Tag Archives: dynasty

If You Think Ted Cruz Is Extreme, Wait Till You Meet the Conservative Activists Who Endorse Him

by MayraLamilami Posted on May 3, 2016

Mother Jones

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC “-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN” “http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/loose.dtd”>

Tuesday’s Indiana primary is arguably the final frontier for Ted Cruz to keep alive any prospect of winning the Republican presidential nomination. The poll numbers aren’t looking good for him in the Hoosier State, but he’s holding out hope that Indiana will join several other Midwestern states in rewarding him for his socially conservative record. But in his quest to become the favorite of social conservatives, Cruz has aligned himself with a number of far-right extremists who could cause him trouble in the increasingly unlikely event that he finds himself in a general election battle in November. From the star of Duck Dynasty to activists who advocate executing abortion doctors and gay people, here’s a partial list:

The Benham family: In February, Ted Cruz appointed David and Jason Benham, twin brothers and real estate entrepreneurs based in North Carolina, to his campaign’s Religious Liberty Advisory Council. As Mother Jones reported in April, the brothers have been at the forefront of every battle to oppose gay rights in North Carolina in recent years. They’ve opposed gay pride parades and organized anti-abortion protests, and at one point David Benham equated the battle against marriage equality with fighting Nazis. The brothers were most recently instrumental in stoking opposition to a Charlotte nondiscrimination ordinance that eventually led to HB 2, the state’s transgender “bathroom bill” that has sparked a national uproar.

Their father, Flip Benham, is a well-known anti-gay and anti-abortion street preacher in Charlotte. In November, Cruz touted Benham’s endorsement in a press release. In 1994, Benham became the director of the anti-abortion group Operation Rescue, and he later renamed it Operation Save America. He still leads the group. Benham is best known for having helped convert Norma McCorvey—the “Jane Roe” of the landmark 1973 Supreme Court case Roe v. Wade, which legalized abortion—to fundamentalist Christianity and to renouncing her past support of abortion rights. In 1995, Benham opened the national headquarters of Operation Rescue next door to the Dallas abortion clinic where McCorvey was working at the time as a marketing director. The two struck up a friendship, and when McCorvey eventually converted, Benham performed her baptism.

Troy Newman: After Flip Benham moved and renamed the national Operation Rescue operation, Newman took over its western branch, now based in Wichita, Kansas. In January, Cruz announced his campaign would form a Pro-Lifers for Cruz coalition co-chaired by 10 anti-abortion activists. Newman is one of them. The campaign’s press release announcing the coalition describes Newman as the author of Their Blood Cries Out, a 2000 book in which he wrote that “the United States government has abrogated its responsibility to properly deal with the blood-guilty. This responsibility rightly involves executing convicted murderers, including abortionists, for their crimes.”

Last week, after Cruz appeared to be making a play for more women voters by announcing former Republican presidential candidate Carly Fiorina as his running mate, executives from several pro-choice groups wrote an open letter to the Cruz campaign encouraging it to fire Newman from Pro-Lifers for Cruz due to his history. “Troy Newman’s history of violent rhetoric and harassment toward women’s health providers is truly beyond the pale,” they wrote.

Kevin Swanson: Cruz was a featured speaker at the National Religious Liberties Conference in Iowa last November. He was introduced by conference organizer Kevin Swanson, a pastor who is known for his belief that gay people should be killed. Right before bringing Cruz to join him onstage, Swanson gave an impassioned speech in which he clarified that gay people should be executed by the government only after they’ve had sufficient time to repent.

“Yes, Leviticus 20:13 calls for the death penalty for homosexuals,” Swanson said, pacing the stage, his voice rising. “Yes, in Romans chapter 1, verse 32, the Apostle Paul does say that homosexuals are worthy of death. His words, not mine! And I am not ashamed of the Gospel of Jesus Christ!” Here’s Swanson’s speech in full:

Cruz’s appearance at the event, along with those of former GOP presidential candidates Mike Huckabee and Gov. Bobby Jindal, caused an uproar, but the Cruz campaign made no moves to distance itself from Swanson’s ideology. Cruz spokesman Rick Tyler told the Rachel Maddow Show that Swanson’s call for the execution of gay people was “not explicit.” In December, the campaign changed its tune and told USA Today that it was a mistake for Cruz to attend Swanson’s event.

Tony Perkins: Perkins is the head of the Family Research Council, which the Southern Poverty Law Center has classified as an anti-LGBT hate group, and the chair of Pro-Lifers for Cruz. Early in his career, while working as a reserve police officer in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, in 1992, Perkins was suspended from duty after failing to report to his supervisors that an anti-abortion group was planning a violent protest at a local abortion clinic. Perkins had learned this information because he worked part-time for a local conservative TV station, and his camera crew was often outside the clinic, filming confrontations between pro-choice and anti-abortion protesters.

While managing a US Senate campaign in 1996, Perkins paid more than $80,000 to purchase the mailing list of Ku Klux Klan leader David Duke. He later gave a speech to the Louisiana chapter of the Council of Conservative Citizens, another white supremacist group, in front of a Confederate flag. Under his leadership, the Family Research Council has touted a number of false claims about LGBT people, most famously the idea that gay men are more prone to sexually abuse children. (Many medical groups, including the American Psychological Association, have debunked this claim.)

James Dobson: In February, Dobson, the founder of Focus on the Family, the largest organization of the religious right in the United States, endorsed Cruz for president in a TV ad and in robocalls to voters.

Focus on the Family has several million subscribers to its monthly magazines and more than 220 million listeners of its various radio broadcasts, which usually feature Dobson. The group has become known for its deep-pocketed opposition to marriage equality measures and candidates across the country who back gay marriage. It also supports the practice of reparative therapy, which aims to “cure” homosexuality, and has continued to do so even after Exodus International, a reparative therapy group it once partnered with, disbanded and disavowed the practice.

Dobson has also made some extreme statements over the years. He blamed the 2012 mass shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School on the legalization of abortion and same-sex marriage, warned of an impending civil war over gay marriage, and said he opposes the Harry Potter books because they promote a “New Age ideology” to kids.

Phil Robertson: In January, the Cruz campaign put out a video of the candidate duck hunting with Phil Robertson, the star of the A&E show Duck Dynasty, who has come under fire for his anti-gay comments. Robertson has compared homosexuality to bestiality and said AIDS is God’s “penalty” for immorality and gay sex.

In this video from the Cruz campaign, Robertson endorses Cruz, saying, “Ted is my man.” Robertson and Cruz are wearing face paint and hunting gear, shooting rifles into the air.

“I am thrilled to have Phil’s support for our campaign,” Cruz said at the time. In February, Cruz suggested that Robertson would make a good ambassador to the United Nations.

Original link: 

If You Think Ted Cruz Is Extreme, Wait Till You Meet the Conservative Activists Who Endorse Him

Posted in alo, Anchor, Citizen, FF, GE, Jason, LAI, Landmark, LG, ONA, PUR, Radius, Uncategorized, Venta | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on If You Think Ted Cruz Is Extreme, Wait Till You Meet the Conservative Activists Who Endorse Him

How the Christian Right Is Using Hobby Lobby and "Duck Dynasty" to Take Back America

by VickiEllis Posted on October 31, 2014

Mother Jones

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC “-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN” “http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/loose.dtd”>

Pundits may be declaring the culture wars over, but conservative Christians are donning their battle gear and rushing back to the front lines. In recent months, a coalition of conservative evangelical organizations has been pursuing an aggressive voter mobilization campaign that involves a combination of high-tech tools, briefings for pastors, and rallies simulcast to mega-churches around the country.

The goal of these gatherings is to drum up outrage over recent political skirmishes, including the Hobby Lobby lawsuit, and to persuade believers that their religious freedoms are under attack by ungodly forces. During one recent event, which was shown in churches across the nation, speakers likened the situation of US churchgoers to Christians beheaded by ISIS in Syria. “We see the struggle between good and evil, light and darkness, truth and lies,” said David Benham, whose planned HGTV reality show was canceled after his fiercely anti-gay remarks came to light. “What’s happening with swords over in the Middle East is happening with silence over here in America.”

The campaign dates back to March, when United in Purpose, a nonprofit funded by wealthy evangelical Silicon Valley entrepreneurs, convened a Voter Mobilization Strategy Summit near Dallas. At the event, churches and conservative Christian political organizations forged a strategy to mobilize voters for the 2014 midterms. United in Purpose, a behind-the-scenes technology and communications group with deep dominionist ties, also shared a variety of tools including videos and voter mobilization apps. (One app allows pastors to compare their membership rosters with voter rolls, so they can better guide their flock to the polls.) The Family Research Council and Texas-based Vision America, which played a key role in the summit, then began hosting policy briefings for pastors and staging lavishly produced voter mobilization events that were broadcast live to churches and groups across the country.

Continue Reading »

Original article: 

How the Christian Right Is Using Hobby Lobby and "Duck Dynasty" to Take Back America

Posted in Anchor, FF, G & F, GE, Jason, LAI, LG, ONA, Oster, PUR, Radius, Uncategorized, Venta | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on How the Christian Right Is Using Hobby Lobby and "Duck Dynasty" to Take Back America

Duck Dynasty Guy’s Ad for Duck Dynasty Candidate Is the Full Duck Dynasty

by LorenaLuffman Posted on October 27, 2014

Mother Jones

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC “-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN” “http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/loose.dtd”>

Zach Dasher, a Republican businessman running for Congress in Louisiana’s fifth district, has one major thing going for him: He’s the nephew of Phil Robertson, patriarch of the Duck Dynasty clan. And he appears to be squeezing everything he can out of the connection. In a new ad, Robertson, who was suspended by A&E last year over comments he made in a GQ interview on homosexuality and race, holds up a Bible and a rifle, as an acoustic version of “Amazing Grace” plays in the background. “Hey, Louisiana,” Robertson says. “Bibles and guns brought us here. And Bibles and guns will keep us here. Zach Dasher believes in both. That’s why I’m voting for him.”

The ad’s content isn’t much of a surprise. Dasher has made his faith (and Duck Dynasty ties) a central part of his campaign, has said godlessness is driving America toward “tyranny and death,” and worries that the term “YOLO” encourages atheism by discounting the idea of an afterlife. Robertson has also raised money for Dasher, at one fundraiser referring to the candidate as “my little nephew who came from the loins of my sister.”

Ahead of a special election for the seat in 2013, Willie Robertson, Dasher’s cousin, cut an ad for Rep. Vance McAllister, but the incumbent congressman has fallen out of favor with the family since he was caught on tape kissing a staffer.

View the original here:

Duck Dynasty Guy’s Ad for Duck Dynasty Candidate Is the Full Duck Dynasty

Posted in Anchor, FF, GE, LG, ONA, Radius, Uncategorized, Venta | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Duck Dynasty Guy’s Ad for Duck Dynasty Candidate Is the Full Duck Dynasty

Late Libertarian Icon Murray Rothbard on Charles Koch: He "Considers Himself Above the Law"

by ShavonneHain Posted on June 5, 2014

Mother Jones

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC “-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN” “http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/loose.dtd”>

Cross-posted from Kochology, where Daniel Schulman is releasing exclusive documents and other materials gathered in the process of reporting his new book Sons of Wichita: How the Koch Brothers Became America’s Most Powerful and Private Dynasty.

Long before Charles Koch became the left’s public enemy number one (or two, depending on where David Koch falls in the rankings), some of his most vocal detractors were not liberals but fellow libertarians. None of his erstwhile allies would come to loathe him more fiercely than Murray Rothbard, one of the movement’s intellectual forefathers, with whom Charles had worked closely to elevate libertarianism from a fringy cadre of radical thinkers to a genuine and growing mass movement.

In the 1970s, Charles helped fund Rothbard’s work, as the economist churned out treatise after treatise denouncing the tyranny of government. Rothbard was a man with a plan when it came to movement-building. Where some libertarians had bickered over whether to advance the cause through an academic or an activist approach, Rothbard argued that the solution wasn’t to choose one path, but both. Charles was taken with his strategic vision.

Rothbard dreamt of creating a libertarian think tank to bolster the movement’s intellectual capacity. Charles Koch made this a reality in 1977, when he co-founded the Cato Institute with Rothbard and Ed Crane, then the chairman of the national Libertarian Party. This was a high point for libertarianism, when a busy hive of libertarian organizing buzzed on San Francisco’s Montgomery Street, home to Cato and a handful of other ideological operations bankrolled by Charles Koch.

But the relationship between Cato’s co-founders soon soured.

Rothbard, who was feisty by nature, chafed under the regime of Crane and Koch—the libertarian movement’s primary financier at that time. His breaking point came during the 1980 election, when David Koch ran as the Libertarian Party’s vice presidential nominee. Rothbard and his supporters felt that, in a bid for national legitimacy, David Koch and his running mate, Ed Clark, had watered down the core tenets of libertarianism to make their philosophy more palatable to the masses. Americans today would consider their platform—which called for abolishing Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid and eliminating federal agencies including the EPA and the Department of Energy—a radical one. But to Rothbard and his circle, it wasn’t radical enough. For instance, the Clark-Koch ticket stopped short of calling for the outright repeal of the income tax. And Clark, to Rothbard’s horror, had even defined libertarianism as “low-tax liberalism” in a TV interview.

Following the 1980 election, in which the Clark-Koch campaign claimed a little over one percent of the popular vote, Rothbard did not hold back. He penned a scathing polemic titled “The Clark Campaign: Never Again,” in which he wrote that Ed Clark and David Koch had “sold their souls—ours, unfortunately, along with it—for a mess of pottage, and they didn’t even get the pottage.” Thanks in part to Rothbard’s rabble-rousing, factional feuds and recriminations splintered the libertarian movement just as it was gaining momentum. A few months after Rothbard’s diatribe, Charles Koch and Ed Crane tossed him out of the Cato Institute and voided his shares in the think tank (which was set up, under Kansas law, as a nonprofit corporation with stockholders), a rebuke that turned their libertarian brother-in-arms into a lifelong adversary.

Rothbard would later play a cameo role in the messy battle between the four Koch brothers. In 1988, when Bill and Frederick Koch sued their brothers over control of the family foundation that had been established by their father, they dredged up Rothbard as a possible witness, seeking to depose him in the case. They hoped his testimony would damage Charles Koch’s credibility and support their contention that their brother was a tyrannical control freak who used nonprofit entities to advance his own aims.

A document summarizing Rothbard’s anticipated testimony was filed in the case, and I came across it as I pored over thousands of documents at the district court house in the Koch family’s hometown of Wichita. Rothbard, it seemed, was only too eager to denounce his onetime benefactor.

Charles Koch, Rothbard planned to testify, “involves himself in the minutest details related to the non-profit foundations with which he is associated…. He insists on personally approving even the minutest matters, such as $100 grants, stationery design and color of offices.” Rothbard contended that Charles would go “to any end to acquire/retain control over the nonprofit foundations with which he is associated” and “considers himself above the law.” And the economist further alleged:

Charles Koch has a practice of misusing nonprofit foundations for his own personal ends. Charles Koch wants absolute control of the non-profit foundations, but wants to be able to spend other people’s money not his own. He wants to spend that money on things that will enhance his personal image and goals, even it these expenditures are not consistent with the publicly stated goals of the foundation. Amongst other things, Charles Koch uses his involvement with non-profit foundations to aquire access to, and respect from, influential people in government and elsewhere.

Rothbard died in 1995, taking his grudge to the grave. By then, Charles and David Koch had abandoned the libertarian movement and struck out on their long path to becoming Republican powerbrokers. As their influence has expanded within the broader GOP in recent years, I’ve heard echoes of Rothbard’s past criticisms in the conservative nonprofit world by recipients of Koch network funding who complain of micromanagement by the Koch brothers’ political adjutants. “Nobody really works with them,” said the leader of one conservative group. “They work for them or not at all. They are kind of creating a monopoly” and attempting to “make the conservative movement theirs.”

DV.load(“//www.documentcloud.org/documents/1173779-motion-to-quash-murray-rothbard-deposition.js”,
width: 630,
height: 450,
sidebar: false,
text: false,
container: “#DV-viewer-1173779-motion-to-quash-murray-rothbard-deposition”
);

Motion to Quash Murray Rothbard Deposition (PDF)

Motion to Quash Murray Rothbard Deposition (Text)

Continue reading here: 

Late Libertarian Icon Murray Rothbard on Charles Koch: He "Considers Himself Above the Law"

Posted in alo, Anchor, FF, GE, LAI, LG, ONA, Radius, Uncategorized, Venta | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Late Libertarian Icon Murray Rothbard on Charles Koch: He "Considers Himself Above the Law"

Dot Earth Blog: A Fresh Look at America’s Gas Lands

by Myrna Posted on November 26, 2013

A filmmaker from Finland tries to get beyond polarization and propaganda and provide a clear-eyed view of the many meanings of fracking in shale country. See the article here:  Dot Earth Blog: A Fresh Look at America’s Gas Lands ; ;Related ArticlesA Fresh Look at America’s Gas LandsDot Earth Blog: Revisiting Love CanalDot Earth Blog: New Study Finds U.S. Has Greatly Underestimated Methane Emissions ;

See the original article here – 

Dot Earth Blog: A Fresh Look at America’s Gas Lands

Posted in alo, Citadel, eco-friendly, FF, G & F, GE, LAI, Monterey, ONA, PUR, solar, solar power, Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Dot Earth Blog: A Fresh Look at America’s Gas Lands

Pebble Mine project in Alaska is on the ropes

by Arthur Crown Posted on September 17, 2013

Pebble Mine project in Alaska is on the ropes

By

Friends of Bristol Bay

A waterway that leads to Bristol Bay.

The future of the controversial Pebble Mine, which could excavate 186 square miles [PDF] of pristine Alaskan terrain, is now very much up in the air.

The proposed mine near Bristol Bay would dig up an estimated $300 billion worth of gold, copper, and molybdenum. But it would threaten another treasure: one of the world’s biggest salmon runs, which provides half the world’s supply of sockeye.

One of two global mining giants involved in the project announced Monday that it was walking away from what it regards as a high-risk venture. U.K.-based Anglo American had spent $541 million getting the 50/50 joint-venture project nearly to the point where it could begin applying for state and federal permits. By quitting now, it avoids spending nearly $1 billion more it had agreed to sink into development of the mine. Anglo told shareholders it would write $300 million of intangible assets off of its ledger at the end of the year — the price of walking away from a deal that it once thought would lead to bountiful riches.

It’s too early to say what this will mean for the fate of the project, but environmentalists rejoiced in the news while investors choked on it.

“Anglo American’s decision to pull out of the potentially disastrous Pebble Mine highlights the incredible risks the project brings to Bristol Bay’s local communities and fisheries,” World Wildlife Fund Arctic campaigner Dave Aplin said. “When a company is willing to accept a $300 million charge to walk away from a project, it gives you a sense of just how bad of an idea the proposed Pebble Mine really is.”

Opponents of the mine worry that it would wreck an ecologically rich and remarkable landscape. Local fishermen are particularly concerned, fearing the project could destroy their livelihoods — and the livelihoods of the processors and traders that rely on them [PDF].

The timing of the announcement was interesting: It came just weeks after EPA Administrator Gina McCarthy visited the site, which environmentalists and fishermen are lobbying her to protect using provisions of the Clean Water Act. Results of a recent poll indicated that more than 60 percent of Alaskans would vote in a favor of a proposed 2014 ballot initiative to block the mine.

The announcement also coincides with falling worldwide commodity prices.

In Monday’s announcement, Anglo American said it wants to reduce financial risks and reduce spending on “such projects during the pre-approval phases.”

Northern Dynasty Minerals, a publicly traded subsidiary of Canadian mining company Hunter Dickinson, is now left all alone in trying to push through with the mine. Its chief executive put an optimistic spin on the news during a call Monday with reporters. “We will now be back in possession of 100 percent of the Pebble Project and the beneficiary of something north of $540 million worth of expenditures by Anglo over the past five years,” Ron Thiessen said. He insisted the project would move forward, but acknowledged that he really doesn’t know what lies ahead. The company’s board of directors has not yet met to discuss next steps.

Northern Dynasty might be trying to sound upbeat, but investors were having none of it. The company doesn’t have enough money to develop the mine alone. Shares in the company were being traded at $1.50 on Monday — an all-time low, well below the $5 at which its shares were trading a year ago.

If the project is called off, what’s bad news for the mining company’s investors would prove to be wonderful news for the environment.

John Upton is a science fan and green news boffin who tweets, posts articles to Facebook, and blogs about ecology. He welcomes reader questions, tips, and incoherent rants: johnupton@gmail.com.Find this article interesting? Donate now to support our work.Read more: Business & Technology

Follow this link: 

Pebble Mine project in Alaska is on the ropes

Posted in alo, ALPHA, Anchor, FF, G & F, GE, LG, ONA, Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Pebble Mine project in Alaska is on the ropes