Tea Party to the Rescue.....

I sometimes wonder if the Tea Party is more dangerous for the naive ignorance its supporters and candidates or the wholesale buying of elections that is currently underway by Corporate America under the guise of a grassroots movement. In either case it is abundantly clear that the Tea Party itself is actually a multi-headed organization that is being used as a tool to get out the vote for conservative ideas while at the same time disguising itself as a movement of the people. I am quite sure there are many people who are ardent supporters at the grass roots level but these people don’t even seem to realize who is pulling the strings and providing the money at the top. It is almost the perfect storm for political conservatives with the recent unfathomable ruling by the Supreme Court that corporations can take money from their operating coffers and put as much as they want into political campaigns aligning with this phantom movement that has no real leadership. I think we will see the results in the upcoming election in the form of even more corporate control of government policy which is after all the real goal to begin with.

While all of this is disturbing and somewhat depressing it isn’t exactly surprising. The recent economic collapse hurt a lot of mainstream Americans where they can feel it the most; in their pocketbook. It isn’t surprising that they would react with anger at the establishment that brought this about but it is a little surprising that these same people could be so naïve as to throw their support behind the party that caused it to happen in the first place through de-regulation of the banking industry and support of fiscal Ponzi schemes. Propaganda has always been a powerful tool and since Americans lost what was implicitly their ownership of the airwaves where most Americans get their news under the Telecommunications Act of 1996 without even noticing a takeover was in process it has become a reality in this country. No one should be surprised that the “Free Market” that news media outlets were clamoring for has turned into a monopoly since government regulations about who owns such outlets were abandoned. If you own all the media outlets you have a great deal of control over what kind of news they broadcast so there is little wonder that such a takeover was attempted but it is a little surprising that such an attempt was successful and it is even more surprising that more people don’t see the problems it is presently causing.

If that isn’t bad enough we now have evidence that TARP money that was given to financial concerns in this country is now being used to leverage political campaigns by these concerns. This would be comedic if it wasn’t so tragic. In other words, companies that CAUSED the economic collapse and were bailed out by taxpayers are now using taxpayer money to try to buy elections. I wonder how long after the elections it will be before they attack the recent regulations put in place to keep this from happening again. It doesn’t matter that the regulations themselves were toothless and didn’t go far enough to change the policies that caused the collapse; they are an irritant to the people who were stealing all the money and they will be done away with as soon as possible. Expect to see them high on the agenda of incoming Republicans.

In recent days as campaigns wind to a close we are seeing the effects of aligning ideals with fringe groups; groups that under normal circumstances are distanced from the central arena of political discourse. The Tea Party movement in its efforts to show numbers of supporters has done two things that are relatively dangerous in any political movement. They have heated up the rhetoric to a fever pitch while at the same time invoking imagery aimed at stirring up people’s anger at targets of their choosing. As a citizen of Alabama I am not a stranger to asinine and illogical fundamentalist religious rhetoric and its usage by corporate entities to support their real agenda but we are seeing it across the country this election and it is just as ugly there as it has always been here.

A candidate for the Senatorial seat in Alaska closely aligned with the Tea Party reacts to questions that bring into doubt his integrity by having para-military type private security forces handcuff a reporter and physically remove him from the event. It sounds strange but in reality it is even stranger than it sounds. The private security firm he hired, Drop Zone, is closely aligned with the Alaskan Militia which was founded by the Michigan Militia leader who was forced out of that state for his alignment with Timothy McVeigh of Oklahoma City fame. Miller, the candidate who hired Drop Zone, asserts that he was forced to hire private security because the function was on public property. Never mind that this excuse is complete and utter nonsense according to local officials, the hiring of Drop Zone actually corresponds with Miller’s decision that he is not going to answer any more personal questions for the remainder of the campaign. With his lead slipping in the polls and more and more evidence from his past coming to light that he is indeed nothing like he campaigns to be he decided that he just wasn’t going to answer such questions. It is his prerogative to decide what questions he will or will not answer but it is not his prerogative to decide to put people in handcuffs and physically remove them if they decide to ask them anyway. This is the same candidate who earlier responded to questions as to the veracity of the effectiveness of building a fence at the Mexican Border by responding that it worked pretty well in Berlin.

Perhaps he doesn’t understand the difference between keeping oppressed people in a country and keeping economically oppressed people out. In any case, he leaves out the fact that the wall itself didn’t keep people in Berlin, it was the machine guns and guards on top of it that were effective deterrents.

Mr. Miller's official response to the handcuffing incident was that the Drop Zone security people didn’t realize the man they handcuffed and restrained was a reporter. This leads one to believe that Mr. Miller believes such tactics would be acceptable if he was just a private citizen asking questions the candidate didn’t want to answer. While this would be perfectly acceptable behavior in East Germany where the wall Mr. Miller seems to have admired so much existed it isn’t acceptable in this country; at least not presently. That could all change after the Tea Party gets in power, especially if they continue to seek the support and muscle of groups like the Alaskan Militia.

Meanwhile, in Kentucky previous to a scheduled debate pitting the Tea Party candidate for Senate, Rand Paul, against his opponent there is a scuffle between a political activist from the Move on.org group and some of Mr. Paul’s supporters. It turns out that the activist was intent upon handing Mr. Paul a mock award for his achievement of vast economic support from corporate entities as he got out of his car at the event. Paul’s supporters, sensing something was up with the woman attempted to get the police to remove her from the scene. Unfortunately, the police officers happened to understand that the right to free speech trumps the innate sense of future embarrassment that Paul’s supporters seemed to possess so they declined to intervene. Maybe Paul’s supporters should have actually read one of those copies of the Constitution they are so proud of carrying in their back pockets before deciding to attack someone who might embarrass their candidate but that would assume they would take the time to read anything instead of letting Rush Limbaugh and Shaun Hannity pour half truths straight into their heads through their self anointed halos for many hours each day.

In any case, two of the more heroic Rand supporters ripped her wig off, forcibly tackled her and pinned her to the asphalt against the curb. Just to make sure she couldn’t utter something to embarass Mr. Paul while she was crammed into a fetal position with one man on top of her another man proceeded to put his foot on her neck and roughly stomp down on her. It was a perfect metaphor, the angry Tea Party advocate with his foot on the neck of someone with differing views. Unfortunately for Mr. Paul and his Tea Party supporters there happened to be a camera rolling at the time.

This is just the latest example of how Mr. Paul’s association with radical fringe elements has come around to embarrass him as there have been several others already. It is worth noting that the man who literally stomped on the woman to protect him from possible embarrassment is not exactly that much of a fringe element as far as Mr. Paul is concerned. He was in fact the head of Mr. Paul’s organizing committee in that part of Kentucky and a man Mr. Paul had proudly brandished the endorsement of previously. As it turns out, both he and the man who tackled the woman were senior officials in the Tea Party movement Mr. Paul is so proud to receive support from.

The man who infamously stomped the woman’s head into the concrete curb had several excuses for his actions. The first one was that he had tried to get the police to remove her before it “came to that.” Maybe he should have hired Drop Zone for security instead of trying to depend on the police who are actually familiar with the Constitution his party claims to be protecting. His second excuse was that it wasn’t as bad as it looked on camera and had a lot to do with the fact that he has a bad back. Presumably, if he hadn’t had a bad back he could have bent over far enough to punch her in the face or physically apply a gag in her mouth instead of having to rely on just stomping her head into the curb to keep her quiet.