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Congressional Tea Party Downgrade of America
The Boston Tea Party in December 1773 threw the East India Company’s tea overboard. The Republican Tea Party in August 2011 threw America overboard.
Only in Congress, with its rules for minority rule, can a minority of the Republican Party in the House of Representatives impose its havoc on the American people there, then on the Senate side and on Obama’s wilting White House.
"You see, these House and Senate Tea Partiers are like mad dogs – at times even beyond control of their political and corporate masters." (photo: M.V. Jantzen)
Leaving aside the psychiatric question of why a clutch of Republican Tea Partiers, many of them freshmen, terrify the veteran Republicans who outnumber them in the House, consider what they just pushed through the House against the American people.
For 150 million workers, Tea Partiers pushed through more cuts in the already starved federal programs that are aimed at diminishing the yearly 58,000 fatalities in workplace-related disease and trauma plus larger numbers injured and wounded.
There are 307 million eaters in America. More than 7,000 of them die from contaminated food and more than 300,000 are hospitalized each year. The Tea Partiers pushed cuts through the House to the already underfunded FDA food safety programs. They did this even though last year Congress strengthened the FDA’s authority and expanded its responsibilities, including closer inspection of hazardous foodstuffs increasingly coming from communist China.
There are 60 million investors in company stocks in America. The Tea Partiers stomped their feet and cut the House appropriations for law enforcement against Wall Street’s frauds by the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission. This cuts the number of federal cops on the Wall Street crime beat, especially on derivative scams.
All Americans breathe air and drink water. The Tea Partiers are cutting the budget of the federal agencies working to get the toxic pollution out of those two necessities for life on Earth. Don’t even mention global warming and climate change to Tea Partiers who are willing to die laughing at such a prospect.
There are millions of women and children with special health needs who depend on federal programs for assistance. The House Tea Party members want to slash the modest budgets for these programs.
There are 200 million drivers in America. The Tea Partiers intend to cut the already measly auto safety budget of the Transportation Department. The auto safety budget is less than a third of the budget they allowed for guarding the U.S. embassy in Baghdad.
They have also told others in Congress they are opposed to last year’s auto and bus safety bill giving long-overdue authority to safety regulators. The bill was supported by Democrats and Republicans but was blocked by one Senator Tom Coburn, a physician no less, in the last December days of the session. Minority rule again blocking 99 senators who signed off on unanimous consent to get this life-saving legislation through the Senate.
There are 30 million American workers, polls show, who would like to have a trade union represent them in negotiations with giants like Walmart. The Tea Partiers hate unions of workers and were instrumental in blocking the budget for the FAA in late July and early August on a union organizing mechanism and $16 million in subsidies for a few rural airports. For almost two weeks, the Tea Partiers punished tens of thousands of American workers who had to stop working on airport improvement and repair projects, and with the law’s expiration, the Tea Partiers let the U.S. government lose $30 million in a day in airline ticket taxes.
The Tea Partiers hate taxes, especially on the rich and corporations, even though they are the lowest rates in 20 years. They are extremists, mindlessly embracing Grover Norquist’s no-tax pledge. They are even against giving the IRS funds it needs to collect $15 for every $1 it spends collecting taxes on the ever-more privileged. The number of Treasury auditors focused on these giant global companies is miniscule.
The Tea Partiers don’t even care that 50 percent of Tea Partiers back home and 70 percent of Republicans polled thought additional tax revenues should be part of the deficit-reduction program passing through Congress.
You see, these House and Senate Tea Partiers are like mad dogs – at times even beyond control of their political and corporate masters. Fanatics neither think nor blink in their hostage politics. They’re scarring Wall Streeters with their brinkmanship. Brandishing a historic moniker that symbolized rebellion against the then monarchial power, the Congressional Tea Partiers are anything but rebels against power – whether against the wars of empire, corporate welfare, sovereignty shedding NAFTA and WTO, corporate crime, the flouted war powers of Congress, or a runaway Wall Street.
Back home last year, Tea Party rhetoric did echo the people’s concerns about these matters. It turned out to be just talk by those now in Congress. The Tea Party in Congress is more interested in wielding the axe against public works programs, education, housing, public health, drug safety and medical research. But they leave alone the hugely expensive, cost-over-run weapons systems – long after the dissolution of the Soviet Union. Raising money from the fat cats for next year’s election, the Tea Partiers aren’t about to challenge tax favoritism – officially known as tax expenditures – that Reagan’s economist, Professor Martin Feldstein recently called the single largest source of wasteful and low-priority spending in the federal budget.
It is one thing for the Tea Party politicians in Congress—already well-to-do and consuming a pretty nice salary and a bevy of benefits – to lack empathy. But America needs to call them out on their downright ideologically-inebriated animosity toward the domestic necessities of the American people. Tea Party extremists in Congress may well sink the Republican Party but in the process take many Americans down with them.
They’re taking the debt-limit vote to the cliff set up the Standard and Poor’s (S&P) first-ever downgrade of the U.S. government’s credit rating, last Friday. Call it the Tea Party downgrade.
It is time to put a firm cap on the kettle.
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54 Comments so far
Show AllReminds me of the story about the guy who, fed up with leaves needing to be collected in the fall, cut down all the trees around his house. He realised his mistake (will the T-party?) only with the heat of summer and thus no shade to hide.
Reminds me also of Thatcher's Britain. Yes the UK was not well, it had a sick heart.
Thatcher's answer ! rip out the heart. See no more sick heart, yet no heart either.
Kwame Appiah has a great answer to this problem. On NPR's 'On Being" this weekend he suggested talking with people about ordinary stuff, even those we don't agree with. Then the harder subjects are easier to tackle.
pax
Too bad Obama gives in to the tea party so frequently while chastising the people who voted for him whenever they question his actions.
RUN RALPH RUN.
NADER IN 2012!
I don't think he'll do it. He's done his time in the trenches.
As for all of you a-holiers that had so much fun bashing third party voters, you're worth less than the lowest Tea Partier.
The teabaggers are running the Republican party, just call them the Koch, fox news baggers after all that is what they are. Fox news created these idiots and the Koch brothers quickly financed them into puppetme rice American people are that stupid, in Florida, the retirement state, the people voted into the Governors office a man that was convicted of the most ruthless Medicare fraud in history, and he paid the largest fine for Medicare fraud. Rick Scott, and they knew his history. We can count on the teabaggers getting elected to watch our money just like Rick Scott got elected to watch Floridas Medicare. Fox news lies, where are the jobs you ran on republicans?
Sorry for the duplication
The teabaggers are running the Republican party,
The teabaggers are running the Republican party, just call them the Koch, fox news baggers after all that is what they are. Fox news created these idiots and the Koch brothers quickly financed them into puppets the American people are that stupid, in Florida, the retirement state, the people voted into the Governors office a man that was convicted of the most ruthless Medicare fraud in history, and he paid the largest fine for Medicare fraud. Rick Scott, and they knew his history. We can count on the teabaggers getting elected to watch our money just like Rick Scott got elected to watch Floridas Medicare. Fox news lies, where are the jobs you ran on republicans?
Rick Scott was never charged, never indicted, never convicted of any crime. Quite the opposite, he walked away from his health "care" company with millions and then he was further rewarded with the governorship of FL by clueless jackasses. This guy should be rotting in hell for his crimes but instead he is wrecking havoc on FL and the boobs who elected him will suffer the most from his hellish libertarian policies. The corporations, the millionaires and billionaires will do just fine under his misrule.
But Ralph... the Tea Party is a *construct* of the Republican hierarchy!
Dick Armey and the Koch Brothers *created* the Tea Party, combining right-wing Republicans with justly disaffected Independents. Then, they got them to support and vote for candidates that will destroy their lives (Medicare, SS).
This is not news.
The news is the complete capitulation of the Democratic Party. For example, here's proof that it was Obama, not the Republicans, who put SS at risk during the faux debt crisis (at 1:30):
http://www.crewof42.com/cbc/conyers-on-jobs-weve-had-it-lays-out-obama-calls-for-protest-at-white-house/
With both political parties ready, willing, and able to destroy what's left of the United States... where do we turn?
That was my thought, too, bugmenot.
It also struck me that this is a perversely effective variation on the bogus Liberal/Progressive Realpolitik Handbook strategy I'm always carrying on about-- the dogma that an activist citizen movement, aka "the grassroots", must tirelessly work to advocate issues and create the "political space" to give Elected Misrepresentatives a basis for supporting them.
The "Tea Party" bugaboo demonstrates this process in reverse: here, the Tea Party began as a fake or manufactured "grassroots" pseudo-movement that attracted enough disaffected citizens to make it seem like a legitimate bottom-up grassroots movement.
Armey and the Koch Brothers, et al, leveraged this pseudo-movement with the help of the corporate mass-media, which bent over backwards to give it the exposure and status to make its fictitious legitimacy "real", i.e. a fait accompli.
So it's actually a top-down power play to create a virtual "political space" that the reactionary politicians can then take advantage of to implement top-down policies-- pretending that, as true small-d democratic politicians, they're complying with the will of the people as forcefully and relentlessly expressed in the "Tea Party Movement".
During my years as a regional "specialist" for the state unemployment insurance agency, I became familiar with a favorite tactic of the most chickenshit, weaselly office managers: they constantly insisted to their subordinate supervisors and staff that they were implementing onerous or just plain offensively wrong policies and personnel decisions because "Harrisburg" or "the regional director" demanded it.
It's not me, it's X (the Regional Director), or the big shots in Harrisburg! they would insist.
Once in a while it happened to be true, but most of the time these managers would decide on their own to make the effed-up decisions in question. Pretending that the Regional Director or bosses in Harrisburg made them do it was a cheap trick to get justifiably disgruntled subordinates off their slimy backs.
It's the same thing here-- the wingnut Republicans insist that "The Tea Party is 'making' us do it!", and the colluding Democrats bleat in turn, "Those dastardly kamikaze Republicans are 'making' us do it!"
Not only did he put Social Security and Medicare on the chopping block, Obama also initiated the "payroll tax holiday" that defunds Social Security for the first time ever. Every day for the past two weeks Obama has announced how important it will be to extend the "payroll tax holiday" beyond 2011, allegedly to create jobs, actually to accelerate the demise of Social Security.
It will accelerate the demise of Social Security for sure. Again today, Obama repeated the same call to extend the "payroll tax holiday" like a broken record. Bush is probably very envious of him because Obama seems to be more fervent in repeating lies. We've had this "payroll tax holiday" for the past 7 months and it has had no effect.
You're right, and I have repeated this a million times on CD, yet funny how there's never a response to this horrible fact by the likes of constitutiona/damnliberal and the other Obamabots/Dem-Apologists, any time you or I or anyone else posts it. They turn a blind eye to their golden boy's destruction of the New Deal safety net, his war crimes and lawlessness, his flouting of the Constitution, his daily blowjobs given to his Wall Street masters - all the while screaming from frothy lips about how evil the Republicans are.
It never ceases to amaze me just how good some people are at brainwashing themselves.
Two articles by Nader on CD in a row in which he is all of a sudden towing Democratic Party talking points. Yes, his criticisms are valid but he omits the Democratic Party's complicity. Nader is working his way towards irrelevancy because he has no support of Democrats and Republicans and if he continues, he will lose progressives. It is apparent Nader didn't read the CD comments on his previous article.
What ? Nader actually bashing the Tea Party and Republicans ? He normally reserves his unbridled attacks for Democrats and never calls out the repubes. Is he having a change of heart ?!!
In any case i would totally support Matt Gonzalez for President :)
riddimboy
Matt Gonzalez! Yes!
Most progressives don't waste their breath criticizing Republicans because the problems with their policies are self-evident. Democrats get more criticism on CD because they feign progressivism and carry out Republican policies.
Get your Tea Bags outta my cup!
Here's Boehner's reply email to me. His damage control:
Thank you contacting me regarding the Budget Control Act. It's good to hear from you. It's clear that Washington's reckless spending binge is hurting private-sector job growth across the country. That's why I said President Obama's request for an increase in the national debt limit could not pass unless it included spending cuts that exceed the debt hike, reforms to restrain future spending, and no job-crushing tax hikes. The Budget Control Act meets that test by:
• Cutting and capping spending by $21 billion next year and $917 billion over the next 10 years;
• Advancing the cause of a Balanced Budget Amendment (the best mechanism for restraining the growth of government long-term);
• Keeping the focus on spending cuts by requiring a joint-committee of Congress to identify additional deficit reduction of at least $1.5 trillion by the end of the year; and
• Protecting families and job creators from tax hikes demanded by President Obama.
The bill is a positive step toward stopping Washington from spending money it doesn't have - but it's only a step. We can celebrate when a Balanced Budget Amendment is ratified, the deficit is fixed, and our economy has returned to creating jobs.*** Until then, we have a lot of work to do.
Thank you again for contacting me. Your ideas, comments, and questions help make possible my goal of leading a House of Representatives that listens and reflects the will of the American people. I hope you'll keep speaking out by:
• Connecting with my office on Twitter.com/SpeakerBoehner/; and
• Discussing solutions to the challenges facing our country at AmericaSpeakingOut.com.
I made a Pledge to America to focus on removing government barriers to private-sector job creation*** and economic growth. I also pledged to lead an effort to reform Congress and rebuild the bonds of trust between the American people and their representatives in Washington. Please stay engaged and keep me updated on your thoughts as we work to keep this pledge. To learn more about the Republican blueprint for job creation, click here or visit Jobs.GOP.Gov.
Job creation comments posted from another site:
* You are completely wrong!! Companies will not hire because they are holding the U.S. hostage! They are purposely saving money to weather the storm until they get their Republican candidate into the WH and Congress. They don't care about the American people. If they did, they wouldn't be sending our jobs overseas! They only care about Republican puppets changing government so that they can make billions more!
* As many have already pointed out, companies are laying off people and doubling the workload on the rest with no adjustment in pay. Why would they hire new employees if they can make people do twice the work for the same pay? They probably got a taste of how workers are treated in China, and just want to apply the same business logic here.
* Why won't employers hire... simple. Because they care more about cutting wages to make a stock quote for those at the helm of a company to cash in their options.
Anybody who thinks otherwise is a fool.
* Read a little about the fall of the Roman Republic and the rise of the Caesars. Cheap labor from conquered territories undercut the Roman middle class, while the ultra wealthy reaped vast profits. After a few generations there were only the ultra rich, the military and the poor.
I assume you are a community organizer.
The Romans also used taxes to enslave the middle class.
I hate that the Media speaks about the "Tea Party", like it is made up of legitimate people instead of being a Front for the Koch Brothers, Dick Armey, Karl Rove ect. Why not just say that the Koch Brothers don't want their Oil and Gas and income regulated and taxed? Why not say that Karl Rove and Mitch McConnell want Congress Republicans to march in lock step, to bring our Government to a stand still, in the hopes that they can bring Obama and the Democrats down. Since Obama was elected, he has been sabotaged by the under cover Republicans, known as the Blue Dog Democrats, thus eliminating his advantage prior to 2010 elections. Why not point out that Linda Koch is one person who is affiliated with Mcgraw-Hill, who owns S&P. Why not call this for the Political chess game that it is?? Instead the media gives credence to the myth that "The Tea Party" is a percentage of voters who are unhappy. Of course Congress bows to the political pressure of those who bribe them with campaign donations. Let the media tell the truth, instead of allowing the myth to go on!
It's too late, the tea is working...
The Last Tea Party; Jim Jones Edition:
http://thewashingtonfancy.com/2011/08/wf-editorial-the-last-tea-party/
Sometimes I believe that the "Tea Party" was A manufactured distraction to conceal "ALEC"...
Just look at the attendance rate of these recent Tea Party rallies..Citizens United Ruling is the Backbone of these Fascist enterprizes...With the "Rule of Law" that we are experiencing these days, they would probably get away with all anyway, Citizens United/Corporate Citizen or not!!!
Spot on!
It is the absence of a leftist & truly progressive party in the US that is the problem, not the presence of the fascists on the right. Obama is a very adroit & adept violinist, as Paul Street so eloquently noted: "Obama the violin with his left hand, but then plays it with his right!"
BTW, the "Timidcrats," more so at the national level (i.e. DNC) are center right & are just pro-capitalist, pro-corporate & pro-war, just like the "Teapublicans."
What CheGuevara said. Timidcrats. Teapublicans. Heh.
The only reason the phony "Tea Party" has any clout is because the democrats and the republicans both use them to make the continuous rightward movement, which BOTH "parties" support, seem like it is a more reasoned approach to what they ALL have in common.
I cannot comprehend why Ralph Nader is participating in this fraudulent pretense that the Tea Party is not supported by the democrats as well as the republicans.
This article makes me want to just quit thinking about any of this bullshit!
Both parties definitely appreciate the cover the tea party gives them to move rightward.
Obama's and most other Democratic Party campaigns in 2012 will have a singular focus to convince voters to elect Democrats in order to keep those scary tea party candidates and incumbants from taking over.
I really feel sorry for the rank and file on the left. The more Socialized Europe is in massive debt trouble, has flamed out and is sinking, America is running massive deficits, our economy is stalling again, our credit is being questioned and to the left the problem is the result of not enough taxing of the wealthy/ too little governmental spending and that 5% of one third of the US government (who have been in office for 8 months now) aren't playing nice in their sandbox????????
Evidently you can fool some of the people all of the time.
Well, the right thinks we are going to tax cut our way to number 1 again. Really? Seriously? One of the big reasons we are in this mess was massive tax cuts that did nothing for the economy but help run up massive deficits.
Your are NOT going to grow your way out of this mess. Too many jobs have been sent overseas, and we are now a major importer of oil, which by the way appears to have peaked several years back. Our country was setup around cheap oil, and those days are over. We are in serious trouble.
So yea keep cutting taxes. That's all that Amerika stands for now a days. We probably have about a trillion dollars of infrastructure upgrades that are needed across the country, But hey baby cut taxes. So what if bridges cave in, gas lines explode, water systems fail. Cut taxes yea.
There is plenty of money in this country to take care of its citizens, but that is not the priority. The priority in this country is Empire, the military, murdering foreigners, and funneling money up to the already ultra rich. May the ultra rich be buried with their money stuffed in their mouths so they are dug up in a thousand years future archeologists will know what scummy pigs they really were.
Hello NC-Tom
Good reply and I agree with parts of it.
I know all sides lie so I try read many sources. Here is what I believe: While we have a very high corporate tax rate http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tax_rates_around_the_world corporate taxes as a share of GDP is a little low by historical standards http://www.deptofnumbers.com/blog/2010/08/tax-revenue-as-a-fraction-of-gdp/ While I could be wrong, I believe large corporations have gotten politicians to bake in some big loop holes into the tax code. The code should be simplified with the outcome being rate reduction and loopholes closed (get back to more historic levels).
The rich could be taxed some more, and I for one would support that, but everyone including the poor needs skin in the game! Every politician has been getting elected by promising services for votes using other people's money: That has got to stop!!!!!!!!
Governmental spending has been going through the roof since 2000, (Bush was horrible Obama is even worse) http://www.usgovernmentspending.com/federal_deficit_chart.html
Defense should be cut but current entitlements are not sustainable http://www.cbpp.org/cms/index.cfm?fa=view&id=1258 (Don't believe me look at Europe) http://www.irows.ucr.edu/papers/irows8/irows8.htm (scroll down to shares of World GDP 1820 to 1998, others show European trajectory continuing along the same declining path).
You may hate the Tea Party, but to blame them is playing the fool and drinking the Kool-Aid!!!!!!!!!!!!
I love Ralph Nader, but I have to somewhat part ways with him here. The reckless and outrageous spending has to end. It just has to. Its insane. Its killing everyone. And both parties split the guilt –right down the middle. I agree however that the rich and corporate needs to be taxed and taxed accordingly.
To Ralph's chagrin, its a group from the citizenry that got the ball rolling. : )
The Left – if it insists on clinging to the dead donkey – needs its own version of the TP if it is to have any leverage at all. Not sure how thats gonna happen though. Most everyone in the mix now has been pretty much discredited. The Left is up Shit Creek without a paddle. This prez is going to get nailed and I mean nailed in '12. (And I don't get any joy outta sayin' it. Hell, I voted for the Turkey.) And how badly he gets spanked – i.e humiliated – is totally up the republicans that will have total discretion of providing the whipping.
The truth is, the downgrade was coming, regardless of the TP.
Bernie Saunders/Ralph Nader in 2012....Or Gabrielle Giffords/Elizabeth Warren....
I hate to say it, but I've been done with Obush-ma for a long time
Am I going to do this? Yss I am. I'm going to part ways with those who say we have stop all this spending. Actually we've got to increase the federal budget deficit just as Frnanklin D Roosevelt and other real Democrats once did. We have to stop letting ourselves put pictures in our heads that are right out of the Tea Party's BS. We need to get rid of all balanced budgets until the economy comss back. A balanced budget killed the economy under Herbert Hoover here and killed it in Germany under the Weimar politicians and look at what happened in Germany. is that really what balanced budget types want hard times harder than they already are? It must be nice to be a billionaire.
To avoid running up deficits which cost us, tax the wealthy and the corporations that profit here appropriately, and cap their incomes. Spend far less on the military and spend more on social programs.
Agree with you though that we have to spend our way out of this current morass. Running up the deficit did help cause the morass (which was created ON PURPOSE, because WE pay usurious interest on it to our Masters).
When Bushco was running up the deficit like a runaway train, the Republicans were saying deficits don't matter! They do!
Well we all are now victims of the Tea Party idea of Government and so are they. What you sow you reap. So now instead of progress we regressed and boy does that stink.
Reliving the Dept mess is not getting us anywhere and playing blame games is fruitless.
We all know how we got into this mess and we need to reverse this calamity ASAP.
When are you all going to realize that these crazies are the “Armageddon” people? These are the “end-of-times” people, the …”you are going to go to hell people”.
They act like the “We are the “not happy people and if we are not happy, we are going to take this world with us when we go people”, and if we are not happy we are damn sure going to make your lives miserable too.
All this democracy stuff was taking too damn long for them and now they are rushing to end it all or rather pushing it all down hill. Hell is too good a place for these people.
These folks watch too much TV.....and on TV their heroes always manage to get up again and be all heroish after being shot, stabbed, bashed and behead. Wrong! Real life hurts and sometimes you do not get up.
There is however one comforting thought…..Or, as some I respect on CD have said …….and I am paraphrasing here......Karma is a bitch.
It won't be hard for me to remember who was cause of this shit, not at all. What worries me is how well the M$M has narcotized its dumbstream garden with the 'telling a lie enough and they will believe it' fertilizer, such doesn't lend its self to intelligent thinking.
HELLO!
In all of the other posts here, everyone keeps forgetting REVENUE.
WE ARE NOT TAKING IN ENOUGH REVENUE. TAXES ARE REVENUE‼!
If millionaires, billionaires and rich corporations are not paying their fair share…or nothing at all, they then think now they are going to squeeze that last drop out of the American people. I think not!
I have been squeezed enough and you lackeys here in sheep’s clothing do not fool me. Go play with yourselves. I have garden tools and I am mad as hell.
Hear hear!
Gosh, you all must be too young to remember that it was Ralph Nader, by splitting the progressive vote in 2000, got us into this God awful mess. Now he has the gall to stand up and preach. Actually I never heard where his millions came from, or how much tax he paid on them? But it is clear that the Koch brothers and their ilk helped fund his 2000 and 2004 campaigns.
Democrats still blaming Nader for Gore/Lieberman's loss. They blame Nader for the wars which Democrats supported and voted for. They blame Nader for tax cuts which Democrats supported and voted for. Those Democrtic talking points don't work on Common Dreams.
I disagree with you here, Santa Cruz Red. It was the Democrats themselves who helped get us into this mess by being so wooden and complicit, and who constantly rolled over and parted their butt-cheeks for the Republicans that really helped get us into this mess. The two-party system here in the United States has held the American Electorate hostage for far too long. Real change is needed, and it won't come either from this present Administration in Washington, the Democratic Party at large, or the GOP.
In the long run perhaps the tea party will be seen for what they are, sort of a battering ram judas scapecoat for the forever cowardly extreme right politicos who's trump card will be to point a crooked finger at the baggers and exclaim the devils made us do it..the tea party antics in the public arena embellished in a violent ignorance, void of any semblance of humanity smack of the brownshirt army of yesteryear..their blind whacks at the their own tree roots smacks of alfred e. newman...I only wish a few of those axe swings could strike the koch tree..then again who knows..rabid dogs have been known to turn on their beloved masters!..One could only hope and pray
well said
You folks are not focusing on the real issue. The US is rich - very rich. It also has 40% of the planet's GNP. That is 40 times what Russia has. It is not that there is not enough wealth, or cash, it is that the wealth is not distributed with any evenness. The US has a more-skewed wealth and income distribution than Colombia! The real problem is that a very small group, mostly in NYC, have started stealing all the wealth of everybody else - by orchestrating mortgage plunder. Start by putting this scum in jail.
The other place where Ralph Nader goes wrong is not recognizing that the Administration can easily generate sufficient funds for investments and stay under the "debt ceiling" by the administrative action of "Impoundment." The House passes a spending bill directing say $300 billion for the F-35 joint strike fighter - the Administration simply impounds the funds, and refuses to spend it.
Bingo - you are 300 extra-large off the spending hit, and free to go over in some other place. Nader forgets that the biggie in spending is the military hardware. Because military items such as carriers and submarines are so capital-intensive, impounding these purchases rapidly decreases the deficit. I hear the argument that we need these projects for the jobs they bring. Rubbish. A sub does not require $4 billion in labor. Far cheaper to simply issue the paychecks and have the workers stay home than to build useless hardware (which costs a ton of more money to keep running and crewed, and does nothing). What are you going to do with a $300 billion airplane? Admire it at airshows?
If Obama wanted to enforce discipline, it is easy enough to do. Select one Tea Party nutcake in a State that is never going to vote Democratic anyway - say, Kansas or Oklahoma or South Dakota. Scrap every single federal installation in the District. Airport? Sorry, controllers needed somewhere else; leave it a grass strip. Courthouse? Sorry, no money, close it, remove the files, and demolish the top two floors with a wrecking ball. Leave the rest of the structure there as an abject reminder of the price you pay when you vote tea party (and you bust it up so that if the Repubs gain control, they first have to finish the demolition and then start reconstruction of a building, will take years). Road contract in progress? Cancelled; leave it unpaved. Amtrak? Demolish the station, stops in the district are cancelled. When you inflict enough pain, and send in a facepiece to tell the locals that it continues until they impeach the looney, the rest of the Districts get the message real fast. End of that problem.
Nader is obviously joining with the Blues next year...
Makes sense, he tried the indy and Green route enough times and failed miserably -to build a movement or Party- every time. So now he seems to think a Prog Blue Primary run by somebody (but who?) is the ticket.
Oh well. ;)
People of sound mind really, really need to quit empowering the teabaggers by saying things like, "The Republican Tea Party in August 2011 threw America overboard."
For one thing, this doesn't reflect reality. For another, it gifts this rag-tag group of knuckle-dragging, poor white trash, racist, gutter-suckers with powers they don't even own, nor are capable of seizing. In what universe would any Democrat or Republican be bullied into acquiescing the reins of power to a deranged nutjob who thinks the U.S. census is a communist conspiracy and who called on her colleagues to slit their wrists in solidarity? Without the Koch brothers and the C-Street gang, Bachmann, Palin, Angles and their ilk would relegated, and rightfully so, to the ranks of the Warren Jeffs, Rev. Jim Jones and Ray Larsen.
The sooner we replace "Tea Bag Party" with "Koch Brothers" or, (when speaking of the teabaggers themselves), "Koch heads" the sooner we begin an honest dialogue about who and what has hijacked our country and the sooner we empower the voice of the 70 to 80% of American citizens who are saying "Hell no" to all this lawlessness and plundering.
Why does everyone keep engaging in this circle jerk, trying apply logic to the fact that the teabaggers don't rebel against "the wars of empire, corporate welfare, sovereignty shedding NAFTA and WTO, corporate crime, the flouted war powers of Congress, or a runaway Wall Street?'" Why does everyone keep scratching their heads over why "a clutch of Republican Tea Partiers... terrify the veteran Republicans."
Neither Obama nor Boehner are "terrified" of the Tea Party. They're terrified of losing favor with the robber barons and, with it, their cushy jobs; they're terrified of being thrown into the tar pits with the rest of us. In-between all this terror, our leaders are enjoying the fruits of their plunder, grateful as hell that they're safe from the protests of the 70 to 80% of citizens -- protests which, for 10 years and counting, have been routinely dispersed with rubber bullets, tear gas, mass arrests and the complicity of the media to ignore the facts on the ground.
I prefer to say "Koch suckers"
Mr. Nader,
You have done a lot for our Country, and at the same time have been a victim of the joint Democrat/Republican political monopoly.
Please read the Preamble to the Constitution again, for it gives the reason our founders formed the United States in the first place: "We the People," "General Welfare," Ourselves and Our Posterity."
The failure of the Supreme Court to recognize the problems large political donations cause to our politics is inexcusable. Large donations are bribes not free speech.
You should take the lead in pushing for a Constitutional Amendment that will disallow campaign donations by anything or anyone other than registered voters, and that will set a reasonable cap on the size a donation can be.
An amendment of this nature will cause the main focus of Congressmen and women to be on "We the People" rather than on their big campaign contributors.