The Treasonous Tea Party

The most successful anti-American terrorist organization in the world is not Al-Qa'ida, it’s not Hizballah, Hamas, Islamic Jihad or any possible collective combination of foreigners. The radical group that is choking this nation’s economy, destroying its Constitution, dividing its people, and crippling its defenses is a home grown anti-government insurgency that Timothy McVeigh would happily join; it’s the Tea Party. Unlike other insurgencies that employ violence to inflict casualties, instill fear, and demonstrate the powerlessness of government to stop them, this group of traitors infiltrated our democratic institutions by simultaneously exploiting widespread voting apathy among its opponents and energizing a base by stoking ignorance, bigotry, and irrational fear. The movement is led and bankrolled by a few shadowy billionaires consumed by greed and bent on preserving and increasing their immense wealth and political power. When measured objectively, the “success” of their treachery has been monumental.

The March 1 sequester marks their latest success; a Rube Goldberg budget mechanism accepted as ransom payment in exchange for an economy held hostage via the debt ceiling and threatened with death by shut down; a sequester that was preserved when they torpedoed the “super committees” with uncompromising cuts-only dogma. This action – that they fight to keep in effect – has already significantly degraded military readiness and will soon see this proud nation furlough its national security civilians – a breach of trust with our most noble public servants, many of whom are military veterans, and all of whom are essential to the training, equipping, and deploying of our forces or who personally man security posts critical to protecting our nation. These patriots have already endured a Tea Party mandated pay freeze for the past two years – now they are forced to take a 20% pay cut with absolutely no reasonable explanation as to why. How’s morale? Let no one doubt that this puts additional stress and strain upon Soldiers, Sailors, Airmen, Marines, and Coastguardsmen who are already dealing with an epidemic of suicides. Let no one claim that this does not embolden potential enemies and boost the morale of the Taliban in Afghanistan because it already has. Al-Qa’ida could not even conceive of an attack that would simultaneously prevent a US carrier from deploying to the Persian Gulf, halt the construction of another, dock the growth of the US economy by 1%, push 750,000 out of work, force the US to shamefully turn a cold shoulder to its poor, elderly, and most vulnerable child citizens, and demonstrate to the world that it’s oldest, richest, and most powerful democracy is no longer capable of accomplishing the basic functions of government. Tea Partiers in the House displace the blame and cry, “let the Senate pass a budget” while knowing full well that fellow Tea Partiers in the Senate are a de facto ruling minority that shamelessly employ an endless filibuster to prevent any progress. Meanwhile, all who hate and plot against the US dance in celebration.

The ingeniousness of the sequester cannot be fully appreciated unless one takes into account the long strategy the Tea Party employed to bring it about. In the midst of the worst recession since the depression, they craftily employed irrational fear and willful economics misinformation to change the national dialogue from recovery and employment to reducing national debt. They told us we were just months from becoming as insolvent as Greece. Though laughable given that investors the world over are essentially paying us to convert their money to US Treasury bonds, and an insulting national comparison from a stature standpoint, debt nevertheless became the only preoccupation of our government. And though debts and deficits are always only solved via a combination of revenues and cuts, the Tea Party insists on only cuts; and cuts right now – cuts that any student of basic economics would tell you should never be enacted in the midst of a recession because it will slow or even reverse a recovery. But recovery is not what the Tea Party wants; they want to destroy the government – at least the parts of the government that don’t serve their billionaire bankrollers. For it was the generosity of these benefactors that fed the largest expenditures ever in the 2010 mid-term election which in turn led directly to Tea Party victories at the federal level. Their like-funded victories at the state level meant partisan Tea Party Congressional redistricting that preserved a House majority despite a 2 million vote deficit in the 2012 election. But these expenditures were only possible after Tea Party infiltration of the Supreme Court and a sweeping decision based on ham-fisted logic concerning a lawsuit brought forward by a Tea Party organization – a truly diabolical victory for America’s oligarchs.

But then, all this fear over debt wouldn’t be compelling if the debt isn’t first made really big; and how better to destroy government than to bankrupt it? There too, history shows the Tea Party’s visible hand prints; they are responsible for the largest contributors to our debt. First, they deregulated banking and finance, erasing all the protective barriers erected following the Great Depression and put friends of the banks in charge of oversight who blindly allowed the banks to enrich themselves on a huge housing bubble. When it popped, they deliberately delayed and disrupted government action which vaporized the wealth of ordinary Americans, sapped 9% from the economy, and bled out 9 million jobs. Second, they championed tax cuts and spent extravagantly on the wares peddled by friends in the industrial military complex: 80’s tax cuts in the face of the largest defense buildup of the cold war which doubled the debt; 90’s tax cuts in the face of a recession and the first Gulf War; 2001 and 2003 tax cuts in the face of two wars (the one in Iraq was a neoconservative war of choice sold to Congress on a stack of lies and fabrication) which doubled the debt again; and a more recent insistence on more tax cuts as part of stimulus – all of which disproportionately benefit the rich and exponentially added to the debt until revenues as a percent of GDP fell to their lowest level since the 1920s and grew the gap between revenues and expenditures to its highest point ever – well over a trillion dollars. Paint the new African-American President as a big-government, socialist, other; exploit a European debt crisis by making irrational comparisons to small dysfunctional economies like Spain, Greece, and Italy; and voilà, debt crisis. Gun violence? Immigration? National Security? Global Warming? 14 million Americans unemployed? No matter, it’s the debt stupid; oh, and never mind the facts; it’s purely a spending problem...

And so the Tea Party marches on, self- proclaimed as the nation’s saviors from the crises they themselves engineered to wield again and again, destroying the US government from within by pushing the most destructive actions on the most vulnerable. They have their 2013 crises all lined up, first the sequester, then the continuing budget resolution, then another debt ceiling vote; perhaps they’ll overturn the Voting Rights Act too, and then consider Gerrymandering the Presidential electoral college... Public opinion and elections results be damned, the Tea Party will not rest until the United States government is so crippled and feeble that little Grover Norquist can gleefully drown it in Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s bathtub. Let’s all share their vision and pledge allegiance to the new United Oligarchy of Ayn Rand; “one nation, bought and paid for, divided by class, with liberty and justice to the highest bidder.” Your average Joe may profess to be a US patriot willing to die to protect his country from its enemies, but in drinking the Jonestown Kool-Aid he has unwittingly spawned and fed a Tea Party cancer within our government. By view of its collective actions and apathy for the human consequences, this cancer now manifests the greatest threat facing our nation. If Joe doesn't frick’n wake up, he’ll trap us all in the acrid, polluted, and violent slums that will surround the gated community where the light on the hill still burns – but for only upon a very privileged few.

Mr Sperling is just a political hack. What a horrible interview! Mr Sperling I have a great idea, answer the questions!

Mr Woodward was threaten by Mr Sperling and he does not have the decency to apologize. What a political hack!

Good interview Mr Gregory with both Mr Boehner and Mr Sperling. Keep holding these government officials feet to the fire!