Tea Party Patriots : and Republican Bigots

Why Today’s GOP Crackup Is the Final Unraveling of Nixon’s ‘Southern Strategy’


William Greider   October 12, 2015
The Nation

Tea Party rebels are exposing the deep rifts between country-club elites and social-issue hard-liners.



John Boehner, AP Photo / Evan Vucci,


Fresh chatter among Washington insiders is not about whether the Republican Party will win in 2016 but whether it will survive. Donald Trump—the fear that he might actually become the GOP nominee—is the ultimate nightmare. Some gleeful Democrats are rooting (sotto voce) for the Donald, though many expect he will self-destruct.

Nevertheless, Republicans face a larger problem. The GOP finds itself trapped in a marriage that has not only gone bad but is coming apart in full public view. After five decades of shrewd strategy, the Republican coalition Richard Nixon put together in 1968—welcoming the segregationist white South into the Party of Lincoln—is now devouring itself in ugly, spiteful recriminations.

The abrupt resignation of House Speaker John Boehner was his capitulation to this new reality. His downfall was loudly cheered by many of his own troops—the angry right-wingers in the House who have turned upon the party establishment. Chaos followed. The discontented accuse party leaders of weakness and betraying their promises to the loyal rank and file.

At the heart of this intramural conflict is the fact that society has changed dramatically in recent decades, but the GOP has refused to change with it. Americans are rapidly shifting toward more tolerant understandings of personal behavior and social values, but the Republican Party sticks with retrograde social taboos and hard-edged prejudices about race, gender, sexual freedom, immigration, and religion. Plus, it wants to do away with big government (or so it claims).

What if we default on our debt?

“Sitting on the Pavement, Thinking About the Government” –

What if we default on our debt?  (Dylan, “Subterranean Homesick Blues”)

 Bill Barclay.

The debt ceiling, the dollar and hegemonic currencies

Let’s begin by clearing up a possible lingering misconception about debt and defaults.  If Congress does not raise the debt ceiling and we default, does that mean the U.S. is broke?  No.  The U.S., like any country that 1) controls the creation of its own currency and 2) issues its debt in its own currency, cannot go broke.  However, political calculations can impose deadbeat status on such a country. 

What about other countries, why don’t they have this problem?  The answer is equally simple.  With the exception of Denmark, no other wealthy industrial society has a debt ceiling – and Denmark’s is set at over twice their actual level of government debt – and it is not a political football.  So yes, the U.S. is, as our national meme says, exceptional.  The debt ceiling – and any associated problems – are our own creation. 

Support Firefighters in California

     This is a good time to thank all of those public workers – the Firefighters ( men and women) and their support crews who are fighting the fires in the California mountains. And, we should thank the public who fund the fire fighting efforts through their tax dollars. Currently the cost is $44 million. This is how government works.

Unfortunately a minority living in the mountains tend to be anti government and anti tax.  Well- someone needs to promote a democratic society in opposition to the political project of the Tea Party and Right Wing Congressmen and elected officials like Mc Clintock.
Update: Sacramento Bee

On Sunday, President Barack Obama called Gov. Jerry Brown and committed federal resources to help the state, according to a statement form the White House.

Following that telephone call, the Federal Emergency Management Agency announced today it had authorized federal funds to help fund the firefight. The agency said it would reimburse the state for as much as 75 percent of eligible costs, including expenses for field camps, materials and supplies and mobilization and demobilization efforts.

Read more here: http://blogs.sacbee.com/capitolalertlatest/2013/08/californias-firefighting-costs-hit-44-million.html#MTRecentEntries#storylink=cpy

  

More on Texas Republicans seek to ban critical thinking

Criminalizing Thinking: Dumb, Ignorant, Mean or Greedy ?

by Rodolfo F. Acuña

I am having trouble getting into this essay on the war on critical thinking. I cannot figure out whether it is dumb or ignorant.  My mother would say that the people conducting the war are malditos, mean.  The reality is that the criminalization of rational thought goes beyond being dumb, ignorant or just plain mean.   

Because the consequences are so calculated and far reaching, it is important to break it down so everyone can understand it and where we are headed.

Fascism did not start on February 27, 1933 with the burning of the Reichstag building in Berlin; it did not begin with the building of concentration camps after the fire. It was all planned and a strategy of division, doubt, and fear simply bore fruit at this point.

Hitler summed up his strategy; he sowed the seeds of “mental confusion, contradiction of feelings, indecision, [and] panic.”

Were the German people dumb, ignorant or just plain malditos?  Some were all of the above.

Tea Party Hostage taking produces debt rating downgrade

The inability of the U.S. government to operate rationally, as demonstrated in the recent hostage crisis over the raising of the debt ceiling, has led to the first ever downgrading of U.S. Credit Rating.  This may cost the gov. states, and counties, and individuals, billions in interest on credit.
The Republican Party has managed to not only stop any recovery during Obama's first term, but they have  also crippled the United States of America's economy despite only controlling the House of Representatives and half of our state Governments. They know how to abuse power.

Standard and Poor.  United States of America Long-Term Rating Lowered To 'AA+' Due To Political Risks, Rising Debt Burden; Outlook Negative

* We have lowered our long-term sovereign credit rating on the United States of America to 'AA+' from 'AAA' and affirmed the 'A-1+' short-term rating.
* We have also removed both the short- and long-term ratings from CreditWatch negative.
* The downgrade reflects our opinion that the fiscal consolidation plan that Congress and the Administration recently agreed to falls short of what, in our view, would be necessary to stabilize the government's medium-term debt dynamics.
* More broadly, the downgrade reflects our view that the effectiveness, stability, and predictability of American policymaking and political institutions have weakened at a time of ongoing fiscal and economic challenges to a degree more than we envisioned when we assigned a negative outlook to the rating on April 18, 2011.
See video in the post below.

Tea Party Victory- less than they thought

If the Tea Party backlash to big government reached a high-water mark when Republican and Democratic leaders struck a deal on the budget Sunday, history should judge the movement as a failure.

David Callahan The American Prospect

Big government lives on. The American public still wants—and, under this deal, will still get—a public sector that will be larger over the next decade than it has been at most points since World War II. As with Reagan-era conservatives and the Republican majority in Congress during the 1990s, the legacy of the Tea Party will only be to stall government’s growth; this latest push from the right won’t substantially downsize—much less starve—the beast.

On Sunday, House Speaker John Boehner said that the deal “shows how much we’ve changed the terms of the debate in this town.” That may be true if your memory only reaches back two years, but things look different in the larger sweep of history.

Consider some numbers.

Before the debt-ceiling deal was reached, the Congressional Budget Office estimated that the U.S. government would spend $46 trillion between 2012 and 2021. Now, the government plans to spend about $43.5 trillion. In constant 2005 dollars, this is more money than all federal spending between 1950 and 1980—the three decades typically seen as the golden age of active government. In turn, the U.S. Treasury is likely to collect more in taxes over the next decade than it took in between 1950 and 1988. Measured on a per-capita basis that accounts for big population increases, federal outlays are roughly three times greater today than in 1965.

Meanwhile, federal spending as a percentage of GDP is now at a historic high of 25 percent. After Sunday’s deal, it will come down some but will likely remain over 21 percent through the next decade, well above the postwar average of 19.5 percent.

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.

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.

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.

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

*****

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. 

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.?