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Sen. Jim DeMint says America ‘headed’ to becoming like Iran.

By Lee Fang on Aug 20, 2009 at 9:10 pm

Sen. Jim DeMint (R-SC) appeared on Hugh Hewitt’s radio show today to continue his near daily rants against President Obama. DeMint, who has repeatedly boasted that he will “break” Obama by defeating health care reform, has made a habit of comparing government under Obama to fascism. This time, DeMint told Hewitt that immigrants from Iran tell him that America is going “down the road” to the type of government they had fled from:

DEMINT: And we’ve seen a lot of countries over the years collapse when they’ve gone down the road that we’re going down. Probably the most heart-wrenching experiences I’ve had over the last several days is when naturalized American citizens who have immigrated here from Germany, Iran and other countries, they come up to me and they say why are we doing what so many have fled from? Why don’t Americans see what we’re doing? And I’ve realized that these people who’ve lived under socialist type economies, and totalitarianism, they know where we’re headed if we don’t turn things around.

Listen here:

Rather than making his usual Nazi references, DeMint appeared to slam contemporary Germany as a country lacking freedom and suffering under “totalitarianism.” However, according to research by the Pew Charitable Trusts, Germany actually ranks far above the United States in upward economic mobility.

Update

“The president is on a rampage with an agenda that has surprised everyone,” DeMint said.

Related Posts

Politics

VIDEO: Stimulus Opponent Cantor Hosts Job Fair With Jobs Fueled By The Stimulus

By ThinkProgress on Aug 20, 2009 at 7:37 pm

House Minority Whip Eric Cantor (R-VA) has been one of the Recovery Act’s most vocal critics. Despite evidence that that the stimulus is helping to turn around the economy, Cantor repeatedly says that it is “failing” to “create jobs.” On Monday, Cantor hosted a job fair in Midlothian, VA, to demonstrate how he — and not the Obama administration — is working on “long-term solutions that will put Virginia businesses and Virginia workers back on the path to financial stability.”

ThinkProgress attended the event, which attracted more than 2,000 people. Watch a video report on Cantor’s stimulus-fueled job fair:

The Recovery Act created and saved jobs by injecting funds into local governments, while also fueling demand in the private sector by spurring improvements to infrastructure and other critical projects. ThinkProgress found in Chesterfield County that many jobs represented by employers at the job fair were a direct result of those funds:

–Commercial building contractor Colonial Webb credits the stimulus package with helping to create 20 new jobs. Colonial Webb, a firm that deals directly with helping to increase energy efficiency and LEED certification, is directly benefiting from Virginia’s $164 million in stimulus grants for weatherization and energy-efficiency programs.

–The Chesterfield County Police Department, which has received $505,822 through the stimulus, created 10 jobs.

–Chesterfield County Public Schools received over $4.4 million in funds from the stimulus. The money help plug budget gaps while aiding in 61 new hires.

–The Henrico County Police Department received over $63,069 from the stimulus and created 1 new job. The department also received $458,132 in stimulus money, helping to save other jobs.

It’s worth noting that among the job fair participants, more than half were from the public sector, including the Department of Veterans Affairs, the CIA, FBI, Army and the Department of Motor Vehicles –- even though Cantor previously has criticized the stimulus plan for placing too great an emphasis on “preserving jobs in the public sector.”

Over the next two years, Chesterfield County will receive more than $38 million in stimulus funding. Fliers were also displayed at the job fair advertising stimulus-enabled unemployment aid. Sixty two million dollars in stimulus funding is headed to Virginia that will extend unemployment benefits, providing many at the job fair with a lifeline.

Security

TNR: Resistance To Occupation = ‘Terrorism’

By Matt Duss on Aug 20, 2009 at 7:00 pm

abbasHere’s how Haaretz’s Avi Issacharoff reported on the Fatah conference earlier this month in Bethlehem:

President Mahmoud Abbas says his people must not “mar their legitimate struggle with terror” and that while his government seeks peace with Israel, it reserves the right to resort to “resistance.” [...]

“Although peace is our choice, we reserve the right to resistance, legitimate under international law,” Abbas said in a policy speech, using a term that encompasses armed confrontation with Israel and non-violent protests.

Colette Avital, in the Jerusalem Post:

[Fatah's] Bethlehem platform calls for “resistance by all legitimate means,” and leaves out the option of armed struggle.[...]

Abbas himself made his position very clear: “We must not stain our legitimate struggle with terror,” he said.

Here’s how The New Republic puts it:

What Fatah’s Defense Of Terrorism Means for Israel (8/20/09)

TNR contributing editor Yossi Klein Halevi reveals a variety of troubling details surrounding the Fatah convention in Bethlehem last week, arguing that the Palestinian faction’s alleged “right to terrorism”…

It is true that Fatah reaffirmed their right to armed struggle — a right retained by all people who suffer under foreign military occupation, as the Palestinians do. This is not synonymous with terrorism, Halevi’s flat assertion that it is simply a “code word” (and TNR’s misleading quotation marks) notwithstanding. As both Issacharoff and Avital report, but for some reason Halevi ignores, the conference ended with Fatah (again) choosing to abjure violence in favor of negotiation. This is a good thing, isn’t it?

Yglesias

Endgame

By Matthew Yglesias on Aug 20, 2009 at 6:14 pm

Still in a room without a view:

— The benefits of the Unified Development Code for Memphis and Shelby County.

— Ezra Klein on the retirement age; note that in general a more prosperous society should involve a longer retirement period—that’s the point!

— National Review thinks Obama is like an Iranian dictator because he sometimes doesn’t wear a tie.

— Rick Boucher gives away the game and worries that people might like a public option too much.

— Why the Air Force should support socialized medicine.

— Mike Ross is indifferent about people getting sick and dying because they’re too poor; he just doesn’t think it’s important.

I was going to offer Green Day’s “Know Your Enemy” off their new album, but even though I’m still a fan it really bugs me to think about their painfully earnest lyrics (a huge contrast from their early albums) so there’s also Rage Against The Machine’s “Know Your Enemy”.

Economy

UBS: Just The Tip Of The Tax Haven Iceberg

By Pat Garofalo on Aug 20, 2009 at 6:00 pm

ap0112290739After a three-year investigation that opened up “a deep diplomatic rift between the United States and Switzerland,” the Swiss bank UBS has finally succumbed to the IRS and is going to “hand over 4,450 accounts that contain a staggering $18bn”:

The 4,450 accounts soon to be in the possession of US investigators are expected to reveal the secretive world of international wealth management in which complicated webs of sham trusts and shell companies are created in tax havens to protect the assets of the super-rich. Switzerland shields nearly a third of the world’s $7tn of privately held wealth. Under US law, the IRS must be notified of offshore accounts holding more than $10,000.

For what it is, this is a good outcome. While the U.S. did not receive anywhere close to the 52,000 names that it requested from UBS earlier this year, as Bob Williams at TaxVox pointed out, the UBS probe has “really juiced the amnesty program,” under which tax evaders turn themselves in for smaller (though still hefty) penalties. Last month, for instance, the IRS reported that more than 400 evaders showed up in one week, “four times as many as in all of last year.” So the mere fact that the IRS wore down UBS is chasing other tax evaders out of the woodwork.

However, UBS is really the tip of the iceberg when it comes to tax evasion. The IRS estimates that about $5 trillion in assets is held in tax havens worldwide. In a report released last month, the Congressional Research Service said that the U.S. loses $40-$70 billion in annual revenue due to tax avoidance by individuals and another $10-$60 billion in corporate tax evasion. This squares with a report from the U.S. PIRG, which found that tax evasion shifts a $100 billion annual tax burden onto the individuals and corporations that do pay taxes in the U.S.

According to the Government Accountability Office, 83 of the 100 largest U.S. corporations have subsidiaries in nations judged by the US to be tax havens. In the Cayman Islands, for instance, “one mailing address alone houses 18,857 corporations.”

So this is a very widespread problem. To deal with it, the administration has proposed a handful of changes to the tax code — which are being vigorously opposed by the business lobby — and a doubling of the tax enforcement budget. These are good steps that would mitigate at least some of the evasion that is going on (although I’m willing to bet that armies of tax lawyers are already figuring out new ways around all of the changes). That UBS finally caved is definitely a victory, but there is far more that needs to be done.

Politics

American flags not welcome at oil Astroturf rally.

By Brad Johnson on Aug 20, 2009 at 6:00 pm

At a “grassroots” rally organized by the American Petroleum Institute in Houston on Tuesday, activists bearing American flags were turned away. Oil company employees were bused in to the “Energy Citizens” gathering to hear billionaire Drayton McLane Jr. attack President Barack Obama’s clean energy agenda as an economy-destroying energy tax. However, grassroots tea-party activists told Public Citizen Texas that they and their American flags were refused entry to the company picnic:

They said, “We won’t let you have an American flag either.” They said they won’t let you have this, and then the guy touched this, the American flag.

Watch it:

The activists were invited by Dick Armey’s Astroturf organization Freedomworks, one of the participating organizations in the new Energy Citizens coalition. While the tea party patriots were locked out, employees of the oil giants Chevron, Anadarko Energy, Halliburton, ConocoPhillips, and others were “invited to participate” and bused to the event on company time.

Update

Watch the extended video from Public Citizen Texas of frustrated teabaggers at the Wonk Room.

Yglesias

Kennedy Eying Succession

By Matthew Yglesias on Aug 20, 2009 at 5:28 pm

225px-ted_kennedy_official_photo_portrait_crop

Back when Mitt Romney was governor of Massachusetts and John Kerry was running for Senate, the Massachusetts legislature passed a law ensuring that Romney wouldn’t be able to appoint a Republican to fill Kerry’s Senate seat if he won. Instead, the seat would stand vacant until a special election could be held. Now, though, Deval Patrick is governor of Massachusetts and Ted Kennedy is in poor health. So Kennedy, sensibly, is encouraging Massachusetts to change the rules again and let Patrick appoint a temporary replacement so the seat won’t stand vacant if he needs to abandon the seat.

Jason Zengerle says “there’s a good lesson here about legislative bodies being careful not to muck around with these sorts of rules for short-term political gain.” I sort of feel the opposite way. There’s a very minor problem here, and it’s been totally solvable for months. The only roadblock is that the MA legislature seems too hesitant to change the rules for short-term political gain. But when you have a state whose state legislature is firmly and forever in the hands of one political party, the smart thing is for the legislature to be constantly changing rules based on short-term considerations. Nothing’s stopping them from changing the rules back later.

Climate Progress

Joe Klein on the GOP: “How can you sustain a democracy if one of the two major political parties has been overrun by nihilists? … How can you maintain the illusion of journalistic impartiality when one of the political parties has jumped the shark?”

By Joe Romm on Aug 20, 2009 at 5:25 pm

[I'd love readers answers to the two headline questions posed by Klein. ]

death panels illo

When I get back from vacation, I’ll blog at length about what the White House’s dreadful messaging on health care says about the likelihood they’ll improve their dreadful messaging on the climate and clean energy bill.

But Time magazine’s Joe Klein — a generally moderate/centrist columnist — has written perhaps the definitive piece on what the health reform “debate” says about the Republican establishment, in a piece titled, “The GOP Has Become a Party of Nihilists.”  As Wikipedia explains:

Most commonly, nihilism is presented in the form of existential nihilism which argues that life is without meaning, purpose, or intrinsic value. Moral nihilists assert that morality does not exist, and subsequently there are no moral values with which to uphold a rule or to logically prefer one action over another.

I have previously made this point about the willful immorality of beltway conservatives/Republicans on climate change:

Klein shows it is a broader phenomenon.  I’ll excerpt him at length since the GOP scorched-earth strategy on healthcare certainly foreshadows the fall debate we’ll see on climate:

Read more

Politics

New poll finds that 77 percent of Americans still support the public option.

By Zaid Jilani on Aug 20, 2009 at 5:15 pm

In recent weeks, the fate of the public option in new health care legislation has been uncertain. Yet, while the issue continues to be hotly debated in the halls of Congress, a new poll by Survey USA finds that the idea is as popular as ever amongst the American public:

More than three out of every four Americans feel it is important to have a “choice” between a government-run health care insurance option and private coverage, according to a public opinion poll released on Thursday.

A new study by SurveyUSA puts support for a public option at a robust 77 percent, one percentage point higher than where it stood in June.

The SurveyUSA poll finds similar results to several other polls that also show that the public option is very popular, a fact that some members of Congress consider to be a detriment.

Climate Progress

American Flags Not Welcome At Oil Astroturf Rally

By Brad Johnson on Aug 20, 2009 at 5:13 pm

At a “grassroots” rally organized by the American Petroleum Institute in Houston on Tuesday, activists bearing American flags were turned away. Oil company employees were bused in to the “Energy Citizens” gathering to hear billionaire Drayton McLane Jr. attack President Barack Obama’s clean energy agenda as an economy-destroying energy tax. However, grassroots tea-party activists told Public Citizen Texas that they and their American flags were refused entry to the company picnic:

ACTIVIST: They said, “We won’t let you have an American flag either.” They said they won’t let you have this, and then the guy touched this, the American flag.

ANOTHER ACTIVIST: I got an email from Freedomworks saying, “Come, it’s free, free food,” doodah doodah. And then I get here and they say, “Well, it’s against fire code to let people in the door.” And then, they let all these people in. Granted, one of the people was Drayton McLane. He’s got more money than God, so, I guess…

Watch it:

The activists explained that they were invited by Dick Armey’s Astroturf organization Freedomworks, one of the participating organizations in the new Energy Citizens coalition. While the activists were locked out, employees of the public corporations Chevron, Anadarko Energy, Halliburton, ConocoPhillips, and others were “invited to participate” and bused to the event on company time.

At the company picnic, Houston Astros owner Drayton McLane defended his billionaire lifestyle, saying, “We need to preserve this way of life.” Inheriting much of his wealth, McLane made billions by selling his grocery business to Wal-Mart. In January 2008, McLane received the Woodrow Wilson Award for Public Service for showing a “deep concern for the common good beyond the bottom line.” National Black Chamber of Commerce President and CEO Harry Alford, who recently accused Barbara Boxer of racism, was also a featured speaker.

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