Who are these nuts in the tea party rallies?
We’re talking about the people carrying the offensive signs, making obscene comments and creating altered images of elected officials. Remember, elected officials are those courageous individuals who legitimately go out to the people, tell them their plans for society, ask for help from their fellow citizens and then rest on the will of the people as they vote.
Of course, most of these people have some sense of responsibility. That is opposed to these tea-bagger people with not much education, low level jobs, who never lost the bigotry of their fathers or who became bigoted themselves. Maybe they they were too uneducated to find a good job and too intellectually lazy to get some good training.
It is that same intellectual laziness that we see in those people as opposed to union members. Union members are not overly educated, but they do have discipline–good jobs and understand hard work. Have you noticed that unions campaign–not for the rich, nor Rush Limbaugh nor Glenn Beck (both multi-multi-millionaires)–but for people who need jobs and health care to survive. They work for their fellow Americans.
Tea Party people, whether they know it or not…and we think they do, because they identify themselves as 75% Republican (e.g., supporting the power of rich, white men, especially bigoted rich white men)…they work for EXXON, GE, Walmart, Chevron, the tobacco companies, and the coal companies. Here’s how stupid the Tea Party members are. An organization of theirs in Ohio, has a blog. The “leader” –he says he organized the group (and 54 more groups…i.e., about a hundred people total one would guess)–says the following, in only one blog:
1.) “Congress manipulated the tax code so that 50% of the voters don’t pay any federal income tax.” He says this is pandering to the “lower half.” This guy is obviously a plant by the Republican Party. Otherwise he would know the facts. Namely that 64% of the income in this country is earned by the 20% of the people at the top. So the “lower half” would only be paying a fraction of that 36%–even if we DOUBLED their income tax. We’re talking about working people, not bums…which is what this Neocon plant is implying.
It is so easy to say…”why do we have to pay income taxes and why do I have to pay so much?” And, frankly, some of us wonder if blowing up a country like Iraq and killing half a million people, then building up Iraq again is such a good use of our money. Should we have thought of alternatives to being in Afghanistan at a billion dollars a week since 2002? Do we have a reasonable chance of finding another planet to live on when the nearest one that is remotely possible is 3.6 light years away? Do we need all this corporate welfare so that EXXON who made $45 billion in profits last year can pay NO INCOME TAXES AT ALL?
As far as the low income people not paying much income taxes, everyone who works pays FICA, which is important. The costs of Social Security and Medicare and unemployment are supposed to be paid by this tax..and it is a substantial tax if you only make about $40,000 per year, which is what the average worker makes, which means that the “lower half” makes less than that. So our friend here, is concerned that people making considerably less than $40,000 are being under taxed, while Dick Cheney, who makes several hundred thousand a year while not working, pays less than 23%. Almost no one who makes $1,000,000 per year pays 35% on their income. They average about 23%
The Reagan, Bush and Bush administrations took that FICA money that the people put in for their Social Security and Medicare and spent it on other things. Social Security used to be solvent. But except for Clinton, who actually restored some of the Social Security money that had been taken for other things, all of those administrations spent Social Security on wars and other things, while cutting taxes for the rich, at least Reagan and Bush II.
And finally, let’s not lose sight of the fact that the “government” that this moron is talking about is the Reagan, Bush, Bush II “government.” These are the chumps who cut taxes by more than 50% while spending more. It wasn’t an accident. If everyone gets taxes reduced, in order to give every millionaire a $43,000 per million tax break then the lower end which does pay some taxes, despite this ignoramus’s contention, pays commensurately less, and the lowest pay none. The Reagan tax cuts from 74% down to 28% were much larger than the measly $43,000 per million by Bush II.
2.) His second point is that, somehow, President Obama, is a Socialist because he, like most people on both sides of the political spectrum who are activists, studied Saul Alinsky, the brilliant labor organizer. (Most people know that Alinsky was NOT the founder of Socialism.) He then makes the obligatory Neoconservative comment about Dr.Bill Ayers as somehow associated with the President. He wasn’t but even if he were, let’s see who Ayers is.
Ayers is a (and this is his title) a “Distinguished Professor and Senior University Scholar” at the University of Illinois in Chicago. While he was bombing public buildings in protest against the Viet Nam war, but killing no one, the military was dropping napalm on Viet Nam villages, incinerating thousands and tens of thousands of children. That’s not hyperbole. In fact it may have been more. This is what he was protesting. He was wrong to do it that way. Violence is not the answer, either here or in trying to change the minds of Vietnamese…in which effort we failed. We got into that war for the right reasons, but when we realized it was a mistake, we pushed the accelerator (killing many more civilians) rather than the brake. Ayers was wrong and our military, in which many of us participated, was wrong…looking back on it.
Next the tea party organizer accuses Obama, who cut taxes as soon as he came to office, of allowing the people who have only 36% of the income already of paying too little in taxes. Even if his version were correct…who cares? The Republicans have blocked and would block any increase in taxes on anyone. So, by implication this guy says that the millionaires who went from a marginal top rate of 74% to now only paying 35% (really only 23% like Cheney) pay too much of the tax burden. And, actually those who pay that 35% (net 23%) are the ones who are in the top 1% of the country.
Statistically money and power is skewed much more than that. The top 1% owns, if you subtract individual home ownership, 88% of all U.S. wealth. Only 1% of the population owns 88% of everything, except people’s individual homes. Of course they own many homes. Senator John McCain owns 9 homes. The people this guy supports…the Republicans…have been doing this for 30 years, cutting taxes on the rich, then giving some small tax breaks to the poor, who get poorer, which is why they pay no taxes. He blames “Congress” and Obama. He also blames the media, but praises the Right Wing Fox News organization and the anti-American fascists, like Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck and Anne Coulter.
Like so many of the “tea baggers,” and this guy is representative of so many of these types, he is a Neoconservative Republican who has, yes, fooled some people. But these are people probably, right now, who still have low-level jobs and some kind of minimum health insurance but are also racists. They are still fighting the election while we have already moved on, with national health care, troops coming home from Iraq, ramping up the war in Afghanistan in order to get done what the military thinks we need to do to “win” and get out. We see legislation that this clown would be against (because he is a Neocon) that would put some restrictions on credit card companies, make banks stop gambling with our money, increase infrastructure across the country and finally get us off Arab oil while cleaning up the atmosphere at the same time.
He brings up Jeremiah Wright, the pastor of President Obama’s church when he lived in Chicago as an example of his influences. He doesn’t mention Newton Minow, the distinguished statesman and legal scholar or Dick Durbin or Mayor Daley or John Kerry or Ted Kennedy. No, those people, who were President Obama’s real mentors are too distinguished, successful and mainstream. And then he says this:
3.) Next, he wraps all his phony, foolish accusations in one paragraph.
“Let me ask ya something. Are ya tired of the bailouts? Tired of the spending? Tired of the executive orders? The Court appointments? How about the arrogance? Tired of not being listened to? Tired of the spending? The higher taxes? The lies? The entitlements? Tired of Uncle Sam taking over more and more of your life?”
Where have we heard this kind of rhetoric before? Tea Party imbeciles? This is the kind of meaningless scattergun approach that is more like a childish playground taunt than the considered complaint of an adult.
Let’s take them individually but quickly, because it takes no time at all. Bailouts? Bush $700 billion to biggest Wall Street banks. Hank Paulson, former head of Goldman, Sachs was Bush’s guy who didn’t see the crash coming (supposedly) and begged Congress to bail out the banks. Spending? From 2001 to 2008, largest spending in the history of the country as well as the largest deficit ($4.5 trillion under Bush and total of $11 trillion by the end of the Bush Administration.
Executive orders? What executive orders? There haven’t been any executive orders on anything significant under Obama. Court appointments? Sonja Sotomayor? That’s his complaint? Preposterous. Both Republicans and Democrats thought her to be the appointment of a very distinguished, honored and extremely bright Federal justice. Anyone can make wild, idiotic accusations.
Arrogance? More ridiculous nonsense. If President Obama or if Harry Reid is arrogant, then what was Dick Cheney…Dictator? The person saying that has not been watching the dozens and dozens of times that the Republicans–who vote NO in one solid block on all legislation–have refused to participate in the political process. The evidence is overwhelming against the Republicans. They have filibustered legislation a historically record 112 times, keeping it from being enacted. In order to think Obama is the arrogant one a person must be blind, deaf, dumb or a wholesale bigoted racist. Because that is the only possible reason after the unbelievable effort to bring Republicans into the process. They are the ones acting like 1930s Nazis or Fascists–basically thugs trying to destroy our political process.
Next? Ah yes, higher taxes. This is of course either stupidity or a blatant lie. There have been no higher taxes since Obama. There have been tax cuts, during the stimulus but no tax increases. Only tax cuts, even tax credits…government checks with the stimulus. Next was…entitlements? So what does this guy want to do, cut out Social Security and Medicare? Who is he working for…EXXON? The Koch Oil Family? The Chamber of Commerce or the big health insurance companies, tobacco companies? They are the ones who want to kill entitlements.
The facts are quite clear by now. Big corporations and some of the very wealthy, people who could never spend all the money they already have, want small government. CEOs are CEOs because they love money. Otherwise they would do something else, or take less than the 300-times-average-worker-income salaries that they make. Take your income times 300 and that is what the lowest average major corporate CEO makes. It goes up from there. With many of the very wealthy, including the people like Bernie Madoff and the top executives of the ENRON scam, money is the goal and other people be damned. Often they even ignore stockholders.
What’s next? Ah, yes, here is another good one: Uncle Sam is taking over more and more of your life. Who in their right minds could even figure out what that means? Obviously, this guy is just making things up, one after the other. He must know that ninety percent or higher is a lie. So he is either working for the Neocon Republican Party, or some white supremacist group. Some people might ask why so specifically those two groups? The answer is that only those two groups have motivation to say the things that this guy says, because they are so easily debunked. Uncle Sam is not regulating the banks or the investment groups who bankrupted the country. Uncle Sam is not preventing people from walking around with guns. Not preventing people from shooting school children or college students.
Uncle Sam is not preventing companies from selling fraudulent ARM mortgages to people, then raising the rates beyond their ability to pay. We’ve got plenty of freedom. We’ve got the freedom to join a private army of 14,000 men in North Carolina called Blackwater. How’s that for freedom? Armed men from private companies roaming around your neighborhood who may pull up in a black SUV with weapons they can legally carry but you can’t. How’s that for Uncle Sam staying out of people’s business.
This is typical of these kinds of web sites. The amount of money coming from Corporate America, flowing through the Right Wing media, through Fox News, through Clear Channel radio network, through Citadel Radio, through the Premiere radio syndication company, through vile, vicious commentators whose paychecks come from these very wealthy corporations is staggering. How many radio or television programs could stand losing the sponsorship of 60 national sponsors? Glenn Beck did. So who is paying his salary? He made $32 million last year.
Over a $100 million a year by the very wealthy and top corporations supports Limbaugh, Hannity, Beck, Savage, Ingraham, Liddy and many, many others whose job it is to fight against any thing that government proposes to do for the middle class. Sarah Palin, supporting the Right Wing policies of the corporate-owned Republicans, makes $100,000 a speech. And so far this year she has made $12 million. Her job and the job of the other propagandists is to rally the latent hatred and empower the bigots. Their job is to lie and lie again to the people, until they won’t see all their dreams disappear until it is too late. Their job is to wipe out the middle class. When the middle class goes, Koch Family, the Walton Family and the hundreds of Texas families who inherited the big oil companies will be immensely richer overnight.
It is not a coincidence nor an accident that the Bush Administration saw to it that over 15 million people are out of work. If you make a million dollars a year, you can only benefit from lower wages, desperate workers, reduced prices, and banks that will only loan to those who already have large incomes. President Obama does want to redistribute income. Make no mistake about it. He wants to restore the working middle class. But the big corporations, and the anti-Americans, including Dick Armey’s Right Wing FreedomWorks, have, at every level been paid by filtering the money down even to creeps like this blogging tea bagger to insure that the Middle Class goes away.
