The new silent majority

We have been told that the nation is swept up in anti-incumbent fervor, and that we are mad, mad, mad. Except that, by and large, we are really not all that mad. A recent Pew Research Center poll found that only 21 percent of Americans are angry at the federal government. And the term "anti-incumbent fervor" loses a bit when you learn that, according to political scientist Michael Robinson, 98 percent of all congressional incumbents who ran in this year's primaries prevailed.

An event that took place on the National Mall on Saturday, October 20, presented a more serious reflection of our collective state of mind. Comedians Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert held a rally in Washington, D.C. to Restore Sanity. The crowd appeared to exceed organizers' expectations, spilling past the boundaries set for the rally. Organizers estimated attendance at about 250,000; while many in the media estimated it to be around 220k.


There were satellite rallies going on in 47 states and six foreign countries. Add these numbers to the huge attendance of the Washington D.C. rally and you get 100s and 100s of thousands. Once the numbers are tallied, Jon Stewart may get the "million moderate march" he wanted with a few people brandishing signs that read, "I disagree with you, but I'm pretty sure you're not Hitler."

It seems the majority of people want sanity.


While the audiences of the two comedians undoubtedly lean somewhat to the left, Stewart presented the rally as a chance for the low-key middle to come together – those who do not care to shout or call names and who do not think we have Nazis or Socialists in charge of our government.

As described on The Rally to Restore Sanity Web site: "We're looking for the people who think shouting is annoying, counterproductive, and terrible for your throat; who feel that the loudest voices shouldn't be the only ones that get heard; and who believe that the only time it's appropriate to draw a Hitler mustache on someone is when that person is actually Hitler – or Charlie Chaplin in certain roles."

Alan Gitelson, a professor of political science at Loyola University Chicago, compared the sizable group of people who are neither angry nor partisan as the new "silent majority". Gitelson said. "The tea party is clearly to the right.... And then you have progressives on the other side, and then there is this large center. The rally that Colbert and Stewart are doing is kind of part of a balancing act."

Some on the right have portrayed the rallies as a last-ditch effort by liberals to rile up Democratic voters before an election in which conservative candidates clearly have the enthusiasm edge and are poised to win a sizable number of congressional seats. That fits nicely in much of their conspiracy-laden, "us vs. them" talk that comes from a swath of Tea Party leaders, but I believe what Stewart and Colbert are doing what their shows do so well: hold a mirror up to our society, point out hypocrisies and silliness and have a good laugh.

Jeffrey Juris, an assistant professor at Northeastern University, said the rallies go beyond political comedy, and should be taken seriously.

"The point of the rallies, and The Daily Show and The Colbert Report more generally, is to use humor to shine a light on the contradictions, foibles and absurdities of our political culture in order to provoke critical reflection, particularly among young people who might not otherwise take an interest in politics," Juris wrote in an analysis piece posted on the university's website. "In this case, the rallies go one step further and entail participatory action."

That is why these rallies have the chance to empower those who have sat back and watched the Tea Partiers and other crazies go insane over having a black Democratic president. Gitelson said Stewart and Colbert could be the right people to fire this group up, not in a way that would swing an election but enough to force politicians, once the election is over, to consider moderating their messages – maybe.

Colbert and Stewart’s shows delight in taking on both sides of the political aisle, relentlessly ferreting out inconsistencies and absurdities. An hour of Fox News and an hour of MSNBC can cancel each other out, but "The Daily Show" and "The Colbert Report" routinely use razor-sharp satire to slice away artifice and give a clear, albeit comedic, picture of the news of the day. The real "we the people," the silent majority, tend to recognize this and enjoy laughing at Stewart’s comedy because it is funny yet true. The rallies today will likely be a reflection of that, a coming together of the more-or-less like-minded middle.

At the rally's conclusion, Stewart gave an impassioned speech about the caustic level of discourse in Washington, and its nasty echoes on cable television's 24-hour news cycle. Stewart said that noisy debate obscured a reality that he perceived: that everyone throughout the country had found a way to work together.

"...The only place we don't is here [pointing at the Capitol building] or on cable TV," said Stewart, putting much of the blame on Washington. "If we amplify everything, we hear nothing...."

"...We live now in hard times, not end times. And we can have animus and not be enemies," Stewart said. "But unfortunately, one of our main tools in delineating the two broke. The country's 24-hour political pundit perpetual panic ‘conflictinator’ did not cause our problems. But its existence makes solving them that much harder."

Despite its comedic origins, the rally is being taken seriously, garnering plugs from Oprah and even President Obama himself. And while these events will be unlikely to change the course of the country, they might serve to remind anyone with a far-left or far-right ideology that there are masses in the middle to contend with – the people who are reasonable – the new silent majority.

If only they would actually vote and cause the Tea Party to lose, then maybe the crazies would go home.

The tax cut that no one noticed

In his interview on The Daily Show, President Obama stated that tax cuts were given to 95% of Americans in the Recovery Act. Yes, there was a tax cut. In fact, I got twice the amount of money back that I got under the Bush tax cuts. But no one else seems to know they got a tax cut except for me and a few others who really stay informed.

The National Review, an ultra right leaning magazine, actually ran a piece that said the President’s claim "strained credulity." The same magazine ran another piece insisting, "If the taxes of 95 percent of Americans actully [spelling mistake is theirs] had been cut, surely somebody other than Obama would have noticed."

It is incredible that the Righties think this is a matter of opinion. Obama cut taxes for millions of Americans, but since most people did not really notice their net pay increase, then, according to the Righties, maybe it did not happen. This argument is along the same line as “if a tree falls in the forest, but no on hears or sees it, did the tree really fall?”

The truth is that Democrats passed one of the largest middle-class tax cuts in the history of the country, and Republicans voted against it and fought to kill it. Congressional Republicans, whose inclination is to love tax cuts, refuse to give the president or Democrats in Congress any credit for this. And the general populace seems to have missed the news entirely.

How could a president cut Americans' income taxes by $116 billion and nobody notice? This is not a rhetorical question. At a rally organized recently by a Republican women's club, a half-dozen guests were asked by a reporter what had happened to their taxes since President Obama took office.

"Federal and state have both gone up," said one silver-haired attendee, echoing the comments of others. After further prodding with a reminder that a provision of the stimulus bill had cut taxes for 95 percent of working families by changing withholding rates, the rally attendee’s memory was jogged.

"You're right, you're right," he said. "I'll be honest with you: it was so subtle that personally, I didn't notice it."

This person was so very sure that his federal taxes had gone up because FOX news and Republican leaders (Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, Glenn Beck, Bill O'Reilly, Karl Rove, John Boehner, and Mitch McConnell) had told him so.  But in reality, his taxes had gone down. Anyone can go back and look at paycheck stubs and see that their taxes have been reduced. This happened when Obama signed the Recovery Act into law the first couple of months after being sworn into office. But even when talking to a reporter, the rally attendee’s first instinct was to say the exact opposite of what really happened. He is obviously not the only one who is misinformed.

Less than 10% of the country realizes they got tax cuts. About a third of the population believes their federal taxes actually went up.

The tax cut was designed to be subtle, on purpose, because rebate checks tend to be saved, not spent. So, President Obama and the Democrats set it up so that everyone's paycheck would simply be a little higher every pay period – an average of about $50 a month for the typical working person – about $1200 per year for a middle class two-income family – hoping that more people would be more likely to spend that extra bit.

For the most part, it was effective because the economy is improving – albeit slowly.

How bad is the disconnect between perception and reality? Almost immediately after Obama signed one of the largest tax cuts in American history, right-wingnuts started organizing rallies to announce that they are Taxed Enough Already. The Republican leaders were lying; and the Republican sheep were not paying close enough attention to know the president had just given them a tax break.

Sadly, what makes for good economic policy often has no bearing on politics or public opinion. Obama could have gone with rebate checks that would have been better noticed, but the economic result would have been worse. The president chose to go with an approach that worked better for the economy, but paid little political dividend. Good for the economy. Bad for him. For the good of the nation, Obama is knowingly sacrificing public opinion about himself.

Rush, Sean, Glenn, Bill, and every other Republican mouthpiece has been telling Bubba that Obama raised his taxes – even though they know that their statements are not true – and Bubba believes them because he never noticed that his paycheck has a bit more money in it every week.  When arriving home from work, Bubba is checking his brain at his front door, turning on FOX News, and allowing the lies and misinformation to pour into his skull.

I cannot lay all the blame at the feet of FOX and friends, though, because Obama and the Democrats are very bad at letting the public know about the help they are getting.  Their publicity machine is a failure.

Under Obama, middle class Americans got the biggest tax cut in history, but no one noticed.

Privatizing social security a bad idea

Privatizing Social Security was a bad idea in 2005 when it was proposed by President Bush and rejected by the American people. It is still a bad idea, despite recent Republican attempts to revive it.

Three new analyses out this week make it very clear that GOP proposals would cut benefits for middle-income Americans, jeopardize the solvency of the Social Security Trust Fund and weaken the program's ability to keep millions of Americans out of poverty.

The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities (CBPP), the Chief Actuary of Social Security, and the U.S. Congress Joint Economic Committee (JEC) have each weighed in on the Social Security proposal introduced by Republican Congressman Paul Ryan. While Republicans have sought to recast their proposals as modest changes to the current system, they are anything but that.

[First]… the new CBPP report finds that Rep. Ryan's proposal would reduce benefits for the top 70 percent of earners by linking Social Security benefits to change in prices, rather than changes in wages, as is now the case. Additionally, increasing Social Security's full retirement age, as called for in Ryan's plan, would reduce benefits for everyone regardless of when they retire.

[Second]… according to the Chief Actuary of Social Security, the "progressive price indexing" proposal would reduce benefits by 17 percent compared to current law for a new retiree in 2050 with medium earnings ($43,000 today). The cuts get deeper over time and are steeper for higher income workers. By 2080, benefits converge at a much lower level, with little difference in benefits for high earners and medium earners. At that point, Social Security would bear little resemblance to today's program, where benefits are based on a worker's lifetime earnings.

[Third]… the JEC report, prepared by the committee's Majority Staff, looks at privatization, where future retirees are able to divert a portion of their payroll taxes to private investment accounts. Privatization would allow all retirement savings accumulated by retirees to be subject to fluctuations in the performance of asset markets, including the stock market, where significant swings in returns and account accumulations are possible from year to year and even month to month.

A worker with a private account could purchase an annuity with a fixed monthly payment at the end of his or her working life. However, the size of that monthly payment depends on the timing of retirement relative to the performance of the different asset markets that the retiree had invested in. For example, a retiree who invested their social security payroll tax  solely in the stock market over a 40-year work history and was expecting an annuity of $867 per month in 2006 would have received only $399 per month if he had retired in 2008.

Republicans claim that the Social Security Trust Fund would ensure that individuals who invest in private accounts will get back as much as they put in, plus indexing for inflation, even if the stock market craters. But such a guarantee - where private account holders win when the stock market is up, and don't lose when the stock market falls - must have another source of funds during bear markets. Without additional funds to pay for this one-sided bet, the solvency of the General Fund will be at risk.

While Social Security benefits are modest, they have a major impact. Without Social Security, nearly half (46 percent) of senior citizens would live in poverty, but with Social Security the poverty rate for elderly Americans falls to 10 percent. Indeed, Social Security accounts for more than 76 percent of income for middle-class seniors.

The Republicans ignore these facts and plan to radically change a program that provides economic security and peace of mind to millions of Americans. Their proposals are either a misguided belief in the stock market's ability to miraculously "save" Social Security or a cynical attempt to gut a successful program that has kept generations of Americans economically secure.

From: Privatizing Social Security: Haven't We Seen This Movie Before?
By Rep. Carolyn Mahoney
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/rep-carolyn-maloney/privatizing-social-securi_b_772334.html

Republicans are for off-shoring American jobs

Michelle Bachmann rose to national attention with her call for the news media to conduct an investigation of Congress for un-American policies. But the hypocrite does not have to look any further than her own cloakroom and her own voting record. 

What could be more un-American than promoting the off-shoring of American jobs?

Yet, that is what Republicans favor. They voted to allow companies to deduct from their taxable income the expenses of off-shoring jobs and of shipping equipment overseas.

It would be one thing if only the nutcase Michelle Bachmann voted for it – but that is not what happened. The entire Republican Party voted for it, including the purported Speaker to be, John Boehner. The Republican Party favors sending your jobs offshore. They favor a global labor market, driving down the cost and power of American labor. They cheerfully toast the screwing of the middle class. It drives up their profits, their wealth, their power. 

It is anti-American.

Democrats do have something to say about this, but their voices are too polite, too weak. It is not clear and concise. It gets all muddled with other words that are good for policy wonks, but do not touch peoples' guts. They are so weak in their answer that no one hears them.

So, I will shout this:

A vote for any Republican is a vote to send your job to a foreign country!

That is why business, both domestic and foreign, is buying the election for Republicans.

The political ads I would put out there:

One ad shows George Bush speaking to the black-tied, bejeweled dinner calling them "his base"; then shows Joe Barton apologizing to BP; then fade to American workers walking out of a plant while the foreign workers walk in.

Another ad shows the white-haired gent who runs the Chamber of Commerce showing a list of their foreign contributors, then showing a scene of American factory workers walking out of their plants and foreign workers walking into American manufacturing plants.

Then, with these ads (pictures worth more than 1000 words), maybe the electorate will understand that Republicans are for off-shoring American jobs.

Displaced anger

The Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) and, to a lesser extent, the stimulus have become symbolic conduits of political anger. The reason is simple. Both were passed amid much fanfare and controversy, and yet the unemployment rate is still almost 10%. Therefore, critics say, the programs are flops.

The bailouts were rational, clear-headed responses to the worst financial meltdown since the Great Depression. The recession is still hurting many, but the hard facts are that both measures have made the economy better, or to be more precise, not nearly as bad as it otherwise would have been.

What would have happened if the bailouts had not been instigated? The early 1930s provide a case study in what happens when a financial crisis is met with inaction and sanctimony about a return to basic values. Suffice it to say, things did not end well back then – and the Great Depression went on for years. This time around, both the Bush and Obama administrations, Congress, and the Federal Reserve were determined not to let history repeat itself.

TARP, enacted two years ago with bipartisan support, injected capital into financial institutions when credit was frozen. And contrary to what is believed, the government did not simply hand cash to the banks with no strings attached; it purchased shares of preferred stock. Now that the banking system has stabilized, the stock is being sold, at a profit to taxpayers. Similarly, TARP money was used to prop up GM and Chrysler when the collapse of those domestic automakers would have added hundreds of thousands more workers to the unemployment rolls.

Of the $388 billion in TARP money that was spent, more than half has already been recovered, according to the latest Treasury Department report. What's more, with GM looking healthier and insurance giant AIG showing signs of life, it is possible that TARP could turn a profit in the end. That would make it one of the best uses of federal tax dollars in memory.

Similarly, the stimulus has had a positive effect, though measurable only against a less desirable situation that might have been. It strengthened the social safety net for those cast into desperate straits and bolstered struggling states and localities. The non-partisan Congressional Budget Office (CBO) estimates that 1.4 million to 3.3 million more people would be unemployed today without it. The challenge now is to ensure that spending meant to be temporary and targeted does not become permanent.

Given the unpopularity of TARP and the stimulus, it is not surprising that candidates this fall are trying to disassociate themselves with these programs. In fact, voters in GOP primaries ousted several Republicans – known as the TARP martyrs – who supported the bailout. As the Great Depression proved, the true act of irresponsibility in the midst of economic crisis is to freeze up and do nothing, then take cheap shots at those who saved the day. It’s too bad that some Republicans lost their jobs due to TARP.

Voters have every reason to be angry about the economic mess, but their rage is displaced. It should be directed at the Wall Street financiers who threw caution to the wind and the politicians of both parties who enabled them, not at lawmakers who acted responsibly to save the system at a moment of maximum peril.

American oligarchs

The United States is fast becoming a third world nation run by corporate oligarchs, their political lackeys, and supported by gullible citizens who, come November, will vote against their own best interests to further their masters' agendas.

How gullible are you? When Republicans promise to cut taxes and reduce deficits, do you ask them how it is possible to do both at the same time? What specific spending cuts do they propose? GOP sweetheart Paul Ryan, who is touted as the spending and deficit guru of his party, has proposed privatizing Social Security and then further delaying retirement age to 70 from what is now 67. He has previously advocated completely dismantling Social Security – until Mitch McConnell (GOP Congressional leader) advised him that such words would cause him to lose the election. Ryan also wants to end Medicare, and has specifically said so. He wants old people to have to pay for their own insurance on the open market – never mind that it would be extremely expensive, even if they could qualify. Therefore, many of our elderly would have to go without healthcare.

The recent Republican Pledge to America is full of bloviated ideas but short on details. For example, they do not mention how to cut taxes and reduce deficits at the same time. Cutting taxes to next to nothing has long been a Republican goal, and when they tried to do that during the Bush years they turned a huge surplus left by Clinton into a huge deficit.

They proposed privatizing Social Security. What if they had been successful? Where would your Social Security money be today after the market crash of 2008? Those funds would be in the same sinking boat as the 401ks. Given what we have seen happen to financial markets, how would you have done if your Social Security account were turned over to private sector brokerages, like, say, Lehman Brothers?

The GOP promises to repeal the American Care Act (healthcare reform). Of course they have no actual proposal except going back to what we had: yearly double digit increases, children being denied coverage because of pre-existing conditions, more and more Americans losing their coverage and their coverage being dropped when they get sick, small businesses cutting benefits or eliminating coverage for employees, and on and on.

President Obama's healthcare reform is presently prohibiting insurance companies from denying coverage to children with pre-existing conditions. Now, this very day, parents may continue covering their kids on their policies until the kids turn 26. Those who are very sick are now able to enter a high risk health insurance program run by private insurers (if their state will allow it). Small businesses that provide coverage for their employees will receive a tax subsidy to offset the cost (which was not true before now). Now, which of these benefits would you like to see cut? What about the old system did you find so attractive?

The United States spends 17% of GDP on healthcare. Gross Domestic Product, or GDP, is basically the sum total of our economy. Germany, France and the United Kingdom spend 10% of their GDP. Switzerland, second to the U.S. spends 11% of GDP. Are we healthier because we spend so much more? No. Independent studies show that our healthcare system ranks 37th in the world in terms of favorable outcomes, just below Slovakia.

Do you want to go back to that?

As the Bush Tax cuts approach expiration, the President has proposed continuing the tax cuts for 98% of all Americans. Those deficit hawks on the right insist that the top 2% should continue to get their tax breaks too, and the Republicans are holding your and my taxes hostage to assure that. Apparently, they don't mind the $700 billion those tax cuts will add to the deficit over the next few years – and well over 1.4 trillion in 10 years.

What the Republicans are really doing is protecting those extremely wealthy oligarchs. These billionaires and millionaires paid a marginal rate of 39% under President Clinton, and 91% under President Eisenhower, supposedly deserve our sympathy because their rate will go from the current 36% to the previous 39%.

Gee, those poor rich people. Boo-hoo.

Don't be a gullible tool of the Koch Brothers (big oil and huge money machine for Republicans) and the other corporate oligarchs like Rupert Murdoch. Vote in your own best interest – against the Republican corporate machine on November 2.


*Oligarchs are rulers in an oligarchy: a form of power structure in which power effectively rests with a small segment of society distinguished by royalty, wealth, family ties, or military control. In the United States, the oligarchs are ‘distinguished’ by wealth.

Just Dreaming

Sitting here daydreaming and wishing that maybe Republicans have vastly overplayed their hands this year – just as they did 12 years ago when they banked on impeachment of Clinton winning them more seats. Let’s say they succeed in picking up a dozen or fewer seats in the House, and perhaps just a seat or two in the Senate leaving the Democratic majorities shrunk only marginally. Republicans would have thrown everything they had at this election – and still come up short.

That would be lovely.

The repercussions of this scenario for the party would begin immediately with the futures of John Boehner, and his deputy, Eric Cantor, ability to hold leadership positions coming very much in doubt. That thought alone makes me smile. More than that, though, a full struggle would begin within the Republican Party over the degree it has aligned itself with the Tea Party movement. (This especially will be true if, as expected, Democrat Chris Coons trounces tea party favorite Christine O’Donnell for a Delaware Senate seat when mainstream Republican Mike Castle would have won that race handily.)

As recriminations mount inside the Republican Party, frustrated GOP incumbents who had been holding on just to see a return to majority status could begin heading for the exits. Beginning in a trickle, Republican retirements would soon pick up speed as lawmakers look to move on to greener pastures. (These retirements alone would seriously hurt Republican chances to retake majorities in 2012 and subsequent elections.)

But, as important as all of these consequences would be, a Republican failure to take back Congress this year would have even an even far-reaching significance: it likely would call into question the GOP’s entire longstanding strategy of obstructionism.

Almost since the day President Obama took office, Republicans have stood shoulder-to-shoulder, nearly unanimously trying to stand in the way of even the most modest of the president’s initiatives. They think that if they thwart progress – and deny the Democratic president credit for success on anything – they will frustrate voters. That frustration, the Republican thinking goes, would then compel voters back into the GOP camp.

But what if that thinking failed to produce the majorities Republicans so desperately crave (as in “I want my country back”). And, given how obstructionism has played a central role for their political game, I think it could not be underestimated how damaging it would be to the GOP if this tactic failed. I do not think Republicans have any other cards to play. A failure of obstructionism to win back a majority would cause a massive crisis of confidence inside the GOP. A crisis of confidence for Republicans only would be amplified should Obama see any uptick in his approval ratings, for even an incremental improvement in the economy.

Quite simply, Republicans’ spirits would be broken – and that thought makes me giggle out loud.

If they do not take back Congress this November, they would perhaps have an incentive to cooperate a little more with Obama and the Democrats, which in turn, could improve the prospects for such stalled initiatives as climate legislation and immigration reform.

All of this is enough to put a smile on nearly any liberal, moderate, or independent voter’s face. Maybe it is enough to get them out and voting in November.

But I am probably just dreaming.

A good look at privatization

There are currently two competing visions of governance in the United States. The conservative vision believes in the on-your-own society, no ‘village’ and no group cooperatives. This policy agenda primarily serves the well off and privileged sectors of the country. This conservative vision of utopia (touted by many of the GOP candidates in this election) is a society in which most government agencies are privatized, and unregulated free enterprise reigns supreme.

The conservative vision was on full display last week in Obion County, Tennessee. In this rural section of Tennessee, Gene Cranick’s home caught on fire. As the Cranicks fled their home, their neighbors alerted the county’s firefighters, who soon arrived at the scene. Yet when the firefighters arrived, they refused to put out the fire, saying that the family had failed to pay the annual subscription fee to the fire department. Because the county’s fire services for rural residences is based on household subscription fees, the firefighters, fully equipped to help the Cranicks, stood by and watched as the home burned to the ground!

The homeowner, Gene Cranick, said he offered to pay whatever it would take for firefighters to put out the flames, but was told it was too late. They wouldn’t do anything to stop his house from burning. Each year, Obion County residents must pay $75 if they want fire protection from the city of South Fulton. But the Cranicks did not pay. The mayor said if homeowners don’t pay, they’re out of luck.

I am surprised that the fire department was not prepared to accept payment for services. If the issue really is limited resources, then surely they would be interested in recouping the costs of having responded to the scene. The Cranicks offered to pay whatever it took to put the fire out. Why didn’t the fire department do so, and then charge as doctors or hospitals might for uninsured patients? The mayor of South Fulton said the chief could not have made an exception. “Anybody that’s not in the city of South Fulton, it’s a service we offer, either they accept it or they don’t,” Mayor David Crocker said. If homeowners do not pay, they’re out of luck.

The fire reportedly continued for hours because garden hoses would not work to put it out. When the fire spread to a neighbor’s property they responded because that neighbor had paid the fee. I am sure the firefighters on the scene who refused to put out the fire really wanted to help – some said they went home and cried later that night – but the county commission (all Republicans) and the fire department just could not escape the powerful lure of semi-privatization and market forces. They even allowed a barn full of horses burn to the ground a while back because the owner had not paid the $75. The city of South Fulton actually benefited to let a few houses burn down as an example to homeowners who will not pony up the protection money.

A local newspaper pressed Mayor Crocker about the city’s policy, which has been in place since 1990. Crocker, a Republican who was elected in 2008 and serves with a county commission in which every seat is also filled by a Republican, likened the policy to buying auto insurance. The paper said he told them that, after all, “if an auto owner allowed their vehicle insurance to lapse, they would not expect an insurance company to pay for an unprotected vehicle after it was wrecked.”

Ironically, in the county commission’s latest report on its fire services which outlines which parts of the municipal area will receive fire services only through subscriptions, the commissioners and fire service officials brag that the county is “very progressive.”

So this is what it is coming to: a far Right, to hell with the collective good and never mind about social services because we do not want to pay taxes to support them. We hear that mindset far too often these days: the only good government is no government; corporatize everything; privatize everything – Rand Paul’s biggest fantasy come true. The fiscal conservatives of Obion County, Tennessee threw out the money they spent sending the trucks out and turned their backs on a profit-making opportunity in exchange for the chance to stick it to the Cranicks for not paying the ‘voluntary’ fee.

If you think letting someone’s house burn to the ground because they forgot to pay a $75 fee is heartless, just wait until the GOP gets back their governmental power and start dismantling Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, public Education, and any other domestic program they can. It will be government for the rich people, by the rich people. It will be all about paying your own way. If you are old, sick, and lose your home to medical bills – tough luck. If you neglect to pay the fire department fee and your house catches on fire – too bad, because they do not care about you. You could live in a tent and the Republicans will not care as long as they cannot see the tent from their house. This could very well be the inevitable conclusion to the Tea Party's empowerment.

Their counterargument is, in this instance, that the system only works if there are consequences for opting out. For the firefighters to have put out the blaze would supposedly have generated a bunch of future free-loaders.

The other vision of governance, the progressive one, believes in an American Dream that works for all people, regardless of their racial, religious, or economic background. Government is not good at taking care of every problem, but there are some basic services like police, fire, sanitation, and transportation that government should do because it furthers our social contract – that is, the basic understanding that we all are in this world together. It is an idea that today’s conservatives do not seem to understand. They are only willing to take care of numero uno – themselves.

What happened to compassionate conservatism? It never existed.

The dingbat revolution is nigh

Sarah Palin – who earlier had held a closed-door fundraiser for Rand Paul, the Tea Party champion running for the U.S. Senate – railed against a GOP establishment that has just seen Tea Partiers oust entrenched Republicans in Delaware and New York. The red-hot mama of American exceptionalism, as Matt Taibbi calls her, spoke at the National Quartet Convention in Louisville, a gospel-music hoedown in a giant convention center filled with thousands of elderly white Southerners.

Matt Taibbi, a reporter for Rolling Stone, attended the event and writes: "Palin chortles, 'We're shaking up the good ol' boys,' to the best applause her aging crowd can muster. She then issues an oft-repeated warning (her speeches are usually a tired succession of half-coherent one-liners dumped on ravenous audiences like chum to sharks) to Republican insiders who underestimated the power of the Tea Party Death Star.

"There isn't a single black person in the crowd. And there is a truly awesome quantity of medical hardware: Seemingly every third person in the place is sucking oxygen from a tank or propping their giant atrophied glutes on motorized wheelchair-scooters. Palin launches into her Ronald Reagan impression: 'Government's not the solution! Government's the problem!'

"…the person sitting next to me leans over to explain that the scooters are because of Medicare.  They have these commercials about how you won't even have to pay for your scooter! Medicare will pay! Practically everyone in Kentucky has one."

Apparently, although they want government spending cut for everyone else, they do want government to spend on them. They feel entitled. They think they earned it when actually they use up what they paid into Social Security and Medicare within the first few years. For the remainder of their years, they are on the dole of taxpayers.

Taibbi continues, “A hall full of elderly white people in Medicare-paid scooters, railing against government spending and imagining themselves revolutionaries as they cheer on the vice-presidential puppet hand-picked by the GOP establishment. If there exists a better snapshot of everything the Tea Party represents, I can't imagine it.”

After Palin wraps up, Taibbi searches for departing Medicare-motor-scooter conservatives. He come upon an elderly couple, Janice and David Wheelock, who are fairly itching to share their views: 

I'm anti-spending and anti-government,"  crows David, as scooter-bound Janice looks on. "The welfare state is out of control."
"OK,"  I say. "And what do you do for a living?"
"Me?"  he says proudly.  Oh, I'm a property appraiser - have been my whole life."
I frown. "Are either of you on Medicare?"
Silence: Then Janice, a nice enough woman, it seems, slowly raises her hand, offering a faint smile, as if to say, You got me!
"Let me get this straight," I say to David. "You've been picking up a check from the government for decades, as a tax assessor, and your wife is on Medicare. How can you complain about the welfare state?"
"Well,"  he says, "there's a lot of people on welfare who don't deserve it. Too many people are living off the government."
"But,"  I protest, "you live off the government. And have been your whole life!"
"Yeah,"  he says, "but I don't make very much." 

More from Taibbi:
"They're full of s**t.  All of them.

“At the voter level, the Tea Party is a movement that purports to be furious about government spending — only the reality is that the vast majority of its members are former Bush supporters who yawned through two terms of record deficits and spent the past two electoral cycles frothing not about spending but about John Kerry's medals and Barack Obama's Sixties associations. The average Tea Partier is sincerely against government spending – with the exception of the money spent on them. In fact, their lack of embarrassment when it comes to collecting government largesse (for themselves) is key to understanding what this movement is all about – and nowhere do we see that dynamic as clearly as in Kentucky, where Rand Paul is barreling toward the Senate with the aid of conservative icons like Palin.

"Early in his campaign, Dr. Paul, the son of the uncompromising libertarian hero Ron Paul, denounced Medicare as "socialized medicine." But this spring, when confronted with the idea of reducing Medicare payments to doctors like himself – half of his patients are on Medicare – he balked. This candidate, a man ostensibly so against government power in all its forms that he wants to gut the Americans With Disabilities Act and abolish the departments of Education and Energy, was unwilling to reduce his own government compensation, for a very logical reason."

Rand Paul said that physicians should be allowed to make a comfortable living and therefore, Medicare should not be allowed to reduce payments to physicians.  (But he is against the government bail out to the states that saved the jobs of teachers, fire fighters, and policemen.)

Taibbi continues: "Those of us who might have expected Paul's purist followers to abandon him in droves have been disappointed; Paul is now the clear favorite to win in November. (Ha, ha, you thought the Tea Party actually gave a s**t about spending, joke's on you.) That's because the Tea Party doesn't really care about issues – it's about something deep down and psychological, something that can't be answered by political compromise or fundamental changes in policy. At root, the Tea Party is nothing more than a ‘them-versus-us’ thing. They know who they are, and they know who we are ('radical leftists' is the term they prefer), and they're coming for us on Election Day, no matter what we do — and, it would seem, no matter what their own leaders like Rand Paul do."

(Remember, facts do not matter to this crowd. Reasoning with them is futile.)

"In the Tea Party narrative, victory at the polls means a new American revolution, one that will "take our country back" from everyone they disapprove of. But what they don't realize is, there's a catch: This is America, and we have an entrenched oligarchical system in place that insulates us all from any meaningful political change. 

"The Tea Party today is being pitched in the media as a great threat to the GOP; in reality, the Tea Party is the GOP. What few elements of the movement are not yet under the control of the Republican Party soon will be, and even if a few genuine Tea Party candidates sneak through, it's only a matter of time before the uprising as a whole gets castrated, just like every grass-roots movement does in this country. Its leaders will be bought off and sucked into the two-party bureaucracy, where its platform will be whittled down until the only things left are those that the GOP's campaign contributors want anyway: top-bracket tax breaks, free trade and financial deregulation.

"The rest of it – the sweeping cuts to federal spending, the clampdown on bailouts, the rollback of Roe v. Wade – will die on the vine as one Tea Party leader after another gets seduced by the Republican Party and retrained for the revolutionary cause of voting down taxes for Goldman Sachs executives."  

"The over 65 dingbat revolution, it seems, is nigh."


To read the remainder of the Taibbi’s article, go here:
http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/17390/210904?RS_show_page=0