Helms, J

---=yikes<a href="https://www.alternet.org/news-amp-politics/trump-packing-courts-unqualified-conservatives">https://www.alternet.org/news-amp-politics/trump-packing-courts-unqualified-conservatives</a>Many of Trump’s appointees have drawn scrutiny, including Leonard Grasz, who was the Senate—who the Senate confirmed earlier this month to the 8th Circuit Court of Appeals despite a “not qualified” rating from the American Bar Association. Grasz is one of at least four Trump nominees the ABA deemed “not qualified.” Meanwhile, Trump’s nominee to a lifetime appointment on the U.S. District Court in Washington withdrew from consideration, after widely circulated video showed he was unable to answer basic questions about the law and had never tried a case in court. This is Louisiana Republican John Kennedy questioning Matthew Petersen at a Senate Judiciary Committee confirmation hearing earlier this month....AMY GOODMAN: In today’s New York Times, Reverend Bishop William Barber, co-chair of the Poor People’s Campaign, <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/26/opinion/william-barber-trumps-judge-farr.html" style="text-decoration-line: none; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">wrote</a> about Trump’s nomination of Thomas Alvin Farr, a protégé of Senator Jesse Helms, to serve on the U.S. district court for the Eastern District of North Carolina. Barber writes about Farr’s connections to white supremacist causes and writes, quote, “Mr. Farr’s former law partner, Thomas Ellis, was Mr. Helms’s top deputy for decades. He also served as a director of the Nazi-inspired, pro-eugenics Pioneer Fund and used funding from that organization to create and bankroll a network of interlocking organizations to support Mr. Helms and other political candidates who espoused the notion of a superior white race and opposed civil rights.”...Now, those are the words of William Barber, the well-known civil rights activist. Judge Scheindlin, can you talk about Mr. Farr and the significance of his—Trump’s choice?SHIRA SCHEINDLIN: Well, I can a little bit. I wrote about Mr. Farr also in my New York Times <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/09/opinion/trump-judges-courts.html" style="text-decoration-line: none;">op-ed</a>, but in a much-reduced fashion, because I wrote about four nominees rather than one. And I pointed out many of the same things. But one fact that I also pointed out is that President Bush had nominated Mr. Farr in 2006, but he didn’t go through. I mean, then, even then, that Congress said, “No way. This person should not be on the federal bench.” Now he comes back, redux—what is it?—12 years later, and suddenly he’s going to be acceptable.Now, what has changed? What has changed is we don’t have the filibuster rule. This is very important to explain. It used to take 60 votes, but now it takes only a bare majority. Now, that changed under the Democrats in 2013, but they had to do it. They had to use that nuclear option, because their picks were being blocked in the Senate. And while they knew they did that at their own peril, that it would come back to haunt them, there are many who believe, even if they hadn’t done it, it would be done now. The Republicans would do the same thing. So, six of the Trump judges have already been confirmed with far less than 60 votes. They would never have been confirmed before. And that’s going to happen with Farr, if he’s confirmed.Now, the other thing I would say about Farr is that it’s a district court nominee. That’s the lowest court. That’s the trial court. Thankfully, right now, he’s not being nominated for an appellate court. But it wouldn’t surprise me, if he is confirmed, in the next two, three years, they’ll put him up for the circuit court. I have no doubt about that. This is a person who does not belong on the federal bench. His views are unacceptable to the vast majority of Americans. That’s the problem with the Trump picks. They’re simply not mainstream people. They are extremists. And this man is an extremist who doesn’t belong on the federal bench, does not understand fairness and justice. And he’ll turn the clock back. He was a great supporter of North Carolina’s voter suppression law, which the circuit reversed and said it targeted, with almost surgical precision, against black voters. So this is a dangerous person to put on the bench.=-

died 2008

cd not get mtg w/ b2, but rice and and card ok on co2 reg. after crossfire, 4 sen Hagel, pat roberts, idso, larry craig (Wise U), helms sent ltr (may have been prompted/written by DC; b2 met but held up ltr in reply. kyoto wd hurt us economy

==

Kemp's vaunted compassion for the downtrodden stops abruptly at the water's edge, though his support for international cutthroats has been little publicized.

Take his support of the Renamo mercenaries in Mozambique. Renamo was originally financed by white settlers in Rhodesia and by the South African apartheid regime to harry Mozambique's leftist government. A 1988 State Department report described vividly how 100,000 civilians had been massacred by Renamo, in the words of a New York Times story about the report, ``shot, knifed, axed, bayoneted, burnt, starved, beaten, drowned and throttled.''

When Reagan received the lawful president of Mozambique, Joachim Chissano, at the White House in 1987, Kemp led a group of 19 Republican congressmen in protest, proclaiming they would invite Renamo's boss to Washington as an antidote. Kemp once sent a letter to this blood-stained criminal, saying, ``Best wishes for continued success.''

Kemp was equally rabid in Central America, where he made haste to consort with death squad regimes in El Salvador and Guatemala. He cosponsored a bill with Jesse Helms to throw a third of a billion dollars to the Nicaraguan contras. El Salvador's most notorious death squad boss, the late Roberto d'Aubuisson, was reported by the Sept. 10, 1987, Washington Post as saying he hoped Kemp ``would come to power soon . . . because we both need each other.''

Alexander Cockburn is a columnist for the Nation magazine.

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huffpo obit

The urge to speak no ill of the dead is a powerful one. And it was on full display this week as former Senator Jesse Helms was laid to rest. Although one brave North Carolina state employee, L.F. Eason, resisted that urge when he <a href="http://www.newsobserver.com/front/story/1135443.html" sl-processed="1" style=" list-style: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; color: rgb(0, 136, 195); outline: 0px; text-decoration: none;">refused to lower the flag</a> at his state lab to honor Helms and was forced to retire.

Republican leaders including Vice President Cheney attended Helms' funeral. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/video/2008/07/08/VI2008070801963.html" sl-processed="1" style=" list-style: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; color: rgb(0, 136, 195); outline: 0px; text-decoration: none;">eulogized Helms</a> as one of the "kindest men" in Congress, and said, "no matter who you were, he always had a thoughtful word and a gentle smile.

Which is a load of crap. Clearly, McConnell saw the charming face Helms could present to the world when he wanted to. But the real Jesse Helms oozed out nearly every time he<a href="http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9C03EED61530F934A15752C1A962958260&sec=&spon=&partner=permalink&exprod=permalink" sl-processed="1" style=" list-style: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; color: rgb(0, 136, 195); outline: 0px; text-decoration: none;">opened his mouth</a> to slander those who didn't agree with him. He <a href="http://www.fair.org/index.php?page=1871" sl-processed="1" style=" list-style: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; color: rgb(0, 136, 195); outline: 0px; text-decoration: none;">claimed</a> "crime rates and irresponsibility among Negroes are a fact of life which must be faced" in a 1981 New York Times interview, and in 1963 <a href="http://www.indyweek.com/gyrobase/Content?oid=oid%3A25113" sl-processed="1" style=" list-style: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; color: rgb(0, 136, 195); outline: 0px; text-decoration: none;">asked</a>, "Are civil rights only for Negroes? White women in Washington who have been raped and mugged on the streets in broad daylight have experienced the most revolting sort of violation of their civil rights."

Helms reserved his full disgust for gays and lesbians, who he <a href="http://www.fair.org/index.php?page=1871" sl-processed="1" style=" list-style: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; color: rgb(0, 136, 195); outline: 0px; text-decoration: none;">called</a> "weak, morally sick wretches" (1994), accused of engaging in "incredibly offensive and revolting conduct" (1990), and warned his constituents to beware "homosexuals, lesbians, disgusting people marching in the streets, demanding all sorts of things, including the right to marry each other" (1990).

Beyond his hateful words, Helms' bigotry was shown by his political aims. He led the opposition to the federal Martin Luther King Jr. holiday, supported the apartheid regime in South Africa, and consistently opposed civil rights legislation. For nearly two decades, he fought tooth and nail against expanded federal funding for AIDS research, and exploited gays and lesbians as convenient scapegoats in his constant fear-mongering crusade.

Helms at 1990 campaign rally, moments after calling gays "disgusting people"

Media post-mortems of Helms' career were mostly deferential, especially in North Carolina, the state he represented in the Senate for five terms. N.C. television stations and newspapers glossed over almost all of Helms' ugly history as the last unapologetically racist politician of the segregation era. Even the liberal Raleigh News & Observer kept its gloves on, despite having been Helms' favorite press punching bag for years.

It was largely a repeat of the softball treatment Helms got when he <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/07/06/AR2008070602321.html" sl-processed="1" style=" list-style: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; color: rgb(0, 136, 195); outline: 0px; text-decoration: none;">announced his retirement in 2001</a>. Then, the Washington Post called Helms "one of the most powerful conservatives on Capitol Hill for three decades," and the New York Times said he'd been "a conservative stalwart for nearly 30 years." But they avoided serious discussion of how Helms stirred the pot of bigotry and hatred to win elections and further his political career.

Helms grew up in small town Monroe, N.C., home to an active Ku Klux Klan. His father, known as Mr. Jesse, was the police chief and a mean, imposing 6' 4" man who didn't hesitate to intimidate and run roughshod over the civil rights of Monroe's black citizens.

Jesse A. Helms, Sr.pix

In North Carolina historian Tim Tyson's <a href="http://uncpress.unc.edu/browse/book_detail?title_id=700" sl-processed="1" style=" list-style: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; color: rgb(0, 136, 195); outline: 0px; text-decoration: none;">biography</a> of civil rights leader Robert Williams, head of the Monroe NAACP, Williams described watching when he was eleven years old as Mr. Jesse SR] beat a black woman on the street, then "dragged her off to the nearby jailhouse, her dress up over her head." He was haunted for years by the woman's "tortured screams as the flesh was ground away from the friction of the concrete."

Interviewed in 2005 for the documentary <a href="http://www.unctv.org/senatorno/" sl-processed="1" style=" list-style: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; color: rgb(0, 136, 195); outline: 0px; text-decoration: none;">Senator No</a> and asked about Monroe in the 1920s and 30s, Helms said, "In so many ways I think the relationship between the races was far better than it is now. I could give you a thousand examples of why I'm convinced of that. I don't know of anybody who ever persecuted anybody of another race."

Helms had his first brush with statewide politics in 1950. Employed as a radio reporter for conservative magnate A.J. Fletcher's WRAL network, he unofficially aided right wing Raleigh attorney Willis Smith in his primary campaign against incumbent U.S. Senator and North Carolina liberal hero Frank Porter Graham.

Graham beat Smith in the initial Democratic primary, and Smith had all but decided not to call for a runoff. But three Supreme Court decisions undermining segregation were announced within weeks, inflaming racial tensions in the South. Helms took to the airwaves and urged Smith's voters to assemble at his Raleigh house and ask him to reconsider. A mob of supporters responded, and Smith called for a runoff.

Handbill created by Jesse Helms for Willis Smith's 1950 campaign

In the runoff, Helms used the skills he had learned as a reporter to help create scurrilous, race-baiting ads and handbills for Smith's candidacy. <a href="http://news.yahoo.com/s/thenation/20080705/cm_thenation/1334586" sl-processed="1" style=" list-style: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; color: rgb(0, 136, 195); outline: 0px; text-decoration: none;">One was headlined</a>, "White People - Wake Up Before It's Too Late," and asked, "Do you want negroes working beside you, your wife and daughters in your mills and factories? Frank Graham favors mingling of the races." The most infamous was a flyer featuring a fake photo, doctored to show Sen. Graham's wife dancing with a black man. Helms and his backers later went to great lengths to cover up his role in the Smith campaign, but as biographer Ernest Furgurson <a href="http://www.indyweek.com/gyrobase/Content?oid=oid%3A25113" sl-processed="1" style=" list-style: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; color: rgb(0, 136, 195); outline: 0px; text-decoration: none;">put it</a>, "Jesse was in it up to his neck." Helms went to Washington with the victorious Sen. Willis Smith, hired as his top assistant.

Throughout the 1960s, Helms denounced the civil rights movement from his bully pulpit as the most widely known TV and radio commentator in North Carolina. He delivered snarling five-minute commentaries that were broadcast twice a day at the end of WRAL's newscasts, railing against integration, liberals, and anything the Kennedys said or did. Helms' diatribes were reprinted in newspapers throughout North Carolina and the South with <a href="http://www.answers.com/topic/jesse-helms" sl-processed="1" style=" list-style: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; color: rgb(0, 136, 195); outline: 0px; text-decoration: none;">titles like</a>"Nation Needs to Know of Red Involvement in Race Agitation!"

He called civil rights workers "Communists and sex perverts," claimed there was "evidence that the Negroes and whites participating in the march to Montgomery participated in sex orgies of the rawest sort," and commented "they should ask their parents if it would be all right for their son or daughter to marry a Negro," in response to students holding campus vigils when Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated in 1968.

Helms won election to the U.S. Senate in 1972 after tying his Greek American opponent to George McGovern and using the slogan, "Jesse Helms: He's One of Us!" He was soon dubbed "Senator No" for his votes against government spending on social programs, including education, environmental protection, school lunches, food stamps, and aid to the disabled.

During the 1976 presidential campaign, Helms and his political organization, the National Congressional Club, made a lasting impact on American politics by helping Ronald Reagan come from behind to win the North Carolina primary. This victory sparked a surge for Reagan in the late contests that almost led to his unseating President Gerald Ford as the Republican nominee. It sealed Reagan's position as the 1980 frontrunner following Ford's narrow general election loss to Jimmy Carter.

Button from 1976 Republican Convention

To win North Carolina, the Helms machine went all out. They ran hard-hitting attack ads slamming Ford over the Panama Canal Treaty. And of course, Helms used racially coded appeals. Tens of thousands of leaflets <a href="http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9803E5DF1639F934A15752C0A960958260&sec=&spon=&pagewanted=all#" sl-processed="1" style=" list-style: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; color: rgb(0, 136, 195); outline: 0px; text-decoration: none;">were distributed</a> that alleged Ford was considering picking a black running mate.

In the late 70s, Helms was a <a href="http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,962538-1,00.html" sl-processed="1" style=" list-style: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; color: rgb(0, 136, 195); outline: 0px; text-decoration: none;">strong supporter</a> of the apartheid regime in South Africa. He voted against virtually every U.S. measure ever proposed to pressure the white minority government, no matter how mild. Speaking against an attempt to impose economic sanctions, Helms claimed, "all this bill does is exacerbate the situation in South Africa." Referring to anti-apartheid protests, he asked, "who are we to be so pious about the efforts of the South African government to stop the riots, the looting, the shooting and the mayhem that's going on over there?"

N.C. students protesting apartheid cross paths with Helms, 1984

Helms filibustered against renewal of the Voting Rights Act in 1982. The next year, he made national headlines and drew heavy criticism when he led the charge against making Martin Luther King Jr. Day a federal holiday.

In his 1984 re-election fight against sitting N.C. Gov. Jim Hunt, Helms went to the mat in a knock-down, drag-out campaign remembered as one of the nastiest campaigns in modern history. Perhaps realizing he had overreached in his overt displays of racism, Helms dialed back his attacks on blacks and minorities, although he still <a href="http://www.politico.com/blogs/bensmith/0708/The_connection_is_Charlie_.html" sl-processed="1" style=" list-style: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; color: rgb(0, 136, 195); outline: 0px; text-decoration: none;">stirred up</a> fear of voter registration drives associated with Jesse Jackson's presidential campaign.

But Helms had found a even scarier bogeyman - the homosexual menace. He and his supporters <a href="http://joeherzenberg.blogspot.com/1985/09/anatomy-of-election-southern-exposure.html" sl-processed="1" style=" list-style: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; color: rgb(0, 136, 195); outline: 0px; text-decoration: none;">repeatedly linked Jim Hunt to gay activists</a> and took every opportunity to "throw rocks at the gays," as the N.C. Republican Party chair explained Helms' strategy.

Helms at press conference, 1982

During the 1980s, as the AIDS crisis unfolded, Helms led the opposition in the U.S. Senate to increased federal funding for AIDS research. This was perhaps Jesse Helms' greatest crime, and left real blood on his hands. Even a modest increase in spending could have saved tens of thousands of gay Americans who died horrible, painful deaths in the years before effective AIDS drugs were developed.

In 1987 he said, "Somewhere along the line we're going to have to quarantine people with AIDS." Helms' uncaring response to the disease was explained by his tirade the next year against the bipartisan Kennedy-Hatch AIDS bill, when he <a href="http://www.fair.org/index.php?page=1871" sl-processed="1" style=" list-style: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; color: rgb(0, 136, 195); outline: 0px; text-decoration: none;">claimed</a>, "There is not one single case of AIDS in this country that cannot be traced in origin to sodomy."

Helms continued to oppose AIDS funding throughout the 1990s. In 1995, he <a href="http://www.aegis.org/news/ap/1995/AP950702.html" sl-processed="1" style=" list-style: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; color: rgb(0, 136, 195); outline: 0px; text-decoration: none;">fought reauthorization of the Ryan White Act</a>, saying AIDS victims contracted the disease through "deliberate, disgusting, revolting conduct." That same year nationally syndicated advice columnist Ann Landers called him out as a liar when she published a sharp rebuke to his efforts to cut AIDS funding, headlined "These are the facts, Sen. Helms."

Helms makes his point, 2002

Sadly, this account only scratches the surface of all Jesse Helms' shameful words and deeds. No amount of whitewashing Helms' legacy can erase the stain of his reliance on hate-filled, divisive politics, or the hurt he caused so many people in the process.

Erik Ose registered N.C. voters against Helms in the 1990s as co-founder of Musicians Organized for Voter Education (MOVE). Cross-posted at <a href="http://thelatestoutrage.blogspot.com/" sl-processed="1" style=" list-style: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; color: rgb(0, 136, 195); outline: 0px; text-decoration: none;">The Latest Outrage</a>.

<div><a href="http://3chicspolitico.com/2013/09/13/video-senator-ted-cruz-we-need-100-more-like-jesse-helms-in-senate/">http://3chicspolitico.com/2013/09/13/video-senator-ted-cruz-we-need-100-more-like-jesse-helms-in-senate/</a></div>

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<p style=" border: 0px; margin: 0px 0px 24px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; color: rgb(51, 51, 51); font-family: Georgia, 'Bitstream Charter', serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 24px; background: rgb(255, 255, 255);">So Seantor Ted Cruz thinks we need 100 UNITED STATE SENATOR like Jesse Helms.

Let’s look at Senator Helms, and you decide if you agree with Ted Cruz

wiki?:

<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jesse_Helms" sl-processed="1" style=" border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; color: rgb(116, 51, 153); background: transparent;">Jesse Alexander Helms, Jr. (October 18, 1921 – July 4, 2008)</a> was a five-term Republican United States Senator from North Carolina who served as chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee from 1995 to 2001. A leading conservative, he helped organize and fund the conservative resurgence in the 1970s, aiding Ronald Reagan’s quest for the White House and helping many local and regional candidates.

A journalist by training, Helms was the longest-serving popularly elected Senator in North Carolina’s history, and was widely credited with shifting the one-party state dominated by the Democrats into a competitive two-party state. The Helms-controlled National Congressional Club’s state-of-the-art direct mail operation raised millions for Helms and other conservative candidates allowing Helms to outspend his opponents in most of his campaigns.[3]

An unreconstructed Southern conservative, he began his political career in the Democratic Party in the days when many white Southern politicians championed racial segregation. He moved to the Republican party in the 1970s. Helms was the most stridently conservative politician of the post-1960s era,[4] especially in opposition to federal intervention into what he considered state affairs (integration, the Civil Rights Act and the Voting Rights Act). Helms tried, with a 16-day filibuster, to stop the Senate from approving a federal holiday to honor Martin Luther King, Jr.

On social issues, Helms was a traditionalist. He was a “master obstructionist” who relished his nickname, “Senator No”.[7] He opposed, at various times, civil rights, disability rights, feminism, gay rights, affirmative action, abortion, and government support for contemporary art with graphic sexuality.[8] Helms brought an “aggressiveness”[9] to his conservatism, as in his rhetoric against homosexuality, and employed racially charged language in his campaigns and editorials.[10] He combined cultural, social and economic conservatism which often helped his legislation win overwhelming support. The Almanac of American Politics once wrote that “no American politician is more controversial, beloved in some quarters and hated in others, than Jesse Helms”.[11]

Views on minorities[edit source]

Helms opposed many progressive policies regarding race, such as busing, the Civil Rights Act and the Voting Rights Act. He once referred to the University of North Carolina (UNC) as the “University of Negroes and Communists”.[258][259][260][261] Helms called the Civil Rights Act of 1964 “the single most dangerous piece of legislation ever introduced in the Congress”, and sponsored legislation to either extend it to the entire country or scrap it altogether.[163] Helms reminded voters that he tried, with a 16-day filibuster, to stop the Senate from approving a federal holiday to honor Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.,[262] although he had fewer reservations about establishing a North Carolina state holiday for King.[263] He has been accused of being a segregationist by some political observers and scholars, such as USA Today’s DeWayne Wickham who wrote that Helms “subtly carried the torch of white supremacy” from Ben Tillman.[264][265][266][267]

In 1996 the Department of Justice admonished Helms’s 1990 campaign for mailing 125,000 postcards to households in predominantly African-American precincts warning them (incorrectly) that they could go to jail if they had not updated their addresses on the electoral register since moving.[268] Helms opposed “every piece of civil rights and affirmative action legislation” and blocked “black judges from being considered for the federal bench”.[263] In 1982, he voted against the extension of the Voting Rights Act.[263][263] Helms opposed busing, supported the “racist apartheid regime of South Africa”, and “for years blocked attempts by President Bill Clinton to appoint a Black judge on the Fourth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals”.[263] Only when Helms’s own judicial choices were threatened with blocking did attorney Roger Gregory of Richmond, Virginia get confirmed. Helms also tried to block the nomination of Carol Moseley Braun, the first African-American female senator, as ambassador to New Zealand.[263]

And who could ever forget this Helms campaign ” WHITE HANDS” ad.

wiki

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<h3 style=" margin: 0.3em 0px 0px; overflow: hidden; padding-top: 0.5em; padding-bottom: 0px; border-bottom-style: none; line-height: 1.6; background: none rgb(255, 255, 255);">Food stamp program<span class="mw-editsection" style=" -webkit-user-select: none; font-weight: normal; margin-left: 1em; vertical-align: baseline; line-height: 1em; display: inline-block; white-space: nowrap; unicode-bidi: -webkit-isolate;">[<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Jesse_Helms&action=edit&section=17" title="Edit section: Food stamp program" style=" text-decoration: none; color: rgb(11, 0, 128); background: none;">edit</a>]</h3>

An opponent of the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Food_Stamp_Program" title="Food Stamp Program" class="mw-redirect" style=" text-decoration: none; color: rgb(11, 0, 128); background-image: none; background-attachment: initial; background-size: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial;">Food Stamp Program</a>, Helms had already voted to reduce its scope,<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jesse_Helms#cite_note-127" style=" text-decoration: none; color: rgb(11, 0, 128); white-space: nowrap; background: none;">[127]</a> and was determined to follow this through as Agriculture Committee chairman.<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jesse_Helms#cite_note-Thunder_from_the_Right-128" style=" text-decoration: none; color: rgb(11, 0, 128); white-space: nowrap; background: none;">[128]</a> At one point, he proposed a 40% cut in their funding.<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jesse_Helms#cite_note-129" style=" text-decoration: none; color: rgb(11, 0, 128); white-space: nowrap; background: none;">[129]</a> Instead, Helms supported the replacement of food stamps with <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Workfare" title="Workfare" style=" text-decoration: none; color: rgb(11, 0, 128); background-image: none; background-attachment: initial; background-color: initial; background-size: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial;">workfare</a>.<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jesse_Helms#cite_note-130" style=" text-decoration: none; color: rgb(11, 0, 128); white-space: nowrap; background: none;">[130]</a> He then proposed that food stamp benefits be dropped by $11.50 per month per child for each youngster enrolled in the school lunch program. He maintained that "free lunches" duplicate food stamps. The outcry against his proposal was so strong that he was compelled to back down. Helms also challenged fraud in the food stamp program. He said that the public had "grown legitimately resentful about the abuses which they themselves have observed".<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jesse_Helms#cite_note-131" style=" text-decoration: none; color: rgb(11, 0, 128); white-space: nowrap; background: none;">[131]</a>

As a freshman lawmaker in 1973, Helms tried to reverse the 1968 congressional vote which had permitted workers on strike to qualify for food stamps. Though he failed to gain reversal, his position drew the support of future Minority and Majority Leader <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Howard_Baker" title="Howard Baker" style=" text-decoration: none; color: rgb(11, 0, 128); background: none;">Howard Baker</a> of <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tennessee" title="Tennessee" style=" text-decoration: none; color: rgb(11, 0, 128); background: none;">Tennessee</a> and twelve Senate Democrats. Helms' position was upheld in 1988, when the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Supreme_Court" title="United States Supreme Court" class="mw-redirect" style=" text-decoration: none; color: rgb(11, 0, 128); background: none;">United States Supreme Court</a> decreed 5–3 that a law denying food stamps to strikers was constitutional unless the worker otherwise qualified for food stamps prior to going on strike. Justice <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Byron_White" title="Byron White" style=" text-decoration: none; color: rgb(11, 0, 128); background: none;">Byron White</a> said that the government must maintain neutrality in labor dispute and not subsidize strikers.<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jesse_Helms#cite_note-132" style=" text-decoration: none; color: rgb(11, 0, 128); white-space: nowrap; background: none;">[132]</a>

As the Agriculture Committee chairman, Helms proposed repeal of the 1977 amendment which had deleted the purchase requirement for food stamps. With that position he ran afoul of fellow Republican <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bob_Dole" title="Bob Dole" style=" text-decoration: none; color: rgb(11, 0, 128); background: none;">Bob Dole</a>, who claimed that the purchase requirement had contributed to fraud and administrative difficulties in the program. Helms cited a Congressional Budget Office report which showed that 75 percent of the increase in stamp usage had occurred since the purchase requirement was dropped. When Helms' ally, <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steve_Symms" title="Steve Symms" style=" text-decoration: none; color: rgb(11, 0, 128); background: none;">Steve Symms</a> of <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Idaho" title="Idaho" style=" text-decoration: none; color: rgb(11, 0, 128); background: none;">Idaho</a>, proposed to reinstitute the purchase requirement, the motion was defeated, 33–66.<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jesse_Helms#cite_note-133" style=" text-decoration: none; color: rgb(11, 0, 128); white-space: nowrap; background: none;">[133]</a>

The Helms bloc also failed to secure other limits to the program, including a motion to delete alcohol and drug residential treatment patients from benefits. House and Senate conferees dropped a Helms-backed provision requiring families disqualified from the program to repay double the amount of any benefits received improperly. House Democratic Whip <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tom_Foley" title="Tom Foley" style=" text-decoration: none; color: rgb(11, 0, 128); background: none;">Tom Foley</a> of <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Washington(U.S.state)" title="Washington (U.S. state)" class="mw-redirect" style=" text-decoration: none; color: rgb(11, 0, 128); background: none;">Washington</a> insisted that such a penalty would violate the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fifth_Amendment_to_the_United_States_Constitution" title="Fifth Amendment to the United States Constitution" style=" text-decoration: none; color: rgb(11, 0, 128); background: none;">Fifth Amendment</a> rights to <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Due_process" title="Due process" style=" text-decoration: none; color: rgb(11, 0, 128); background: none;">due process</a>. Instead families repay the actual amount of improperly obtained benefits.<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jesse_Helms#cite_note-134" style=" text-decoration: none; color: rgb(11, 0, 128); white-space: nowrap; background: none;">[134]</a>

<h3 style=" margin: 0.3em 0px 0px; overflow: hidden; padding-top: 0.5em; padding-bottom: 0px; border-bottom-style: none; line-height: 1.6; background: none rgb(255, 255, 255);">Economic policies<span class="mw-editsection" style=" -webkit-user-select: none; font-weight: normal; margin-left: 1em; vertical-align: baseline; line-height: 1em; display: inline-block; white-space: nowrap; unicode-bidi: -webkit-isolate;">[<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Jesse_Helms&action=edit&section=18" title="Edit section: Economic policies" style=" text-decoration: none; color: rgb(11, 0, 128); background: none;">edit</a>]</h3>

Helms supported the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gold_standard" title="Gold standard" style=" text-decoration: none; color: rgb(11, 0, 128); background: none;">gold standard</a> through his role as the Agriculture Committee chairman, which exercises wide powers over commodity markets.<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jesse_Helms#cite_note-Republican_support_for_a_new_gold_standard-31" style=" text-decoration: none; color: rgb(11, 0, 128); white-space: nowrap; background: none;">[31]</a> During the budget crisis of 1981, Helms restored $200 million for school lunches by instead cutting foreign aid,<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jesse_Helms#cite_note-135" style=" text-decoration: none; color: rgb(11, 0, 128); white-space: nowrap; background: none;">[135]</a> and against increases in grain and milk price support,<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jesse_Helms#cite_note-136" style=" text-decoration: none; color: rgb(11, 0, 128); white-space: nowrap; background: none;">[136]</a><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jesse_Helms#cite_note-137" style=" text-decoration: none; color: rgb(11, 0, 128); white-space: nowrap; background: none;">[137]</a> despite the importance of the dairy industry to North Carolina. He warned repeatedly against costly farm subsidies as chairman.<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jesse_Helms#cite_note-138" style=" text-decoration: none; color: rgb(11, 0, 128); white-space: nowrap; background: none;">[138]</a> However, in 1983, he used his position to lobby to use the country's strategic dairy and wheat stocks to subsidize food exports as part of a <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trade_war" title="Trade war" style=" text-decoration: none; color: rgb(11, 0, 128); background: none;">trade war</a> with the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Union" title="European Union" style=" text-decoration: none; color: rgb(11, 0, 128); background: none;">European Union</a>.<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jesse_Helms#cite_note-139" style=" text-decoration: none; color: rgb(11, 0, 128); white-space: nowrap; background: none;">[139]</a><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jesse_Helms#cite_note-140" style=" text-decoration: none; color: rgb(11, 0, 128); white-space: nowrap; background: none;">[140]</a>Helms heavily opposed cutting food aid to Poland after <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martial_law_in_Poland" title="Martial law in Poland" style=" text-decoration: none; color: rgb(11, 0, 128); background: none;">martial law was declared</a>,<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jesse_Helms#cite_note-141" style=" text-decoration: none; color: rgb(11, 0, 128); white-space: nowrap; background: none;">[141]</a> and called for the end of grain exports to (and arms limitation talks with) the Soviet Union instead.<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jesse_Helms#cite_note-142" style=" text-decoration: none; color: rgb(11, 0, 128); white-space: nowrap; background: none;">[142]</a>

In 1982, Helms authored a bill to introduce a federal <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flat_tax" title="Flat tax" style=" text-decoration: none; color: rgb(11, 0, 128); background: none;">flat tax</a> of 10% with a <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Personal_allowance" title="Personal allowance" style=" text-decoration: none; color: rgb(11, 0, 128); background: none;">personal allowance</a> of $2,000.<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jesse_Helms#cite_note-143" style=" text-decoration: none; color: rgb(11, 0, 128); white-space: nowrap; background: none;">[143]</a> He voted against the 1983 budget: the only conservative Senator to have done so,<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jesse_Helms#cite_note-144" style=" text-decoration: none; color: rgb(11, 0, 128); white-space: nowrap; background: none;">[144]</a> and was a leading voice for a <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Balanced_budget_amendment" title="Balanced budget amendment" style=" text-decoration: none; color: rgb(11, 0, 128); background: none;">balanced budget amendment</a>.<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jesse_Helms#cite_note-145" style=" text-decoration: none; color: rgb(11, 0, 128); white-space: nowrap; background: none;">[145]</a> With <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charlie_Rose_(congressman)" title="Charlie Rose (congressman)" style=" text-decoration: none; color: rgb(11, 0, 128); background: none;">Charlie Rose</a>, he proposed a bill that would limit tobacco price supports, but would allow the transfer of subsidy credits from non-farmers to farmers.<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jesse_Helms#cite_note-146" style=" text-decoration: none; color: rgb(11, 0, 128); white-space: nowrap; background: none;">[146]</a> He co-sponsored the bi-partisan move in 1982 to extend drug patent duration.<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jesse_Helms#cite_note-147" style=" text-decoration: none; color: rgb(11, 0, 128); white-space: nowrap; background: none;">[147]</a> Helms continued to pose obstacles to Reagan's budget plans. At the end of the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/97th_United_States_Congress" title="97th United States Congress" style=" text-decoration: none; color: rgb(11, 0, 128); background: none;">97th Congress</a>, Helms led a filibuster against Reagan's increase of federal <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gasoline_tax" title="Gasoline tax" class="mw-redirect" style=" text-decoration: none; color: rgb(11, 0, 128); background: none;">gasoline tax</a> by 5-cents per gallon:<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jesse_Helms#cite_note-From_Reagan_Ally-148" style=" text-decoration: none; color: rgb(11, 0, 128); white-space: nowrap; background: none;">[148]</a> mirroring his opposition to <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Governor_of_North_Carolina" title="Governor of North Carolina" style=" text-decoration: none; color: rgb(11, 0, 128); background: none;">Governor</a> <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jim_Hunt" title="Jim Hunt" style=" text-decoration: none; color: rgb(11, 0, 128); background: none;">Jim Hunt</a>'s 3-cent increase in the North Carolina gasoline tax, but alienating the White House from Helms.<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jesse_Helms#cite_note-From_Reagan_Ally-148" style=" text-decoration: none; color: rgb(11, 0, 128); white-space: nowrap; background: none;">[148]</a>

<h3 style=" margin: 0.3em 0px 0px; overflow: hidden; padding-top: 0.5em; padding-bottom: 0px; border-bottom-style: none; line-height: 1.6; background: none rgb(255, 255, 255);">Social issues<span class="mw-editsection" style=" -webkit-user-select: none; font-weight: normal; margin-left: 1em; vertical-align: baseline; line-height: 1em; display: inline-block; white-space: nowrap; unicode-bidi: -webkit-isolate;">[<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Jesse_Helms&action=edit&section=19" title="Edit section: Social issues" style=" text-decoration: none; color: rgb(11, 0, 128); background: none;">edit</a>]</h3>

Although Helms recognized budget concerns and nominations as predominant, he rejected calls by Baker to move debate on social issues to 1982,<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jesse_Helms#cite_note-149" style=" text-decoration: none; color: rgb(11, 0, 128); white-space: nowrap; background: none;">[149]</a> with conservatives seeking to discuss abortion, school prayer, the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minimum_wage" title="Minimum wage" style=" text-decoration: none; color: rgb(11, 0, 128); background: none;">minimum wage</a>, and the "<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fair_housing" title="Fair housing" class="mw-redirect" style=" text-decoration: none; color: rgb(11, 0, 128); background: none;">fair housing</a>" policy.<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jesse_Helms#cite_note-150" style=" text-decoration: none; color: rgb(11, 0, 128); white-space: nowrap; background: none;">[150]</a> With the new Congress, Helms and <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_K.Dornan" title="Robert K. Dornan" class="mw-redirect" style=" text-decoration: none; color: rgb(11, 0, 128); background: none;">Robert K. Dornan</a> again proposed an amendment banning abortion in all circumstances,<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jesse_Helms#cite_note-151" style=" text-decoration: none; color: rgb(11, 0, 128); white-space: nowrap; background: none;">[151]</a> and also proposed a bill defining fetuses as human beings, thereby taking it out of the hands of the federal courts,<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jesse_Helms#cite_note-152" style=" text-decoration: none; color: rgb(11, 0, 128); white-space: nowrap; background: none;">[152]</a> along with <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_Hyde" title="Henry Hyde" style=" text-decoration: none; color: rgb(11, 0, 128); background: none;">Henry Hyde</a> and <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Romano_Mazzoli" title="Romano Mazzoli" class="mw-redirect" style=" text-decoration: none; color: rgb(11, 0, 128); background: none;">Romano Mazzoli</a>.<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jesse_Helms#cite_note-153" style=" text-decoration: none; color: rgb(11, 0, 128); white-space: nowrap; background: none;">[153]</a> More successfully, Helms passed an amendment banning federal funds from being used for abortion unless the woman's life is in danger.<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jesse_Helms#cite_note-154" style=" text-decoration: none; color: rgb(11, 0, 128); white-space: nowrap; background: none;">[154]</a><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jesse_Helms#cite_note-155" style=" text-decoration: none; color: rgb(11, 0, 128); white-space: nowrap; background: none;">[155]</a> His support was key to the nomination of <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C.Everett_Koop" title="C. Everett Koop" style=" text-decoration: none; color: rgb(11, 0, 128); background: none;">C. Everett Koop</a> as <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Surgeon_General" title="United States Surgeon General" class="mw-redirect" style=" text-decoration: none; color: rgb(11, 0, 128); background: none;">Surgeon General</a>, by proposing lifting the age limit that would otherwise have ruled out Koop.<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jesse_Helms#cite_note-156" style=" text-decoration: none; color: rgb(11, 0, 128); white-space: nowrap; background: none;">[156]</a> He proposed an amendment taking school prayer out of the remit of the Supreme Court, which was criticized for being unconstitutional; despite Reagan's endorsement, the bill was eventually rejected, after twenty months of dispute and numerous filibusters, in September 1982, by 51–48.<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jesse_Helms#cite_note-157" style=" text-decoration: none; color: rgb(11, 0, 128); white-space: nowrap; background: none;">[157]</a> Helms and Strom Thurmond sponsored another amendment to prevent the Department of Justice filing suits in defence of federal busing, which he contended wasted taxpayer money without improving education;<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jesse_Helms#cite_note-158" style=" text-decoration: none; color: rgb(11, 0, 128); white-space: nowrap; background: none;">[158]</a> this was filibustered by <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lowell_Weicker" title="Lowell Weicker" class="mw-redirect" style=" text-decoration: none; color: rgb(11, 0, 128); background: none;">Lowell Weicker</a> for eight months, but passed in March 1982.<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jesse_Helms#cite_note-159" style=" text-decoration: none; color: rgb(11, 0, 128); white-space: nowrap; background: none;">[159]</a>

In 1981, Helms started secret negotiations to end an 11-year impasse and pave the way for desegregation of historically white and historically black colleges in North Carolina.<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jesse_Helms#cite_note-160" style=" text-decoration: none; color: rgb(11, 0, 128); white-space: nowrap; background: none;">[160]</a> In response to a rival anti-discrimination bill in 1982, he proposed a bill outlawing granting tax-free status to schools that discriminated racially, but allowing schools that discriminate on the grounds of religion to avoid taxes.<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jesse_Helms#cite_note-161" style=" text-decoration: none; color: rgb(11, 0, 128); white-space: nowrap; background: none;">[161]</a> When the<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voting_Rights_Act" title="Voting Rights Act" class="mw-redirect" style=" text-decoration: none; color: rgb(11, 0, 128); background: none;">Voting Rights Act</a> came up for amendment in 1982, Helms and Thurmond criticized it for bias against the South, arguing that it made Carolinians "second-class citizens" by treating their states differently,<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jesse_Helms#cite_note-162" style=" text-decoration: none; color: rgb(11, 0, 128); white-space: nowrap; background: none;">[162]</a> and proposed an amendment that extended its terms to the whole country, which they knew would bury it.<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jesse_Helms#cite_note-Reagan_backs_extension-163" style=" text-decoration: none; color: rgb(11, 0, 128); white-space: nowrap; background: none;">[163]</a><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jesse_Helms#cite_note-164" style=" text-decoration: none; color: rgb(11, 0, 128); white-space: nowrap; background: none;">[164]</a> However, it was extended anyway, despite Helms's filibuster, which he promised to lead "until the cows come home".<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jesse_Helms#cite_note-165" style=" text-decoration: none; color: rgb(11, 0, 128); white-space: nowrap; background: none;">[165]</a> In 1983, Helms hired <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Claude_Allen" title="Claude Allen" style=" text-decoration: none; color: rgb(11, 0, 128); background: none;">Claude Allen</a>, an African American, as his press secretary. Despite his publicly aired belief that he was one of the best-liked senators amongst black staff in Congress, it was pointed out that he did not have any African-American staff of his own, prompting the hiring of the twenty-two-year-old,<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jesse_Helms#cite_note-166" style=" text-decoration: none; color: rgb(11, 0, 128); white-space: nowrap; background: none;">[166]</a> who had switched parties when he was press secretary to <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bill_Cobey" title="Bill Cobey" style=" text-decoration: none; color: rgb(11, 0, 128); background: none;">Bill Cobey</a> in the previous year's campaign.<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jesse_Helms#cite_note-167" style=" text-decoration: none; color: rgb(11, 0, 128); white-space: nowrap; background: none;">[167]</a>

With <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Porter_East" title="John Porter East" style=" text-decoration: none; color: rgb(11, 0, 128); background: none;">John East</a> and <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Stennis" title="John Stennis" class="mw-redirect" style=" text-decoration: none; color: rgb(11, 0, 128); background: none;">John Stennis</a>,<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jesse_Helms#cite_note-Honoured.2C_but_still_controversial-168" style=" text-decoration: none; color: rgb(11, 0, 128); white-space: nowrap; background: none;">[168]</a> Helms led the senatorial opposition to establishing <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martin_Luther_King_Day" title="Martin Luther King Day" class="mw-redirect" style=" text-decoration: none; color: rgb(11, 0, 128); background: none;">Martin Luther King Day</a> as a <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal_holidays_in_the_United_States" title="Federal holidays in the United States" style=" text-decoration: none; color: rgb(11, 0, 128); background: none;">federal holiday</a> in 1983, attributing his opposition to two associates of <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martin_Luther_King" title="Martin Luther King" class="mw-redirect" style=" text-decoration: none; color: rgb(11, 0, 128); background: none;">King</a>'s with communist ties:<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanley_Levison" title="Stanley Levison" style=" text-decoration: none; color: rgb(11, 0, 128); background: none;">Stanley Levison</a> and <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jack_O%27Dell" title="Jack O'Dell" class="mw-redirect" style=" text-decoration: none; color: rgb(11, 0, 128); background: none;">Jack O'Dell</a>.<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jesse_Helms#cite_note-169" style=" text-decoration: none; color: rgb(11, 0, 128); white-space: nowrap; background: none;">[169]</a> They embarked on a 16-day filibuster, which Helms broke in exchange for a new tobacco bill.<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jesse_Helms#cite_note-Honoured.2C_but_still_controversial-168" style=" text-decoration: none; color: rgb(11, 0, 128); white-space: nowrap; background: none;">[168]</a> However, he then demanded that FBI surveillance tapes allegedly detailing philandering on King's part be released, although Reagan and the courts refused. The conservatives attempted to rename the day "National Equality Day" or "National Civil Rights Day", but failed, and the bill was passed.<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jesse_Helms#cite_note-Honoured.2C_but_still_controversial-168" style=" text-decoration: none; color: rgb(11, 0, 128); white-space: nowrap; background: none;">[168]</a> Writing in the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Washington_Post" title="Washington Post" class="mw-redirect" style=" text-decoration: none; color: rgb(11, 0, 128); background: none;">Washington Post</a> several years later, <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Broder" title="David Broder" class="mw-redirect" style=" text-decoration: none; color: rgb(11, 0, 128); background: none;">David Broder</a> attributed Helms opposition to the MLK holiday to racism on Helms's part.<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jesse_Helms#cite_note-170" style=" text-decoration: none; color: rgb(11, 0, 128); white-space: nowrap; background: none;">[170]</a>

<h3 style=" margin: 0.3em 0px 0px; overflow: hidden; padding-top: 0.5em; padding-bottom: 0px; border-bottom-style: none; line-height: 1.6; background: none rgb(255, 255, 255);">Latin America<span class="mw-editsection" style=" -webkit-user-select: none; font-weight: normal; margin-left: 1em; vertical-align: baseline; line-height: 1em; display: inline-block; white-space: nowrap; unicode-bidi: -webkit-isolate;">[<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Jesse_Helms&action=edit&section=20" title="Edit section: Latin America" style=" text-decoration: none; color: rgb(11, 0, 128); background: none;">edit</a>]</h3>

Upon the Republican takeover of the Senate, Helms also became chairman of the Subcommittee on Western Hemisphere Affairs, promising to "review all our policies on Latin America", of which he had been severely critical under Carter.<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jesse_Helms#cite_note-Senators_Meet_on_Salvadoran_Aid-171" style=" text-decoration: none; color: rgb(11, 0, 128); white-space: nowrap; background: none;">[171]</a> He immediately focused on the escalating <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salvadoran_Civil_War" title="Salvadoran Civil War" style=" text-decoration: none; color: rgb(11, 0, 128); background: none;">civil war in El Salvador</a>, and particularly preventing <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicaragua" title="Nicaragua" style=" text-decoration: none; color: rgb(11, 0, 128); background: none;">Nicaraguan</a> and <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cuba" title="Cuba" style=" text-decoration: none; color: rgb(11, 0, 128); background: none;">Cuban</a> support for <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guerrilla" title="Guerrilla" class="mw-redirect" style=" text-decoration: none; color: rgb(11, 0, 128); background: none;">guerrillas</a> in <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/El_Salvador" title="El Salvador" style=" text-decoration: none; color: rgb(11, 0, 128); background: none;">El Salvador</a>.<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jesse_Helms#cite_note-172" style=" text-decoration: none; color: rgb(11, 0, 128); white-space: nowrap; background: none;">[172]</a> Within hours, the subcommittee approved military aid to El Salvador,<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jesse_Helms#cite_note-Senators_Meet_on_Salvadoran_Aid-171" style=" text-decoration: none; color: rgb(11, 0, 128); white-space: nowrap; background: none;">[171]</a> and later led the push to cut aid to Nicaragua.<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jesse_Helms#cite_note-173" style=" text-decoration: none; color: rgb(11, 0, 128); white-space: nowrap; background: none;">[173]</a> Helms was assisted in pursuing the foreign policy realignment by John Carbaugh, whose influence the New York Times said "[rivalled] many of [the Senate's] more visible elected members".<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jesse_Helms#cite_note-174" style=" text-decoration: none; color: rgb(11, 0, 128); white-space: nowrap; background: none;">[174]</a><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jesse_Helms#cite_note-175" style=" text-decoration: none; color: rgb(11, 0, 128); white-space: nowrap; background: none;">[175]</a>

In El Salvador, Helms had close ties with the right-wing <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/El_Salvador" title="El Salvador" style=" text-decoration: none; color: rgb(11, 0, 128); background: none;">Salvadoran</a> <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nationalist_Republican_Alliance" title="Nationalist Republican Alliance" style=" text-decoration: none; color: rgb(11, 0, 128); background: none;">Nationalist Republican Alliance</a> and its leader and <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_squad" title="Death squad" style=" text-decoration: none; color: rgb(11, 0, 128); background: none;">death squad</a> founder <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roberto_D%27Aubuisson" title="Roberto D'Aubuisson" style=" text-decoration: none; color: rgb(11, 0, 128); background: none;">Roberto D'Aubuisson</a>.<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jesse_Helms#cite_note-Bronstein_Jy_8-176" style=" text-decoration: none; color: rgb(11, 0, 128); white-space: nowrap; background: none;">[176]</a><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jesse_Helms#cite_note-McEwan_Jy_7-177" style=" text-decoration: none; color: rgb(11, 0, 128); white-space: nowrap; background: none;">[177]</a><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jesse_Helms#cite_note-178" style=" text-decoration: none; color: rgb(11, 0, 128); white-space: nowrap; background: none;">[178]</a> Helms said, "If I had found even one credible link between D'Aubuisson and the so-called 'death squads' ... I'd repudiate him instantly."<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jesse_Helms#cite_note-Link_248-179" style=" text-decoration: none; color: rgb(11, 0, 128); white-space: nowrap; background: none;">[179]</a> Helms opposed the appointment of <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_R._Pickering" title="Thomas R. Pickering" style=" text-decoration: none; color: rgb(11, 0, 128); background: none;">Thomas R. Pickering</a> as <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Ambassador_to_El_Salvador" title="United States Ambassador to El Salvador" style=" text-decoration: none; color: rgb(11, 0, 128); background: none;">Ambassador to El Salvador</a>.<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jesse_Helms#cite_note-Link_248-179" style=" text-decoration: none; color: rgb(11, 0, 128); white-space: nowrap; background: none;">[179]</a> alleged that the CIA had interfered in the Salvadoran election March and May 1984, in favor of the incumbent centre-left <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jos%C3%A9_Napole%C3%B3n_Duarte" title="José Napoleón Duarte" style=" text-decoration: none; color: rgb(11, 0, 128); background: none;">José Napoleón Duarte</a> instead of D'Aubuisson,<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jesse_Helms#cite_note-CIA_role_in_El_Salvador-180" style=" text-decoration: none; color: rgb(11, 0, 128); white-space: nowrap; background: none;">[180]</a> claiming that Pickering had "used the cloak of diplomacy to strangle freedom in the night".<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jesse_Helms#cite_note-Link_248-179" style=" text-decoration: none; color: rgb(11, 0, 128); white-space: nowrap; background: none;">[179]</a> A CIA operative testifying to the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Senate_Select_Committee_on_Intelligence" title="United States Senate Select Committee on Intelligence" style=" text-decoration: none; color: rgb(11, 0, 128); background: none;">Senate Intelligence Committee</a> was alleged by Helms to have admitted rigging the election, but senators that attended have stated that, whilst the CIA operative admitted involvement, they did not make such an admission.<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jesse_Helms#cite_note-CIA_role_in_El_Salvador-180" style=" text-decoration: none; color: rgb(11, 0, 128); white-space: nowrap; background: none;">[180]</a> Helms disclosed details of CIA financial support for Duarte, earning a rebuke from <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barry_Goldwater" title="Barry Goldwater" style=" text-decoration: none; color: rgb(11, 0, 128); background: none;">Barry Goldwater</a>, but Helms replied that his information came from sources in El Salvador, not the Senate committee.<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jesse_Helms#cite_note-181" style=" text-decoration: none; color: rgb(11, 0, 128); white-space: nowrap; background: none;">[181]</a>

In 1982, Helms was the only senator who opposed a Senate resolution endorsing a pro-British policy during the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Falklands_War" title="Falklands War" style=" text-decoration: none; color: rgb(11, 0, 128); background-image: none; background-attachment: initial; background-color: initial; background-size: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial;">Falklands War</a>,<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jesse_Helms#cite_note-182" style=" text-decoration: none; color: rgb(11, 0, 128); white-space: nowrap; background: none;">[182]</a> citing the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monroe_doctrine" title="Monroe doctrine" class="mw-redirect" style=" text-decoration: none; color: rgb(11, 0, 128); background-image: none; background-attachment: initial; background-color: initial; background-size: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial;">Monroe doctrine</a>,<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jesse_Helms#cite_note-183" style=" text-decoration: none; color: rgb(11, 0, 128); white-space: nowrap; background: none;">[183]</a> although he did manage to weaken the resolution's language.<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jesse_Helms#cite_note-184" style=" text-decoration: none; color: rgb(11, 0, 128); white-space: nowrap; background: none;">[184]</a> Nonetheless, Helms was a supporter of the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chile" title="Chile" style=" text-decoration: none; color: rgb(11, 0, 128); background-image: none; background-attachment: initial; background-color: initial; background-size: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial;">Chilean</a> <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dictator" title="Dictator" style=" text-decoration: none; color: rgb(11, 0, 128); background-image: none; background-attachment: initial; background-color: initial; background-size: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial;">Dictator</a> <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Augusto_Pinochet" title="Augusto Pinochet" style=" text-decoration: none; color: rgb(11, 0, 128); background-image: none; background-attachment: initial; background-color: initial; background-size: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial;">General Augusto Pinochet</a>,<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jesse_Helms#cite_note-185" style=" text-decoration: none; color: rgb(11, 0, 128); white-space: nowrap; background: none;">[185]</a> who supported the United Kingdom in the Falklands conflict. Helms was steadfastly opposed to the Castro regime in Cuba, and spent much of his time campaigning against the lifting of sanctions. In 1980, he opposed a treaty with Cuba on sea <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boundary_delimitation" title="Boundary delimitation" style=" text-decoration: none; color: rgb(11, 0, 128); background-image: none; background-attachment: initial; background-color: initial; background-size: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial;">boundary delimitation</a> unless it included withdrawal of the Soviet brigade stationed on the island.<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jesse_Helms#cite_note-Pear_17-109" style=" text-decoration: none; color: rgb(11, 0, 128); white-space: nowrap; background: none;">[109]</a> The following year, he proposed legislation establishing <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radio_Free_Cuba" title="Radio Free Cuba" class="mw-redirect" style=" text-decoration: none; color: rgb(11, 0, 128); background-image: none; background-attachment: initial; background-color: initial; background-size: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial;">Radio Free Cuba</a>,<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jesse_Helms#cite_note-186" style=" text-decoration: none; color: rgb(11, 0, 128); white-space: nowrap; background: none;">[186]</a> which would later become known as <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radio_Mart%C3%AD" title="Radio Martí" class="mw-redirect" style=" text-decoration: none; color: rgb(11, 0, 128); background-image: none; background-attachment: initial; background-color: initial; background-size: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial;">Radio Martí</a>.

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rs:

A month after Exxon's [hitlist]fax, Whitman got her first sign that the EPA

was no longer in charge of climate policy. "When I made the statement

in Italy that something might happen on CO2," she says, "the utility

industry got really engaged, and all of that caused a rethink." In a

move Cheney is suspected of engineering, conservative senators Jesse

Helms, Chuck Hagel and Larry Craig wrote the White House on March 6th

seeking a "clarification" of the president's policy.

</pre>

<pre>-----

</pre>

helms mojo 1995

...

It is a classic Helms maneuver. The Mexican loan package is complex, but the senator has sidetracked the entire debate by turning a nonfact into a central issue. "No conditions" becomes a refrain throughout the hearing, creating a false impression of Mexican deadbeats trying to get something for nothing from American taxpayers. Weintraub spends the rest of the morning on the defensive, refuting something that no one had any reason to believe was true in the first place.

INNUENDO AND DIVERSION

After nearly a quarter century in the Senate, Helms understands how a determined minority of one can influence the national agenda. Whether he is suggesting that the commander in chief needs a bodyguard or demanding that Fidel Castro leave Cuba "in a vertical or horizontal position," Helms is well-known for his use of innuendo and diversion. Even the Republican Party treats him as a rogue elephant, powerful yet dangerously erratic. But the recent GOP stampede has given Helms a respected position from which to trumpet his bitter opposition to abortion, gay rights, racial equality, arts funding, and aid to what he calls "foreign rat holes."

His agenda is driven by a lifelong opposition to democracy and diversity. In his first months as Foreign Relations chair, Helms called for tougher sanctions against Cuba, accused Haitian President Jean Bertrand Aristide of unleashing "vigilance committees," and moved to gut support for developing nations. On the home front, he introduced a bill to eliminate all affirmative action programs, which he denounced as "reverse discrimination at the hands of ruthless bureaucrats."

How did someone so mean-spirited end up in a position to act on his divisive politics? For the most part, Helms wins political battles by keeping the spotlight on the morality plays he stages. To hear conservatives tell it, Helms is a personal friend of Jesus Christ, a populist defender of the little guy, and a bitter opponent of big government.

Shifting the spotlight reveals a different Helms. A former bank lobbyist whose fundraising machine has been fined for breaking federal campaign laws, Helms favors a big-spending, activist government—one that aids those in economic power. He voted to bail out the savings and loan industry, for example, and has seldom met a big-ticket missile system he didn't like. By contrast, he has voted to slash school lunches for impoverished children, medical care for disabled veterans, prescription drugs for the elderly, and wages for working families (see "<a href="http://www.motherjones.com/news/feature/1995/05/bates.sidebar.html" style=" color: rgb(0, 0, 0); text-decoration: none; border-bottom-width: 1px; border-bottom-style: dotted; border-bottom-color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">On the record</a>").

"Looking at the record, people ought to understand that Helms is not representing them on the great majority of issues," says Rep. Melvin Watt, a North Carolina Democrat. "They perceive that he stands up for the little guy, but he really stands up for rich people rather than poor and working-class people."

NEGLECTING NORTH CAROLINA

James Harrington is one of the little guys. He doesn't vote. At 63, he retired last year from a loading job in Raleigh, N.C., and gets around with the help of a walker. He rents a ramshackle house in a black neighborhood for $250 a month, no heater, no appliances. Helms, he says, is just like any other politician. "They promise you a whole lot, but you can hold what you get from them in a small paper bag."

Beecher White votes. She cleans tables and washes dishes at two restaurants. For the past 16 years she has rented a modest house in a predominantly white part of Raleigh: $325 a month, no appliances. She likes Helms because "he is unpopular with liberals. I'm a conservative, so that's fine with me. I'm opposed to homosexual rights and abortion, and in favor of a balanced budget, increased defense spending, and Christian prayer in the schools. Helms is like my granddaddy."

Harrington and White are more than a cross section of the North Carolina electorate. Both live in rental units owned by Helms' wife Dorothy. The couple's personal property—including their home and the more than a dozen rental units they own between them—is valued for tax purposes at more than $1.4 million. An investigation by The Independent, a weekly newspaper in Durham, found that the Helmses employ two rental agents to manage their properties—one in low-income black neighborhoods and another in middle-class white areas. Some of the low-income units are in disrepair; Harrington's house has a rusty fuse box, peeling linoleum, missing doors, and a leaky ceiling.

If Helms the landlord neglects some of his tenants, Helms the senator fails to provide for many North Carolinians. Only four states receive less per capita in federal funds; only eight have more residents living in poverty. The state currently ranks 42nd in the release of cancer-causing toxins, 43rd in manufacturing wages, and 44th in infant mortality.

To obscure his record, Helms relies on a potent combination of money and fear mongering. Since he was first elected to the Senate in 1972, Helms has raised hell, introducing amendments he knows will be defeated simply to force recorded votes. He has also raised money, founding the North Carolina Congressional Club, a political action committee that quickly became the nation's most successful moneymaking machine. The club freed Helms from the restraints operating on most politicians: He no longer needed the party to raise money, and he no longer needed the media to reach voters.

But his fundraising edge has never bought Helms a stunning margin of victory. Although he outspent his opponent 30-to-1 in his first bid for re-election, the senator won by only 103,000 votes out of 1.1 million cast. Six years later, when Reagan carried North Carolina with 62 percent of the vote, Helms raised a record $16.5 million and barely edged by with 52 percent. Trailing in the polls to black architect Harvey Gantt two weeks before the 1990 elections, Helms used an infusion of national capital to air a set of overtly racist commercials and squeaked through with only 53 percent.

Those narrow victories indicate how sharply Helms polarizes voters. "Right now there are 45 percent of the people going to vote for him if he runs two years from now, and 45 percent going to vote against him," says North Carolina AFL-CIO President Christopher Scott, who has followed Helms' Senate career closely. "He's never won an election by more than 55 percent, and when he's been seriously challenged it's been closer than that. He's been able to artfully use racism and negative character assassination to pull just enough votes over the line to win."

Many white North Carolinians are no doubt motivated to vote for Helms because of the almost primal fears he fans. "The principles we're espousing have been around for thousands of years," former aide James Lucier once explained, citing the "prepolitical" themes of God, family, property, and national pride.

But some voters are also attracted to Helms by the personal qualities that make him a rarity among politicians. He brings genuine passion and a sense of moral purpose to what he does. He stands on principle and refuses to compromise. He stands by his friends, and he forces opponents to vote on issues they would rather ignore.

"Most North Carolinians are not as conservative as Jesse Helms," says Paul Luebke, a state representative and author of Tar Heel Politics. "But by presenting himself as a man of courage, willing to stand up against 'tax-and-spend liberals,' homosexuality, and so forth, Helms commands respect."

But respect only goes so far—so the Helms campaign hedges its bets by cheating. In 1986, the Federal Election Commission penalized the North Carolina Congressional Club $10,000 and ordered it to reorganize, saying it had illegally subsidized Helms' 1984 campaign. Last year, a decade after the race, the FEC penalized the Helms for Senate committee $25,000 for accepting $700,000 in illegal contributions. And in 1992, the Helms campaign and the Congressional Club settled a Justice Department complaint over a pre-election mailing of postcards falsely threatening 125,000 black voters with jail if they went to the polls.

POLITICS OF SEGREGATION

The strategy that helped Republicans sweep to power last November is one that Jesse Helms perfected decades ago. "Jesse Helms understood before anyone else that the proverbial angry white male feels the most aggrieved, and is therefore the most likely to vote," says Larry Sabato, a professor of government at the University of Virginia. "Jesse Helms was an angry white male before most of his compatriots were. He should have been lucky enough to be on the ballot in '94. He would have won easily."

Unlike many of his Republican counterparts, Helms has changed little over the past 50 years. Long before Rush Limbaugh, Helms pioneered the use of television to rally public sentiment. While Ronald Reagan was losing primaries to Gerald Ford, Helms mobilized the religious right and built one of the most profitable political fundraising machines ever. And long after die-hard segregationists like George Wallace and Strom Thurmond began courting black voters, Helms fueled white fears by opposing a national holiday in honor of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., whistling "Dixie" while standing next to Senator Carol Moseley-Braun, and supporting apartheid in South Africa.

"His racial politics are deeply held convictions, not simply politics of convenience," says Christopher Scott. "He has a view of a fundamentalist Christian society in which everyone is not welcome. If you could pick up the South Africa of 20 years ago and transplant it to America, that's what he would do."

Born in Monroe, N.C., in the fall of 1921, Helms grew up in a segregated world not unlike the one of apartheid. He dropped out of college to work full time as a reporter before discovering the two arenas that would shape his career: broadcasting and politics. He learned about radio as a Navy recruiter during World War II and stuck with the emerging medium as news director of a fledgling station in Raleigh. And he was an "unofficial" researcher for conservative Willis Smith, whose 1950 Senate campaign is still considered one of the meanest and most racially divisive in the country's history. (One of Smith's ads featured a doctored photo of the incumbent's wife dancing with a black man. Helms has denied any involvement, but a newspaper advertising manager later told Helms biographer Ernest Furgurson that Helms personally cut up the photos.)

Smith won, and Helms was rewarded with a job as staff administrative assistant. In 1953, Helms returned to North Carolina as executive director of the state's banking association, spending the next seven years fighting to enrich his bosses. He won a seat on the Raleigh City Council and, in 1960, took a job as a TV commentator. He spent the decade railing against King, "Negro hoodlums," the media, "sex perverts," and anyone on welfare. As he explained in one of his nightly five-minute broadcasts, "A lot of human beings have been born bums."

Since Helms won election to the Senate, no "bums" have felt his rage as fiercely as citizens of poor nations. Over the years, the senator has proposed hundreds of measures to slash foreign aid, overthrow governments he doesn't like, and block administration policies. As the new chair of the Foreign Relations Committee, he has made it clear that his first priority is to enact deeper cuts to a foreign aid budget already slashed nearly 30 percent in the past decade.

"The fact is that the American people are sick and tired of this whole foreign aid concept anyhow," Helms said last year. "I find myself wishing that somehow we could put it on a national ballot and say: 'What do you think of this?'"

Those cuts will hit hardest in the Third World, where Helms has long been a staunch ally of right-wing military rulers like Augusto Pinochet in Chile, Raoul Cedras in Haiti, and Roberto D'Aubuisson in El Salvador. Confronted with evidence that D'Aubuisson directed death squads to murder civilians, Helms made it clear that some things are more important than human life. "All I know," he replied, "is that D'Aubuisson is a free enterprise man and deeply religious."

A SHADOW STATE DEPARTMENT

Helms has long maintained an extensive network of contacts in Latin America that serves as a sort of shadow State Department. "For years he had a cadre of young people who were very well-connected," says a committee staff member. "You could have set them down in any South American junta and they would have been right at home."

The problem, say those familiar with his network, is that the information it provides is one-sided. "When I bring people to his office to tell him what we've seen, we aren't even allowed in," says Gail Phares, who leads delegations to Central America through Witness for Peace. "I remember when one delegation managed to get in and told his staff what they'd seen and heard in Nicaragua about the contras killing doctors and nurses and children, their response was, 'Well, they're just Communists—they deserve to die.'"

Such careless remarks concern the new Republican leadership, but Helms is simply too valuable—and too powerful—to silence. In effect, his unpredictable outbursts serve the GOP by tilting the agenda to the extreme right. "Helms is a wild card," says one former committee staffer. "You never know where he will pop up—and that keeps the opposition guessing."

Helms also keeps the media guessing. His staff refused an interview for this article, but Helms recently exhibited his disdain for journalists when a Washington Postreporter asked him what he considered his biggest accomplishment as senator. "Raising the blood pressure of reporters and editors like you so easily and so often," Helms replied.

After nearly half a century of outraging his enemies, Helms may need to watch his own blood pressure. At 73, he has been slowed down by prostate cancer and heart surgery, and several staffers say privately that the senator visited the hospital in January complaining of chest pain. Helms has broken with many longtime allies, purging several key staffers and ending his formal ties both to the fundraising machine now called the National Conservative Club and to a spin-off group accused of illegalities by the IRS.

Some observers feel that federal scrutiny of his campaign network, along with his failing health, could make Helms vulnerable now that he has indicated he will run for re-election in 1996. But such predictions have been made before, and Helms has overcome the odds.

What would Helms do with a fifth term? "If you think he's bad now, wait until you see what he's like if he wins again," says Christopher Scott of the North Carolina AFL-CIO. "The biggest fear people should have is that if Helms is re-elected, he will understand that the next term would almost inevitably be his last. He will feel no constraint—he won't have to worry about political realities. It will be his final chance to shove it to those people he doesn't like."

For a list of resources on Jesse Helms, see our <a href="http://www.motherjones.com/arts/books/1995/05/hotmedia.html#bates" style=" color: rgb(0, 0, 0); text-decoration: none; border-bottom-width: 1px; border-bottom-style: dotted; border-bottom-color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">resource guide.</a>

===

time mag sept 14 81

Going dirty

Helms used race routinely; he and ops came up with

Panana Canal that helped RR 93

ties to nicaragua, guate, arg, chile 95

Finklestein says we can't elevate JH, so we gotta tear opponent down 96

led fight against mlk day (even thrumon supported)

Helms attack ads influential on later campaigns 105

direct mail really scary: cannibalism, wifeswapping and infanticide  and death panels 106

tried to get buyout of CBS to ctr bias

gay marriage as wedge

---

Hard Right: The Rise of Jesse Helms [Hardcover]

Ernest B. Ferguson

mojo

If Helms the landlord neglects some of his tenants, Helms the senator fails to provide for many North Carolinians. Only four states receive less per capita in federal funds; only eight have more residents living in poverty. The state currently ranks 42nd in the release of cancer-causing toxins, 43rd in manufacturing wages, and 44th in infant mortality.

To obscure his record, Helms relies on a potent combination of money and fear mongering. Since he was first elected to the Senate in 1972, Helms has raised hell, introducing amendments he knows will be defeated simply to force recorded votes. He has also raised money, founding the North Carolina Congressional Club, a political action committee that quickly became the nation's most successful moneymaking machine. The club freed Helms from the restraints operating on most politicians: He no longer needed the party to raise money, and he no longer needed the media to reach voters.

But his fundraising edge has never bought Helms a stunning margin of victory. Although he outspent his opponent 30-to-1 in his first bid for re-election, the senator won by only 103,000 votes out of 1.1 million cast. Six years later, when Reagan carried North Carolina with 62 percent of the vote, Helms raised a record $16.5 million and barely edged by with 52 percent. Trailing in the polls to black architect Harvey Gantt two weeks before the 1990 elections, Helms used an infusion of national capital to air a set of overtly racist commercials and squeaked through with only 53 percent.

Those narrow victories indicate how sharply Helms polarizes voters. "Right now there are 45 percent of the people going to vote for him if he runs two years from now, and 45 percent going to vote against him," says North Carolina AFL-CIO President Christopher Scott, who has followed Helms' Senate career closely. "He's never won an election by more than 55 percent, and when he's been seriously challenged it's been closer than that. He's been able to artfully use racism and negative character assassination to pull just enough votes over the line to win."

----

<a href="http://www.historycommons.org/entity.jsp?entity=jesse_helms">http://www.historycommons.org/entity.jsp?entity=jesse_helms</a>

---

Jesse Helms - [<a href="http://mercury.spaceports.com/%7Epersewen/list_freemasons.htm" style=" color: blue; text-decoration: underline;">33º Freemason</a>; (quasi-Masonic, United Nations NGO) Rotary Club] CNP Board of Governors (1982); CNP Membership Directory (1984-84, 1988, 1996, 1998, 1999). With oil billionaires <a href="http://watch.pair.com/database1.html#hwhunt" style=" color: blue; text-decoration: underline;">Herbert William and Nelson Bunker Hunt</a>, Helms is a member of the American branch of a racial eugenics group headquartered in Scotland and headed by Robert Gayre, who published the racialist Mankind Quarterly until <a href="http://watch.pair.com/heritage.html#nazi" style=" color: blue; text-decoration: underline;">Roger Pearson</a> took it over in 1978. [Bellant ON 46]

Senator Helms has been chairman of the Senate Agriculture Committee, Chairman, Subcommittee on Western Hemisphere Affairs of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Chairman of the Senate Steering Committee, a member of the <a href="http://www.pir.org/gw/rrt.txt" style=" color: blue; text-decoration: underline;">Council of 56 of the Religious Roundtable</a>, a member of the Executive Committee of America Cause, in 1975, along with <a href="http://watch.pair.com/belmont.html#braden" style=" color: blue; text-decoration: underline;">Spruille Braden</a> and <a href="http://watch.pair.com/database2.html#teller" style=" color: blue; text-decoration: underline;">Dr. Edward Teller</a> - both members of the CFR, a member of the Committee on Conservative Alternatives - discussed earlier, Director of the American Conservative Union in 1978-1979, a member of the Organizing Committee of the Citizen's Legal Defense fund for the FBI Ad Hoc - discussed previously, a Trustee of America's Future - a network of the "Establishment", associated with the Committee for the Survival of a Free Congress, an "endorser" of the Unification Church spawned Washington Times, and according to high placed sources, a member of the CFR in 1972! 84. [Miller 6]

The National Congressional Club is Jesse Helms' PAC based in Raleigh and was directed by Helms' senior advisor, attorney <a href="http://watch.pair.com/database1.html#ellis" style=" color: blue; text-decoration: underline;">Tom Ellis</a>. Ellis was the second president of the CNP and former director of the Pioneer Fund, a foundation which finances efforts to prove that African-Americans are genetically inferior to whites. The Congressional Club began after the 1972 Senate campaign, when Ellis retained <a href="http://watch.pair.com/database2.html#viguerie" style=" color: blue; text-decoration: underline;">Richard Viguerie</a> to help pay off the Helms campaign debt. Ellis and Viguerie built the Congressional Club mailing list to more than 300,000 regular contributors -- a constituency for Helms and a major financial resource within the conservative movement...Helms has used his political organization to build connections with New Right and conservative political activists. Besides <a href="http://watch.pair.com/database2.html#viguerie" style=" color: blue; text-decoration: underline;">Viguerie</a>, <a href="http://watch.pair.com/database2.html#phillips" style=" color: blue; text-decoration: underline;">Phillips</a>, and <a href="http://watch.pair.com/database1.html#dolan" style=" color: blue; text-decoration: underline;">Dolan</a> connections, Helms is actively represented in <a href="http://watch.pair.com/database2.html#weyrich" style=" color: blue; text-decoration: underline;">Paul Weyrich</a>'s coordinating groups. [Saloma 90-92]

In May of 1998, HR 2431 was passed in the House of Representatives and introduced to the Senate as S772 by Senator Arlen Specter (a Mason). There it was stalled in committee until the Republican leadership led by (Mason) <a href="http://watch.pair.com/database1.html#lott" style=" color: blue; text-decoration: underline;">Trent Lott</a> maneuvered a compromise version of the bill through (33º Mason) Jesse Helms' Foreign Services Committee. On October 9, the U.S. Senate passed the <a href="http://watch.pair.com/persecution.html" style=" color: blue; text-decoration: underline;">International Religious Freedom Act</a> (S-1868) sponsored by Senators <a href="http://watch.pair.com/database2.html#nickles" style=" color: blue; text-decoration: underline;">Don Nickles</a>, Joseph Lieberman and others by a vote of 98-0. S-1868 was referred immediately back to the House of Representatives where it was passed into law the next day.

On January 20, 2000, North Carolina Senator Jesse Helms became the first sitting U.S. Senator in history to address the United Nations Security Council. <a href="http://www.ashevilletribune.com/helms-un.htm" style=" color: blue; text-decoration: underline;">Click here</a> for the text of that speech as reported in the The Asheville Tribune.

<a href="http://watch.pair.com/database1.html">http://watch.pair.com/database1.html</a>  CNP db

sourcewatch

The National Congressional Club (NCC) was formed in 1972 by <a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=R.E._Carter_Wrenn&action=edit&redlink=1" class="new" title="R.E. Carter Wrenn (page does not exist)" style=" font-size: 13px; line-height: 19.200000762939453px; text-decoration: none; color: rgb(165, 88, 88); background-image: none; background-attachment: initial; background-size: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial;">R.E. Carter Wrenn</a> and attorney <a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Tom_Ellis&action=edit&redlink=1" class="new" title="Tom Ellis (page does not exist)" style=" font-size: 13px; line-height: 19.200000762939453px; text-decoration: none; color: rgb(165, 88, 88); background-image: none; background-attachment: initial; background-size: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial;">Tom Ellis</a> to help <a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Jesse_Helms" title="Jesse Helms" style=" font-size: 13px; line-height: 19.200000762939453px; text-decoration: none; color: rgb(11, 0, 128); background-image: none; background-attachment: initial; background-size: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial;">Jesse Helms</a> (R-NC) "pay off the debts incurred during his 1972 Senate campaign. (Ellis' law firm also handled the dispute with the Justice Department)." Ellis retained <a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Richard_Viguerie" title="Richard Viguerie" style=" font-size: 13px; line-height: 19.200000762939453px; text-decoration: none; color: rgb(11, 0, 128); background-image: none; background-attachment: initial; background-size: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial;">Richard Viguerie</a>, with whom he "built the Congressional Club mailing list to more than 300,000 regular contributors." <a rel="nofollow" class="external autonumber" href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/politics/campaigns/money/archive/money092396.htm" style=" font-size: 13px; line-height: 19.200000762939453px; text-decoration: none; color: rgb(102, 51, 102); padding-right: 13px; background-image: url(data:image/png;base64,iVBORw0KGgoAAAANSUhEUgAAAAoAAAAKCAYAAACNMs+9AAAAVElEQVR42n3PgQkAIAhEUXdqJ3dqJ3e6IoTPUSQcgj4EQ5IlUiLE0Jil3PECXhcHGBhZ8kg4hwxAu3MZeCGeyFnAXp4hqNQPnt7QL0nADpD6wHccLvnAKksq8iiaAAAAAElFTkSuQmCC); background-attachment: initial; background-size: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-position: 100% 50%; background-repeat: no-repeat;">[1]</a><a rel="nofollow" class="external autonumber" href="http://watch.pair.com/database.html" style=" font-size: 13px; line-height: 19.200000762939453px; text-decoration: none; color: rgb(102, 51, 102); padding-right: 13px; background-image: url(data:image/png;base64,iVBORw0KGgoAAAANSUhEUgAAAAoAAAAKCAYAAACNMs+9AAAAVElEQVR42n3PgQkAIAhEUXdqJ3dqJ3e6IoTPUSQcgj4EQ5IlUiLE0Jil3PECXhcHGBhZ8kg4hwxAu3MZeCGeyFnAXp4hqNQPnt7QL0nADpD6wHccLvnAKksq8iiaAAAAAElFTkSuQmCC); background-attachment: initial; background-size: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-position: 100% 50%; background-repeat: no-repeat;">[2]</a>

The NCC helped build Helms' national reputation and get <a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Ronald_Reagan" title="Ronald Reagan" style=" text-decoration: none; color: rgb(11, 0, 128); background-image: none; background-attachment: initial; background-size: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial;">Ronald Reagan</a> elected president. In 1985, backed by Helms, the NCC was the nation's second-largest <a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Political_action_committee" title="Political action committee" style=" text-decoration: none; color: rgb(11, 0, 128); background-image: none; background-attachment: initial; background-color: initial; background-size: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial;">political action committee</a>, that supported <a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Conservative&action=edit&redlink=1" class="new" title="Conservative (page does not exist)" style=" text-decoration: none; color: rgb(165, 88, 88); background-image: none; background-attachment: initial; background-color: initial; background-size: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial;">conservative</a> candidates. Wrenn was then NCC executive director. <a rel="nofollow" class="external autonumber" href="http://66.218.71.225/search/cache?p=%22National+Congressional+Club%22&sm=Yahoo%21+Search&toggle=1&ei=UTF-8&pstart=1&b=11&u=www.southnow.org/publications/sn_weekly/2001-08-23.html" style=" text-decoration: none; color: rgb(102, 51, 102); padding-right: 13px; background-image: url(data:image/png;base64,iVBORw0KGgoAAAANSUhEUgAAAAoAAAAKCAYAAACNMs+9AAAAVElEQVR42n3PgQkAIAhEUXdqJ3dqJ3e6IoTPUSQcgj4EQ5IlUiLE0Jil3PECXhcHGBhZ8kg4hwxAu3MZeCGeyFnAXp4hqNQPnt7QL0nADpD6wHccLvnAKksq8iiaAAAAAElFTkSuQmCC); background-attachment: initial; background-color: initial; background-size: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-position: 100% 50%; background-repeat: no-repeat;">[3]</a><a rel="nofollow" class="external autonumber" href="http://www.ferris.edu/ISAR/Institut/pioneer/helms.htm" style=" text-decoration: none; color: rgb(102, 51, 102); padding-right: 13px; background-image: url(data:image/png;base64,iVBORw0KGgoAAAANSUhEUgAAAAoAAAAKCAYAAACNMs+9AAAAVElEQVR42n3PgQkAIAhEUXdqJ3dqJ3e6IoTPUSQcgj4EQ5IlUiLE0Jil3PECXhcHGBhZ8kg4hwxAu3MZeCGeyFnAXp4hqNQPnt7QL0nADpD6wHccLvnAKksq8iiaAAAAAElFTkSuQmCC); background-attachment: initial; background-color: initial; background-size: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-position: 100% 50%; background-repeat: no-repeat;">[4]</a>

The NCC "raised $9.8 million in the 1982 election cycle. In the 1984 cycle, the club raised $5.7 million while Helms campaign committee raised $13.99 million, a record in a Senate contest." At the time, the NCC "financially [eclipsed] North Carolina's Democratic and Republic Parties, each of which [operated] on annual budgets of less than $500,000." <a rel="nofollow" class="external autonumber" href="http://www.ferris.edu/ISAR/Institut/pioneer/helms.htm" style=" text-decoration: none; color: rgb(102, 51, 102); padding-right: 13px; background: url(data:image/png;base64,iVBORw0KGgoAAAANSUhEUgAAAAoAAAAKCAYAAACNMs+9AAAAVElEQVR42n3PgQkAIAhEUXdqJ3dqJ3e6IoTPUSQcgj4EQ5IlUiLE0Jil3PECXhcHGBhZ8kg4hwxAu3MZeCGeyFnAXp4hqNQPnt7QL0nADpD6wHccLvnAKksq8iiaAAAAAElFTkSuQmCC) 100% 50% no-repeat;">[5]</a>

The FEC lawsuit charged that the NCC used <a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Jefferson_Marketing,_Inc." title="Jefferson Marketing, Inc." style=" text-decoration: none; color: rgb(11, 0, 128); background: none;">Jefferson Marketing, Inc.</a> to "channel illegal contributions into a political campaign" and charged Jefferson Marketing with providing "fund-raising, media and other campaign services to candidates at 'less than the fair market value'. ... If a corporation, such as Jefferson Marketing does not charge a campaign fair market value for its services, the corporation is making illegal contributions, because corporations cannot contribute to federal candidates and because the contributions were not reported, according to federal election law." <a rel="nofollow" class="external autonumber" href="http://www.ferris.edu/ISAR/Institut/pioneer/helms.htm" style=" text-decoration: none; color: rgb(102, 51, 102); padding-right: 13px; background: url(data:image/png;base64,iVBORw0KGgoAAAANSUhEUgAAAAoAAAAKCAYAAACNMs+9AAAAVElEQVR42n3PgQkAIAhEUXdqJ3dqJ3e6IoTPUSQcgj4EQ5IlUiLE0Jil3PECXhcHGBhZ8kg4hwxAu3MZeCGeyFnAXp4hqNQPnt7QL0nADpD6wHccLvnAKksq8iiaAAAAAElFTkSuQmCC) 100% 50% no-repeat;">[6]</a>

FEC Ruling

"On May 15, 1986, the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of North Carolina issued a consent order agreed to by the <a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Federal_Election_Commission" title="Federal Election Commission" style=" text-decoration: none; color: rgb(11, 0, 128); background: none;">Federal Election Commission</a> and three defendants: the National Congressional Club (NCC), a multicandidate political committee; NCC's treasurer, R.E. Carter Wrenn; and Jefferson Marketing, Inc., a North Carolina corporation that provides <a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Media" title="Media" style=" text-decoration: none; color: rgb(11, 0, 128); background: none;">media</a> services to political committees. Plaintiff and defendants agreed that:

<li style=" margin-bottom: 0.1em;">Since NCC and JMI had operated as a single entity, NCC and its treasurer, R.E. Carter Wrenn, had violated section 434 of the election law by failing to report JMI's financial activity; and</li>

<li style=" margin-bottom: 0.1em;">Within 30 days of the court's order, defendants would pay a $10,000 civil penalty to the U.S. Treasury for these violations.</li>

</ul>

"Furthermore, defendants no longer contested the FEC's allegation that JMI had violated section 441b of the election law by charging less than the fair market value for services JMI had provided to federal candidates."

Source: <a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="http://www.fec.gov/info/casums3.htm" style=" text-decoration: none; color: rgb(102, 51, 102); padding-right: 13px; background: url(data:image/png;base64,iVBORw0KGgoAAAANSUhEUgAAAAoAAAAKCAYAAACNMs+9AAAAVElEQVR42n3PgQkAIAhEUXdqJ3dqJ3e6IoTPUSQcgj4EQ5IlUiLE0Jil3PECXhcHGBhZ8kg4hwxAu3MZeCGeyFnAXp4hqNQPnt7QL0nADpD6wHccLvnAKksq8iiaAAAAAElFTkSuQmCC) 100% 50% no-repeat;">FEC v. National Congressional Club</a>, FEC Record, July 1986, p. 7.

<h2 style=" font-weight: normal; margin: 0px 0px 0.6em; overflow: hidden; padding-top: 0.5em; padding-bottom: 0.17em; border-bottom-width: 1px; border-bottom-style: solid; border-bottom-color: rgb(170, 170, 170); font-size: 19px; line-height: 19.200000762939453px; background-image: none; background-attachment: initial; background-size: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial;">SourceWatch Resources</h2>

<li style=" margin-bottom: 0.1em;"><a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Soft_money" title="Soft money" style=" text-decoration: none; color: rgb(11, 0, 128); background-image: none; background-attachment: initial; background-size: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">soft money</a></li>

</ul>

<h3 style=" margin: 0px 0px 0.3em; overflow: hidden; padding-top: 0.5em; padding-bottom: 0.17em; border-bottom-style: none; font-size: 17px; line-height: 19.200000762939453px; background-image: none; background-attachment: initial; background-size: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial;">External links</h3>

<li style=" margin-bottom: 0.1em;"><a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="http://www.fecinfo.com/cgi-win/x_pacwhere.exe?DoFn=C00119370" style=" text-decoration: none; color: rgb(102, 51, 102); padding-right: 13px; background-image: url(data:image/png;base64,iVBORw0KGgoAAAANSUhEUgAAAAoAAAAKCAYAAACNMs+9AAAAVElEQVR42n3PgQkAIAhEUXdqJ3dqJ3e6IoTPUSQcgj4EQ5IlUiLE0Jil3PECXhcHGBhZ8kg4hwxAu3MZeCGeyFnAXp4hqNQPnt7QL0nADpD6wHccLvnAKksq8iiaAAAAAElFTkSuQmCC); background-attachment: initial; background-size: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-position: 100% 50%; background-repeat: no-repeat;">Database of all Helms' donors and recipients since 1980</a>.</li>

<li style=" margin-bottom: 0.1em;">Thomas B. Edsall and David A. Vise, <a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="http://www.ferris.edu/ISAR/Institut/pioneer/helms.htm" style=" text-decoration: none; color: rgb(102, 51, 102); padding-right: 13px; background-image: url(data:image/png;base64,iVBORw0KGgoAAAANSUhEUgAAAAoAAAAKCAYAAACNMs+9AAAAVElEQVR42n3PgQkAIAhEUXdqJ3dqJ3e6IoTPUSQcgj4EQ5IlUiLE0Jil3PECXhcHGBhZ8kg4hwxAu3MZeCGeyFnAXp4hqNQPnt7QL0nADpD6wHccLvnAKksq8iiaAAAAAElFTkSuQmCC); background-attachment: initial; background-size: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-position: 100% 50%; background-repeat: no-repeat;">"CBS Fight a Litmus Test for Conservatives: Helms Group Faces Legal Hurdles in Ideological Takeover Bid,"</a> Washington Post, March 31, 1985.</li>

<li style=" margin-bottom: 0.1em;"><a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="http://www.time.com/time/archive/preview/0%2C10987%2C1101860519-144070%2C00.html" style=" text-decoration: none; color: rgb(102, 51, 102); padding-right: 13px; background-image: url(data:image/png;base64,iVBORw0KGgoAAAANSUhEUgAAAAoAAAAKCAYAAACNMs+9AAAAVElEQVR42n3PgQkAIAhEUXdqJ3dqJ3e6IoTPUSQcgj4EQ5IlUiLE0Jil3PECXhcHGBhZ8kg4hwxAu3MZeCGeyFnAXp4hqNQPnt7QL0nADpD6wHccLvnAKksq8iiaAAAAAElFTkSuQmCC); background-attachment: initial; background-size: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-position: 100% 50%; background-repeat: no-repeat;">"American Notes Primaries. Snubbing Jesse's Club,"</a> <a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Time" title="Time" style=" text-decoration: none; color: rgb(11, 0, 128); background-image: none; background-attachment: initial; background-size: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial;">Time</a>, May 19, 1986: "The National Congressional Club, political lair of North Carolina Senator Jesse Helms, is a money machine that raised $5.7 million to back <a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Right-wing" title="Right-wing" style=" text-decoration: none; color: rgb(11, 0, 128); background-image: none; background-attachment: initial; background-size: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial;">right-wing</a>candidates in the 1984 election, one of the largest war chests collected by any political-action committee in the nation, conservative or <a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Liberal" title="Liberal" class="mw-redirect" style=" text-decoration: none; color: rgb(11, 0, 128); background-image: none; background-attachment: initial; background-size: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial;">liberal</a>."</li>

<li style=" margin-bottom: 0.1em;">Charles Babington, "Helms PAC's Debt to Covington Lingers", Legal Times, February 19, 1990.</li>

<li style=" margin-bottom: 0.1em;">Dwight L. Morris, <a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/politics/campaigns/money/archive/money092396.htm" style=" text-decoration: none; color: rgb(102, 51, 102); padding-right: 13px; background-image: url(data:image/png;base64,iVBORw0KGgoAAAANSUhEUgAAAAoAAAAKCAYAAACNMs+9AAAAVElEQVR42n3PgQkAIAhEUXdqJ3dqJ3e6IoTPUSQcgj4EQ5IlUiLE0Jil3PECXhcHGBhZ8kg4hwxAu3MZeCGeyFnAXp4hqNQPnt7QL0nADpD6wHccLvnAKksq8iiaAAAAAElFTkSuQmCC); background-attachment: initial; background-size: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-position: 100% 50%; background-repeat: no-repeat;">"Staving Off Gantt,"</a> Washington Post, September 23, 1996.</li>

</ul>

===

mojo

slumlord?

riased huge sums but barely wins

<a href="http://italkyoubored.wordpress.com/2014/02/05/roger-stone-pretty-reckless-is-going-straight-to-hell-part-three/#bkfrftnote42" sl-processed="1" style=" color: rgb(0, 0, 0); text-decoration: underline;">42</a> The following is a transcript of <a href="http://books.google.ca/books?id=0OSXeiTCfLAC&lpg=PP1&pg=PA72#v=onepage&q&f=false" sl-processed="1" style=" color: rgb(0, 0, 0); text-decoration: underline;">“Fooled on the Hill: How some die-hard Cold Warriors and a Belgian con artist tried to change U.S. policy in Africa”</a>, by David Aronson and David Kamp:

FOOLED ON THE HILL

How some die-hard Cold Warriors and a Belgian con artist tried to change U.S. policy in Africa

BY DAVID ARONSON AND DAVID KAMP

Judging from the scene in the stands, we could have been watching a brawl from the Turin-Liverpool match in the 1985 Cup of Champions, or a tilt-screen sequence from the old Batman series, or almost anything except a group of foreign dignitaries attending the inauguration last spring of the president of a new nation. But that’s what it was. On the playing field, with grace and dignity, Sam Nujoma, leader of the South-West Africa People’s Organization (SWAPO), was being sworn in as independent Namibia’s first president. But up in the reviewing stand, elbows were flying like mad. One witness saw Angola’s president José Eduardo dos Santos, “pummeling somebody else’s security guard,” and James Baker, the U.S. secretary of State, eluding a haymaker coming from the direction of the president of Zaire. The Namibians, not yet accustomed to this ceremony, had not provided enough seats in their stadium to accommodate both the visiting dignitaries and their bodyguards; a mad scramble for space quickly devolved into an every-VIP-for-himself melee.

Baker avoided damage; had Senator Jesse Helms been in Baker’s shoes, the escape might not have been so complete. Four months earlier Helms and his right-wing allies had managed to put the United States in the position of disapproving Namibian independence by sneaking a rider to a budget bill through Congress. The rider authorized the president to halt U.S. funding for a United Nations team, called UNTAG, that was overseeing Namibia’s peaceful, carefully negotiated secession from South Africa. As we shall see, the basis of Helms’s legislative gambit was bogus, a fabrication that might have been revealed had Congress administered some rudimentary tests before enacting the bill into law. But no tests were administered, and four months later Jim Baker was in Windhoek, bobbing and weaving, trying to convey the message Hey, Namibia – nothing personal.

Helms, like most of Capitol Hill’s extreme conservatives, never wanted an independent Namibia, a country whose dominant party (SWAPO) is aligned with Moscow. Neither do Helms and his ilk hold much affection for Namibia’s friendly neighbor, Angola, whose Marxist government is backed by Cuba and is fighting a civil war against Jonas Savimbi’s U.S.-supported UNITA (National Union for the Total Independence of Angola) guerillas. In December 1988, Angola, Cuba and South Africa signed an agreement in which Cuba promised to withdraw its troops from Angola by mid-1991 and South Africa agreed to allow Namibia’s independence. This deal was not universally approved; Duncan Sellars, chairman of the conservative International Freedom Foundation (IFF) in Washington, says that after the agreement was signed, right-wingers thought of it as “a sellout of [South Africa-controlled] Namibia and a sellout of UNITA.”

Helms and a platoon of right-wing operatives (the lobbyists at Black, Manafort, Stone & Kelly, who represent UNITA, and the think-tankers at the Heritage Foundation and the IFF) coalesced around a piece of legislation – the rider on the budget bill – that would have given President Bush an excuse for withholding Washington’s funding for the UN team in Namibia if any evidence was found that the Cubans were using chemical weapons to support their Marxist pals in Angola. In other words, the bill said that if the Commies misbehaved in Angola, we wouldn’t help pay for Namibia’s transition to independence.

The idea for the bill was born during a trip to Angola in March 1989 by Michael Johns, the Heritage Foundation’s policy analyst for African affairs. There he met Andries Holst, a West German who claimed to be filming a documentary about Cuba’s use of chemical weapons in Angola. Johns brought Holst to Washington, where the German filmmaker was introduced to Helms, State Department officials, lobbyists and other conservatives likely to be moved by his footage, which purported to show the horrors of chemical warfare.

For whatever reason, Holst did not impress, and Helms’s bill foundered. To salvage the effort, the IFF’s Duncan Sellars refocused attention on a scientific report Holst had commissioned from Aubin Heyndrickx, a toxicologist from the University for Ghent in Belgium, which substantiated Holst’s claims. In July, Sellars brought Heyndrickx to Washington to tour the same conservative network Holst had earlier traveled. The difference: Heyndrickx’s opinions carried the heft and credibility of science.

While Heyndrickx held forth, Helms rallied his allies on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee to lash the rider to a vital appropriations bill and Black, Manafort’s lobbyists hit the Hill. And son of a gun, with the boost Heyndrickx provided, the plan worked: on November 21, George Bush put his signature on a bill containing the Cuban-chemical-warfare provision.

But what might look like a model of parliamentary maneuvering is more likely an instance of ultraconservative fraud. For as it turns out, Holst is an impostor with no serious journalistic or filmmaking credentials, and Heyndrickx, on whose reports the rider was entirely predicated, is a publicity-seeking showboat. Heyndrickx has visited war zones around the world – Cambodia, Afghanistan, Iran – in search of evidence of chemical warfare and has tended to find it or not depending on who was supplying his funding. He once argued that one of his clients, the Iranian Army, had not used chemical weapons against the Iraqis because “the gases are not in the Koran.”

Heyndrickx’s examination of Holst’s bomb fragments and environmental samples showed that chemical weapons were used. Other chemical-weapons experts – one is tempted to say realchemical-weapons experts – disagree. Finland’s Marjatta Rautio, who is perhaps the world’s preeminent expert in this field, examined Heyndrickx’s data and reports. “I don’t see the connection between the results and the conclusions,” she says. Julian Perry Robinson, senior researcher at the University of Sussex, doubts Heyndrickx’s descriptions of the victims’ medical conditions. And André De Leenheer, Heyndrickx’s overseer at Ghent, is frankly contemptuous. “I’ve been studying everything in detail that has been written,” De Leenheer says of Heyndrickx’s findings. “It’s a real joke.” De Leenheer says he would kick out any student who handed in a similar report.

Heyndrickx does have a champion or two in the scientific community, including Dr. Clair Paley, a British toxicology expert. And according to Duncan Sellars, “The Soviets said his clinical analysis was incredibly accurate…But it’s not a result of a chemical bomb per se; it’s a firebomb.” As it turns out, Sellars’s source for what the Soviets said about Heyndrickx is – Heyndrickx! But curiously, an account of the meeting between Heyndrickx and the Soviet scientists that appeared inTass indicates that it was not Soviet scientists but – yes! – Heyndrickxhimself who suggested that the residue came from a firebomb.

The question arises, how were Washington’s conservatives so sure that Heyndrickx’s work was scientifically sound? Riva Levinson, one of Black, Manafort’s people on the UNITA account, says she cannot personally vouch for the Heyndrickx report. “All I can tell you,” she says, “is that I am not a technical expert on this issue and that other people are, whom I listen to.” She referred us to Margaret Calhoun, a freelance lobbyist who worked for Black, Manafort and UNITA on the Hill last summer. Calhoun shares Levinson’s ignorance of science (“When you talk about chemical formulas, my eyes glaze over”) but says that she checked Heyndrickx out. “Duncan’s probably more of a technical expert in this,” she says. “You should talk to Duncan.”

We did. Sellars told us he had hired no one to check out Heyndrickx’s bomb-site samples but Heyndrickx himself had sent them to the State Department and other agencies. Helms’s aides at the Senate Foreign Relations Committee say that they too relied on the State Department’s analysis of Heyndrickx’s findings. So we asked the State Department whether it could vouch for the report. Gary Crocker, a State Department intelligence officer with expertise in chemical warfare, indicated that the department’s tests for evidence of chemical contamination in Heyndrickx’s samples were negative. In other words, this significant piece of legislation was passed with no credible substantiation whatsoever.

Like the lobbyists, UNITA can’t really say how or whether it confirmed Heyndrickx’s findings. Helder Mondabe, UNITA’s man in Washington, told us he had visited a “university of chemical warfare” in Switzerland to discuss Heyndrickx’s work, but he could not remember the name or location of the university. We called the military attaché to the Swiss embassy in Paris for help; he said that no such university exists, that no such studies are undertaken at any of the Swiss universities. When we called Mondabe a week later to see whether he’d remembered the name of the university, he said no, he still didn’t remember, and Hey, do you guys really have to mention the Swiss university in your article?

Duncan Sellars remains unfazed by his star witness’s impeached authority. “The questions raised have bee arguments attempting to attack his personal credibility,” he says stalwartly. Fortunately, the State Department has wised up. Is Heyndrickx a charlatan? “I have no doubt about that,” says Gary Crocker. “That’s for sure.” But a year ago the findings of an easily debunked professor were regarded as gospel by gullible policymakers, a mistake that could be rectified only by dispatching Jim Baker to Windhoek, just to show the Namibians that we were sorry we had been such soreheards about their independence.

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<p style=" color: rgb(85, 85, 85); font-size: 13px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: 22.75px; orphans: auto; text-align: left; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: auto; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px;">The piece featuring Aubin Heyndrickx from the time of the Iraq war is the following, <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2006/06/19/world/europe/19iht-chem.2001719.html?_r=0&pagewanted=print" sl-processed="1" style=" color: rgb(0, 0, 0); text-decoration: underline;">“In Iraq chemical arms trial, scientists face many burdens of proof”</a>:

For 18 years, Dr. Aubin Heyndrickx has tended the sealed jars containing strands of hair and scraps of clothing he gathered from a dead woman’s body. Collected in Halabja, one of many Kurdish towns in northern Iraq that were attacked with chemical weapons by Saddam Hussein’s army in 1988, they have sat in a blue plastic drum in his lab ever since, waiting.

Now, as prosecutors prepare to try Saddam in Baghdad for genocide against the Kurds, Heyndrickx would like the material to be analyzed. “May I insist these proofs are mentioned at the trial?” the doctor asks.

He is one of a small group of doctors, scientists and Middle East experts who have studied chemical weapons use by Iraq against its Kurdish citizens in the 1980s. Now, they are dusting off evidence and attempting to collect new data in an effort to define the scope of a distant tragedy that is only now to come under scrutiny in court.

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Because of the lack of hard data and the imprecise testing there is some disagreement about how many people were affected and what chemical compounds were used.

Heyndrickx, somewhat of a maverick in the field, believes that the Iraqi Army also used cyanide and biological toxins, although most other scientists disagree.

Still, he was one of the few Western experts on the ground in Halabja just after the attack, and the samples in his lab – particularly the clothing – could still provide valuable clues if they were properly sealed and stored, Hay said.

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<p style=" color: rgb(85, 85, 85); font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: 22.75px; orphans: auto; text-align: left; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: auto; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px;"><a id="ftnote43" name="ftnote43" style=" font-size: 13px; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); text-decoration: underline;"> </a><a href="http://italkyoubored.wordpress.com/2014/02/05/roger-stone-pretty-reckless-is-going-straight-to-hell-part-three/#bkfrftnote43" sl-processed="1" style=" font-size: 13px; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); text-decoration: underline;">43</a> From <a href="http://www.aei.org/scholar/marc-a-thiessen/" sl-processed="1" style=" color: rgb(0, 0, 0); text-decoration: underline;">the profile for Marc Thiessen</a> at the American Enterprise Institute; I boldface his experience at BMS&K:

Experience

<ul>

<li style=" color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-weight: normal;">Columnist, Washington Post, 2010-present</li>

<li style=" color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-weight: normal;">Cofounder, Oval Office Writers, 2009-present</li>

<li style=" color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-weight: normal;">Visiting Fellow, Hoover Institution, 2009-2010</li>

<li style=" color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">Senior Speechwriter, Deputy Director of Speechwriting, Chief Speechwriter for President George W. Bush, the White House, 2004-2009</li>

<li style=" color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">Chief Speechwriter for Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, Department of Defense, 2001-2004</li>

<li>Spokesman and Senior Policy Adviser to Senator Jesse Helms, Senate Foreign Relations Committee, 1995-2001</li>

<li style=" color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-weight: normal;">Press Secretary, Huffington for Senate Campaign, 1994</li>

<li style=" color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-weight: normal;">Assistant to the President, Empower America, 1993-94</li>

<li style=" color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-weight: normal;">Researcher and Deputy Communication Director, Black, Manafort, Stone, and Kelly, 1989-93</li>

</ul>

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Stuart Stevens didn’t always live life in the shadows. As an up and coming political star, Stevens used to enjoy the parties and celebrity, but that was before he helped George W. Bush win the controversial 2000 presidential election and his friends started shunning him. The Hollywood group who used to find his act so charming  had become disenchanted with Stevens’ act, they didn’t like his tactics, and they particularly didn’t like the people he was surrounding himself with, men like Karl Rove, Stevens’ <a href="http://www.tnr.com/article/magazine/politics/105738/stuart-stevens-romney-strategist-interesting" style=" text-decoration: none;">longtime friend and collaborator</a>.

Stuart Stevens was born in 1954 in Jackson, Mississippi. He has the reputation of being an easy going Southern good ol’ boy, but he’s anything but. Pennsylvania Lieutenant Gov. Mark Singel calls Stevens “ruthless”.

<h4 style=" padding: 0px; margin: 0px; font-size: 15px; clear: both;">A native of Jackson, Miss., Stevens, 58, grew up in a Democratic household in a town and state dominated by Democrats. The Republican Party, he says, inexplicably drew him in.. <a href="http://triblive.com/home/1867264-74/stevens-says-romney-campaign-ridge-republican-singel-race-stuart-mitt" style=" text-decoration: none; padding: 0px; margin: 0px; font-size: 15px; clear: both;">Read more at the Pittsburgh Tribune</a></h4>

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At a time when the Civil Rights struggle was in full force, when Dixiecrat segregationists were fleeing the Democratic Party, Stevens decided to join the Republican Party. While anti-Civil Rights leaders, like Strom Thurmond, Todd Cochran, and Jesse Helms, were fleeing the Democratic Party because of Democratic support for the 1964 Voting Rights Act and putting stakes down in the “new” Republican Party, Stevens decided to hop aboard their divisive bus. Stevens’ close friend Haley Barbour remembers that time of <a href="http://www.npr.org/blogs/itsallpolitics/2010/12/21/132228034/haley-barbours-praise-for-racist-group-gets-plenty-notice" style=" text-decoration: none;">White Citizen’s Councils fondly</a>.

Republican political consultant Mike Murphy called Stuart Stevens “a slippery character.” He’s a man unafraid of breaking rules, an endurance athlete who playfully experimented with steroids;

<h4 style=" padding: 0px; margin: 0px; font-size: 15px; clear: both;">As a kid growing up in the Deep South, what I liked most about sports was the endless opportunities presented to hit somebody and not get into trouble.”…His life as a political consultant, Mr. Stevens wrote, “served as an outlet for my violent tendencies.”   <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/20/us/politics/stuart-stevens-redefining-romneys-presidential-run.html?pagewanted=all" style=" text-decoration: none; padding: 0px; margin: 0px; font-size: 15px; clear: both;">Read more at the New York Times</a></h4>

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<h4 style=" padding: 0px; margin: 0px; font-size: 15px; clear: both;">They’re not afraid to, as one admirer of the team put it, “wield the knife” when necessary…Stevens is a former film student who spent a short stint working under veteran political knife fighter Arthur Finkelstein. <a href="http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0712/78214.html" style=" text-decoration: none; padding: 0px; margin: 0px; font-size: 15px; clear: both; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Read more at Politico</a></h4>

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Arthur Finkelstein is one of the big names in the Republican political consulting business. After working on Ayn Rand’s radio show, Finkelstein worked  alongside controversial Romney aide <a href="http://www.baracksbackers.com/?p=960" style=" text-decoration: none;">Alex Castellanos</a> in getting North Carolina’s segregationist Jesse Helms elected to the senate. Stevens learned from the best.

After working for politicians like Todd Cochran, Haley Barbour, Chris Christie, Roy Blount, and George W. Bush, Stevens went to work for John McCain. He urged McCain to go negative, “you have to keep your foot on his throat,” he declared.

Stevens then joined the Romney campaign, under specific conditions, of course;

<h4 style=" padding: 0px; margin: 0px; font-size: 15px; clear: both;">“He wasn’t going to do [the Romney campaign] unless he was going to be The Guy,” says one former colleague… Stevens sought to reprise the attack strategy for Romney… Stevens quipped: “I was confident we could come up with a spin. You could spin anything if you did it with enough confidence.”   <a href="http://www.tnr.com/article/magazine/politics/105738/stuart-stevens-romney-strategist-interesting" style=" text-decoration: none; padding: 0px; margin: 0px; font-size: 15px; clear: both;">Read more at The New Republic</a></h4>

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<h4 style=" padding: 0px; margin: 0px; font-size: 15px; clear: both;">(He) has the reputation, as a prominent G.O.P. consultant who admires Stevens’s talent put it, of one who “does not play well with others.”…The strategist’s gift for withering criticism is rubbing off on his boss.  <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2011/12/04/magazine/mitt-romney-bot.html?_r=1&pagewanted=all" style=" text-decoration: none; padding: 0px; margin: 0px; font-size: 15px; clear: both;">Read more at the New York Times</a></h4>

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<h4 style=" padding: 0px; margin: 0px; font-size: 15px; clear: both;">As its strategy of racial polarization unfolds – with the latest and most blatant example emerging in a blatantly false attack on the Obama Administration’s welfare policies. Suspicions that Romney might seek to inflame racist anger toward America’s first black president began to arise when his campaign strategist Stuart Stevens – a scion of Mississippi’s Republican Party – coined the slogan “Obama Isn’t Working,” which sounded to some like code for ethnic stereotyping…  now the Romney campaign – and the candidate himself – have seized upon welfare, the classical subject of racial stereotype, to divide the country against Obama with false accusations… This isn’t a muted dog-whistle.  It’s a deafening foghorn.   <a href="http://www.nationalmemo.com/dishonoring-dad-the-romney-campaign-blows-racial-foghorn/" style=" text-decoration: none; padding: 0px; margin: 0px; font-size: 15px; clear: both;">Read more at The National Memo</a></h4>

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Is Stuart Stevens carefully laying out a racially charged campaign to appeal to white voters? The answer to this will reveal itself in the coming weeks as Mitt Romney lays out his case to be president. Romney should know that there will be no hiding behind quiet dog whistles and racist subtlety, however. His man, Stuart Stevens, has made it clear that he’s a believer that voters are very attuned in picking up the messages he’s sending.

<h4 style=" padding: 0px; margin: 0px; font-size: 15px; clear: both;">“Voters are very sophisticated consumers of all these little signs and codes,” Stevens told The Baltimore Sun that year, referring to the firm’s range of spots for Ehrlich that targeted working-class voters. “People may not read all that much, but they really know how to look.”   <a href="http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0712/78214.html" style=" text-decoration: none; padding: 0px; margin: 0px; font-size: 15px; clear: both;">Read more at Politico</a></h4>

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