Taibbi Tackles the Inequities of America's Two-Tiered Society - Heidi Klum in 'Red-Face'?

Journalist-author Matt Taibbi

As the most unproductive and heartless US Congress in American history gears up to block a Senate bill to restore unemployment benefits to over 3 million members of the long-term unemployed, it's not hard to feel discouraged by the steady un-Democratization of this nation.

This week a private research study shows that in 2013, US corporations held a staggering $2.1 trillion in profits overseas to avoid paying taxes at a time when they're making record profits at home, flailing about the evils of raising the minimum wage and being coy about starting to rehire Americans on a large scale. 

On top of that we discover the cash reserves of the nations largest banks are underfunded by billions of dollars a mere six years after the financial meltdown of 2008 - and we all know who was on the hook for that one - and who was let off the hook.

Lately the conservative members of the Roberts Supreme Court are making it seem less a politically autonomous branch of the Federal government dedicated to interpreting the Constitution, than a disassociated bunch of cranky old farts perpetually stuck in the intellectually-nonsensical ideological bubble of the Fox News world.  

Case in point (bad pun intended): the high court's recent decision to further undermine the Democratic process in this nation by making it more difficult to define political corruption, while simultaneously making it easier for wealthy political donors to pour enormous sums of money into the election process.

And remember, that's after they struck down a key provision of the Voting Rights Act, essentially making it easier for state legislatures to make it harder for citizens to vote.

But just when things look bleak, Matt Taibbi cuts through the fog with his signature blend of relentless hard-hitting journalism. On Monday I heard an interesting interview with Taibbi on NPR as he discussed his latest book, "The Great Divide: American Injustice in the Age of the Wealth Gap".

Click the link above and give it a listen if you've got a few minutes. In the past couple years his essays in Rolling Stone have taken on the issues that the mainstream media has totally shied away from; topics like the deep-seated corruption within the US and global financial system, the complexities of the LIBOR scandal, the rigging of commodities markets, the mortgage crisis and the implosion of the housing market and of course, the massive inequities in the US justice system.

Taibbi said after spending years on topics related to the financial meltdown, he was personally struck over how difficult it seemed to be to bring any individual from the corporate or banking sector to trial or jail time; yet it was and is frighteningly easy to jail someone for welfare fraud, possessing small amounts of illegal drugs - or simply for no reason at all beyond an over-zealous police force, lack of access to legal counsel, overwhelmed public defenders' offices and prosecutors seemingly determined to keep US prisons filled with non-violent offenders.

To borrow a quote from the new book cited in the NPR article about Taibbi:
"Poverty goes up. Crime goes down. The prison population doubles. Fraud by the rich wipes out 40 percent of the world's wealth. The rich get massively richer. No one goes to jail."

Don't hold your breath waiting for CNN, NBC, ABC, FOX or CBS to broach that topic on prime-time news. Outside of Frontline and Bill Moyers on PBS and Vice on HBO, mainstream media doesn't see the biggest story in this nation as much of a story at all. That's just sad; and unfortunately not unintentional. Bread and Circuses...

Anyway, to some lighter fare. Now let me just say first that I have no axe to grind with super model turned fashion show host and arbiter of good taste Heidi Klum. I've a seen a few episodes of Project Runway, and she's pretty sharp and has a good sense of humor in a no-nonsense German kind-of-way.

So what the hell was she thinking promoting a Germany's Next Top Model photo shoot featuring hot young German frauleins posing in 'Red-Face' in Native American costumes and scenarios?

As ThinkProgress.com reports Klum is receiving flack on her Facebook page, social media platforms and from a host of Websites and blogs for lending her name, face and reputation to this ill-advised promotional campaign that incorporates Native American stereotypes and imagery.

Given Germany's ongoing struggle to move beyond the dark legacy of the Third Reich and its institutionalized racism before and during World War II that led to millions of deaths, how could Klum not know what a disaster a group of young German girls dressing up as provocative little Indian-sex kittens would be? Och! Heidi!

It really hasn't been a good PR month for Germany.

The April issue of Vanity Fair Magazine features Alex Shoumatoff's brilliant expose article on the recent trove of over 1,280 artworks originally stolen and confiscated from Jewish families, art dealers and collectors (fleeing Germany or sent to the camps from Germany and France) in WWII that ended up in the Munich apartment of a strange German recluse named Cornelius Gurlitt.

Seriously, you really have to read this Vanity Fair article to gain some insight on this monumental art theft. Gurlitt's father was an art dealer for the Nazis and helped to broker the sales of thousands of pieces of art Hitler labeled "degenerate". Gurlitt's apartment was packed with an estimated billion dollars worth of priceless art by a range of master painters including Matisse, Picasso, Gauguin, Dix and more.

One of the most interesting tidbits from the article: cosmetic billionaire Ronald Lauder, who's supported efforts to return looted art to the original Jewish owners for years, claims the German government has housed tens of thousands of pieces of looted art in the basements and vaults of it's museums since the end of the War; knowing full well where they came from. 

It's a rather disturbing read, but an enlightening one as well that lends insight into a crime against humanity which in many ways, is still going on to this day.

It's Viva Las Vegas For GOP Contenders & Ken Detzner Rides Again

Voter purge-obsessed Florida Sec of State Ken Detzner

March may be coming to a rain-soaked close here by the banks of the Delaware River but if you harbored any doubts about Republican focus on the upcoming fall mid-term elections, kiss 'em goodbye.

Between the Supreme Court challenge by Hobby Lobby to undermine the contraceptive portions of the Affordable Health Care Act, ongoing Republican efforts to prevent eligible US citizens from voting in the November Congressional elections and a massive fund-raising campaign, the GOP is in game mode and all bets are off.

They're trying to hold onto their majority in the House and six is the magic number for them to re-gain the Senate. According to the slew of e-mails from the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee clogging my overburdened in-box, a single GOP fundraiser last week raised a staggering $15.1 million.

Not a bad take for one nights work. Evidently the fiery but frequently senseless right-wing rhetoric of the recent CPAC conference motivated Republicans to whip out their checkbooks.

Remember when presidential candidates used to actually court the approval of American voters?

Last week a steady stream of potential GOP presidential candidates made the pilgrimage out to Las Vegas to seek the blessing (and campaign contributions) of global casino magnate Sheldon Adelson.

You remember Sheldon right? After pouring $19 million of his almost $37 billion fortune to prop up Newt Gingrich's hopeless snoozer of a 2012 presidential campaign, Adelson then backed Mitt Romney once Newt crapped out. (And Sheldon made his fortune in gambling?)

Even walking-political liability Chris Christie is out there trying to make his case. He's happy to get the hell out of New Jersey for a few days and is apparently undeterred by the fact that pricey attorney/fixer Randy Mastro's NJ tax payer-funded whitewash "investigation" (which exonerated hizzoner despite not interviewing Bridget Kelly or David Samson) is almost universally viewed as a total sham by both the public and press.

Governor Christie seems to be laboring under the delusion that convincing David Samson to "retire" from his post at the head of the monumentally corrupt Port Authority will quench the thirst of the restless hordes calling for the truth about Bridge-Gate.

But wooing the backing of big GOP donors in Vegas may be the least of Christie's host of problems.

He's also got some 'splainin' to do to the members of the Republican Jewish Coalition meeting out there in Vegas regarding those anti-Semitic comments made by the Gov's own staffers about the GW Bridge traffic snarl in front of Rabbi Mendy Carlebach's house. Adelson is RJC's largest financial backer as well as a board member. Oops.

Julie Bykowicz wrote an excellent summary of the GOP players out in the desert seeking Sheldon's blessing on Bloomberg.com; check it out.

Finally, based on the ongoing Republican obsession to prevent US citizens from voting in essential swing states, one might almost be led to believe the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) has a Sith lord on their payroll who can use the dark side of The Force to manipulate the minds of Republican secretaries of state like Ohio's notorious vote suppressor Jon Husted and Florida's vote suppressing zealot Ken Detzner (pictured above), to believe in a mythical plot of wide-spread voter fraud.

Data from organizations like the Department of Justice demonstrates that actual cases of voter fraud in the United States are so numerically infrequent (.00000013 out of 197 million votes cast in 2006) as to make it make it almost nonexistent.

But that hasn't deterred groups like True the Vote from using fabricated statistics and rhetoric-filled fear-mongering to support arcane voter ID laws, limit polling stations in districts that skew Democratic, and curtailing voting hours that make it easier for people who work to vote.

Republicans simply haven't been able to sell a simple majority of Americans to back GOP their legislative initiatives or presidential candidates in years, so men like Husted and Detzner have taken on the dirty work; doing everything in their power to try and systematically purge Democratic voters from the election rolls.

The state of Florida recently put the halt on yet another voter purge list filled with thousands of names the Republican party wants to remove the voter rolls led by the voter suppression ideologue, Detzner; the same guy who in 2011 ordered local Florida election districts to send out letters to thousands of voters informing them they were "non-citizens" and did not have the right to vote.

It turned out the purge list was filled with errors and most of the people were actually citizens who were eligible to vote. According to ThinkProgress.org a letter was even sent to a 91 year-old WWII veteran. The article by Josh Israel reports Detzner recently tried yet again to purge more voters but was once again shut down by the state because of inaccuracies and mistakes in the list.

It's a sad state of affairs when a political party simply stops trying to sway voters with new ideas and instead pours millions of dollars into widespread efforts to illegally strip people who won't vote for them of their most basic Constitutional right.

Or perhaps, Republicans are just terrified of what conservative author and pundit Ann Coulter recently termed the "browning of America"? Annie get your gun!!

And Republicans like John McCain are up in arms and outraged about Putin annexing Crimea?

Seems to me the GOP has it's own kind of Anschluss going on right here in America, only instead of guns and bogus diplomacy, they're using false voter fraud accusations to manipulate the electorate in a devious effort to assume further control over state legislatures, the House of Representatives and United States Senate.

Limbaugh Claims Poll Data is a Voter Suppression Tactic

"The mainstream media's efforts to suppress your vote is now at full speed. It's getting tiresome to me, but it is taking place now at full speed."

That's talk-show host and touchy professional grouch Rush Limbaugh on Wednesday trying to explain away Romney's trailing in the polls even though it's actually Republican state legislatures behind the REAL voter suppression efforts.

According to the Brennan Center for Justice, at least 180 separate bills aimed at restricting the right to vote have been introduced by legislatures in 41 different states since the start of 2011. The American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), a shadowy quasi-public/private think tank that I blogged about back in March of last year, actually drafts the language of right-wing legislation for GOP politicians has been very busy indeed; the implications for the basic tenets of Democracy are chilling.  

In one of the most perplexing political jabs of the campaign season, Limbaugh claims that two CBS/New York Times and Washington Post polls that show President Obama with significant leads in critical swing states are "..irresponsible. They are designed to do exactly what I have warned you to be vigilant about, and that is to depress you and suppress your vote. These two polls today are designed to convince everybody this election is over." The transcripts are on Limbaugh's own Website.

Let's review shall we? The same guy who advocates on behalf the Koch brother's Tea Party-backed True the Vote -the organization behind morally reprehensible voter-suppression tactics - is claiming that poll data taken by three of the most trustworthy news sources in the world are themselves, tactics to suppress the Republican vote. How crazy is that? Kevin Cirilli wrote an interesting piece on Limbaugh's kooky assertions on Politco.com.
 
If Rush Limbaugh were just another schmuck with a radio show, the baseless absurdity of his loony right-wing political theories would likely be dismissed as the rantings of just another small-minded man channeling his anger into a mic. But he's not.

Limbaugh is the anointed mouthpiece of all things Republican, so his latest effort to help salvage poor Flipper's imploding presidential campaign only served to further cement the perception of the GOP as hopelessly stuck in a detached ideological reality the majority of the country can't identify with let alone stomach.

If you think about it, it's kind of like the build-up to the invasion of Iraq under W back in 2002.

When Dick Cheney didn't like the intelligence he got from the CIA and MI-6 saying Saddam Hussein had nothing to do with the 911 attacks; he simply instructed his staffers (none of whom were actually intelligence experts) to use inconclusive raw data to create their own intelligence conclusions about WMD's for W to use during his State of the Union address; Yellow Cake anyone?

But you have to admit Limbaugh's got moxie. Poll data isn't saying what you want? Smear it! It's like when Paul Ryan got all worked up when multiple fact-checking organizations called him out for blatant factual errors in his speech at the RNC. Rather than make loose accusations about poll data, perhaps Limbaugh should blame the current culture of the GOP which never seems to let facts stand in the way of the rigid convictions of it's own ideology.

Do you know who Catherine Engelbrecht is? The New York Times sure does. If you believe all American citizens legally registered to vote in this nation have the right to do so, you should too.

Countdown in Ohio: Will Jon Husted Really Fire Two Board of Elections Members for Standing Up for Voter's Rights?

Tonight millions of people across the nation are holding their breath as Hurricane Issac chugs towards New Orleans; threatening landfall on the Gulf coast on the eve of the anniversary of Hurricane Katrina.

But a potential storm is brewing in Ohio too.

Embattled Secretary of State Jon Husted (who just canceled a featured-speaker appearance at the True the Vote Ohio summit in the wake of increased media scrutiny over his voter suppression tactics) will have to decide whether to fire Democratic Montgomery County Board of Elections members Dennis Lieberman and Thomas Ritchie (pictured left).

Both men made an appearance on tonight's edition of Politics Nation with Al Sharpton and I was impressed by Lieberman's statement that, "I can find another job but I only have one conscience." in reference to the very real possibility that he will loose his job because of Republican efforts to suppress voter participation across the nation.

Lieberman and Ritchie (who also made an appearance on the Rachel Maddow Show) were suspended last week for defying Husted's order that early voting and weekend voting hours be curtailed; despite the fact that 197,000 Ohio voters cast their votes early or during evening and weekend hours during the 2008 election.

Between the flood of money from billionaires and Super Pacs, the constant stream of negative TV ads distorting President Obama's record and the voter suppression efforts, clearly there's a method to the Republican madness and it may just be the numbers. Earlier this evening Rachel Maddow and her guest, former New York Times columnist Bob Herbert, discussed the startling fact that this election will likely be the last presidential election where a white demographic will have enough voters to be able generate a sufficient majority to elect a president.

By 2016 with the rapidly-expanding Hispanic and Asian populations changing the fabric of the nation, the traditional Republican demographic (as it now stands) just won't have the numbers to elect a president. That's a huge shift for this nation and it scares a lot of people on the Republican side.

Enough for them to start laying the foundation to be able to suppress voters in heavily-Democratic districts. If Jon Husted fires Dennis Lieberman and Thomas Ritchie tomorrow for simply supporting expanded hours for Ohio citizens to take part in the electoral process, a basic foundation of the United States reinforced by the landmark Voting Rights Act of 1965, the GOP may very well unleash a storm that could end up doing more damage to their own brand than simply loosing an election. 

GOP Efforts to Strip Voter Rights: Jim Crow Rides Again

Say hello to one of the faces of voter suppression in 2012. He's not some thug you'll find standing around the ballot box with a club trying to intimidate people attempting to exercise their Constitutional right to vote.

Nor is he some mafia hood like the kind gangster Al Capone sent to Cicero, Illinois in 1924  to physically beat voters into casting ballots for his hand-picked corrupt Republican candidate Joseph Z. Klenha.

The man pictured here is Jon Husted, the Secretary of State of Ohio and his name is popping up in the mainstream media after he led efforts to cut back the available hours for Ohio citizens to vote during the upcoming elections; including totally eliminating early voting and night and weekend voting hours.

Just so we're clear here, during the 2008 Presidential elections many voters in Ohio complained about facing waits as long as six hours to cast their ballots; the same year 48% of voters in Franklin County cast their votes early.

It's not like it's a big secret about why Republicans nationwide are going out of their way to make it more difficult to vote. The Franklin County Republican chairman Doug Preisse freely admitted the rule changes would restrict black voter turnout in an e-mail to the Columbus Dispatch. According to Priesse, a former primary adviser to Newt Gingrich, "...we shouldn't contort the voting process to accommodate the urban voter-turnout machine."

But Republicans should contort it to keep people from participating in the Democratic process? What has happened to the GOP? And when did they decide to turn America into a Banana Republic?

Have you heard of the organization called 'True the Vote'? Last night Rachel Maddow featured a spot on this right wing group openly dedicated to intimidating voters at polling stations. True the Vote claims it's training millions of members to simply show up at polls (mostly in places where minorities vote) like they did in Houston, Texas.

Yup, same Texas that had four cases of voter fraud in the last two general elections. Make no mistake this isn't a "black or Hispanic-thing"; this an "American-thing". All Americans should be very concerned at this kind of hijacking of people's right to vote; not just because it's immoral, illegal and a mockery of American values, it's a blatant violation of the most basic premise of Democracy.

The same sort of mindset who embrace abstract patriotic rhetoric to send US troops over to foreign lands to kill people in the name of "Democracy" are actively trying to obstruct the Democratic process here in America. Think about that. If you don't, you're just going to make it easier for the GOP to obstruct the votes of whichever demographic that disagrees with them.

"The sides are being divided now. It’s very obvious. So if you’re on the other side of the fence, you’re suddenly anti-American. Its breeding fear of being on the wrong side. Democracy’s a very fragile thing. You have to take care of democracy. As soon as you stop being responsible to it and allow it to turn into scare tactics, it’s no longer democracy, is it? It’s something else. It may be an inch away from totalitarianism."

SAM SHEPARD, The Village Voice, Nov. 12, 2004