posted September 07, 2009 12:00 PM         

Cenk Uygur
August 10, 2009

What we’re seeing in these angry town halls these days is the last gasp of the angry white man. He’s not quite sure what he’s angry about, but he knows he’s angry. It’s not the world he used to know. He gets the disquieting feeling that he doesn’t rule the roost anymore. And it’s driving him crazy.

One of the chants at the town hall events was, “No national health care!” Okay, mission accomplished. No one has proposed such a thing. So, I guess they can go home now, befuddled at what they were yelling about.

The reality is that what they have been manipulated into arguing against is a public option that would give them more choices, not less in health insurance. It wouldn’t nationalize health insurance at all, let alone any part of the rest of the health care industry.

But this isn’t about health insurance. It isn’t even about health care. You think those people are really this animated about having less health care options and making sure it costs more for them and their family? No, this is visceral for them. And it has nothing to do with their perceived choices on health care. This is about the sinking feeling in their stomach that they are losing power in this country — losing control. That the reins of power are slipping out of their hands and they don’t know what to do about it, except yell, really loud.

One guy famously shouted, “Keep your government hands off my Medicare.” Everyone is understandably amused by this. But there is a larger point here. They don’t care about the logic of the issue at hand. I’m not convinced they even care what the issue is. These are the same people that were yelling at the Palin rallies. They were screaming just as loud then, and it was different issues, or no issues at all. Just name calling and fear. Pure, unadulterated fear.

At a recent Tampa town hall people were yelling at the top of their lungs, “Hear Our Voice.” Ironically, that’s all we could hear. No one could hear the congresswoman there. Or any arguments that were being made or any issues debated. All they could hear was the loud, angry voices demanding to be heard.

And who is stoking these fires? Encouraging and egging on these screams, this anger, this fear? Conservative talk hosts all across the country (and, of course, special interest groups funded by the health care industry who are relishing using these poor schleps as fodder for their effort to kill health care reform). They’re telling them the proper response is anger.

Don’t wait your turn. Don’t listen to the congressman. Shout. Be heard. Be angry. Obama is taking this country away from you.

The woman who now famously stood up in a Delaware town hall and demanded that her congressman recognize the illegitimacy of Barack Obama’s birth certificate, said something telling in her rant. She said, “I want my country back!”

Indeed. Where did it go? Of course, the country is still right here. It’s the “my” part that’s missing. She doesn’t want this country back. She wants her country back.

I want everyone to be heard, too. I hated it when the Bush handlers would keep out dissenting voices from their town halls. If conservatives are frustrated with some of the policy initiatives of the Obama administration, I think it’s an appropriately democratic reaction to show up at town halls and ask questions. In fact, if they did it in a way that asked their representatives interesting and tough questions, I’d be proud of them.

Some of them are holding up constitutions. They finally got them out of the drawer where they were collecting mothballs as the Bush administration ran roughshod over that sacred text. They didn’t seem to demand loyalty to that document as the Bush team eviscerated the Fourth Amendment.

But bygones be bygones, if they want to hold Obama responsible for his signing statements for example, great. You can argue he is impinging against Article I of the Constitution just as Bush did.

Do you think that’s the argument the town hall screamers are making? Come on, can anyone really discern an argument? Could they point to one clause that they think Obama has violated? My guess is if challenged they would scream out the Second Amendment. Except Obama has not only not done anything to impose gun control, he has gone out of his way to rein in his Attorney General to make sure he also does nothing about it. It isn’t about the Second Amendment. It isn’t about the Constitution. It’s about the anger.

It’s a self-justifying anger. The angrier they get the more they feel the imperative to get angry. What is it? What’s really eating away at them? I don’t think it’s a conscious racial thing for them. It’s more a feeling of their way of life slipping away from them.

Think about it. If you worked at the local shop and in the old days you could get your son hired there, things were pretty good. Now, they tell you that they have to give the job to someone else’s son. Someone that doesn’t look like you, someone that you’ve never met or ever talked to. There’s been a lot of generations of that now.

You think those guys are going to inquire into the history of racial prejudice in this country and why it might make sense to increase diversity in a workplace when some groups have been excluded entirely? No, all they know is that their son couldn’t get the same job that their dads got for them. They want their country back.

Of course, this has been building up for quite awhile. But now they have lost their political power. Now the epitome of what they were fighting against is their new leader. His first hire for the Supreme Court is a Hispanic woman, who they hear is racist against white men and was only picked because of her race and gender.

And when the president is talking about a confrontation between a white man (a cop trying to do his job) and a black man (another one that got to be a professor, though God knows if he earned it), he immediately chooses the side of the black man — without even knowing the facts. Man, they’re angry. This is the guy they were warned about.

Whether their perception is true is not relevant. It’s the intensity of the perception that is relevant. And on top of all this, they feel the whole system is rigged against the average guy (and they’re right about this one).

The bankers get all the money. The government spends a ton of cash, but they feel like it never comes to them. It feels like the guys at the top are the ones who always make out like bandits (the fact that their anger against this is being used by those same guys for their own interests is of tremendous irony).

But then add on top of that, their team lost. They don’t feel like the president is “one of them.” Maybe that’s not even malicious, or at least consciously malicious. But that’s how they feel. The world is changing around them and every time they turn on the radio or television (which, of course, is glued to Fox News), they are being told they’re right to be angry. And that their anger should be directed primarily at one man: Barack Obama.

That’s where the trouble comes in. It’s starting to feel like a third world country around here. In developing countries there are organized mobs. There are disruptions of political gatherings. There are angry crowds and talk of gathering weapons. Talk of revolutions (one man in South Carolina told Rep. Inglis that “there is not a day that goes by … that I don’t hear talk of revolution in our country.”).

We’re America. We’re supposed to be better than this.

We’re supposed to resolve our differences peaceably and civilly. We’re supposed to listen to one another. We’re supposed to have the best democracy in the world. As it stands, we’re one burning tire away from Haiti. We have to dial this thing back down.

Of course, the problem isn’t the progressives here. Their side won. The moderates and independents aren’t necessarily boiling over with anger. No, in this case, it’s the right-wing. And there’s the problem. Because there does not seem to be anyone on that side who is capable or inclined to bring down the volume of the conversation. If anything, their response is more shouting, more disruptions, more rancor and more accumulation of weapons. As one local Republican nominee in Virginia put it, “We have the chance to fight this battle at the ballot box before we have to resort to the bullet box.” So, what happens when they keep losing at the ballot box?

It’s beginning to smell a lot like banana republic around here. And there is no answer. If you try to suggest that they bring it down a notch, they scream censorship and warn their audience that their rights are about to be taken away from them. And so is their country. If you say it might not be such a good idea to have all of these weapons in the hands of all these angry men, they scream about the Second Amendment and tell their audience to hold on to their guns even tighter. And many have held on so tight that some of them even pulled the trigger.

posted September 07, 2009 03:18 PM         

quote:

---

As one local Republican nominee in Virginia put it, “We have the chance to fight this battle at the ballot box before we have to resort to the bullet box.” So, what happens when they keep losing at the ballot box?

---

GOP Candidate's Remarks Spur Outcry
By Fredrick Kunkle
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, July 17, 2009

A Virginia Republican's fierce call to resist President Obama's political agenda -- with bullets, if necessary -- ignited an outcry on the Internet yesterday and forced her to clarify that she was not looking to incite violence.

Appearing at a "Tea Party" rally Wednesday to protest Obama's expansion of government, Catherine Crabill, a political neophyte running for the House of Delegates in the Northern Neck, quoted from a March 1775 speech by Patrick Henry and then went further, calling on Americans to resist the course Obama has set for the country.

"We have a chance to fight this battle at the ballot box before we have to resort to the bullet box," Crabill said. "But that's the beauty of our Second Amendment right. I am glad for all of us who enjoy the use of firearms for hunting. But make no mistake. That was not the intent of the Founding Fathers. Our Second Amendment right was to guard against tyranny."

Crabill, a real estate agent and home-schooling mother of four, said yesterday that she would not back down from her defense of the right to use bullets to address government grievances, saying that if fiery words were good enough for Henry, they're good enough for her.

"Those are my convictions," Crabill, 52, said in a telephone interview. "I am a full-blooded, freedom-loving American, and what we're seeing in Washington is domestic terrorism at its worst."

But as the video of her remarks zipped around the Internet, she said she worried that she would be caricatured. And she said she wanted to make clear that she was not advocating armed resistance.

"I have no desire to see this country erupt in any kind of violent revolution," Crabill said. "I don't even own a gun."

Looking around a nation in which some people have been stockpiling weapons since Obama's victory, however, she said she worried where it all might lead. She said her speech was less a call to arms than a call for conservatives to mobilize for coming elections at all levels.

"It scares me what's going on," she said. "And this administration is socializing every area of life." She added: "Socialism is probably being kind: This is a Marxist agenda."

After a video of her remarks was posted on the Internet, some Democrats seized on them to suggest that the Republican Party remains a haven for extremists.

"The Northern Neck is conservative, but not reactionary, and I think people will be appalled," said her opponent, Del. Albert C. Pollard Jr. (D-Northumberland).

Some said her remarks were not surprising, given an April 1995 article by the Washington Times that identified her as a member of a militia known as the New Mexico Citizens Action Association and quoted her as saying that she believed the Oklahoma City bombing had been the work of the federal government. Pressed about her remarks of nearly 15 years ago, Crabill disputed the exact wording but not the gist of her beliefs.

posted September 07, 2009 04:44 PM         

Republican Autoerotic Asphyxiation
Allan Goldstein, OpEdNews
8/05/09

One glance at the birthers and the town hall screamers tells you all you need to know. You don’t even need to see it, you can hear it in their strangled cries. The Republican party is a junkie, addicted to hate.

“The base is on fire!” the Republican spokeszombies shout, spittle flaking their bloodless lips. ‘We’re back!” they spew, “bigger and better than ever!”

Hate is a rush, hate is a drug. When all your plans and dreams have gone to hell, when everything you stand for has been repudiated, when the people have abandoned you and it feels like God himself has forsaken you, hate will give you a reason to live.

The problem with hate is that, like any drug, you develop a tolerance to it. Last year a Republican mob could get into ecstasies of joy by chanting the lie “Obama is a Muslim!” That worked for a while, but then they had to up the dose. “Obama is a socialist!” was good for a nice hate buzz, but it got old in a hurry. Now mere lies don’t cut it anymore. Now it takes blood libel to feed the monkey.

“Obama is an illegal alien! Obama hates white people! Obama wants to slit granny’s throat! We hate him, Hate him, HATE HIM!”

This isn’t party politics, this is delirium tremens, and what comes next is rigor mortis.

Liberals, moderates and even rational conservatives–those few who haven’t gone on the junk–hear this stuff and are terrified.

I can’t blame them. It is scary. When you can’t have a town hall meeting without a shrieking, 140 decibel, bussed-in, paid-for mob doing everything in its malevolent power to scare the bejesus out of everyone and make democratic debate impossible, it’s easy to cut and run. The fight-or-flight reflex kicks in and even the strong are tested.

Many fail. The Blue Dogs hear the furor and turn Yellow. “Let’s take August off and hope it all goes away. These issues are just too contentious.”

But “the issues” have nothing to do with it. Do we really think those mobs give a crap about the intricacies of health care reform? Has fear made us that stupid?

The birthers, the “just say no” crowd, the “Cash for Clunkers is a failure because it worked” idiots don’t really care about any of those things. All they want to do is hurt Obama because they hate Obama.

They hate Obama because he beat them. That inescapable fact is what’s driving the right insane.

All they care about is driving down Obama’s poll numbers. But why? Seriously, my Republican brethren, are you really so delusional that you think you can beat him in 2012? Obama is going to eat Mitt Romney and crap Bobby Jindal in three years. What’s the point? Don’t you have a country to help run, or would you rather run it into the ground?

The right thought it was America. It turns out America is bigger than that. Forty years ago the left labored under the same delusion.

Crazy-ass, bug-eyed, screaming imbeciles, drunk with hate and high on anger are always with us, on both fringes. The terrible failure of conservative leadership today is their refusal to repudiate those foaming fanatics in the harshest, clearest words possible.

Conservatism is a serious intellectual project. It has a long, proud history of standing foursquare against the rule of the mob. There is only one moral response a true conservative can have, when confronted with ignorance, hatred and lies, lies, lies about the duly elected President of the United States of America: “We renounce you, root and branch.”

But they don’t because it feels too good. The hatred is “energizing the base,” it’s “firing up the party,” it’s “bringing us back.”

No, it’s not. It’s killing you. And it will keep killing you until you decide you don’t want Obama to fail more than you want America to succeed.

For just a few moments of bitter joy, the Republican party is murdering itself. Those screaming crowds, the frightened Democrats, the rising ratings of right-wing radio ranters, Obama’s slipping poll numbers! It’s such a rush! We can’t stop, it feels too good!

posted September 07, 2009 04:58 PM         

Yep, people all across America are expecting trouble from O'Bomber's administration and the knotheads in Congress who are not listening to the people.

O'Bomber and his Marxist Socialist advisors he's brought into his administration and the Marxist Socialist demoscats in Congress are not going to be permitted to remake the United States in the image of a Socialist gulag state. They are already way over the Constitutional lines.

posted September 07, 2009 05:06 PM         

Here's that self-proclaimed patriot, Rush Limbaugh, on the subject of the nation's new president. "I've been listening to Barack Obama for a year-and-a-half," Limbaugh wrote during the weeks before the inauguration. "I know what his politics are. I know what his plans are.... I don't want them to succeed...I hope he fails."

We've come to expect nothing better from these SOBs who make extravagant incomes by saying the most outrageous things they can think up -- the Hannitys, the O'Reillys, the Michael Savages and the Ann Coulters of this world, the media choir of fascist voices that have enabled some of the worst crooks and incompetents of the Bush years to reign supreme. Those voices have poisoned the atmosphere and blunted the intelligence, twisting the national discourse into oversimplifications that included the comic strip visions of George W. Bush, a world divided into "good folks" and "evil doers," and a nation divided between those who gave blanket assent to a hasty and misguided invasion of Iraq and those who were called unpatriotic for questioning such a rash move.

You cannot be an American patriot, or a decent human being, if your wish is for our leader to fail. You cannot claim to care about this country if you hope the actions of our new leader don't succeed. If you are wishing for four more years of failed leadership following eight years of failed leadership, then you surely are no lover of this nation. What you are is a paid partisan hack, a voice determined to put ideology above country, a man intent on holding his overpaid position as a agent provocateur for right wing dimwits who offer them their ditto-head allegiance.

After only a few days of the Obama presidency, however, we can now hear clearly just how irrelevant voices like Rush Limbaugh's have become. They belong to a past already fast receding as the extraordinary job of repairing the harm they have done begins. We must rebuild an economy decimated by Bush neglect. We must turn our attention to our infrastructure, also neglected during the time of Bush misrule. We must forge a government that re-dedicates itself to serve all of the people, not just the rich. But now, with the very viability of our system at stake, and the health of our people at issue, Rush Limbaugh hopes that Obama fails, not caring that if Obama fails, the nation fails. It's like calling in a repair crew to fix the damage done to a house that has been trashed by its former occupants, then hoping the repair crew proves unable to fix the damage.

Let us hope that such voices have been repudiated, these ignorant and hollow blusterers who contaminate hope and thwart change. These are the voices that have brought us to the brink of ruin. Look around our local landscape to see the wreckage of what they wrought. Gottschalk's is bankrupt. Circuit City is about to close. Mervyn's stands vacant. And dozens of small businesses have gone belly up, all because of the greed and corruption fostered by the deregulation that first gave us the Enron debacle, and then was allowed to fester as the banking institutions ran amok, squandering their credibility and the public good while stuffing their pockets with as much ill-gotten gain as they could grab.

Now Obama wants to fix what's broken, and he calls on his fellow citizens to join him in that effort, regardless of party, race, or religious affiliations. But Rush, the bloated symbol of all that corruption we've known so far this century, says no. Rush says, "I hope he fails." Rush pines for more of what we've known, despite the fact that what we've known has gotten us into a very deep hole. Rush liked things as they were because, for Rush, things as they were were pretty damn good. He got a $400 million dollar contract to carry water for the right wing, and $400 million can make a shallow person pretty indifferent to a world collapsing around him, especially when that shallow person is well fed, and high on Oxycontin.

But, at last, we have a man of intelligence at the helm, one who vowed on his first day in office to change the way business is done in Washington. To that end, he set a cap on salaries of the White House staff, and he blocked the shameful practice of officials shuttling between government service and highly paid lobbying slots. This is a chief executive who signals a turn away from the practices that turned public service into a public feeding trough, where swinish people traded their former government connections in for highly paid lobbying work in the industries they were once paid to oversee. Obama's campaign slogan promised a weary people "change we can believe in," and his first acts in office indicate that he was serious. Already the tone has changed, but the tone-deaf darlings of the right wing never could abide change. They loved the status quo, loved entrenched power, loved sucking up to the guys with the bottomless expense accounts. They loved hanging out with the vultures who perch atop the American dream, those who invited them aboard their yachts and into their sky boxes and penthouses.

posted September 07, 2009 05:22 PM         

O'Bomber is not America...except in the minds of O'Bomber's Kool-Aid drinkers.

posted September 07, 2009 05:28 PM         

quote:

---

You cannot be an American patriot, or a decent human being, if your wish is for our leader to fail. You cannot claim to care about this country if you hope the actions of our new leader don't succeed. If you are wishing for four more years of failed leadership following eight years of failed leadership, then you surely are no lover of this nation. What you are is a paid partisan hack, a voice determined to put ideology above country, a man intent on holding his overpaid position as a agent provocateur for right wing dimwits who offer them their ditto-head allegiance.

---

posted September 07, 2009 08:39 PM         

I would also hope O'Bomber would fail if he attempted to seize control of the Federal Government...in violation of his oath of office and the US Constitution.

Get it through your heads. O'Bomber isn't overly bright and he's damned sure not the Messiah some claim him to be.

O'Bomber is an employee of the people of the United States and our employee isn't going to tell us what we must do. Period.

posted September 07, 2009 10:29 PM         

...Nowadays, if someone gets up at a town hall meeting and declares that he or she is a terrorist, many thoughts will run through the minds of those attending. They could be thoughts of panic, agreement, fear, national pride, collusion, distaste or disgust.

Last week, at a town hall meeting held by U.S. House Representative Wally Herger at Simpson University in Redding, California, 67-year-old Bert Stead, stood up and said “I am a proud right-wing terrorist.” Mr. Stead’s declaration was met with applause by the 2000 people attending the town hall meeting.

Freedom of speech, right? He’s only joking, right? What Bert Stead said might be considered totally inappropriate at anything other than a meeting of the Klan, or maybe lunch at an Oklahoma roadside diner with Timothy McVeigh and Terry Nichols, but what was even more inappropriate was the government official’s solemn response, “Amen, God bless you,” said Representative Wally Herger, “there is a great American.”

posted September 07, 2009 11:58 PM         

O'Bomber is making a mockery of the US Constitution.

O'Bomber has been around the world apologizing for America.

O'Bomber has surrounded himself with every crackpot radical leftist in the US...in the White House...including a Revolutionary Communist..Van Jones.

O'Bomber has attempted to cram Socialist Health Care down America's throat, take $560 BILLION out of Medicare and force rationing or worse..denial of health care on seniors

O'Bomber has forced Americans to help pay for new cars for other Americans...then screwed up the car dealer reimbursements to the point dealers refused to sell any more cars on the O'Bomber Plan.

O'Bomber has attempted to appoint income tax evaders...a federal felony, to his cabinet...and succeeded with Tim Geithner.

O'Bomber is a radical leftist elitist who denigrates Americans behind their backs...when he thinks only his leftist elitist friends are listening.

O'Bomber is not THE United States. It appears O'Bomber doesn't even like the United States or the American people.

Of course rational people want O'Bomber to fail in his quest to turn the United States into a failed Socialist boondoggle.

posted September 08, 2009 11:36 AM         

Van Jones Biography
Civil Rights Lawyer, Advocate, 1968-

"Dr. King didn't get famous giving a speech that said,"I have a complaint." It's time for us to start dreaming again and invite the country to dream with us. We don't have any "throw away" species, nations, or children. We must birth a global green economy strong enough to lift people out of poverty."

Born in rural Tennessee, Jones graduated in 1990 from the University of Tennessee and, in 1993, from Yale Law School. At the age of 27, Jones convinced the California State Bar Association to allow him to begin a program that would provide lawyer referral services for police abuse victims. Jones, a civil-rights lawyer, is founder and executive director of the Ella Baker Center for Human Rights, a nonprofit agency for justice, opportunities, and peace in urban America. Located in Oakland, California, the Center focuses on campaigning to reform California’s abusive and costly youth prison system, creating opportunities in the "green" economy for poor communities and communities of color, supporting victims and survivors of police abuse and their families, and uplifting young people and addressing Bay Area violence with a mix of activism and street culture.

Jones has lead many campaigns including Books Not Bars, an advocacy program for parents/grandparents of incarcerated youth in the United States. It has been credited with a 30% drop in the total number of youth incarcerated in California. Additionally Jones sits on numerous governing boards, and following Hurricane Katrina co-founded the largest online activist community addressing Black issues (ColorOfChange.org).
http://www.americanswhotellthetruth.org/pgs/portraits/Van_Jones.html

he seems alright to me.

Raymond

------------------
“It is absolutely the perfect name,” Dr. Brown said, given the continuing discord among astronomers and the public over whether Pluto should have retained its planetary status.

In mythology, Eris ignited discord that led to the Trojan War.

“She causes strife by causing arguments among men, by making them think their opinions are right and everyone else’s is wrong,” Dr. Brown said. “It really is just perfect.”

posted September 12, 2009 11:30 AM         

Glenn Beck now setting the news agenda for CNN as well
September 11, 2009 5:23 pm ET by Brian Frederick

On March 13, 2009, Glenn Beck rolled out his "9-12 Project" in a special featuring Chuck Norris, various "survivors," and numerous moments of Beck openly crying about how much he loved his country. In describing the project, Beck stated, "We weren't told how to behave that day after 9-11, we just knew. It was right; it was the opposite of what we feel today." And with tears flowing down his cheeks, Beck asked, "Are you ready to be the person you were that day after 9-11, on 9-12?"

Of course, most observers -- The New York Times not among them -- recognized Beck's 9-12 Project as a shameless shtick exploiting a terrible tragedy. Indeed, Stephen Colbert offered up the best evidence of Beck's phoniness, airing a tape of him back in 2005 savaging the families of victims of 9-11:

BECK: You know, it took me about a year to start hating the 9-11 victims' families. ... I don't hate all of them. I hate about, probably about 10 of them. But when I see, you know, 9-11 victim family, on television, or whatever, I'm just like, "Oh, shut up." I'm so sick of them, because they're always complaining. And we did our best for them.

Colbert shrewdly noted that Beck's "9-12 Project is not for families directly affected by 9-11. Just people building their careers on it."

Beck concluded his 3-13 9-12 special by stating, "On Saturday, 9/12 -- Saturday, September 12, I will share with you what I've been working on to put the principles and the values to work in my own life. And you show me what you have done. We'll meet back here in six months, all right?"

Well, it's six months later. Time to find out what all the fuss is about.

Turns out it's nothing more than another tea party protest in Washington, D.C.

Beckisms
“Every night I get down on my knees and pray that Dennis Kucinich will burst into flames.” (2003)
"I'm thinking about killing Michael Moore, and I'm wondering if I could kill him myself, or if I would need to hire somebody to do it." (2005)
"When I see a 9/11 victim family on television, or whatever, I'm just like, 'Oh shut up' I'm so sick of them because they're always complaining." (2005)
“The only [Katrina victims] we’re seeing on television are the scumbags.” (2005)
“Let me tell you something, there ain’t [nothing] better than looking at a hot, naked chick.” (2006

FreedomWorks foundation: wiki
Funding
FreedomWorks is primarily funded by individual donations. According to the nonpartisan media watchdog group Media Matters for America information center, FreedomWorks has also received funding from Verizon and SBC (now AT&T). [7]Other FreedomWorks funders have included MetLife, Philip Morris and foundations controlled by the conservative Scaife family, according to tax filings and other records. [8] It also receives funding through the sale of insurance policies through which policyholders automatically become members of FreedomWorks. [9]

FreedomWorks is closely tied to its founder, corporate lobbyist and former Republican Congressman Dick Armey, whose former lobbying firm DLA Piper that he resigned in August 2009, represents Bristol Myers Squibb, among other pharmaceutical companies. [10][11]

President and CEO Matt Kibbe, a former aide to Republican Representative Dan Miller and a former staffer at the Republican National Committee.

Matt Kibbe?
Citizens for a Sound Economy/CSE (1984 - 2004) was a conservative political group operating in the United States, whose self-described mission was "to fight for less government, lower taxes, and less regulation." In 2004, Citizens for a Sound Economy split into two new organizations, with Citizens for a Sound Economy rebranding as FreedomWorks, and Citizens for a Sound Economy Foundation becoming Americans for Prosperity.

Controversy
On July 23, 2006, the Washington Post reported on the organization's tactics in signing up as members people who did not know about the organization, by enrolling them as members during unrelated insurance transactions in order to boost membership numbers. The group obtained about $638,000 and 16,000 members through the sale of insurance policies in this way, according to the report.[3] When someone signed up for insurance through "Medical Savings Insurance Company", they were also automatically signed up for Citizens for a Sound Economy without their knowledge, the report asserted. Their information is subject to be rented out as the Medical Savings Insurance Company deemed fit, which is not uncommon for many groups who obtain client contact information. The dues they paid also paid for Citizens for a Sound Economy projects.[citation needed] Critics suggested the effort as a way for this group to inflate their membership rosters, and more exactly, by taking dues from people with no interest in the groups' politics.[3]

posted September 12, 2009 11:59 AM         

i had never even HEARD OF beck until recently when he started making an over-the-top arse of himself...

posted September 12, 2009 01:51 PM         

Are you really aware of what you're posting?

Pray tell, exactly who is Colbert to even have an opinion about the motivations of ordinary US citizens. Inhabitants of elitist alternative universe don't know what's going on..on earth.

I've watched this moron twit...once and once was enough. Yet, there are those who get their news from "entertainers". Go figure.

posted September 12, 2009 02:05 PM         

were you aware of what you were reading?