Category Archives: Tea Party

The Legacy Of Lee Atwater: How Republicans Became The Party Of Racists.

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Following the Civil Rights Act of 1964, LBJ famously said that, by signing the bill, the Democratic Party may have lost the South for a generation. Not long afterward, Republican strategist Lee Atwater formulated the Southern Strategy, which encouraged Republicans to express their racism in more subtle ways in order to win elections.

“You start out in 1954 by saying N.…., N.…., N….. that hurts you, backfires. So you say stuff like, uh, forced busing, states rights, and all that stuff… All these things you’re talking about are totally economic things and a byproduct of them is blacks get hurt worse than whites,” said Atwater.

We’ve seen these dog whistles for racists play out in Republican politics ever since. Indeed, they’ve never been more apparent than now that we have an African-American president. Instead of using the N-word to describe President Obama, they use “de furer” [sic]. They portray him as a clown. They push for “3 strikes and you’re out” laws that fill our prisons with minorities. They support “stop and frisk” laws in our cities. And they pass restrictive voter ID laws in order to suppress minority votes.

I could cite hundreds of examples mostly generated by the “Grand Old Party” of the South.

Eventually, Atwater recognized the damage he had created. On his death bed, he apologized for his actions. But the Republican Party that embraced his views hasn’t. In fact, on what may well be the Party’s deathbed following their forced government shutdown and potential US default, much of the Republican Party, expecially its Tea Party parasites, is still clinging to Atwater’s advice.

May those who continue this strategy rot in the same hell as the Confederacy.

Why Do We Have A Debt Ceiling Anyway?

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Following the Tea Party-forced government shutdown and near default, it’s worth considering doing away with the debt ceiling. It serves absolutely no purpose other than providing recalcitrant congressional representatives the opportunity to hold our government hostage in order to “negotiate” their pet issues.

Since the debt ceiling is a measure of money already spent by Congress, it has no real impact on congressional budgeting and government spending.

If we really want to limit government spending, what we need is a spending ceiling based on a percentage of the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) and an absolute deadline for the House, the Senate and the White House to agree on a federal budget. Such a law would force Congress to negotiate the federal budget without threat of our government defaulting on its debts.

It would also be far more sensible than the Teapublican-sponsored balanced budget amendment that could lead to greater dysfunction than we’re already experiencing.

A spending ceiling would allow the budget to increase along with the GDP, and presumably the population, while maintaining fiscal discipline. Moreover, Congress and the White House could be given the flexibility to temporarily override the ceiling in special or extreme circumstances, such as the Great Depression or the Great Recession, as long as there was a commitment to offset the overrides within five years. This would allow the federal government to stimulate the economy for a year or two, or to increase spending in wartime. But, in most years, the political debate would be confined to how the money should be spent. Not the amount of money to be spent.

Such a system might allow citizens to more clearly track their representatives’ priorities. It might also make it difficult for representatives to speak in broad generalities about the budget and force them to address specific programs. And, if properly implemented, it might be easier to tell if a representative favored corporate welfare over human needs; or whether or not a representative was voting in support of special interests versus the interests of his, or her, constituents.

In other words, Congress would be forced to do something unprecedented…create a budget and live with its consequences.

GOP Put “Obamacare” Tantrum Above Infrastructure And Jobs.

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In March of this year, President Obama called for Congress to approve a $21 billion package designed to update our crumbling infrastructure and create jobs. “Let’s get this done. Let’s rebuild this country we love. Let’s make sure we’re staying on the cutting edge,” Obama said, calling for a “partnership to rebuild America.”

As part of the package, Obama proposed creating an infrastructure bank to help seed major projects. In addition, his proposal would invest $4 billion to support the Transportation Infrastructure Finance and Innovation Act (TIFIA) designed to leverage private and non-federal funding for projects of regional or national significance through loans, loan guarantees and lines of credit. The proposal also called for tax incentives meant to support state and municipal bonds for infrastructure modernization projects. The president noted that both the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and labor unions back infrastructure spending.

It was met with indifference by Republicans in Congress.

Speaker John Boehner questioned how such projects would be funded. “It’s easy to go out there and be Santa Claus and talk about all the things you want to give away, but at some point somebody has to pay the bill,” he said.

Keep in mind the cost of the package was $21 billion…$3 billion less than Republicans and their Tea Party parasites squandered by shutting down the government for 16 days! Who’s going to pay that bill?

Wait! I already know the answer. If the GOP follows it’s usual protocol, the money will be taken from food stamps, kids and the working poor.

The End Is Near?

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All across the Worldwide Web, you can find websites, blogs and videos announcing the impending “End of Obama.” Some have been created by fanatical Christian groups that are convinced President Obama is a Muslim. Some have been created by white supremacy groups and other racist thugs who dislike the color of his skin. Some have been created by fraudsters determined to scare you out of your money.

We have pundits predicting the demise of democracy if Obama is allowed to implement his agenda. (Never mind that Obama was democratically elected – not once, but twice.) They predict that he will single-handedly lead us into economic disaster. Some of these predictions come from right wing radio hosts looking to scare up higher ratings. Some are pushed by right wing politicians determined to scare people into voting for them.

The two things that connect all of these dire (and unfounded) predictions are fear and hatred.

This is really not a new phenomenon. We’ve had doomsayers for centuries. But nobody actually took them seriously…until now. They used to be the subject of ridicule and smirks. They used to stand on street corners holding signs and shouting to themselves until the people in white coats put them in straight jackets and carted them off. They used to hide deep in the woods never to be heard from again. But now we make TV shows and movies about them. Worse yet, we elect them to office.

Today, we have people such as Tea Party favorite Ted Cruz and Tea Party caucus leader Michele Bachmann warning of the end times. We hear dozens of bombastic right wing preachers and televangelists predicting dire consequences if we don’t do as they say and send them money. We have TV “reality shows” rating the ability of “Doomsday Preppers” to build bunkers, stash food and map escape routes. We have gun “collectors” storing arsenals of weapons and ammo that would put the armies of many small countries to shame. We have Tea Party fear mongers warning of UN troops in black helicopters coming to take away our freedoms. And we have right wing billionaires funding TV commercials warning that “Obamacare” is the “end of liberty.”

Is this really what Americans have become as a people? A nation of ninnies afraid of a shadow – especially if that shadow is cast by a black man? Has the “land of the free and the home of the brave” become the land of the hateful and the cowards? If so, we better commission someone to write a new national anthem.

The generation of my parents fought the Great Depression and World War II with the words of Franklin Delano Roosevelt ringing in their ears, “We have nothing to fear but fear itself.” If they were called The Greatest Generation, what should we call the generations of today?

Artificial Intelligence.

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In an age of political irony, the committee assignment for Rep. Michele Bachmann stands out. Believe it or not, she is a proud member of the House Intelligence Committee!

Clearly, GOP leaders have no understanding of the word’s meaning. As I’m sure you know, intelligence is defined as “the ability to learn facts and skills and apply them, especially when this ability is highly developed.” It may also be defined as “information about secret plans or activities, especially those of foreign governments, the armed forces, business competitors, or criminals.”

Do either of those definitions have any obvious relationship to Bachmann? Seriously?

In all her years in office, Bachmann has displayed no aptitude for learning. She has demonstrated no understanding of history, our Founders, our Constitution or any other aspect of government. Neither has she demonstrated an ability to keep her lack of knowledge secret. Honestly, the woman can’t keep her mouth shut!

For example, Bachmann says that we are now living in the end of times. She’s not only a believer in Biblical Armageddon. From her politics, one might rightly conclude that she’s trying to rush to the end by defunding the federal government, defaulting on government loans, denying the science of climate change, fighting against gun safety, pushing for more fracking and oil drilling, and denying equal rights for all Americans.

However, if you listen to her long enough, you find that she admits to having no mind of her own. Like Sarah Palin, she claims that God tells her what to do. How sacrilegious is that!? She would have us believe that God would consistently tell her to say and do the wrong thing?

I find that offensive!

As a child, I was told that God is omniscient and omnipotent. Bachmann? Not so much. That leaves only two possible explanations for Bachmann’s failures. Either God doesn’t really speak to Bachmann. Or he has one heck of a sense of humor!

The $24 Billion Tantrum.

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Following the Teapublican-caused government shutdown and threatened US default, it’s fair to look at what this pointless exercise cost us. Not including the human costs, economists at Standard & Poors estimate the cost of the government shutdown at $24 billion.

That’s larger than the entire annual budget for NASA ($17.8 billion) or the Department of the Interior ($13.5 billion). Put another way, it’s larger than the budget for the Environmental Protection Agency ($8.9 billion), the National Science Foundation ($7.5 billion), the Small Business Administration ($1.4 billion), the Corporation for National and Community Service ($1.1 billion) and the Disaster Relief Fund ($2 billion) combined.

It’s nearly double the annual revenue collected through the Estate and Gift Tax ($13 billion). It’s nearly half of the entire budget for Homeland Security. And, in more human terms, it would feed 1.6 million American families of four for an entire year!

Now imagine what would happen if Democrats proposed spending $24 billion to help the working poor or to rebuild our crumbling infrastructure. Teapublicans would cry, scream and hold their breath. They would fill the airwaves and the newspapers with paranoia. They would say that Democrats were mortgaging our children’s future. Yet they were willing to spend $24 billion on nothing…absolutely nothing.

Worse yet, 144 Teapublican Congressional Representatives and 18 Senators voted no on the bill to reopen the government and to prevent default! That’s 162 Teapublican votes to pour even more money down a rat hole. 162 votes to send the US government into default…risking a worldwide economic calamity!

And what might that have accomplished? Most economists feared that a failure to increase the debt ceiling would not only downgrade the rating of US bonds, it would create a collapse worse than the Great Recession of 2008 and 2009…maybe worse than the Great Depression. To put that into perspective, in a research paper for the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas, economists David Luttrell, Tyler Atkinson and Harvey Rosenblum calculated that the total cost of the Great Recession to the U.S. was on the order of $6 trillion to $14 trillion. The larger figure is roughly one full year of U.S. economic output and nearly equal to the entire federal debt!

Do you still think the Republican Party is the champion of fiscal responsibility?

Who’s Really Responsible For Our National Debt?

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It’s popular for the Republican Party to blame our $16.7 trillion debt on President Obama. Certainly, like all presidents, he has some responsibility for it. But a much larger share of the responsibility goes to President Reagan, President George H.W. Bush and, most especially, President George W. Bush.

You see, the increase in spending in 2009 following the economic collapse of 2008 should rightfully be attributed to the Bush administration. That’s because the 2009 deficit was the result of a spending bill, including the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP), authorized by Congress in October of 2008 and signed by President Bush months before Obama took office. In fact, spending in the first year of any administration is always the result of the previous administration. Properly credit 2009 spending to Republicans, and you’ll discover that President Obama has been responsible for the lowest spending increases since Eisenhower. Similarly, he is responsible for the most rapid cuts to our deficit in more than 50 years!

While it’s true that the debt has increased 18.5 percent since Obama became president, as discussed, he should not be held responsible for most of that increase. Even so, it’s still less than the 20.7 percent increase in national debt that accrued during George W. Bush’s second term. And it’s only marginally greater than the 13 percent increase during Bush Sr’s term, and the 11.3 percent increase during Reagan’s first term.

A better measure of Obama’s spending comes courtesy of Rick Ungar, a contributor to Forbes Magazine (hardly a bastion of liberalism). According to Ungar, in President Obama’s first term, overall government spending grew just 1.4 percent as compared to 7.3 percent in George W. Bush’s first term and 8.1 percent in Bush’s second term!

So why do Republicans continue to place the blame on Obama? First, it’s a matter of political convenience to portray Obama as a “tax and spend” liberal. Second, the narrative is relatively believable since government spending skyrocketed during the first year of the Obama administration. Third, the media has done a very poor job of countering Republican misinformation.

In order to truly understand the federal debt, you have to look at the history of US borrowing.

Following the Revolutionary War, the US debt stood at roughly 35 percent of Gross Domestic Product (GDP). It again reached that level following the Civil War. In both instances, the debt was brought down by a combination of increased revenues and spending restraint. During WW I, the US debt again rose to approximately 35 percent of GDP. Before it could be paid down, our economy collapsed leading to the Great Depression. That was quickly followed by WWII. The two events caused the debt to soar to more than 117 percent of GDP. But, through a combination of post-war prosperity and income tax rates of up to 91 percent during the Eisenhower administration, the debt was again brought under control.

By the end of the Carter administration, the national debt had been reduced to 32.5 percent of GDP.

President Reagan’s expansive military spending during the Cold War once again caused the debt to soar, reaching more than 66.1 percent GDP. Under Clinton, it was reduced to 56.4 percent of GDP. Then, under George W. Bush, two wars (one of which was a war of choice) and lax government oversight led to the Great Recession – the worst economic calamity in nearly 80 years. At the same time, a Republican-led Congress cut taxes (and, therefore, revenue), particularly for the wealthy.

President Obama inherited a debt of more than 84 percent of GDP, along with a worldwide economic collapse, double-digit unemployment, spiraling health care costs, two wars estimated to have cost more than $6 trillion, a Congress that refused to rescind the Bush tax cuts, and a uniquely obstructionist Republican Party.

All of this was roughly the equivalent of combining the costs of World War II and the Great Depression without the primary mechanism needed to reduce the debt – taxes!

President Obama was left with few choices. He had to stimulate the economy through loans and tax cuts in order to put people back to work. This led to reduced revenue. He had to wind down the war of choice in Iraq as quickly as possible. He needed to stabilize the war in Afghanistan that had been allowed to languish under Bush at a cost of $1 million per soldier per year. Moreover, since few Americans had been asked to sacrifice for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, unlike World War II, they felt no need to pay for the wars through increased taxes. Indeed, even though federal income taxes were at a 50-year low, extremists funded by billionaires created the TEA (Taxed Enough Already) Party.

All of this led to the growth of our debt, which now equals nearly 102 percent of GDP.

Certainly, this debt is of great concern. But it’s not the short-term crisis Teapublicans would have you believe. (It’s the equivalent of a family earning $100,000/year holding a $102,000 mortgage.) And, without modest tax increases, there are few ways to reduce the debt.

One is to grow the economy, and according to most economists, including Lloyd Blankfein of Goldman Sachs, the economy is on the verge of significant, sustained growth if the nitwits in Congress would just get out of the way and stop dragging us from one self-inflicted crisis to another.

Two is to make cuts without adding to unemployment. (For example, we squander tens of billions each year on weapons systems that our military doesn’t even want, but Congress refuses to defund them because doing so would cost jobs.) And, once the economy shows sustained growth, programs such as food stamps can be cut – especially if we raise the minimum wage to reduce the large number of working poor who have little choice but to rely on government assistance.

In summary, contrary to what Teapublicans would have you believe, our national debt is not Obama’s debt. It’s the result of decades of wars, tax cuts, regulatory indifference, a struggling worldwide economy, out-of-control health care costs, greedy corporations that off-shore both jobs and profits, and a dysfunctional Congress that not only fails to help the economy. It makes decisions that are actually preventing economic recovery!

As a matter of fact, the Tea Party seems determined to force our nation into default. And, like the debt, they would have you believe that it’s all Obama’s fault.

Late Night Skullduggery By The GOP.

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In the wee hours of September 30, the eve of the government shutdown, the GOP-controlled House Rules Committee pushed through a last minute amendment that was intended to go unnoticed. This slight of hand known as HR 368 changed long-standing House rules to prevent any House member other than Majority Leader Eric Cantor from calling for a vote on a Senate-passed bill.

In essence, this amendment usurped power from members of the House and gave it exclusively to the leader of the party that was intent on defunding “Obamacare” or shutting down the entire government. It was a ploy by GOP leadership to make sure that none of their members broke ranks and voted for a “clean” Senate bill to reopen the government.

In other words, they don’t trust the President, the Senate or even their own membership!

After all, it was certain that the Senate would eke out a compromise bill to fund the government and raise the debt ceiling. Just as certainly, a few of the more sensible GOP members of the House would bow to pressure from their constituents to vote for it. (It only takes 17 House Republicans to side with House Democrats to pass a bill.) HR 368 would ensure party purity by making it impossible for anyone other than the Majority Leader to bring a funding bill to the floor.

Further, by withholding the amendment until a few hours before the shutdown, the GOP “trickeration” would be more likely to go unnoticed by Democrats and the media in the wake of the government shutdown. And, of course, no Republican will talk about it.

This appears to be the GOP’s standard operating philosophy. If you can’t win by any other means, cheat!

UPDATE: After crafting a new spending bill without Democratic participation, House Republican leaders held a press conference today following a rendition of “Amazing Grace.” In a clueless display of hypocrisy, they repeated the word “fairness” dozens of times. Once they present their one-sided bill, it’s rumored that they plan to leave town before the Senate votes on its own bipartisan bill.

Rebels Without A Brain.

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Sunday’s demonstration of anger, racism and stupidity at the WW II monument revealed far more about those speaking than about our government shutdown.

Waving the Battle Flag of Northern Virginia (aka the Confederate flag), holding “Impeach Obama” signs and hiding behind a few hundred veterans, Canadian-born Sen. Ted Cruz, failed VP candidate and former Alaska Governor, Sarah Palin, and Larry Klayman of Freedom Watch demanded that President Obama put down the Q’uran and resign. “I call upon all of you to wage a second American nonviolent revolution, to use civil disobedience, and to demand that this president leave town, to get up, to put the Q’uran down, to get up off his knees, and to figuratively come up with his hands out [sic],” said Klayman.

They decried the exploitation of veterans for political purposes even as they exploited veterans and the WWII Memorial. “Our vets have proven that they have not been timid,” said Palin, “so we will not be timid in calling out any who would use our military, our vets, as pawns in a political game.” And in an equally absurd show of hypocrisy, they blamed the shutdown on the president, even though the Teapublican-controlled House passed a funding bill that denied funding for “Obamacare” knowing the Senate would not pass it and the president could not sign it.

Still, it was the waving of the Confederate flag in front of the White House that rightfully drew the most criticism by the media and many Americans. This is not only the flag of secessionist states that tried to rend our nation apart, resulting in the deaths of 650,000 people. It is the flag of racists, having been proudly flown by slave-owners and those who continued to deny equal rights to African-Americans during the days of Jim Crow. Even to this day, it is the symbol of white supremacists.

To fly this racist symbol in front of the White House currently occupied by the nation’s first president of African-American heritage is not only clueless and tasteless. Since it represents the Confederacy, it borders on sedition!

Falling Behind Russia.

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For those Americans who still consider Russia a rival of the US, I have bad news. We have fallen behind the Great Russian Bear in one important economic category: Russia is one of the few nations on the planet with more economic disparity than ours.

In the US, the top one percent own 40 percent of the nation’s wealth, while the bottom 80 percent own just 7 percent. But in Russia, just 110 people own 35 percent of the nation’s wealth! According to a report by Credit Suisse, “Russia has the highest level of wealth inequality in the world, apart from small Caribbean nations with resident billionaires.”

Damn those Russians! We used to be number one!

Of course, this means our greedy billionaires will need to step up their game. We know they’re trying. The Koch brothers funded the government shutdown over “Obamacare” in order to maintain the status quo. Wall Street, the health care industry, and defense contractors have increased their lobbying groups in Washington. And the US Supreme Court is currently hearing a court case that may allow the obscenely wealthy to better purchase politicians and political favors under the guise of free speech.

But even that may not be enough. So the bought-and-paid-for Teapublicans are working overtime to privatize Social Security, Medicare, our military, prisons, schools and every other institution in the US. The claim is that this will make the institutions run more efficiently and more cheaply. But, in reality, privatization merely makes these institutions less responsive while adding to their costs and the corporations’ bottom lines.

But who are the poor and the middle class to complain? This is about national pride. We’re exceptional!  We have to be number one. USA! USA! USA!