Tea Party and their Corporate Paymasters and Wealth Elites.

Sorry Tea Partiers -- The GOP Only Cares About Their Corporate Paymasters and Wealthy Elites Like the Kochs By Jim Hightower, AlterNet Posted on January 20, 2011, Printed on January 30, 2011 http://www.alternet.org/story/149585/ Early this month, when John Boehner was sworn in as the new speaker of the House of Representatives, he tipped his hat to the teabag activists across the country who had fueled the Republican takeover of the chamber last fall. He almost choked up as he promised to "give the government back to the American people." Boehner was not choking back tears, however, he literally was choking on the flagrant hypocrisy of his words. You see, the people he's giving the government back to are not tea partiers, but the rapacious corporate lobbyists who ran the Congress during the years when former Majority Leader Tom DeLay ran the show. Apparently, the name "Boehner" is derived from an ancient Teutonic word meaning: business as usual. Throughout his two decades in Congress, the new speaker has been a reliable ally of corporate interests. In recent years, he has formed unusually tight legislative, political and even social ties with a group of lobbyists for such giants as Citigroup, Coors, Goldman Sachs, Google and R.J. Reynolds. Of course, most congressional leaders work with lobbyists, so that's not odd, but to have them also be his closest friends and social chums -- well, you just want to say, "For heaven's sake, Johnnie, get a life!" These influence peddlers are now the speaker's inner circle, guiding his legislative decisions. Even before last November's election, Boehner had a private meeting with a flock of top corporate lobbyists to help shape "a new GOP agenda." Forget the tea party. No tea party operative is a Boehner insider. It's the corporate agenda that Republican leaders will be pushing, and to make sure that it stays on track, Boehner has hired a top corporate lobbyist to be his policy director. So, while tea party regulars are giddy with the thought that their movement took over the U. S. House, they were actually a Trojan horse. They delivered the votes to make Boehner speaker, which allowed the corporate powers to move inside, quietly take over and return Congress to business as usual. On opening day of the 112th Congress, beaming members of the new Republican majority entered the House chamber, accompanied by their proud families. But the moment did not belong to members alone. Also entering the Capitol for the swearing-in ceremonies was David Koch, the multibillionaire industrialist and laissez-faire extremist who bankrolled much of the tea party/GOP victory last fall. What symbolism! The members were taking office, but Koch and his corporate agenda were taking power. Indeed, many lobbyists for Wall Street banks and big corporations have been hired as top legislative aides for Republican members. As Rep. John Campbell put it, "You want someone with experience." Yeah, experience in corporatizing our government. In fact, some of the most powerful lawmakers in the House are simply handing their power to corporate interests. For example, Rep. Spencer Bachus of Alabama, the new chairman of the Wall Street oversight committee, declared that his role is to "serve the banks." The chief comforter of corporate crybabies, however, is Rep. Darrell Issa of California, chair of the wide-ranging government reform committee. He sent letters to 150 corporate interests, asking them to tell him if Obama and his Democratic meanies have imposed any consumer, worker or environmental protections that should be undone. That's like asking a barber if you need a haircut! The letters unleashed an outpouring of corporate whining -- big banks, for example, wailed that their ability to gouge customers with rip-off debit-card fees had been curtailed. There, there, Issa said soothingly, I'm here now. I'll make it all better for you. Under the guise of giving government back to the people, the House majority is giving it to the corporate powers who finance their campaigns. This is not just business as usual, it's business way more than usual. To find out more about Jim Hightower, and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate web page at www.creators.com. COPYRIGHT 2011 CREATORS.COM Jim Hightower is a national radio commentator, writer, public speaker, and author of the new book, "Swim Against the Current: Even a Dead Fish Can Go With the Flow." (Wiley, March 2008) He publishes the monthly "Hightower Lowdown," co-edited by Phillip Frazer. © 2011 Independent Media Institute. All rights reserved. View this story online at: http://www.alternet.org/story/149585/

Tea Party activists seeks anti immigrant vote

             Tea Party activists are seeking to qualify an Anti Immigrant initiative in California. The purpose of the effort is to generate fear and bigotry.

Anti Mexican racism works.  Here is how it happened in California in 1994.

 "In the Summer of 1993, a failing economy and governmental retrenchment combined to make Governor Pete Wilson the most unpopular governor in recent history.  By November of 1994 Wilson won re-election with over 56% of the vote.  Two factors combined to deliver victory to Wilson; a mean spirited, divisive, and racist campaign directed against Mexican and Mexican Americans, and an inept campaign by Democratic Candidate Kathleen Brown.

    In 1994 The voters of California voted 62% to 38% in favor of Proposition 187, the Save Our State initiative to restrict illegal immigration.  A number of groups including FAIR, the Republican Party, and the Perot organization worked together to qualify the initiative.

    In 1994 California has a population that is 56.3 % White, 26.3 % Latino, 9.4% Asian, 7.4 % African American, and 0.6% other.  However, according to exit polls, the voters in this election were 80% white, 9% Latino, 7 % African American, and 4 % Asian. Exit polls show that Latinos voted against Prop. 187 by 3 to 1, African Americans split their vote 50 -50, and the Anglo electorate passed the proposition by over 60%.

            If the electorate is primarily older White voters, such as in the November 2020 election, this kind of campaign will work.  If younger people vote- it will fail.

California , like Texas, Arizona, New Mexico, and parts of Colorado, was once part of Mexico. It was taken by force. In the 1850's newly arrived Irish and German immigrants drove Mexican and Chinese miners from the mines with the foreign miners tax. Then the Anglos came and took the land. Anti immigrant campaigns have a long history in the California; 1878 Constitution was anti Chinese, 1911 Anti Japanese, 1930's-1950's, Anti Mexican. 1940's anti Japanese. 1994, Prop.187. It will take hard work, but reasonable people will be able to defeat these fear filled campaigns. Immigrants are not the cause of the economic crisis- it was Wall Street. But, Tea Party folks want to protect Wall Street by focusing fear on immigrants.

Called the "Support Federal Immigration Law Act," the  California proposal was submitted to state authorities in September by Michael Erickson, a Tea Party activist in in the Bay Area city of Belmont and former chair of the Sonoma County Republican Party.

The effort will rely largely on volunteers from California's Tea Party network, which is really just another name for the Republican base. 

The California proposal would make it a state crime for undocumented persons to seek work while hiding their immigration status, and a state crime for employers to "intentionally or negligently" hire an illegal immigrant.

TEA PARTY MEMBERS: WATCH YOUR BACKS

According to this post at The Texas Fred Blog:

Today I received a plea for help from the Tawakoni Area TEA Party. They have a Mayor that is out of control and hates the TEA Party too. He has fired 2 long time officers for no other apparent reason than the simple fact that they belong to the local TEA Party chapter.

West Tawakoni is a small town in East Texas...

Yes, the story is anecdotal at this point.

Read more HERE.

Tea Party Jacobins

Important reading.  Tea Party Jacobins.

http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2010/may/27/tea-party-jacobins/

 Also: Harpers.  July 2010.  Tea Party in the Sonora : for the future of the GOP governance, Look to Arizona.   Ken Silverstein. 

Tea Party Jacobins

In my own search to comprehend the craziness of the anti immigrant Right and the Tea Party, I found this insightful piece.  From, the NY Review of Books. May 27.  Mark Lilla. Click on the title above to get the entire piece. A review of 5 books on the subject.

Which brings us to Fox News. The right-wing demagogues at Fox do what demagogues have always done: they scare the living daylights out of people by identifying a hidden enemy, then flatter them until they believe they have only one champion—the demagogue himself. But unlike demagogues past, who appealed over the heads of individuals to the collective interests of a class, Fox and its wildly popular allies on talk radio and conservative websites have at their disposal technology that is perfectly adapted to a nation of cocksure individualists who want to be addressed and heard directly, without mediation, and without having to leave the comforts of home.

The media counterestablishment of the right gives them that. It offers an ersatz system of direct representation in which an increasingly segmented audience absorbs what it wants from its trusted sources, embellishes it in their own voices on blogs and websites and chatrooms, then hears their views echoed back as “news.” While this system doesn’t threaten our system of representative democracy, it certainly makes it harder for it to function well and regain the public’s trust.

The conservative media did not create the Tea Party movement and do not direct it; nobody does. But the movement’s rapid growth and popularity are unthinkable without the demagogues’ new ability to tell isolated individuals worried about their futures what they want to hear and put them in direct contact with one another, bypassing the parties and other mediating institutions our democracy depends on. When the new Jacobins turn on their televisions they do not tune in to the PBS News Hour or C-Span to hear economists and congressmen debate the effectiveness of financial regulations or health care reform. They look for shows that laud their common sense, then recite to them the libertarian credo that Fox emblazons on its home page nearly every day: YOU DECIDE.

So  what will happen to the Tea Party organizations: after tasting a few symbolic victories they will likely dissolve. This is not only because, being ideologically allergic to hierarchy of any kind, they still have no identifiable leadership. It is because they have no constructive political agenda, though the right wing of the Republican Party would dearly love to attach its own to them. But the movement only exists to express defiance against a phantom threat behind a real economic and political crisis,

Working class anger

June 8, 2010

Working class anger centers on Wall Street greed, but the right wing is trying to channel that anger in dangerous directions, said panelists at the America's Future Now conference. But a focus on jobs and a working family economy can turn that anger into election wins this fall.

*****

Follow the AFL-CIO at:

Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/aflcio
Twitter: http://twitter.com/aflcio
YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/aflcionow
RSS: http://blog.aflcio.org/wp-rss2.php

*****


Jobs, Economic Fears--Not Love of Right--Fuel Workers' Anger
http://blog.aflcio.org/2010/06/07/jobs-economic-fearsnot-love-of-rightfuel-workers

Wall Street Reform a First Step to Taking Back America
http://blog.aflcio.org/2010/06/07/wall-street-reform-a-first-step-to-taking-back-america

Steve Poizner campaigns for Tea Party votes in the foothills

And, he gets votes for this in Shingle Springs and the Foothills. Click on the title above to see the talk.
http://www.sacbee.com/static/weblogs/capitolalertlatest/2010/05/red-meat-time-f.html
We  should recognize that distrust of the government is legitimate because on economic issues the government  too often represents the oligarchy.  While we  separate ourselves from those who would respond to the distrust, discontent, and anger with domestic terrorism- such as  the militia movements- the anger itself is legitimate.  However, when  the anger is only focused on the government, and not also on Wall Street and corporate America, then clearly the group is being manipulated.  If the anger  targets racial and ethnic group, or at immigrants,  then they do not understand global economics nor solidarity- and quite likely they are being used.  Our task  is to  develop an  effective anger and resistance .

The Tea Party Activists and their Republican funders promote  conflicts over  issues of immigration,  teachers’ unions, public workers pensions, and big government as substitutes for the  critical  economic problems.  These false choices work, they mobilize, because they seem to offer an explanation – albeit a false one- to the very real economic pain of working people.  Our task is to point out that  the U.S. and eventually world wide financial crisis was caused by the greed and the theft of a few very rich operatives.    The oligarchy caused the unemployment ( not immigrants), the economic losses, the off shoring of production jobs,  the cuts in services to the poor, to families,  and to the unemployed. 

DON'T UNDERESTIMATE THE WILL OF THE PEOPLE

A shot in the arm when we're feeling discouraged as to the direction America is presently taking:

Tax day and Tea Parties

Hey. Tea Party advocates. You forgot to notice:

You probably paid more taxes than ExxonMobil this year. Seriously.

That's probably because they spent a lot more money lobbying Congress than you did. In fact, last year, they spent over $27 million in lobbying so they could take home a bigger chunk of the $284 billion they made.¹

And they aren't the only corporation to dodge their tax bill through offshore accounts and shell companies. Far from it.² 

The good news is that President Obama has been trying to close loopholes that allow corporations to get away with this kind of highway robbery.³ 

But there are still too many lobbyists in DC fighting against him. That's why we're launching this petition to show how fed up we are with lobbyists rigging the system and demand that they take action before next Tax Day.

See the petition at Moveon.org

Poll Results: Tea party

A Feb.4, 2010 poll by CNN says,

33% of the U.S. supports the Tea Party.

A Feb. 4, 2010  poll by Gallop say,

36% in the U.S.  have a positive view of socialism.

Now, which one of these- Tea Party or Socialism gets access to mainstream media.?

The 912 March on Washington: Photo Essay

I was there at the 912 March on Washington with my husband, The Beak, my student MJB, and some blogging friends.

Folks, this event was huge! So huge, in fact, that the march had to begin at least an hour early because protesters were jamming the streets and side streets of Washington, D.C.

The mainstream media and even some in the alternative media are not recognizing the importance of the 912 March on Washington! Astroturf, not.

BEGIN PHOTO ESSAY (all photos unedited)

The following picture taken at the statuary on the west edge of the Capitol Hill Lawn doesn't show the crowd but expresses the sentiments I saw from many of the protesters:



The pictures below were taken during the march itself:







At the footsteps on the west side of Capitol Hill:



A vista view looking toward the west side of Capitol Hill:



A sea of people covered the area from Capitol Hill to the Washington Monument! Furthermore, more protesters covered many of the side streets.

All worn out, Mr. AOW and I headed back to Union Station around 2:00 PM. People were still arriving from Union Station and from buses which had finally made their way through the traffic jams on all the roads feeding into our nation's capital!

ABC News estimated the numbers before everyone had arrived. The estimate is low. I know this for a fact because the estimate was announced as people were still streaming in, getting as close as they could to Capitol Hill.

I've lived in the D.C. area all my life and tell you that I've never before seen any event like this here before.

As soon as possible, I will be posting additional photos at my site