[Marxism-Thaxis] Tea Party Group Blames 'Leftist' for Giffords Shooting
Tea Party Group Blames 'Leftist' for Giffords Shooting by Garance Franke-Ruta The Atlantic January 9, 2011 -- 1:49 PM ET http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2011/01/tea-party-group-blames-leftist-for-giffords-shooting/69153/ cross-posted on the Cuentame Facebook page http://www.facebook.com/cuentame?v=app_11007063052#!/notes/cuentame/is-the-blame-game-appropriate-tea-party-group-blames-leftists-for-giffords-shoot/486496362610 Showing no sign of tamping down on divisive political rhetoric in the wake of the shooting of 20 people that left six dead in Tucson Saturday, the Tea Party Nation group e- mailed its members Sunday warning them they would be called upon to fight leftists in the days ahead and defend their movement. TPN founder Judson Phillips, in an article linked off the e- mail The shooting of Gabrielle Giffords and the left's attack on the Tea Party movement, described the shooter as a leftist lunatic and Pima County Sheriff Clarence Dupnik as a leftist sheriff who was one of the first to start in on the liberal attack. Phillips urged tea party supporters to blame liberals for the attack on centrist Democratic Rep. Gabrielle Giffords of Arizona, who was shot through the head and is now fighting for her life, as a means of defending the tea party movement's recent electoral gains. The hard left is going to try and silence the Tea Party movement by blaming us for this, he wrote. Clinton used the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing to blame conservative talk radio, especially Rush Limbaugh and The tactic worked then, backing conservatives off and possibly helping to ensure a second Clinton term. The left is coming and will hit us hard on this. We need to push back harder with the simple truth. The shooter was a liberal lunatic. Emphasis on both words, he wrote. The Tea Party Nation is the sponsor of the Tea Party Convention at which former GOP vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin was the keynote speaker in February 2010. America is ready for another revolution! Palin told the assembled at the conference, to standing ovations. Other tea party groups took a less combative tone. Tea Party Express Chairwoman Amy Kremer said Saturday her group was shocked and saddened by the terrible tragedy. These heinous crimes have no place in America, and they are especially grievous when committed against our elected officials. Spirited debate is desirable in our country, but it only should be the clash of ideas, Kremer said in a statement published by the New York Times. An attack on anyone for political purposes, if that was a factor in this shooting, is an attack on the democratic process. We join with everyone in vociferously condemning it. [Garance Franke-Ruta is a senior editor at The Atlantic and oversees politics coverage for TheAtlantic.com ] == Arizona's History of Hate: A Timeline by Jamilah King ColorLines.com January 11 2011 http://colorlines.com/archives/2011/01/arizonas_history_of_hate_a_timeline.html Shortly after Gov. Jan Brewer signed SB 1070 into law, the state of Arizona became jokingly known in some progressive circles as the new Mississippi. Of course, this didn't change the fact that Mississippi is still Mississippi. But the comparison was based on the idea that Arizona had become to the modern immigrant rights movement what Mississippi was to its civil rights predecessor over four decades earlier: ground zero for the political and cultural changes sweeping the rest of the country. And the defiant, often violent, backlash that comes with it. According to activists at Alto Arizona, last Saturday's deadly shooting rampage in Tucson is just the latest in a string of violent political acts dating back over two decades in the state. They've put together a timeline dating back to 1987 showing that Arizona's status as a rouge state isn't new. It includes Sheriff Joe Arpaio's lawlessness in Maricopa County and the horrific murder of a 9-year-old girl and her father by Minuteman activists, and much more. Check out the timeline, which we've posted above, and add your own story. http://prezi.com/doz0js1hj3rv/a-history-of-hate-political-violence-in-arizona/ ___ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list Marxism-Thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis
Re: [Marxism-Thaxis] Tea Party
On Thu, Nov 11, 2010 at 12:40 AM, CeJ jann...@gmail.com wrote: I know I'm being too harsh on Obama. I want him to leave office after this term or the second term renouncing the military interventionist policies, slashing the military budgets, and telling it like it is to Americans about the death throes of the imperium and why their society and political economy fails them. That would not make him a SUCCESSFUL president in the eyes of most Americans, I suspect. As I have said before, a successful president is one, in the view of the 'general public', who transcends the interests of the narrow interest groups who financed his or her way into the Repugnicratic system, somehow transcends those interests, in domestic policy, in foreign policy, etc. It's been a while since a president has succeeded on such terms. There might have been a sense that Clinton did by the end of his second term, but he had also relented and signed the Democratic Party onto 'regime change' now (not later) in Iraq. And transcendance seems to have been making the Democrats the sponsors of 'welfare reform' and 'regime change'. In the case of Obama, he represents a coming together, however ephemeral and however shallow, a much broader coalition of interests and forces. There is no where to go on the accepted political spectrum for him to move in order to transcend that, if that sort of transcendance is even possible. That is why I think his best success as president would be to fail and tell like it really is--because he might yet get enough interest for it to mean something. So far he has shown himself to be a very cautious leader. I doubt if anyone gets even a fraction of as far as he did without being very cautious. Like Carter I want to know what the guy really thinks. CJ Yes, by and large an unsuccessful President for them ( like Carter) is about as good as it gets from our standpoint on the left, no ? In terms of the dialectic of reform, Obama's Presidency as a Black President is a medium level reform. Revolutionists support reforms that can sort of teach the masses. If Obama's presidency sort of blows apart either the Republican or Democratic Parties, this might be a teaching moment for the US masses. I don't know. I heard on Bill Press this morning that two Democrats were on the front page of some paper asking Obama to declare that he is not going to run for re-election. Could Obama's presidency divide the Democratic Party, a new route to a third party through an unexpected dialectic ? White supremacy is so central to the US system , Obama's just being Black, even though he is not left, as everybody here has essayed at length, makes his presidency a medium level or significant reform. The white supremcists jumping out of the woodwork is a sign of this. ___ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list Marxism-Thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis
Re: [Marxism-Thaxis] Tea Party
But Obama was seen as an 'African-American' who said 'white Anglo-Saxon' things most of the time and this made him the darling of a temporarily expanded Democratic Party, ^^^ CB: Yeah, not only could he talk white but his racial ontology was half-white. He was half-white because his mother was white. That definitely helped a lot of white people to vote for him. On the other hand, it probably triggers some of the racist anger with him now, because it reminds of the ole American bugga boo would you want your daughter to marry , actually fuck, one. ^^^ in which young and African-American and even anti-war lefties participated for the presidential election. That he managed to split the independent vote to favor the Democrats also helped. CB: I suspect that it is among these independents that you find a lot of quasi-left quasi-libertarians who might have voted for Obama and now are recoiling in horror at what they did. Their racism was sort of suppressed and then they regressed, and sharply. There's a historical pattern of Americans taking back anti-racist gains, as with jim crow after slavery was abolished and Reaganism after the civil rights movement gains. Here a discussion of it: If racism tipped the scales in 2010, why didn't racism tip the scales against Obama in 2008? ^ That was the historic aspect of 2008 that I wrote about constantly on lbo-talk and otherwise. It was one of those extraordinary events in American history like the Civil War or Civil Rights movement ( though not as structural and big as those), when a majority of White Americans take an anti-racist act. I wrote constantly about it from the Iowa Caucus on. Black people were amazed. We were right on to (a whole lot) of White people voting anti-racist ! But as in the other historic cases, the advances seem to beget a take back or cold feet or betrayal response as in Jim Crow taking back the gains of Reconstruction after slavery, or Reaganism betraying the gains of the Civil Rights movement. Now the Tea Party racists betray the historic advance and symbol of anti-racism in a Black President. At any rate, the thing to pay close attention to is the sharp reversal from 2008 and how to negate that negation. ^^^ He was widely condemned as a socialist by the loony right then too (Rev. Wright, Bill Ayers). The economic crisis was already the foremost issue and the same meme about government spending was circulating in regards to the TARP. I can only speculate. The loony right was reeling back on its heels from how bad the Bush administration's programs were going , so unpoplar. The Republican Party was declared down and out. Obama did everything he could to make race not and issue, as he would lose on it. He didn't confront any racism. That was his part of the deal to the very middle of the road White Americans who were sincere about being colorblind, not judging him by his color, accepting that racism is wrong , but that America has reached a post-racist society. This is not true and it is part of Reaganism, the denial that racism still exists among whites. But there was a large group of Whites who accepted the sort of benign but naive color blind aspect of Reagaism. Not accepting the racist aspect which says the racists today are Black people. These white people who voted for Obama really do represent the great hope in America today. The racists down and out revived themselves pretending to be not Republicans but Tea Partiers - a charade and masquerade like the original Boston Tea Party. Pretending to be rebels , but really cadres for the status quo. The scary part is that _masses_ of whites ignored the obvious lie that they weren't Republicans, since they all ran as Republicans it was a big lie, and many masses voted for them. Large numbers not everybody, but large enough to shift the balance in the election. The major theme, unifying theme of the Tea Party was to get Obama . They went way past normal American standards in attacking Obama. This is the direct indication of racism and appeal to racism. And it resonated with millions creating another great white American betrayal of White steps forward against racism. Interestingly a Canadian writer noticed how far over the line breaking its own American traditions of patriotism and respect for a sitting President the Tea Partiers went. http://www.seniorlivingmag.com/articles/america-hes-your-president-for-goodness-sak America - He's Your President for Goodness Sake! By William Thomas Posted: Friday, October 1st, 2010 There was a time not so long ago when Americans, regardless of their political stripes, rallied round their president. Once elected, the man who won the White House was no longer viewed as a republican or democrat, but the President of the United States. The oath of office was taken, the wagons were circled around the country’s borders and it was America versus the rest of the world with the president of all the
[Marxism-Thaxis] Tea Party
I know I'm being too harsh on Obama. I want him to leave office after this term or the second term renouncing the military interventionist policies, slashing the military budgets, and telling it like it is to Americans about the death throes of the imperium and why their society and political economy fails them. That would not make him a SUCCESSFUL president in the eyes of most Americans, I suspect. As I have said before, a successful president is one, in the view of the 'general public', who transcends the interests of the narrow interest groups who financed his or her way into the Repugnicratic system, somehow transcends those interests, in domestic policy, in foreign policy, etc. It's been a while since a president has succeeded on such terms. There might have been a sense that Clinton did by the end of his second term, but he had also relented and signed the Democratic Party onto 'regime change' now (not later) in Iraq. And transcendance seems to have been making the Democrats the sponsors of 'welfare reform' and 'regime change'. In the case of Obama, he represents a coming together, however ephemeral and however shallow, a much broader coalition of interests and forces. There is no where to go on the accepted political spectrum for him to move in order to transcend that, if that sort of transcendance is even possible. That is why I think his best success as president would be to fail and tell like it really is--because he might yet get enough interest for it to mean something. So far he has shown himself to be a very cautious leader. I doubt if anyone gets even a fraction of as far as he did without being very cautious. Like Carter I want to know what the guy really thinks. CJ ___ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list Marxism-Thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis
Re: [Marxism-Thaxis] Tea Party
On Mon, Nov 8, 2010 at 4:42 PM, waistli...@aol.com wrote: In a message dated 11/8/2010 8:20:54 A.M. Eastern Standard Time, _cb31...@gmail.com_ (mailto:cb31...@gmail.com) writes: Tea Party Election Results Diluted in Highly Populated States By Tom Moroney and Terrence Dopp - Nov 5, 2010 Tea Party supporters boasted of their 28 victories in U.S. House races. What the election results also made clear was that their appeal stopped at the border of the most densely-populated states and metropolitan areas. Republican _Carl Paladino_ Comment As I understand the results, the blue dog democrats took the big hit losing 23 or their 54 official caucus members, or 48% of the Democrat party House loses. Michigan governor race was another Democratic Party loss. Rick Snyder (R-MI) 1,879,499 Votes 58% Virg Bernero (D-MI) 1,278,566 Votes 40% And the beat goes on. WL CB: Yeah. Bernero ran very left. He said he was going to take state money out of banks that didn't carry out the mortgage modification plan, put a moratorium on mortgage foreclosures, made Mainstreet vs Wall Street v his campaign theme, picked a Black woman mayor as his running mate. I was in Bert's at karaoke on the Saturday before the election. I was going to say vote for Bernero before I sang. Next thing I know there's Verg Bernero coming into the bar saying a few words. Anyway, the Republicans won all state offices and majorities in both Houses of the legislature. So, it is squarely on them to balance the state budget. How they will cut taxes on business and do that too will be quite a trick. And then how are they going to fix the economy ? Isn't it the Republican idea that government should stay out of the economy ? Let the economy fix itself ? Free enterprise and the free market. Yet, this Republican is elected on the promise of fixing the economy _as governor_, which means by government means in derogation of the Republican fake free market ideology. But hey, Mr. Capitalist ( Snyder is a middle sized capitalist), show us how to use the government to fix the economy. That'll be a form of socialism. And if the economy doesn't get better, there will be clearly only one party to blame in Michigan. ___ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list Marxism-Thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis
Re: [Marxism-Thaxis] Tea Party
I have been scouring websites in the USA to try to find a good socialist critique of the ideology of the Tea Party. But so far I have found nothing. The WSWS website says absolutely nothing to critique the ideology of the Tea Party. It seems that many on the left are adapting to the reactionary ideas of white sociologically working class men. There is no real Tea Party. It's the usual instigators trying to get white working class to vote Republican. The basic idea is that playing up nationalism, anti-immigration, and anger over economic malaise can keep these people voting Republican, especially in the South and the West. It's the usual 'insider as outsider' story of right wing politics. This time around the interests that fund such activities had to go outside the Republican Party mainstream, at least during the primaries, in order to get more people involved. Because quite a few are right-wing independents, that strategy actually makes good sense. Republicans, however, are often running against their own party. That is because they are pork barrel politicians locally, with pork barrel being where the pork is--military and security budgets. Ideologically such conservatives will say they are fiscal conservatives but they will actually compete for the federal budgets to go to their states, their voting districts and about the only thing they will actually agree on with their colleagues in the House and Senate is the need to increase the military budgets so everyone gets what they want--more spending in their state and local districts. The significant shift this time around, and one that means quite likely that Obama is a one-term president, is that so many governorships went Republican. That means they will control the voting in the presidential election. It will take some doing to unseat the president and his party from the executive branch. I'm not sure though that Obama can use the same strategies that kept Clinton in the WH. About the only thing remarkable about Clinton when you get right down to it is that boy sure knew how to win elections. I wonder if the challenge to the Republican establishment won't come from the Palin types but rather the Bloomberg types. OTOH, neither party has really managed to keep everything stitched together when a white male ETHNIC is involved--Iacocca, Cuomo, Giuliani, now Bloomberg. If he challenges as an Independent, he could spend billions in futility. If he tries to integrate into the Republican Party, they will have a hard time selling him and branding him for the nationwide election. If Obama had been caucasian (e.g., dark-featured caucasian, like some Arabs or Turks or Persians), that combined with his funny name would have doomed him. A plurality of American voters tends to not like ethnic Catholics, ethnic Jews, and African-American politicians (the ones with real African-American community roots, like slave ancestors, like parents and uncles and aunts who participated in the civil rights movements, etc). But Obama was seen as an 'African-American' who said 'white Anglo-Saxon' things most of the time and this made him the darling of a temporarily expanded Democratic Party, in which young and African-American and even anti-war lefties participated for the presidential election. That he managed to split the independent vote to favor the Democrats also helped. The guy had a lot of things to say when he was running, most of which I didn't think much of at the time. Now it seems he doesn't even have much to say. As for a Palin presidency--she is about as qualified as anyone else the Democrats or Republicans are going to let into the race. I don't think even the Republicans can sell and brand a woman though, especially one who can't read the script much of the time and extemporizes. What self-respecting Repug man would want to be her VP candidate? CJ ___ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list Marxism-Thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis
[Marxism-Thaxis] Tea Party
_Print_ (http://www.bloomberg.com/news/print/2010-11-05/tea-party-results-diluted-in-high-density-states-as-christie-fades-at-home.html#print) _Back to story_ (http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2010-11-05/tea-party-results-diluted-in-high-density-states-as-christie-fades-at-home.html) Tea Party Election Results Diluted in Highly Populated States By Tom Moroney and Terrence Dopp - Nov 5, 2010 Tea Party supporters boasted of their 28 victories in U.S. House races. What the election results also made clear was that their appeal stopped at the border of the most densely-populated states and metropolitan areas. Republican _Carl Paladino_ (http://search.bloomberg.com/search?q=Carl%20Paladinosite=wnewsclient=wnewsproxystylesheet=wnewsoutput=xml_no_dtdie=UTF- 8oe=UTF-8filter=pgetfields=wnnissort=date:D:S:d1partialfields=-wnnis:NO AVSYNDlr=-lang_ja) , who had the Tea Party endorsement, took a 27 percentage-point drubbing from Democrat _Andrew Cuomo_ (http://search.bloomberg.com/search?q=Andrew%20Cuomosite=wnewsclient=wnewsproxystylesheet=wnewsoutput =xml_no_dtdie=UTF-8oe=UTF-8filter=pgetfields=wnnissort=date:D:S:d1part ialfields=-wnnis:NOAVSYNDlr=-lang_ja) in New York’s gubernatorial race. In California, _Carly Fiorina_ (http://search.bloomberg.com/search?q=Carly%20Fiorinasite=wnewsclient=wnewsproxystylesheet=wnewsoutput=xml_no_dtdie=U TF-8oe=UTF-8filter=pgetfields=wnnissort=date:D:S:d1partialfields=-wnnis :NOAVSYNDlr=-lang_ja) failed in her Senate race. Other contests in New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Atlanta, Chicago and Philadelphia showed as well that Democrats maintained their political firewall in areas that historically have backed their party. In New Jersey, Tea Party-backed U.S. House candidate Anna Little lost to Democratic incumbent _Frank Pallone_ (http://search.bloomberg.com/search?q=Frank%20Pallonesite=wnewsclient=wnewsproxystylesheet=wnewsout put=xml_no_dtdie=UTF-8oe=UTF-8filter=pgetfields=wnnissort=date:D:S:d1partialfields=- wnnis:NOAVSYNDlr=-lang_ja) by 11 points. Governor _Chris Christie_ (http://search.bloomberg.com/search?q=Chris%20Christiesite=wnewsclient=wnewsprox ystylesheet=wnewsoutput=xml_no_dtdie=UTF-8oe=UTF-8filter=pgetfields=wnn issort=date:D:S:d1partialfields=-wnnis:NOAVSYNDlr=-lang_ja) backed Little only after his first choice lost to her in the state’s Republican primary. Christie last month decided not to join a lawsuit the Tea Party filed against the health-care overhaul President _Barack Obama_ (http://search.bloomberg.com/search?q=Barack%20Obamasite=wnewsclient=wnewsproxystylesheet=wnews; output=xml_no_dtdie=UTF-8oe=UTF-8filter=pgetfields=wnnissort=date:D:S:d 1partialfields=-wnnis:NOAVSYNDlr=-lang_ja) pushed through Congress. And he rejected help from former Alaska Governor _Sarah Palin_ (http://search.bloomberg.com/search?q=Sarah%20Palinsite=wnewsclient=wnewsproxystylesheet=w newsoutput=xml_no_dtdie=UTF-8oe=UTF-8filter=pgetfields=wnnissort=date: D:S:d1partialfields=-wnnis:NOAVSYNDlr=-lang_ja) , a prominent spokeswoman for the Tea Party causes of limited government and lower taxes, for his own campaign last year. “The trend is away from Tea Party people, demographically,” said _Ken Warren_ (http://search.bloomberg.com/search?q=Ken%20Warrensite=wnewsclient=wnewsproxystylesheet=wnewsoutput=xml_no_dtdie=UTF-8oe=UTF-8filter=pgetfiel ds=wnnissort=date:D:S:d1partialfields=-wnnis:NOAVSYNDlr=-lang_ja) , a professor of political science at St. Louis University. Blue-State Firewall The Nov. 2 election results and Christie’s reluctance to fully embrace the Tea Party illustrates the group’s difficulty in winning elections in some of the most populous U.S. areas. Representative _Rush Holt_ (http://search.bloomberg.com/search?q=Rush%20Holtsite=wnewsclient=wnewsproxystylesheet=wnewsoutput=xml_no_dtdie=UTF-8oe =UTF-8filter=pgetfields=wnnissort=date:D:S:d1partialfields=-wnnis:NOAVSY NDlr=-lang_ja) , a Democrat who defeated Republican _Scott Sipprelle_ (http://search.bloomberg.com/search?q=Scott%20Sipprellesite=wnewsclient=wnewsp roxystylesheet=wnewsoutput=xml_no_dtdie=UTF-8oe=UTF-8filter=pgetfields= wnnissort=date:D:S:d1partialfields=-wnnis:NOAVSYNDlr=-lang_ja) 53 percent to 46 percent, said “at the end of the day, New Jersey is still a blue state. It’s still significantly more Democratic-leaning than Republican. For any conservative movement, it’s going to be tough to make inroads.” _Maurice Carroll_ (http://search.bloomberg.com/search?q=Maurice%20Carrollsite=wnewsclient=wnewsproxystylesheet=wnewsoutput=xml_no_dtdie=UTF-8oe=UT F-8filter=pgetfields=wnnissort=date:D:S:d1partialfields=-wnnis:NOAVSYND lr=-lang_ja) , director of the _Quinnipiac University Polling Institute_ (http://www.quinnipiac.edu/x271.xml) in Hamden, Connecticut, said the same trends applied across the U.S. “The country is red in the middle, but it’s blue on the sides,” he said, using the color-coded political parlance for regions that trend toward Republicans and areas where Democrats have the
Re: [Marxism-Thaxis] Tea Party
In a message dated 11/8/2010 8:20:54 A.M. Eastern Standard Time, _cb31...@gmail.com_ (mailto:cb31...@gmail.com) writes: Tea Party Election Results Diluted in Highly Populated States By Tom Moroney and Terrence Dopp - Nov 5, 2010 Tea Party supporters boasted of their 28 victories in U.S. House races. What the election results also made clear was that their appeal stopped at the border of the most densely-populated states and metropolitan areas. Republican _Carl Paladino_ Comment As I understand the results, the blue dog democrats took the big hit losing 23 or their 54 official caucus members, or 48% of the Democrat party House loses. Michigan governor race was another Democratic Party loss. Rick Snyder (R-MI) 1,879,499 Votes 58% Virg Bernero (D-MI) 1,278,566 Votes 40% And the beat goes on. WL ___ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list Marxism-Thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis
[Marxism-Thaxis] Tea Party Nationalism
Tea Party Nationalism By Benjamin Todd Jealous, President and CEO of the NAACP http://www.teapartynationalism.com/ We know the majority of Tea Party supporters are sincere, principled people of good will. That is why the NAACP-an organization that has worked to expose and combat racism in all its forms for more than 100 years- is thankful Devin Burghart, Leonard Zeskind and the Institute for Research Education on Human Rights prepared this report that exposes the links between certain Tea Party factions and acknowledged racist hate groups in the United States. These links should give all patriotic Americans pause. I hope the leadership and members of the Tea Party movement will read this report and take additional steps to distance themselves from those Tea Party leaders who espouse racist ideas, advocate violence, or are formally affiliated with white supremacist organizations. In our effort to strengthen our democracy and ensure rights for all, it is important that we have a reasoned political debate without the use of epithets, the threat of violence, or the resurrection of long discredited racial hierarchies. This July, delegates to the 101st NAACP National Convention unanimously passed a resolution condemning outspoken racist elements within the Tea Party, and called upon Tea Party leaders to repudiate those in their ranks who use white supremacist language in their signs and speeches, and those Tea Party leaders who would subvert their own movement by spreading racism. The resolution came after a year of high-profile media coverage of racial slurs and images at Tea Party marches around the country. In March, members of the Congressional Black Caucus reported that racial epithets were hurled at them as they passed by a Washington, DC health care protest. Civil rights legend John Lewis was called the n-word in the incident while others in the crowd used ugly anti-gay slurs to describe Congressman Barney Frank, a long-time NAACP supporter and the nation's first openly gay member of Congress. Local NAACP members reported similar racially-charged incidents at local Tea Party rallies. At first, the resolution sparked defensive, misleading public responses from the usual corners. First, Tea Party leaders denied our claims were valid. Then Fox News repeatedly circulated the false claim that we were calling the Tea Party itself racist. Then their commentators and other media personalities said the Tea Party was too loosely configured to police itself. Local NAACP volunteers and staff members around the country were barraged by angry phone calls and death threats. Yet, amid the threats and denials, something remarkable began to happen: Tea Party leaders began to quietly take steps toward actively policing explicitly racist activity within their ranks. Before the end of July, the Tea Party Federation had expelled Mark Williams, then-president of the powerful and politically-connected Tea Party Express for his most-recent racially offensive public statements, a move they had previously refused to make. The move was significant for three reasons: 1) it proved wrong those national leaders and news personalities who said the Tea Party was too loosely configured to insist its leaders act responsibly, 2) it sparked a rift among Tea Party leadership between those who are tolerant of racist rhetoric and those who would stand against it, and 3) it showed our resolution was having an impact. Soon after, Montana conservative Tim Ravndal was fired as head of the Big Sky Tea Party Association after local media published messages posted to his Facebook account that appeared to advocate violence against gays and lesbians. In the midst of all this, Tea Party leaders moved quickly to take on a communications strategy typical of corporate crisis public relations. A Uni-Tea rally to promote Tea Party diversity was hastily organized, while FreedomWorks launched a Diverse Tea web initiative to spotlight pictures of nonwhite Tea Partiers. There was a Tea Party leadership race summit facilitated by Geraldo Rivera. In August, Fox News personality and Tea Party icon Glenn Beck instructed his followers to leave all signs at home in the lead-up to his rally on the National Mall to avoid media scrutiny, and has since admonished Tea Partiers across the nation to dress normally, lest their signs and t-shirts distract from the fiscal message for which he would prefer the Tea Party be recognized. In some areas, the response appears to have spread beyond the Tea Party itself. In September, former Florida Republican Party Chair Jim Greer made a surprise public apology for the racist views among some members of his party. These are welcome first steps. They promote diversity and acknowledge the inherent perception problem that plagues the Tea Party: that while many of its leaders are motivated by common conservative budget and governance concerns, for too long they have tolerated others who espouse racism and xenophobia and, in
[Marxism-Thaxis] Tea Party
http://www.alternet.org/story/147307/ the_tea_party_is_dangerous%3A_dispelling_7_myths_that_help_us_avoid_reality_about_the_new_right-wing_politics ___ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list Marxism-Thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis
[Marxism-Thaxis] Tea Party oh , oh
http://www.alternet.org/story/147307/the_tea_party_is_dangerous%3A_dispelling_7_myths_that_help_us_avoid_reality_about_the_new_right-wing_politics ___ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list Marxism-Thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis
[Marxism-Thaxis] Tea Party, Coffee Party: Why Not A Black Party?
Tea Party, Coffee Party: Why Not A Black Party? By Ron Walters NNPA Columnist http://www.michigancitizen.com/default.asp?sourceid=smenu=76twindow=Defaultmad=Nosdetail=8428wpage=1skeyword=sidate=ccat=ccatm=restate=restatus=reoption=retype=repmin=repmax=rebed=rebath=subname=pform=sc=1070hn=michigancitizenhe=.com Now we have the Coffee Party, which I suppose is a liberal counterpart to the Tea Party that emerged in the Washington, D.C., area by folks led by Annabel Park, a documentary filmmaker who was horrified by the ugly, menacing, anti-government spirit of the Tea Party crowd that emerged to disrupt the flow of civil discussion about important issues. I’ve been asking, ‘Where are the folks who voted for Barack Obama, believing in Hope and Change and pinning for a new post-Bush, post-Conservative America?’ Well, many of the ground troops of the Obama movement that were responsible for its grass roots organizing were young adults who went back to school, back to their professional desks or somewhere back to their normal pursuits, but away from politics. In their de-mobilization, they left the field open to the crazies who have mounted a movement not designed to be a force for change, but for the status quo and even for retrogression, wanting to “take back America” from a future they fear. Organizing for Change, the organization created as the repository of the Obama campaign, has largely been ineffective in my evaluation and David Plouffe, its head and Obama’s campaign manager, has recently gone into the White House. So, what is developing is a discussion at the community level across the country about the role of government and the Tea Party, and now the Coffee Party. The Republican party seems to be attempting to grab hold of the Tea Party movement and turn it into an election day force against Democrats vulnerable to elections in this cycle. At this point, the Coffee party has not come that far and the Democratic party has not made its move. Where does this put Blacks? There is a healthy discussion going on in the Black community about the role of President Obama and his responsibility, or the lack of it, to the Black community, but with the exception of Tavis Smiley for all the folks who believe that they have to make him accountable to a Black agenda, they have not yet put a mechanism on the ground to do it. There has been a long discussion about the efficacy of a Black political party and many years ago, I joined Ron Daniels and others in an attempt to create one. The irony of that experiment was while half of the people attracted to the idea wanted it to serve as a power-base for elections, others wanted to only exist as a grass roots organizing tool. It eventually split apart along those lines. Today, it is clear, however, that beyond the general discussion about accountability, there needs to be not only a place where you get down to the “nuts and bolts” about exactly who should be accountable about what, but how to develop effective methodologies of tactics and strategies to achieve it. Thus, whether you call it a party or a posse doesn’t matter, the point is that there is a necessity to mobilize to achieve the ends people are talking about. A Black party could enable the discussion about accountability to focus on the cabinet agencies where the Federal budget exist to achieve some of the things needed by the Black community. Some of the specific programs being rolled out around jobs and a new focus on home foreclosure and etc. look good, but others, such as “race to the top” as an educational program, looks questionable to me — and the issue is that few of these programs across the board have been developed with the vigorous input and engagement of those for whom the programs are supposed to be designed. A Black party could also monitor and engage local initiatives more effectively. Where the rubber meets the road is in the local communities and there, mayors, county officials, state legislators and others presumably have some idea of what it takes to make Black communities whole, what resources are addressed to that task and what is lacking. A mobilized force could assist in this task of projecting community needs and monitoring whether or to what extent they are met. What I am suggesting has been happening to some extent with the vigilance of our Civil Rights organizations, the Institute of the Black World 21st Century and the action of progressive Black officials at the national, state and local levels. However, there should be a greater role for citizen engagement and a Black party mechanism could be the key. What we are witnessing is the rush of media attention to these movements, a dynamic that gives them power and places our interests farther and farther into the background. Mobilizing would give us the power to regain the footing to address the truth of our condition. Dr. Ron Walters is a Political Analysts and Professor Emeritus of the University of
Re: [Marxism-Thaxis] Tea Party Lights Fuse for Rebellion on Right
WL: Very reactionary political current reminiscent of the ideological bent of the pro slavery forces during the lead up to the Civil War in America. The slave oligarchy and the Southern elite claimed to stand on the side of the Constitution, and they did. That the Constitution legalized and protected slavery meant its defense supported slavery. No real difference today. These people are very angry and believe they can recast bourgeois private property in their favor. They are horribly mistaken. Perhaps, Texas needs to be given back to Mexico. What does it mean to say one believes in the Constitution? That it creates a federal structure that controls a nation, and that structure can not be broken up or seceded from by any state? That the Constitution can not be amended (by amendment, by legal decisions)? The Constitution can and has been constitutionally amended, as allowed for by the constitution? Aren't the long-running issues: 1. What does the Constitution (having been amended quite a number of times since its first form) in its current state actually allow and provide for? 2. In what ways can the current Constitution be changed in order to improve the federal structure and its relationship with the states and with citizens? I grew up in 'Thaddeus Stevens country'. I even played near the forge he co-owend outside of Gettysburg (the Confederates destroyed it). He believed in the constitution enough to support the federal structure and then lead the movement to amend it. He was a federalist, a constitutionalist and a 'Congressionalist'--believing in the powers of Congress as provided for under the constitution. First, for TS, reconstruction was re-establishment of the USA in its sovereignty over all parts beyond martial law. So if teabaggers want to get back to the constitution, they might start with the beginning of the Civil War and work their way forward in time to the US of today. http://www.let.rug.nl/usa/D/1851-1875/reconstruction/steven.htm Nobody, I believe, pretends that with their old constitutions and frames of government they can be permitted to claim their old rights under the Constitution. They have torn their constitutional States into atoms, and built on their foundations fabrics of a totally different character. Dead men cannot raise themselves. Dead States cannot restore their existence as it was. Whose especial duty is it to do it? In whom does the Constitution place the power? Not in the judicial branch of Government, for it only adjudicates and does not prescribe laws. Not in the Executive, for he only executes and cannot make laws. Not in the Commander-in-Chief of the armies, for he can only hold them under military rule until the sovereign legislative power of the conqueror shall give them law. Unless the law of nations is a dead letter, the late war between two acknowledged belligerents severed their original compacts and broke all the ties that bound them together. The future condition of the conquered power depends on the will of the conqueror. They must come in as new states or remain as conquered provinces. Congress . . . is the only power that can act in the matter. Congress alone can do it. . . . Congress must create States and declare when they are entitled to be represented. Then each House must judge whether the members presenting themselves from a recognized State possess the requisite qualifications of age, residence, and citizenship; and whether the election and returns are according to law. ... They ought never to be recognized as capable of acting in the Union, or of being counted as valid States, until the Constitution shall have been so amended as to make it what its framers intended; and so as to secure perpetual ascendency to the party of the Union; and so as to render our republican Government firm and stable forever. The first of those amendments is to change the basis of representation among the States from Federal numbers to actual voters. . . . With the basis unchanged the 83 South ern members, with the Democrats that will in the best times be elected from the North, will always give a majority in Congress and in the Electoral college. . . . I need not depict the ruin that would follow. . . But this is not all that we ought to do before inveterate rebels are invited to participate in our legislation. We have turned, or are about to turn, loose four million slaves without a hut to shelter them or a cent in their pockets. The infernal laws of slavery have prevented them from acquiring an education, understanding the common laws of contract, or of managing the ordinary business of life. This Congress is bound to provide for them until they can take care of themselves. If we do not furnish them with homesteads, and hedge them around with protective laws; if we leave them to the legislation of their late masters, we had better have left them in bondage. If we fail in this great duty now, when we have the power, we shall
Re: [Marxism-Thaxis] Tea Party Lights Fuse for Rebellion on Right
Most people have forgotten who Thaddeus Stevens was (one of the greatest legislators in US history) while they remember James 'the Mercersburg Flash' Buchanan as the 'worst president' (thankfully George W. Bush will give him some competition in that category). It's ironic that Stevens was the Pennsylvanian (his adopted home state) who gave Lincoln backbone but was based in the same area as Buchanan (very close to the Mason-Dixon line). A further irony is that Lincoln was preceded by the worst president in US history (James Buchanan) and then succeeded by the worst president in US history (Andrew Johnson). http://www.fergusbordewich.com/PAGESjournalism/FBsteve.shtml Thaddeus Stevens and James Buchanan: How their Historic Rivalry Shaped America By Fergus M. Bordewich. This article originally appeared as “Was James Buchanan Our Worst President? Digging into a Historic Rivalry” in Smithsonian Magazine, February 2004. WHEN JIM DELLE’S crew of student archaeologists broke through the roof of an old cistern in Lancaster, Pennsylvania last December, they discovered something totally unexpected: a secret hiding place for fugitive slaves in the backyard of one of nineteenth century America’s most powerful, most passionate, and most hated political figures, the radical Republican Thaddeus Stevens. Although the story of the Underground Railroad is replete with legends of exotic hiding places, they are actually quite rare. “I’ve looked at many tunnels that were alleged to have been used by the Underground Railroad,” says the dark-haired, bespectacled Delle, a man of ordinarily skeptical disposition. “Usually, I’m debunking these sites. But in this case, I can think of no other possible explanation.” The site sheds a dramatic new light on the life of Stevens, a brilliant lawyer with a rapier wit, a withering Yankee gaze, and a commitment to racial equality that was far in advance of his time. Stevens was the father of the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments to the Constitution, which guaranteed African-Americans civil liberties and the right to vote, and the architect of post-Civil War Reconstruction. A lightening rod for the political passions that electrified the United States during and after the Civil War, he was almost forgotten for more than a century after his death in 1868. “If you stopped a hundred people on the street today, right here in Lancaster, and asked them who Stevens was,” says Lancaster’s gregarious mayor, Charlie Smithgall, “I bet only fifty would know, and most of them would think you were talking about the junior college that has his name on it.” IRONICALLY, STEVENS’S REPUTATION in Lancaster is dwarfed by that of his neighbor and bitter ideological rival, James Buchanan, the nation’s fifteenth president and possibly its worst, whose palatial home has been lovingly restored as a memorial. Stevens’s far more modest home lay utterly neglected, until now. (Unfortunately, much of it, including the recently excavated archaeological site, is slated to be demolished to make way for a massive new convention center.) The two men could not have been more different: one the foremost radical of his generation, the other a pro-slavery Northerner, or “dough face,” who committed his career to the preservation of the South’s “peculiar institution.” Stevens was a man driven by deep-running moral convictions, Buchanan diplomatic, legalistic, and so priggish that Andrew Jackson once impatiently dismissed him as “a Miss Nancy”—a sissy. Yet their lives ran in curiously parallel courses. Both men had humble origins. Buchanan was born in a log cabin on the Pennsylvania frontier in 1791, Stevens a year later in poverty, in rural Vermont. Both were lifelong bachelors, workaholics, and fueled by intense political ambition. Both lawyers, they built their careers in Lancaster, and lived less than two miles apart. And both would die in 1868, two months apart, amid the postwar trauma of Reconstruction. For decades, their politics were inextricably intertwined, the twin counterpoints of the age when slavery was the six-hundred pound gorilla in the parlor of American democracy. One of them would lead the United States to the brink of Civil War. The other would, more than any other American, shape its aftermath. Lancaster was a prosperous little rose-red city of some ten thousand souls when Buchanan arrived there in 1812. Its handsome two- and three-story brick or cut-stone homes were laid out in pleasing, dignified lines as befit a city which had served as the state’s capital since 1799. Furniture makers, gunsmiths, shoe factories, and markets for the thousands of German and Quaker farmers who lived in the surrounding county lent its unpaved streets an atmosphere of bustle and importance. Fresh out of Dickinson College, Buchanan was a young man on the make, determined to please his demanding Scots-Presbyterian father, who never tired of telling him how much he had sacrificed to send him to school. Had he lived in
Re: [Marxism-Thaxis] Tea Party Lights Fuse for Rebellion on Right
On 2/19/10, CeJ jann...@gmail.com wrote: Most people have forgotten who Thaddeus Stevens was (one of the greatest legislators in US history) ^ CB: Wasn't he a Radical Republican and abolitionist ? ___ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list Marxism-Thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis
[Marxism-Thaxis] Tea Party U.S.A.: It’ s Still the Economy, Stupid!
February 18, 2010 Tea Party U.S.A.: It’s Still the Economy, Stupid! Posted by John Cassidy In the wake of yesterday’s fascinating report in the Times about sixty-something Tea Party activists bracing for a violent counter-revolution, several people have asked me why Americans are so angry. I am tempted to say that that is what age and a steady diet of Fox News does to people, but that can’t be the full story. (Roger Ailes and his gang have been on air since 1996.) One factor that the Times article tiptoed around, but which undoubtedly plays some role, is racism. For some white Americans of a certain age and background, the sight of a black man in the Oval Office, even one who went to Harvard Law School and conducts himself in the manner of an aloof WASP aristocrat, is an affront. While President Obama’s approval rating has fallen in almost all groups, the biggest slippage has taken place among whites, especially middle- and working-class whites. A Gallup poll identified this trend last November, and it surely played a role in Scott Brown’s victory in Massachusetts. Another factor, which rarely gets mentioned, but which appears obvious to people who didn’t grow up here, such as myself, is that many Americans reach adulthood with a set of values and sense of self-identity that is historically inaccurate and potentially dangerous. If you have it banged into your head from the cradle to adolescence that America is the chosen nation—a country built by a rugged and God-fearing band of Anglo-Saxon individualists armed with pikes and long guns—you are less likely to embrace other essential features of the American heritage, such as the church-state divide, mass immigration, and the essential role of the federal government in the country’s economic and political development. When things are going well, and Team USA is squashing its rivals, this cognitive dissonance is kept in check. But when “the Homeland” encounters a rough patch and its manifest destiny is called into question, the underlying tensions and contradictions in the American psyche come to the fore, and people rail against the government. Not all Americans are subject to this unfortunate mental condition, of course. Many, perhaps most, of our citizens are pragmatic, open-minded, and justifiably proud of the nation’s cultural and ethnic diversity. But at any period of time, there is a certain segment of the population—a quarter, perhaps—that provides fertile ground for what Richard Hofstadter, back in 1964, called the “paranoid style” of American politics, which trades in “heated exaggeration, suspiciousness, and conspiratorial fantasy.” All countries have some disaffected folk, of course. But the real danger to any democracy comes when military conflict or economic dislocation swells the ranks of the permanently alienated with legions of people who are temporarily disadvantaged or angry. And that, I think, is what is happening now. My thanks to the indefatigable Brad DeLong and Matt Yglesias—do these guys ever sleep?—for bringing to my attention these two charts that John Sides, a political scientist at George Washington University, posted on the blog The Monkey Cage: The first chart confirms that suspicion of the federal government isn’t anything new. For decades, pollsters from the American National Election Studies have been asking people this question: “How much of the time do you think you can trust the government in Washington to do what is right, just about always, most of the time, or only some of the time?” The chart shows that Americans started to lose faith in Washington during the nineteen-sixties and seventies, with the percentage of the population expressing trust in the government falling from the high seventies to the low thirties. Since then, the figures have moved up and down broadly in line with economic conditions, falling during the recession of the early nineties, rising in the subsequent period of prosperity, and falling sharply in the past few years. The second chart, which plots the level of trust in government against annual changes in per capita disposable income, provides more evidence to support the idea that economic developments are key. Most of the data points are arrayed in a north-easterly direction. This strongly suggests that when people’s incomes are rising they are more likely to have trust in the government; when their incomes are stalled, they lose faith in Washington. And the fact that most of the individual date points are close to the straight line—the regression line—demonstrates that this relationship is statistically robust. (For all you wonks out there, the R-squared is 0.75 and the t-statistic is 5.44.) Now, this analysis doesn’t imply that Americans aren’t furious about the political paralysis in Washington—they are—or that Obama doesn’t bear some blame for allowing his Administration to be portrayed as a tool of Wall Street and failing to articulate a coherent policy agenda that could overcome
[Marxism-Thaxis] Tea Party Lights Fuse for Rebellion on Right
New York TIMES / February 16, 2010 Tea Party Lights Fuse for Rebellion on Right By DAVID BARSTOW SANDPOINT, Idaho — Pam Stout has not always lived in fear of her government. She remembers her years working in federal housing programs, watching government lift struggling families with job training and education. She beams at the memory of helping a Vietnamese woman get into junior college. But all that was before the Great Recession and the bank bailouts, before Barack Obama took the White House by promising sweeping change on multiple fronts, before her son lost his job and his house. Mrs. Stout said she awoke to see Washington as a threat, a place where crisis is manipulated — even manufactured — by both parties to grab power. She was happily retired, and had never been active politically. But last April, she went to her first Tea Party rally, then to a meeting of the Sandpoint Tea Party Patriots. She did not know a soul, yet when they began electing board members, she stood up, swallowed hard, and nominated herself for president. “I was like, ‘Did I really just do that?’ ” she recalled. Then she went even further. Worried about hyperinflation, social unrest or even martial law, she and her Tea Party members joined a coalition, Friends for Liberty, that includes representatives from Glenn Beck’s 9/12 Project, the John Birch Society, and Oath Keepers, a new player in a resurgent militia movement. When Friends for Liberty held its first public event, Mrs. Stout listened as Richard Mack, a former Arizona sheriff, brought 1,400 people to their feet with a speech about confronting a despotic federal government. Mrs. Stout said she felt as if she had been handed a road map to rebellion. Members of her family, she said, think she has disappeared down a rabbit hole of conspiracy theories. But Mrs. Stout said she has never felt so engaged. “I can’t go on being the shy, quiet me,” she said. “I need to stand up.” The Tea Party movement has become a platform for conservative populist discontent, a force in Republican politics for revival, as it was in the Massachusetts Senate election, or for division. But it is also about the profound private transformation of people like Mrs. Stout, people who not long ago were not especially interested in politics, yet now say they are bracing for tyranny. These people are part of a significant undercurrent within the Tea Party movement that has less in common with the Republican Party than with the Patriot movement, a brand of politics historically associated with libertarians, militia groups, anti-immigration advocates and those who argue for the abolition of the Federal Reserve. Urged on by conservative commentators, waves of newly minted activists are turning to once-obscure books and Web sites and discovering a set of ideas long dismissed as the preserve of conspiracy theorists, interviews conducted across the country over several months show. In this view, Mr. Obama and many of his predecessors (including George W. Bush) have deliberately undermined the Constitution and free enterprise for the benefit of a shadowy international network of wealthy elites. Loose alliances like Friends for Liberty are popping up in many cities, forming hybrid entities of Tea Parties and groups rooted in the Patriot ethos. These coalitions are not content with simply making the Republican Party more conservative. They have a larger goal — a political reordering that would drastically shrink the federal government and sweep away not just Mr. Obama, but much of the Republican establishment, starting with Senator John McCain. In many regions, including here in the inland Northwest, tense struggles have erupted over whether the Republican apparatus will co-opt these new coalitions or vice versa. Tea Party supporters are already singling out Republican candidates who they claim have “aided and abetted” what they call the slide to tyranny: Mark Steven Kirk, a candidate for the Senate from Illinois, for supporting global warming legislation; Gov. Charlie Crist of Florida, who is seeking a Senate seat, for supporting stimulus spending; and Meg Whitman, a candidate for governor in California, for saying she was a “big fan” of Van Jones, once Mr. Obama’s “green jobs czar.” During a recent meeting with Congressional Republicans, Mr. Obama acknowledged the potency of these attacks when he complained that depicting him as a would-be despot was complicating efforts to find bipartisan solutions. “The fact of the matter is that many of you, if you voted with the administration on something, are politically vulnerable in your own base, in your own party,” Mr. Obama said. “You’ve given yourselves very little room to work in a bipartisan fashion because what you’ve been telling your constituents is, ‘This guy’s doing all kinds of crazy stuff that is going to destroy America.’ ” The ebbs and flows of the Tea Party ferment are hardly uniform. It is an amorphous, factionalized uprising with no clear
Re: [Marxism-Thaxis] Tea Party Lights Fuse for Rebellion on Right
Common ground? Tea Party leaders say they know their complaints about shredded constitutional principles and excessive spending ring hollow to some, given their relative passivity through the Bush years. In some ways, though, their main answer — strict adherence to the Constitution — would comfort every card-carrying A.C.L.U. member. Shane Mage This cosmos did none of gods or men make, but it always was and is and shall be: an everlasting fire, kindling in measures and going out in measures. Herakleitos of Ephesos ___ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list Marxism-Thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis
Re: [Marxism-Thaxis] Tea Party Lights Fuse for Rebellion on Right
I gotta find some of their interpretations of the Constitution. I'm sure they are gungho on the 2nd Amendment and probably the 10th Amendment. I don't know that they have much truck for Miranda warnings or Warren Court interpretations of the Constitution. They probably think affirmative action violates the 14th Amendment - not Anyway, they might be splintering the righjt rather than starting a majority fascist party. On 2/18/10, Shane Mage wrote: Common ground? Tea Party leaders say they know their complaints about shredded constitutional principles and excessive spending ring hollow to some, given their relative passivity through the Bush years. In some ways, though, their main answer — strict adherence to the Constitution — would comfort every card-carrying A.C.L.U. member. Shane Mage This cosmos did none of gods or men make, but it always was and is and shall be: an everlasting fire, kindling in measures and going out in measures. Herakleitos of Ephesos ___ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list Marxism-Thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis ___ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list Marxism-Thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis
Re: [Marxism-Thaxis] Tea Party Lights Fuse for Rebellion on Right
On Feb 18, 2010, at 3:42 PM, c b wrote: I gotta find some of their interpretations of the Constitution. I'm sure they are gungho on the 2nd Amendment and probably the 10th Amendment. I don't know that they have much truck for Miranda warnings or Warren Court interpretations of the Constitution. They probably think affirmative action violates the 14th Amendment - not Probably. But if strict adherence to the constitution is their thing, we should find it easy to persuade the brighter and less brainwashed among them that the real anticonstitutionalists are right wingers, not leftists. Just like when prospective teabaggers are outraged at Obama's plans to cut Medicare we should be able to persuade the brighter and less brainwashed among them that the real answer is to offer Medicare to everybody, not force them to buy insurance from the Health Insurance Corporations that they hate! On 2/18/10, Shane Mage wrote: Common ground? Tea Party leaders say they know their complaints about shredded constitutional principles and excessive spending ring hollow to some, given their relative passivity through the Bush years. In some ways, though, their main answer — strict adherence to the Constitution — would comfort every card-carrying A.C.L.U. member. Shane Mage This cosmos did none of gods or men make, but it always was and is and shall be: an everlasting fire, kindling in measures and going out in measures. Herakleitos of Ephesos ___ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list Marxism-Thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis ___ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list Marxism-Thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis Shane Mage Porphyry in his Abstinance from Animal Flesh suggests that there are appropriate offerings to all the Gods, and to the highest the only offering acceptable is silence. ___ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list Marxism-Thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis
Re: [Marxism-Thaxis] Tea Party Lights Fuse for Rebellion on Right
I don't know if this is representative. They don't like some Constitutional Amendments that come after 1913 ( like women voting ? smile). So, do they not consider the provision on the Constitution on Amendments valid , or what ? CB http://taxdayteaparty.com/2010/01/constitutional-reform/ Constitutional Reform Posted by Eric Odom on Jan 12, 2010 in Daily Tea | The following was submitted for posting and I’ve published it on behalf of the author. -Eric ——– I am perplexed by the issues that are facing our nation right now. But I am even more concerned that the root of these problems are not being addressed. The answer to everything that ails this nation is the Constitution. We are losing our freedoms because we are ignoring the Constitution as put forth by our Founding Fathers. Washington is taking liberties that do not belong to them, and they have the arrogance to ignore the citizen protests in the process. The Constitution is very clear in stating where the power lies. It is with the people, and the States in which they reside. We have been far too complacent in letting the Federal government, aided and abetted by the Progressive movement, to erode and transfer this power, beginning with the constitutional amendments ratified in 1913. In much the same way that Esau sold his birthright to Jacob for a mess of pottage, the States sold their birthright to the Federal government. It is time to take this birthright back. What I would like to explore and debate, with the help of other conservatives such as the Liberty Alliance, is using the ballot initiative process (in the 24 States that use ballot initiatives) to force a Constitutional Convention designed to restore the Constitution back to a document designed to ensure the liberties of its citizenry. Some of the restorative changes I would like to see are as follows: 1. Reiterate the 10th Amendment which already states that the federal government does not have the power or authority to introduce programs such as health care. 2. Rescind the 16th Amendment. Let the States set the Federal budgets and collect monies needed for the operation of the Federal government. This will end the progressive movement, pork barrel spending, most corruption, influential lobby groups, and much more. It will also allow the States to make decisions that are better suited to the needs of its own citizens in areas such as healthcare, education, and much more. It will also put an end to tax dollars being used to bail out companies that should be allowed to fail. This change would make the federal government subservient to the States, rather than controlling the States. In turn, this would put an end to enough wasteful spending that would allow States to balance their budget deficits. 3. Force a balanced budget amendment. No more borrowing or printing money. Put an end to the Federal Reserve. This will protect our currency and allow America to lead the world economically. 4. Rescind the 17th Amendment. Let the State Senators be appointed by the States. This will give direct power to the States and put an end to the need for term limits. 5. Require that all foreign treaties be ratified by the Senate with a two-thirds majority, essentially letting the States determine foreign policy by virtue of the States appointing and controlling the Senators. This will ensure against being absorbed into the International community and protect our Sovereignty, and respect for American law over International law. 6. Define the meaning of “regulating interstate commerce” to mean that Congress shall encourage interstate commerce and shall do nothing to hinder interstate commerce. 7. Reiterate property rights by restricting eminent domain. It is not my intention of defining in detail the Constitutional changes that need to be made that will end federalism, shrink the government and restore freedoms. I need the feedback of those much smarter than me. But I see no alternative. Fighting and debating Washington is like debating your four year old. It is pointless, when neither of them have any power except that which you are willing to succeed them. If I could come up with specific language to be used in any ballot initiatives, I see great synergies in using the grassroots movement that has developed this past year in moving these initiatives forward. I am looking for assistance in this endeavor. Although I would prefer to just raise my family and run my business, I sense an urgency in correcting this and am willing to dedicate my time and efforts to this cause. Regards, Lyndon Brittner lbritt...@connect2.com 54 Responses to “Constitutional Reform”« Older Comments Eric Smith says: February 8, 2010 at 3:35 am Lesser words are not meant in less meaning… Politics has become a business. From there, all evil has sprung. We NEED to stop the career minded campaign politician. Term Limits. That little punctuation right there is a period. I don’t infer that there are no other problems to
Re: [Marxism-Thaxis] Tea Party Lights Fuse for Rebellion on Right
In a message dated 2/18/2010 12:20:49 P.M. Pacific Standard Time, cb31...@gmail.com writes: As the meeting ended, Carolyn L. Whaley, 76, held up her copy of the Constitution. She carries it everywhere, she explained, and she was prepared to lay down her life to protect it from the likes of Mr. Obama. “I would not hesitate,” she said, perfectly calm. more at _http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/16/us/politics/16teaparty.html_ (http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/16/us/politics/16teaparty.html) Comment Very reactionary political current reminiscent of the ideological bent of the pro slavery forces during the lead up to the Civil War in America. The slave oligarchy and the Southern elite claimed to stand on the side of the Constitution, and they did. That the Constitution legalized and protected slavery meant its defense supported slavery. No real difference today. These people are very angry and believe they can recast bourgeois private property in their favor. They are horribly mistaken. Perhaps, Texas needs to be given back to Mexico. WL. ___ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list Marxism-Thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis
[Marxism-Thaxis] Tea Party Movement Returns Christian Right to Its Racist Past
Tea Party Movement Returns Christian Right to Its Racist Past By Michelle Goldberg, The American Prospect Posted on October 2, 2009, Printed on October 2, 2009 http://www.alternet.org/story/142988/ Now that popular conservatism has given itself over so avidly to racial resentment, it's curious to remember how hard the right once tried to scrub itself of the lingering taint of prejudice. Indeed, for a decade and a half the Christian right -- until recently the most powerful and visible grassroots conservative movement -- struggled mightily to escape its own bigoted history. In his 1996 book Active Faith, Ralph Reed acknowledged that Christian conservatives had been on the wrong side of the civil rights movement. The white evangelical church carries a shameful legacy of racism and the historical baggage of indifference to the most central struggle for social justice in this century, a legacy that is only now being wiped clean by the sanctifying work of repentance and racial reconciliation, wrote Reed. Racial reconciliation became a kind of buzz phrase. The idea animated Promise Keepers meetings. Racism is an insidious monster, Bill McCartney, the group's founder, said at a 39,000-man Atlanta rally. You can't say you love God and not love your brother. The Traditional Values Coalition distributed a video called Gay Rights, Special Rights to black churches; it criticized the gay rights movement for co-opting the noble legacy of the civil rights struggle. Throughout the Bush years, homophobia and professions of anti-racism were twinned in a weird way, as if the latter proved that the right wasn't simply still skulking around history's dark side. At a deeply surreal 2006 event at the Greater Exodus Baptist Church, an African American church in downtown Philadelphia, leaders of the religious right invoked Martin Luther King Jr. and Rosa Parks on behalf of gay marriage bans and Bush's judicial nominees. At the end of the evening, several dozen clergymen, black and white, joined hands in prayer at the front of the room. Black Americans, white Americans, said a beaming Tony Perkins, leader of the Family Research Council. Christians, standing together. The whole premise of compassionate conservatism -- which shoveled taxpayer money towards administration-friendly churches like Greater Exodus Baptist -- was that the right cared as deeply as the left about issues like inner city poverty. What a difference an election makes. Even if you believed that compassionate conservatism was always a bit of a con, it's amazing to see how quickly it has vanished, and how fast an older style of reaction, one more explicitly rooted in racial grievance, has reasserted itself. Today's grassroots right is by all appearances as socially conservative as ever, but its tone and its rhetoric are profoundly different than they were even a year ago. For the last 15 years, the right-wing populism has been substantially electrified by sexual anxiety. Now it's charged with racial anxiety. By all accounts, there were more confederate flags than crosses at last weekend's anti-Obama rally in Washington, DC. Glenn Beck has become a far more influential figure on the right than, say, James Dobson, and he's much more interested in race than in sexual deviancy. For the first time in at least a decade, middle class whites have been galvanized by the fear that their taxes are benefiting lazy, shiftless others. The messianic, imperialistic, hubristic side of the right has gone into retreat, and a cramped, mean and paranoid style has come to the fore. To some extent, a newfound suspicion of government was probably inevitable as soon as Democrats took power. At the same time, with the implosion of the Christian right's leadership and the last year's cornucopia of GOP sex scandals, the party needed to take a break from incessant moralizing, and required a new ideology to take the place of family values cant. The belief system analysts sometimes call producerism served nicely. Producerism sees society as divided between productive workers -- laborers, small businessmen and the like -- and the parasites who live off them. Those parasites exist at both the top and the bottom of the social hierarchy -- they are both financiers and welfare bums -- and their larceny is enabled by the government they control. Producerism has often been a trope of right-wing movements, especially during times of economic distress, when many people sense they're getting screwed. Its racist (and often anti-Semitic) potential is obvious, so it gels well with the climate of Dixiecrat racial angst occasioned by the election of our first black president. The result is the return of the repressed. It's not, after all, as if the Christian right was something completely removed from the old racist right -- rather, as Reed acknowledged all those years ago, they were initially deeply intertwined. The Columbia historian Randall Balmer has shown that Christian conservatives were not,
