Showing posts with label Dick Armey. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Dick Armey. Show all posts

Monday, September 20, 2010

Beware the hermit crabs in the political class

THE LATE A.J. LIEBLING, the iconoclastic journalist and acerbic critic of newspapers, once described two Columbus papers housed under the same roof as "two hermit crabs living in the same shell." That also seems to be the crabby case now with the former Republican Party and its Tea Party proprietor that have been clawing the Obama Administration. In their meteoric rise, the TP's have shared time, space and manic attacks on their Democratic victims as well as bashing some of the programs that have been around for more than three-quarters of a century. For example, Social Security.

While many Republican pols find ways to lessen the political consequences of an all-out appeal for ending the program that has served countless millions of retirees, the Tea Partiers toss it into the same stew as, say, street cleaning or 4th of July fireworks. If it comes from the government (i.e., taxpayers) , it has got to go. Some of the very same pols even quietly deny that they are in accord with their Tea Party friends on all counts and that neither occupant of the shell really wants to deprive us of monthly Social Security payments. That's baloney, of course., that only the Fox News culture would have us believe.

I would excuse some Tea Partiers who only know what they heard from Glenn Beck or Sarah Palin. But if you want to know what they are really thinking, pay attention to Dick Armey, the former Texas congressman and bloated chairman of FreeomWorks, whose comfort zone is squarely in the Tea Party base. In an interview with ThinkProgress at a Tea Party rally in Chicago, Armey declared that Social Secruity was a "corrupt goverment practice" and a "pay-as-your-go Ponzi scheme."

Such damning seems to come easily for a person of Armey's means who would live very well, thank you, without those monthly checks. Trouble is, such calculated madness has taken root in a lot of people for whom Social Security, Medicare and other forms for federal assistance are literally keeping them alive these days. W hen the wealthiest among us pretend to empathize with folks living on the edge, what hope is there for a level playing field in this year's elections?

Tuesday, December 22, 2009

RNC's Steele flips out on flipping a bird

ALTHOUGH IT didn't seem possible that RNC Chairman Michael Steele could lower his rants to the depths of the gutter, he did exactly that with a blast at Democrats on the health care front. In a conference call with former Texas Rep. Dick Armey, who has resurrected himself as a leader of the Tea Bagger movement, Steele frothed:
"I'm tired of this congress thumbing their nose and flipping the bird at the people of this country!"
Flipping the bird? If the term eludes you, think of a middle finger raised in anger. Some Democrats as well as Republican Sen. Judd Gregg found his outburst quite distasteful. As for me, I have no choice but to award him the Grumpy Abe Linguistic Lunacy (GALL) award. For Steele, that's not the first time he walked off with a GALL - and I'm sure not the last.

Tuesday, August 18, 2009

The curse of Moses Cleaveland

  • MORE THOUGHTS AFTER HOURS OF YARD WORK:

  • A friend who is a Cleveland sports fan raises troubling questions after each loss, among them: What is it about Cleveland? A... It's the Moses Cleaveland curse! When the surveyors drew up the first maps of the settlement founded by Cleaveland, they dropped the "a" from his name. Horrified, he cast an eternal curse on the place. Or something like that. Won't make any difference whether Quinn, Anderson or Kosar is the quarterback. Moses was here first.
  • As the White House hopes for a public option in health care continue to vaporize, I'll have to repeat my theory that Democrats have no guts, and Republicans have no conscience. The second part of that is that Republicans take no prisoners while Democrats willingly allow themselves to be the prisoners.
  • Now that former congressman Dick Armey is making the rounds with his bloated Texas-size ego guiding the narrative of Tea Parties, he would seem to be a perfect dance partner for another Texan, Tom DeLay, in a record breaking 20 second marathon on the ballroom floor. What is it about Texas?
  • Imagine how much better life would be if all of the things promised by the TV commercials were really true. Even half-true!
  • Pity the poor company executives who are giving up choice seats for themselves and clients at baseball games because they don't want anybody to think that they are wasting big dollars on corporate excesses. Seems a rather strange sacrifice to me since millions of corporate dollars are being wasted on the .221 hitters in the dugout.

Saturday, August 8, 2009

A woeful opera in too many nasty acts

WE'RE LIVING with the myth that the "debate" over health care reform is all about what's best for ordinary citizens. But there's nothing very ordinary about the nasty narrative that's in our face today. Americans might just as well be taking sides on whether Silvio Berlusconi should be running around his luxurious Sardinian estate with tempting young girlfriends. It really doesn't matter what ordinary Americans think. (Nor does the Italian premier care about what Italians think!)

In this country the luxurious estate is the fortress set up by huge health insurance companies to protect their tidy investment in your health and mine. They are, of course, servilely aided and abetted by their beneficiaries within the ranks of both parties. Besides, we've learned rather quickly that there are few self-described "ordinary" folks at the disrupted Town Hall meetings. They are scripted in how to hack a reasoned discussion of the issue with their Democratic congressmen.

And who is the inspiration for the hackers who have been crafted with behavioral patterns that riotously break up these sessions? One is, of all people, Rick Scott, who has put up millions to fight health care reforms as head of Conservatives for Patients Rights. I love these benign sounding front groups with titles that have little to do with their line of work. They might as well be called Concerned Foxes for Chickens' Rights. This, after all, is the same Rick Scott who once headed Columbia HCA, a for-profit hospital system that chiseled so much money from the Feds that he finally had to pay a $1.7 billion fraud settlement. That's billion. Among other things, he closed unprofitable hospitals and cut back services to the patients who were unlucky enough to land in the profitable hospitals that made the cut. I'm obviously missing something here, folks. Where are the patient's rights that this conservative wants to protect?

Another who has cast a big shadow on the "debate" is former Texas congressman Dick Armey, who is one of the heavy hitters at "Lobbyists, Central" in D.C. His outfit is a warm and fuzzy number called DreamWorks. He's also the Co-Chairman of the Alliance for Retirement Prosperity, another straight-faced cover job? By now, I'm ready to accept the validity of Concerned Foxes for Chickens' Rights.

But some of the paint on these well financed civic enterprises is starting to flake. One woman who went bananas at one of Town Halls later told a network that she was "just a mom" from down the block who had arrived to express her frustration. She lied. When reporters checked her background, it turned out that she was a soldier for the Republican Party in her state. The script for these well organized assaults of public sanity also remind the shouters to spread out across the hall so that a speaker might conclude that everybody is up in arms against health care reform.

And didn't Rep. John Boehner, the House minority leader, referring to the town meetings, declare that it was going to be a long, hot summer for the Democrats? This raucous opera obviously won't be over until - unlike the fat lady - the woeful chorus of Boehner, Scott, Armey and The Mom, stop singing.