I was speaking with a voter while phone banking in 2010 and I was recounting a few of the extreme things the GOP has done, including some general things like crashing the economy with their hands-off policies on banks and specific things like warrantless wiretapping. The voter said it didn't help my cause when I was trashing the competition. Nothing I said was untrue and I hadn't been using my ranting voice or inflammatory words so I simply asked him what I was supposed to say if, in fact, what I said was true? This turned the tables and he became open to looking a few of these things up.

GOP spin doctors intentionally lie and misdirect and the lies propagate across the nation with the help of vast sums of money from wealthy and corporate interests looking out only for their bottom line. We believe the scale and intentionality of this effort requires that we stop dancing around the issue, put aside some of our politeness and directly address this.

We need to go meta -step out of the conversation to look at the conversation itself. Not just our opponent's propaganda but the media's tacit acceptance of it by it's equivocating between truth and wacko opinion. We need to question the choice of questions. It's time for our spokespeople to question the questioners.

The GOP's public discourse is anything but civil and they've counted on our reluctance to call a lie a lie. As a result, their propaganda has been tragically effective. The damage to our economy, our environment and our families is already great. It's long past the time to bring the debate back to reality.

(A bit of reality from one of Minnesota's best writers, David Strand. -Ed.)

Contrary to the GOP label that President Obama is a socialist, he is doing all he can to save capitalism, and could do more if not for the obstructionist tactics of the Republican controlled House and the undemocratic Senate.  This column appears in the May 2nd issue of the Aitkin Age.

It's no secret the GOP will almost always favor business over people. We've noted here that you can almost always divine the GOP's position on any issue if you figure out who stands to profit from a decision one way or another. Thom Hartman has this interesting quote:

When Progressives proposed net neutrality to prevent major Internet corporations from carving up the Internet and screwing over consumers - Republicans lined up against it calling it a government takeover of the Internet. But when it comes to giving those same corporations the power to share your personal information with the government - Republicans line up in support. Yes, Conservatives side with big corporations over working people even in cyber space.

Net Neutrality is the idea that the Internet cannot be owned by corporations or government -that it is a space, as are broadcast airwaves and even the open air, where speech must be free. Why would Republicans, so vocal about money being speech be so strongly against Net Neutrality? As we've said before -follow the money!

If Net Neutrality -the original state of the Internet- were maintained businesses could not control it for profit. Comcast, an active opponent of Net Neutrality, has been testing the limits of what they can and cannot control. Filtering content and capping downloads (and speed) are tricks ISPs have used recently to push the envelope. Pipleine owners like Comcast want to charge not only you the viewer for access but they want protection money from every business, non profit, church, personal blog -everything- or the data will be slowed down or perhaps not delivered at all. You can see the profit potential here -and the reason the GOP want's government to kill Net Neutrality.

While the GOP wants the government in or out depending on the profit opportunity, there is no profit to be gained by allowing citizens a little privacy. In fact, invading our privacy promises to be a boon not only to law enforcement (who today must establish probable cause -unless you are suspected of being a terrorist; or anyone who knows a terrorist or saw one on the street or heard about one) but also to business.

Many businesses stand to gain from the erosion of privacy in all things digital. Already your phone and your apps spy on your location, your contacts, the messages you send and the links you click -often with apps that come preinstalled, launch themselves and cannot be removed. Your ISP knows what links you click when you browse the internet with your computer. Personal information about people is about the hottest commodity around so companies are collecting it and selling it. So of course, the GOP is for invasion of digital privacy -there's a profit to be made!

Again, what seems paradoxical is not at all if you follow the money!

Great article (link below) that brings sense to the Obamacare debate. First though, FrameShop editor Jeremy Powers:

This is an easy-to-understand report on the reality of everyday people’s lives and their health care, or lack of it.

I remember hearing a speech on public radio about two years ago by a guy who studied health care around the world with the premise that what would happen if he broke his arm. Essentially he said there are four health care systems in the world.

1. Government paid and government provided health care – like the British system.

2. The government paid and private provided health care – the Canadian system.

3. The privately paid and privately provided health care – like Germany, Korea and more, usually done through employers.

4. The pay as you go system – which is what is the only thing available in much of the poorer countries.

What’s weird is: the United States has all four. The first system is yours if you’re a vet using the VA. The second system is yours if you’re on Medicare. The third system is yours if you have a “good” job. And everyone else has the fourth system and it is essentially paid for by everyone whether they know it or not.

http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0412/74779.html

We spoke about how important it is to uncover the underlying frame in messages from today's conservatives. This gets tricky though: There are often two agendas -one somewhat hidden and another more public one constructed to distract voters -and you- from the real agenda.

Let me give you as perfect an example as you'll ever find -Voter ID: a solution to a non existent problem affecting zero people that creates a problem for tens of thousands. I had a conversation with a state Senator who thought it sounded like common sense and didn't understand why her supporters were up in arms about it. I only needed to point out that the reason the GOP pushes this is to keep her from getting elected.

It has been established in factual analysis after factual analysis that for all intents and purposes, there is no voter fraud problem, certainly nothing that a photo ID would fix. Yet not only is the GOP making it a huge issue -the ALEC initiative aims to enact Voter ID in every state- they will go as far as using constitutional amendments to accomplish it. Why such intense effort for a non problem?

As everyone seems to know but seems afraid to talk about -especially in the media- is that it's all about diminishing Democratic votes. The people who will be affected by the laws fit the Democratic voter demographic. Statistically the GOP will gain a permanent electoral advantage by enacting Voter ID. This is the hidden agenda. Conservative propaganda makers count on the fact that Progressives don't like to impugn motives -we prefer to talk about facts. They know that we are reticent to say, “They just want to keep Democrats from voting” -when that's exactly the reason!

We should never be afraid to talk about the hidden agenda.

Often a single hidden agenda is often at work in other issues too. Union busting in Wisconsin and other states (another ALEC initiative slated for all states) is intended to diminish the power of unions because union members tend to vote and donate to Democratic candidates. Killing unions gives the GOP a statistical advantage in elections often won by a percent or less. It also serves the bedrock private agenda to protect wealth and large corporations from paying high salaries (read diminish profits).

Private agendas hiding behind public ones are everywhere. Does anyone actually believe Conservatives have any interest in the science regarding climate change or evolution? Out of all the scientific areas, many of which are vastly more contentious than climate change or the decidedly uncontentious theory of evolution, why did they pick these to get their grundys in a bunch about? Look to the hidden agenda.

If climate change really will doom us all then companies that release carbon will need to clean up their act. This will cost companies money and it may prove difficult to get them to part with profits willingly, so it means government must regulate to make sure it happens. In the conservative worldview, the government should never interfere with the ability to make profit. Regulation is bad. Collecting taxes to fund cleanup or alternative energy research is taking money away from companies and successful entrepreneurs -the most deserving Americans in their worldview.

Since they know the science is not in their side, they cannot win on facts. They need to create doubt about the facts and they also count on our shamefully widespread science illiteracy (which they also promote, but that's another story). They also count on a neutered media to always give the boldest crank equal time at the mic. The energy industries fund pseudoscience and simply lie repeatedly to get people to simply stop and say, “Maybe there really is an issue here”. Doubt is created and doubt is often enough to gain a few percentage points in an election.

Creationism is a special kind of propaganda as it both promotes science illiteracy and is one of the “big three” distractions -gays, guns and God. The hidden agenda is twofold: distract from more important issues and teach extremist versions of Christianity to public school students. They also get a bonus round of energizing their base.

Too often progressives respond only to conservatives' public agenda on issues. Forget for a moment that getting you to respond at all means they control the debate; we cannot be afraid to uncover the hidden agenda and we must insist on talking about it in public and in the media.