The Tea Party Chronicles
Raising Cain
Herman Cain, the former CEO of Godfather’s Pizza is rolling in dough and rising in the polls. A new national survey of primary voters by the Wall Street Journal and NBC News has the Hermanator in first place ahead of Mitt Romney and all the other Tea Party types. The question is whether working families will support Cain’s plan for a national sales tax to pay for lower taxes for bankers and billionaires? I don’t think so.
Don’t Know Much about History
The Tea Party takes its name from the Americans who dumped British tea into Boston Harbor to protest taxation without representation in 1773. The Tea Partyers profess great reverence for the founders but the Tea Party candidates are clueless about the founding of our nation. Tuesday Rick Perry placed the American Revolution in the 16th century which would have given our founders only a few years to get things rolling after Columbus came to town. Previously, Michele Bachmann described the founders as abolitionists, a portrayal which would have greatly surprised the hundreds of slaves owned by George Washington and Thomas Jefferson. By the way, Representative Bachmann, the Boston Tea Party, like the battles of Lexington and Concord, was in Massachusetts, not New Hampshire.
Greed is Good
Greed is good should be the motto for the Party of Tea, the party formerly known as the GOP. Tuesday, Every POT member of the United States Senate opposed the president’s proposal to reduce payroll taxes and provide tax breaks for small businesses which hire people without jobs. Why did the POT spit the bit on the issue that Americans care most about? Because Democrats would pay for the tax cuts for working families and small businesses by making millionaires and billionaires pay their fair share of taxes. Greed is good for the Tea Partyers and their billionaire buddies who bankroll their big budget campaigns. Because the POT blocks action in Washington on jobs, thousands of Americans occupy Wall Street and streets across the country to protest corporate greed. Will the numerical advantage that the 99 percent have triumph over the money muscle of the 1 percent. Yes, it will.
ObamaCares
Time magazine released a new national survey yesterday that shows Barack Obama beating all his POT challengers. The secret of the president’s success is Obama’s caring. A clear majority (57 percent) of likely voters believe that Barack Obama cares about the problems of people like themselves. It’s not surprising that Americans feel that the president cares about them when the Party of Tea goes out of its way to cut Medicare and Social Security benefits for seniors but fights to the death to protect federal tax freebies for bankers, billionaires, hedge fund managers, and corporate jet setters.
It’s about Time
The same Time magazine national survey indicates that two of every three Americans believe the rich should pay more taxes. Which explains why more than half (54 percent) of the likely voters have a favorable opinion of the protesters against corporate greed while only one of four people (27 percent) have a favorable opinion of the Tea Party. The Tea Party has been replaced by the new kid on the block. Far be it for me to give advice to Republicans but they better quickly take back their party from the extremists before voters dump the old GOP into the harbor with the Tea Party.
By: Brad Bannon, U. S. News and World Report, October 13, 2011
Regressive Politics: Why Herman Cain Scares Me
When Herman Cain said he was on the GOP panel of candidates for the presidency for comic relief, I laughed, because I thought “this guy’s a joke.” But he isn’t. The polls show he is gaining more and more acceptance and popularity among those on the right; and, the facts show, this man is dangerous.
Let’s start with Mr. Cain’s racism. I believe he is a bigot.
From saying that a Muslim would have to go through certain requirements to ensure he or she isn’t a terrorist to work for him, to stating that communities should be able to ban mosques from their cities and towns, Cain has made several bigoted statements.
I am sure that the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. would roll in his grave listening to Mr. Cain’s remarks. And Mr. Cain forgets where he came from. He grew up in the segregated, racist South. Has Mr. Cain looked in the mirror lately?
Or how about glancing at our Constitution? Dr. King gave his life for to ensure the civil rights for all Americans, Muslims included. And how about that First Amendment? You remember that one, something about religious freedom for all?! Hmmm.
Having a Muslim prove he isn’t a terrorist is as bigoted as requiring a black man (like Cain) prove he isn’t lazy, living on welfare, and father to numerous children with different mothers. Both are disgusting negative stereotypes and are not true.
Oh yes, I know, Mr. Cain apologized to the Muslim community; like Mel Gibson apologized to the Jewish community. An apology doesn’t change one’s heart nor one’s prejudices.
And speaking of bigotry, how about toward his own community, African-Americans?
His 9-9-9 plan makes me want to call 9-1-1!
This plan benefits the rich and places the tax burden on the middle and lower income families in America; the African-American community would be hit especially hard.
Let’s look at a few of the problems with the 9-9-9 plan, shall we?
- Capital Gains: This would ensure that a large portion of the rich’s income would essentially go untaxed. Middle and lower income families do not have the resources to invest and benefit from this tax break.
- Cutting the federal budget by 70 percent: The federal government is one of the largest employers in the United States. How many people would lose their jobs as a result of this?
- Does the 9 percent apply to purchasing homes? Stocks? What about businesses?
- Where’s the math to prove that this would work?
- When it comes to sales tax, this would amount to a tax increase for the middle, lower, and poorer income levels in America.
Herman Cain says on his website that he has top economists and well known people who back the 9-9-9 plan and can speak to its merit; yet he refuses to list them.
A vote for Herman Cain, in my opinion, is a vote for moving backward. Back before our civil rights laws, perhaps even before the First Amendment, as Mr. Cain has repeatedly dodged the question regarding former Gov. Mitt Romney’s Mormon religion being a cult or not Christian.
The bottom line is, if you want to be commander in chief of this country, you need to be able to make decisions to benefit all of this country: black, white and yes, Muslim. Oh, and Mr. Perry, that means Mormons as well.
By: Leslie Marshall, U. S. News and Woeld Report, October 12, 2011
Hank Williams Jr. Doesn’t Quite Get The First Amendment
ESPN will no longer air Hank Williams Jr.’s song at the beginning of Monday Night Football, it was announced today. Will MNF survive? Ha, of course it will. Nobody cares about that song. ESPN could play literally any song in the world before Monday Night Football, and the experience would be just as good. Please just don’t use this song. We can’t take it anymore.
Amusingly enough, both ESPN and Williams took credit for the split. ESPN, in a statement, said, “We have decided to part ways with Hank Williams Jr. We appreciate his contributions over the past years. The success of Monday Night Football has always been about the games and that will continue.” Williams, meanwhile, posted this note on his website, once again capitalizing whatever words he felt deserved capitalization.
“After reading hundreds of e-mails, I have made MY decision. By pulling my opening Oct 3rd, You (ESPN) stepped on the Toes of The First Amendment
Freedom of Speech, so therefore Me, My Song, and All My Rowdy Friends are OUT OF HERE. It’s been a great run.”
Williams makes a common mistake here. His “First Amendment Freedom of Speech” was not “stepped on” by ESPN. Williams was and is free to make whatever Hitler analogies he so desires. He can write a new country song called “President Obama Is Just Like Hitler” if he wants to and play it at his next concert. But ESPN isn’t bound by the First Amendment to associate with him. The First Amendment doesn’t protect anyone from the repercussions of their own stupidity.
By: Dan Amira, Daily Intel, October 6, 2011
“Occupy Wall Street” Picks Up Where The Tea Party Sold Out
The federal bank bailout masterminded by President George W. Bush and his Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson ignited the grassroots anger that created the Tea Party. But the populist group betrayed its roots when it went corporate in 2009 after the friendly takeover by Rupert Murdoch and the Koch brothers. The Tea Party sellout may be the reason why the group’s negative ratings have doubled in national polls in the last year.
The Tea Party had every right to be angry in the fall of 2008. The finance industry spent $64 million lobbying Washington in 2008, and the bankers and hedge fund managers got a great return on their investment. The feds came up with $770 billion dollars to bail out the bankers and billionaires who created the economic meltdown that led to millions of Americans losing their jobs and then their homes.
Americans were justifiability horrified at the single biggest federal welfare payment of all time. Not only did the feds bailout out Wall Street but they failed to do anything to help the millions of Americans who lost everything they had because of corporate wrongdoing. Meanwhile, Citibank used $15 million of their fed bailout bucks to buy the naming rights to the new stadium built for the New York Mets.
National surveys show that large majorities of Americans favor ending federal tax freebies for bankers, billionaires, hedge fund managers, and corporate jet setters. The public also wants to end tax giveaways for the oil companies and the Benedict Arnold corporations that send American jobs overseas. But few people in Washington listen, the Tea Party punted, and thousands of courageous Americans are taking to the streets.
To add fuel to the fire, the Bank of America announced this week that it would charge consumers $5 a month to use their own debit cards. After the Tea Party became a subsidiary of corporate America, it was just a matter of time until somebody rushed into the vacuum to channel the hostility that exists towards big business.
By: Brad Bannon, U. S. News and World Report, October 6, 2011
Mitt Romney, The Quiet Extremist
At the last GOP presidential debate, Americans of all political persuasions were shocked when the audience loudly booed Stephen Hill, an openly gay soldier who sent in a video question from Iraq about the repeal of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell. We were even more shocked when it dawned on us that not a single candidate on stage was going to step up to defend Hill or even thank him for his service to the country. Rick Santorum, the only candidate to respond to Hill’s question, accused him of receiving “special privileges” for “sexual activity” and called the new policy that allows him to serve openly “tragic.” None of his fellow candidates contradicted him.
Similar scenes unfolded in earlier debates, when crowds cheered Texas’ record breaking number of executions and applauded the idea of an uninsured man dying of a treatable illness.
These reactions hopefully say little about the average GOP voter — most decent people of any party recoil at the idea of insulting an active servicemember or of a sick neighbor dying — but the candidates’ silence spoke volumes. Today’s Republican presidential candidates, even the supposed moderates, live in fear of crossing a small base that has developed an alternate view of reality and a dangerously skewed notion of liberty. Chief among these is Mitt Romney, who started his career as an East Coast moderate but now knows that extremists are the only thing that can keep him from the GOP nomination. The former moderate is now, paradoxically, the most beholden to the extremist fringe.
Romney is still trying to have it both ways — to retain what little is left of his “moderate” persona while cheerfully appeasing the most extreme elements of the corporate and religious Right. He is banking on being able to get through the primary with both of his personas intact. Unfortunately for him, it’s not working.
In fact, Romney’s eagerness to appease has placed him solidly in the far-right — and increasingly unpopular –Tea Party camp of the GOP.
Romney wears his pro-corporate politics with the pride of a Koch brother. He told an audience in Iowa recently that “corporations are people” — a bold statement, even for a multi-millionaire who made his fortune partly on the profits from outsourcing American jobs. And he hasn’t backed down from his claim — in fact, he keeps repeating it.
Romney may think that corporations are people, but he seems to think that they deserve more care and concern from the government than working, tax-paying, family-feeding citizens. His economic plan calls for the vast deregulation of financial markets, whose lack of constraints in the Bush era led to the catastrophic economic collapse from which we’re still digging our way out. In contrast with his policies as governor of Massachusetts, where he helped close a budget gap by eliminating $110 million in corporate tax loopholes, Romney has now signed a pledge rejecting all efforts to raise revenues by making the wealthiest pay their fair share in income tax or closing loopholes that help companies ship jobs overseas. Instead, he has called for reducing corporate income tax, which is already so low and riddled with loopholes that some mammoth companies didn’t pay any last year. When a debate moderator asked the GOP candidates if they would accept a budget compromise that included $10 in spending cuts for every $1 in revenue increases, Romney joined all the others in saying he would reject it.
It’s perhaps not unexpected that Romney has joined the Tea Party herd on fiscal policy — after all, he’s a wealthy man himself and stands to lose a little if Bush’s tax breaks for the wealthy and other hand-outs to the most fortunate are rescinded. But he has also, in more of a stretch, wholeheartedly embraced the social extremism of the Religious Right.
Romney’s still distrusted by many on the Religious Right — he was for abortion rights before he was against them, once promised to establish “full equality for American gay and lesbian citizens” and distributed pink fliers at a gay pride parade, and, of course is a Mormon. But that hasn’t kept him from kowtowing to the Religious Right leaders who still hold enormous sway in the Republican party.
In the most recent illustration yet of Romney’s quiet acceptance of the Radical Right, he is scheduled to speak at next week’s far-right Values Voter Summit, a Washington get-together sponsored by designated hate groups the American Family Association and the Family Research Council. At the event, Romney will take the stage immediately after AFA spokesman Bryan Fischer, a man whose record of outspoken bigotry is so shocking he would be an anathema to any reasonable political movement. Fischer wants to deport American Muslims, says gays are responsible for the Holocaust and claims Native Americans are “morally disqualified” from controlling land. He also claims that non-Christian religions don’t have First Amendment rights – among the faiths he has singled out as exceptions to the free exercise clause is Romney’s own Mormonism. I have called on Romney to distance himself from Fischer’s bigotry before handing him the microphone on Saturday… but don’t hold your breath.
Participants at the Values Voter Summit rarely check their less savory values at the door. At last year’s event, which Romney also attended, FRC president Tony Perkins managed to simultaneously insult both gay troops and several allied nations by insisting that nations that allow gay people to serve openly in the military “participate in parades, they don’t fight wars to keep the nation and the world free.” Neither Romney nor any of the other GOP luminaries present spoke up in response.
At the Values Voter Summit, as in the GOP debates, Mitt Romney will doubtless attempt to slide under the radar, never openly condoning extremism, but never contradicting it either. As he emerges as the GOP frontrunner, it needs to be asked: is Mitt Romney more moderate than his fellow candidates, or is he just better at strategically keeping his extremism quiet?
By: Michael B. Keegan, President: People for The American Way, October 4, 2011
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