In April 29th Broader View Weekly, the Cooper Brothers debated the Tea Party Movement and whether it was a legitimate grassroots organization. I have to say that neither got it right. The problem is that no one is looking deep into the organization. That's not to say the Tea Party isn't legitimate, but grassroots? The definition of grassroots "is the bottom of the political pyramid, opposite the establishment, which controls the top."
So when you look at the Tea Party they say they are grassroots, but when you look at the organization it turns out to be a fraud, the wolf in sheep's clothing.
When you look at the makeup of the organization it is 90% white Americans in the $75,000 and above income bracket and most say that they come from republican roots. What you don't see is that the Tea Party is funded by big corporations including the coal, oil and drug industries. Worse than that is that in the funding area there are organizations, such as the Heritage Foundation and Americans for a Clean Coal Economy, that have been funneling money from big corporations to the Tea Party.
Also, Tea Party sweetheart, Sarah Palin, Sean Hannity and Glenn Beck have been lining their pockets giving speeches at rallies. Palin has received hundreds of thousands of dollars from the Tea Party Movement, alone. They have also been spending thousands of dollars to run their bus tour through the country. How is it that most people can even take a sick day and here is a group that seems to have all the time in the world to travel the country, not talking about the gas for the buses or the cost to rent them or have them painted with a Tea Party logo?
Then look at the issues. We won't spend any time with the "Obama wasn't born in the U.S. issue" which is a building block of the Tea Party, but how about taxes. According to the IRS, 2009 tax load was the smallest in over 60 years. And then there is state rights and big government. In the last 50 years the federal government has been consistent with population growth while state governments have grown substantially across the nation. And isn't the Texas School board infringing on other state's rights?
They are also angry at congress, but when surveyed a large majority of Americans are satisfied with their congressional representation. The Tea Party doesn't like your choice of representation. Even the roots of the organization contradict themselves. Tea Party people hate socialism, but "grassroots" is a social movement. They hate taxes but don't want social security or medicare cut, both social. They also don't want the military budget cut, though the military budget has risen faster than any other budget area. They want responsible government, but won't hold corporate America to the same standard. Taking the military budget as an example, there are more cost overruns and programs that don't work in the private sector related to the military than in social security or medicare.
They want government to privatize everything, social security being one. There are over 36 million people over 65 that would have lost everything in the recent crisis if social security had been privatized. And look at the history of private corporations such as WorldCom, Enron, AIG, Goldman Sachs, BP, Exxon, Massey Coal just to name a few.
The Tea Party isn't what it appears to be. They seem to be elitist conservatives holding on to their power. They are not looking out for average Americans, except for themselves. They are not constitutionalists or "One Nation under God" would mean something as well "as form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general Welfare."
Don't get sucked in by the hype, distortion, and lies.
Additional comments (May 24, 2010), Now the conservatives want the federal government to take over the gulf oil spill clean up. It seems the private sector can not do their own clean up. When did the feds go into the oil clean up business? And what about cost overruns and the deficit? What about "Drill, Baby, Drill" or "Drill here, drill now"?
Supporting Documentation
Amid complaints about high taxes and calls for a smaller government, Americans paid their lowest level of taxes last year since Harry Truman's presidency, a USA TODAY analysis of federal data found.
Some conservative political movements such as the "Tea Party" have criticized federal spending as being out of control. While spending is up, taxes have fallen to exceptionally low levels.
Federal, state and local taxes -- including income, property, sales and other taxes -- consumed 9.2% of all personal income in 2009, the lowest rate since 1950, the Bureau of Economic Analysis reports. That rate is far below the historic average of 12% for the last half-century. The overall tax burden hit bottom in December at 8.8.% of income before rising slightly in the first three months of 2010.
"The idea that taxes are high right now is pretty much nuts," says Michael Ettlinger, head of economic policy at the liberal Center for American Progress.
http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/archives/individual/2010_05/023743.phpReports indicate that the Tea Party Movement benefits from millions of dollars from conservative foundations that are derived from wealthy U.S. families and their business interests. Is appears that money to organize and implement the Movement is flowing primarily through two conservative groups: Americans for Prosperity and FreedomWorks.
In an April 9, 2009 article on ThinkProgress.org, Lee Fang reports that the principal organizers of the Tea Party movement are Americans for Prosperity and Freedom Works, two "lobbyist-run think tanks" that are "well funded" and that provide the logistics and organizing for the Tea Party movement from coast to coast. Media Matters reported that FreedomWorks receives substantial funding from David Koch of Koch Industries, the largest privately-held energy company in the country, and the conservative Koch Family Foundations, which make substantial annual donations to conservative organizations, including FreedomWorks (and its predecessor, Citizens for a Sound Economy) as well as other conservative think tanks advocacy groups, etc. Media Matters reports that the Koch family has given more than $12 million to CSE/FreedomWorks between 1985 and 2002.[1][2]
Media Matters also lists the Sarah Scaife Foundation as having given a total of $2.96 million in funding to FreedomWorks.[3] The Sarah Mellon Scaife Foundation is financed by the Mellon industrial, oil, and banking fortune. [4]
The Claude R. Lambe Foundation, also controlled by the Koch family, has donated more than $3 million to Americans for Prosperity. [5]
http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Tea_Party_movement_funding
http://www.mediaite.com/online/rachel-maddow-investigates-corporations-funding-tax-day-protests/
Are the Tea Party Backers Really Wealthy and Highly Educated?
Last week, the New York Times ran a front-page story announcing the results of a poll that completely scrambled our notion of who made up the Tea Party. The supporters are "wealthier" and "more educated" than the average American, the story announced.
http://www.slate.com/id/2252281
Poll Finds Tea Party Backers Wealthier and More Educated
The 18 percent of Americans who identify themselves as Tea Party supporters tend to be Republican, white, male, married and older than 45.
They hold more conservative views on a range of issues than Republicans generally. They are also more likely to describe themselves as "very conservative" and President Obama as "very liberal."
A plurality do not think Sarah Palin is qualified to be president, and, despite their push for smaller government, they think that Social Security and Medicare are worth the cost to taxpayers. They actually are just as likely as Americans as a whole to have returned their census forms, though some conservative leaders have urged a boycott
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/15/us/politics/15poll.html
Sarah Palin takes $100,000 for populist Tea Party speech
Sarah Palin is a charlatan who ripped off the Tea Party movement for $100,000, kept the dough for herself, before taking her quackery and confidence game to another venue, for another $100,000, and a little more fame.
The Extraordinary Growth in State Government Revenues
Like so many impressions, this singular focus on national government tends to hide what may be the most remarkable changes in government fiscal policy in this century: the growth in relative power and revenues of state governments.
Consider the following two developments:
* From the end of World War II to 1997, federal revenues as a percent of gross domestic product (GDP) were almost constant. During the same period, individual income taxes were also relatively constant. State and local tax receipts, however, rose from about 5 percent to 11 percent of GDP.
* At the beginning of the century, local governments collected about four-fifths of state and local taxes. Today, local governments collect only about two-fifths of revenues. That is, states tripled their share even while the share of local governments was cut in half.
http://www.taxpolicycenter.org/publications/url.cfm?ID=1000188
Drill, baby, Drill and then export it.
More offshore drilling in the Gulf Coast region, however, may not do much to increase our energy security. A CAP analysis (.xls) of Energy Information Administration data found that a large portion of the oil produced in the Gulf Coast region is actually exported as finished petroleum products to other nations, and this undoubtedly includes some of the offshore oil produced there (see chart at right).
http://www.americanprogress.org/issues/2010/05/gulf_oil_exports.html