Give Me a Break--Please

I suppose it was inevitable—tea party members now want to change their image of wild-eyed lunacy into something more like a respectable third party with appeal for thoughtful moderates. I listened to an active tea partier the other day, freshly returned from a rally where I can only assume the leaders told them to evangelize and try to make such a case. He tried, I questioned, he got huffy.


All I can say is that it ain’t gonna happen because wild-eyed lunacy is all the Tea Party ever had. Once the politics of NO is gone, there is no basis for the party’s platform. They have no approach to ruling the country except for not liking the way things are going and slinging slogans.

Now, I am not discounting the rational among them—and there are some, perhaps even many. But they weren’t the ones who got the tea party candidates elected. The ones who walked the streets, attended the rallies, donated the money, and had a wonderful puff of resentment beneath their wings were the angry, and I doubt their sincerity beyond their own self-interest. Given a choice between the personal sacrifice they preach for others and making some of their own, I haven't seen any evidence that any would give up a shred of their personal entitlements. Reduce Social Security checks in order to balance the budget that they say is a primary focus? Not on your life. Not on their backs. They earned their rewards--let the cuts fall somewhere else.

Do I exaggerate?

This year there is no increase in social security benefits because there is no inflation. COLA allowances are tied to inflation. No inflation, no increase. To listen to them as I have to, you would think the government was cheating them of a birth right. “My expenses are going up,” bleated one, “it’s disgraceful that there’s no increase this year.” Considering that most people use up what they contributed to Social Security within ten years or so, the disgrace is seniors who burden the economy and demand that the nation meet their medical needs, all the while denying care to the young because it might reduce their current benefits.

What sense does this make? Tea Partiers, mostly older, mostly male, mostly white, denying care and support to the next generation on whose shoulders the future economic development of this nation rests? This seems to me the world turned upside down: seniors more important than the nation’s future.

Sorry tea partiers. On every level, I just don’t buy you as this nation’s future. I’ve always thought of governing by looking to that future. I can’t get into the idea of governing by looking to the past. Even if you are comfortable there (all right in your corner, Jack), the rest of us thoughtful moderates aren’t. Your creature comforts matter less to me than the corporations who run this country and, increasingly the world; they are doing so without oversight while you guys wave the flag, trot out a Christ who would disapprove of the lot of you, and still cling to the folorn hope that Obama wasn’t born in Hawaii.

The tea party moderate? Give me a break. Please.

After the Ball

Now that it's done and the usual political crowing is clogging the airwaves, I suppose it's time to consider the what next of what the US will be living in the couple of years ahead.

We have just returned into (partial) power the same folks who took us into a unnecessary war on the basis of lies, cost over 4,000 lives and nearly bankrupted us; lifted all regulation on financial markets and therby nearly destoyed our financial system; fought tooth and nail to turn our social security savings over to the same financial markets (Bush says his greatest regret is not privatizing it); and tried to oppose any and all legislation on behalf of the planet that might get in the way of profits. And that's not just the Republicans--some of the Democrats were on board with that agenda too. Every time we get these people in power, they promise fiscal care and prudence. Every time what we get is one group becoming insanely rich while the rest of us get screwed.

I don't get it.

Why would people drawing social security want to end it? Do they have other sources of funds and so don't need it? Why not value it for the precious thing it is? People on medicare want to end medicare? They say they want to get the government out of medical insurance--don't they realize that privatized medical care will drop  them first thing? People who have never studied economics think they know how to fix the economy? People who have never been unemployed are experts on unemployment? People whose houses have lost multiple thousands oppose regulation that might prevent the worst mortgage and lender abuses? Just goes to show that ignorance and prejudice must be a sexy sell.

I've been a lukewarm supporter of the Obama White House. I was a Hillary supporter but my bottom line at that time was anything BUT the Republicans and BUT the corporate power brokers. The corporate players were in disarray then because of their own excesses so the Democrats got in. Now, the Corporations have come roaring back along with the Conservatives and their self-satisfied hypocrisy and flat out greed. Of course, they needed complicit ignorance among the electorate.

One thing I have said consistently is that we have changed from a republic into an oligarchy. As my friend Ken says, this country is run by 30 corporations. You can count Halliburton and its craven puppet Dick Cheyney as a good example. Halliburton profits from war--it thrives on it--its stock goes through the roof--its executives get big money and raises. Halliburton needs profits and so we go to war, allowing Halliburton to get no-bid contacts from politicos it has bought and paid for. But add to it the banks, big oil, pharmacueticals, big agriculture, big media, etc. These are the interests that run this country. They buy and sell us daily and we are too besotted with the chaos they deliberately sew among us to see it. Obama at least spent our money on us. We can now look forward to it siphoning back to its corporate masters.

Over time, I suppose I will return to the fray. One can be apathetic only so long and this, after all ,is my planet too. My current home state, Colorado, seems to have taken a thoughtful stance on political reality--bless you my fellow Coloradans for not saddling the world with Tom Tacredo as Governor and Tea Partier Buck as US Senator.  I'll cling to the hope that in the next two years we can all get some common sense.