Since July, an anti-abortion group's deceptively edited videos targeting Planned Parenthood for allegedly profiting off sales of fetal tissue appear to have prompted at least four arson attacks on Planned Parenthood clinics. And even though the allegations were bogus, the vilification of the women's health organization has done additional damage: Violent threats and a political chill in the wake of the videos have begun to undermine potentially life-saving research on diseases including diabetes, Parkinson's, and Alzheimer's. Fetal-tissue donation programs essential to such research have been shut down, supplies of the tissue to labs have dwindled, and legislation is brewing in multiple states that could hinder cutting-edge scientific studies.

"It's anti-progress," says Gail Robertson, a veteran researcher at the University of Wisconsin-Madison who uses cell lines derived from fetal tissue to study heart disease, including sudden cardiac death, the largest cause of natural death in the United States. "We're in a fight for the future of cures to the diseases that will affect us all."

Every woman who has ventured online is well aware of the perils. Sheltered by anonymity, sexual predators thrive on the Internet, where sending vulgar missives rarely has consequences.

Most women cope by promptly deleting these inappropriate messages and trying to forget about them. Mia Matsumiya, a professional violinist based in Los Angeles, chose to save them.

For the past 10 years, Matsumiya has collected over 1,000 obscene communications she’s received in a folder called “creepiness.” Now she’s sharing them all with the world, on a tongue-in-cheek Instagram account aptly named @perv_magnet.

According to Buzzfeed, Matsumiya gained a following after she started blogging about her band performances in 2003. Since then, she’s received a seemingly endless torrent of sexually aggressive messages on Facebook, MySpace, OkCupid and other sites.

Nearly half (48.2%) of the 3 million hourly workers who were at or below the federal minimum in 2014 were ages 16 to 24. An additional 22.4% are ages 25 to 34, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics; both shares have stayed more or less constant over the past decade. That 3 million represents about 2.3% of all wage and salary workers. (See more about the demographics of minimum-wage workers.)

About 20.6 million people (or 30% of all hourly, non-self-employed workers 18 and older) are “near-minimum-wage” workers. We analyzed public-use microdata from the Current Population Survey (the same monthly survey that underpins the BLS’s wage and employment reports), and came up with that estimate of the total number of “near-minimum” U.S. workers – those who make more than the minimum wage in their state but less than $10.10 an hour, and therefore also would benefit if the federal minimum is raised to that amount. The near-minimum-wage workers are young (just under half are 30 or younger), mostly white (76%), and more likely to be female (54%) than male (46%). A majority (56%) have no more than a high-school education.

Koch was asked if it’s healthy for democracy “that so much money is coming out of a relatively small group of people.”

“Listen, if I didn’t think it was healthy or fair, I wouldn’t do it,” he said. “Because what we’re after is to fight against special interests … My interest is, just as it’s been in business, is what will help people improve their lives and to get rid of these special interests. That’s the whole thing that drives me.”

One thing Congressional Republicans haven't helped themselves with recently is their war on Planned Parenthood. By a 12 point margin, 49/37, voters say they have a higher opinion of Planned Parenthood than the Republicans in Congress. That includes a 45/35 edge with independents.

Unfortunately for the Utah Republican, Chaffetz’s evidence ended up embarrassing him, not his target. The chart’s data had been manipulated in a deceptive way, and it had come from an avid anti-abortion group, not Planned Parenthood’s annual reports. His winning argument was a disaster, which left the chairman momentarily speechless. The GOP lawmaker eventually concluded he would “get to the bottom” of this.

Well, Chaffetz has now had a couple of days to do that, and as it turns out, he’s still convinced he’s right.



I can appreciate why the Republican chairman was disappointed by how his hearing turned out. He did, after all, expect to make a powerful case against Planned Parenthood, which obviously didn’t happen. On the contrary, Chaffetz’s show trial even disappointed his allies.

Even if we put aside the fact that Chaffetz got the source of the chart wrong – he overlooked the fact that it literally says, “Source: Americans United for Life,” in all capital letters– his proof was gibberish. He and his staff, for example, created a chart with no y axis, rendering the entire image meaningless.

What’s more, over the course of the decade, the numbers really haven’t budged. Vox’s Tim Lee explained, “So it’s not true, as the chart implies, that Planned Parenthood has been performing more abortions while drastically cutting back the provision of other services. The overall number of non-abortion services provided by Planned Parenthood barely changed at all, going from 10.29 million in 2006 to 10.26 million in 2013.”

In other words, everything about Chaffetz’s argument was wrong. Literally, everything. And it’s against this backdrop that the committee chairman still says, “I stand by the numbers."

Chaffetz finally opted to run for Congress himself in 2008, running to the right of six-term incumbent Chris Cannon successfully, and probably ensuring he’ll be in office until he either resigns or gets primary challenger to boot him out of office. Because Utah’s 3rd Congressional District is one of the rightest leaning places in the country, that even before it was redistricted in 2008, it had a +26 R lean in the Cook Partisan Voting Index. And that’s where we’ll begin looking at how Chaffetz continued to play at his base.

- Upon moving to Washington in 2009, Chaffetz quickly followed the lead of Tim Walberg, deciding it would be cheaper to sleep in his congressional office than actually get a real place to stay in town (which there was a whole ethics investigation about).

- In Sept. 2009, Chaffetz began a feud with the TSA, when he got into a shouting, swearing match with TSA agents for doing their job at Salt Lake City International airport, and claiming he was specifically targeted by them as revenge, because he voted against all TSA workers having collective bargaining rights.

- In October 2009, after hearing that President Obama had won the Nobel Prize, Chaffetz said, “I just lost all respect for the award. It used to be one of distinction, but it is hard to give it any credibility.“

- Later in 2009, Chaffetz was on Fox News, to demonize United States Census Workers as employing scores of child molesters, rapists, and murderers. That’s not only paranoid and crazy, but could have reduced census numbers when people were too afraid to answer the door when the census showed up.

- His feud with the TSA continued in 2010, claiming the TSA should institute a profiling policy instead of searching everyone equally (including him).

-Rep. Chaffetz went off on the TSA again in 2011, stating again that he felt they should be “behavior profiling”, and instead of body-scanners, and that people should just be allowed to be harassed instead with bomb-sniffing dogs.

- In October 2011, Rep. Chaffetz was pushing for legislation that would sell off federal public lands, to help balance the budget. He’s really big on this idea, having pitched it several times.

- With his own re-election in Utah’s 3rd almost guaranteed, Chaffetz was one of the greatest proxies for fellow Mormon Mitt Romney during the 2012 presidential campaign, oddly spending his time running around the country shadowing Newt Gingrich, in particular, in the brief time when Newt gained momentum in the GOP primary. He would spend most of the rest of the year trying to ensure a Romney presidency.

- A Republican budget plan in March 2012 saw Rep. Chaffetz put in an amendment within it that would preserve $40 million in tax breaks for oil companies and pay for it by again, trying to sell off some of our national parks.

- Chaffetz became one of the standout distorters of the truth regarding Benghazi, and while trying to prove a link to show that somehow, some way, the Obama administration was complicit in the death of 4 Americans there on 9/11/12. On October 10th, a month after he was making hay on the subject, CNN’s Soledad O’Brien asked him if he had, in fact, voted twice to reduce the budget for security for foreign ambassadors since taking office. Chaffetz blew it off saying, “When you’re in tough economic times, you have to make tough choices. You have to prioritize things.” But y’know, it was that damned Obama’s fault, still.

- By October 19th 2012, Chaffetz realized the Republicans weren’t getting people fired up enough about Benghazi to help Mitt Romney win the election, so he started claiming there was a coordinated effort by both the White House, and the State Dept (thus, President Obama and Sec. Hilary Clinton) to remove security from Libya. Even Fox News had to ask if he had proof of this, and he clarified it was his “strong opinion”. And he further went on to call Susan Rice’s comments (which have since been proven accurate) “somewhere between an outrageus lie and total falsehood”.

- Perhaps the most outrageous move Chaffetz made while working with the Romney campaign, was that after Mitt Romney claimed on a campaign stop in Ohio, that a Jeep factory was closing because of President Obama’s mismanagement of the American economy. The CEO of Jeep Chrysler actually came out to say, “Uh, no. That factory’s not closing. And I would know, as the guy in charge of the company.” Jason Chaffetz actually claimed that the Romney ad was “100 percent correct and accurate”. Because what does a CEO know about his own company, right?

-In January 2013, Chaffetz decided to talk impeachment… AND Benghazi, not claiming there was any sort of a coverup, but that if the Obama administration didn’t do more to do the legwork to prove he should be impeached… it was an impeachable offense.
By May of 2013, after almost eight months of looking into what happened to Benghazi, no links had been found to show the State Dept. or White House were in any way complicit in affecting security there that would have made them more vulnerable to the attacks. Rep. Chaffetz claimed at that point that it was because Obama administration officials had threatened witnesses. Again, even Fox News thought that was bulls***, with Chris Wallace asking him for a specific example of such a witness claiming that had happened. Chaffetz could not offer one.

-In June of 2014, perhaps realizing that a report was about to be released revealing that there was no wrongdoing found during any of the numerous Benghazi hearings, Chaffetz decided to move on… by claiming that the IRS Scandal was a big conspiratorial cover up, and something sinister was going on there because the IRS lost Lois Lerner’s e-mails, and they could not be recovered. “We’ve got to find those geeks and those nerds,” he said.

- In July of 2014, Chaffetz turned heads by claiming that Mitt Romney would run for president again in 2016. And this time, HE’D WIN. Which was news to Mitt Romney, at the time, considering he had to be talked into even running in 2012.

Right-wing leaders often appropriate progressive themes by calling for rule by “the people,” equal opportunity, and “equality” feminism. Their rhetoric has convinced many voters that the Right offers a more fair and direct form of democratic representation than that offered by liberals and progressives.[1] But an accurate analysis of the Right’s agenda reveals that, while it embraces the rhetoric of democracy, it promotes a constricted, shrunken version of democracy. It’s a version that resembles the United States political landscape before the New Deal reforms of the 1930s and 1940s. By defining democracy in its narrowest sense, the contemporary Right claims the mantle of democracy, even though, since the election of Ronald Reagan in 1980, its campaigns, policies, and initiatives have attacked democratic principles and undermined democratic practices.

In the 1970s the New Right set out its ideology with shameless clarity. Calling itself a “revolutionary” movement, its leaders declared that they were going to take the country back from the liberals, feminists, and secular humanists who “controlled” the national agenda. In a book that could serve as the manifesto of the New Right, The New Right: We’re Ready to Lead!, Richard Viguerie states, “Conservatives are fighting for …basic rights not merely for ourselves but for all Americans. One of the biggest lies of 20th century American politics is that liberals care about people and conservatives don’t. This is a bum rap put on us by liberals. I suggest it’s conservatives who, by their actions, show real love and compassion for their fellow men.” [8] The New Right repackaged the agenda of the Old Right, while denying that the movement was racist. The New Right’s leaders sought to leave behind the Old Right’s tainted association with the KKK, White Citizens’ Councils, neo-nazi anti-Semites, and even the John Birch Society, while simultaneously positioning themselves well to the right of traditional Republican conservatives.[9]

To become a mass-based social and political movement, however, the New Right needed to attract a following outside of the Republican Party. Republicans have for decades had a reputation as the party of white country club members and big business. But at various times it has successfully painted itself as the party of “the common man,” especially during the anti-communist hysteria of the 1950s. Another instance was the courtship by President Richard Nixon’s Vice President, Spiro Agnew, of “the silent majority.” Agnew claimed that most inactive voters were conservative and were best represented by conservative Republicans. Two constituencies were available for the New Right’s recruitment: voters who had supported the presidential candidacy of George Wallace, the white supremacist Democratic governor of Alabama who is sometimes called the father of the conservative movement, and conservative Christian evangelicals across the country.

In recruiting these new constituencies, the New Right’s leaders struck an aggressively populist tone, despite an agenda that served the interests of business and the wealthy. As Chip Berlet describes in his book, Right-Wing Populism in America: Too Close for Comfort, “…[T]he grievances of many White middle- and working-class people-both a legitimate sense of injury and angry scapegoating generated by the erosion of traditional privileges-could be harnessed to benefit wealthy elites and intensify disempowerment and inequality for millions of people.” [10] As is so often true of right-wing populism, rhetoric about “the people” masks the interests of the ruling class.