Dennis Hastert -- Televangelist

Stealth "Christian" with a Hasty (and Mean) Heart

Wednesday, December 24, 1998 -- WASHINGTON -- It's 1998, it's Washington, the day the impeachment war is over. For many this means they've survived and will be going home to their districts. But not everyone. An overzealous Republican prosecutor -- and a soldier for the Christian Coalition, Corporal Kenneth "Lachie" Starr, is the victim of a wounded ego and the end of what was a brilliant pre-war career.

He's moved to a M*A*S*H unit to undergo "political brain surgery." As time goes by he begins to recover and watches, in dismay, as other GOP soldiers pack up and head for home. The spin doctors have told him he needs to remain "for observation". Colonel Dennis Hastert, the unit "preacher" takes Sister Paula Jones, the unit head nurse, into his confidence and tells her that the real reason Cpl. Starr can't go home because the wounds he sustained destroyed his mind and his memory is now defective and will shut down in three to four weeks. He asks her to put Starr up with some other soldiers, like Gingrich, DeLay, Canady, Livingston and Barr -- guys she has waiting to go home (for good) -- so that he can spend his last days with friends. But Cpl. Starr wants nothing to do with friends and prefers his own privacy to "idle chat". He's a hard nut to crack and their work is cut out for them to make him as comfortable as possible.

Can Colonel "Hasty Heart" Hastert make his last days comfortable?

You bet!

If the plot sounds familiar, it's from the 1949 English classic film "The Hasty Heart." The film was remade, terribly, for cable in 1993. Like the original "Lachie," Ken Starr, in our plot, finds a friend in the Colonel Hastert and finally rejoins his friends. But our latest "Speaker to Be or Not to Be" may not be as sensitive to American wishes as was the Colonel in the film version, and his confirmatory vote by fellow Repugnicans may be anything but locked.

Dennis Hastert, Chief Deputy Whip of the House Republican Luftwaffe, is popular, yes, and appears moderate to most idiot pundits searching his background. After all, except for the most erudite political observers, Hastert is a nonentity in Congress and perhaps the only man in the House that might have no sordid skeletons in his closet. He couldn't have -- after all 117,000 Americans voted for him in 1998.

Or does he?

Well, that depends on how you define "sordid."

Hastert is a conservative through and through. Conservative enough to be elected speaker by the whippersnapper classes of 1994 and 1996 Republican Freshmen and Sophomore classes. That's conservative.

Here's a start toward understanding Hastert's "hidden political genius"

WASHINGTON -- March 26, 1998

"Rep. J. Dennis Hastert, R-Ill., announced Thursday that all House members and their staffs would be subjected to random drug testing under a rule the Republicans are proposing at a House subcommittee hearing.

"We want to raise the level of awareness in the hearts and minds of the American people," said Hastert, chairman of House Speaker Newt Gingrich's week-old Task Force for a Drug-Free America."

All House members? We could just giggle thinking about Connie Morella trying to urinate in one of those plastic cups -- six time a year -- as Hastert proposed. We laughed out loud visualizing Henry Hyde urinating at all!

Bob Michel, the tired GOP ex-congressional leader, tells us "He is not an ideologue." How then does Hastert get straight "A"s from every "conservative" and Neo-Nazi group in the nation -- and straight "F"s from labor and liberal interests?

Hastert has been around the Illinois delegation for 11 years and represents a swing district in the Windy City 'burbs. He is best known for making compromises and is more comfortable in the back room rather than on C-Span or Meet the Press. Well, so far, so bad. The only smoke-filled room dealing we're aware of is his support for back-room abortions that kill and cripple young girls too frightened to tell their Bible-thumping parents that they're pregnant.

Hastert is no intellect. A former high school teacher, he gained infamy by inking the Republican mantra against universal health care. In short, even though he surrounded himself with kids during his previous life, he now thinks that 12 million children should be denied basic and catastrophic health care if they can't afford to pay.

He also cut the Democrats to shreds when they tried to allow Americans to sue their HMOs for the lousy health care they provide us and our employers in order to afford more expensive executive jets.

On the other hand, he calmed the dogs and got medical savings accounts through the rabid GOP so that mere workers could stay insured as they moved between jobs. Gee, that's kinda liberal, ain't it?

Make no mistake, Hastert is not a man who cares about the average American, and especially Americans who speak with foreign accents. It was Hastert who put together the plot to overturn Democrat attempts to allow the 2000 census to count aliens and ghetto dwellers by statistical sampling methods so those too afraid to talk to an ever more fascist government wouldn't be undercounted this decade. What this will result in is an undercount of those in need of the most help from the Federal government, and some say will result in crippling big and medium sized city welfare departments.

Worse yet, Hastert is a self-described evangelical Christian. If you want to know what that might mean, take a look at Pat Robertson, Paula Jones' legal team, Ralph Reed, Dr. James Dobson, and every moralizing hypocrite on earth and you might get some idea of where Dennis' Hasty Heart really is.

Ones thing's for sure: he wants to lower taxes by cutting social programs, but loves to spend money on more B1 and B2 bombers. He is pro-life, anti-abortion, anti-woman, and loves his role as budget balancer on the backs of the working poor.

His reward? "Life Memberships" in the National Right to Life Committee, the Christian Coalition, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the National Rifle Association and the American Conservative Union. Klan member David Duke only rates him in the mid-80s and we still haven't heard from the American Nazi Party.

And don't worry about Hastert cleaning up the latest toxic dump in your backyard stream. The League of Conservation voters scored him a whopping 13 out of 100. The ACLU gave him a zero. And the AFL-CIO "lost their cookies" at the mention of his name. So, if you love the environment, believe in the Constitution -- as it was really written -- and work for a large company, forget it. You're horse meat.

Hastert was one of the ideologues (sorry, Mr. Michel) that voted to override President Clinton's veto on partial birth (remember when they were referred to as late term) abortion. Then the genius voted to keep contraceptives away from young girls without Mommy and Daddy's permission so as to guarantee an increase in unwanted pregnancies and unwanted children -- none of whom Denny Boy was willing to adopt. He also fought hard to stop FDA approval of the RU-486, the "morning after" pill, and tried to stop federal employee health plans covering contraceptives. His attitudes on birth control are an obvious sign of the sort of mental feebleness and constant use of illogic that would knock a moron for a loop -- and were largely adopted by the GOP.

You can also count on Hastert to try again to destroy the National Endowment for the Arts. The last time he and his cronies attempted it, Hastert wanted to move Arts money to school voucher programs to insure the total, rather than almost-total, destruction of inner-city public schools and simultaneously deny poor Americans any access to things like drama, traveling museum shows, art, music and culture of any kind.

If you have any doubt that Hastert makes Gingrich look like a socialist, how about his leading the charge against clean-needle exchanges for addicts -- thereby signing their death warrants and the death warrants of anyone who shares a bed or a syringe with them? We're sure Hastert merely wanted to save corporate taxpayers the money for jailing them and thought it was cheaper to treat them for AIDS and a variety of other dirty needle diseases.

Yeah, that must have been his logic, a kind of transfer of funds to the HMOs!

Ralph Reed, according to the AP, said that Hastert 'is "reliable" but not defined by the religious right' nor its champion.

Well, if he isn't, we'd like some proof. Maybe he's against the death penalty for shoplifting?

There you have it, my friends.

So when Tim Russert and Sam Donaldson start to gush and fawn all over Hastert and try to tell you he's a "fine man," just remember what he stands for -- Good Ole Southern White-Boy Traditions, like lives ruined or ended by botched abortions, warehousing marijuana users in overstuffed federal prisons, the lowest possible minimum wage, and the tallest building in the world -- owned, of course, by your nearest HMO.

If you're smart, and represented by a Republican member, you'll get out your little pen and paper and write your congressman. Tell him he better not vote for "Hasty" Hastert or you'll vote a straight Democrat ticket in 2000.

As they say in Brooklyn: "Enough already!"

- Mac MacArthur

105th Congress

• Voted for the "Hastert Amendment" to the FY 98 Labor, HHS Appropriations bill that would have permanently banned federal funding for needle exchange programs.
• Voted for HR 3717 which permanently bans federal funding for local needle exchange programs. Voted for the Hefley Amendment to the Commerce, Justice, State Appropriations bill (H.R. 4276). The Hefley Amendment guts the President's executive order that prohibits discrimination based on sexual orientation in the federal civilian work force.
• Voted for the Riggs amendment to the FY 99 VA-HUD Appropriations bill. This amendment prohibits San Francisco from using VA-HUD funds to implement its entire city ordinance against discrimination in city contracts.
• Voted for the Hilleary Amendment to the VA-HUD Appropriations bill. This amendment takes $21 million from the Housing Opportunities for People With AIDS program.
• Voted for the Largent Amendment to the DC Appropriations bill (H.R. 4380). The Largent Amendment denies any couple in the District of Columbia not related by blood or marriage from jointly adopting a child.
• Voted for the Tiahrt Amendment to the DC Appropriations bill (H.R. 4380). The Tiahrt Amendment prohibits any funds from being used by the District of Columbia for needle exchange programs.
• Voted against the Moran Amendment to the DC Appropriations bill (H.R. 4380). The Moran Amendment would have only denied the District of Columbia from using federal funds for needle exchange programs, not all funds as does the Tiahrt Amendment.

Hastert also further gutted Welfare -- H.R. 3734;
limited rights of habeas corpus -- H.R. 2703;
played with Prison Litigation Reform Act -- H.R. 3019;
tried to make Flag Desecration a deadly sin -- H.J. Res 79;
got into Internet Censorship -- H.R. 1555;
voted down Campaign Finance Reform -- H.R. 3820;
preached on Defense of Marriage -- H.R. 3396;
jiggled on HIV and the Military -- S. 1124;
Denied Benefits to Immigrants -- H.R. 2202;
embraced the Neo-Nazi "National ID Card" -- H.R. 2202;
voted against Medical Records Privacy -- H.R. 3103;
erected on Counter-terrorism - H.R. 2703;
backed "English Only" H.R. 123;
and didn't think any prison sentence was too harsh -- Unfair Sentencing H.R. 2259.

And, OH THE MONEY!!!

Hastert raised almost 42 times as much as his opponent for his 1998 re-election bid ­ taking in just over $1 million and spending almost $945,000. That was about 50 percent higher than the average of $626,000 spent by House winners in the 1998 elections.

Hastert's contribution profile largely reflects the industries that lobby the House Commerce Committee on which he served during the 105th Congress. The committee oversees health care, telecommunications policy, and electricity markets. The two leading industries giving to his 1998 campaign were health professionals ($62,200) and insurance ($59,990). Hastert chaired the House Working Group on Health Care Quality, a Republican task force that produced the GOP's counterpart to the Democrats' "Patient's Bill of Rights."

Other top contributors to Hastert's campaign were electric utilities ($48,099), telephone utilities ($43,480) and commercial banks ($34,675).

Bank One Corp. was his single biggest donor. The company's PAC and two subsidiary PACs gave a total of $13,500. Four other business PACs -- BellSouth, Ameritech, the American Medical Association, and Caterpillar Inc. -- gave $10,000 or more, as did the Operating Engineers Union.

Overall, Hastert collected just over $600,000 in PAC contributions during 1997-98, about 60 percent of his total revenues.

-- compiled by Mac MacArthur