Mean Old Billionaire

Won’t Wind Freedom’s Watch.

Wingnut Welfare kings and queens freak out en masse over maybe having to get real work in George Bush’s Prosperity Doctrine America.

Film at 11.

From the NYT.

Great Expectations for a Conservative Group Seem All but Dashed

By MICHAEL LUO

The conservative group Freedom’s Watch, headlined by two former senior White House officials, had been expected to be a deep-pocketed juggernaut in this year’s presidential election, heralded by supporters on the right as an aggressive counterweight to MoveOn.org, George Soros and the like.

But after a splashy debut last summer, in which it spent $15 million in a nationwide advertising blitz supporting President Bush’s troop escalation in Iraq, the group has been mostly quiet, beset by internal problems that have paralyzed it and raised questions about what kind of role, if any, it will actually play this fall.

The group was conspicuously absent this week as Gen. David H. Petraeus, the United States commander in Iraq, returned to Congress to testify. Moreover, the troubles at Freedom’s Watch come as some Democratic-aligned groups are seeking to take the offensive, with one group, Progressive Media USA, planning to raise $40 million to spend on advertisements and other efforts to undermine Senator John McCain of Arizona, the presumptive Republican nominee.

Independent groups not constrained by the limits placed on campaign contributions to candidates and parties have increasingly become major players in races for federal offices. Those known as 527s, named for the section in the tax code they fall under, raised more than $400 million in the 2004 election cycle alone, according to the Campaign Finance Institute. Such efforts could be especially beneficial for Mr. McCain, who has badly trailed his Democratic counterparts in fund-raising.

Backers of Freedom’s Watch once talked about spending some $200 million, a figure that officials now say was exaggerated. Lending to the aura of ambition, the organization moved into a state-of-the-art 10,000-square-foot office in Washington and hired a staff of about 20, with talk of bringing in scores more for a vigorous campaign to promote conservative issues.

Behind the scenes, however, Freedom’s Watch has been plagued by gridlock and infighting, leaving it struggling for direction, according to several Republican operatives familiar with the organization who were granted anonymity so they could be candid about the group’s problems.

Although the organization was founded by a coterie of prominent conservative donors last year, the roughly $30 million the group has spent so far has come almost entirely from the casino mogul Sheldon G. Adelson, the chairman and chief executive of the Sands Corporation, who was recently listed as the third-richest person in the country by Forbes magazine.

Mr. Adelson has insisted on parceling out his money project by project, as opposed to setting an overall budget, limiting the group’s ability to plan and be nimble, the Republican operatives said. Mr. Adelson, who has a reputation for being combative, has rejected almost all of the staff’s proposals that have been brought to him, leaving the organization moribund for long stretches, the operatives said.

“What has happened here is pretty much you had a single donor who essentially dictates the way things occur or do not occur,” said one of the Republican operatives.

…

In an example of the false starts at Freedom’s Watch, the group had planned to turn its attention to the threat of Iran, convening a private gathering for Mr. Adelson and a group of experts on Iran and radical Islam in October at the Four Seasons in Washington.

Afterward, the attendees were asked to put together proposals for projects to be financed, leading many of them to scramble over the course of a week to pull together their applications, with the promise they would hear back by the end of November, according to one participant, who spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of reprisal. Since then, however, no financing has materialized.

…

Mr. Adelson, who is aggressively expanding his business in China and was recently appointed to a presidential advisory position on trade issues, has been a prolific donor to Republican candidates and committees, as well as independent conservative 527 groups, contributing more than $2 million last year alone. He also established a foundation last year to support Israel and Jewish causes and pledged $200 million to it.

…

In another example of fumbling, staff members at Freedom’s Watch spent weeks working on an ambitious package for the presidential campaign that included message testing, polling and advertising, only for it to go nowhere earlier this year.

…

/Pause for piteous weeping at the sad, sad sight of a rich guy using his fiscal leverage to just completely fuck with his minions/

/End pause/


If you have ever mowed the lawn of some loud, peevish, old douchebag who thinks that parting with his pocket change after you have sweated off 15 pounds to make his yard sparkle is more unfair than slavery and worse than seven Hitlers…then you can probably understand how fucked-over the wingnut heroes of Freedom’s Watch feel right about now.

Which I find to be redolent with the minty fresh flavor of irony goodness because those exact circumstances writ large – capital holding labor hostage, unprotected and unmediated by any rules -- are exactly what the wingnut heroes of Freedom’s Watch have in store for you and your children.

Just like they said they would, the Wingnut Movement really did take over the United States government.

And just like they said they would, they wrecked it.

‘Cause it was evil.

Eeeeeevil.

And so, over the last couple of decades, the United Serfs of America have gotten a good, full pour of exactly what the world looks like when Evil Gummint is gutted, and the corporate shills, liars, fascists and the assorted other Rapture-Ready lunatics who make up the Right Wing A-Team move into the vacuum and are actually allowed to run things.

The planet melts. Whole cities and counties get smashed to rubble. The economy stampedes every last pfennig that can be begged or borrowed into the pockets of the filthy rich and leaves everyone else to fight for crusts and crumbs. Children’s toys are made out of poison.

The media sells its organs to butchers.

The dollar starts cutting itself with razors just to feel alive.

The military is ground into powder.

And your Conservative Movement’s solution?

More war.

More tax cuts.

More deregulation.

Of course, as any real American knows, “government” in a democracy is really nothing more than a non-guillotine-based means available to citizens to allow to them to act for their common good and in the national interest.

But of course the core tenets of the Glorious Conservative Revolution dictate that there are no higher interests than those that are immediate, personal and selfish.

That the “common good” is just code for “Communism”.

And that is you happen to die under in the gears of the Great Capitalist Machine, that just proves you were unfit to live in the first place.

So no big surprise that one of the early casualties of this relentless mocking and bulldozing of the very idea of sacrificing for a cause greater than oneself might be that the Feudal Overlords of the Glorious Conservative Revolution would, y’know, not believe in dipping into their boodle for the good of The Cause.

Or for anything that does not benefit them directly and personally.

So while it utterly delights me to see Conservative Movement parasites reaping what they have sown, longer term, if you want a clear look at how America will be run after Conservatives finally smash the Evil Gummint and turn all of us over to our new Feudal Overlords, take a peek at the dynamics at work inside the meltdown at Freedom’s Watch.

A nation where everything – schools, roads, courts, the food you eat, the water you drink and the air you breathe – have all been defunded, deregulated and privatized.

A nation stratified into billionaires, poor house servants, poorer soldiers and starving field hands.

A nation where the “common good” is an antique concept barely even mentioned in history classes at the universities that your children will never be able to afford to attend anyway.

Where anything that moves is a boutique project funded by the private largesse of billionaire wingnuts who dictate terms to suit themselves, and fuck with you just because they can.

Where we are finally the nation Conservatives always wanted us to be: a money monarchy, ruled entirely by the whims of wealth, where justice is doled out like piñata candy to the most supplicalicious, and victory in war is measured solely in percentage of shareholder value added.