Who Is The Tea Party And What Do They Want?

[Minor Axis]

This is the Tea Party You'll Vote For?

I'm about to subscribe to The Hightower Lowdown a newsletter by Jim Hightower that calls conservatives out. If not familiar and you want to read a fresh voice, take a look. In the September 2011 newsletter he goes after the Tea Party. It's wonderful. And before you reject it off hand, actually read what he is saying. The entire newsletter is readable at the previous link. It might rile you. thumbup Or you can report back how it is all lies. You know who you are.

In just one year, the tea party went from hating billionaires to fronting for them.

Our problem in Washington really comes down to this: We have too many 5-watt bulbs in 100-watt sockets. Take, for example, the astonishing clamoring by tea party congress critters to pass a light bulb bill. Yes, light bulbs! In July, these addle-brained lawmakers actually spent time, energy, and their credibility on stopping the horrible scourge of energy eafficient bulbs from spreading across the country.

This non-issue was literally drummed up by the billionaire Koch brothers (who, by the way, are in the dirty energy business and profit if you have to use more of it to light your home). During the past couple of years, various Koch front groups have been shrieking that nanny-state Democrats have banned Thomas Edison's old, glowing 100-watt incandescent globes. As of next January 1, they wailed, sales of Edison's marvel will be outlawed, replaced by the cold glare emitted by spiral, fluorescent bulbs.
Only, none of that is true...

Meanwhile, America's corporate media have surrendered any semblance of journalistic responsibility in covering the tea party congress. On the one hand, they treat the slightest sneeze from these lawmakers as a powerful storm. For example, on July 27 the Koch-backed astroturf group, the Tea Party Express, held a "Hold the Line" media event on the Capitol grounds. It was promoted as a mass rally to demand that Congress slash trillions of dollars from the federal deficit through spending cuts alone, with no tax hikes on billionaires and corporations.

News cameras were there to record and report every bon mot tossed out by such tea party favorites as Sens. Jim DeMint and Rand Paul. They did not report, however, that fewer than 50 of the expected masses showed up (see a great photo of DeMint at the "rally" speaking, essentially, to no one but the cameras: www.flickr.com/photos/58372028@N00/5981973020).

The media, however, only generalize that tea party Republicans are doing this or that, failing to deliver such useful specifics as: "Hey, the goober you sent to Congress just stabbed you in the back." On July 28, for example, the New York Times ran an important article about the wholesale assault on environmental protections by "freshman Republicans," not even mentioning that these are tea partiers. The members were attaching some 70 pro-polluter amendments to an appropriations bill--including unleashing coal giants to blow up Appalachia's mountains, allowing uranium mining at the Grand Canyon, exempting offshore oil drillers from any accountability for their equipment failures, blocking all agencies from doing research on climate change, letting industrial corporations escape from even reporting their carbon pollution, and stopping the EPA from so much as studying pollution by factory farms.

As a result, the tea party uprising was soon hijacked and transformed into anti-populism. The key player was Dick Armey. A former GOP majority leader in the House, he was a well connected corpo-rate lobbyist for tobacco giants, drug corporations, and others when he noticed reports in early 2009 of some mad-as-hellers brandish- ing tea bags at a few scattered protests. Armey also was head of a Koch-financed political shop called FreedomWorks. "Eureka!"

Then, in August, a defining "Tea Party Manifesto" emerged, asserting that the diffused rebellion had coalesced into a national movement with hard-core right-wing principles. It proclaimed adamant opposition to "government... high taxes... state government employees... [and] a government-defined health insurance plan." Who wrote the manifesto? Not grassroots folks, but Dick Armey and his top staffer at FreedomWorks. The purpose of the movement, declared the document, is "a hostile takeover" of the Republican Party.

On the opening day of Congress last January, beaming members of the new Republican majority entered the House chamber. But also entering triumphantly for the swearing-in ceremonies was David Koch, the multibillionaire laissez-faire extremist who bankrolled much of the tea party Republicans' victory last fall. What symbolism! The members were taking office, but Koch and his corporate peers were taking power.

• In an astonishing case of tone deaf overreach, Rep. Paul Ryan, a tea party endorsee last year and now the House budget chairman, proposed to privatize Medicare and slash its health care payouts to seniors by two-thirds. This would be a windfall for insurance corporations, and it's a top priority of kill-the-government Koch-heads. Ironically, most tea party candidates for Congress in 2010 had bashed "Obamacare" by falsely claiming that it would require "massive cuts" in this very popular, efficient, and effective Medicare program--all but two tea partiers voted with Ryan to destroy it. As one observer said, "it's a measure of just how far off the deep end Republicans have gone." That was no lefty talking, but David Stockman, Ronald Reagan's budget director.
• A few days after voting against granny's health care, the GOP (including all tea partiers) did vote to help one of the neediest among us: Big Oil. With gasoline at $4 a gallon and oil profits soaring, Democrats suggested that the annual $4 billion taxpayer subsidy for the oil giants should be eliminated. "No," said all 241 Republicans--with not a single dissent from tea party lawmakers, who otherwise decry "entitlement" programs.

 

[Alien Allen]

No surprise you would fall in love with Hightower.

He is a radical far left wind bag.

He repeats the mantra that they want to end govt and end regulations, blah, blah, blah.

I guess if you keep telling lies loud enough and long enough it should be no surprise those on the left buy into it.

 

[Minor Axis]

No surprise you would fall in love with Hightower.

He is a radical far left wind bag.

He repeats the mantra that they want to end govt and end regulations, blah, blah, blah.

I guess if you keep telling lies loud enough and long enough it should be no surprise those on the left buy into it.

No surprise you'd sweep this aside as all lies... that is your only plausible defense while crossing your fingers no one questions. lol.

You are disputing that right now in Congress, Republican/Tea Baggers are trying to unravel all environmental regulations as part of a plan to dismantle government?

 

[Alien Allen]

you really think they are trying to unravel ALL environmental regulations?

you really thing the EPA would be abolished?

Come on Minor get a grip

And I never said all Hightower said were lies.

But then you got them filters on again and they are dialed really high.

 

[Minor Axis]

you really think they are trying to unravel ALL environmental regulations?

If they perceive that such regulations cost corporations profits, my guess is they will start by cutting the budgets by what they think they can get away with, initially being happy just to neuter the department, then later will argue the department is ineffective and suggest it be abolished. They have all ready targeted the FDA, the EPA, and attacked efficient light bulbs, for gosh sakes. They really want to turn back the clock to corporate self regulation. Let a thousand people die, and then the market will correct itself. If you listen, you hear the theme of self regulation frequently.

 

[Johnfromokc]

I have been to one Oklahoma TEA Party rally, and my wife has been to two of them. It is a REPUBLICAN group, plain and simple. Not one single populist working class candidate has been sponsored by them. They might not have started out this way, but that is the present reality.

This documentary shows how it started and who funds it. Grassroots? Yeah, right. Here is a trailer and a link to watch the full film below:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uB2d-1PRvO4

Full 54 minute film:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GO_WC0FINmA&feature=player_embedded




http://www.filmsforaction.org/Watch/The_Billionaires_Tea_Party/

 

[All Else Failed]

I'm not sure it really matters if they are genuinely grassroots or not

 

[Johnfromokc]

I'm not sure it really matters if they are genuinely grassroots or not

How so?

 

[MoonOwl]

Any "TeaParty" that doesn't have Ron Paul at it's helm is a corporate copycat takeover. Too bad some of it's 'followers' apparently don't realize that.

I find it quite sad that something that started out so cool has become something so sold-out and status quo.

Ron keeps winning polls and the media keeps talking about Perry & Romney as the front runners. LOL At least it shows their bald-face slant to anyone actually paying real attention. I do believe they think they can decide the election for all of us. Just like every election before this coming one.

 

[Accountable]

The TEA Party is a wholly-owned subsidiary of the Republican wing of The Party. While it started out as a grass-roots movement, it has been absorbed, branded, and commercialized. The organization bears no resemblance to the movement except in name.

..........

 

[Minor Axis]

Media "What about this story from your X about having an open marriage?"
The Grinch "I think media is harmful (when it is critical of me, otherwise if it's used to destroy my enemies, have at it!)".
In response, TEA PARTY-ers give a STANDING OVATION to one of the slimiest, hypocritical politicians of the last three decades?? CNN reports that 45% of The Grinch's votes came from the Tea Party. No wonder this country is so fucked...

 

[Accountable]

Yup. Y'all partisans vote for slime time and time again. You're so used to it that when you see someone who actually has shown a willingness to clean up the slime and follow the rules, you call him an extremist nut and say he's not a viable candidate.

We (America) get what we deserve.

 

[CityGirl]

and the Republican's cried "Give us Barrabus!"

 

[Accountable]

http://www.thedailybeast.com/newswe...ma-s-long-game-will-outsmart-his-critics.html

This guy claims to be a conservative, and gave a kind of back-handed endorsement to Ron Paul last month. Read this article and tell me what you think.

A president in the last year of his first term will always get attacked mercilessly by his partisan opponents, and also, often, by the feistier members of his base. And when unemployment is at remarkably high levels, and with the national debt setting records, the criticism will—and should be—even fiercer. But this time, with this president, something different has happened. It’s not that I don’t understand the critiques of Barack Obama from the enraged right and the demoralized left. It’s that I don’t even recognize their description of Obama’s first term in any way. The attacks from both the right and the left on the man and his policies aren’t out of bounds. They’re simply—empirically—wrong.

 

[Minor Axis]

http://www.thedailybeast.com/newswe...ma-s-long-game-will-outsmart-his-critics.html

This guy claims to be a conservative, and gave a kind of back-handed endorsement to Ron Paul last month. Read this article and tell me what you think.

I've seen the author (Andrew Sullivan) on Bill Mayer. Overall I can't say I always agree with him, but I like the perspective he brings to conversations he is involved in. I only had time to read the first page (heading out the door), but it sounded good to me.