Political Chaos in the County

Plutocrats Are Coming

(Plutocracy is rule by the wealthy, or power provided by wealth.)

A quick poll of yard signs, suggests Taos County Republicans are way more active in this fall’s gubernatorial race than the Democratic establishment. With the exception of Trudy Valerio Healy’s big ads in The Taos News, the Chicano Barber Shop’s huge Denish-Colon sign, and Paul Martinez’s subversive– “Los Martinez Para Denish,” the DEMOS are MIA. Apparently, DEMO Boss Chuby Tafoya has ceded the power to insurgent leader Erminio Martinez–the Lord of El Salto and Arroyo Seco, who is reportedly leading the Demo charge in favor of NM Tea Party candidate, La Martinez.

“If Martinez wins, the water fountains and money spigots in Taos County will be turned off,” says longtime custodian of the purse, Flavio. “For the last eight years, Trudy (Water Board), Rep. Bobby, and Sen. Carlos, due to the relations with the Big Fella, have been bringing home the pork and pie. Remember Gary Johnson. Big Bird will be dropping shit on our heads if she wins.”

It’s tough to get a handle on Los Politicos. The true-blue populists, Republican Jerome Lucero and Independent Democrat Jeff Northrup, fight to bring down gas prices, stop GRT increases, and petition against electric rate boosts. You got Republicans like Arsenio Cordova, Bobby Ortega, and Luis Reyes, joined at the hip with Demos like Francis Cordova, Lorraine Coca-Ruiz, and Manuel Medina going along with property tax and electric rate increases. Then Demo Luisa Mylet and Republican Virgil Martinez, like Jeff and Jerome, oppose raising KCEC rates.

While the El Prado Siblings, Los Cordovas, whether featured on milk cartons or in KCEC newsletters, orchestrate the finances of local citizens, some Demos wonder where Little Chuby Tafoya, the nominal head of the Demos, is hiding out. Flavio says, “He’s not standing behind those tiny yard signs supporting Denish-Colon. Maybe he’s hanging round CRAB Hall trying to figure out how and why he let that property tax increase slip through the cracks or checking in with his Republican mentor, Publisher Chris Baker at The Taos News. No se.”

The Plutocrats in Charge

According to national news reports, Billionaires like the Koch Bros and Publisher Rupert Murdoch of the Wall St. Journal, also owner of Fox Broadcasting, are orchestrating the Tea Party insurgency—thanks to the Roberts court, which, according to the NYT “has championed corporations…and overturned a century of precedent to give corporations, along with labor unions, an unlimited right to spend money in politics.”

On Plutocratic politics, Frank Rich, NYT, Sunday, Oct. 3, 2010, writes, “In fact, local chapters of Tea Party Patriots routinely received early training and support from FreedomWorks, the moneyed libertarian outfit run by the former Republican House majority leader and corporate lobbyist Dick Armey. FreedomWorks is itself a spinoff from Citizens for a Sound Economy, a pseudo-grassroots group whose links to the billionaire Koch brothers were traced by Jane Mayer in her blockbuster August exposé in The New Yorker. Last week the same Tea Party Patriots leader who bragged to the National Journal about all those small donations announced a $1 million gift from a man she would identify only as an entrepreneur. The donor’s hidden identity speaks even louder than the size of the check. As long as we don’t know who he is, we won’t know what orders he’s giving either…By the time her [Christine O’Donnell] fans discover that any post-election cuts in government spending will be billed to them, and not the Tea Party’s shadowy backers, she’ll surely be settling her own debts with fat paychecks from `Fox & Friends.’”

Nobel prize winner in Economics, Paul Krugman, wrote on Sun. Oct. 3: “Every major contender for the 2012 Republican presidential nomination who isn’t currently holding office and isn’t named Mitt Romney is now a paid contributor to Fox News. Now, media moguls have often promoted the careers and campaigns of politicians they believe will serve their interests. But directly cutting checks to political favorites takes it to a whole new level of blatancy.

“Increasingly, Fox News has gone from merely supporting Republican candidates to anointing them. Christine O’Donnell, the upset winner of the G.O.P. Senate primary in Delaware, is often described as the Tea Party candidate, but given the publicity the network gave her, she could equally well be described as the Fox News candidate. Anyway, there’s not much difference: the Tea Party movement owes much of its rise to enthusiastic Fox coverage.

“As the Republican political analyst David Frum put it, “Republicans originally thought that Fox worked for us, and now we are discovering we work for Fox” — literally, in the case of all those non-Mitt-Romney presidential hopefuls.

“So the Ministry of Propaganda has, in effect, seized control of the Politburo. What are the implications?

“Perhaps the most important thing to realize is that when billionaires put their might behind “grass roots” right-wing action, it’s not just about ideology: it’s also about business. What the Koch brothers have bought with their huge political outlays is, above all, freedom to pollute. What Mr. Murdoch is acquiring with his expanded political role is the kind of influence that lets his media empire make its own rules.

“So think of those paychecks to Sarah Palin and others as smart investments. After all, if you’re a media mogul, it’s always good to have friends in high places. And the most reliable friends are the ones who know they owe it all to you.”

In Taos, we have Los Cordovas et al raising taxes and rates. At the national level we’ve got Murdoch and Koch pulling the strings. The Democratic party–at all levels–whimpers. The voices of only a few outliers, like Jeff, Jerome, Paul, Trudy, and columnists on the NYT fight back against the betrayal of the American Dream.

Want to retaliate? Join Cliff Bain and get out your shotgun. The Osprey season opens on Oct. 14. Say “no” to more profits for the Corporate Air Force.