The right’s startling contempt for poor children

What is it about the far right and its contempt for helping children? What kind of political movement or organization would devote a sizable chunk of its limited resources (as two of the local “libertarian” “free market” think tanks do these days) to railing against public programs designed to feed poor kids? What motivates such venom?

Whatever it is (see below for some theories) there has been a veritable flood of bile emanating from Right-wing Avenue on the subject in recent weeks. Whether it’s the incessant effort to claim that (horrors!) children above the poverty line are accessing reduced price school lunches or the mountain-out-of-a-molehill rants about a low income pre-school student and a helper’s inept attempt to get her some vegetables, it’s been hard to keep track of the articles, op-eds, blog posts, tweets that have been spewing forth of late.

And what makes it all the more disturbing is that it’s never about the children or a concern that public programs are harming them or making the programs work better; it’s all about portraying simple, wholesome and absolutely essential things like feeding kids as diabolical and corrupt Maoist schemes ordered up by some combination of Hugo Chavez and Al Qaeda.

The latest

This week, the Pope Civitas Institute even placed the following question on its website, online push poll: “Should charter schools be required to provide meals and transportation to underprivileged students?” The alleged results: 10% “yes” and 90% “no.”

Got that? Charter schools, of course, are public schools that are required by law to have student bodies that reflect the demographics of the communities in which they are located. Who would think of such a question, much less promote it unabashedly?

Consider also the ongoing obsession of the Locke Foundation with “fraud” in school lunch programs for poor kids. In article after article, in recent years, the group has never missed an opportunity to demonize such programs and to portray them as veritable snake pits of corruption. Just this week, the Locke people even had to tell us that the state of New Jersey is “cracking down on school lunch cheaters.” In the past, articles have targeted supposed abuses in the Charlotte-Mecklenburg system.

Mind you, these articles are not about allegations that public bureaucracies are serving kids lousy food full of salt and sugar and fat or otherwise doing them a disservice as happened in Great Britain a few years back; these articles are about supposed abuses by the children and their families – as in, kids whose parents make more than the designated bureaucratic definition of “poor” getting reduced price meatloaf and green beans.

Similar illogic permeates the wild spasm of coverage that Locke and The Pope-Civitas Institute have poured on the incident they both like to refer to as “Chicken Nugget-gate.” You remember the story of the pre-schooler in a poorer southeastern North Carolina county and the well-meaning but clumsy decision by a helper in the school to supplement the kid’s homemade bag lunch with a school- provided lunch that included a vegetable. In as state in which thousands of kids go to bed hungry and/or malnourished every night, this is a matter that deserves to be splattered all over Fox News and the conservative blogosphere as a “scandal”?!

Trying to understand

Understanding the motivations for this kind of determined and disturbed advocacy to undermine the feeding of children is difficult for those of us who are not predisposed to see commie plots hiding behind every state budget line item. What could possibly make grown people with college degrees and jobs think that the phenomenon of poor and near poor kids getting more chances to eat a semi-square meal is such a threat to the Republic?

For some of the real racists and extremist kooks, it’s obviously just a matter of ignorance and blind hatred. But that’s not what’s going on over on the Pope campus for the most part. These people aren’t in that league.

No, somehow, the market fundamentalists have come to convince themselves that public involvement in something as basic as school lunches (and pre-kindergarten and even education generally) is a fundamental infringement on the parent-child relationship.

It’s really the old fluoridation debate all over again. These people are so stubbornly committed to their ideology (and so massively oblivious to the myriad ways in which public structures and systems make civilized society and middle class life possible) that they would rather see children malnourished and toothless than think that they are somehow being “molded” and “controlled” by “government.”

And no matter how many times it’s demonstrated to them that public educators and cafeteria workers have no desire whatsoever to turn children into little socialist automatons who hate their parents (as if that isn’t a natural phenomenon for nearly every adolescent), the true believers on the right just can’t see it.

Reality check

So what is the response? How do we make the crusaders on the right (or, at least, the members of the public that they have confused) understand the truth?

There are undoubtedly a lot of highfalutin and policy-based responses to this madness. One can demonstrate the pervasiveness of poverty and food insecurity, the comparative pittance that our society spends on school lunch programs and even look at compelling individual stories of children for whom school meals are their only decent meals.

It might be simpler and just as effective, however, to put it this way:

Earth to the right-wing think tanks: Have any of you people ever eaten lunch in a public school? Do you know what it is like? Do you have any idea how “un-cool” it is in many places – especially for middle and high schoolers – to eat this way? Have you ever stopped to ponder the peer pressure that actually must be overcome by many kids to get access to free or reduced price lunches? Have you ever contemplated how much kids must need the food in order to be willing take such steps?

If you had thought about any of these things there’s no way you’d be embarked upon such a strange and mean-spirited crusade. Instead, you’d realize that: a) children are hungry out there and, b)  no society ever jeopardized its freedom or well-being by making sure – even at the cost of some waste and inefficiency – that all kids have enough to eat.

The right wing’s ongoing effort to make reactionary policies seem reasonable

Right-wing politicians and talking heads are in damage-control mode these days as they attempt to put a positive spin on the disastrous legislative session that adjourned last month (and the new “special” sessions they plan to convene in the weeks and months ahead). House Speaker Thom Tillis met with editorial boards in recent days and the supposedly nonpartisan market fundamentalist think tanks dutifully echoed Republican claims.

As Chris Fitzsimon noted previously in columns like this one and this one, this is nothing new. Republicans have been desperately seeking to deny the obvious truth about their new state budget and some of the other “accomplishments” of the 2011 session since before it adjourned.

Still, there is something of late that indicates a new sense of urgency. Whether it’s a perceived need to respond to falling poll numbers or just a premeditated effort to coordinate their mid-summer messaging and “soften” their collective image, folks on the right are out there dispensing whoppers with great regularity.

Education posturing

As reported this week on The Progressive Pulse here and here, one of the top talking points for House Republicans appears to be the transparently absurd notion that they are all passionately committed to helping at-risk kids and saving teacher jobs. To listen to Tillis and House Education Committee co-chair Rep. Bryan Holloway talk lately, you’d think they were a couple of liberal softies.

This is from an article in Raleigh’s News & Observer that followed an interview Tillis did with the paper:

“He said some children who haven’t received the education they need early in life are being wasted as productive members of society.

‘I’m absolutely certain that some number of those people who are being lost were lost before they ever get out of third grade,’ Tillis said. ‘They didn’t have early childhood development opportunities. They didn’t have the core ability to read by third grade. They didn’t have the skills they needed to be educated past third grade.’”

Mind you, this is the same man whose budget slashes spending on early childhood education and devastates the state’s excellent More at Four pre-Kindergarten program.

Holloway, meanwhile, was quoted in an N&O story about the demise of the state’s much-beloved Governor’s School as saying:

“It was not a matter of wanting to cut the Governor’s School. It was a matter of us wanting to keep teaching and teaching assistant positions.”

Say what? Keep teacher and teaching assistant positions? Earth to Rep. Holloway: Your budget will cause thousands of teachers and other essential school personnel to be pink-slipped. You could have avoided these cuts simply by not giving a tax cut to rich individuals and large, multi-state corporations. (Interestingly, Bob Luebke of the Pope-Civitas Institute must not have gotten the memo about image softening; he blamed the cuts to the Governor’s School on its “pro-gay agenda”).

Both of these claims come on the heels of an interview Tillis did last week with the Asheville Citizen-Times that included this rather remarkable passage about the most powerful man in the legislature and the budget he crafted and championed:

“Tillis said he didn’t know yet how many classroom positions would be cut but said he would reconstitute a special oversight committee to look at teacher changes from 2010-11.

The Republican-led budget spent $258 million, or 2.3 percent, less on education than Perdue proposed. Critics said it would cost 13,000 public education jobs, but GOP leaders said that was overstated.

If cuts do badly hurt systems — particularly rural or small ones — Tillis said he would work to help them.”

Did we hear that right? Tillis just rammed through the most controversial state budget in decades and now he’s claiming that he doesn’t really know what its impact will be in the single most important and highest profile area (and is already promising to fix the damage)?

Finally, if you have any doubts that conservative spin-doctoring; there was this column from the head of the John Locke Foundation (one of the groups funded by conservative activist Art Pope that’s been championing a supposed conservative “revolution” in state policy for months). In it, the author claims that the budget differences between Governor Perdue and the Republicans were essentially negligible.

Got that? The group that spent months talking about Republicans fundamentally transforming North Carolina politics is now pushing the line the new state budget is about the same as the one proposed by Governor Perdue!

Gussying up the denial of basic rights

There are other areas in which the far right has been trying to soft-pedal reactionary policy proposals. This month’s session (in which Republicans plan to push through some of the most reactionary voter suppression laws in the country and advance redistricting maps that will, if the congressional map is any indication, be almost comically partisan), is being sold as no big deal.

Of redistricting, Tillis told the Citizen-Times that “I want us to be able to look people in the eye and say, ‘We did this by the book.’” He has also portrayed plans to override a gubernatorial veto of the hugely controversial proposal to mandate photo identification for all voters in the state as – ho hum – a “no brainer.” Meanwhile, in an eight-page letter drafted by their lawyers, the Senate and House Republican legislators spearheading redistricting made this statement (apparently with a straight face):

“From the beginning, our goal has remained the same: the development of fair and legal congressional and legislative districts.”

Like the virtual adjunct staff to the Republicans that they are, the Pope groups obediently chimed in with pieces like this article and this TV interview in which they offered similarly sunny portrayals of the special elections law session.

Finally, there is the matter of the planned September session to consider several constitutional amendments (most notably, the offensively mislabeled “Defense of Marriage Amendment”). Tillis did his best in the Citizen-Times interview to make a hate/prejudice-inspired proposal that would deny fundamental human rights to hundreds of thousands of North Carolinians sound like some kind of technical, rulemaking change.

First, he implied that it wasn’t really his idea, but something driven by polling. Then there was this remarkable statement:

“I mean, I hate to make something as emotional as this issue be boiled down to data, but the fact of the matter is there seems to be a pretty compelling story to be told there. So I think to the extent that we are promoting the institution of marriage, and institution of marriage is a bond between a man and a woman, that is something that I support.”

All of which goes to show that: 1) Even when right-wingers are trying to sound “moderate” they can say things that are remarkably stupid, offensive and demonstrably wrong and, 2) Spin can only do so much to disguise extreme views and attitudes.

Senate Republican leader confirms that market fundamentalists are fully in charge

Since the beginning of the 2011 session, some caring and thoughtful observers of North Carolina politics have clung to the hope that not all legislative Republican leaders are far right ideologues. These folks have held on to the optimistic view that there is a difference between folks on the fire-breathing, anti-government, tea partying right and the more mainstream, corporate/country club types who are, on the whole, very conservative, but not complete ideologues.

This week, we learned that if such a divide exists, it is getting narrower all the time.

Showing one’s true colors

The latest confirmation of this sobering fact was there for all to see in a press conference held by Senate President Pro Tem, Phil Berger this week. The subject matter for the conference was the economy and jobs and Berger’s effort to respond to the growing chorus of criticism being leveled at legislative Republicans because their agenda has had nothing to do with improving either one.

Normally, Berger is a fairly understated and seemingly modest fellow – a small town lawyer who looks the part and who rarely lapses into the kind of pontificating tones that people have come to expect from hard-bitten ideologues like House Majority Leader Paul Stam and, to a somewhat lesser extent, Speaker Thom Tillis.

Going into Thursday’s press conference, it seemed at least possible that Berger would adopt a semi-conciliatory tenor in which he would have talked about finding common ground and maybe even admitted, at least tacitly, that Republicans have strayed during the early months of the 2011 session from their supposed top priority of jumpstarting North Carolina’s economy.

Unfortunately, such hopes were dashed shortly into the event. Rather than reaching out, Berger quickly went on the attack and lurched sharply to the right.

Here are some of Berger’s statements from the conference, followed by some brief reality checks that hold the statements up to the light of day. (You can watch the entire WRAL.com recording of the even by clicking here.)

Of jobs, Governor Perdue and Texas

Berger began the event with a brief prepared remark in which he said the following:

“Since Governor Perdue took office, the state has lost over 100,000 jobs.”

When pressed in the first question as to whether Governor Perdue could really be legitimately blamed for job losses resulting from the Great Recession, Berger replied that it was “the policies that Governor Perdue and the Democrats” have followed that are responsible.

When a reporter followed up by pointing out that North Carolina’s economic struggles have not been significantly different from a number of other, southeastern, textile-dependent states, Berger said:

“We’re concentrating on North Carolina. What we know is – is that when the recession started, North Carolina led the nation in job losses. South Carolina didn’t lead the nation in job losses. Georgia didn’t lead the nation in job losses. North Carolina went from having what appeared to be a fairly good job situation to one of the worst in the country.”

Berger followed this remark with several other fairly remarkable comments, including:

* One in which he stated that “It appears to me that the one job that Governor Perdue is worried about is her own”:
* Another in which he held up Texas as the model state for economic development; and
* Another in which the only two Republican accomplishments in support of the economy that he could call to mind were a) creating a committee to review regulations on business and b) not raising taxes.

Reality check

On the whole the Senator’s presentation was so convoluted, contradictory and confounding that it’s hard to know where to begin.

On jobs – First off, to blame Governor Perdue for the effects of the Great Recession – a worldwide disaster that officially commenced in December of 2007 and ended in the United States in June of 2009 (the month before the Governor’s first budget even took effect!) – is sophistry of the highest order. Similarly, the notion that North Carolina government should have retreated into some kind of Hoover-like shell at a time when all responsible economists were counseling the importance of maintaining public investments in order to prop up the economy and stave off a genuine depression is equally absurd.

Ah, but you say, “Governor Perdue is a Democrat and since Democrats were in power in North Carolina during the recession, it’s really all the same. You know what Senator Berger means.”

Well, actually no, it’s not “all the same.” First, Senator Berger seems to have conveniently forgotten that the Great Recession was, first and foremost, a byproduct of eight years of often bipartisan, casino capitalism spearheaded by President Bush. It was Bush’s deregulatory fervor that helped spur the housing bubble and the ensuing mortgage and financial crises.

Second, from 2001 to 2009, Beverly Perdue was North Carolina’s Lt. Governor – one of the most impotent political positions in state government. Guilt by association won’t do.

Third, things couldn’t have been too bad under the control of North Carolina Democrats. How do we know? Senator Berger told us. Re-read his statement above – in which even he admits that the state had “a fairly good job situation.”

Of course, in fairness, Republicans can and should take some of the credit for those relatively good times. Many of them voted for the Democratic budgets passed during the last decade. Heck, two of Berger’s lieutenants in the current session, Senators Richard Stevens and Stan Bingham voted for the Democratic budget in 2010!

On Texas – As for the Senator’s assertion that Texas (Texas!!) ought to be North Carolina’s model for development, he simply can’t be serious. By any number of accounts and measurements, Texas is an economic and fiscal basket case. Has it enjoyed an economic rebound of late? Sure. Rising oil and gas prices will do that for a state that is dependent (and overly-so) on those dwindling commodities. But Texas also has a $27 billion budget shortfall, a Third World-like divide between rich and poor and any number of categories in which its quality of life ranks near the bottom. As the late, great Molly Ivins, once famously observed, in many ways, Texas is “Mississippi with good roads.” If this is Berger’s model for North Carolina’s future, God help us.

On taxes – Ultimately, of course, the main point of Senator Berger’s little talk was to make the case for the Republicans’ disastrous and hard-hearted decision to cut taxes from their present levels at a time when state budget revenues are only beginning to recover from the downturn. According to Berger, North Carolina’s economic development is being greatly retarded by “high taxes.”

But, of course, as business development publication after publication constantly reports, North Carolina is always near the top of “business friendly states.” Not only do these publications place North Carolina’s tax rates in the middle of the national pack, they report that taxes are always near the bottom of factors driving business development decisions. To argue that an extra half a cent on the sales tax and a small surcharge of the incomes of the state’s wealthiest citizens are somehow responsible for thousands of textile jobs fleeing to Southeast Asia is pure demagoguery.

Going forward

Berger’s talk appears to leave us with three “takeaways”:

1)      Barring something unforeseen, it’s clear that, for now, far right, market fundamentalists are firmly control of the North Carolina General Assembly.

2)      All that stands between North Carolina and several years of increased suffering is the will of a Governor who is still growing into the job and a handful of conservative House Democrats critical to sustaining her vetoes.

3)      Judging by some of Berger’s cheap shots against her, Governor Perdue is in for a no-hold-barred fight. If she really is concerned about keeping her job in 2012, now is the time for her to seize the initiative and portray her opponents as the extremists they are.

The right's absurd and contradictory arguments about school class size

Expect to hear a lot in upcoming months about class size.

As in: raising the number of kids in each public school classroom North Carolina.  

As in: firing thousands of teachers to help close the budget shortfall.

The likely source of a lot of this talk will be the right-wing think tanks that clearly aspire to serve as the de facto policy staff for the new conservative leadership teams in the General Assembly. Here's one of the main right-wing talking heads in a recent column casually explaining how state education funding could be slashed by 15%:

"Save around $1.7 billion in the state's education budget by reducing non-teaching positions in public schools by about 30 percent, rolling back recent class-size reductions, and focusing state higher-education funding on undergraduate instruction while raising tuition and private fundraising."

Did you get that? "Rolling back recent class-size reductions" is a prettified way of saying "firing teachers."

In many ways, this is nothing new. Far right groups like the Locke Foundation have been attempting to peddle the nonsensical idea that class size is irrelevant for years. But now, of course, things are a little more serious. With a $4 billion budget gap staring the state in the face and new conservative majorities running things in the House and the Senate, some people in positions of actual influence may begin to listen to this kind of malarkey.  

(As an aside, it would be great if some of these people were forced to go into a randomly selected public school and identify the three out of ten "non-teaching positions," – i.e. counselors, custodians, nurses, librarians, etc – that should be eliminated. Then it would be great to give them a mop and a broom and ask them to clean up the cafeteria after lunch).

What parents think

Interestingly, the idea that raising class sizes is a bad idea does not seem to have seeped through to the parents whose "choices" the right-wing groups profess to care so passionately about. In fact, in 2007, a Locke Foundation report extolling the supposed wonders of charter schools had this to say:

"On the question of why parents choose a particular charter school for their children, Fedewa [the Superintendent of Schools for the Catholic Diocese of Raleigh who had conducted a survey] reports that ‘Over 75 percent of responding parents indicated that school size was an important reason when selecting a charter school for their children.' Likewise, a question asking parents to compare their child's current charter school with the school the child would otherwise be attending revealed that parents perceived school size and class size to be better in charter schools than district schools."

The report went on:

"Charter schools are exempt from the state's class-size requirements. Nevertheless, charter schools instinctively keep class sizes low. Charters have identical class sizes as district schools in grades 1-3 but lower class sizes in kindergarten and grades 4-8. Smaller class sizes in the middle school grades may provide an advantage to students who attend charter schools, as struggling students begin to fall behind at this stage of their schooling. Smaller classes may also contribute to parents' observation that students receive more individualized attention and extra help in a charter school than the district school the child would otherwise attend."

To which just about anyone with a modicum of common sense would reply: "no kidding!"

Although the author goes on to attempt to cover his tracks with a weak statement that "there is no consistent evidence that smaller class sizes increase student performance" the obvious truth of the parents' perceptions in the survey speak with great power. Parents know through observation and experience that kids in smaller classes often do better in myriad ways. They also know that less crowded schools make for better results overall. That's why many parents choose less crowded private and charter schools for their kids when given the option.

Reality Check

Parents' common sense perceptions on this issue are, not surprisingly, backed up by volumes of research. Is the connection always direct and completely predictable? No – of course not.

Some studies indicate that lower class sizes are more important in earlier grades, while the benefits are actually realized more in later grades. Some research points to the benefits that extend to other areas besides classroom performance like socialization, health, access to enrichment activities, etc…. Some studies highlight the benefits for overall school health and stability. Others point to the benefits for teacher happiness and longevity. Obviously, smaller differences in size generally make for less obvious benefits.

And, of course, there are dozens of other factors that can intervene and prevent smaller classes from having their desired effect in specific situations.  Small class sizes will clearly do less good in crumbling schools staffed with young, overmatched teachers attempting to reach poor kids from dysfunctional families. Class size is only one part of a complicated jigsaw puzzle.     

On the whole, however, it is an extremely important part. And it is ridiculous to pretend that smaller classes are not worth pursuing or that we should cavalierly discard the progress of recent decades on this front in order to avoid a small amount of short-term sacrifice from those with the ability to pay a few more tax dollars.  

The real story?

So why does the right (or at least a segment of the hard core ideologues) stick to its passionate push to fire teachers and cram more kids into fewer classrooms? While some true believers are no doubt sincere in their arguments, there is reason to think there's more to the story.

Especially in light of the longstanding hostility of some key conservative figures to the very idea of public schools (and their concomitant infatuation with the idea of charters, vouchers, parochial schools and a generally privatized education system) this bizarre and illogical opposition to smaller class sizes is enough to make one suspect a darker motive.

Over the past year, as the fight for the future of the Wake County schools has been joined, more and more critics of the conservative school board majority have reported the distinct impression that it's almost as if some of the right-wing forces behind the move to re-segregate the system want it to fail – thereby paving the way for general dismantling of a system that they see as "socialistic" and "collectivist." That one of the majority's key supporters owns a growing and ambitious chain of private schools that sees himself as a competitor to the public schools lends credence to this theory. That the school board chair himself has served on the chain's board of directors adds even more.

Whatever the ultimate motivation of the conservatives promoting larger class sizes, however, – be it genuine confusion or an ulterior plot to promote privatization – the fact remains that their recommendations are wrong, destructive and in defiance of common sense.

Let's hope state leaders listen to parents and leave the recommendations of the market fundamentalist ideologues in the shadowy margins where they belong.

There is a bit of common wisdom in modern American culture about the intersection of the debate between progressives and conservatives. It's often voiced by politicians, members of the media and a lot of average folks. You may have even espoused such a view yourself. It goes something like this:

"Both sides of the debate have their crazies – people out on the fringe. If you listen to what the advocates on both sides are saying, though, you can usually find a middle ground that takes some of the best ideas from both points of view and arrive at a moderate position."

At one level, the logic behind this statement makes a lot of sense. The basic tenets of the American experiment – democratic government, the Constitution and the Bill of Rights, a broadly capitalist economy – clearly lie somewhere in between the extreme views espoused by neo-Fascists and religious theocrats on the right and Marxist collectivists on the left. From 30,000 feet above the scene, the truth of this characterization is hard to deny.

Zoom in a little closer, however, and the accuracy of this statement starts to wane – especially in recent decades. Check out the debate between progressives and conservatives here in North Carolina for example, and one cannot help be struck by the difference in the "extremism quotients" of the two sides.

The modern "left"

There is no doubt, that there have been times in America in which people on what might fairly be characterized as the "left" have enjoyed at least some notoriety and influence. In the lowest depths of the Great Depression, Socialist candidate and Presbyterian minister Norman Thomas polled around 2% of the vote in the 1932 presidential election. In the 1960's, when the Vietnam War was at its worst, an array of avowedly left grassroots movements like Students for a Democratic Society made some inroads in pushing the national political pendulum. Those old enough to have experienced the 1970's can remember that there was a time in the United States in which Richard Nixon flirted with the idea of replacing "welfare" with a guaranteed national minimum income and in which one could safely discuss nationalizing the oil industry without fear of physical assault.

Today, however, there is no organized "left" in the United States – much less in North Carolina. Indeed, none has existed for decades. While there are certainly a few left-leaning public figures – muckrakers and iconoclasts, ready to poke at the corporate establishment and its hirelings – there is no organized, ideologically driven movement.

Look no further than the virtual pages of Progressive Voices - where NC Policy Watch collects and displays the latest thinking of the state's progressive advocacy groups and their leaders. Read these essays and their modest pleas for government reform, an end to discrimination against women and minorities, tax fairness and some limits on environmental degradation. Most of these pieces are about as far "left" as a suburban PTA meeting.

The nutty right

Now compare this to what emanates on a daily basis from the right's propaganda shops and the cadre of lower rung academics on whom they rely for ideas. Listen to Limbaugh, Beck, Hannity, Savage, et al. Visit World Net Daily.

Unlike progressives, with their tepid and cautious calls for "reform," the right goes for the jugular. Where the "left" talks about "reform," the right calls for radical change: an overhaul of the U.S. Constitution, eradication of the wall between church and state, new definitions of citizenship, a revival of "state's rights" and "nullification." 

Next week, the Locke Foundation will sponsor an event it's calling "A Citizen's Constitutional Workshop." From all indications, this will be the group's latest worshipful homage to its favored selection of old, white men in wigs. This is from the official description:

"This workshop provides today's Patriots with the intellectual tools to restore original intent and repair the damage done. It explains what the framers meant by phrases such as the ‘general welfare,' ‘necessary and proper' and other so-called ‘elastic' clauses….By examining the important role of the states in the nation's beginning and providing constitutional commentary based on the founders' words, this workshop is a must for Americans interested in preserving the United States and a federal form of government."

In other words, you can be sure they'll spend some time at this event discussing and promoting "state's rights" – the extreme right-wing idea promoted by antebellum pre-Confederates and mid-20^th Century segregationists, that America is not really a nation, but merely a collection of states that are free to "nullify" federal laws with which they disagree and even to secede.

If you think this is a joke or an exaggeration, then read some of the things that one of the "scholars" listed in the group of official endorsers of the event has to say, a "History Instructor" at Chattahoochee Valley Community College in Alabama named Dr. Brion McClanahan.

McClanahan, it seems, is a fairly prolific contributor to a number of groups and websites that promote some pretty far out ideas. On the "libertarian" site, LewRockwell.com, McClanahan wrote an article in which he derided Abraham Lincoln and the idea that the 16^th president saved the union. According to McClanahan, the notion that Lincoln fought to save the union was a "shield…widely used in the North during the War for Southern Independence as a propaganda piece."(Emphasis supplied). He goes on to quote a Delaware state senator who once called Lincoln a "tyrant" and claims that Lincoln "forged a new centralized despotism."

On McClanahan's own site, he approvingly posts without comment a 1930 article by H.L. Mencken in which the brilliant but frequently unhinged old coot discusses "The Calamity of Appomattox." In it, Mencken writes optimistically of how much better the country would have been had the Confederacy emerged victorious from the Civil War.

"Whatever the defects of the new commonwealth below the Potomac, it would have at least been a commonwealth founded upon a concept of human inequality, and with a superior minority at the helm."

Lest you conclude that McClanahan's link to Mencken is some sort of lame attempt at humor, check out this article in which he quotes confederate patron saint John C. Calhoun and argues with a straight face that African-Americans in Alabama and Mississippi would be better off had those states been free to nullify federal laws or even secede.

We are not making this up.

Reality check for today's policy debate

Just about every day in North Carolina, mainstream news reporters and commentators hold up the staff of the Locke Foundation and their fellow travelers in the stable of Raleigh conservative think tanks as the voices of modern conservatism. This is a phenomenon that has been going on for the better part of two decades.

In some ways, this is understandable. These groups are certainly prolific and somewhat polished. They do a good job of playing the role of respectable researchers and experts. In truth, however, this image is an illusion. Dig just an inch or two beneath the surface and you quickly discover that these groups and the folks with whom they cavort are frequently out on (or aligned with) the wackiest, confederacy-celebrating, Constitution-rewriting, U.S. government-hating, extreme right-wing.

And while progressives certainly have their share of wacky individuals, conspiracy theorists and the like, North Carolina has no left equivalent – no movement of neo-Stalinists or Maoists yearning for the "good old days" even as they affiliate with or pretend to be mainstream analysts and commentators. One can only imagine what would occur if such a thing existed.

Let's hope that in the days ahead, more and more North Carolinians come to learn about the company that the "conservative" and "free market" think tanks keep. If they do, they might just rethink the way they look at the political spectrum.     

The right is relegated to just making stuff up

It's a favored catchphrase of sports fans everywhere – usually uttered by supporters of a talented team that finds itself up against an overmatched opponent. It goes something like this: "If we can't beat these guys, then we don't deserve to be champs." Think, for instance, of the U.S. soccer team and its World Cup match with Algeria this week.

Such statements are rarer in the world of policy and politics, where public admissions of self-confidence are frowned upon as bad form. For progressives – who usually find themselves overwhelmed by the resources at the disposal of their ideological opponents on the right – such statements are a particular taboo. As any advocate who's done battle with a well-heeled corporate opponent learns early in his or her career, even the most logical and best researched argument can be easily thwarted by the sheer power of money and/or fear-based appeals to people's worst instincts. When in doubt, goes the thinking, hope for the best and expect the worst.

All of this notwithstanding, there are occasional moments when an honest North Carolina progressive simply has to survey the current political and policy landscape and the "line-up" mustered by the folks on the ideological right and think – maybe even out loud – "if we can't beat these guys, then we don't deserve to win."

Such a moment must have occurred this week for any progressive brave and/or bored enough to have perused the Civitas Review (formerly known as the Red Clay Citizen) – the blog of the  Pope Civitas Institute. Though the blog is always chock-full of wacky and outlandish posts, one stood out this week as so over-the-top ridiculous, uninformed, and just plain lame that it had to give heart to any thoughtful person who might find themselves worried at times about the state of "the battle of ideas."

Here is the post in its entirety:

"Hit By Lightning, Attacked By Bear, Legislation Pending

Well, not exactly, but you have to wonder if the legislature might be eager to help this "victim" of lightning and mauling.  The legislature went full till (sic) after video poker, errr, sweepstakes machines because the machines literally attack poor people in the streets and in their homes.  Without stopping to solve the budget woes, they went forcefully after the machines led by the Sen. Josh Stein (D-Wake and former head of Self Help whose brother ran the Center For Responsible Lending which helped usher in the mortgage meltdown.)

So, I guess Stein and Co. might just have to pass some legislation against lightning or bears in some way.  I mean, this fella' was just a victim and Stein should be concerned.  The difference is that you can really avoid sweepstakes machines, but Stein and the rest of the senate doesn't think your (sic) smart enough to do so on your own.

"They represent gambling on a massive commercialized scale," said Sen. Josh Stein

Hmm. . doesn't he support the NC Educational (sic) Lottery?  Oh and Harrah's Casino in Cherokee?  I think it is you Sen. Stein who also represents gambling on a massive commercialized scale with taxpayer dollars."

Got that? That bright, honest and energetic young state senator who just about everyone recognizes as one of the state's rising political stars is actually responsible for the collapse of the economy, the enactment of the state lottery and the introduction of casino gambling on the Cherokee reservation. Oh, and the nearly unanimous efforts of the state Senate to restrict the latest incarnation of video poker?  It's actually an effort to destroy the poor, defenseless souls who run the video "gaming" industry and to micromanage every detail of every individual's life in a relentless assault on individual freedom. Who knew?   

Reality check

Where does one begin to respond to such ridiculous and ineptly crafted drivel? Let's try the following:

Don't they have any editors over at Civitas? It's true that this absurd little stink bomb is just a blog post by a former Pope, Inc. employee who appears to have found work as a right-wing radio squawker, but come on guys, if you're going to allow your website to be used to attack someone in such a personal way, exercise at least a little oversight.

Senator Stein was never the "head" of the Center for Community Self-Help or any of its affiliates. He did work there for a time early in his career as a real estate project manager for the Self-Help Credit Union. There, among other things, he did some wonderful work to rehabilitate some abandoned Durham drug houses and convert them into single family homes. It was his first job out of Harvard Law School and he was in his late 20's. Good job, but not the boss. 

More prevarication about the meltdown. While it is true that the Senator's brother is a long-time consumer advocate who did indeed help lead a Self-Help affiliate known as the Center for Responsible Lending, the assertion that the Center "helped usher in the mortgage meltdown" is unadulterated bull. This particular allegation is the long-debunked attempt by some of the robber barons who actually were responsible for the national financial crisis to shrug off the blame and, with the help of their toadies in the right-wing think tanks, pin it on consumer advocates and, of course, racial minorities.

Their "logic" goes like this: Many of the victims of the predatory mortgage lending binge that helped contribute to the housing bubble were low and moderate income people who should have never gotten home mortgages. All of the lenders and scam artist who made obscene profits off of these cockamamie loans would never have made them if it weren't for the encouragement they received from government regulators for helping poor and minority borrowers. The devil made them do it!  

Give us a break. As has been demonstrated in multiple places, this assertion is an absolutely ridiculous cover-up. The mortgage meltdown was caused, among other things, by decades of greed and casino capitalism. It was not caused or even "ushered in" by the nation's modest efforts to encourage lending to people of color or by consumer advocacy groups that have long fought for sane financial regulations and stronger consumer protection laws. Indeed, even before the creation of the Center for Responsible Lending, it was the folks at Self-Help who helped craft North Carolina's anti-predatory lending law (a law that helped insulate North Carolina from some of the worst of the effects of the mortgage meltdown and that has served as a model for national reforms).  

The lottery? Cherokee reservation gambling? Let's get this straight – the author is blaming Josh Stein for the "Educational" Lottery and Indian casino gambling?!

Uh, Earth to Civitas:

Stein was elected in 2008. The lottery was passed and enacted in 2005 over the objection of many progressives including Stein's predecessor and rough ideological twin, then-Senator Janet Cowell. As for Harrah's Casino, it was opened in 1997 when Stein was wrapping up his work at the credit union. While we probably shouldn't put it past Civitas to concoct some nutty explanation of how Self-Help and other consumer advocates are responsible for Indian casino gambling, this is scurrilous fairy tale-telling of the lowest order.

Going forward

As noted, the silver lining in all of this is two-sided.

First, it confirms yet again just how marginalized the far right think tanks have become in the Tea Party era. It can't be long before a Civitaser will be blaming Stein for fluoridation and its threat to our "precious bodily fluids."

Second and even more encouragingly, it reminds progressives of just how thin the ranks really are over on the other side of the ideological debate. In other words, if we can't beat these guys, then we don't deserve to win. 

Political "scorecard" shows just how extreme the conservative movement has become

America has always had a full complement of "conservatives" of varying stripes. Comfortable suburbanites and dirt poor farmers, religious fundamentalists and libertarian freethinkers, ideologues who don't believe in government at all and respectable establishment types who view public office as their birthright, single issue fanatics and sober pragmatists, immigrant haters and immigrant hirers.

Today, it appears, we are in the midst of a new shakeout on the ideological right. As economic and social fundamentalists have gained more and more prominence and power, the number of traditional conservatives – middle and upper-middle class burghers who feel duty-bound to help make public institutions work for everyone – is on the wane.

Compare and contrast, for instance, the conservative leaders of today with those of two or three decades ago. Look at the current crop of national conservative leaders – Sarah Palin, John Boehner, Newt Gingrich, Rush Limbaugh – and line them up against those of the 1970's and 80's like Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford, and even Ronald Reagan and the first George Bush. By just about any measuring stick, the new crop is clearly more rigid and ideological and less interested in governing and service.

Even in North Carolina, the home of Jesse Helms – one of the godfathers of what might be called the "anti-governing movement" – this shift is evident. During Helms' heyday, North Carolina conservatives also included relatively moderate figures like Holshouser, Martin and Broyhill. Not anymore. Today's conservative leadership has been almost completely overrun by far right ideologues,

Foxx on the run

This new reality was on full-display this week in a rather remarkable email distributed by one of the members of this new wave of conservative leaders, Congresswoman Virginia Foxx. Not only does the email demonstrate just how loony much of the modern right has become, it also helps make clear just where a lot of this new and extreme ideological conformity comes from -namely the hand-in-glove relationship between people like Foxx and the far right PAC's and nonprofit think tanks that drive the movement.

In the email, the text of which is also posted as the lead story under the category "Foxx in the News" on her campaign website, Foxx links the reader directly to a "Carolina Journal Exclusive" from the website Carolina Journal Online. For those of you not familiar with the Carolina Journal, it is the newsletter of the John Locke Foundation. (Interestingly, the Foxx email makes no mention of the Locke connection.)

In the article – sorry, "Exclusive" – one of the Locke staffers (a person who has written multiple articles for the certifiably insane World Net Daily), "reports" that Foxx and her ideological partner, Senator Richard Burr, have scored high on a "pro-growth scorecard." Here's the lead from the faux news piece:

"RALEIGH – A Washington-based group advocating limited government has ranked North Carolina Rep. Virginia Foxx and Sen. Richard Burr, both Republicans, in its top tier of fiscally conservative lawmakers in 2009.

The Club for Growth's latest congressional scorecard, released Monday, gave perfect marks to nine representatives and six senators on issues such as tax reform, free trade, and deregulation. Foxx garnered 100 percent on the report and Burr 96 percent.

It's the second time in as many years that Foxx, who hails from the strongly Republican 5th Congressional District, has earned a perfect ranking from the group. Burr's counterpart, Democratic Sen. Kay Hagan, earned 6 percent on the scorecard."

The "Exclusive" goes on to take a few gratuitous potshots at some of the state's Democratic congressmen by attacking, without any real explanation or analysis, some alleged pork barrel spending that it attributes to them.

Reality check

While little that Raleigh's right-wing think tank/political machine and its favored politicians do really comes as much of a surprise anymore, there's still something noxious and noteworthy about this little missive.

The noxious part is mostly in the transparency of the whole thing. It's one thing for a nonprofit, nonpartisan think tank to attack or "report" on politicians with whom they disagree, to rev up their friends and supporters to mobilize to become engaged in the political process, or even for its employees to be active in political campaigns in their private lives. It's another, however, for the think tank to manufacture faux news about a partisan group's endorsement of a politician and then package and distribute that partisan group's ratings as "exclusive" news. Moreover, when that "news" is then immediately repackaged and distributed by the candidate herself, the whole thing just smells bad.

Happily, the more noteworthy part of the story is in what it says about the state of the "conservative" movement. The "scorecard" touted in the "exclusive" is from a national far right, market fundamentalist group called the Club for Growth. This is the same organization that, among other things, maintains a "Power Ranking" chart in which its members rate and rank all 535 U.S. Senators and Representatives on a daily basis for their supposed loyalty to the conservative cause. For some time now, the highest ranked member of the House of Representatives is the rabidly combative Michele Bachmann of Minnesota. This is the same lawmaker who has urged citizens not to participate in the Census and who has made the following statements in recent years:

"I find it interesting that it was back in the 1970s that the swine flu broke out under another, then under another Democrat president, Jimmy Carter. I'm not blaming this on President Obama, I just think it's an interesting coincidence."

"Carbon dioxide is portrayed as harmful. But there isn't even one study that can be produced that shows that carbon dioxide is a harmful gas."

"This is probably the biggest issue [gay marriage] that will impact our state and our nation in the last, at least, thirty years. I am not understating that."

In short, Bachmann is nuts and the poster child for the modern, dangerously uninformed, fear mongering, tea partying right. She neither cares nor has any meaningful capacity to help govern the country. She is Ann Coulter with a vote – a destructive force interested in little more than ginning up people's worst fears and instincts to her own advantage. Say what they will about her voting record, but if she is the quintessential modern conservative – the person that Virginia Foxx and her deep-pocketed think tanker friends and allies seek to emulate – then there really is a profound shakeout afoot in the conservative movement.

The good news for thinking and caring people is that, like most hard-line ideological purges, such a shakeout is, in the long run, almost certain to leave behind a "club" that's shrinking rather than growing.

During this holiday period, we are pleased to present you with 'the best of 2009' Fitzsimon File commentaries. We hope you enjoy re-reading some of these thoughtful editorials that are still relevant to the 2010 policy debate.

The unfortunate alliance of religious conservatives and anti-tax ideologues     

For most progressives, there's something that rankles about the longstanding, often successful effort of religious conservatives to appropriate the word "family." The presumptuous notion that one particular band of one religious tradition – in this case conservative Christianity – has the right to anoint itself as the "defender of traditional family values" is simply offensive to millions of loving, caring and family-oriented people who come from lots of other faith and non-faith-based traditions and hold different political views.

Still, as the years have gone by, the competing sides, the media and the public at-large have come to a kind of general understanding – namely that the "family values" banner is not to be taken literally. It is, instead, understood to be a handy code phrase – a shorthand descriptor for religious conservatives who speak out on "social" issues like abortion, prayer in public places, LGBT rights, end-of-life decision making and the like. As a practical matter, the conservative positions on these issues have nothing in particular to do with supporting the "family," but at least, just about everyone knows what they mean by their use of the term.

As used in this context, "family values" means the values of a subset of religious conservatives who generally favor literal interpretations of selected parts of the Bible and the promotion of some of the social practices and hierarchies of an earlier time in American history. That time period is always a little fuzzy and can, depending on the particular subgroup, refer to the 1950's, the 1750's or somewhere in between.

In North Carolina, there are numerous groups that claim and display the family values mantle, but the most active and visible one in state policy debates is probably the North Carolina Family Policy Council. Here's how the group, describes itself:

"Founded in 1992, the North Carolina Family Policy Council is a nonpartisan, nonprofit research and education organization dedicated to the preservation of the family and traditional family values.

Our mission is to strengthen the family by educating North Carolinians on public policy issues that impact the family and equipping citizens to be voices of persuasion on behalf of traditional family values in their localities….

As an independent 501(c)(3) research and education organization, the North Carolina Family Policy Council is supported entirely by the generosity of our donors. We are engaged in a battle to retain the Judeo-Christian values that are the foundation of western civilization. These are the same values which supported the establishment of the United States and which are embodied in the Ten Commandments and in the founding documents of our nation." (Emphasis supplied).                 

Through the years, the group has been a prolific voice in the General Assembly on a host of issues – most notably of late in opposing any and all efforts to confer equal rights on lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people. During the past two legislative sessions, the group pulled out every imaginable stop in an ultimately unsuccessful effort to defeat anti-school bullying legislation that sought to make clear that kids targeted because of their sexual orientation or gender identity were deserving of full protection.

Branching out?

Increasingly, however, the group's definition of "traditional family values" appears to be confined less and less to the realm of "social" issues like sex and religion and definitions of life. Indeed, if a recent report released by the group is any indication, the Family Policy Council and some of its allies now feel fully empowered to place the "traditional family values" seal of approval on an unlimited assortment of conservative policy positions.

The report in question (which was actually prepared by a pair of right-wing think tank staffers and "co-released" by the North Carolina group along with a couple of it national partners) is entitled "Repealing death tax will create jobs and boost economy." "Death tax," of course, is the far right's approved propaganda term for the federal estate tax – a tax on very large estates that has already been slashed in recent years.

The hook that makes the piece a "family" issue is that the "death tax" supposedly impacts "family businesses." But this is just a clever bit of packaging by a market fundamentalist group in search of political allies. The estate tax is, in reality, a modest tax on a very small group of rich people.

As the right does with every other progressive tax, however, the authors trot out all of the standard "supply side" (i.e. trickledown) economic theories – that government can raise more revenue by cutting taxes, that taxing the rich stifles economic activity, and that progressive taxes are somehow part of a nefarious plot to "redistribute" wealth. Here is a representative paragraph:

"Eliminating the death tax would increase small business capital accumulation, create a large number of small business jobs, and actually increase tax revenue at the federal, state, and local government levels. It is rare that a policy option that is extremely simple to enact with such clearly identifiable positive effects presents itself to Congress."

In other words the report consists of the same old, predictable anti-tax rhetoric that one could easily find on the website of any number of conservative, anti-government think tanks. The only "traditional family values" really at stake in the debate appear to be the values of the stock market and real property portfolios of the "traditional" (i.e. wealthy and establishment) families who underwrote the report.

Reality check

To read actual, fact-based assessments of the estate tax, readers would do well to explore a pair of reports from the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities – "The Estate Tax: Myths and Realities" from February of this year, and a more recent piece that directly critiques the Family Policy Council report.   

Among the things that one would discover:

• The estate tax has been an important source of federal revenue for nearly a century.
• Almost all estates (99.7%) owe no federal estate tax at all. Of this tiny number of very wealthy estates that do owe taxes (perhaps 6,000 per year), the effective tax rate averages less than 20%. In return for this modest attempt at a measure of tax code progressivity, the federal government brings in tens of billions of dollars each year in essential tax revenue.
• Repealing the estate tax would weaken the economy by adding nearly $800 billion to budget deficits over 10 years, thus reducing national saving and leaving fewer funds for investment that leads to higher productivity in the long run.
• Repeal would also be likely to harm charitable donations significantly since estates currently redirect billions of tax exempt dollars per year to nonprofits.

In other words, the estate tax is about as much of a threat to the average American family as a tax on private jets or seventh homes. Try as they might to conflate the interests of the super-wealthy with those of average religious conservatives, right-wing think tanks just can't make it make sense.

The sad part about all of this, of course, is that for many rank and file Christian conservatives (most of whom live on modest incomes and have never heard of genuine tax policy experts Center on Budget and Policy Priorities), the pseudo-research from conservative ideologues will be all they hear about this issue.

Like the pathetically misinformed health care reform protesters who decry "government intervention in their Medicare" and do the bidding of insurance conglomerates, these activists are being duped into supporting policies and politicians that work counter to their own economic well-being.

It's enough to make you think that the real, traditional American value receiving protection from the so-called family groups is the robber baron-era aphorism frequently attributed to promoter P.T. Barnum: "There's a sucker born every minute."   

The economic news from Raleigh and Washington this week is gloomy, but comes amid new evidence that policymakers don’t have to sit idly by and wait for things to turn around for struggling families.

State revenues are $110 million behind projections, according to Barry Boardman, the top economist at the General Assembly.  Most of that is due to the sagging sales tax, hardly a surprise with unemployment hovering around record levels.

Legislative budget writers are bracing themselves for a shortfall of as much as $400 million when the General Assembly returns to Raleigh in May to make budget adjustments.

Though it is little consolation, North Carolina is not alone.  Boardman says that 43 states are concerned or pessimistic about their revenue outlook in the current fiscal year and 38 states report sales tax revenue lagging behind projections.

The national economic downturn continues to take its toll on millions of families.  And it could have been a lot worse. The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities released a report Thursday that finds the economic recovery act passed by Congress earlier this year is keeping more than 6 million Americans out of poverty and reducing the severity of poverty for 33 million more.

The report says the expansion of food stamp benefits, tax credits for working families, unemployment assistance, and the one-time payments to people with disabilities and veterans in the recovery act are keeping more than over 200,000 people in North Carolina from falling into poverty.

The Center says the numbers are conservative and do not take into account the parts of the stimulus plan that the Congressional Budget Office says have saved or created up to 1.6 million jobs.

And there is more to do. The House this week passed a jobs bill that will extend unemployment benefits another six months, extend COBRA health insurance subsidy for people who have been laid off, and renew a small business loan program.

As many 200,000 people in North Carolina will lose their unemployment benefits at the end of the year unless the new jobs bill passes the Senate and is signed by President Obama. 

Nobody expects a dramatic decrease in the unemployment in the near future.  Boardman says it will be well into 2010 at the earliest before the employment improves significantly. Those workers can’t make it until the summer without help no matter how much they want to work if there are no jobs available.

The House jobs bill tries to address that problem by investing $48 billion that banks have repaid the federal government in highways, transit, and jobs programs.

It is often popular these days to complain about the government, but public investments and assistance made earlier this year are literally helping millions of families weather the storm of the worst economic crisis in 70 years.  It is not nearly enough but it’s something that is making a difference. 

The new jobs bill will help families too. It’s easy for some folks in Congress and the think tank world to complain about the stimulus plan or the new push to extend unemployment and health care benefits. It runs counter to their anti-government, free-market orientation.

Thank goodness enough folks in Washington are ignoring the naysayers who’d rather do nothing and let families flounder on their own than extend a helping hand.  Rigid ideology doesn’t pay the rent or buy a family enough food to eat.

Should progressives play just as mean and nasty as the ideologues on the other side?

Maybe it's because progressives are soft and naïve. Maybe it's because they're a frequently divided and disparate movement with a long and varied list of distinct priorities. Maybe it's just because they cling to a shred of human decency and a belief that love and tolerance rather than wealth and greed and meanness ought to be the underpinnings of human society and governance. Maybe it's some combination of all three.

Whatever the reason, progressives are almost always thrown for a loop these days when they confront the cold reality of what the right wing is willing to do and say in order obtain, exercise and hold on to power. Like an abused family member who is stunned into a dumfounded silence when he or she experiences just how low their seemingly civilized spouse or parent is willing to sink in order to exert power and control, modern progressives are almost always slow to respond to the right wing's acts of political hardball.

Whether it's the post 9/11 deceit of the Bush-Cheney administration, the shameless and systematic looting of the national economy by fabulously wealthy individuals and corporations over the last couple of decades in the name of "free markets," or the stunning and seemingly insatiable greed of the modern health insurance industry, progressives have frequently responded with a kind of sheep-like passivity. It's as if they just can't believe the other side would really be doing what they're doing – on purpose, with genuine malice aforethought.

"Come on, they wouldn't really do that," goes the thinking. "This is the United States of America, not some backwater banana republic."

Oh yes they would

But, of course, the truth of the matter is that, with the complete takeover of the modern conservative movement by social and economic fundamentalists, there is very little that the right won't do or say. As with so many other groups of true believers throughout history who have seen the world in "black and white," "either-or," terms, for the modern American right, the ends justify the means.

Think about it for a minute. Look at what's going on in North Carolina of late – especially in Wake County where a new school board majority is moving to dismantle a painstakingly constructed system with scarcely a nod to openness or process, and where a group of conservative county commissioners has shown a willingness to compromise the physical comfort and wellbeing of their fellow commission members in order to consolidate power.

Consider the following inflammatory and dishonest language from a letter authored by one of the chief shouters for the local conservative movement as he attempts to call true believers to action next week for a Wake County School Board meeting.

"The results of the election and the resulting agenda of the freedom loving members of the board is (sic) not sitting well with radical union organizers.

With them the education of students does not come first, politics and payoffs are more important.

Clearly union organizers will stop at nothing to protect the status quo at the expense of our children, taxpayers and the will of the voters….

You will need to arrive early, because the disruptive union organizers and special interests will certainly try to fill every seat to keep your voice from being heard. Let me be clear, union organizers will fight our new school board at every turn and you must join the fight now so the noisy union bosses and special interests do not win the day."

He concludes:

"The question is, will the overwhelming majority of voters who oppose forced bussing (sic), wasteful spending and forcing unwilling parents into year-rounds schools be listened to? Or will union organizers, special interests and defenders of the status quo stop the change voters demanded."

This outrageous, absurd (and poorly spelled) letter comes from the group, Americans for Prosperity, which of course is one of the key rabblerousing arms of the advocacy empire of right-wing millionaire activist, former state House Republican leader (and school board campaign architect), Art Pope.  

Ends justifying the means

In many ways, it should come as no particular surprise that we should see such over-the-top, ends-justify-the-means behaviors. If you (like the denizens of the Pope Empire) really believed that your side has unearthed the inerrant Word when it comes to how our economy should be organized or the supposed inherent evil of most public institutions, you too might feel inclined to do and say whatever it takes to win – even if it means denying bathroom and food breaks to elderly elected officials or spreading malicious lies about those who would dare to stand in the way of your plans.

You might also feel inclined to engage in the kind of one-way, hyper-partisan hypocrisy that so characterizes the far right in North Carolina – a movement in which Republican Party leaders like Pope himself and former Pope-Civitas Institute boss Jack Hawke shuttle back and forth with regularity between nonprofit, supposedly nonpartisan, think tanks and partisan campaign work and in which Democratic politicians (sorry, that would be "Democrat politicians" in the officially permitted conservative terminology) are the only ones ever subjected to  serious criticism (much less, investigations and exposés) from the supposedly nonpartisan think tanks.

Compare and contrast this with the frequent and pointed criticisms leveled at Democratic officials by progressive nonprofits and other activists. Consider the virtual pages of N.C. Policy Watch, where our columnists, bloggers and cartoonist skewer Democrats on a regular basis. Look at the scores of commentaries in which Chris Fitzsimon has lambasted policies and actions of Democratic officials for lack of openness. Look at Democratic activist, Joe Sinsheimer, who has made a name for himself exposing and publicly attacking prominent members of his own party.

This is the kind of honest behavior and genuine analysis that would never be permitted in the monolithic right-wing movement of this state. When it comes to Mike Easley or Jim Black, the Pope Empire will be only too happy to turn its "opinion journalists" loose to dig up and sensationalize whatever dirt it can find or manufacture. When it comes to bullies like Wake County schools boss Ron Margiotta or any other Republican official, however, any abuses of process will be ignored or dismissed as necessary under the circumstances.              

Reality check

So, what should progressives do and say in response? Should they work to become just as mean and nasty? Should nonprofit think tanks like Policy Watch adopt the same level of thinly veiled partisanship as the competition?

The answer is "yes" and "no."

No, progressives don't need to transform the employees of their think tanks and nonprofits into fundamentalist, partisan hacks or adopt the right's ends-justify-the-means approach to every issue. If the heart of your philosophy is based on the pursuit of truth, it would be a grave mistake to start basing your actions on ignoring it. Over time, you'll become just as twisted as the other side.

On the other hand, yes, progressives should become, if not mean and nasty, a hell of a lot tougher. Truth telling need not always be polite. For too long the right has gotten away with murder in North Carolina by simply out-shouting progressives and stunning them with The Big Lie. Progressives have grown so used to hearing absurd whoppers from the other side that they often forget to speak up and remind everyone else – the news media, their friends and neighbors – of the truth.

And one need look no further than the Wake County school board or county commissioners to see what happens when progressives passively allow ends-justify-the-means ideologues to seize power.