Steve Kangas: It was 'Liberals' and 'Communists' with Help from the Government who Really Won the West!

by Len Hart

The American right wing nurtures and promotes a 'mythology' of the 'Old West' just as Adolph Hitler and his Nazi minions nurtured and promoted a Nazi 'Weltanschauung' i.e, a sweeping Nazi interpretation of German folk lore and history. The version of American history that is given the 'right wing stamp of approval' is the political 'big lie' designed to support a contemporary right-wing extremist political agenda.

The strategy seeks to cloak extremism with 'folklore', to hide lies amid fables of pioneer struggles and exploits'. It is claimed, with a straight face or a smirk, that the pioneers were right wingers too!

That's not true!

At least as many were liberal, even communist! At least as many were what we might now call 'green'! At least as many were anarchists and opposed any government at all. At least as many believed in cooperation over competition and, in fact, found both cooperation and sharing to be absolutely essential to survival. At least as many were open to innovation. They were adventurous not conservative. It was a matter of survival --not politics or ideology.

The Nazis --specifically Hitler's propaganda guru Joseph Goebbels --did it first.

In Hitler's Nationalist Socialist Party, the indoctrination program incorporated the use of the German folktale and was employed "as an ideological weapon" meant to serve the building of the Thousand Year Reich. Thus, Party official Alref Eyd announced in 1935, "The German folktale shall become a most valuable means for us in the racial and political education of the young" (1977:170). Unfortunately, as Kemenetsy perceptively points out, the German version of the folktalke used by the Third Reich "was no longer a true reflection of the common peasant folk, but only a medium for the Nazi ideology, and a mouthpiece of racial propaganda"(1977:178).

--Cathy Lynn Preston, Folklore, Literature, and Cultrual Theory

The following excerpt is one of many brilliant essays published by the late 'liberal' activist Steve Kangas.

Most Americans have accepted the myth that early Americans were rugged individualists, pioneers who blazed trails into the Western hills and overcame adversity on the strength of their own self-reliance.

'Tain't necessarily so.

Entire books could be written about how white Americans got rich off the labor of their slaves, all the while waxing rhapsodic over the virtues of self-reliance. Volumes could be written about the early American women who created extensive social networks and church groups to help each other's families, all the while their men were entertaining the conceit of rugged individualism. But this is an essay devoted to the government's contribution to early American survival, so it will address that topic only: (1)

From the start, the West was not conquered by rifle-toting pioneers, but by the U.S. Army. (Hardly a government "success," to be sure, but the point here is that the stereotype of the lone pioneer conquering the West is a myth.) The government made massive land purchases, without which the conquest of these territories would have been even bloodier. It spent $15 million on the Louisiana Purchase, $25 million on the Texas/California purchase, and $7 million for the Alaska Purchase.

The government then turned around and sold this land below cost, at considerable loss to itself. The Preemption Act of 1841, the Graduation Act of 1854 and the Homestead Act of 1862 all gave away land to pioneers for a song.

The government also played a crucial role in developing these lands. When it came to connecting the Great Lakes to the Eastern seaboard with canals, the government funded or financially guaranteed three fourths of the $200 million project. It also gave each state 30,000 acres of land to build agricultural colleges. It would be difficult to overstate how important these colleges were in advancing agricultural education and techniques among the farmers. With their help, American farmers were quickly able to create a working agricultural economy. Meanwhile, the government provided mail services like the Pony Express that interconnected this economy.

At the farthest edges of the frontier, the settlers were literally lawless; gun-fighting and dueling were rampant. It was only when the government moved in that law and order and a sense of community were established. Disease, attacks from Native Americans and economic chaos at the frontier often turned towns into ghost towns overnight. Not surprisingly, group survival proved more effective than true hermitism. Historian John Mack Farragher described life on the frontier as "a community experience… Sharing work with neighbors at cabin raisings, log rollings, hayings, husking, butchering, harvesting or threshing were all traditionally considered communal affairs… [A] 'borrowing system' allowed scarce tools, labor and products to circulate for the benefit of all." One pioneer told prospective settlers: "Your wheel-barrows, your shovels, your utensils of all sorts, belong not to yourself, but to the public who do not think it necessary even to ask a loan, but take it for granted."

The government continued to develop the West in the early 20th century. It constructed dams and subsidized huge irrigation projects. During the Great Depression, rural electrification programs brought electricity to farmers, which enabled them to use power tools, refrigeration and household appliances to make their work and personal lives easier. The government also built highways into the West, and wired the countryside for telephone service. The government saved countless small farmers by giving them loans to stall foreclosures and tide them over the rough times. And it began paying huge farming subsidies that continue to this day.

Even then, it was not the small pioneer, but the major corporation that settled the West, often with vast help from the government. By the turn of the century, the government had distributed a billion acres of land, but only 147 million became homesteads. Sociologists Scott and Sally McNall estimate that "probably only one acre in nine went to the small pioneers." Some 183 million acres were ultimately given to the railroad companies. (It was these federal giveaways that created the major logging companies, not family businesses.) Four out of five transcontinental railroads were built in this way, and Congress approved loans up to $48,000 per mile to build them.

The West has a rich tradition of dependency on government. As historian Stephanie Coontz says: "It would be hard to find a Western family today or at any time in the past whose land rights, transportation options, economic existence, and even access to water were not dependent on federal funds." Paradoxically, however, the West has also enjoyed a long tradition of anti-government sentiments. When John Wayne punched out "Mr. Government Bureaucrat" in a Hollywood Western, he was acting out the misplaced rage of many Western Americans.

In closing, the story of the Montana Freemen is especially revealing. This is the radical anti-government militia that kept the FBI at bay in an armed stand-off that lasted for months. It turns out that they had stalled foreclosure on their farms for ten years by accepting $676,082 in government farming subsidies and loans. [Pic: Robber Barons were in for the booty]

Apparently, government assistance makes one ungrateful.

--Steve Kangas, Myth: Early Americans built this land on rugged individualism.

Kangas [the quoted author] was found in the men's room of Richard Mellon Scaife's office building in Pittsburgh. According to reports, he died of shot[s] wounds to the head! It was ruled 'suicide'!

Why have the police not questioned Scaife, since his newspaper, the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, depicted Kangas as an obsessed lunatic who had come to that city with the intent of assassinating Scaife, but allegedly turned the gun on himself instead? And if Kangas was of no concern to Scaife, why did the reclusive billionaire dispatch his No. 1 private detective, Rex Armistead, to dig into Kangas' past.

Moreover, isn't strange that those who still insist presidential adviser Vince Foster was murdered, a theory promoted by Scaife, have no interest in how or why Kangas died?

The major media may be afraid of Scaife, who is known for going after his critics, but veteran journalist Mike Snow is continuing his quest for the answers to all these questions.

--The Kangas Chronicles

Suicide, it was conveniently ruled! But in Scaife's bathroom? Now --Scaife is reported to have 'threatened' Kangas! Scaife, it must be recalled, is the 'vast right wing conspiracy' so famous referred to by Hilary Clinton.

He posted his last essay to his Web site on February 3, just five days before his untimely death. In my opinion, it is not the writings of a man in throes of alcoholism, though people like Richard Scaife have suggested as much and he may well view Steve's work as pornography. See: ~kangaroo/L-PowerDistribution.html

There are more questions than answers. Richard Scaife hiring a detective to try and dig up dirt on Steve Kangas raises a red flag. He used the same detective, Rex Armistead, that was used to try and dig up dirt on President Clinton for the Arkansas Project. The Pittsburgh police should have been so thorough. I doubt the police even questioned Richard Scaife, though one report did say they were thinking about it. The systematic attempted trashing of Steve Kangas' raises questions. Discrepancies between the coroner's report, in which Steve was injured when first found, and the police report, with no mention of injuries when he was first found raises questions. The quick cremation and the erasure of Steve Kangas' hard drive raises questions.

If magically I could have three questions about the circumstances around this case answered, I suppose they would be -- (1) Is the checking of the circuit breakers in One Oxford Centre rest rooms sop, and is there a log to prove this? (2) Was the gun that killed Steve empty when found? The news articles infer this, stating 47 rounds were found in his backpack and in one pocket. This is important because if Steve Kangas were in custody of Scaife security, they may have initially taken his gun away and emptied the clip. There may even be prints on the bullets or the clip, if the gun is still in evidence. (3) One intriguing puzzle piece that doesn't fit with the theory of suicide -- the bullet found around the time that Steve Kangas was found. There was a bullet hole found in the window of a street level clothing store. The slug was found inside the store. The bullet got there somehow. The location of One Oxford Centre doesn't appear to be a part of Pittsburgh where random bullet holes would be found. I suspect this may be the first time ever that a bullet hole was found in a window of one of the shops. Maybe some time after all the stores had closed, Steve Kangas had attempted to leave, was stopped by Scaife security, shots or a shot were fired, with Steve Kangas was forced to go back up to the 39th floor. If that bullet is connected, suicide becomes implausible.

I don't know what happened to Steve Kangas on the evening of February 8. I can write several scripts from the facts, as reported in the various newspaper articles. Many of the facts of the case seem suspicious and do not fit well with the theory of suicide. When I started digging on my own, that is what I expected to find. But from the burglar alarm system, to the $300 gun, to the intensive work he'd been doing on his political web site, that does not seem to be where Steve Kangas was at.

And then there is that bullet hole in the window of the Kountz and Rider clothing store.

For Steve's sake, this case deserves to be investigated further by someone with the means and abilities far greater than I. Hopefully someone, or some agency, will investigate the death of of Steve Kangas in the manner it deserves.

--Democratic Underground, Who Killed Steve Kangas?

Who had Method, Motive and Opportunity to Murder Kangas?

I simply do not believe that someone --contemplating suicide --would make a trip to another city, look up the address of an arch nemesis, go to the bathroom there and proceed to shoot himself in the head!

I say that there is sufficient and probable cause to indict Richard Mellon Scaife and take his deposition where lies become a matter of record and are prosecutable. I suggest the same thing be done with the hired gunsel --specifically Armistead!

Armistead among other things is the famous private investigator used by Scaife to dig up dirt on President Clinton and Steve Kangas. He was paid $250,000 for one job. Rex Armistead was aided by Scaife's Pittsburgh Tribune-Review reporter Richard Gazarik and Steve's grieving parents eager for any information to fill the terrible vacuum. His mother now seems to regret being used that way. The Tribune-Review published some of the sleaziest dirt jobs you will find in any tabloid -- against Kangas. Below, you will see how one witness (Steve's mom) was mysteriously manipulated into telling lies about her son. Propaganda and mind bending. It's what they do.

--Evidence of Kangas' murder, Who Killed Web Warrior Steve Kangas

Odds are this case is just another instance in which the right wing murders anyone who disagrees. We are reminded of Conan Doyle's character, Sherlock Holmes, who said: "When you have eliminated the impossible whatever remains however improbable must be the truth!" If, by that standard, you rule out an unlikely suicide, that leaves only a murdered Kangas in Scaife's men's room. That is the probable cause to investigate Scaife and his hired gun thugs!

The Kangas case is one of hundreds, possibly thousands of suspicious deaths, enough to make a 'statistic'.

George W Bush also has intimate connections to the Saudi Royal family and actively trades weapons with Pakistani militant groups from the ISI. For more on this, watch Farenheit 911 from Michael Moore. The documentary has been smeared as a Republican bashing video, however, Michael does a very good job exposing Bush's connections to the Saudi's, his dodging of the draft for Vietnam, and his connections to the defense contractors who benefited from 9/11.

Laura Bush, George's wife and the first lady, was involved in a fatal car crash in November of 1963. She was speeding and disregarded a stop sign. The victim in the other car was Michael Dutton, a 17 year old boy. The investigation concluded that the crash had "bizarre" aspects, such as the cars didn't seem to show physical evidence of normal drive behavior. With that said, the other "bizarre" coincidence is that the victim, Michael Dutton, was Laura Bush's ex-boyfriend and classmate. Again, in a "bizarre" coincidence, Laura Bush didn't get a ticket.

Michael Dutton Douglas and Laura Welch (Laura Bush's name at the time) were students together at Robert E. Lee High School in Midland, Texas. Douglas was described as an active athlete, physically attractive, and intelligent. He was nominated as the school's most popular male student while a junior, an honor typically awarded only to graduating high school seniors.

In May 2000 , a two-page police report detailing the fatal crash was made public. The report revealed that on November 6, 1963, Welch was driving her Chevrolet Impala sedan with one passenger (Judy Dyke, also 17). It was a clear Wednesday night, shortly after 8 p.m., when Welch entered the intersection of State Highway 349 and Farm to Market Road 868 . Welch failed to observe the intersection's stop sign and collided into Douglas' Chevrolet Corvair sedan. Welch and Dyke sustained minor injuries; Douglas was pronounced dead on arrival at Midland Memorial Hospital. Welch was not charged with any offense.

The future First Lady made a brief remark in March 2000 about the crash, "I know this as an adult, and even more as a parent, it was crushing ... for the family involved and for me as well."

Most Americans are aware of the countless violations of checks and balances and constitutional amendments this administration has committed. It is clear that George W Bush is a shadow figure with power only a few have ever had in history.

Marvin Bush, George's older brother, was the principal shareholder of Securicom until 2000. Securicom held the security systems contract for the World Trade Center and also held the security contracts for United Airlines, where 2 of the planes hijacked on 9/11 were from. Securicom bought CTC International under Marvin Bush as well. CTC International held the contracts of security at Dulles International Airport where the other 2 planes came from on 9/11.

Bertha Champagne

Marvin Bush's house maid, Bertha Champagne, was killed September 29, 2003 on Marvin's property. Like the usual Bush bizarre stories, Bertha was run over in Marvin's driveway by her own vehicle and pinned against the side of the garage. The investigation concluded that it was an "accident." Those who knew her remember her with fondness. Richard Davis, general manager for Belle Haven Country Club, said, "She made people feel welcome. A florist once told me, 'I could never forget Bertha; she made me feel like a member here.' She was friendly and outgoing; she always had a big smile, and a hello and a good-bye." Redding said, "Belle Haven was her stage; the people there loved her and she loved them." "Everybody knew Bertha," said Davis.

John McWethy Feb 2008, Former ABC News national security correspondent John McWethy was killed in a skiing accident in Colorado. McWethy was at the Pentagon on 9/11 and covered the attack live. McWethy had a number of good sources within the intelligence community. In a June 2005 WMR report: "WHY NSA IS THE FORT KNOX OF THE U.S. INTELLIGENCE ESTABLISHMENT" that covered the effect of outsourcing on the diminishing security of sensitive U.S. communications intelligence sources and methods, a major story first reported by McWethy.

Sid Adger Mr. Adger, a Houston oil supply company executive and Bush family friend, died in 1996 of unknown causes. Adger was the mysterious businessman who approached General James Rose and asked him to help George W. Bush avoid Vietnam by recommending him for a pilot position with the National Guard.

General James Rose General Rose recommended George W. Bush for a pilot position with the Texas National Guard. He died of unknown causes in 1993. He was immediately buried and no autopsy was performed.

Lt. Colonel William Harris, Jr. Lt. Col. William Harris was one of two commanding officers who could not perform George W. Bush's annual evaluation covering the year from May 1, 1972 to April 30, 1973. They stated in their filing that "Lt. Bush has not been observed at this unit during the period of this report." Fortunately for George W. Bush, Lt. Col. Harris is not here to verify his 1973 statement. He's dead.

Amiram Nir: He was a former Israeli agent who was in Jerusalem with George Bush during Iran Contra. He went under the assumed name of Pat Weber. Nir was scheduled to testify to the Senate subcommittee and it was feared he would reveal the truth. He perished, following the shooting-down of his aircraft with missiles from the helicopter of a man called Gene Tatum, 25-year CIA deep cover agent.

Lt. Colonel Jerry B. Killian Lt. Col. Jerry B. Killian, another George W. Bush's commanding officer. He cannot testify, he's dead.

James Downing Aalund Mr. Aalund's name is the first on a long list of young Texans who died in Vietnam. No Texas Air National Guard connections.

Lewis B. Miskell WMRMurdered Canadian diplomat another possible victim of Valerie Plame Wilson/Brewster Jennings disclosure. On May 26, Italian police discovered the badly decomposed body of Canadian diplomat Lewis B. Miskell in a Naples sewer. Miskell, 49, had been stabbed in the abdomen. Intelligence sources report that Miskell, who assigned to the Canadian embassy in Vienna, Austria, was the attached responsible for liaison to UN specialized agencies in Vienna

Mark Lombardi He was an accomplished conceptual artist who, while chatting on the phone with a banker friend about the Bush savings and loan scandal, started doodling a diagram and was inspired to create a complex series of drawings and sketches that charted the details of the scandal. According to the New York Times, "He was soon charting the complex matrices of personal and professional relationships, conflict of interest, malfeasance and fraud uncovered by investigations into the major financial and political scandals of the day; to keep facts and sources straight, he created a handwritten database that now includes around 12,000 3-by-5-inch cards." On the evening of March 22, 2000, Mark Lombardi was found hanging in his loft, an apparent suicide.

Peter Hartmann Central Figure in cemetery probe found dead ... Peter Hartmann FEMA, La. Outsource Katrina body count to firm implicated in body-dumping scandals. The Federal Emergency Management Agency has hired Kenyon International to set up a mobile morgue for handling bodies in Baton Rouge, Louisiana following Hurricane Katrina, RAW STORY has learned. Kenyon is a subsidiary of Service Corporation International (SCI), a scandal-ridden Texas-based company operated by a friend of the Bush family. Recently, SCI subsidiaries have been implicated in illegally discarding and desecrating corpses.

Steve Kangas His web site, Liberalism Resurgent, was meticulously researched and presented such a problem to the "real boss" of George Bush, Richard Scaife, that he hired a private detective to look into Kangas' past. Steve Kangas was found in a 39th-floor bathroom outside of Scaife's offices at One Oxford Centre, in Pittsburgh, an apparent suicide.

Maria DiBiase WMR has learned from UN sources that the 19th Floor from which UN employee Maria DiBiase plunged to her death in the early morning of February 17, houses the Department of Peace-keeping Operations/Field Administration and Logistics Division (DPKO/FALD). The offices also house the code machines used for the encrypted fax machines used for DPKO activities in addition to a spare set of code machines used for DPKO rapid response teams. New York Daily News more search terms: Austrian national, IAEA, Conference Services, UNSCOM, Saadam Hussein wmd database, Iraq invasion, black market nuclear suppliers, A Q Kahn, Libya , Turkey, Pakistan, Marc Rich, Sibel Edmunds, 'black bag' operation.

Governor Mel Carnahan Missouri's former Democratic governor, Mel Carnahan, who lost his life in 2000, three weeks before Election Day, during his Senatorial race against John Ashcroft. Carnahan went on to become the first dead man to win a Senatorial race, humiliating and defeating the unpopular Ashcroft posthumously. Ashcroft, despite his unpopularity, went on to be appointed Attorney General by George W. Bush. Investigators determined that Carnahan's plane went down due to "poor visibility."

Gus W. Weiss, former White House policy adviser on technology, intelligence, and economic affairs, highly significant player in Reagan/Bush Sr. execution of Soviet downfall, "Weiss had declared himself to be against the war in Iraq a short while before his "suicide". It is interesting to note that 18 days before Weiss' death, another Bush government analyst also committed suicide -John J. Kokal (58 years old) on November 7, 2003. This man leapt to his death from an office in the State Department where he worked.

Other Bush Family:

Jeb Bush, another one of George's brothers, conveniently and quietly declared martial law in Florida 4 days before the 9/11 attacks. This resulted in the public failing to find out the many hidden truths about what happened in Florida in the lead up to 9/11, which the public has yet to learn. In the upcoming film from Truth Alliance, this information that Jeb Bush doesn't want you to hear will be available. The working title for the 9/11 project is, "Corruption at the Core." PNAC signatory and he signed Executive Order 01-261 September 7, 2001 which allowed martial law to be declared in Florida. His was the first state to declare a state of emergency on 9/11, however, this was 4 days before it had happened..

Of course it is Florida where Jeb Bush was Governor that the massive account of voter fraud occurred and George W Bush illegally stole the office of President of the United States to begin with. The film, Unprecedented: The 2000 Election, was one of the journalist stories that didn't make headlines in the U.S. Greg Palast from the BBC also had the film, Bush Family Fortunes, as well as a book, The Best Democracy Money Can Buy, all about Bush's history and voter fraud case in Florida. Hundreds of thousands of votes were literally not counted due to a "glitch" in the Florida system that was supposed to go through and eliminate felon votes. The majority, over 90% of names removed, turned up to be innocent of any crime. Some counties were reporting that the cards used to vote with were confusing and placed the names of candidates nest to boxes that didn't match that candidate, a slick and manipulative move by someone clearly attempting to steal votes. It worked, Bush won by a couple hundred votes in Florida. Had the votes been allowed to be recounted, he would have lost.

Neil Bush, the president's other brother, had intimate connections with John Hinckley, the man who shot and tried to assassinate Ronald Reagan. Neil Bush was scheduled to have dinner on March 31, 1981, with Scott Hinckley, brother of John Hinckley, the day after a bullet came within an inch of making Neil Bush's father the new president of the United States. Even though John Chancellor had let slip out this most remarkable assassination coincidence shortly after John Hinckley tried to kill President Reagan, it was censored by NBC News and the other organs of the national news media during the subsequent 10 years. And even in the several months of extensive coverage of Neil Bush's part in the massive savings and loan fraud, no mention was made of his role in the continuing cover-up of the most significant story in the 1980s. Scott Hinckley, John's brother, worked for Standard Oil under Neil Bush's management. Had Hinckley succeeded at killing Reagan, George HW Bush would have become President much faster.

What did Neil Bush do in 1985 after he became a director of the Silverado Banking, Savings & Loan Association that went bust three years later at a cost to taxpayers of at least $1.6 billion? Among other improprieties involving "some of the worst kinds of conflicts of interest" according to federal regulators, he admits that he failed to list his business relationship on a conflict-of-interest form when he got a $100,000 loan from a developer who was a partner in his oil company. That was after he helped approve more than $100 million worth of loans to that business partner. When he wrote "None" on that form, he actually was dependent on one of the thrift's biggest borrowers for the entire $75,000 annual salary that was his main source of income. "I know it sounds a littlefishy," he admitted when he testified that the loan was not to be repaid unless JNB Exploration was successful, which it wasn't. What it was, he said in one of the classic understatements of our time,"was an incredibly sweet deal." One bemused expert observed that it "may have been the first completed loan in financial history in which the creditor defaulted."

While five of Silverado's board members were banned for life from any federally insured institution, Neil Bush was ordered only to "desist from any acts,omissions or practices involving any conflicts of interest, unsafe or unsound practices or breaches of fiduciary duty." In other words, to do nothing more than obey the law. And no order to pay restitution.

Shortly before the 1988 election, when the regulators wanted to close Silverado, a call came from Washington to delay that action for 45 days—until after election day. After George Bush was elected, an order was issued to close the bank. A Treasury Department request to the FBI a year ago for an investigation of White House pressure on federal regulators to delay closing Silverado until after the election received no attention from the president's good friend, Attorney General Dick Thornburgh (whom the voters of Pennsylvania last month temporarily removed from public office once they could get their votes on him).

Neil's mother is praised in puff pieces from Parade to People to the New York Times as a devoted wife of 45 years and mother of "four happy children" who nonetheless seem to be endlessly enmeshed in unhappy and unethical scandals. She is repeatedly quoted as saying that Neil was being "persecuted" and "has done nothing wrong." Her third son is known to suffer from a reading disability believed to be dyslexia, but she let an unexpected cat out of the bag when she told a Parade interviewer: "You know, people who have reading disabilities learn to fake. And Neil really had learned to fake."

Finally, there is Neil's father. "We will not rest until the cheats and the chiselers and the charlatans spend a large chunk of their lives behind the bars of a federal prison," President Bush said on June 22, 1990, in regard to the savings and loan fraud. Read his lips. Then stare at the fact that when FBI field offices requested 425 new agents to help investigate the 21,000 thrift fraud referrals sitting "unaddressed" in their files, the Bush administration approved only half those requests and reduced the funds Congress authorized to spend on prosecutions. You and I may not always agree with Bill Moyers, but he was on target when he said that "George Bush is the most deeply unprincipled man in American politics today. He strikes me as possessing no essential core. There is no fundamental line from which he will not retreat....I have watched him for almost 30 years and have never known him to take a stand except for political expediency."

Don't forget, of course, George W Bush had substantial prior knowledge of the 9/11 attacks as proven by the enormous amount of whistle-blowers and memos the public has now seen exists. Aside from Bush's clear involvement from covering up the attacks being a potential complicit attack from the Intelligence community itself, he has been accused by many to have been possibly involved in its planning.

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