#pat buchanan

[opendirectories]

[politicalrpf]

"Denials" by Jack Davis, early 1990s.

[spotlightstory]

The Michigan Medicis of Donald Trump’s America

Left, clockwise from top left Blackwater founder Erik Prince; U.S. Sec of Education Betsy DeVos (Prince); philanthropist Elsa and Prince Corporation founder Edgar Prince. Right, philanthropist Hellen and Amway co-founder Richard DeVos; standing, businessman Dick DeVos.

If you ever wondered where the weird Republican ideas came from or how did we get here, well, here's a piece of the puzzle. Buckle up, it's a long read. Link to full article above. I pulled out quotes on topics below.

"In the solar system of elite Republican contributors, Richard DeVos Sr., who died Thursday at age 92—one of the two founders of Amway, the direct-sale colossus—occupied an exalted place, and his offspring did too. Since the 1970s, members of the DeVos family had given as much as $200 million to the G.O.P. and been tireless promoters of the modern conservative movement—its ideas, its policies, and its crusades combining free-market economics, a push for privatization of many government functions, and Christian social values. While other far-right mega-donors may have become better known over the years (the Coorses and the Kochs, Sheldon Adelson and the Mercers), Michigan’s DeVos dynasty stands apart—for the duration, range, and depth of its influence."

Conservative think tanks, advocacy organizations, and colleges

Grand Valley State University; Calvin College, attended by several generations of DeVoses, including Rich’s daughter-in-law Betsy DeVos, Northwood University, her husband Dick’s alma mater. Hillsdale, the libertarian-plus-Christian liberal-arts college in southern Michigan.

Other recipients of DeVos largesse: the Heritage Foundation, the Institute for Justice, and the American Enterprise Institute

"The DeVoses’ preference for “values-oriented” candidates reflect the teachings of the Christian Reformed Church. A small breakaway denomination of its Dutch forerunner, it has some 300,000 adherents in North America, many living in the same western-Michigan towns where their immigrant ancestors settled in the 1840s to pursue a faith.."

SCHOOL REFORM: Who can forget Betsy DeVos’s campaign to undo the state’s public-education system and replace it with for-profit and charter schools that, as she had put it two decades earlier, shared her mission of “defending the Judeo-Christian values"?

“[Among] her big ‘accomplishments,’” says Diane Ravitch, the N.Y.U. professor and respected education historian, “have been reversing civil-rights enforcement for kids with disabilities, putting administrators from for-profit colleges in charge of monitoring for-profit colleges . . . stabbing in the back young people with heavy debt for their college education, and being a constant critic of public schools.” One saving grace, Ravitch contends, is that DeVos has gotten very few of her budget proposals through Congress. 

LABOR UNIONS: Another target was labor unions. Amway and the Prince Corporation had no use for them. Now the family waged a public fight. After Dick DeVos was routed when he ran for governor of Michigan in 2006, he blamed his defeat, in part, on Michigan’s unions and began to push for a right-to-work law (weakening the unions’ economic power and political clout, a pillar of the state’s Democratic Party). In 2012, the bill got through, and Michigan—headquarters to the United Automobile Workers, no less—became yet another of the country’s right-to-work states.

FAMILY: "Betsy and Erik’s father, Edgar Prince, was a Chrysler-Plymouth salesman and then machine engineer who started a die-cast business and also had a tinkerer’s gift for inventions. One, the lighted vanity mirror on the flip-up sun visor (introduced in 1972), helped Prince become one of the wealthiest men in Michigan." (wow) "As he got richer, the elder Prince rewarded his hometown handsomely; Prince money has done much to preserve downtown Holland, which remains a 1950s time capsule of Candy Land façades."

The C.R.C.’s greatest figure, Abraham Kuyper, a Dutch theologian and prime minister who died almost a century ago, had declared, in words the faithful know by heart: “There is not a square inch in the whole domain of our human existence over which Christ, who is Sovereign over all, does not cry, Mine!”  

The Princes and DeVoses—with neighboring homes in Holland—had effected a merger thanks to the 1979 marriage of their firstborn, Betsy Prince and Dick DeVos, then in their 20s. “Bible-reading jet-setter” was the description in a Detroit Free Press profile of Betsy.

Betsy and Dick own a 22,000-square-foot mansion on Lake Macatawa.

ERIK PRINCE was devoted to his father, who doted on him. He played four sports at Holland Christian and was the proudly straitlaced kid who, without being asked, put away the soccer balls after practice. Prince enrolled in the U.S. Naval Academy in 1987 but was shocked by the frat-house atmosphere—too much for a junior culture warrior who’d been an intern at the Family Research Council. After three semesters, he transferred to Michigan’s Hillsdale College.

Today Hillsdale, under its president, Larry P. Arnn (former head of the Claremont Institute, a citadel of far-right ideology), is known as a feeder school for the Trump administration, including Betsy DeVos’s chief of staff, Josh Venable. In May, the week Vice President Pence gave the commencement address there, Politico called it “the college that wants to take over Washington”—citing many alums who are now D.C. power players. 

In 1989, Erik had been invited to a “youth” inaugural ball for Bush—and there had met Joan Keating, the woman who would become his first wife. Prince even worked as a Bush White House intern. “I saw a lot of things I didn’t agree with,” he later said. “Homosexual groups being invited in, the budget agreement, the Clean Air Act, those kind of bills. I think the administration has been indifferent to a lot of conservative concerns.” He left that job for another, in the office of California congressman Dana Rohrabacher, who has often been called Vladimir Putin’s top Capitol Hill asset, so valued, the Times has reported, that he was given a Kremlin code name.

Prince spent four years with the SEALs in the early 90s but moved on after his wife was diagnosed with cancer and his father, aged 63, died of a heart attack. The elder Prince left behind a business with 4,500 employees. The family sold it for $1.3 billion, and Erik, at 25, now had a sizable inheritance.

One of Prince’s instructors in the SEALs, Al Clark, was also looking to set up a security-and-defense training company. Prince had money to invest. Out of this came Blackwater, which began as an instruction facility for law enforcement, the military, and special-ops squads in Moyock, North Carolina. 

The article goes into detail about Blackwater and it is mind-blowing. Their involvement post 9/11, Russian arms dealings, US government contracts,

"The source says he resigned after he discovered that Prince had approved plans to illegally weaponize aircraft and “actively train former Chinese Red Army personnel that are now being deployed into Pakistan, Thailand, Myanmar, and the Uighur region in China”—actions he perceived as supporting foreign interests above America’s. (Other Prince associates reportedly resigned for similar reasons.) Prince firmly denied the allegations."

[wardsutton]

My new piece for today's Boston Globe.

[wutbju]

Remember when Pat Buchanan spoke in Chapel in the FMA during Campaign 1996?

I remember that Gunter Salter really liked him. He was talking pretty loudly in the Faculty Room of the Dining Common afterward.

[oldshowbiz]

1992.

The Invention of the Culture War.

[themaninthegreenshirt]

"But in a culture war, where the other side is always making demands, and the other side is always ready to fight, this translates into endless retreats and eventual defeat."

Pat Buchanan

[cccovers]

Penthouse Max #2 (November 1996) cover by Pablo Bach.

[eternal-echoes]

[mitjalovse]

Some musicians gain a huge respect thanks to their work behind the scenes to move then. Jimmy Webb, for instance, penned a lot of classics, so he did get a chance to make something on his own. However, I would claim his latest records look a bit too much into his past. Then again, what a past he had! A good case of that would be how he and Glen Campbell made many great songs, including one I consider to be one of the best pop tunes, so the fact the latter duetted with him on one of the latter's latest? This does make sense, though I still have this feeling these LPs Webb releases now find him in a retrospective mode. One understand that, this is what happened to most of his peers, but one still wishes to hear what currently troubles him.

[numberstationmason]

I miss being paleo(conservative) 卐

[politicalrpf]

2000 political cartoon of Al Gore and George W. Bush, by Pat Oliphant.

[dalesramblingsblog]

Gun to my head, if you told me to differentiate between pictures of Pat Robertson and Pat Buchanan, I guess I'd just kinda die. What is it about rich, ghoulish conservatives named Pat that makes 'em all look a certain way?

[thenewdemocratus]

Patrick J. Buchanan: Rogue President

Source:The New Democrat  You know what the difference is between President Obama giving amnesty to millions of illegal immigrants in America and giving President George W. Bush giving amnesty to illegal immigrants in 2006 and President Ronald Reagan giving amnesty to illegal immigrants in 1986, President Obama gave amnesty to five-million people. I believe roughly twice the size of President’s…

[cynicalclassicist]

That was a good line from Jimmy Carter.

I'm sure you saw that Jimmy Carter died. You feel that he was a bad POTUS, but what do you think was his greatest achievement in Office?

Real Answer: Started deregulation, the Camp David Accords.

Joke Answer: This response to Nazi apologist and unrepentant bigot Pat Buchanan: "I can't believe God made a woman as ugly as your wife. It's almost enough to make me stop going to church!"

-SLAL