'Secessionist' Movements Underscore the Far Right's Hatred of Democracy

If you needed a reminder where those folks on the far right who naive mainstream Democrats keep mistakenly treating as rational actors are coming from, just survey the "secessionist" campaigns in various states, most notably Maryland at present.

One of the leaders of a group of western Maryland counties' efforts to secede and form a 51st state (good luck with that), a fellow named Steve Strelczyk, appeared on Fox's America Live yesterday and explained himself, sorta -- brushing off the obvious question: Well, you live in a democracy; are you just unwilling to live by majority rule?

STRELCZYK: In some sort of way, that could be correct. However, the real issue that we see in this state, I think the primary issue, is the fact that the state has been so badly gerrymandered. ... Through the normal electoral process we cannot even change that. So we don't feel that we are being represented there, our needs aren't taken into account, and we simply feel that our differences are irreconcilable, so therefore we are seeking an amicable divorce.

He went on to explain that they planned to create their own state.

Fox News gives the proponents' view:

Strzelczyk said the biggest concerns are increasing taxes, and the Democrat-controlled legislature gerrymander voting district so that the state’s big metropolitan areas have the most representation and tighter gun laws enacted this year, which he calls “the last straw.”
The movement is just one of several across the country that includes the Upper Peninsula in Michigan, Northern California and several conservative northern Colorado counties.
The Colorado effort is backed by the Tea Party movement and has gotten the issue put on the November ballot as a non-binding referendum. The movement was also driven in large part by state lawmakers passing tighter gun-control legislation this year that was signed by Democratic Gov. John Hickenlooper.

... Still, secession will not be easy, for a variety of reasons, including that many of these remote, rural regions rely on money generated in their state’s more commercial and populated cities. And secession leaders would need state and federal approval, which seems unlikely considering the last time a region broke off was 1863, when 50 western Virginia counties split to form West Virginia.

As he always does, Joshua Holland clearly and capably explains what's going on here:

Bizarre as it seems, the effort is part of a trend. In Colorado, up to 10 rural counties want to break off and form a new state called Northern Colorado. A handful of counties in Kansas and Nebraska are reportedly thinking about joining them. Several counties in Northern California are hoping to combine with a chunk of Southern Oregon to form the state of Jefferson – an old idea that apparently hasn’t gone out of fashion. And folks in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula fed up with Lansing have also been kicking around the idea of cutting loose.

The media have framed these stories as a symptom of a growing rural-urban divide, and that’s true. Gun safety laws enacted after the Sandy Hook shootings sparked the move in both Colorado and Maryland. Marriage equality for gays and lesbians, and differences over energy policy, immigration (over which state governments have little control) and taxes are often cited as “irreconcilable differences” by these secession advocates.
But it’s also another sign of the difficulty that a group which dominated American politics just a generation ago – a group political scientist Alan Abramowitz narrowed down to married white people who identify as Christians – are having adapting to a country that’s becoming more diverse and embracing a different, more liberal set of cultural values. As Michael Rosenwald noted in The Washington Post, “with secessionists, the term ‘final straw’ comes up a lot.”

An analysis of Census data by Moyers & Company found that non-Hispanic whites make up 93.5 percent of the rebellious Colorado counties, a higher share than the 87.7 percent of the rest of the state’s population. Unsurprisingly, there’s also a significant partisan gap — only around 39 percent of those living in the break-away North voted for Obama in 2012, while the rest of the state supported him by a 52-46 margin, according to an analysis of election returns.

Those divides are even more dramatic in Maryland, where a 26-point gap in presidential preferences separates the five counties considering secession from the rest of the state. Breakaway Maryland is 85 percent white, while whites make up just 51 percent of the population in the rest of the counties, according to a Washington Post analysis.

Go read it all.

This is the reaction we've come to know and expect from people on the hardnosed edges of the American right: At the end of the day, they don't really believe in democracy. They don't believe in putting up with other citizens who believe differently, who pray differently, who dress and wear their hair and their clothes differently and eat differently and most of all who think differently from them.
They like the idea of America as a big all-white nation. They don't like the idea of America as a democracy.

Their antipathy to democracy always creeps out, even in their conspiracy theories (how many times have we heard the far-right refrain, "This is a republic, not a democracy!"), but more importantly in their actions and their political strategies, embodied most recently in the gutting of the Voting Rights Act and the ongoing efforts at voter suppression by conservative Republicans.

And when they realize they are not going to get their way, their solution is not to accept the verdict of democracy. Their solution is to drop out.

That's why we get people like the Threepers and the white supremacists who want to form their own enclaves off somewhere in the woods.

In the 1990s, we had survivalists, "Freemen," Patriot-movement militiamen, "sovereign citizens," and various cranks doing similar things here in the Northwest woods. Here in western Washington, we had far-right factions in rural areas that attempted to secede from the large urban counties in western Washington.

It's always the same old story. And at the end of the day, what they really hate most of all is democracy.

Cross-posted at Crooks and Liars.

Russia's Gay-Bashing Politics Look Like a Descent Into Fascism

We've all been shocked at the vicious nature of Russia's official embrace of anti-gay politics, but we should all be deeply concerned too -- because what we appear to be witnessing is the descent of post-Communist Russia into a fascist state.

First Russian officials passed an Orwellian law banning gay "propaganda," making potentially anyone even remotely sympathetic to LGBT people into criminals. That was followed by the appearance of neo-Nazi thugs on the scene, attacking any gay-rights demonstrators with open violence. The official response to these attacks was instructive: Police either stood by as the thugs attacked gays, or they themselves arrested gay demonstrators and carted them off.

Russian journalist Masha Gessen has been saying this openly:

"What they're doing with this law is they're enshrining second-class citizenship," she added. "So in that sense it's very much like the laws in Nazi Germany. It makes it a crime to say that a group is socially equal to another group. So I said this is creeping Fascism, and if you don't want us to become a Fascist country, then don't just stand by, put on a pink triangle."

Moreover, officials are openly encouraging the violence by making clear that it's justified and won't be prosecuted:

Vitaly Milonov, a deputy in the St. Petersburg legislative assembly from United Russia, is co-author of the notorious law forbidding “promotion of homosexuality.” He blamed the incident in the club on gay people themselves. He said in an interview with Snob.ru that the incident was the ”result of the obnoxious, crude and permissive behavior of the gay community. …What other reaction could there be when, in response to democratic actions, they run around like jackals at consulates, beg for another grant and write letters demanding that the authorities be punished? This is a warning to the gay community so that they don’t forget that they live in the Russian Federation, a country with a healthy historical and cultural legacy.”

In case anyone missed that, let us spell it out in plain English: an elected official from Russia’s second largest city, its so-called “window on Europe,” has condoned mob violence against a particular group of his fellow citizens, blaming them—the victims—for the attack. This is fascism.

Oh, and remember Pussy Riot’s desperate attempt to warn their own fellow citizens and the rest of the world about the dangers of a fusion of church and state in Russia? Well, here’s what you get when the merger is a done deal and the gloves come off:

Sergei Rybko, a Russian Orthodox priest, spoke out more forcefully. “The Holy Scriptures instruct us to cast stones at all those guys with nontraditional orientation. As long as that scum is not banished from Russian land, I completely agree with people who are trying to cleanse our homeland of them. If the government won’t do it, then the people will,” he said an interview with Pravoslaviye i Mir (Orthodoxy and the World). He added that he regretted that because he is a priest, “he couldn’t take part in actions of this sort.”

Nor is it an exaggeration to observe that this is classic far-right fascism, with gay people playing the role of the old fascists' Jews as chief scapegoat, whipping boy and otherwise expiative target for violence.

That's because, according to observers in Russia, the Putin regime and its official right-wing cohort have been actively courting and supporting the activities of various far-right entities in Russia, including a variety of skinhead and neo-Nazi factions.

This is from a Marxist source, but appears generally accurate, reflecting a number of similar reports from inside Russia:

The anti-gay law is not just another law that seeks to villify LGBTQ people and their very existence, but this move by regime is a capitulation to Russian neo-Nazi organisations to further terrorise LGBTQ people. Police complicity with fascists already has a history in Russia and Putin’s regime has sponsored nationalists in the Rodina party, and the neo-nazi Nashi youth organisation to attack and discredit challenges to the regime from the Communist Party and Russian youth. From watching videos of the recent attacks on LGBTQ people, police often stand back and let homophobic and transphobic assaults continue with little or no intervention. Protesters recall previous pride demonstrations (which have been increasingly bigger targets for anti-queer violence) where cops were seen allowing fascists into vans where arrested protesters were being held, suggesting the police work with or are members of neo-Nazi groups.

Neo-Nazi group Format18 and their infamous spokesperson Maxim Martsinkevich (nicknamed Tesak, or ‘hatchet’) have lead the attacks on LGBTQ youth that claim to target paedophiles on the internet. However this is a lie; they put up fake profiles on social networking sites and arrange to meet with LGBTQ youth for a date, only to kidnap, torture, rape and even kill them – all without prosecution by the state. Many of the young people that this group have targeted have subsequently had videos and photos of their kidnap and torture put on the internet, causing them to be outed, humiliated and often driven to suicide.

The victims of the far-right are not just LGBTQ people, the fascists also attack black people, immigrants and various religious groups, in order to scapegoat them – one high profile attack in 2006 by neo-Nazis in St. Petersburg ended in the death of a Sengalese student, Lamzar Samba.

Nor is it any accident that this is happening. It's been brewing for awhile now; these people are well-organized, and some reports indicate the ranks of neo-Nazis have swelled to 100,000 and more in recent years.

And all this has its sources in far-right radicals from the United States and elsewhere.

Back when he was rehabilitating his career after spending time in prison for fraud related to his gambling addiction, David Duke spent a great deal of time organizing neo-Nazis in Russia:

White supremacist David Duke has set his sights on Russia. Saying that the nation holds the "key to white survival," Duke has recently embarked on a campaign to spread his racial theories of white superiority and anti-Semitism in the former Soviet Union. The notorious American hatemonger has recently launched an appeal to Russian nationalists. In Duke’s eyes, Russia presents an unmatched opportunity to help protect the longevity of the white race, since he predicts that "racially aware" parties could achieve political influence there. He believes that Russia’s "sense of racial understanding" will unleash a trend internationally.

Duke has taken at least three recent trips to Russia to speak with nationalists and to promote his new book, The Ultimate Supremacism: My Awakening on the Jewish Question (the Russian title translates as The Jewish Question Through the Eyes of an American). Duke has indicated he may move there to more actively "struggle against people of other colors and with Jews," according to the Interfax news agency.

During his visits to Russia, Duke has held a rally at a respected literary museum and met with nationalist leaders there, including former Communist lawmaker General Albert Makashov, a figure well known for anti-Semitic statements. Duke went to Russia this past summer at the invitation of Alexander Prokhanov, editor-in-chief of Zavtra (Tomorrow), an ultra-nationalist newspaper, and Konstnatin Kasimovsky, the head of an anti-Semitic organization called Russian Action. At the time, several Russian nationalist publications ran reports on Duke’s visit to Moscow. An Internet forum of Russian neo-Nazi skinheads praised the meeting with Duke, who was termed "a well-known American patriot."

This organizing appears to have melded with another branch of far-right activism in Russia, also with its roots in American radicals -- the virulent anti-gay radicals who blame the Holocaust on gays and sponsor anti-gay legislation in places such as Africa and in Eastern Europe.

The largest of these organizations calls themselves the Watchmen on the Walls, and they represent a coalition of Russian-American, American, and Russian right-wingers whose loathing of LGBT people and their rights knows no bounds.

One of the Watchmen's leading figures is a Holocaust revisionist named Scott Lively, who blames Teh Gay for the deaths of millions during World War II. And these are the kinds of things he's prone to pronouncing:

And in the United States where the sexual revolution began, it was the homosexual political movement that designed this strategy to attack Christianity. The homosexual movement teaches sexual freedom, and its first target is the heterosexual people. The homosexual activists stayed hidden but they taught this philosophy through their activists. And out of the philosophy came the principalities and powers that is destroying the West: The pornography industry, the abortion industry, and the destruction of marriage through divorce. These things are the product of a way of thinking. They deny the Truth of God. They deny the design of God for human beings. And their purpose is the change the cultures of the world.

Now, the homosexual movement has been winning this war in the United States, and it has been winning this war in Europe. And we’re looking at the future collapse of Western civilization. And Watchmen on the Walls is an organization to fight against this collapse. Watchmen On the Walls is an organization of men and women with courage, who will stand on the Truth of God and without compromise demand that the culture will follow the guidance of God. That marriage and family must be held at the highest level.”

Lively once gave a talk wherein he described, in a jocular fashion, the bashing death of a gay man by Russian nationals in Sacramento.

Moreover, Lively has taken a leading role in attempts to outlaw homosexuality in Uganda, and he's now taking credit -- with some cause -- for the anti-gay legislation in Russia:

"I can’t point to any country of the world today that is a model for the rest of the world, except perhaps for Russia, which has just taken the very important and frankly necessary step of criminalizing homosexual propaganda to protect the society from being 'homosexualzed.' This was one of my recommendation to Russian leaders in my 50-city tour of the former Soviet Union in 2006 and 2007.

"I strongly advise that you adopt an anti-propaganda law similar to what Russia has recently passed, to stop the 'gay' agenda from advancing any further that it may already have done. It will also be necessary to uproot and discard any existing sexual orientation regulations (the bad seeds) which criminalize discrimination against homosexuality in your laws and in the official policies of your government agencies, universities, corporations, and NGOs."

It's also worth noting that Lively was a significant source of misinformation for Jonah Goldberg's Liberal Fascism, another attempt to whitewash away the common ground between genuine street fascists and the mainstream right. But now that common ground is making itself manifest in Russia.

The most disturbing component of all this is the open collusion between authorities and these far-right thugs. That is the classic manifestation of genuine fascism as we have known it historically; the examples of Germany and Italy in the 1920s are always there to remind us:

Fascist violence was neither random nor indiscriminate. It carried a well-calculated set of coded messages: that communist violence was rising, that the democratic state was responding to it ineptly, and that only the fascists were tough enough to save the nation from antinational terrorists. An essential step in the fascist march to acceptance and power was to persuade law-and-order conservatives and members of the middle class to tolerate fascist violence as a harsh necessity in the face of Left provocation. It helped, of course, that many ordinary citizens never feared fascist violence against themselves, because they were reassured that it was reserved for national enemies and "terrorists" who deserved it.

Now it's all the straight, non-gay Russians and other Eastern Europeans who are standing by and watching this trend develop, knowing that they will not be targeted for the fascists' violence ... this round. When they gain real power, well, that will be a different story.

If people in the West do not awaken to the nature of the beast that is taking root in Russia and Eastern Europe, all in the guise of gay bashing and "defending traditional marriage", they will live to regret it.

Cross-posted at Crooks and Liars.

Why You Ought to Support Orcinus

There are two main reasons that monitoring the activities of the extremist Right in America -- which is the main task at hand for this blog, and for my work as a journalist in general -- is pretty much the direct opposite of a lucrative beat for a professional journalist:

1) There has been tremendous pushback from conservatives against this kind of reporting in general, and particularly against law-enforcement intelligence that makes use of it, as part of an insistent campaign to whitewash the existence of these groups and their profound impact on the body politic out of the national dialogue. They object to any attempt to point out the cooperation and collusion between extremists and mainstream conservatives as a "smear".

2) Liberals and progressives in general agree and comply. Many liberals, particularly mainstream Democrats, shy away from any confrontation with the extremist elements on either side, and particularly the conservative side of the aisle, and prefer not to raise the issue in their polite attempts at debate with the Right, believing in their hearts that such civility will be reciprocated even when it is not. It's considered gauche to even raise the subject, since many of them concur with conservatives that such talk is simply a form of reverse McCarthyism. Heaven knows that mainstream Republicans have nothing to do with such nutcases and do nothing to empower them, right? 

I grew up in conservative southern Idaho and still know how to talk the talk and walk the walk, but I long ago shed my naivete about the nature of the political beast I write about. I know from long experience that "reaching out to the other side of the aisle," when that other side is populated almost entirely with venomous Limbaughites to whom compromise means defeat, only means that you will be retrieving a bloody stump.

And I have watched, over many years, as crazy ideas that originated with the most vile and vicious hatemongers were dressed up in mainstream clothing and trotted out for popular consumption as a normative "new" idea (what I have long called the transmission belt). I have witnessed these ideas steadily migrating right into the mainstream, thanks to people like Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck and Ron Paul -- and also thanks to blinkered progressives who consider the provenance of this insanity an irrelevance.

I happen to know that this information is vital and important, and will be considered so one day again -- probably not too long from now -- to both liberals and conservatives in the mainstream. Because right-wing extremists attack the interests of all of us, and they damage the fabric of American democracy in their every activity. Eventually, the toll they take becomes unmistakable.

That's why I have made this my beat. It's why I have revived this blog. Very few people are listening right now. If you too believe this is important, do what you can to help out.

P.S. Be sure to check out my appearance at Truthout.org:

An Autopsy of the Minuteman Movement: Q&A WithInvestigative Journalist David Neiwert

Even Children Instinctively Know Orca Captivity is Wrong

Even children instinctively understand that there is something profoundly wrong with keeping orcas in captivity. That's why, when they speak out, it carries real weight. We can argue until we are blue in the face about it, but at the end of the day, we all know that their simple insight is right. 

Case in point:

Teachers must have their work cut out for them in today’s world, where because of media access children are bombarded with information and are witness to events from which they once were sheltered. How to help and empower them so that they can grow up to be contributing adults who work to solve problems may not be every teacher’s task, but it certainly is every teacher’s mission.
One such person is Mr. Parkinson, a computer specialist at a school in Manchester, England, who is focusing on teaching kids how to use ipads as a tool and who found the documentary film “Blackfish” touching and powerful. Because he felt that some of the content would be disturbing, he only has the children watch the trailer (below). The film is not scheduled to be released in Europe so there is no question that the kids would be exposed to the really disturbing events. Mr. Parkinson writes:

In my quest to find a topic that I want to ignite the children’s passion to write and share work through the school blog, I watched a very moving and interesting film over the summer called Blackfish. The documentary exposes the dreadful life of Killer Whales in captivity. Although I don’t feel the film is appropriate for children to watch and have emphasised this point with them (some scenes of the whales attacking trainers etc.) The message that it portrays, however, is one I wanted to share with the class. I wanted to use a real life issue to inspire writing and this is one that the film has really brought into the public eye.

From the children in Mr. Parkinson’s class:

Mr Parkinson told us about a film he watched over the summer called, Blackfish. This documentary explored the effects captivity have on killer whales. After Mr Parkinson told us a little about the film, we wanted to research some of the effects ourselves and were astonished to see how unfair and unnatural it is to keep these very intelligent animals in captivity. Mr Parkinson made it clear that the film wasn’t appropriate to watch however did show us a suitable clip that demonstrated some of the effects captivity has on Orca.
We wanted to start this topic with a bang and raise as much awareness as possible so we decided to make a class advert for this issue. We discussed features we could include to make our advert as effective and really grab people’s attention. We used camera effects and emotive music to set the mood. We used rhetorical questions to make the viewer think and persuade them to agree with our viewpoint.

If you agree with the message in our video, please help us raise awareness by sharing our video with as many people as possible. This will hopefully provide our blog with an audience to showcase the writing we will be producing over the next few weeks. We would also love it if you can comment on our video to let us know what you think. Some of the children have already been writing about this issue and you can read them here.

I can attest to some personal experience in this regard. Below is a brief excerpt from my forthcoming book, Of Orcas and Men: What Killer Whales Can Teach Us, following the story of the captures from Northwest waters of the killer whales -- named Namu and Shamu -- who provided the foundations of the captive-orca entertainment industry:

Shamu made Sea World a multi-billion-dollar business. Thanks to the presence of their performing killer whales, the onetime backwater business of marine parks has blossomed into a big-money corporate undertaking, entertainment venues that families plan their whole vacations around seeing.

I know this from personal experience. We took Fiona to Sea World in San Diego a couple of times when she was little – ages one and two, respectively. It was actually a lot of fun.

And you have to give credit where it is due: My little girl was flabbergasted and smitten by the sight of the great orcas, especially when they glided past the glass enclosure where she spent the better part of an hour oohing and ahhing over them. These parks deserve great credit in providing people the opportunity to actually see, in the flesh, one of these great creatures. Whether what they’re being shown is orcas as they really are is another question. 

At those parks, they tell a different story about killer whales. They portray them as docile and friendly, like super-smart performing dogs. Though imposing and intimidating, they are clearly dominated by their human trainers. The parks claim to give their attendees an “education” and “conservation message” through their shows, though what information they give is often muddled and sometimes downright false. There is a lot of prattle about how much the whales eat and what it’s like to train them, but almost nothing about their social lives, their backgrounds, or their population type.

But most of all, you will never, ever hear about the endangered population of killer whales in the Pacific Northwest, and most certainly not the outsize role played by the captive-orca industry, during its founding years, in driving those populations to the brink. Yes, you might be told that whales face all kinds of survival challenges in the wild, and often do not survive them – mostly as a means of rationalizing the continued captivity of killer whales by theme parks. You will be told the oceans are a scary place (as proven by the difficulties whales face in Puget Sound) and that the parks can provide the whales better food and care than they can get in the wild. You will probably also be told that their orcas live longer in captivity than do whales in the wild.

These are at best gross distortions of reality. And the last is simply a lie: Captivity has been a catastrophe for most killer whales taken from the wild. Study after study has demonstrated that whales in captivity are more than two and a half times more likely to die than whales in the wild. All the care in the world cannot compensate for the stress brought on by placing a large, highly mobile, highly intelligent, and highly social animal with a complex life into a small concrete tank.

Of the 136 orcas taken in captivity over the years, only 37 still survive. The average lifespan of all these orcas in captivity so far is about eight and a half years. In the wild, the average rises to thirty-one years for males and forty-six for females.

Then there is the upper end of the spectrum. In the wild, males will live up to sixty years, and in the Puget Sound, there is a matriarchal female named Granny who is believed to be a hundred years old. Having met Granny up close in my kayak, I can attest that she remains spry and playful. There are several other elderly females in the southern resident population.

But we don’t know how long orcas will live in captivity yet. We’re still finding that out.

Perhaps the most telling number is that, of those fifty-five orcas taken from the Pacific Northwest, only two remain alive today: Corky II, the matriarch of the Sea World orcas in San Diego, taken from Pender Harbor in 1969; and Lolita, also known as Tokitae, the only surviving orca from the horrific Penn Cove captures of 1970, who is alone in a small tank at Miami Seaquarium. Both are estimated to have been born in 1966, making them roughly co-equals as the oldest whales in captivity, though there are some estimates that indicate Lolita is older. Regardless, Corky has been captive longer than any living whale. Their stories are amazing and, in the end, inspiring – except that the ending so far is that they remain in captivity, their owners intent on keeping them.

On our second visit to Sea World, we bought tickets for Fiona and her mom to go to the exclusive “Dine With Shamu” luncheon, where trainers bring whales up close to the tables where you’re gnoshing and give you a good look. The whale Fiona got to see up close was none other than Corky.

I asked her afterward if she was excited to meet Corky up that close. She seemed noncommittal. Her mom told me that she seemed more taken aback than anything. “There was something disturbing about it,” she said.

That had been in February, and later that summer, in August, we had our close encounter with orcas in the wild. That evening in camp, I asked her if she had thought about those orcas at Sea World after seeing these in the wild. She said she had. I asked what her thoughts were. She paused for only a moment.

“They should let them go,” she said. Even a three-year-old could see it.

Here's that's trailer for Blackfish that inspired the children in England.

The Revival Fundraiser!

Yes, I am reviving this blog, bringing back the old mix of monitoring the extremist right and environmental reportage -- along with some old-fashioned philosophical musings. Read all about it here. 

Investigating the far right is the opposite of what would usually be a "profitable business model". Generally I have to scrape by. So if you want to see this kind of work continue, please pitch in.
 

The Other Side

Just because I like to present dissenting voices, here are a couple of responses from readers at AlterNet who picked up on my post about Ron Paul's extremism.

As usual, there's an endless supply of people who desperately want to believe that Ron Paul is the source of all goodness and light in American politics, and they are as always deep in denial about the real nature of their icon. 

dangerdanman

Man you guys really go out of your way to trash people who disagree with you. I love how Alternet will say hes a "far-right extremist" even though he supports full equality, gay marriage no more foreign wars, he wants to demilitarize the police, stop the NSA (which he has been saying for years was happening), make drugs legal, make the penalities for drugs like marijuana non-existant and bring jobs back to America. But I guess when he was congressman of Houston and made it one of the most successful cities in America you have to slander people because you have nothing else to argue with. Oh and by the way he is going up there to discuss economics.

 And then there are the imaginative excuses:

Rob Chapman

I have to agree with Dan. This piece skirts dangerously close to scurilous character assassination.

It might be that Ron Paul wants to speak to this group to differentiate his brand of politics from the anti-Semitism espoused by the others.

It is also possible, and probably even likely that Ron Paul is unaware of the anti-semitic activities and statements of the others and merely took this engagement through his normal booking process. Do American public speakers' agents generally enquire as to whether sponsors are anti-semitic?

I hate to defend Ron Paul, who I view as a charlatan and dupe, but this article relies too heavily on right wing tactics of innuendo and smear to go unanswered.

Because, yeah, the economics experts I know go to Canada all the time to participate in conferences run by anti-Semitic cults. And are perfectly unaware of their nature when they do so. (Hint: Paul has been associating with the Fatima people since at least 1998, when he helped make that video atop the post.)

And then there was the "militiamen are really patriotic people"  contingent:

jaylindberg

 

This David Neiwert guy is way off base.

Ron Paul is smart, articulate, honest and fearless. He has been around a long time and one trait have never seen in him is hatred.

You have to love America's the author's definition of Anti-semite. Anyone that states the Palestinians are being mistreated, that the Jewish lobby and AIPAC have too much power in Washington, that Israeli settlements in Palestine are illegal, that Israel is trying to drag us into this War with Syria or that Israel needs to be get rid of their nuclear weapons is an anti-semite.

Sometimes you have to wonder if clowns like David Neiwert are nothing more that the propaganda arm for the ATF, FBI and Homeland Security. His hate group propaganda Creates the demand for government infiltration, incarceration and far too often assassination of members militia movements under the ruse of hate groups and domestic terrorists. He makes great money plugging this type of propaganda.

My assessment of most militia movements are that they are informed, patriotic Americans that are offended by the conduct of this government. They like guns and know how to take care of themselves.

This is my assessment of most of the groups David claims to be hate groups or domestic terrorists.

Ron Paul is not a terrorist. He is a patriot. He is the closest leader we have in this country to an alternative of our corrupt two party system.

While we are on the subject of terrorism I should also mention that Ron Paul wants to end the Drug War. The closest most Americans will ever come to real domestic terrorism is this government's involvement in the war on Drugs. This war, and the Drug War NAZIs that profit from it terrorize our communities. It is out of control, corrupt and their policies have to answer to nobody. In my case, my opposition to the war on Drugs made my family a target and a parent got killed. I know what terrorism looks like.

 Just for the record: We define anyone who posits and aggressively promotes conspiracy theories claiming that Jews secretly are plotting to rule the world and enslave America (or Russia, or whatever country they're operating in) as anti-Semitic. And the Fatima folks fit that description in spades.

Also, be sure to check out the foulmouthed response from the Threepers that was directed at the folks at the Institute for Research and Education on Human Rights for their investigative report on the Threeper plans to build a backwoods compound in Idaho called The Citadel. Definitely NSFW!

Deep-Woods Lunatics Have High Hopes for Idaho Hideaway

You remember the most recent entries in the "let's move to the Idaho wilderness so we can escape liberals and get eaten by mosquitoes" tradition -- the people who have bought property in Benewah County and plan to build a place called The Citadel -- right?

Let's recall their residency requirements:

The Citadel is not to be a closed society, instead a refuge for genuine Patriots who wish to live without neighbors who are Liberals and Establishment political ideologues.

That's right: Their community "bans Liberals from living among us." But it's not closed.

In the event, my friends at the Institute for Research and Education on Human Rights (IREHR) did a proper and thorough investigation of The Citadel and its would-be organizers.

The results are now available for all to read at The Nation:

Is America’s Militia Movement on the Rise?

Up an unpaved Idaho road, self-styled “patriots” gather to plan and train in close-quarters battle.

... Now, after a year of justifiable skepticism about the walled city’s prospects, expressed by the Benewah County Sheriff, and criticism of the project’s leadership by rival militia factions, the group behind the Citadel is taking the next steps. On September 6–8 it gathered at a twenty-acre plot it had already purchased as a starter base-camp, according to county records.

A couple dozen or more militia-types are thought to have traveled off the main highways and up the unpaved logging roads for close-quarters battle training and a self-styled patriot convention. They housed themselves in tents and RVs. Jim Miller, a fully licensed arms manufacturer at the heart of the Citadel’s plans, was in attendance. Perhaps he sold some of the guns he has recently built, AR-15s—a civilian replica of the American military’s M-16s. Chris Kerodin, the Citadel’s central idea man and principal propagandist, taught hand-to-hand combat courses known as CQB—close-quarters battle.

They also were slated to make plans to eventually attract 300 “patriots” to their ranks, people willing to “go into harm’s way,” and “clear Black Panthers from the voting stations,” according to one of Kerodin’s frequent blog posts.

At IREHR's site, there's more detail about what they found there -- including the reaction of locals, including the sheriff of Benewah County, who is not much impressed:

On his desk and others in the office sat a stack of the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution, pocket-sized editions provided by the Cato Institute. "I believe in the Constitution," Resser declared. "These guys claim to have a mindset in the Constitution, but that's not what they're about," he said about Kerodin's Threepers. The Citadel was against the Jeffersonian ideals they claimed to be protecting, he claims. "From the sounds of it, only a few honchos would be calling all the shots, which makes it an oligarchy, not a republic," he explained.

Resser also had his doubts about the future of the operation, however. "A scam. It's obviously some sort of scam," Resser added, tipping back his hat. He compared the Citadel plan to a cult and drew parallels between it and the disaster of Jim Jones and Jonestown. Resser later added that Kerodin and his ilk were "preying on the fears of well-intentioned good-minded people."

Be sure to read the whole thing.

The Pacific Northwest Inlander has also been reporting on The Citadel plans, and noted back in February that locals have long memories about far-right separatists moving into the northern Idaho backwoods:

“You’re a little worried because it’s a little out of the box, and you always worry a little about the anti-government types,” says Bryan Chase, who runs Timber Country, a sports apparel store his mother owns on Main Street. “I think back to when Coeur d’Alene had the Aryan Nations, and that gave all of North Idaho a bad name.”

Notably, these cultural separatists were given a big shot in the arm by Glenn Beck not too long ago. This should not come as a surprise, really, since Beck has a long record of endorsing and empowering various kinds of far-right extremism -- particularly the notion of such cultural separatism and eliminationism directed at liberals -- as well as inspiring various acts of extremist violence. There's a reason we call him the "fearmonger in chief."

Cross-posted at Crooks and Liars.

Reviving Orcinus

Back in January of 2003, when I started up this little blog, I barely could have conceived the path that would follow. Indeed, it was kind of a toss-off thing, something to while away some time while my baby daughter napped and to get some of the material I had in my files in at least a form of print.

Then it became much more than that. Suddenly I had hundreds, then thousands, of readers daily, and just like that I was posting almost daily and attracting a regular audience. Five years later, I was editing and managing a blog on a national scale -- first Firedoglake.com (rather briefly), and then Crooks and Liars for the better part of four years.

When I first hired on as a national-blog editor, I tried to keep Orcinus running by cross-posting my material there over to here. But I didn't anticipate the crushing load imposed by those jobs, and the difficulty of monitoring two sites at once. So, as most of you who once may have read here regularly are aware, I slowly let Orcinus fade into the sunset, occasionally reawakening to insert back posts. But it was an enterprise in which I was not very involved any longer.

I quit holding the reins at C&L last January, though I still contribute there as a senior editor and occasional writer (see my blog there). To some extent I was burned out on blogging and needed a break, but more importantly I needed to prepare to promote And Hell Followed With Her, and to begin work on Of Orcas and Men. It has been a crazy busy spring and summer.

But now it's past and I'm settling into writing mode full time for Of Orcas and Men, and it seemed like an opportune time to restart my old blog here at Orcinus.

I'm going to try to get back to posting daily, or mostly daily. And the posts will feature my traditional mix: an emphasis on watchdogging the radical right in America and all its permutations, documenting extremist violence, thuggery, and acts of domestic terrorism, combined with a healthy dose of environmental reporting, with a strong emphasis on an animal I write about a great deal, the killer whale, aka Orcinus orca. 

I'll continue writing for C&L and cross-posting here, but as many of you know, there's a lot of material I liked to post here that was never appropriate for a national political blog and is mostly fun or interesting stuff. That will be back.

But I'm also going to be doing something I did more in the early days of the blog -- that is, waxing philosophic (some of you may even recall my failed Media Revolt Manifesto). After all, I have studied philosophy for years and over them have developed some ideas of my own. And I like discussing them with other people who are interested in having a real conversation.

I am struck by the overwhelming need for a progressive movement -- political, cultural, and personal -- predicated on enshrining the innate and intrinsic worth of every individual human being, and doing so through the power of communitarian action and institutions. I would call it a Human Movement. And I would like to bring it to shape through the power of collaborative discussion that's really only possible through Internet-based media, such as a blog like this one, where we can keep it small and personal.

As I did in gradually transforming the conversations that resulted from Rush, Newspeak and Fascism and The Rise of Pseudo-Fascism into a single book -- The Eliminationists -- these conversations may well result someday in becoming part of a larger written thesis. Certainly, those ideas were shaped and sculpted by those conversations (I really still think of that book as a collaborative effort), and I consider the democratic/egalitarian approach to shaping movements the healthiest thing for them.

So come join in the conversation. I'm going to be busy writing Of Orcas and Men over the next few months, and I have another exciting book project waiting shortly behind it.

But the conversation about a new kind of political movement is one we need to have, and it really can't wait any longer. I'm hoping you all will come and join.

Secondarily, I am making very little money at any of this (sorry gang, the book-writing business does not pay the bills unless you write a young-adult fiction series or hit the jackpot with a bestseller). I am in fact barely staying afloat these days.

So if you want to help contribute to the work I'm undertaking here -- knowing what I've done in the past -- I would deeply appreciate any donation you can come up with. It will definitely make a difference in my ability to keep doing this work.

See you all in the weeks ahead. 

Is DA Shielding Old Pal Chris Simcox on Child Sex Abuse Charges?

I thought the nativists who populate the Republican Party in Arizona would at least have enough sense and basic decency to just run away from Chris Simcox after his arrest on child-molestation charges. I was wrong.

And even though this story is a week and a half old already (I missed it while off in the wilderness), if your outrage-o-meter hasn't hit at least a 9 recently, well, just digest the latest news in Simcox's ongoing drama, courtesy of Stephen Lemons of Phoenix New Times. Mine's at 11:

At a pretrial conference Wednesday before Commissioner Virginia Richter, deputy county attorney Yigael Cohen signaled that the Maricopa County Attorney's Office will be offering a plea deal in the case of former minuteman leader Chris Simcox.

Simcox, 52, was arrested June 19, and is currently being held nonbondable on six felony counts related to child molestation and sexual conduct with minors under the age of 10.
Initially, the allegations involved three kindergarten-aged girls, one of them his own daughter. (Simcox was a kindergarten teacher in Los Angeles, before his move to Arizona.)

Since his arrest, the prosecution has dropped one victim -- a little girl Simcox allegedly bribed with candy to show him her underwear. Now, the other two victims in the case, each of whom say they were molested by Simcox, may be denied the justice they deserve.

The prosecutor did not describe the plea offer to the court. In fact, he said he still had to write it up for review by the defense.

And, significantly, at the mention of a plea deal, Simcox, who was standing in the jury box in stripes and shackles, shook his head, as if to reject the offer out of hand.

One of the victims' parents, at least, appears shaken and outraged:

After the hearing, outside the courtroom, I saw the prosecutor speaking with Michelle Lynch, the mother of one of Simcox's victims.

Lynch was in tears and very upset. I overheard what the prosecutor had to say to her.
"I will let your views be known," he said at one point before rushing off. "It's not set in stone."

Lynch declined comment for this report.

Whatever the plea offer is, based on Lynch's reaction to it, we can assume it is not good for the victims.

And why, we might ask, would the Maricopa County DA be interested in letting off a notorious hatemonger who appears to have forced little girls to watch porn films and to be molested as they took showers with him?

Because the DA is a big fan of the Minutemen and Simcox!

An irony of Simcox's current situation is that his minuteman movement was once supported by Maricopa County Attorney Bill Montgomery.

Both the website for Simcox's now-defunct Minuteman Civil Defense Corps, and the morgue of the Tucson Citizen newspaper indicate that Montgomery participated in an "Arizona Operation Block Watch Kick-Off Rally" in 2006, when he was running as the Republican nominee for state Attorney General.

One of the photos on MCDC's site shows Montgomery speaking at the event. Other speakers included Simcox, GOP congressional candidate Randy Graf, Michelle Dallacroce from Mothers Against Illegal Aliens, and someone from the national nativist organization Federation for American Immigration Reform.

Montgomery may have gone on minuteman patrols, as well.

Go read it all. I love the part about how one of Montgomery's chief benefactors is none other than Simcox's recent employer.

Of course, it's also worth remembering that this is the county run by Montgomery's friend and ally Sheriff Joe Arpaio -- whose mishandling of sex crimes cases is already legendary. It's obvious he has a partner in that component of his broad misfeasance of his duties.

There's a special kind of corruption in Arizona, enabled and fueled by hardnosed partisan and ethnic hatred. It remains that state's real and lasting stain.

Cross-posted at Crooks and Liars.

Ron Paul Reveals Yet Again Who He Really Is: A Far-Right Extremist

Freed from the constraints of running semi-permanently for president, Ron Paul is letting his skirts down by appearing as a speaker at a convention of some of the most fascistic far-right global ideologues in the business.

The SPLC's Hatewatch explains that both Paul and the president of the John Birch Society are part of a phalanx of Americans participating at the upcoming gathering:

In early September, the men are all scheduled to speak – along with a lengthy list of archconservative clergy, lawyers and academics – at a conference in Canada sponsored by the Fatima Center, part of the “radical traditionalist Catholic” movement, perhaps the single largest group of hard-core anti-Semites in North America.

Paul, the former Texas congressman and Republican presidential candidate, is the keynote speaker of the weeklong conference slated for Sept. 8-13 in Niagara Falls, Ontario. ...
The conference is titled, “Fatima: The Path to Peace” and “is a call,” according to a Fatima Center press release, “to a return to sanity in the government of the world and the Church, for the two cannot be separated.”

Also scheduled to speak is Roberto Fiore, an Italian politician, who, when he won a seat to the European Parliament in 2008, was described by a fellow member of the body as “absolutely the most extreme person who has ever served in the European Parliament.”

John F. McManus, the president of the archconservative John Birch Society (JBS) is also listed as a speaker at the Canadian conference. JBS has been dogged for decades by charges of anti-Semitism, accusations society leaders vehemently deny.

This is, of course, nothing particularly new. A significant chunk of Paul's radical right voting record in Congress revolves around his various efforts to promote the Birch Society agenda by getting the U.S. to withdraw from the United Nations. And indeed, Paul's obsession with the "New World Order" is a reflection of the same paranoid belief system, a product of old-line anti-Semitic far-right organizations.

As Rachel Tabachnik at Talk 2 Action explains, neither is it new for Paul to be openly embracing these anti-Semites:

This is not the first time that Paul has been involved in a conspiracy-themed project with Father Nicholas Gruner, the founder of the Ontario-based Fatima Center. In 1998 the John Birch Society produced and marketed a film promoting the American Sovereignty Restoration Act, a bill sponsored in the U. S. Congress by Ron Paul calling for withdrawal from the United Nations. The film includes the participation of Fr. Gruner and a total of five speakers who are also speaking at the Fatima Conference. In the film Paul claims that the United Nations is coming to get your guns and your property. Resistance will be futile, Paul warns, and "If the United Nations has their way, there will be curtailment of our right to practice religion."

The 30-minute John Birch Society film includes five of the speakers who will be participating in the Fatima Center conference this coming week: Ron Paul; Fr. Nicholas Gruner, founder of the Fatima Center; John McManus, president of JBS; William Jasper, editor of the JBS magazine New American; and Cornelia Ferreira. Ferreira is another radical traditionalist Catholic who writes and speaks about claimed takeover of the church by a Masonic conspiracy and "liberal churchmen" who are in league with a "Luciferian revolution."

See the video atop this post for a pared-down version. The complete 30-minute video is here.

Tabachnik has more details about the deeper (and more disturbing) nature of the Fatima Society's radicalism:

Most mainstream press coverage has focused solely on the anti-Semitism of the Fatima Center and affiliated schismatics, described by the Southern Poverty Law Center as "the single largest group of hard-core anti-Semites in North America." The SPLC isolates the Fatima Center, claimed to be the largest international Fatima apostolates, as one of the "Dirty Dozen" of traditionalist Catholic groups preaching anti-Semitic hatred.

But the anti-Semitism is part of a larger story.

The Fatima Center is one of several examples of rightwing fascination with Russia as an emerging world leader and counter to American liberalism on social issues.

... The Fatima Center was founded by Father Nicholas Gruner as part of a larger movement dedicated to fulfillment of instructions believed to be given by the Virgin Mary to three Portuguese children in 1917. The message was in the form of "Three Secrets." It is the Third Secret of Fatima, kept confidential until announced by the Vatican in 2000, which has been the source of international controversy. This third secret is described as prophetic information about the conflict between Russian-sourced communism and the Roman Catholic Church and is supposed to include the instructions for the "Consecration of Russia to the Immaculate Heart of Mary."

... The Fatima Crusaders attacks on the Vatican and warnings of destruction are strikingly similar to the anti-Catholic narratives of televangelist John Hagee and other marketers of fundamentalist Protestant end times prophecy. (Hagee is an independent Charismatic.) In these narratives, the Roman Catholic hierarchy partners with an Illuminati conspiracy and pave the way for the reign of the Antichrist. In Hagee's version, evil on earth is orchestrated by "half-breed Jews" and in the Fatima version by a "Judeo-Masonic" conspiracy. Both are fixated with claims that the Federal Reserve is owned by Rothschilds. One of the speakers at the "Fatima: Path to Peace" conference is G. Edward Griffin, author of one of the most popular, although somewhat sanitized, versions of the Rothschilds' enslavement of humanity through manipulation of the dollar.

It's not a coincidence that mainstream Russian politics has taken on a strong odor of brownshirt-style fascism in its thuggish approach to gay rights and similar issues: These politics are being espoused and promoted with the help of international far-right factions such as the Fatima Society.

And foremost among these elements are American far-right figures, including most prominently Ron Paul. As Tabachnik explains:

Paul has a long history as the link between a diverse array of groups that promote anti-Semitic conspiracies as well as a deep hatred of U.S. government. As we face the challenges of the next few weeks on the issues of Syria and conflict in the Middle East, we should be aware that some of the voices calling for peace are not partners looking for a less militaristic America, or a plan to lead the world toward a more progressive future. Some of the voices for "peace" are coming from people who would take us back to the Middle Ages.

Cross-posted at Crooks and Liars.

Johnstone Strait Orcas: The Video

This is my latest video from my recent trip to Johnstone Strait, B.C. -- on the northeastern side of Vancouver Island. It's a bit of a break from my traditional slide show. Instead, this is video footage of whales passing by (unfortunately, my only good footage on this trip came from shore at my camp at Kaikash Creek; my attempts to video from my kayak didn't pan out this time). The best part is that you can hear them breathing, something missing from my slideshows.

I've added the sounds these whales made passing by the camp as a secondary soundtrack, so you can get an idea of what was going on underwater at the same time. Enjoy!

Immigration Hangout: A Chat About 'Border Security' and the Minutemen

Here is our conversation earlier today discussing the Minutemen and the "border security" scam, featuring:

• Juanita Molina from the Border Action Network in Tucson, Arizona, will discuss how these groups and personalities shaped the debate over immigration reform in her state.
• Julieta Garibay from United We DREAM will explain how that discussion led to a growing push to militarize the border.
• Frank Sharry from America's Voice, who moderated.

 Hope you find this enlightening. Many thanks to Frank Sharry, Matt Hildreth and Joe Sudbay for making the hangout happen.

Along the same lines, be sure to check out the interview I did with David Kortava at The Mantle in which some of the same issues are raised:

I think a lot of people really underestimate the influence and power and impact of these kinds of groups on the mainstream right. They tend to have a gravitational effect on conservatives, pulling them farther towards the right. A lot of the positions we’re seeing bandied about now as normative—particularly within the Tea Party—were the views of radical militia types back in the 1990s.

Rightwing extremism has broader impacts on society. It’s true that only something like 8 or 9 percent of hate crimes are committed by members of hate groups; the vast majority are committed by people who are otherwise considered mainstream normal kids, usually young men. But something like seventy percent of these crimes are accompanied by verbiage associated with hate groups. In other words, you have people picking up on cultural cues from the extremist right and incorporating them into their worldview, even if they aren’t necessarily adopting the broader ideology.

Anti-immigration organizations like the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR) hand out these pseudo-academic studies suggesting that immigrants are using up taxpayer money, bringing in disease, and committing crime. While none of this true, it does produce a toxic effect on the conversation about immigration. Instead of focusing on the problem—antiquated laws—we focus on the supposed criminality of people who are themselves victims, victims both of those laws and of the economic forces compelling them to make these death-defying crossings through the desert.

Finally, you should check out my interview with Matthew Filipowicz, who as always manages to find the humorous vein in all this.

Why the Right-Wing 'Border Security' Fetish is a Sham Concocted by Criminal Nativists

Here's my op-ed at America's Voice:

Back in the days when he was a media darling appearing on every network – before everything would collapse in an appalling heap of criminality – Chris Simcox would promote his border-watching “Minuteman” movement as an essential component of national security because of the ominous threat that terrorists might cross over the border into the USA from Mexico.

“It is frightening to think that just one terrorist hiding among thousands of illegal immigrants who come across the border each day could easily carry chemical, biological or even nuclear materials into the U.S.,” Simcox told a reporter in 2005. “At this point, it’s not a question of ‘if’ but of ‘when.’”

Naturally, this was the entire purpose of his organization. “While officials are talking, Minutemen are acting,” said Simcox pronounced. “They need to put our money where their mouth is, and start doing something about our borders.”

Simcox also had something of a paranoid streak about the borders: “Take heed of our weapons because we’re going to defend our borders by any means necessary,” he told an audience in 2003. “There’s something very fishy going on at the border. The Mexican army is driving American vehicles — but carrying Chinese weapons. I have personally seen what I can only believe to be Chinese troops.”

For Simcox and the Minutemen, the rubric of reason for the “citizen border watches” they organized all revolved around “national security” – at least when the TV cameras were on. When they were off, it was a different story: Minutemen border watchers were fond of explaining in private to people they thought were fellow participants that the best solution to stopping “the invasion” (as they liked to call it) of Latino immigrants they hoped to catch in the act was to start shooting one or two of them.

One of them even explained it on camera once: “No, we ought to be able to shoot the Mexicans on sight, and that would end the problem,” he told a reporter. “After two or three Mexicans are shot, they’ll stop crossing the border. And they’ll take their cows home, too.”

Of course, we're still hearing the same excuses from the right:

“Border security” was just a verbal rubric pasted over the real source of these nativists’ anxieties. It was a coded phrase for the underlying intention: “Keep out the brown people.”

Seven years down the road, that reality hasn’t changed a bit. What has changed instead is an electoral landscape where it’s becoming increasingly clear that the need for comprehensive immigration reform has become inescapable, but when faced with legislation to achieve it, those same nativists and their Tea-Partying cohorts in Congress continue to revert to the same old saw: “We need to secure the border before we can pass reform.” And it still means the same old thing.

What, exactly, do they mean by “border security”? It’s hard to pin down the exact definition of a “secure border” – reflective of the fact that it is a coded phrase – but in the hands of various Congressional Republicans, what emerges is a fantasy portrait of a militarized fortress-style border with Mexico secured by a towering fence and the constant buzz of manpower patrolling it. In the immigration-reform bill passed by the Senate (but still bottled up in the House), the legislation requires construction of 700 miles of new double-walled border fence and 20,000 more Border Patrol agents to man it.

Notably, these proposals all envision such a facility along the 1,954 miles of border the United States shares with Mexico. No such fence is envisioned for 5,525 miles of border that we share with Canada – even though, when it comes to national security, we already know which border terrorists are likely to cross. And it’s not the southern one. Of course, building a second fence two and half times as long as that proposed for the Mexico border would be outrageously expensive – especially when the latter already fits that description.

Go here to read it all.

As the Need for Immigration Reform Grows, Congress Grows Less Likely to Act

[Note: Crooks and Liars will be hosting a Google Hangout on Thursday discussing immigration reform on live video with a special panel of experts, including Frank Sharry, Executive Director of America's Voice; Juanita Molina, Executive Director, Border Action Network and Julieta Garibay from United We DREAM, and C&L's own David Neiwert, author of And Hell Followed With Her: Crossing the Dark Side of the American Border. Be sure to tune in at 10 am PDT!]

The WaPo's Ed O'Keefe has an excellent piece looking at the real-world consequences of Congress's mishandling of immigration reform so far, from the point of view of people who actually live along the border:

They say that lawmakers should instead consider the economic benefits of legal immigration. About 20 percent of the $500 billion traded annually between the United States and Mexico passes through ports of entry along this part of the border, and locals say the numbers would climb dramatically if trucks carrying goods could cross faster.

More than 100,000 jobs in the region rely on the lawful movement of people, goods and services between the two countries, and officials predict that even more business and jobs would be created if Congress made it easier for guest workers to cross, or if illegal immigrants could come out of the shadows.

“It would seem to me that the key to immigration reform is providing some type of work visas to shuffle out those who are just here to work and many times want to go home,” Wiles said. “They want to come, work, support their families and eventually go home.”

Yet the cold reality is that the Tea Party faction controls Congress, and as long as that's the case, there will be no immigration reform bill to emerge from the black hole of negativity it has become.

The public agrees. According to Rasmussen, only 28 of the American public thinks immigration-reform passage is likely this year -- even though a substantial majority favor it.

Most voters still want the emphasis on border control, and with this in mind, fewer than ever think Congress is likely to pass immigration reform this year.

Fifty-three percent (53%) of Likely U.S. Voters favor a reform plan that gives legal status to many of those now here illegally as long as the border is really secured to prevent future immigration. A new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey finds that 30% are opposed to this plan even with the guarantee of stricter border control. Seventeen percent (17%) are undecided.

As Rep. Pete Gallego observes in the WaPo piece, this doesn't say anything very flattering about the anti-democratic forces that are overwhelming our political process:

“If immigration reform doesn’t happen, that doesn’t say good things about our democracy, that everybody wants it but Congress couldn’t pass it,” Gallego said during a recent dinner meeting with constituents.

It does, however, underscore the need to get the House out of the hands of the Tea Party.


Cross-posted at Crooks and Liars.