized under section 501(c)(4) of the Internal Revenue Service code. According to the DLC, the council "is not a political committee and is not organized to influence elections." Rather, the DLC "seeks to define and galvanize popular support for a new public philosophy built on progressive ideals, mainstream values, and innovative, non-bureaucratic, market-based solutions." The DLC publishes the magazine Blueprint: Ideas for a New Century and an online newsletter called New Dem Dispatch. Closely associated and sharing offices with the DLC is the Progressive Policy Institute (PPI), a think tank sponsored by the Third Way Foundation that proposes policy agendas for the so-called third way movement of what the DLC designates the "New Democrats."

The DLC's "New Democrat Credo" declares: "In keeping with our party's grand tradition, we reaffirm Jefferson's belief in individual liberty and capacity for self-government. We endorse Jackson's credo of equal opportunity for all, special privileges for none. We embrace Roosevelt's thirst for innovation and Kennedy's summons to civic duty. And we intend to carry on Clinton's insistence upon new means to achieve progressive ideals."

The DLC's "leadership team" includes Vilsack, chairman; Delaware Sen. Tom Carper, vice-chairman; Senator Clinton, chair of the DLC's American Dream Initiative; Al From, chief executive officer; and Bruce Reed, president. From and Reed, together with Will Marshall of the Progressive Policy Institute, are the main architects of the DLC's center-right political agendas, which are laid out in more detail in the reports of the PPI and in articles in Blueprint and New Dem Dispatch.

The DLC comprises three main clusters of New Democrats. The largest is a group of nearly 400 national, state, and local legislators and officials. This contingent includes a wide range of centrist and conservative Democrats, including Sen. John Kerry of Massachusetts, former North Carolina Sen. John Edwards, former Florida Sen. Bob Graham, and Connecticut Sen. Joe Lieberman. (Perhaps the DLC's political thrust is more precisely defined by a list of prominent Democrats who have not lent their names to the DLC, including such figures as Massachusetts Sen. Ted Kennedy, former Vermont Gov. Howard Dean, and Ohio Rep. Dennis Kucinich.)

Aside from the DLC's leadership team, the major forces of the New Democrat movement are 45 House members and 20 senators who compose the New Democrat coalitions in Congress. According to the DLC, "Together, they are among the most influential forces in the United States Congress." In the House, the coalition's leaders are California Rep. Ellen Tauscher, Wisconsin Rep. Ron Kind, Washington Rep. Adam Smith, and Alabama Rep. Artur Davis.

The Senate New Democrat Coalition (SNDC) was formed in 2000 by Bayh, Graham, Lieberman, Louisiana Sen. Mary Landrieu, and Arkansas Sen. Blanche Lincoln in order "to provide a unified voice in the U.S. Senate for progressive ideas, mainstream values, and innovative, market-based policy solutions," according to the DLC. Other members of the SNDC-which the DLC calls "the strongest and most unified Democratic group in the Senate"-include Delaware Sen. Tom Carper, Nebraska Sen. Ben Nelson, Florida Sen. Bill Nelson, and Michigan Sen. Debbie Stabenow.

The DLC was established in the wake of President Ronald Reagan's 1984 landslide victory, in which he won 49 states, over Democrat Walter Mondale. During the Democratic convention in San Francisco, Mondale had successfully beat back a challenge from Gary Hart, who predicted that unless the Democratic Party adopted a new image it would be decisively defeated. Mondale proved unable to respond effectively to charges from the Republican right and neoconservative Democrats that the Democratic Party was the party of progressives-which Jeane Kirkpatrick variously labeled as the "San Francisco Democrats" and the "blame America first" Democrats-who were out of touch with mainstream America. As Dan Balz and Ronald Brownstein concluded in their book Storming the Gates, "Mondale's landslide defeat exposed as a dead end the vision of regaining the White House by mobilizing an army of the disaffected with a message of unreconstructed liberalism."

Pondering the Mondale defeat, a gathering coalition of Southern Democrats and northern neoliberals expressed concerns that the Democratic Party faced extinction, particularly in the South and West, if the party continued to rely on its New Deal message of government intervention and kept catering to traditional constituencies of labor, minorities, and anti-war progressives. In 1985, Al From, an aide to Rep. Gillis Long (D-LA), took the lead in formulating a new messaging strategy for the party's centrists, neoliberals, and conservatives. Will Marshall, at that time Long's policy analyst and speechwriter, worked closely with From to establish the DLC and then became its first policy director.

In his "Saving the Democratic Party" memo of January 1985, From advocated the formation of a "governing council" that would draft a "blueprint" for reforming the party. According to From, the new leadership should aim to create distance from "the new bosses"-organized labor, feminists, and other progressive constituency groups-that were keeping the party from modernizing. From's memo sparked the formation of the Democratic Leadership Council in early 1985. According to Balz and Brownstein, "Within a few weeks, it counted 75 members, primarily governors and members of Congress, most of them from the Sunbelt, and almost all of them white; liberal critics instantly dubbed the group 'the white male caucus.'"

Although DLC members shared, for the most part, the neoliberal perspective of centrist Democrats such as Gary Hart, Paul Tsongas, and Michael Dukakis, they took a much harsher, conservative stance on social justice and foreign policy issues. Regarding foreign policy, the DLC attempted to resurrect the hardline anticommunism of Sen. Henry "Scoop" Jackson but rejected the New Deal politics that Jackson and other traditional "New Deal liberals" embraced. In the late 1980s, DLC Democrats supported aid to the Contras, applauded Reagan's "Evil Empire" rhetoric, and offered their support to those militarists calling for missile defense and rejecting arms control negotiations. While the neoliberals foresaw an end to the Cold War, the DLC still viewed the Soviet Union as an unmitigated threat.

In a 1986 conference on the legacy of "Great Society" of the Johnson administration, DLC chairman Gov. Charles Robb of Virginia took up the neoconservative critique of liberalism first articulated in the early 1970s by Daniel Patrick Moynihan, Norman Podhoretz, and other neoconservatives. According to Robb, "While racial discrimination has by no means vanished from our society, it's time to shift the primary focus from racism-the traditional enemy without-to self-defeating patterns of behavior-the enemy within." This speech signaled the end of the "New Politics" of the 1960s and 1970s in the Democratic Party and the rise of a new social conservatism in the party. Robb's speech opened room for Democratic Party stalwarts to back away from political agendas that proposed government initiatives to address poverty, discrimination, and crime, and to join the traditional conservatives and neoconservatives in opposing affirmative action, social safety-net programs, and job-creation initiatives. Thus, the New Democrats of the DLC added their voices to the chorus of those calling for stiffer sentences, an end to affirmative action, reduced welfare benefits, and less progressive tax policies.

The collapse of the Soviet Union and the defeat of neoliberal technocrat Dukakis opened up new political room for the DLC and validated its claim that a conservative agenda was the only hope for reviving the Democratic Party. Arkansas Gov. Bill Clinton, who accepted From's request to become DLC chairman in 1990, helped synthesize the various currents driving the Democratic Party to leave both "New Deal" nostalgia and "New Politics" of the 1960s progressives behind. Clinton successfully redefined the Democratic Party, molding it into an organization led by New Democrats, who seized hold of the political center by targeting swing votes of the middle class and advocating the politics of growth rather than redistribution and safety nets. Clinton leaned heavily on the polling of Yale University political scientist Stanley Greenberg and on the policy framework outlined by two analysts from the PPI in their 1989 paper "The Politics of Evasion."

In many ways, it was Bill Clinton-not the DLC-who succeeded in giving a human face and viable political program to the New Democrats. Although Clinton adopted most of the DLC platform as his own, he softened its hard ideological edge through compromise and inclusion, drawing in the party's left-center and center-right. Ralph Nader and other critics of Clinton and the DLC contend that Clinton was a creature of the DLC. But Clinton proved larger than the DLC ideologues, and it was Clinton who made the DLC a major force in the Democratic Party rather than the other way around, as the DLC leadership implies when it takes credit for the Democratic presidential victories of the 1990s.

Writing shortly before the November 2000 presidential election, John Nichols observed that the DLC had been founded "with essentially the same purpose as the Christian Coalition," namely, "to pull a broad political party dramatically to the right." According to Nichols, "The DLC has been far more successful than its headline-grabbing Republican counterpart" (Progressive, October 2000). Although the DLC can rightly claim to have yanked the Democratic Party to the right, it has repeatedly failed to sideline what PPI president Marshall has disparaging labeled "the party traditionalists." Since its founding, the DLC has aimed to subsume all Democrats under its ideological umbrella. But persistent (and resurgent) resistance to neoliberal prescriptions, neoconservative foreign policy, and social conservative domestic policies has curtailed DLC ambitions and obliged it to operate more as a powerful agenda-setting and lobbying group within the party. In effect, the DLC has focused on controlling the party's platform and leadership rather than on selling "big tent" politics to all Democratic Party constituencies.

As Kenneth Baer observed in his book Reinventing Democrats, the DLC, after several clashes with the leadership of the party's progressives and traditional liberals, refined its mission to function as "an elite organization funded by elite-corporate and private-donors." However, leading DLC voices such as Al From have continued to harbor hopes that the DLC and its think tank will one day constitute the core of the Democratic Party, not just a fifth column working within the party's elite.

When Al Gore, a DLC member since its first years, chose Lieberman, the DLC chairman, to be his presidential running mate, the DLC staff felt triumphant. Although Gore was not a neoliberal "true believer" or national security militarist like Lieberman, in the lead-up to the 2000 party convention, From predicted that soon "We'll finally be able to proclaim that all Democrats are, indeed, New Democrats" (Progressive, October 2000).

More recently, former candidate Howard Dean's criticism that the DLC and its "New Democratic agenda" constituted "the Republican wing of the Democratic Party" highlighted long-running tensions between the party's center-left and center-right. Dean was roundly criticized for dividing the Democratic Party when unity was needed to defeat George W. Bush. The party's leading conservative and then-chair Lieberman lambasted Dean, claiming that his rival for the nomination "essentially pushes Bill Clinton out of the Democratic Party" along with "hundreds of governors and local officials" who consider themselves part of the New Democrat movement. Throughout his campaign, Dean characterized his candidacy as representing "the Democratic wing of the Democratic Party" (Los Angeles Times, December 25, 2003).

Such language alarmed the center-right of the party, especially the DLC leadership. Seven months before Dean took the DLC to task for pushing the party to the right, the DLC had mounted an initiative to discredit Dean. In May 2003, From and Bruce Reed sent a memo to party leaders arguing that Dean's efforts to energize traditional party constituencies around a populist, anti-war, and liberal message would doom the party to the fates suffered by George McGovern in 1972 and Walter Mondale in 1984. Then, at the July 2003 DLC annual conference, the DLC leadership blasted Dean and other presidential hopefuls for flirting with a "far-left" critique of the Bush administration and pointed out the political folly of attacking Bush's tax cuts and his national security leadership. Commenting on the "Democratic Weaselship Council" in Salon.com, Joan Walsh observed that the DLC was "in danger of adopting a political terror strategy [that] involves doing the enemy's work for them: damaging your own party's candidates by declaring them ideologically flawed and unelectable" (Salon.com, July 29, 200 3).

Both the DLC and the closely associated PPI have elicited sharp criticism from several centrist and progressive factions of the Democratic Party. One of the most outspoken DLC critics is Jesse Jackson, who once said that DLC stands for "Democrats for the Leadership Class" (Progressive, October 2000). Nader has also challenged the DLC's attempt to define itself as centrist: "So right-wing is the DLC, mounted imperiously on their sagging party, that even opposing Bush's tax cuts for the wealthy, that cause huge federal deficits and program cuts in necessities such as health, education, environmental protection, and children's well-being, is considered ultra-liberal and contrary to winning campaigns" (In the Public Interest, August 1, 2003). Nader continued: "If there were a superlative to the word 'hubris,' it would come close to describing Al From and his DLC cohorts. With unseemly regularity, they take credit for all Democratic victories as having been rooted in their philosophy of turn-your-back-on-organized labor and open-your-pockets-to-corporations (who fund the DLC, incidentally). All Democratic defeats are explained as owing to losing candidates being too 'left' or too 'populist.'"

Although Clinton's personal charisma and political smarts were the main factors in the success and corresponding re-imaging of the Democratic Party, From, Marshall, and the DLC leadership can claim at least partial credit in moving the core Democratic Party platform closer to the DLC's modernizing agenda, which stresses market-based solutions, an alignment with the military-industrial complex, and a distancing from the identity politics and bothersome demands of the "New Politics" constituencies that emerged in the late 1960s. To its credit, the DLC and PPI have helped the Democratic Party redefine itself as a party that not only represents minorities and the disenfranchised but also the mainstream. But blinded by their own triumphalism, New Democrat ideologues fail to acknowledge that they have fallen in line behind the ills of neoliberals, neoconservatives, militarists, and social conservatives who have transformed the Republican Party over the past three decades. What's more, the DLC (with PPI) has also proved itself an effective shill for transnational Wall Street capitalists, although it faces competition in this role from the Republican Party and its array of affiliated policy institutes and think tanks. Such rightward leanings prompted the America Prospect's Robert Kuttner to call the DLC the "Republicans' Favorite Democrats" (American Prospect, July 1, 2002).

Regarding foreign policy, the DLC proposes a "third way-between the neo-imperial right and the non-interventionist left." The DLC labels its stance on foreign policy "progressive internationalism," which it defines as "the belief that America can best defend itself by building a world safe for individual liberty and democracy." Following this logic, the group proclaims: "We therefore support the bold exercise of American power, not to dominate but to shape alliances and international institutions that share a common commitment to liberal values. The way to keep America safe and strong is not to impose our will on others or pursue a narrow, selfish nationalism that betrays our best values, but to lead the world toward political and economic freedom." When the DLC gets to the specifics of foreign policy, such as supporting the invasion and occupation of Iraq, there seems to be little separating its progressive internationalism from the "neo-imperial" foreign policy of the Bush administration and its neoconservative advisers. According to the PPI, "We aim to rebuild the moral foundation of U.S. global leadership by harnessing America's awesome power to universal values of liberal democracy" (see Progressive Internationalism: A Democratic National Security Policy, DLC, October 30, 2003).

The DLC and its close associate, the PPI, receive grants from many Fortune 500 companies and various right-wing foundations such as the Bradley Foundation. According to the a 2002 study by the Capital Research Center, corporate contributors to the PPI have included the AT&T Foundation, Eastman Kodak Charitable Trust, Prudential Foundation, Georgia-Pacific Foundation, Chevron, and Amoco Foundation. The Third Way Foundation, an umbrella group of the New Democrats in the DLC, receives funding from the Lynde & Harry Bradley Foundation, Howard Gilman Foundation, Ameritech Foundation, and General Mills Foundation. According to John Nichols in the Progressive, the DLC has had funding from Bank One, Citigroup, Dow Chemical, DuPont, General Electric, Health Insurance Corporation, Merrill Lynch, Microsoft, Morgan Stanley, Occidental Petroleum, and Raytheon (Progressive, October 2000).