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Post by Deleted on Sept 13, 2009 10:07:21 GMT -4
I'm all for grass rooted movements and demonstrations to make your cause heard, we have had our share of them as a country over the years. Even though a true grass roots movement is not supposed to be sponsored, but that's a different discussion. It's our right as free Americans to express free speech and to rally behind a cause to make a difference in the country.....as long as it is peaceful and non-violent. So far the tea parties going across the country have been, but there has been a few flair ups of hostility toward others.
Here's a couple of excerpts from CNN covering the tea party express bus rallies being held across the country. ____________________________________________________
Aboard the Tea Party Express -- From the stage, Deborah Johns is the angry conscience of the tea party movement. She leads the rallies in each city with Mark Williams, a former talk radio host who now writes books and makes the rounds on cable TV chat shows. Both work for Our Country Deserves Better, the conservative political action committee sponsoring the Tea Party Express bus tour.
The tour concluded Saturday at the U.S. Capitol in Washington after a 34-stop tour that began August 28 in Sacramento, California.
***** "Question everything your government is doing," she tells a crowd of about 100 from the bus's stage in the parking lot of the Winners casino in Winnemucca, Nevada.
***** Under a setting sun on the steps of the state capitol in Little Rock, Arkansas, Johns says: "Our men and women took an oath when they put on the uniform to defend and protect this country from enemies both foreign and domestic. I think we've got some domestic enemies in the White House."
***** On a sunny afternoon in Louisville, Kentucky, Johns works the crowd of about 2,000 into a frenzy.
"The men and women in our military didn't fight and die for this country for a communist in the White House".
***** Williams is the showman of the bunch. His signature line when he gets the mic goes like this: "You can have our country when you pry it from our ... cold ... dead ... fingers!"
***** Seldom seen on stage are the two gurus of the tea party movement, veteran politico Sal Russo and his protégé, Joe Wierzbicki. They are charged with turning the passion on display at the tea parties into political action.
They have three goals: Defeat President Obama's health care reform efforts, win back the House and Senate in 2010 and take the White House in 2012.
***** "Obamacare Condense Cream of Crap soup" reads a sign in Sparks, Nevada. In Dallas, Texas, a darker mood prevails. A homemade sign with "Obama Lies" features a bold, black swastika.
***** As the tour moves on, Nazi imagery becomes more prominent -- and sometimes confused. One sign at the Alamo in San Antonio, Texas, has Obama's portrait sandwiched between pictures of Adolf Hitler and communist philosopher Karl Marx. In Canton,Ohio, Obama and Hitler adorn a sign reading "Hitler made great speeches, too."
***** If the tea party movement has an architect, it is Joe Wierzbicki. Unassuming in wrinkled khakis and a polo shirt, he is in near perpetual motion. Hands gesturing wildly through the air, he describes his plan.
"There are going to be stops along the way. The first stop is going to be the health care reform act," he says.
If the tea partyers can play a part in stopping the president's health care efforts they will be poised for a much bigger challenge: taking control of Congress from the Democrats, he says.
"Those politicians that aren't responsive to this message are going to face a lot of trouble in their re-election bids in 2010," he says.
***** No one on the tea party express seems concerned with the vocal fringe of the crowds that come with offensive signs -- besides Nazi imagery, a poster of Obama as an African witch doctor has become popular -- or the numerous conspiracy theories that float around most tea parties.
***** In Battle Creek, Michigan, a woman in her 60s says, "I really don't want to be a guinea pig for the experiment they have with the population control." In Canton, Ohio, a woman argues with an Obama supporter: "He's going after our kids to try to indoctrinate them into a national defense army."
***** The Tea Party Express tour has been free of violence, but occasional outbursts of vitriolic hatred toward the president combined with some menacing outward appearances often overshadow the more moderate tea partyers.
***** In Louisville, Kentucky, two young men in camouflage fatigues roamed the crowd trying to recruit new members for their militia called the Ohio Valley Freedom Fighters. They bear signs reading "AK-47s: today's pitchfork" and "Quit worrying. Start your militia training today."
***** In Jackson, Michigan, a young man didn't need a sign. He was carrying the real thing: A loaded AK-47 assault rifle and two loaded handguns.
"I don't want a revolution. I don't want a civil war," he said. "But it is a possibility. It's there as an option, as a last resort." ____________________________________________________
The civil rights movement and anti-Vietnam war demonstrations started out peaceful too, but is didn't stay that way. I hope it doesn't move in that direction.....
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Post by bchevy on Sept 13, 2009 13:32:51 GMT -4
And just what does this bunch propose to do? Pay no taxes? Please explain, in detail, what government services won't be funded. Schools, defense, national parks, Medicare, social security interstate highways, just what? Its find to Censored Bad Word Here, but have some sort of alternate solution that is actually possible to make happen please. These people are simple rabble rousers. My bet is they are making some bucks off all this somehow. Without a rational plan, they are just a bunch of noise. This is a lot like the local no growthers. Take away everyone's land rights but mine. One of the founders of IBM used to have a sign in his office. Real simple message: THINK! You obviously have NO friggin clue what you're talking about. Go get a clue, turn off the nightly news. These are Citizens EXERCIZING THEIR RIGHT OF FREE SPEECH. They DISAGREE with our current administration's current direction and are letting it be known. This country was born by "simple rabble rousers"
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Post by falgar25 on Sept 13, 2009 17:48:25 GMT -4
Since IU already spoke to the rest of the post: This is a lot like the local no growthers. Take away everyone's land rights but mine. One of the founders of IBM used to have a sign in his office. Real simple message: THINK! I suggest you take the advice written on the sign and THINK! Some local no-growthers, like myself, don't want to take away your property rights. I would like to convince you to exercise them differently. If that doesn't happen, I would like to convince the companies looking to develop the land that it would not be in their best interests to do so. I have no ability to take away your property rights nor would I try to do so. On the other hand, the controlled-growth people including the County and the State and the Federal Govt. *are* taking away your rights. They don't encourage you to do one thing or encourage others to do something else. These groups enact laws, legally define protection areas, create growth plans, and enforce zoning regulations that *do* control what you can do with your land. If you are worried about your property rights (or any rights) it is not your neighbors you need to be worried about, it is those who will knock on your door and say, "We're from the Govt. and we're here to help you." And now the world feels right again
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Post by dej on Sept 13, 2009 18:11:32 GMT -4
The Tea Party Express tour has been free of violence, but occasional outbursts of vitriolic hatred toward the president combined with some menacing outward appearances often overshadow the more moderate tea partyers. Actually the first physical confrontation on the tour didn't come until Harrisburg, PA, and it was triggered by an outburst of "vitrolic hatred" towards the tea partiers, not by them. Also you may have noticed these "astroturf" protesters had lots of homemade signs expressing their individual feelings, whereas the "grassroots" people organized by the DNC largely carried signs printed by the DNC and their proxies.
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Post by kl on Sept 14, 2009 9:22:25 GMT -4
The Tea Party Express has hit Washington and while there are many sincere people involved in the Tea Party protests and they have valid points to make about government spending, the entire movement is stained by the fact that its organized by conservatives who are the ones responsible for the mess in the first place and who haven't to this day, taken responsibility for their own mistakes and the economic mess they created by letting George W Bush get away with his disastrous policies. The problem for the sincere Tea Party protesters is the entire movement is conservative organized which. unfortunately completely undermines iits credibility.
It was the conservatives who, after 8 years of the greatest economic expansion in history during the Clinton years, came to power and intentionally undid everything Clinton did, reversing all of Clinton's policies. And anyone with half a brain knows that if you do the opposite of anything you will get the opposite results. And that's what the Republicans did. And that's what the country got. Now the conservatives are shaking their baby rattles and complaining. It was a conservative Republican administration and a conservative Republican congress who blew a $5 1/2 trillion budget surplus. They destroyed the balanced budget they inherited, and after Clinton had eliminated the deficit, they exploded the deficit to record levels with their war and tax policies. It was a conservative Republican government that took the country from the greatest economic expansion in history, lowest unemployment in 40 years, a balanced budget and record surpluses to deficits, unemployment and the greatest economic crisis since the 1930's.
They said nothing and did nothing while Bush and the Republican congress were getting the country into deeper and deeper trouble. The conservatives who organize the Tea Party protests sat on their hands and did nothing. They did nothing when the balanced budget was destroyed, nothing when Bush exploded the deficit, nothing when Bush cut taxes instead of raising them to pay for the war he started.
When Bush became the first President in history to take the country to war and cut taxes at the same time they said nothing. They just happily took their tax cuts, supported the unnecessary war in Iraq and were happy not to pay for it and pass the cost along. Exactly what they are complaining about now. They simply don't want to pay for their mistakes. But they will, like it or not. Which is why the Tea Party protests from conservatives have not so much to do with tea but with whine.
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Post by funnel101 on Sept 14, 2009 11:08:26 GMT -4
At least they're not calling themselves "teabaggers" anymore... ;D
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Post by kl on Sept 14, 2009 12:12:16 GMT -4
At least they're not calling themselves "teabaggers" anymore... ;D ;D
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Post by Deleted on Sept 14, 2009 23:02:09 GMT -4
At least they're not calling themselves "teabaggers" anymore... ;D Maybe there needs to be some "teabagging" happening on the tea party express bus...........it might help loosen up some of the tension people have.
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Post by dej on Sept 15, 2009 4:39:41 GMT -4
Let's not give all the credit to the conservative Republicans, although as kl points out, they certainly worked hard for it. We would be remiss if we left out the liberal Democrats that have worked just as hard at creating today's financial mess. After all, they actually put more years of effort into creating this failure.
It wasn't just deficit spending started by Republicans (and continued by the Democratic controlled Congress) during the Bush years that created the problem. An even bigger factor was the collapse of the housing market, triggering the banking problems and the bailouts that followed. A huge part of the groundwork that collapse was done in 1992 by a Democratic controlled House & Senate. At that time HUD oversaw Fannie & Freddie operations and the passage of "The Federal Housing Enterprises Financial Safety and Soundness Act of 1992" allowed HUD to get Fannie & Freddie into the subpirme market. In the mid to late 1990's under President Clinton's leadership, HUD mandated goals for Fannie & Freddie which could only be met by loosening their guidelines for low-income mortgages, and getting them even deeper into the subprime market.
A NYT article (hardly a conservative source for news) on Sep 30, 1999 had this to say; "In moving, even tentatively, into this new area of lending, Fannie Mae is taking on significantly more risk, which may not pose any difficulties during flush economic times. But, the government-subsidized corporation may run into trouble in an economic downturn, prompting a government rescue similar to that of the savings and loan industry in the 1980's." I guess their crystal ball was working pretty well back then
Concerns like this in 2000 led Congressman Baker (R-LA) to introduce a bill calling for greater oversight of Fannie Mae/Freddie Mac. Congressman Barney Frank's (D-MA) response was that such concerns were overblown and "there was no federal liability there whatsoever".
Baker tried again in 2003 for a little oversight. Barney Frank's response to those efforts; "I do not regard Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac as problems," and "there is no federal guarantee" of Fannie and Freddie obligations, so there was not threat to our tax dollars.
In 2005 Fannie Mae's regulator had stated the company's quarterly reports of profit growth over the past few years were "illusions deliberately and systematically created" by the company's senior management, which resulted in a $10.6 billion accounting scandal. Kind of sounds like Enron style of bookkeeping, but no Fannie Mae execs wound up convicted and in jail like Enron execs. Instead, at least three of them, James Johnson, Franklin Raines and Jaime Gorelick would later work as Obama campaign advisers instead.
Frank's response to regulation efforts in 2005 was that Fannie & Freddie were no threat to taxpayers and if either or both collapsed, "I think Wall Street will get over it". By 2007 the subprime mortage market was starting to collapse and by 2008 Fannie & Freddie were taken over by the government at taxpayer expense. Apparenttly Wall Street didn't just "get over it", as that takeover was a keystone to triggering the avalanche of bailouts that followed. So much for Frank's assurances of no federal guarantees or risk to taxpayer money!!!
But Frank didn't do it alone. Liberal Democrats like Chuck Schumer (D-NY) were matching his efforts every step of the way on the Senate side. In 2002 it was Schumer who so proudly announced an expansion a Fannie Mae subsidy to allow more people to buy homes with 0% down, thus greatly expanding Fannie Mae's abilty to take on high risk loans and doing his own part to fuel the subprime problem.
While the Republicans generally get the blame/credit for massive deregulation, Schumer has quietly had a notable amount of success there as well. In 2008 the NYT wrote:
"Mr. Schumer, a member of the Banking and Finance Committees, repeatedly took other steps to protect industry players from government oversight and tougher rules, a review of his record shows. Over the years, he has also helped save financial institutions billions of dollars in higher taxes or fees. He succeeded in limiting efforts to regulate credit-rating agencies, for example, sponsored legislation that cut fees paid by Wall Street firms to finance government oversight, pushed to allow banks to have lower capital reserves and called for the revision of regulations to make corporations’ balance sheets more transparent."
In other words, liberal Democrat Chuck saved the banks big bucks in regulator fees, while making sure credit-rating companies could still play fast & loose with the numbers to get the deals done, and letting banks operate on a thinner margin of reserves.
So yes, conservative Republicans, including some cheering on the tea parties, certainly did their part to screw up our economy. But lets not forget all the liberal Democrats who worked many more years at it. All too often they don't get the "credit" they deserve for the economy Obama inherited.
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Post by kl on Sept 15, 2009 6:58:19 GMT -4
Let's not give all the credit to the conservative Republicans, although as kl points out, they certainly worked hard for it. We would be remiss if we left out the liberal Democrats that have worked just as hard at creating today's financial mess. After all, they actually put more years of effort into creating this failure. It wasn't just deficit spending started by Republicans (and continued by the Democratic controlled Congress) during the Bush years that created the problem. An even bigger factor was the collapse of the housing market, triggering the banking problems and the bailouts that followed. A huge part of the groundwork that collapse was done in 1992 by a Democratic controlled House & Senate. At that time HUD oversaw Fannie & Freddie operations and the passage of "The Federal Housing Enterprises Financial Safety and Soundness Act of 1992" allowed HUD to get Fannie & Freddie into the subpirme market. In the mid to late 1990's under President Clinton's leadership, HUD mandated goals for Fannie & Freddie which could only be met by loosening their guidelines for low-income mortgages, and getting them even deeper into the subprime market. A NYT article (hardly a conservative source for news) on Sep 30, 1999 had this to say; "In moving, even tentatively, into this new area of lending, Fannie Mae is taking on significantly more risk, which may not pose any difficulties during flush economic times. But, the government-subsidized corporation may run into trouble in an economic downturn, prompting a government rescue similar to that of the savings and loan industry in the 1980's." I guess their crystal ball was working pretty well back then Concerns like this in 2000 led Congressman Baker (R-LA) to introduce a bill calling for greater oversight of Fannie Mae/Freddie Mac. Congressman Barney Frank's (D-MA) response was that such concerns were overblown and "there was no federal liability there whatsoever". Baker tried again in 2003 for a little oversight. Barney Frank's response to those efforts; "I do not regard Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac as problems," and "there is no federal guarantee" of Fannie and Freddie obligations, so there was not threat to our tax dollars. In 2005 Fannie Mae's regulator had stated the company's quarterly reports of profit growth over the past few years were "illusions deliberately and systematically created" by the company's senior management, which resulted in a $10.6 billion accounting scandal. Kind of sounds like Enron style of bookkeeping, but no Fannie Mae execs wound up convicted and in jail like Enron execs. Instead, at least three of them, James Johnson, Franklin Raines and Jaime Gorelick would later work as Obama campaign advisers instead. Frank's response to regulation efforts in 2005 was that Fannie & Freddie were no threat to taxpayers and if either or both collapsed, "I think Wall Street will get over it". By 2007 the subprime mortage market was starting to collapse and by 2008 Fannie & Freddie were taken over by the government at taxpayer expense. Apparenttly Wall Street didn't just "get over it", as that takeover was a keystone to triggering the avalanche of bailouts that followed. So much for Frank's assurances of no federal guarantees or risk to taxpayer money!!! But Frank didn't do it alone. Liberal Democrats like Chuck Schumer (D-NY) were matching his efforts every step of the way on the Senate side. In 2002 it was Schumer who so proudly announced an expansion a Fannie Mae subsidy to allow more people to buy homes with 0% down, thus greatly expanding Fannie Mae's abilty to take on high risk loans and doing his own part to fuel the subprime problem. While the Republicans generally get the blame/credit for massive deregulation, Schumer has quietly had a notable amount of success there as well. In 2008 the NYT wrote: "Mr. Schumer, a member of the Banking and Finance Committees, repeatedly took other steps to protect industry players from government oversight and tougher rules, a review of his record shows. Over the years, he has also helped save financial institutions billions of dollars in higher taxes or fees. He succeeded in limiting efforts to regulate credit-rating agencies, for example, sponsored legislation that cut fees paid by Wall Street firms to finance government oversight, pushed to allow banks to have lower capital reserves and called for the revision of regulations to make corporations’ balance sheets more transparent." In other words, liberal Democrat Chuck saved the banks big bucks in regulator fees, while making sure credit-rating companies could still play fast & loose with the numbers to get the deals done, and letting banks operate on a thinner margin of reserves. So yes, conservative Republicans, including some cheering on the tea parties, certainly did their part to screw up our economy. But lets not forget all the liberal Democrats who worked many more years at it. All too often they don't get the "credit" they deserve for the economy Obama inherited. And a reason why, now, more than at any other time, that both parties should come together and take care of this b.s. before it's too late.
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Post by hisea on Sept 15, 2009 7:17:22 GMT -4
We need to have lawyers look into Tea Party Express and find out were the money they use is coming from? Does anyone know of a lawyer that is willing to investigate the Tea Baggers?
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Post by kl on Sept 15, 2009 11:06:03 GMT -4
Interesting read here. www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/article/2009/sep/14/tea-party-photo-shows-large-crowd-different-event/By Catharine Richert Published on Monday, September 14th, 2009 at 11:34 a.m. Related rulings: Pants on Fire! Photo of "tea party" protests shows crowd sprawling from Capitol to Washington Monument Bloggers, Saturday, September 12th, 2009. Ruling: Pants on Fire! | Details Bookmark this story: Buzz up! ShareThis Bloggers said this photo showed a gargantuan crowd at Saturday's "tea party" protest. But it apparently was taken in 1997 at a Promise Keepers rally. In the competitive world of Washington protests, crowd size is often a matter of dispute. Organizers usually boast of huge crowds, while police and the news media offer much smaller estimates. So supporters of Saturday’s “tea party” protests against President Barack Obama were quick to highlight their big turnout. To bolster countless claims on blogs and Facebook, many posted a photograph that showed a gargantuan crowd sprawling from Capitol Hill down the National Mall to the Washington Monument. But it turns out the photo is more than 10 years old, apparently taken during a 1997 Promise Keepers rally. On Saturday, estimates about the crowd spread quickly through the conservative blogosphere. Many writers, including author Michelle Malkin, pegged the number of people between 1 million and 2 million. Those reports were largely based on information from people in the crowd. Malkin, for example, updated her blog at 12:34 p.m. noting that, “Police estimate 1.2 million in attendance. ABC News reporting crowd at 2 million,” and she cited a Twitter post from Tabitha Hale, writer of Pink Elephant Pundit, who was in Washington for the protest.
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Post by funnel101 on Sept 15, 2009 12:19:51 GMT -4
We need to have lawyers look into Tea Party Express and find out were the money they use is coming from? Does anyone know of a lawyer that is willing to investigate the Tea Baggers? Rachael Maddox answers that question: FreedomWorks and the National Association of Rural Landowners are the main sources of the money used. The clip from Rachael Maddox is worth watching, at least half-way through. I don't necessarily agree with the vitriol, but I do agree with her commentary.
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Post by dej on Sept 15, 2009 14:41:08 GMT -4
The clip from Rachael Maddox is worth watching, at least half-way through. I don't necessarily agree with the vitriol, but I do agree with her commentary. Whether it's Rachael Maddox or Glen Beck, the vitriol IS the commentary. For both, it's more about ratings than fact, a reason I rarely bother to tune into either one.
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Post by dej on Sept 15, 2009 14:43:27 GMT -4
We need to have lawyers look into Tea Party Express and find out were the money they use is coming from? Does anyone know of a lawyer that is willing to investigate the Tea Baggers? I don't know. but I'll bet if there's actually anything to investigate, the Democrats probably know a lawyer or two. They might even do it pro bono as long as tort reforn stays off the health care bill.
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Post by funnel101 on Sept 15, 2009 15:04:35 GMT -4
Dej, Rachael Maddox talks about who funds it in that link I posted. That's why I posted it.
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Post by dej on Sept 15, 2009 15:11:37 GMT -4
Dej, Rachael Maddox talks about who funds it in that link I posted. That's why I posted it. I guess I should have just copied the second part of the quote, "Does anyone know of a lawyer that is willing to investigate the Tea Baggers?" That was what I was responding to. I had already read about funding sources in several places.
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Post by kl on Sept 16, 2009 6:06:14 GMT -4
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Post by hisea on Sept 16, 2009 8:05:48 GMT -4
I'm thinking of a lawyer that worked for AKRON. AKRON has been helping people cheat the tax payers out of hard earned money! They also have been prosecuted for voter fraud! It looks like Acorns only motivation is to teach others how to cheat and steal from the people!
We could get this lawyer to look into all of Acorns illegal activities and stop the funding of this crooked group of thugs! This lawyer has a history of working with AKRON so he should be very familiar with the way they operate and cheat.
Who could this great lawyer be?
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Post by Deleted on Sept 16, 2009 15:51:19 GMT -4
How GOP can manage Tea Party
By John Feehery Special to CNN
Editor's note: John Feehery worked for former House Speaker Dennis Hastert and other Republicans in Congress. He is president of Feehery Group, a Washington-based advocacy firm that has represented clients that include News Corp., Ford Motor Co. and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. He formerly was a government relations executive vice president for the Motion Picture Association of America.
John Feehery says Republicans should try to stay ahead of the Tea Party, but not try to run it.
WASHINGTON (CNN) -- It is altogether ironic that the one person to have a Sam Adams beer at the infamous beer summit, hosted by the president, was Skip Gates, the Harvard professor whose arrest led to the summit.
Sam Adams was the key revolutionary figure in the Boston Tea Party of 1774, the spark that lit the American Revolution.
And now, 235 years later, Tea Parties have sprung up around the country as a reaction against the rule of President Obama and the Democratic Congress.
It is unlikely that Skip Gates will be spending any time addressing a Tea Party in his hometown of Boston any time soon.
And unlike the popular perception promoted by some in the media, the Tea Party is distinct from the Republican Party, probably as distinct as Sam Adams beer is from Bud Lite.
The Tea Party presents the first truly grass-roots threat to the ambitious agenda of President Obama. Largely misunderstood as anti-tax activists, and attacked by congressional Democrats as a collection of crazy right-wingers, the folks who go to Tea Parties are not concerned primarily with tax policy (although if the Democrats move to raise taxes on just about everybody, that could change).
Instead, they are mostly motivated by out-of-control spending, towering debt, and the pervasive feeling that government is too big, too powerful, too unaccountable and too cozy with Wall Street.
While the Tea Party movement presents a threat to the Obama administration, it also presents a challenge to congressional Republicans. After all, many of the protesters have as low a regard for the GOP as they do for the Democrats, and they hold the previous administration in as much as contempt as they do the Obama White House.
This is a populist movement made up of many strands, joined together only by a common resentment of Washington. Some of those strands, like the birther movement, are illegitimate and a waste of time. Others, though, like those who protest expanding government's role in health care or crushing debt, have legitimate concerns that need to be addressed.
Republicans have two choices when it comes to a strategy of dealing with the Tea Party -- and here I am going to mix my metaphors, so excuse me. They can figuratively try to ride the movement as if it were a bucking bronco. That means trying to influence its leaders, condemning the more unpleasant actors, and inserting some discipline to the movement.
Or they can try to manage the stampede, riding along, gently guiding it toward the ultimate goal of the congressional elections, leading it with some good ideas, but doing their best not to get their own agenda trampled on.
Congressional Democrats and the Obama administration would love nothing more than to get Republicans to more closely identify with the Tea Party protesters. They will call on them to discipline the more radical among them. They will call the protesters racist, or homophobic, or right-wingers or fascists or worse. Jimmy Carter's doing it already -- he said Tuesday that racism is driving much of the animosity to Obama's presidency.
The Democrats will urge the GOP to ride the wild horse and hope that its leaders get thrown and then trampled.
But Republicans shouldn't be suckered into that position. Instead, they should seek to get ahead of the stampede by offering good ideas that will reform the government and bring back into balance the role of the government to the taxpayers.
They should focus on three important areas: transparency, accountability, and thrift.
Perhaps the biggest driver of the Tea Party movement was not the health care debate, but the bailout of Wall Street and the creation of the Troubled Assets Relief Program. That, coupled with the Federal Reserve Bank's mysterious pumping of trillions of dollars, has led to a variety of conspiracy theories, and worse, led to Middle America's complete loss of faith in the Washington-Wall Street industrial complex.
Transparency is the only way to restore faith in the process. Only by knowing exactly where the money has gone and why it went there will the taxpayers regain faith that the public's best interests are being served. But more transparency can help in other ways.
It can help us find out who is cheating us on Medicare reimbursements, why HUD grants are going to political cronies, and who is getting special appropriations for members of the family. Transparency will bring more reform to the way government operates than any other thing.
If you go into any government-run entity, from the local Social Security agency to the local DMV, you can see what happens when an employee is not accountable to the customer. It is actually quite easy to impose accountability to the governing process. Set benchmarks, including things like results, customer satisfaction, productivity -- and when an employee consistently underperforms, fire that person.
This is what happens in the private sector. Why can't it happen in the public sector? If the Department of Education is doing nothing to improve education in the country, why can't there be a mechanism to fire the bureaucrats? Making the government and its bureaucracy more accountable is something that every Tea Party attendee would support.
Finally, the president has talked a good game about the necessity of thrift, but lost credibility on the subject almost immediately. Remember when he asked his agency heads to find a hundred million dollars in budget savings, as he was spending hundreds of billions on an unpopular "stimulus" package?
Republicans needs to reclaim "thrift" as a political virtue. They lost it during the Bush years. But being cheap is making a comeback, especially with voters who have to make their own sacrifices in the face of a struggling economy.
By making proposals that track these three themes, the Republicans can get ahead of the stampede and help lead those who are so concerned about the future of America that they are joining their neighbors in protest.
The Tea Party combines the best elements of civic activism with some of the worst elements of fringe extremism. While most Tea Party activists are genuinely concerned about the future of the country, some others see conspiracies around every corner and use unacceptable rhetoric to communicate their displeasure with the president.
By leading with a reform platform, based on the concepts of transparency, accountability and thrift, Republicans can inspire the best of the Tea Party, find common cause with independent voters, and motivate traditional GOP supporters, giving themselves a chance to regain the trust of the American people, recapture the Congress, and provide a necessary check to the Obama White House.
The opinions expressed in this commentary are solely those of John Feehery.
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Post by truthhurts on Sept 19, 2009 21:01:04 GMT -4
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Post by RobMoore on Sept 20, 2009 0:28:50 GMT -4
Photojacking at a protest? Here is another example
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Post by truthhurts on Sept 20, 2009 0:38:35 GMT -4
Photojacking at a protest? Here is another example Difference is the first one, though most likely "shopped" was accurate.
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Post by bchevy on Sept 20, 2009 7:11:07 GMT -4
Difference is the first one, though most likely "shopped" was accurate. In YOUR Opinion Even as twisted as I think that is. It's not even an argument since someone did that after the fact.... Is it? Why are you libs getting so upset about the tea parties? Why was it OK to question the administration when Bush was in office? This is what this country was built on and for. Get used to it. I do hope it will still be here in 3 years.
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Post by truthhurts on Sept 20, 2009 9:57:29 GMT -4
I do hope it will still be here in 3 years. Why do the Liberals get upset over the tea parties? Maybe it's because of the utter nonsense being spouted by these folks. Listen to the points they expound. It's a rare occurence to hear one that has a clue what they are talking about. When confronted with facts, they fold. What the Hell is wrong with those people? Will the Country last three years? It will, and it will be better. The Conservatives had it for 8 years and screwed the pooch with two needless wars, and nearly destroying the economy. It's our turn to straighten things back out and we're headed in that direction.
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