Name ONE thing the Tea Party stands for that helps People more than Corporations
August 30, 2010

 
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Beck's white rallyLast Saturday was Glenn Beck’s “I Have a Scheme” rally (credit to Wonkette for the pun). Though it was dubbed “not a political rally”, no question that the 99% white crowd consisted almost entirely of Tea Party teanuts with politics on their mind. The theme of the rally was “Restoring Honor”. Restoring honor? This is new. From what TO what? President Obama has been “dishonorable”? To whom? The troops? No, if there is one thing Conservatives support him on, it’s the war. Is he “dishonoring” the office of President? There hasn’t even been a hint of scandal coming out of this administration. Has America itself lost its honor? Why do Beck’s followers hate America? What did America do? Elect Democrats following Hurricane Katrina, $4/gallon gas, two incompetently managed wars, and a looming economic crisis? In the end, Beck’s rally was a LOT of whining, whose ONLY solution was to “hand it over to God” (apologies to “Billy ‘Sol’ Hargis”). Assuming that America, in their tiny minds, “lost its honor” upon the election of Democrats, then clearly, the way out of this mess is theocracy! Fox “news” Sunday’s host Chris Wallace asked his lone guest Beck about calls for a “Beck/Palin” ticket in 2012. Can you imagine a stupider presidential ticket? The Quitter & The Crier. They’d certainly win the “mental patient” vote, which would include a not-insignificant number of teanuts.

As I noted two weeks ago in my continuing list of “reasons to keep Republicans from regaining power”, the Tea Party came out against “Net neutrality” and in favor of corporate restrictions on Internet traffic, arguing that “Net neutrality”… what we have NOW… “would result” in increased government control over the Internet. I repeat, we have Net-neutrality NOW, and HAVE had it since the opening of the Internet in 1993, so using future-tense to describe what “would result” if we passed net neutrality is beyond ignorant. Tea-baggers hate the government and want turn as much of it over to corporate America as possible. Health care? “Death Panels!” Social Security? “Privatize it!” Ditto for the military. Then they print up their “Obama/Hitler” signs and complain about the government bailing out Wall Street… which destroyed the economy playing fast and loose with our money thanks to a decade of deregulation that Tea-Partiers think we need MORE of.

So I find myself wondering (as do you, I’m sure), “What exactly does the Tea Party stand FOR” that helps the bottom and middle 90% of Americans more than the top 2%? We know what they are against: anything & everything involving the government. How is that agenda any different from that of the GOP?

Well, first off, the teanut agenda varies mostly from the GOP’s agenda primarily in their extremism on all fronts. Think of a Conservative trait and multiply it by a factor of two (or more). Republicans want to mix politics & religion. I think most Tea-Partiers… who claim the mantle of “true Americans” while champing at the bit to run the Bill of Right through a Word Processor… think an all-out theocracy wouldn’t be such a bad idea. One need look no further than Nevada’s “Sharron Angle”… (who is SO nutty I don’t even bother to include her latest insane comment in the weekly link-list because it would be beating a dead horse) who thinks “prohibition” was a good idea and “gambling” is evil, all while asking to represent the home of Las Vegas and Reno, campaigning on “lost jobs” (in a state that depends heavily on people who love to drink & gamble to provide jobs). Good luck with that Sharron. If Nevadans elect her, they deserve what they get.

I’ve talked to a lot of Conservatives (no avoiding it in Texas), and their unshakable belief is that “the rich create the jobs”, so it is our duty to make them rich enough to expand their businesses and start creating jobs. But as I’ve said repeatedly, DEMAND creates jobs, not tax cuts for the rich. Conservatives don’t get this. Teanuts REALLY don’t get this.

A little “thought experiment”:

If I gave a millionaire a huge tax cut hoping he’ll use it to make “widgets”… that no one can afford… do you think he’s going to start making widgets, or do you think he’s going to sock the money away for a rainy (rainier) day?

If I gave a bunch of poor people tax cuts (or “refund checks” like Bush did), hoping they’ll start buying the widgets they need, there might be a slight increase in demand that leads to increased production and (eventually) more jobs. But as we saw under Bush, when times are bad, most of that money will go to pay off debts for past purchases, or socked away for rougher times ahead. Only a fraction actually feeds back into the economy.

If, instead, THE GOVERNMENT places an order for 100 million widgets, factories will start hiring to produce them, putting people back to work. “BUT”, Conservatives will argue, “the government can’t be their lone customer forever”. True, but if you build “high-tech widgets” for which there’s a global demand, soon the rest of the world will be your customer (sign my petition).

Conservatives call this “Socialism”. Teanuts call this “Marxism”. Neither are right. This is “Keynesian economics”. Capitalism-101. Think of Sharron Angle (the teanut running for the Senate in Nevada) and the situation I described earlier (a state heavily dependent upon casinos for employment). A perfect metaphor here would be like trying to save the casinos by giving them huge tax cuts (which is EXACTLY what the Republican-Plan would do). That’s not going to bring customers through the door. How many Blackjack dealers must Vegas casinos hire to man empty tables before it “trickles down” into jobs for the average person?

Conservatives controlled both the WH & Congress for six years from 2001 to 2006. They CUT taxes for the rich, SO WHERE ARE THE JOBS? Not only did it NOT create jobs, but it exploded the deficit and tanked the economy. When you ask “why”, they blame 9/11 (their universal “get out of jail free” card under Bush). If tax-cuts for the “rich” couldn’t stop the economic meltdown that occurred over the next five years on their watch, what are the chances they’ll solve the EVEN-BIGGER economic crisis we have NOW? Tax cuts create jobs? Really? The Bush tax cuts haven’t expired yet! They don’t end till the end of this year. So where are the jobs? The Tea-Party’s Grand Marshall Dick Armey believes it is “the uncertainty of not knowing what their taxes will be like after this year” that is discouraging corporations from spending money and creating jobs. So “we must extend the Bush Tax Cuts” to end that “uncertainty”. Uncertainty? What uncertainty? President Obama has always vowed to end the Bush tax cuts, and the Democratic Congress agrees. The only people creating “uncertainty” is the GOP. Maybe THEY should get on board with Democrats to end that “uncertainty”. That would make things a whole lot more “certain” than betting on winning majorities large enough to over-ride a presidential veto. If “uncertainty” is all that stands in the way of an economic recovery, it’s the GOP’s fault, not ours.

Teanuts also question Global Climate Change in greater numbers than even the GOP, and don’t want the government spending a dime on it. Climate Change deniers come in two stripes: those who actually believe GCC is indeed a possibility, but fighting it “interferes with Gods Plan” that we were given permission (according to the Bible) to use up all the Earth’s resources, at which point we would see the “end of the world” and the second-coming of Christ.

And then there is the faction that thinks GCC is “a hoax” perpetrated by “environmentalists” (like those kooks over at NASA) to… uh… because they… uh… well, I’m not quite sure why. I’ve pondered that question hundreds of times in my head. Just what exactly do they hate about “the environmentalists agenda”? Is it that they want everyone to give up their SUV and drive more fuel-efficient cars that reduce our dependence on oil from countries that hate us, all while making our air cleaner to breath? Environmentalists want to make you sort your trash so that we stop tossing everything in the garbage and filling up our landfills? Environmentalists want us to spend millions of dollars developing the technologies of the future for which there will be a global demand, promising millions of new well-paying high-tech jobs of the future? What exactly do “hoaxers” think is so bad about “the environmentalists agenda”?

A few years back, I dared anyone to name a single Republican “policy” that improved the lives of the middle-class more than “the rich”. Grand Prize: a DVD of their choosing. After two years, the best response I got was the sinking of a decommissioned barge in the Pacific to create an artificial coral reef. I disallowed the answer, 1) because it wasn’t GOP “policy” to create artificial reefs, and 2) because you can’t quantitatively prove the reef benefits the middle-class over the rich. After about a year with no winners, I ended the contest.

I’m thinking of a new, revised contest: If anyone can name ONE thing the Tea Party stands for that the GOP doesn’t, that puts the interests of the general population ahead of Corporations… AND prove why… I’ll buy you that DVD. Post your answer in the Comments section below.
 

 
This weeks list of reasons to keep Republicans from regaining power:

  1. NY’s Tea-bagger candidate for governor believes we should convert “underused” State prisons into “Welfare Camps” for the homeless and people on public assistance, saying, “Instead of handing out the welfare checks, we’ll teach people how to earn their check. We’ll teach them personal hygiene…”. Could these guys BE any more insulting? If you lose your job and can’t get another one, you must be a bum, lacking in personal hygiene & social skills. Interesting suggestion coming from the crowd that decries the “Nanny state” and “government intrusion in personal lives”. Remember their paranoia over “FEMA Concentration Camps”?
  2. GOP candidate for TX-17, Bill Flores, repeatedly refused to say if he’d support House Minority Leader John Boehner to be reappointed to his leadership role if he (Flores) is elected. But before anyone praise Flores for his disapproval of Boehner, know it is only because Flores… an anti-government Tea Party favorite… thinks Boehner isn’t wingnutty enough. Only Republicans would elect “anti-government” people to run the government. That’s like electing an arsonist to be the Fire Chief.
  3. Last week it was New Hampshire. This week we learned all four GOP candidates in New Mexico are Global Warming deniers, believing instead that it is “scientists engaged in a conspiracy by to ruin our economy” (those evil anti-economy scientists!) Have I mentioned lately these people are nuts?
  4. Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH) tells a Town Hall attendee that if the GOP retakes the House, all they will do for the next two years is “frame the 2012 election”. Not fix unemployment, the housing crisis, Wall Street or health care reform; they’ll simply use that time to focus on the next big election. Remember Michele Bachmann (R-MN) said all they should do if they win “is issue subpoenas” for the next two years, while Peter King (R-NY) refuses to say anything at all prior to the election about what they will do, for fear of making it “a campaign issue”.
  5. Texas Governor Rick “secede from the Union” Perry, now wants the Federal Government to rescue his state from growing violence just across the border in Mexico’s drug war. After capitalizing on bad-mouthing the Federal Government for the past year as a cheap political ploy, as soon as reality sets in, Perry is first in line to beg it for help.
  6. When asked to name something… anything… besides “tax cuts” that Republicans can do to improve the economy, the only thing Mike Pense (R-IN) can come up with is more tax cuts for the rich.
  7. Rep. Eric Cantor (R-VA) assures fill-in host Laura Ingraham that if Republicans retake control of Congress, “Absolutely” he pledges “to repeal ObamaCare… which prevents insurers from denying people coverage based upon “pre-existing conditions” and stops “lifetime caps” on how much coverage insurers will pay if you get sick.
  8. Texas Senator John Cornyn thinks people are starting “to look back on the Bush Administration’s economic principles ‘with a little more fondness'”. Do you NEED any more evidence these people, not only live in their own little dream-world, but wouldn’t hesitate to re-implement the economic policies that got us here?

Be afraid. Be very afraid. And get to the polls in November.

 

 

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August 30, 2010 · Admin Mugsy · 4 Comments - Add
Posted in: Economy, Election, Energy Independence, Environment, Healthcare, Money, Politics, Right-Wing Insanity

4 Responses

  1. Grant in Texas - August 30, 2010

    Much of big and small business in this nation is Republican-owned. The stock market is recovering, businesses are now sitting on some huge profits, YET, they are not hiring. This “uncertainty” meme is the excuse given but is it really about letting Americans suffer just a little bit longer until after the Republicans possibly take over this November and November 2012? Who cares about so many hurting as long as the rich here can continue their opulent lifestyles? We had all of these “problems” under Bush but the pasty-white teabaggers were SILENT until we put a black man in the White House. RACISM is the big elephant in the room, I do believe.

    It’s not “socialism” either as Germany is much more socialist than we are now. The REICH-wing here attempts to scare us with the “socialism” meme, too. Yet Germany has a strong economy because they still make and sell/export many things like four of the world’s best automobiles, Mercedes, BMW, Audi, and Volkswagen. Germans also manufacture machinery for the rest of the world. Our greedy American corporations instead have outsourced manufacturing to “slave” laborers in China, India, SE Asia, Pacific basin, and Latin America. Worse yet, these American corporations hide their huge profits in offshore banks to avoid paying taxes and helping to reduce our nation’s debt.

  2. Mugsy - August 30, 2010

    Randi Rhodes (nearly) made a great point on her show today:

    What do you think the reaction would of been on the Right if Democrats had held a rally suggesting the United States had “lost its honor”?

  3. Name One Thing the Tea Party Stands For That Helps People More … - August 30, 2010

    […] the Senate in Nevada) and the situation I described earlier (a state heavily dependent upon …More Here var a2a_config = a2a_config || {}; a2a_localize = { Share: "Share", Save: "Save", Subscribe: […]

  4. Ebon - August 31, 2010

    I’m afraid that the Teabaggers have now decided that Keynesian economics don’t work either (and they are busily rewriting the history of the Great Depression to make that case). Besides which, Teabaggers don’t think at all, they just regurgitate whatever the right’s carny barkers have told them to say.

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