The Tea Party is a corporate scam, but members won’t care

No surprise here. A study funded by the National Cancer Institute of the National Institute of Health provides conclusive evidence that the founding of the Tea Party was not a grassroots effort by tax protestors and small government conservatives, but an organization formed and funded by groups with ties to the tobacco industry and the billionaire Koch brothers.

Liberals and Progressives have long asserted that the Tea Party was an AstroTurf movement created to push a corporate-friendly agenda, and now we know that is the case. And the effort has been extremely successful. Since its inception in 2002, the Tea Party has successfully pushed Republican candidates farther and farther to the right, confused the public on climate change, muscled its way into state legislatures to promote its agenda, and all but abolished bipartisanship in Washington, D.C.

You might think that rank and file members of the Tea Party would be a bit miffed to learn they belonged to an organization created by billionaires to advance a corporate agenda, but I doubt that will be the case. First of all, if you are a member of the Tea Party, you’re not too bright to begin with and are probably used to being taken advantage of by those smarter than you. Second, you’ve convinced yourself that it doesn’t matter, because, hey, maybe someday you’ll be a billionaire too. Or finally, you’ve been brainwashed into believing that what’s good for RJ Reynolds and the Koch brothers is good for America.

Interestingly, the Tea Party would probably not have grown into the political powerhouse it is today if anyone other than Obama was President. Because he’s black, smart and the boss of everybody, he has become an icon representing everything Tea Partier’s despise about America in 2015, and he has served to bring racist whites together in common cause and shared hatred.

Money can’t buy love, but it can buy hundreds of thousands of gullible citizens willing to crusade for America’s beleaguered billionaires.

The Kochenstein Monster Lives

Without question, the biggest news of the weekend (sorry, Mayweather) was the announcements by former neurosurgeon Ben Carson and former head of Hewlett-Packard Carly Fiorina that they are running for President. Wow. A surgeon who knows how to fix brains, but doesn’t understand how they work and a former business dynamo who was consistently rated the worst CEO in America have joined the field of Republican luminaries campaigning for America’s top job.

There is actually only one Republican running for President, but it has five faces  (and could end up having as many as 13).  This multi-headed monstrosity is the creation of the evil Koch brothers whom we also have to thank for the Tea Party, which visibly sustains the hideous creature. The Kochenstein monster answers only to its masters and speaks in one voice, advocating regressive, repressive policies that are favored by the criminally insane and old white people with dementia.

If I were a rich man, I would award a large sum of money to anyone who could identify a significant policy difference between any of the current Republican candidates. They all speak Tea Party, a language filled with code words and dog whistles that provides a thin veil over their true racist, elitist, greedy selves. They are united in their hatred of Obama and his accomplishments, blaming everything from the Baltimore riots to Dutch Elm disease on the socialist, foreign-born uppity negro.

At least in the Democratic race there is a clear choice between a very moderate establishment candidate and a boat-rocking progressive socialist, but on the Republican side there are many different faces, but they are all saying the same things.

The Kochenstein monster stumbles forward, its mass increasing as its mind shrinks, terrorizing many in its path as it lurches towards its final destination: Washington, D.C. It’s time to grab the pitchforks and light the torches.

Congress Pays Fealty to its Masters

The United States Congress is home to a large community of corrupt, self-serving, money-grubbing psychopaths who have pledged their allegiance to the 0.01 percent and have no interest in the needs of their constituents. This past week they made an offering to their masters by voting to repeal the estate tax, which mostly benefits the heirs of billionaires. Why not let the next generation of elites know who they can count on to fight for them?

Citizens United opened the bank vaults and we are now watching the corporate funded puppets dancing to their masters’ tune. The Koch’s and friends are buying Washington as a gift to their children. It’s a lot better than a pony.

Many Americans can see what’s happening to our government, but many others cannot, and they seem to make up the segment of Americans who actually go to the polls and vote. Will we ever be able to convince this older, white demographic that they are voting against their best interests? Probably not, and we will all suffer as a result.

What will it take to inspire the rest of the country to take action? That remains to be seen.

Koch brothers announce they are buying the 2016 elections

What do you get the billionaire who has everything? How about the United States of America? 

Charles and David Koch have announced that their political network is planning to spend nearly a billion dollars on conservative candidates for House and Senate seats and the presidency in 2016.

Thanks to their ideological soul mates on the Supreme Court, the Koch’s can now lavish money on their chosen candidates through an immense network of non-profit groups without, in many cases, having to identify donors. Koch-approved Republicans will get writer’s cramps endorsing their checks.

Does this sound like democracy to you? Me neither. America is quickly becoming an oligarchy where a small minority of elites determine who goes to Washington. The system of checks and balances instituted by our founders has clearly broken down, and voting has become an exercise in futility.

It’s a shame. America began as a brilliant experiment in democracy, but has been taken over by the insatiably greedy 1 percent whose only allegiance is to the bottom line.

Killing off America’s middle class is economic suicide

My father was the son of Italian immigrants. Like many young men of his generation, he quit high school to fend for himself during the Great Depression. He became a self-taught auto mechanic and eventually co-owned a garage in Oakland, California. The third of three children, I came along in the early 1950s and grew up in a comfortable middle-class part of the city, enjoying the material benefits of the post-war boom in America. Our house was small but comfortable. He was the sole breadwinner, yet we could afford upper-end cars and took two-week vacations every summer.

We were not Ozzie and Harriet’s family, and we had our struggles and trials, but still, I was brought up living a modest, secure life even though my father never finished the eighth grade and worked with his hands. We were tried and true middle class Americans, a blue-collar family that could still afford nice things.

The point of my little trip down memory lane is to contrast a time when opportunity existed for a large portion of American society, as opposed to today, where opportunity exists for only a very small group at the top of the food chain. The middle class is dying or, more accurately, being killed off by the one percent. In an article on income inequality by Morgan Stanley, there are more than a few depressing graphs and charts illustrating the decline of America’s middle class, but one that stands out is a chart showing the U.S. leading the developed countries of the world in its share of low paying jobs. What does this mean? It means the gap between the tiny group of haves and the rest of us will continue to grow wider and wider.

And this is where I become confused. Doesn’t destroying America’s middle class mean destroying the customer base for many large retailers? If my wages are stagnant or declining while prices of goods rise, that means I’m not going to be able to afford a new model car or a new dishwasher or the latest phone. If I’m the CEO of Target or GM or Amana, why would I support policies or candidates who want to shrink my customer base? Doesn’t that seem self-defeating to you? Yet it’s exactly what’s happening. If the current trajectory doesn’t change, the average person won’t be able to afford to buy things we consider necessities now, like appliances or cars or insurance.

It could be that the richest of the rich simply don’t care. Their wealth places them beyond the concerns of mere mortals and the future of their families seems secure. Are they all as callous, greedy and heartless as the Koch brothers? Perhaps. How else to explain what is happening to our economy?