Wow, that seemed a realistic simulation of the body politic until the end, “hats off to the Republicans once and for all. They’ve been working for forty years to destroy public education in this country.  They now reap the rewards as the uneducated and ignorant flock to their party.”

So is the Dept of Education a Republican agency just because it was created during Reagan’s reign? You’re trying to make me uncomfortable about ‘Republicans’, Don’t work at all at making up my mind, I do that. I like facts, if Republicans were really like you say they are, we would be a lot more like Mehico!

But anyway, I always thought the ruination of education was being wrought by Progressive Democrats worshiping at the Golden Calf of Bureaucracy. But I’ve moved on, now I know they are just doing it to destroy America so they can issue food stamps to everyone and then I guess they’ll say, We won! Now what?

They may not run out of ideas but like most fools, they will run out of money. That’s just my opinion and perhaps I just don’t see what Katie Couric sees. I have an open mind but I do shut the door to keep flies out.

Turn about may be fair play—but it’s fruitless, destructive and endless.  Wiser people have to throw more intelligent monkey-wrenches into the automatic “yes-you-did/no-I-didn’t” mindlessness of mobs.
  If people who call themselves “progressives” can’t create something more constructive that “fuck you!” we are pretty much done for.

Regarding the content of this article, there’s a couple things to keep in mind.

We—anyone born after 1941—grew up in a country in a state of perpetual war without knowing we were at war, a truly bizarre situation.  It felt like peace. Many of us were lucky enough to grow up in secure, peaceful neighborhoods.  The Cold War did not feel like a war at all.  Bicycles, slingshots, BB-guns at an early age; sex drugs and rock-n-roll as we progressed. Korea and Vietnam came along but as soon as they ended it again felt like we were not at war. No matter that during all that time, declared wars or no, our government was overthrowing other governments, arming rebels, infecting the world with Friedman Economics (which abhors any government action except war), spreading disinformation all over the globe, censoring news reporters, and killing people, either directly or indirectly.

What we see now is the fruition.  We are very good at overthrowing governments, thank you.  Arming rebels has become a fetid art form.  We’ve discovered disinformation works just as well, if not better, here in America than it does in Indonesia. And censorship of the news is carried out most exquisitely. Major news outlets censor themselves willingly for the coveted access to government officials and business executives (this censorship of course refers to foreign policy and substantive domestic policy issues; media outlets happily pillory celebrities, no holes barred).  And, as for killing people, well, we do that exceptionally well too, all the while presenting ourselves as a nation of peace and democracy. 

To a degree, then, we can understand how the Tea Party activists are being misled. We all have been.  We grew up in a country we truly did not know or understand.  That’s not to excuse the racist assholes in the Tea Party. They are, after all, racist assholes. But I would hazard to guess there are lots of well meaning people who are being led astray, just as those were who voted for Obama expecting overnight change.

And hats off to the Republicans once and for all. They’ve been working for forty years to destroy public education in this country.  They now reap the rewards as the uneducated and ignorant flock to their party. 

Here’s to hoping for a viable third party that’s not comprised of racists, well-meaning idiots, tyrants, titans, and sociopaths.

I call it the reverse learning curve.  Like the
prominent conservative who objected to the plus-points
Sotomayor seemed to be getting because she had grown up
in the Projects, “I grew up in the Projects.  I’ve been
on welfare and food stamps.  Nobody helped me!!!”

The ‘conservative’ mind may be the only mind that
operates on the principle of the reverse learning
curve.

Yes. 
@RayLan:  Very true.  If the tea party members were protesting the absurd intellectual and capital resources we expend on war, I’d be right there with them.  The fact they are pro-war or simply avoid addressing the war raises a bit of doubt about their sincerity in cutting spending, as does this article.

@gerard: Yes. I think you’re spot on.  We’ve seen it before:
People attacking violence in movies as the government facilitated economic tyranny in South America and Indonesia that resulted in the deaths of hundreds of thousands if not millions. 
General Lieberman going after profane song lyrics as he shamelessly stoked a foreign policy that eventually led us to the war on terror.
And in the midst of all the above, good Christian people protesting movies, burning records, knowing no more about their nations foreign policy than they do about astrophysics while going to church every Sunday and bobbing their heads in prayer and agreement when their preacher talked about the decline of morality in America.  They saw there was a problem, but they were only seeing and addressing some of the symptoms, not the root cause. 
It’s like people being all pissed off about Eminem. Well, you know, he’s lyrical genius who grew up in a violent, crime ridden, drug-addled city. Guess what happens when you take a genius and beat him, rob him, and give him drugs?  You get words like this at this at the end of his songs:  “Fuck you Mrs. Cheney. Fuck you Tipper Gore. Fuck you with the free-est of speech this divided states of embarrassment will allow me to have. Fuck you.”
Turn about is fair play, however. And that’s just what the Tea Party and the Republican Party leaders are saying to progressives and Obama and to the Tea Party members themselves who don’t understand truly what kind of animal is prodding their nether regions to stoke their fury.
Top of the day to you!

Lafayette, October 7 at 5:42 am – “We can rant about Corporate
Welfare till we are blue in the face. But the fact of the matter is that
it will exist for as long as election campaigns depend upon corporate
donations.

Cut the campaign umbilical chord and maybe these reforms might
happen:”

I believe you are right Lafayette, however, the Supreme Court has given
its mandate and until we can get the highest court in the land to work
for the people instead of the corporate masters, all the wailing in the
world is a useless waste of energy.  Might as well nail up all your
complaints on the door of the Supreme Court, or take the class action
suits route.

Fat Freddy, October 7 at 9:30 am and at 8:39 am.  I’m impressed you
took the time to do some investigation.  I don’t necessarily disagree
with much of what you said.  And I appreciate it that you sense the
system we have does not work for the people.  I also agree with glider
about regulated capitalism.  As I have always maintained capitalism is
still the best economic system.  The problem is that built into its
structure is the weakness of admitting huge and rampant corruption. 
But of course it is on account of the greedy who cleverly find every way
possible like vermin to exploit the economic system.  Government does
not show it is able to control it.  The politicians will not control it.  So
the people themselves must do something because at the same time
they must also have a government that takes care of national security,
takes care of its infrastructure, take care of its disenfranchised, and
many other social programs, that wealth and corporate America resist
with monstrous strength.  I wait daily to hear if someone, anyone has
come up with a better plan.  Nothing is forthwithcoming in any cogent
form.  Nothing coherent that would give the people their fair “share” of
life in America.  The wheels of government are much too sluggish.  I
don’t want to keep hearing lots and lots of wailing and berating of
America, because it is the best country on the planet reprehensible as it
is in many ways.  But I would not want to live anywhere else.  It is a
living organism that has to change, and its present economic system
without question has to be reshaped. 

If coops and collectives can give people some measure of self-reliance,
then it seems most logical that they should be encouraged.  Of course,
they will have problems, and human nature will provide interactive
problems as well.  But there are many successes in the history of such
institutions that can provide good models and guides that can list the
pitfalls and pratfalls that can be encountered.  I am simply saying that
people have a responsibility to determine their own lives in
advantageous ways and that can happen at the local level just like they
can affect politics locally. It has to be said.  A journey always starts with
the first step.

FatFreddy ended an excellent exposition with: “That was 1942. Did he predict the TBTF status?”

No, he didn’t ‘predict’ anything, he was just describing the ‘way it is’ AKA ‘the way things are’ AKA ‘wassup’

It started happening in the middle east around 4500-3000 BC with ‘organizing’ around pharaohs taking a precedence over the people’s lives. The oldest deed is 75,000 years BC… people had it ‘naturally’ for quite a while. Not a bad run till weirdos figured out how to get other people to do weird things, ie, worship and then depend on them.

After watching The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo and The Girl Who Played with Fire, I don’t think I want to take Sweden as an example of anything! I don’t imagine the author was writing his fiction completely from his imagination but at least partially from observations of Swedish society!

gerard,

Along these lines the USA has the most virulent form of Capitalism on the planet.  So it is not proper to judge America as an optimized form of “decently regulated capitalism” by any stretch of the imagination.  Perhaps you could focus your comments more about a country such as Sweden which gets much closer.

Gerald,

Like I said I am not a Socialist and would prefer “decently regulated capitalism” with a solid social safety net.  We don’t have that now.  Get it?  That is caused by of our corrupt Corporatocracy and lack of Democracy!  That doesn’t mean that no system of complementary Regulated Captitalism / Socialism is viable.

Somebody here talks seriously about “decently regulated capitalism.”  Try this on your pianola:
Capitalists manage capitalism.
Capitalists could “decently regulate” capitalism the moment they decided to do so.
Why don’t they? Why do they fight to the death any attempt by other “forces” to regulare capitalism?
Because they don’t want regulations, decent or otherwise. 
Why doesn’t the government do something?
Because capitalists own the government.
And on top of all this, who decides what “decent” means? Indecent capitalists?
  Here’s my take, basically:  Capitalists consider money and power, not people. They think most people don’t “deserve” to live in the first place. Besides, the world is getting overpopulated so if a lot of people die or are killed, well, that’s okay, isn’t it?  The fact that in the kill-off most of the people are poor?  Well, that’s okay because they don’t “deserve” life. If they did, they’d work harder and manage their money better, and ... most of them are lazy,etc. etc.
  The trick is to keep the millions in the middle from seeing the “game” and turning over the tables, and you do that by keeping them ignorant and scared.
  Socialism?  Bad! Communism? Bad! Protests? Bad!
Demonstrations? Bad!  Freedom of speech and of the press? Fair and free elections? Dangerous. Call the cops. (All of this being very indecent regulation, by the way. Not just indecent, but illegal, as set forth in the United States Constitution.)

Fat Freddy,

I strongly advocate using decently regulated capitalism where it works best, as in rapidly evolving technological oriented business, as well as in general consumer oriented companies and services, and academics (publish or perish).  Nothing beats it in this application and I want it as the core of our system.  But why believe that model works well for all purposes?  Instead lets use the best tool for each need.

Socialized or centralized government run operations works best in many cases and that has been proven by history IMO.  Good examples are having a sovereign controlled currency and a nationalized banking system, providing for equal opportunity education, voting and elections, the legal system, single payer health care, social safety nets such as social security, maintenance of a common bill of rights for citizens, important insurance (e.g. fire, auto) which functions to distribute risk (i.e. is inherently socialist),  and other essential services such as police, firefighting, prisons, and homeland defense.

As you might gather I am no fan of Woodrow Wilson as he enacted the abomination that is the Federal Reserve takeover of our currency and the devastatingly parasitic Bankster system that is destroying this country.  I admit difficulty coming up with a label for my opinions but don’t think I must define “Progressive” based on a 100 year old movement anymore than “Republicans” do so with Abraham Lincoln.  But a different label without the baggage might help should it arise.

I appreciate the comments regarding the history of farm subsidies. Unfortunately, they are now exploited by the wealthy in their insane drive to become wealthier.

I did not see anyone point out, though, that Americans do not pay realistic prices for food. We do not pay what it actually costs to produce the food we eat. With NAFTA, we have flooded Mexico with our cheap, industrially produced food, and ruined tens of thousands of Mexican farmers who were actually charging their customers realistic prices for food.

I can hear all the simpletons screaming, “What wrong with cheap food?” Well, it has taken millions of people off the land with the advent of industrial farming. It has poisoned the land and the groundwater. If you think not, I suggest you move next door to one of Smithfield’s hog factories and live alongside their manure lagoons. It has filled our grocery stores with corn and soy in every imaginable form, sometimes barely distinguishable as food. It has something to do with diabetes and other diseases, and the terrible costs, both human and economic, these entail. It is not unrelated to eggs produced in disgusting conditions (for both the chickens and the workers), and for peanuts made into peanut butter in the U.S. after being turned away at the Canadian border as being unfit for consumption.

We pay a price, one way or another, of thinking of the land as just another factory, animals as factory units, agricultural workers as scum we want to use and then discard. There is nothing wrong, per se, with agricultural subsidies, when they are used to help real farmers stay afloat during hard times. They seem to have become just one more form of welfare for the rich, however.

Here’s something.. What if the first election where the so-called Tea Party held sway was actually 2008?

Consider that despite the tripe that comes from the most vocal Tea Party spokespersons.. and the goofy rhetoric spewed from candidates courting the current ‘Tea Party’ .. all of it could be be distilled to be a desire for ‘Change’ and ‘Hope’ for a better future… Hmmm. Seems I’ve heard all that before.

Of course many independents, progressives, liberals and even some conservatives are at least publicly appalled by the ugliness of some of the party-goers.. but don’t we in some sense agree? How else can the Nevada senate race be explained if not that we are all, all of us, simply fed-up with the status quo.. up there exemplified by the bland negotiator and Senate ‘manager’ Harry Reid?

Maybe we have met the Tea Party and they is US? .. to paraphrase Pogo.

Oh sure the big money and fringe ideology interests behind the current slate of candidates are scary! Couldn’t the same accusation be made of the groups that propelled Obama to office? It’s all perspective.

Now here’s more.. what if many of these people waving signs and raging against incumbents.. what if they or very many of them (republicans and all) actually voted FOR Obama and AGAINST a continuation of Bush in 2008.. and not having gotten any change, in fact gotten nothing but more compromise and empty promises.. they are mad as hell and aren’t going to take it any more! .. just like many serious progressives and liberals..

I’m not endorsing Tea Party or Republican candidates or their propaganda! .. and I think governing in one-year cycles (the second year is taken up with campaigning) is a dangerous and goofy idea.. But I think voters of all colors and stripes have more in common than is generally believed.

Adios!

Shenonymous

I also see the inefficiencies in our current system. The “big” corporations are just, simply, too big. The separation of management, labor and ownership is too great. The big banks are not “too big to fail”, they are too big to manage, effectively. An economist by the name of Joseph Schumpeter, expanded on a concept known as creative destruction.

As entrepreneurs innovate, they reap economic rewards. Production then expands and new forms of economic organization emerge, such as the modern firm, which grows to capture economic opportunities. As the size of the firm increases, so too does its bureaucracy. The functions of ownership and control gradually separate. Eventually, the owners find that their connection to, and knowledge of, the economic process has been severed. They lose the ability to see the necessity of social institutions, such as private ownership and voluntary contract - institutions without which there would be no economic progress. Isolated from economic reality, their sympathy for the capitalist system begins to wane, and, with it, the social support for the institutions that form the foundation of capitalism.

That was 1942. Did he predict the TBTF status?

Shenonymous

I’ve been reading up on “participatory economics” and “participatory democracy”. I must admit, I was fairly ignorant on the subject. My initial response is, it would create a bureaucracy 10 times larger than what we have now. Although there are some concessions for the individual, it is still highly collectivist. The business model of workers owning the firm is extremely inefficient. The separation of ownership, management, and labor, as in our current system, arose out of necessity, not design. A system where workers would control ownership and management functions, along with the operation, is a huge burden on individuals.  I speak from a little experience, here. When I first started my own business (and currently), I owned it, which means I plan the long term goals and make the big decisions. I also managed the day-to-day operations. Plus, I performed all of the labor. That was far too stressful. I wouldn’t wish that on anybody. To even begin to imagine what it would be like to have 20, 50, or 100 other people trying to perform the same functions, at the same time, like I did, is unimaginable. This is from an owner’s viewpoint. I can also see it from a worker’s viewpoint. (I did work, as a laborer for over 20 years before starting my own business). As a worker, I go to work, perform my duties, and collect a paycheck at the end of the week. Simple. I expected to be “managed”. If I had to worry about making decisions, I wouldn’t be able to properly perform my duties. I was also a foreman (manager). The separation of duties is essential to the efficiency of a firm. Here’s a short, simple story that follows the production of a simple object; a pencil. It has been reduced to commonsensical terms, but it conveys the essentials of the argument.

http://www.commonsenseeconomics.com/Readings/I.Pencil2006.FEE.pdf?nid=316

Perhaps, some time in the future, when we have fully developed AI and AGI, the participatory economic system would lose the inefficiencies that are inherent in it. Until then, I just don’t see it as a viable option.

Glider, You say, “We have about 20% of our people sitting idle doing nothing largely because there are no jobs, in case you have not noticed.  What would a Progressive do (which Obama is not)?”

How about ‘what would a man unfettered by political expectations do?’ Say, of 100 men, there are 20 who have no jobs. Now, I suppose they are satisfied with unemployment checks. If they didn’t have them do I think that of the 20 men, at least one of them might think of how he could do things for people they might want him to do so much, that they reward him for his work behavior? Well, when the checks run out, maybe one of the 20 will be able to come up with an idea and employ some of the other 19… but I would bet the 20 are not there by misfortune but by choice! How do I derive that as choice? If you can’t show up with your pants pulled up or without metal nails protruding from your face you’re probably of the mindset that laboring is a sub-human activity and beneath even a welfare participant like yourself!

Like a very well-educated person I know pointed out to me, he got an education so he wouldn’t have to work. So he could sit at the SEC and watch porno and get fat and die of heart disease? Much more than 20% who do ‘work’ do not really work.

I would tell the 20% who practice at making themselves undesirable to at least get up off their asses and tear up the shrubbery around their porches and plant something they can eat because the checks are going to run out for every single person in the USA when the money is recognized as mere paper.

ON THE TAKE

Corporate Welfare has been rampant in the US long before Ike complained about the M-I-C—and who would have known better than Ike?

And who are the industrial lobbyists in Washington working for - you and me? I’m not paying them ...

We can rant about Corporate Welfare till we are blue in the face. But the fact of the matter is that it will exist for as long as election campaigns depend upon corporate donations.

Cut the campaign umbilical chord and maybe these reforms might happen:
* We will force all TV channels to give equal time to ALL candidates to convey their points of view during election campaigns —and they can deduct the costs from their corporate taxes.
* The state/Fed could offer matching grants for all “personal” donations - meaning corporate donations are forbidden in ALL circumstances.
* Getting out the vote becomes a responsibility of the state and Federal election officials, with an appropriate budget to do so.
* We might get a political class of a caliber that we and this nation deserves.

Either we assume ourselves, each citizen, for the funding of the election process, or we will be moaning about Corporate Welfare for the next decade and beyond—because Absolutely Nothing Will Have Changed.

What we have at present is a beauty contest, not elections that discuss a candidate’s platform in detail. The “debates”, which help many people make up their minds, are not sufficiently in depth. Politicians waffle and commentary is cosmetically applied for effect.

MR. & MRS. AMERICA

Does it really matter that a candidate have 2.3 children and the attractive spouse and a nice house in the countryside? That s/he is a family-person—just because they look like us. That sort of attribute has got us the present political class, because communication experts deliver the “picture” that we want to see of candidates—Mr. & Mrs. America.

The devil is in the details—meaning what the politicians fundamentally believe in, such as:
* Why does a candidate think they are qualified for the job,
* Will they want to pursue it forever (does this nation need politicians who ensconce themselves on Capitol Hill as forever-incumbents?) and
* What are their opinions on that which matters to their constituents - providing the latter are smart enough to ask the right questions or the newspaper journalists know how to do their jobs properly.

POST SCRIPTUM: Word game

Proof of fluff in politics comes from the Republican Pledge to America—a puff-piece devoid of any pragmatism or practicality. It’s a word-game for the brainless that does not evoke the real problems facing America as economic factors (the trade deficit, the lack of necessary skills in our national workforce, the pathetic disarray of our secondary and tertiary educational systems, the highest per capita costly health care of any nation on earth that is corporate welfare, etc., etc., etc., ad nauseam).

I’m not against the tea parties per se, but if I were a political “liberal” and I wanted to attack the hypocrisy of the tea party movement, I would hound them on military spending.  The chic who wrote this article nailed the tea partiers on subsidies, but that’s small potatoes to the tea party’s duplicity in regards to military spending.  The tea party’s endorsement of the international octopus that is the US military will be the movement’s achilles heal.  If this country is serious about reducing the role of government, the first place to cut is the military. 

If the tea party doesn’t address this, then this writer is correct, they’re just Neocon wolves in sheep clothing.

End the Fed.  End the wars.  End the Empire.

“free market”, which disperses decisons to individual actors.??? Really???

If it read:  “... disperses decisions to a relatively few powerful actors” that might be okay.
If it read:  “... disperses all important decisions on economics, war and education/information to 2% of the richest corporate kings in the nation” that would be even better.

Strange women, lying in ponds, is no basis for a system of government.

You, ricorico, obviously don’t understand the notion of socialized
capitalism.  Socialized captialists would rub bodies like football
players but they run their own body rubbing cooperatives and
collectives not a centralized government.  Fat Freddie and I have
already been around the ferris wheel on this one We are on
different sides of the fence.  A federal government takes care of the
bigger problems like national security, medicare and other socialized
health care, social security, education for all programs.  It does not
do away with the need for taxes, but all money collected from the SC
side of the economy is used strictly for public programs. It is non-
violent and not entirely anti-statist, but is a species of modified
anarchistic believing in the self-reliance of the individual compared to
enslaving communism, and does not want to overthrow the government,
having reasons for federally administered social programs added in. 

Its intention does not supplant private capitalism with which it would
compete inasmuch as collectives can provide a revenue stream to fund
its own banks and other financial institutions like credit unions, real
estate and mortgages. It is expected that privatized capitalism would
wither from lack of people participation.  Socialized capitalism is
funded with social capital provided by the members of the cooperatives
of all kinds which police themselves.  It is not a new idea only
regenerating and modifying an old, very old participatory economics
one.  Something has to replace the strictly privatized capitalism and
executive central committee tyrannical controlled oppressive socialistic
systems. You might google it and social capital to find out more about
it. There is no organized effort at the moment so until a movement
gets going, I shall continue to be a Democrat that will choose to vote
for people and issues that come along that make the best liberal sense.

Tea Party is a joke.  Less goverment right!  They want to regulate how a person lives only if it is what they believe.

Shenony:
“I just don’t want an executive central committee structure. Other than that socialism is not a bad idea.”

Oxymoron. Socialism is ‘precisely’ the centralization of economic and social policy decison-making. It’s the antithesis of “free market”, which disperses decisons to individual actors.

You might as well say, “I don’t want all that physical contact. Other than that, football is not a bad game.”

”Truth is, the primary goal of tea party politicians is not to shrink
the government, but to use it to transfer taxpayer wealth to rich
Republicans.”  5 Yups, Eventually the truth always wills itself out. 
The article well references this observation.

Tea Party Socialism – Well, kind of… the tea baggers’ special species
of socialism, meaning there is a group, that socialize, but is hardly
the epitome of socialistic ideology.  It is a bull shit stretch to call it
socialism as socialism is defined to be an set of intentions to benefit
all the members of a society.  A pig society, okay, teabaggers are a
pig society, meaning hogs. 

Democracy merely needs a bath to cleanse the hogs from the pig sty
mentality and pigshit ideas and the smelly Republican pigshit footprints
on the teabaggers.

Nader had a lot of good ideas, but they got waylaid by his arrogance. 
Maybe someone could recycle them so they can really do some good
after all?  It certainly would be an homage to the old guy.

There once was a Social Democratic Party of America 1895. but it
turned into the Socialist Party of America that lasted until 1946.  Google
for a pdf of the Declaration of Principles of The Social Democracy of
America: Adopted at the Special Convention Held Under the Auspices of
the American Railway Union, June 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, and 21, 1897.

(Bernie Sanders is the one socialist politician registered as an
Independent who has a seat in the present Congress). 

Personally I will remain a Democrat and a socialized capitalist for the
duration.  And I like Bernie Sanders. 

The Republicans seem to be calling Democrats socialists.  I say the
Democrats ought to say, “What’s wrong with that?”

I just don’t want an executive central committee structure.  Other than
that socialism is not a bad idea.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_Democratic_Party_of_America

glider

Would you also consider Woodrow Wilson a Progressive?

gerard

A big problem for the small farmers was the 20% interest rates of the late 70s. I think the original subsidies themselves were meant to alleviate some of the problems of the Dust Bowl. I don’t believe the original subsidies to be a problem, the problem was the continuation of them. Nothing the governemnt ever does, seems to be temporary. Subsidies, I believe, became a way for the government,in combination with the big farm corporations, to control the price of commodities and to provide “stability” to the market. It’s a similar story with the GSEs. They started out as a “good” thing, by providing mortgages, but they evolved into just another market control, or stability system. That’s where the term “unintended consequences” comes from. But that begs the question, are they really “unintended” consequences?

glider:

How do you know QB is a Tea Partier?

QuantumBumbler,

Progressives and Socialists are not the same.  We have about 20% of our people sitting idle doing nothing largely because there are no jobs, in case you have not noticed.  What would a Progressive do (which Obama is not)?  They would put Americans back to work with a WPA program that helped dig us out of the last elitist driven Great Depression until private enterprise could recover, as done by the true Progressive FDR.  I am sure your greedy Tea Bagger ass would not like that solution, so how is that consistent with your crazy diatribe?

QBs got it.  Only workers vote. 

That’s the ticket.  We started at only landowners, let’s end at workers only.

What a great idea.

How about Nader’s idea of instant runoff?  How does that grab you?

“the primary goal of tea party politicians is ... to transfer taxpayer wealth to rich Republicans”

To make this a bit more accurate I would amend it to read “to increase the disparity between rich and poor AMAP”

But spot on otherwise!  The same goes for the lack of concern over the staggering sums of expenditures for Bankster bailouts and twin unfunded wars of choice while they in a huff about “cash for clunkers” or “single payer healthcare”. What a joke.  The hypocrisy in this colalition of exploiters and dummies is mind boggling. 

As has been pointed out many times. Most Tea Baggers are simply ignorant dupes to this bogus Corporatist astroturf movement calculated to deflect the anger at a financial crisis they are incapable of understanding, from the Corporatists onto the Government.

How about the rampant inconsistencies in the Progressive Socialist Democratic Party platform, as in: The non-working people will vote for us and will work hard to make this country a better place if we give them money and don’t even expect them to work?

Consistency is only a core issue and this country once had a great core, now the agenda is set by whiners. Next comes failure. Better stop whining and get ready, don’t let a good chaotic mess of an opportunity pass you by!

“Truth is, the primary goal of tea party politicians is not to shrink the government, but to use it to transfer taxpayer wealth to rich Republicans.”

What a load of bullshit!

What a report!

I’m going to wing this one, but as I remember, the original farm subsidies were meant to support farmers at a time when, for several reasons, small farms were the rule, and small farmers were unable to stay in business without a financial boost. Banks were taking over mortgages, and lifetime jobs and food production were at stake. Market manipulations were also partly responsible as international competition increased and trade wars ensued.
  That Big Ag (corporate farming) took over was the eventual result of US farmers’ problems not being adequately addressed in the interests of the farmers. Bad went to worse and individual farms, often farmed by tenant farmers, were sold to corporate interests by the mostly absentee landowners and taken over and rolled together by big corporate interests. “Efficiency” trumped wisdom.
  This process took some years, but continued unabated.  A large part of the problem was that with the continuing development of cities, farm boys who went to college looked not to farming as their future but to white-collar jobs. Their interest in the farms they or their parents had owned flagged and they sold out. (All this was touted at the time as “upper mobility”, “private enterprise”, “the primary value of competition and the market” etc. etc.)
  The result has been very destructive in many respects, including loss of personal caring, broad use of harmful pesticides and resultant pollution, and now the dreaded genetic engineering projects of Monsanto and others, spreading from here throughout the world.
  The history of farm amalgamation is not much different from the history of industrialization in general. At least that’s my memory as a part-time Hoosier.

We had one of those in Washington state. Clint Didier: http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/localnews/2011890132_didier18m.html

I don’t think people understand, the Republicans are against Democrat BIG
spending, NOT Republican BIG spending.  That’s the difference

YOU GOT IT RIGHT, GERARD

I am awaiting the action of the loons wearing the imbecilic hats adorned with hanging teabags to (1) bring mom or dad or grandad or grandmom out of the nursing home and place them in leased hospital beds in the dining room, there to spend their remaining days; or (2) immediately withdrawing them from the “sociialistic big-gummint” Medicaid program and assume the full cost of their continuing care in the nursing home. What a way to celebrate the rightwing mantra that all citizens must fend for themselves irrespective of the circumstances, even if it means sinking in the quicksand of financial disaster, simultaneously shouting freedom lives and waving the flag!

@ Fat Freddy—

As a member of the Libertarian Party, I would not recommend voting for anybody with an R or a D next to their name, with maybe 1 or 2 exceptions.

I’m not currently an LP member, Freddy, but I can only respond, “Hear, hear!!!”

If you want to attack farm subsidies, I suggest you go to their roots; FDR. Libertarians have long been opposed to agricultural subsidies, but then again, Tea Partiers are not “right” libertarians.

Here’s a short list of libertarian publications opposing farm subsidies. If you look, you can find, many, many more.

http://reason.com/blog/2009/01/27/agricultural-subsidies-corpora

http://reason.com/archives/2006/02/01/six-reasons-to-kill-farm-subsi

http://www.cato.org/pub_display.php?pub_id=8459

http://blog.mises.org/13649/powell-versus-farm-subsidies/

The problem with Tea Partiers, is they have an “R” next to their name. If you vote for a Tea Party candidate, you are voting for a Republican. You get what you pay for. As a member of the Libertarian Party, I would not recommend voting for anybody with an R or a D next to their name, with maybe 1 or 2 exceptions.

So?  What’s your point, Republicans did this for 8 years while Bush was the president. Get a clue, the right wing of this country, and the fundamentalists still loved the man.

Unfortunately, if the Democrats think they can gain by devaluing the Tea Party, by using reason and logic, they are mistaken. That’s what they tried with Bush, and look he had two terms.

The Tea Party is pure viscera…pure emotional reaction, pure riot in slow motion…

And the moronic Dims have given them plenty to riot about…

To the point where it looks like those nasty evil Republicans are on their way back into power..and Mr. Obama looks like a lame duck already.

Maybe if he hadn’t bailed out Wall Street, and left Main Street hanging this wouldn’t have happened…

Can’t wait for those campaign Addis in the 2012 elections showing President Obama hanging with all those Goldman Sachs employee’s that will be sweet.

So?  What’s your point, hypocracy? The last administration was full of it, for 8 long years while Bush was the president. Get a clue, the right wing of this country, and the fundamentalists still loved the man.

Unfortunately, if the Democrats think they can gain by devaluing the Tea Party, by using reason and logic, they are mistaken. That’s what they tried with Bush, and look he had two terms.

The Tea Party is pure viscera…pure emotional reaction, pure riot in slow motion…

And the moronic Dims have given them plenty to riot about…

To the point where it looks like those nasty evil Republicans are on their way back into power..and Mr. Obama looks like a lame duck already.

Maybe if he hadn’t bailed out Wall Street, and left Main Street hanging this wouldn’t have happened…

Go ahead try to put lipstick on those cute little pigs, it’s not going to work.

Can’t wait for all those pictures of Goldman Sachs employee’s hanging with President Obama, in the next presidential election campaign Adds, that will be sweet.

My take on these rampant inconsistencies amidst Tea Party endeavors is that members are totally unaware of such anomalies.  This is one of the leading signs of their more or less willful ignorance.  They do not know nor do they want to know what is really going on because then they would not be able to lean on the directions of a leader, whose leadership (in their eyes) relieves them personally of any responsibility for what they believe and do.

What these people want and need is the feeling of “doing something”, not actually figuring out what is the best thing to do.  For them, “doing something” is better than doing nothing, even though they may be doing the wrong thing.  They are in it for the emotional release. The rest is patriotic window-dressing.

The Tea Party’s ‘no big government’ is like most of their platitudes, a rhetorical sham. They want government to monitor abortions and fund bigger prisons for no-victim crimes, engage in expensive stupid immoral wars. They have credibility only for those whose visceral selfishness overcome reason.