*** NPR has the interview online with Mark Potok from the Southern Poverty Law Center. Mr. Potok talked about the growth of militia/patriot/right wing extremist groups:
....Potok points to race as one of the reasons "anti-immigrant vigilante groups [have] soared by nearly 80 percent" in the past year. He also notes a "dramatic resurgence in the Patriot movement and its paramilitary wing" in the past year — jumping 244 percent in 2009. Potok says that these groups' messages are increasingly moving into the mainstream.
"I think it's very clear that you see ideas coming out of all kinds of sectors of the radical right, from the immigrant radical right, from the so-called Patriot groups, the militias and so on — and you see it spreading right across the landscape at some of these Tea Party events," he says. "I think it's worth saying that much of this is aided and abetted by ostensibly mainstream politicians and media members."
It is an interesting post and worth reading. Are some of those people at Tea Party meetings part of the militia?
* More on Republican Eric Cantor and his claim that someone shot a bullet at his office. Washington Post:
The bullet that hit U.S. Rep. Eric Cantor's campaign office in downtown Richmond early Tuesday was random, Richmond police spokesman Gene Lepley said this morning.
"It is a stray bullet as part of random gunfire,'' Lepley said. Police said they have no suspects.....
>>> Check out Raw Story's collection of threats to Democrats. Are the tea party activists being used by some militia and "patriot" groups?
**** Here is another tidbit about Republican John Kasich. When Kasich was in Congress in the 1990's he wanted to give tax cuts to the wealthy. In an effort to find that money, he wanted to cut the school lunch program and other programs during the Clinton administration.
Here is an excerpt from BCFE Newsletter Spring 1995:
....."Rep. Kasich and his budget allies are considering killing, consolidating or privatizing numerous federal offices, among them the departments of Energy, Education, Transportation, Commerce, Human Services, and Housing. They want to turn over Welfare to the states and remake Medicare."
Toward these ends, and in the name of fiscal responsibility, Republicans are seeking to eradicate entirely the $1.3 billion budget of the Low Income Assistance program, which has been helping thousands of indigent citizens pay their utility bills; to eliminate summer jobs for more than 1.2 million low-income youth; to cut Job Corps programs to the bone; to make a nationwide shambles of public housing through a $7 billion rescission; to gut public education; to cancel some programs offering student aid to higher education and abridge the rest; to scale back or drop all programs offering aid to the homeless; to eviscerate child-care assistance for working mothers while forcing more mothers to find one or more jobs; to cut $3 billion out of the food stamps program over the next five years; to defund school lunch programs while relaxing nutritional standards; to block all efforts at health care reform; to lower standards both for product safety and for product liability; to defang the Environmental Protection Agency as well as the Food and Drug Administration; to ease restrictions on industrial polluters; to dilute protections for endangered species while opening more land for exploitation; and, in short, to end or curtail whatever fails to help the wealthy obtain more money.....
Kasich's behavior, plans, objectives, from the past might be an indication of what he'd do if elected governor. If Kasich would eliminate the state income tax, how would the state make up the 40% of the state budget? Would Kasich propose similar cuts in Ohio to give tax cuts to the wealthy? But, wait--- Kasich won't reveal what he'll cut until later. We just have to sit and worry that, if he would win, he wouldn't demolish schools, the state government, libraries, prisoners, programs for the disadvantaged, and elderly. As Dr. Phil says, "The best predictor of future behavior is relevant past behavior."
>>>> Here is another gem from Kasich (NYTimes 10/23/2000):
JOHN R. KASICH has this to say about his impending retirement from the House of Representatives: ''I would actually like to be president one day.''
This is a man who, unlike many of his colleagues on Capitol Hill, does not demur when it comes to his own ambition.....
Ohioans have to worry that Kasich is using the governorship to step into the presidential race again, even though he dropped out in his last presidential run because of lack of interest by voters.
