Why the Tea Party? Why the absence of civility, what my mother called good manners?

It is the inevitable result of our devotion to various boneheaded ideologies. It makes no difference what the ideology is.

It’s time we recovered from this childhood disease of devotion to ideologies.

The incompetence of our politicians for the past few decades is to blame. They are in the game of politics but never learned the basics.

Parties play many roles. Parties can either be ideological or umbrellas. Umbrellas? An umbrella party is one that is deliberately non-ideological. It has no litmus test. If you want to join the party, come on, as long as you behave yourself.

So, why even have such a party? To help you get elected. That’s what politics is all about. If you don’t get elected, your chances of seeing any of your agenda enacted is severely curtailed.

No one ever accused George Wallace and Ted Kennedy of being ideological bed mates. But, they were both Democrats. I’m certain they didn’t relish the opportunity but when it came to endorsing each other they bit the bullet, smiled and said nice things about one another.

It wasn’t just a Democratic peculiarity. The Republicans likewise indulged. The distance between Arizona’s Senator Goldwater and New York’s Senator Javits was not merely geographical.

Given the rabid ideological posturing that has of late commanded the fields of battle, it is understandable if the behavior of those dinosaurs is perplexing. Why would they yoke themselves to people with whom they shared few, if any, positions on the issues of the day?

If you want to be a politician in the Deep South next year, your odds of success are much better as a Republican. The mirror image of that can be found in other locations.

The concept was not difficult. If you want to get elected, you position yourself to best advantage, at least as long as the others in that party are people with whom you can associate socially. They don’t have to agree with any of your policies. They just have to be willing to help you get elected and accept your help in their time of need.

Such arrangements can flourish only in an ambiance of cordiality. That atmosphere has an element of contagion. The supporters of the candidates are less likely to misbehave in public.

Two Is Enough

With umbrella parties two is all that’s necessary. Everyone, excepting the loonies, can find a home. The result is stability. Yes, I know that stability often translates as no change. I prefer to see it as allowing for deliberation and providing time for adjusting to changes. Although, the Great Depression proved alacrity was not forbidden when the times and events demanded.

Let me reminisce. I think it was in the 1980s when I took a look at Italy’s postwar political situation. The numbers may be slightly off, but only slightly. After about 39 years, the Italians had endured 37 administrations. There is a reason. Ideology. It produced a couple of dozen parties.

People seem never to be satisfied with just disagreeing. Catholics and Protestants disagree. Baptists and Presbyterians take issue with each other. Foot-washing Baptists don’t see eye to eye with Snake-handling Baptists. To some extent, the closer you are, ideologically, the more apt you are to produce another schism. Once you start splitting along ideological lines it’s just as difficult to stop as eating potato chips.

Hence, 37 administrations in about as many years. Political instability can lead to paralysis in the operation of a government. Do you commit to a significant project based on the orders of someone who will not last as long as the planning stage?

It was so bad that every few months the Italian post office would take all of the undelivered mail, bulldoze it into large piles and set it ablaze. Remember that the next time you complain about government efficiency.

We can see the beginning of that counting to 37. We have a Tea Party. Well, really, we have several tea parties. Seemingly, no one is ideologically pure enough to satisfy the rabid. They really don’t understand politics. They really don’t give a fig for democracy. They just want their way. They want to take their country back. Back from whom? From people who actually respect the concepts to which this nation has for so long been devoted?

Perhaps they should be speaking of giving the country back to the original inhabitants.

Are You Up For Some History?

We know that Michele Bachmann and St. Sarah are estranged from history and facts. That may be a requirement to belong to one of the tea parties. My first degree being in History, I have a fidelity to facts. Therefore, I will never be qualified to wear those silly outfits.

The original tea partiers dress as Indians. I probably would have tried to conceal my identity had I been involved. I guess that means I would have behaved cowardly too. If they weren’t Indians, who were they? Were they performing an act of patriotism for their fellow man’s liberty and posterity? Well, the answer has to be no.

Ninety thousand pounds of tea was dumped. Was it because of the tax? No. Really? Really. There were two reasons, neither was taxes.

The colonists were buying more tea from smugglers than from the East India Company. They wanted to change that. Parliament wanted to help. They passed the 1773 Tea Act. This was meant to accomplish the two things the Company wanted. First, it would give more emphasis to the Company’s monopoly. Sellers needed a license to legally sell tea.

The Company shipped tea from China and India to England, then to the colonies. A tax was collected for landing in a British port. The Tea Act eliminated that tax. Why? So that the Company could sell their tea for a lower price than the smugglers and the unlicensed sellers.

Now, can you guess who the ‘Indians” were? Just a hint: they were smugglers and unlicensed sellers.

Not all of their fellow colonists thought very highly of them. It was more than six decades before they first called it the Boston Tea Party. It was known as “the destruction of the tea.” That doesn’t have quite the same ring to it. For the most part, those who were around at the time didn’t consider the destruction of property laudable.

Many condemned their little party; Ben Franklin forcefully so. He insisted that the cost of the tea must be paid.

This was an act that was unnecessary and not indicative of the general mood of the colonies. New York, Philadelphia and other ports simply boycotted the tea. That tea was returned to England.

My Way – Or Else

So, what do we have? We have people who know no history. We have people who don’t understand politics. We have people who don’t like democracy. Despite their uninformed claims, they have no allegiance to the Constitution. They are missing any fraternal feeling for their fellow Americans. They are not patriots. They are spoiled brats.

Obviously, that is not a description of everyone who feels some sympathy for their averred aims. Americans, perhaps 98% of us, have good reason to be upset with our lack of influence on events. The Tea Party is not an acceptable response.

We don’t need these fake populist groups, funded by the plutocracy and corporations. We don’t need this distraction from the real, basic issues. We don’t need simplistic policies based on lies and ignorance.

I don’t appreciate being used and otherwise ignored by those running the country. However, the only alternative is not to be threatened with a gun by an ignorant bully who despises the things I cherish. Some make a lot of noise under the guise of patriotism and other laudable banners. Others put an unwarranted trust in those claims.

I would rather see them spend more time learning the facts, including historical ones, than making fools of themselves.

Look that up in your Funk and Wagnell’s.

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We need to send some senators to Guantanamo. They are far more dangerous to our country than any of the people already in residence there.

I’m certain you have at least heard the name of Christopher Bond, Senator from Missouri. You, however, may be forgiven for not recognizing Martha Johnson’s name.

Miss Martha was the President’s nominee to head up the General Services Administration. It’s difficult to think of a political appointment to a less political position. The GSA is primarily the nation’s landlord and maintenance arm. They do the grunt work so that government employees have a roof over their heads.

What connection is there between these two?

Little Chris (Kit) was pissed about something to do with a new Federal building in Kansas City. So, he did what any grammar school kid would do. He took “his” ball and refused to let the others play. He put a hold on her nomination.

Believe it or not, the Democrats finally showed some backbone and forced a vote. What was the outcome of this controversial nomination? She was confirmed: 96-0.

Senators are so impressed with themselves that they refer to the Senate as the world’s most exclusive club. Sometimes they call it the world’s most exclusive debating club. One problem – they no longer debate. They just pose for the cameras and talk past each other.

Given how impressed they are with themselves, they feel they deserve special privileges. So, they give themselves a bunch of special considerations. My problem with that, beyond the attitude that engenders it, is that essentially all of these privileges are anti-democratic. Somehow that doesn’t seem meet in, arguably, the world’s most successful democracy.

The privilege pertinent to the above embarrassment is the rule that permits any Senator to put a hold on any nominee or bill, for any reason, or for no reason. Any single Senator can put the whole country on hold, at his pleasure. It this any way to run an airline?

Now, another Senator has taken the next illogical step. He has put a hold on all nominations. Who is this terrorist? He goes by the American-sounding name of Richard Shelby. Unsurprisingly, he comes out of Alabama, our leading state – at least alphabetically.

Surely there is a serious national danger that calls for such a drastic measure. What could it be?

Old Dick wants a government contract to go to a defense contractor who would do assembly work on a new tanker back home in Alabama. I’m convinced that he merely wants government-funded jobs for his constituents. It has nothing to do with his being on the contractor’s payroll.

Actually, the Dick has another reason, as well. He wants the FBI to build an explosives testing facility in Alabama. We mustn’t locate such a facility too conveniently to the FBI’s primary offices in Virginia. That would only help one part of the government function more efficiently. That would violate one of his “conservative” tenants.

The Dick is famous for how tentative his tenants can be. He once pontificated, “Far too many of the president’s nominees were never afforded an up or down vote because several Democrats chose to block the process for political gain.” That, of course, was when Bush had a majority of Republicans in the Senate.

Another rule has become a “privilege.” That is the rule requiring a super majority. When the Democrats had 60 votes, that meant any Democratic Senator could stand in the way until he/she got what they wanted. That worked out so well we ended up with a joke called a healthcare reform bill. It was more like a ménages à cent.

Now, with the Republicans having 41 votes, one of that group can either stop the majority or broker a deal to get what they want. What about what the people want? Silly question.

How do they justify these privileges? They sometimes resort to calling them a part of the system of checks and balances. Pure BS.

The Constitution provides for several checks and balances. There are what are considered to be the main ones: between the Executive, Legislative and Judicial branches. We also have another between the two branches of Congress. The primary one was to be between the people, on the one hand, and Congress and the White House on the other. That one has been effectively eliminated by the Senate.

There are several ways to eliminate these anti-democratic privileges. The Vice President could, at the beginning of the next session, declare them eliminated. It seems he is not so inclined. The Senate Majority Leader could also lead. Not much chance of that.

The Constitution begins, “We the People.” Forget the Constitution. The Rules of the Senate take precedence. The people have been beaten into complete submission. Do you really think the people are prepared to take time away from their 50″ flat screens and video games to regain the power promised by the Constitution? Sure, there are the teabaggers but they are a thankfully small group of yoyos that are too easily led by faux populists such as Dick Armey and the corporate interests he represents. They are ready and willing to blindly follow con men to support policies that are against their real self-interests.

It doesn’t make much sense to depend on such as the corporately mislead teabaggers to help rid us of the corporate-owned legislators. What is the solution? Realistically, there seems not to be one. They say knowledge is power. How I wish that were true.

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America is the greatest country in the world. I grew up hearing that and I used to believe it. I still hear people saying it.

Is it true? What did people mean when they made that claim? What does it mean now? Are people now just saying it out of habit? What criteria are they using? Perhaps we need to look in the mirror.

We aren’t the richest country in the world. We don’t have the longest life expectancy. We rank way down the list on satisfaction with our lives. We have the highest crime rate in the world. One of every four prisoners in the world is one of us.

We spend half of all the military funding in the world. Is this what they mean when they call us the greatest? I think not.

Our politicians collect more bribes than those of any other country. Is this what they mean when they call us the greatest? I hope not.

America isn’t so much a place with amber grain waving between shining seas. It is essentially an idea, an experiment. Can the people govern themselves? Do we need a monarch or a dictator to make those decisions for us? That is the idea. That is the experiment.

Many people actually think us incapable of making decisions for ourselves. They may be right, or not. The funny thing is, those that believe it just happen to think that they are the only ones qualified and suited to impose those decisions on us.

Who are these exemplars of omniscience? Who are these people worthy to replace democracy? There are two groups of such exalted beings that bless us with their very presence. One group, ironically, acquired their lofty stations via the democratic process they hold in such low esteem. The others are the economic elite, known historically as plutocrats.

These two groups, composing government and corporations, work as a team. The problem is that we make up the other side. There are two political parties: the corporatists and the populists. One side holds the interest of corporations supreme. The other considers actual human beings of greater importance.

There are two quotes that I feel appropriate. The first I commend to you comes from Benito Mussolini, “Fascism should more properly be called corporatism because it is the merger of state and corporate power.” Those corrupting our country should take note of the other, by Charles de Gaulle, “The cemeteries of the world are full of indispensable men.”

We came to expect W, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Bolton, Wolfowitz, and the others of that ilk to repair to their authoritarian bent, whether they felt challenged or not. They were essentially sociopaths. We hoped those eight years were an aberration. We sat back and waited.

We found someone who promised change. Were those sincere promises that became sullied in the rough and tumble of political combat? Or, were those promises no more than a marketing ploy to attract those who were desperate for a government that valued the people.

Obama is being assaulted by the “birthers,” people who make their own reality. He is being compared to Hitler, by people who have no understanding or appreciation of what Hitler represented. He is called a socialist, by people who couldn’t find the word in a dictionary. From Newt Gingrich to the droolers who think he cares about them we hear claims of government plans for euthanasia.

UnAmerican crowds are denying others the right to express themselves, as democracy requires. They threaten bodily harm to anyone with the temerity to hold a different position. Those are the tactics employed by the Brown Shirts back in the 1930s. Rational discourse is disappearing from the American body politic.

The President is doing his fair share of damage to this American idea. He campaigned on the accurate claim that the government and people are being ripped off by al-PhARMA. He proclaimed that banning Medicare from negotiating drug prices had to change. He promised that all negotiations with the health industry would be covered by C-SPAN. Boy, that sounded great. It was just what was needed to restore some confidence in our government.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NCRO0g9CfAw

C-SPAN is ready. The people are waiting. Stand down. There has been no coverage by C-SPAN. The ban on negotiation has been ratified by fiat from the Oval Office. So much for change. Hope felt nice, while it lasted.

If, as Obama and most everyone else agrees, healthcare reform is the most important issue, what are we to do now that it is official there will be no real reform? The White House staff is putting together a marketing campaign to support their empty claim that they have achieved reform. Marketing is hardly an adequate substitute for democracy.

We will be told again that we have the greatest healthcare system in the world. The 47 million uninsured has grown to 52 million. The last study from the World Health Organization listed us as 37^th. Before you gloat too much at that wonderful ranking, you should know that report came out in the year 2000. Before that, the U.S. was falling. It is only natural to assume that the decline wasn’t reversed. Why has there been no updated report? The WHO says that correlating those eight factors is just too complex. My personal opinion is that the U.S. exerted some influence to avoid further embarrassment.

While the cheerleaders shout about our healthcare system being the best in the world, the cost rises. The number without healthcare rises. And The Changer promises the the greediest group in the system a bigger piece of pie. Meanwhile, polls in every country with national healthcare systems shows overwhelming support for their systems. Not a single one of those countries has any interest in adopting our “Greatest Healthcare System in the World.”

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If you were the one who read my post entitled Upside Down, you may have noticed a commenter who shares my aversion to brevity. I mentioned that I had no intention of prolonging the discussion but he wrote back anyway.

I was impressed by his total misjudgment of me, as well as how far off the mark were his definitions. I decided to offer his most recent comment with my opinions and corrections. Although edited for length and tedium, I have not, I think, done violence to his missive.

I may be wrong, but you sound just like a Blue Dog Democrat formerly known as “Yellow Dog Democrats”, i.e., “I’d vote for a Yellow Dog before I’d vote for a Republican”.

Yes, you are wrong, on more than one count. I am neither a Democrat nor a Republican. The Democrats have no homogeneous perspective. That hinders effective action. The Republicans rely on simpleminded cant that has been proven harmful. I am a populist.

There were many ‘Yellow Dog Democrats.’ They were so grateful for what FDR did for them and so angry at what the Republicans did to them that they would vote for a yellow dog before they would vote for a Republican. They are much fewer in number now as memory fades and that generation is dying out. ‘Blue Dog Democrats’ are those who consider themselves social Democrats but see themselves as fiscally conservative. It is not a matter of “formerly known as.” There was no semantic change.

Many, of course, have converted to “realism”, a realization that the electorate was moving away from “loyalty oaths” and complete Democratic control.

I have tried to make sense of that sentence, without success. There is no complete Democratic control, although the electorate moved in that direction, not away. I am unaware of any loyalty oaths, other than to the Constitution.

And I can talk until I’m blue in the face about the astounding turn of fiscal events in America and not change it one whit. I use the word “astounding” with all the power that word conjures up. “New ground,” as we say in the South, “is being plowed.” I just hope we all will not be plowed under.

It’s true the economy will not change dependent upon the color of your face. I fail, however, to see the situation as astounding. The general outline of the failure of regressive economics was predictable. The speed with which it became generally apparent was a bit surprising but, since it began in 1981, it took longer than competent economists might have expected to hit us with its full force.

We will be plowed under if we depend on the private sector to correct the problem. Every policy implemented by the Hoover Administration was in line with such laissez faire nonsense. Every policy they tried drove the economy deeper into the toilet.

Okay, let’s drop the debate about FDR’s Great Depression. I lived through it and knew nothing of the politics involved although I remember liking Wendell Willkie very much. But it seems a shame that the depression lingered on for far too long. The question of “why” is an issue we do not agree on.

I was also a child of the Depression. I scavenged and sold scrap metal for a penny a pound during WWII. I still do not understand the need for reference to Willkie but do understand how a child of that age might be impressed by him. The Depression lingered because of more than 3 years of Hoover’s regressive policies, FDR’s going off course momentarily at the end of his first term and the domino effect of the Smoot-Hawley protectionist act of 1930.

Unlike you who have actually served in elective office (I did try, though) and who apparently did not read the legislation you approved (who has the time to read all that “stimulus package” stuff anyway?) I was keenly aware of pending legislation, how my opponent voted and what were the likely consequences of that vote.

Holding political office is far more than reading and voting on legislation. It is listening to and aiding constituents. It is explaining options and policies. It is a myriad of non-glamorous, non-public tasks. Staff is there to find and point out positives, problems and gotchas. Too many politicians are overly engrossed in getting reelected or padding their bank account to read legislation. Whatever the reason, those thousands of pages of legalese are seldom read by the politicians. Sorry, but that is the real world.

One other correction: Wilson Dam was operational before 1942 and it was the center of the most significant vote on TVA’s constitutionality in 1938.

My bad. Wilson Dam was the first operational dam for TVA. It was built between 1918 and 1924 and acquired by TVA in 1933. Those built by TVA started coming on line in 1942. I am uncertain as to how you construe “most significant” and why the constitutionality of a dam built by the government 20 years previously would be so characterized.

Here’s how the TVA is a reminder that government alone can get us out of this recession (near depression). While TVA provided some good construction but short-term jobs there was nothing left to sustain that work just as the CCC and other make-work programs when finished left no on-going economic base. Only private enterprise can do that.

TVA continues to provide nearly 13,000 jobs 76 years after it was created. Thousands upon thousands have retired from TVA. TVA does not sell power directly to the public. It sells to public utilities. Those utilities employ even more people than does TVA. Building the economy of the Valley made it attractive to private enterprise that would otherwise not have come in. By the way, FDR first begged private enterprise to build it. They refused.

Since private enterprise was decreasing, then as now, they weren’t producing any jobs, much less good jobs. CCC and other programs created a significant part of the infrastructure we have enjoyed for 70 years but now needs replacing. Those programs put money into the economy that allowed people to purchase goods and services from private enterprise. Ask those 5 million plus waiting for their unemployment checks if private enterprise creates permanent jobs.

Though not under FDR, the Interstate System created jobs, infrastructure and private enterprise opportunities. Perhaps you should temporarily suspend your lack of faith in government and ride on it, or use electricity from the power grid FDR provided, or even take a flight along the byways the FCC created. If you want to have a picnic, check the weather. Those things are nice, even though they don’t provide jobs as private enterprise does.

And one last question – where does the money to pay for all these grandiose public projects come from? If you say government, that only can mean the printing of more money and more taxes. Obama seems to think you can get blood from a stone.

All legal American money comes from the government. That other stuff is called counterfeit. When the economy gets smaller, we can let it stay small (permanent depression) or pump money into it. The problem would not have been so massive if not for the debt accumulated via spending and tax cuts when the economy had no need of stimulation. Obama may be right. He may be wrong. But, he certainly can’t get jobs out of private enterprise right this moment.

And oh yes, have you heard one mention of the U.S. Constitution in any of his statements?

I often heard Bush and others in his administration speaking of the Constitution, as though they were familiar with it. Obama’s day job was as a professor of Constitutional Law. He knows it. He is comfortable with it. What is the Constitutional problem anyway? Is it unConstitutional to spend money? What about lowering taxes for 95% of the people? Bringing the troops home, perhaps? Is it unConstitutional to be a Democrat?

Sorry, I missed the “The Rocky Horror …etc.” movie. I’m waiting for the flick that some brave producer will come up with, Ayn Rand’s masterpiece, Atlas Shrugged. You might want to re-read the book in light of present circumstances; Orwell’s”1984” also.

One person’s masterpiece is another person’s drivel. The movie is tentatively scheduled for production in 2011. The shadow of plaigerism still hangs over the book as it has quite a bit in common with a book published in 1922. There is no reason to reread it. It’s lack of coherence or  connection to logic and reality has not changed, regardless of present circumstances.

One more thing, I am not “obsessed” as you clinically infer with the TVA. But I do have a passion for the U.S. Constitution and the implications another “TVA” might have on American society.

I apologize for characterizing you as obsessed with TVA. Looking again at your web site, it was only the first 51 articles that were devoted to that subject.

The Crusader

P.S.

If you print this I’ll know that you still are listening (ha!)

Are you sure that you want me to listen?

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Joe the Plumber became a media star, a foreign correspondent, a lecturer to Republican Congressmen and an expert in various other areas without ever having been a plumber, or even a Joe.

Joe Scarborough became a politician and television star with no ability to communicate. Joe’s problem, one of many, is a total unfamiliarity with the meanings of the words he is so fond of using. It may be unfair, as I suspect he lacks the creative ability to conjure anything passing for English but he was the first I heard using the words.

Joe, referring to Rick Santellis overblown television moment, called it a populist rant. Since his use I have heard many others, commentators, politicians and other comedians, use the same description. Populist? How so?

What we had was a derivatives trader, a bozo with diarrhea of the mouth, calling his fellow Americans losers. Why? Because they didn’t, or couldn’t, meet the requirements of the bankers. It was actually a bankers’  rant.

Zbigniew Brzezinski nailed Joe when describing him as “stunningly superficial.” He was speaking of international affairs but Joe is not so limited. He is stunningly superficial in many areas, English being so obvious. If you still have a Funk and Wagnalls dictionary for junior high students gathering dust around you home, please send it to Morning Joke.

Benito Mussolini defined Fascism thusly: “Fascism should more properly be called corporatism because it is the merger of state and corporate power.” Benito was familiar enough with the subject to serve as an adequate source.

Populism is the opposite. It isn’t some hoary caricature of Huey Long. Former Wisconsin Senator Robert “Fighting Bob” La Follete would be the perfect poster boy for populism. Simply stated, populism is, from one dictionary, The political doctrine that supports the rights and powers of the common people in their struggle with the privileged elite.

Allegiance to corporations, including banks, is antithetical and antagonistic to populism. They are polar opposites. One would think that it is difficult to confuse the two.

Am I basing this criticism of poor little Joe on his misuse of one word? After all, many others behaved similarly. No. The list of words that Joe misunderstands is long: capitalism, socialism, democracy, republic – essentially all of the words that constitute the language of his areas of pomposi . . . er, discourse.

Joe isn’t alone but he tries so hard to stand out. He has been fairly successful in that quest. Not too surprisingly, he isn’t embarrassed by his ignorance. Again, that seems to be the nature of the beast (media star).

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