• Listen to this segment

• Listen to the entire program

The Right Hook, a weekly segment which covers the machinations of the right wing, from the Republican Party to the Tea Party Patriots, and beyond. By Chris Bennett

Christine O’Donnell has the Celibate-Wiccan wing of the Delaware Tea Party firmly nailed down. The three-time Senate candidate finally won as she beat Republican establishment candidate Mike Castle in the primary. Delawarians and Americans can only hope O’Donnell’s victory was the last climax of her campaign. O’Donnell’s past as a national anti-masturbation crusader and acknowledgement of her once having a picnic on a Satanic Alter have overshadowed another Tea Party winner’s shenannigans– Carl Paladino of New York. Gubernatorial candidate Paladino is the forwarder, replier to, and originator of lewd, sexist, and racist emails. Paladino rode to victory on an anti-big government platform and vowed to enact Draconian spending cuts. Paladino is also the recipient of millions of dollars in tax breaks over the years on his Buffalo, NY properties. In 2003, Paladino admitted that he had lobbied to have his properties included in the Empire Zone which made them eligible for tax breaks. At the same time Paladino was asking for tax breaks, he wrote checks to politicians. In July 2002, Paladino’s J-P Group began collecting its tax break. In October, J-P Group wrote a $2,000 check to Gov. George Pataki’s campaign. Pataki’s appointees ran the office which approved Paladino’s tax break.

In California, Meg Whitman is now officially the winner. Of campaign spending, that is. The former eBay CEO and gubernatorial candidate has outspent every other candidate in the history of American politics. According to the L.A. Times, Whitman has spent $119 Million on her campaign thus far. Whitman’s spokesman tells Californians that self-financing makes Whitman independent of special interests. What we do know is that Whitman’s finance ledger looks like any other top-level Republican’s. Even though the vast majority of money she has spent has been her own, her corporate donors include Rupert Murdoch, Jeff Bezos of Amazon, American Express, and Anheuser-Busch, not to mention major law, accounting, and private equity firms, and land developers. Four years ago, the California Legislature passed AB32, the landmark clean energy bill intelligently designed to reduce carbon emissions 80% by midcentury and to spur a green-jobs economy. Now, out-of-state oil companies, and right-wing zealots are trying to kill AB32 with an initiative on the November ballot, Proposition 23. According to the New York Times, oil and gas billionaires Charles and David Koch have given $1 Million to kill AB32. Together with Texas-based oil companies Valero and Tesoro, 97% of the $8.2 Million raised thus far for the initiative, has come from oil companies.

Fans of the internets may remember last summer when talk of cyber-terrorism made it into the mainstream media. The blog Techdirt noted that former Vice Admiral of the National Security Agency Michael McConnell made the media rounds in order to stoke general panic about the threat of hacking and cyber-attacks. McConnell talked about the “Attribution Problem” which is not knowing where an attack is coming from or who is attacking a network. McConnell’s fix for the Attribution Problem is to remove net users’ anonymity. The problem with removing anonymity is that it exposes dissidents and whistleblowers fighting government and corporate oppression. McConnell was interviewed by NPR on this topic and quoted without being challenged. NPR has an attribution problem of its own however, and did not attribute to McConnell his most current title, Senior Vice President of government contractor Booz Allen Hamilton. As McConnell was hyping the cyber-terror threat, Booz Allen was securing government contracts worth approximately $400 Million. And in June, technology blog Hillicon Valley reported that Booz Allen would attempt to raise an additional $300 Million via an Initial Public Offering. But Booz Allen does know how to spread the wealth. It underwrites public media. Booz Allen is now one of the newest underwriters for an organization formerly known as National Public Radio.