Will The Tea Party Burn The House Down ?
My former Texas Senator, John Cornyn, with whom I’ve never agreed, told Ted Cruz words to the effect that you don’t burn the house down to kill the rats. But I wonder. Is Cruz crazy enough to try to do just that? I read he is now collaborating with House teabaggers to create a coup against their own elected leader, John Boehner to take the country to the brink of default on the debt ceiling issue.
I saw these people up close and personal in my Texas life and I can tell you that while they give lip service to the Constitution, they do not recognize the rules laid down therein. They do not recognize the results of democratic elections when they lose and in fact, do all kinds of nefarious things to break rules which do not serve their interests. These people are rabid revolutionaries. They are not incrementalists by any definition. Burning the house down for them is the easiest way they can achieve their white bread theocracy. They are smart enough to understand that they have to first inhabit the house in order to get to the oven to light it and burn baby burn.
And inhabit they do. School boards, county administrations, city halls, state houses all over the country. And now, 51 of them inhabit the House of Representatives. They do not recognize their own Party leadership who helped them get there. I’ve known a few anarchists in my days. These guys make the most strident anarchists look like amateurs. Democratic process? Bunk. Truth? They make their own to fit their narrative. Ethics? That’s for losers. They view themselves as Cruz’s father has described his son. Chosen by God to save his father’s adopted country. The chosen make their own rules. These people are on a divine mission.
So, you ask, would they really take the good old U.S. of A. over the debt limit brink to default if they could? You bet. These same people have rewritten the bible. Have rewritten the Constitution. Have worked in stealth to subvert the voting rights of people who don’t look like them. They harrass voters, trash voting registrations, move polling places, shrink voting schedules, falsify voting information. I’ve seen it with my own eyes. They intimidate at the polls, create legislation to deny rights and are neo-confederates. Meaning, they see no value in the federal government and would rather re-create a confederation of states.
So, bringing the federal system down fits perfectly with their world view. One must ask their funders, Armey’s army and the Koch brothers, are they so cynical in their pursuit of profit and power as to turn this rabid crowd of revolutionaries into the national wrecking crew? Is their anything in their histories that suggests they won’t? I don’t see it.
We need to urge our congressional Democratic Party allies to marshall our majority vote with reasonable Republicans, including speaker Boehner and stop this coup in its tracks. I’m rarely afraid, but this time, I’m very afraid. I hope you are too. But not frozen in fear but mobilized to act with a very strong offense.
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Agreed- now next steps?
Been watching this process for a few years….it was well thought out and funded
The offensive needs to been the same- but proactive- destroy them at their roots – it’s like a hydra cut off the head another grows-
Remember- nits breed lice……
PP wrote:
This seems a strange comment considering that the Republicans are using the results of the democratic elections which gave them control of the House of Representatives to exercise what power they have.
And it’s clear that what you see as “serv(ing) their interests” and they see as “serv(ing) their interests” are two different things. Could allowing the Democrats to shut down the government over their insistence on funding Obaminablecare backfire on the Republicans? Yup, sure could! Could not passing the debt ceiling increase backfire on the Republicans? It might. Then again, they are doing what they told their constituents they would do when they ran for office.
Many conservatives see this as a fight that has to be fought, even if we do lose, and really our last chance to eliminate the wholly misnamed Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act.
@Dana “This seems a strange comment considering that the Republicans are using the results of the democratic elections which gave them control of the House…”
…and you don’t see gerrymandering as doing something nefarious??
Mr Elite wrote:
Perhaps you should ask the authors of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, and the subsequent Presidents who insisted that the VRA required the creation of majority-minority districts wherever reasonably feasible, to prevent the “dilution” of black voting strength. The dense urbanization of many American blacks has resulted in them being in fewer, but very heavily black, congressional districts, where white voters — who are majority Republican — are more spread out over less densely populated areas.
The dense urbanization of many American blacks has resulted in them being in fewer, but very heavily black, congressional districts, where white voters — who are majority Republican — are more spread out over less densely populated areas.
The VRA required that minorities have a chance to be able to vote for their own candidates. Gerrymandering is about diluting the voting power of minorities or parties to elect their own candidates. A thing you can see in the Texas gerrymanders. Even though there are large populations of African Americans and Hispanics, the Texas GOP is working at redrawing the lines to specifically dilute the impact of those votes so they can maintain the order of old white guys telling everyone else what to do.
Amen, Cassandra. Saw that in action with Tom DeLay’s criminal behavior in directing the Texas lege, then Republican controlled, in harshening the gerrymanders to even fewer minority statehouse and congressional districts. Sadly, Republican controlled state and federal benches gave no relief. I can attest that racism is the defining characteristic of both the tea party and the Texas Republican Party movements. After the tightening of these legislative and judiciary remedies for us (Democrats and minorities), they moved onto very outrageous voter suppression strategies. The Republican ascent in Texas was directly tied to our ousting of the Wallace faction from our party and the creation of the Texas Republican majority. We created our own demise, but were willing to pay that price in the belief that revitalized mobilization of the minority electorate could overcome. Obama sure helped that process along in Texas.
PP wrote:
Oh, would that “criminal behavior” be the activity for which the appeals court, in a very unusual move, declared that the state had not produced sufficient evidence to sustain a conviction, and overturned the verdict? Tom DeLay is not a criminal, as adjudicated by the courts.
The unusual move to which you refer was a vote to overturn by a Bush appointed Republican judge on a three judge panel from the appeals court who made the judgement that a $190,000 laundered check was not “money”. The appeal goes now back to the full body of the appeals court.
Cassandra wrote:
And that is exactly what has been done, which is why so many of the longest serving Representatives are black: they were elected to represent majority black districts, and are kept in power because their districts are beyond challenge by Republicans. Thing is, following the requirements of the Voting Rights Act wound up packing large numbers of loyal Democratic voters into fewer districts, producing 90% range votes for the Democratic candidates in those districts, with Republican victories in the adjoining ones.
Personal experience: in 1990, Representative Herb Bateman (R-VA-1) received an unexpectedly strong challenge from the Democratic nominee, a television personality whose name I have forgotten. The same candidate challenged Mr Bateman again in 1992.
But, following the 1990 census, Virginia gained a new congressional district, which the Justice Department said should be considered as a majority-minority district. The State Legislature, which was controlled by Democrats at the time, created a new district for State Senator Bobby Scott — who had lost to Mr Bateman in 1988 — running from Newport News up the James River into Richmond. In the 1992 election, Mr Scott won that seat, as planned, but Mr Bateman now won by a very comfortable margin. I was involved with the campaign back then. (I worked on Tom Ward’s campaign in 1994, when he challenged Bobby Scott. Mr Ward was the perfect candidate: handsome, well-to-do, very successful, exactly the type of candidate who ought to do very well in an election . . . and he got 23% of the vote.)
Now, was Mr Bateman gerrymandered into a safe district by wicked Republicans — then in the minority — or did his district become safe due to the requirements of the Voting Rights Act?
Majority-black districts are a red herring. Republicans kept control of the House by gerrymandering all of the Democratic-leaning small cities and inner suburbs into Republican-leaning districts. It was the carving up of Michigan, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Virginia, Wisconsin, and a few other states that gave Republicans a majority in the House.
are kept in power because their districts are beyond challenge by Republicans.
And are kept in power because Republicans can’t manage to compete in these districts.
Fixed that for you.
Gerrymandering is done to make sure that competition is one-sided. The VRA rules are intended to stop what Texans and others are trying to do — dilute minority blocks. If minorities did not vote mostly for Democrats, Republicans wouldn’t give a damn about minority voting districts. They only care because they find it harder to juke the stats to give them the advantage.
Mr LT wrote:
Really? I wonder how they could have done that had they not already won power in the state legislatures? Much smaller districts — Pennsylvania has 203 House districts — and the Republicans were wining majorities there as well. That ought to tell you something: those states would have elected Republican congressmen even without redistricting.
In 2012, there were something like 57 precincts in Philadelphia where Mitt Romney didn’t receive a single vote. How the heck are you going to politically balance legislative or congressional districts when you have entire precincts voting one way?
How? It is called democracy and it has worked pretty well until petty sore loser fuckbrains like you came along.
Yes folks. It has been a pretty good run. The system was durable but not efficient by design. The founders even anticipated idiots like Dana who would be willing to toss it all in the trash can. What they didn’t anticipate was these sore loser fuckbrains being bankrolled by anti-democratic multi-national interests that were so shortsighted they’d put their narrow financial interests ahead of the country’s.
How the heck are you going to politically balance legislative or congressional districts when you have entire precincts voting one way?
Political balance is not the point of drawing legislative districts. Population balance is. The politics comes in when district drawing is meant to build in an advantage to one party or another. Which is what the Texas lege is doing in trying to minimize the districts that traditionally vote Democratic.
The likelihood of Democrats caving to this bullshit seems remote, but never underestimate the possibility of our modern Dems of offering up some crazy compromise. Half of them are closet Republicans anyyay. They have never failed to cave before. The possibility of them suddenly acquiring a spine seems even more remote. Mark my words, one morning soon we will wake up to read about some heartbreaking deal done overnignt. Joe Biden is ready to get it done like he has so many times before.
Dana is right; this is all proceeding constitutionally. And if they shut the goverment down, it will then be Republivans’ constitutional right to get their asses kicked in the next election.
puck, any system of dialectal inquiry depends on all parties agreeing to rules of order and operating in goodfaith with the best interest of the body at heart. Republicans have run roughshod over the decorum and traditions of congress that were built up over 200 years.
That shitheads like Cruz don’t mind poising the well of American politics means that they are more interested in fucking shit up than they are in governing. that means they should lose elections, but they have billions on thier side and a willingss to flat out lie, so they are in every election regardless.
This phase of our politics will end in one of two ways: things get so bad the extremists are thoroughly repudiated by voters or . .
the extremists wear everybody down, eventually rise to control the White House Senate and House. This latter scenario, granting power to the extremists might be the ultimate solution. Let them self-destruct trying to impose their rigid heartless ideology on America. Most extreme ideologies of the past managed to gain power, then self-destruct.
In a way, New Age Conservative extremism is no different than the Old Age Communist extremism. It’s based on absolute self-certitude centered around a manifesto. It took the USSR seventy years to finally prove that manifestos and theories are not a fit way to govern.
A few years of Ayn Rand manifesto based government, dismantling the safety nets, destroying Federal agencies, America will see the folly of trying to govern by ideology. Communism died by it’s own hand. Aynrandism might have to find that way to the ash heap of history too.
@t123 “the extremists wear everybody down, eventually rise to control the White House Senate and House. This latter scenario, granting power to the extremists might be the ultimate solution. Let them self-destruct trying to impose their rigid heartless ideology on America. Most extreme ideologies of the past managed to gain power, then self-destruct.”
Yes, but sometimes that final self-destruct causes millions of deaths…
How does that Sinclair Lewis quote go?
“When fascism comes to America, it will be wrapped in the flag and carrying a cross.”
This is basically what we’re facing at this very moment. Go to the dictionary and look up the word ‘fascism’. And then think about what the Tea Party represents… Perfect match.
We must not give them the chance to self destruct when they in power. Power must be denied to them by reasoning people.
Here’s what y’all are defending! The wholly misnamed Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act is so bad that a liberal college in a very blue city in a blue state is restricting the hours of “adjunct faculty” to fewer than 30 hours per week, so that they won’t be required to provide health insurance for them. Investor’s Business Daily noted 313 businesses and institutions — 54 of them colleges or universities, not exactly bastions of evil capitalist thought — which are taking the same kind of action.
Three years after the PP&ACA was passed, the federal government is delaying the rollout of some phases, because, after all that time, the government still isn’t ready.
think123 wrote:
I wonder what is so “extreme” about people wanting to keep more of their own money, about people not wanting yet another huge welfare program.
You support letting people die for lack of money or health insurance, and you wonder what’s “extreme” about that?
I wonder what is so “extreme” about people wanting to keep more of their own money, about people not wanting yet another huge welfare program.
And yet you are perfectly happy living off of the welfare your employer gets to provide you with healthcare.
I’m glad “letting people die for lack of money” is having its day in the court of public opinion.
BTW – for the record. there is no way Dana buys half of the crap he tries to sell over here. He is sitting up in some shithole red state like Arkansas or Missouri utterly alone. Having turned everyone near him away with his oafishness.
This is entertainment for him. He is the worst kind of dupe. The type of dupe that gets nothing in exchange for his efforts beyond self satisfaction.
Cassandra wrote:
No, it’s part of my compensation, and in my case, more directly than for most people. My wife has a better health insurance plan — she’s an RN — so we pay extra for her plan to cover me. My employer then pays me extra, because I’m not a burden on his insurance. As far as the government is concerned, it gets more in taxes, because I have to pay income tax on that bonus, while, as an expense that my employer cannot deduct, he must pay slightly more in taxes. I still come out ahead, because the bonus is far more than the amount it costs to add me to my wife’s plan, even with the additional income taxes. 🙂
Employer-provided health insurance is always part of the employee’s compensation: it’s a cost of labor that the employer has to pay. It’s a non-taxable form of income, because the employee never sees that part, just like the employer’s share of Social Security and Medicare taxes.
Mr 330 wrote:
Nope! I live in the unfortunately-blue state of Pennsylvania, and as far as being utterly alone, my wife and i have been married for 34 years, 4 months and 11 days. While I’m certain that what you wrote is what you’d like to believe, it’s about as true as the rest of liberal arguments.
The problem for liberals is that y’all understand neither business nor economics; if you did understand them, you wouldn’t be liberals!
The problem with conservatives is they don’t understand that civilization depends on cooperation, not competition. If they did they wouldn’t be conservatives.
Lonely Red State loser, I guess I hit a nerve. Your lashing out about liberals not knowing about business was a pitiful as it is ill-informed.
And this is why you never trust a modern conservative with his claims of knowing how business works:
Many of the people who are now eligible for health insurance and who are getting subsidies for that insurance are working people too. It is just that the Walmarts and other places tell their employees to get their health insurance from Medicaid or do without. Both of which are highly subsidized by taxpayers or insurance ratepayers respectively. So we have employers who don’t pay this cost of labor, but leave it to the rest us. In the meantime, those of us with employer paid healthcare have that expense paid for by American taxpayers — this subsidy our “business-savvy” pal here is absolutely entitled to. Anyone else getting taxpayer subsidized health insurance can go to hell apparently.
Cassandra, if you are arguing that the taxpayers are paying for employer-provided insurance because it’s a non-taxable benefit for the employee, while the employer gets to deduct it from his gross revenues when calculating his corporate taxes, I wouldn’t disagree with you: in one way, that’s exactly what it is.
I’d define it a bit differently, as income not subject to taxation, the way your 401(k) is tax-exempt, but even better: your 401(k) deduction (assuming that you aren’t using a Roth plan) is subject to Social Security and Medicare taxes, and, depending on the state, state and municipal income taxes as well, while the employer-paid portion of your health insurance isn’t reported as income at all, and is thus not subject to taxation, period.
There are a lot of things in the tax code I think are bad. Most of them were (supposedly) good ideas, to encourage this behavior and discourage that behavior, but that’s something we ought to get away from doing altogether. The mortgage interest deduction (allegedly) encourages home ownership — and it’s a deduction I take advantage of personally — but it means that renters, normally people of lower income than homeowners, are paying a higher effective tax rate than home owners. We have substantial deductions for college tuition, but that means that people who will never be able to go to college are, in effect, subsidizing people, usually of greater means, sending their kids to college. (Yes, we take advantage of this deduction as well.)
The absolute best thing we could do is to repeal the sixteenth amendment, and tax everybody the same amount, period. I’m not naïve enough to think that will ever happen, but the second best plan would be to tax all incomes at the same percentage rate, period: no scaled rates, no exemptions, and no deductions.
“tax all incomes” What a joke. If you had said “tax all sources of income” and do away with deductions you’d have said something. But I know you will not go that far because that would make rich people sad or some stupid bullshit along those lines.
BTW – nobody is fooled by your clumsy attempts to change the subject. Handing you your ass on every topic that comes up is just too easy.
Dana, let’s clear up a few facts for you. Liberals do understand both business and economics at least as well as conservatives. Proof? Only a little over 15% of those employed are in the public sector; 85% work in the private sector; ie: business related work. Let’s assume that all 22 million public sector employees voted for President Obama (I know, way overstated !). That leaves around 42 million Obama votes coming from the private sector employed, who number approximately 120 million. So, overwhelmingly, Obama voters, mostly liberals, are engaged in business, not government.
As for this Obama Democrat, I was self employed in businesses for about half my working career, the rest in the employ of other’s businesses. I started and ran three businesses which gave me both a livelihood and my current retirement. How about a fact based discussion with you?
Mr 330 wrote:
Sure, I’ll go that far: income is income, regardless of from what source derived. That was what I meant all along; apparently you didn’t think that clear enough. And I would add: all taxed at the same rate, whether salaries, dividends, royalties, you name it.
I would make one strong exception: inheritances should not be considered income, because they were taxed all along in the generation of the estate. And dividends should be taxed only on the recipients; they shouldn’t be double-taxed at the corporate level as well.
inheritances should not be considered income – bullshit.
I’m not arguing — I’m pointing out that you, Dana, are arguing against subsidizing the insurance cost of poor working people, while those poor working people (and all of the rest of us for that matter) are subsidizing yours. The government paying part of the tab for health insurance isn’t new, and it is hypocritical (giving you the benefit of the doubt here) to argue against expanding this subsidy to other working people.
OK, Mr Populist, we shall. As a businessman, didn’t you attempt to contain your costs vis a vis your expenses? That’s what the 313 institutions and businesses that Investor’s Business Daily noted are doing, trying to contain costs.
I have no idea what kinds of businesses you had; did you pay your employees more than the going market rate? That’s what the other writers at DL would have us do, raise the minimum wage to more than twice what it currently takes to attract labor, with seemingly little consideration as to whether the employees produced enough to justify $15.00 per hour.
The proof of what I have written is out there, in the real world. Big businesses, those which already provided health insurance, sort-of supported the PP&ACA . . . because it would mean that their competitors would have to do the same. But even they are taking steps to contain their costs, as the regulations being imposed by HHS are driving coverage costs higher. Smaller businesses, where most initial hiring in people’s careers occurs, are scared to death: they don’t know how they can manage to comply with the law and not go broke. And we can see the results: four years after the recession (officially) ended, job creation is abysmal, and the official unemployment rate is only as low as it is — if you can call 7.3% low — because the labor force participation rate is the lowest it has been since the Carter Administration. The real test of liberal economics is right in front of your eyes. In France, with a socialist government not exactly being held back by us wicked Republican reich-wingers, the economy is growing at a whopping 0.5% rate . . . and that’s actually an improvement.
In other words, an industrialized, “first world” nation, with the second largest economy in the “eurozone,” with the type of economic regulations that my good friends at the Delaware Liberal would like to see here, is in even worse economic doldrums than we are.
CBS News — hardly a right-wing source — is reporting yet another study which says that insurance premiums are expected to “soar” under the PP&ACA.
My own darling bride is 53 years old, and past menopause; her insurance rates will surely increase so that she, too, can have free contraceptive and maternity coverage, neither of which we require. But the oh-so-well-meaning bureaucrats in the Obama Administration have decided that we must, must! have such coverage. As a businessman, one would think that you’d have real qualms about adding wholly unnecessary expenses.
You are such a dolt. It isn’t even worth responding to this nonsense.
Well, Mr 330, I will admit to being at something of a loss at seeing how pointing out what is already happening, complete with source citations, constitutes nonsense.
Dana, everybody wants to keep more of their money, nothing extreme about that. Except if money becomes a substitute for mora bearing. I was referring to the idea of shutting down the government or not paying our bills simply because the traditional exercise of democracy, elections, votes in Congress, Supreme Court etc does not go your way. That is extreme. Looking for an alternative to national elections is about as extreme as it gets.
When it comes to the health insurance reforms, you are ignoring anything good from this reform. You seem to be limiting your scope to anecdotal instances of negative stuff. Like everything we do there’s always an upside and a downside. If you limit yourself to just the downside well then nothing is worth doing.
You have been citing business problems with the Obamacare health insurance changes – I urge you to google around for all the small and big business polls over the last 20 years that consistantly put health insurance costs at the very top of the problems business operators worry about. Health insurance as it was is not sustainable.
So . . . we are embarking on a major reform. Not more free riders showing up at the emergency room with a heart attack or car crash or cancer and no insurance – meaning those of us who pay for insurance have to pick up the tab for the free riders. Now we are saying – everybody get health insurance, no more free riders. Same with businesses. Maryland had to pass a law so Walmart would change the set up they had whereas low wage employees did not get health insurance from WalMart so they were eligible for taxpayer funded Medicaid. So we taxpayers pay for all those low wage no benefit employers who now have a nice deal where taxpayer funded Medicaid picks up the tab for there employees. Obamacare is putting an end to that. Either provide health insurance for your employees or kick in a fine to help pay for their health care.
How can anybody be upset about 50 new state by state online marketplaces where citizens can buy health insurance from private insurance companies competing for there business? What is not good about that?
The part I particularily like about the reforms is the 20% cap on loss ratio. That’s the amount of our premiums insurance companies can pocket. Under this reform insurance companies must return 80% of premiums in the form of healthcare services. In the past there have been cases where health insurance companies pocketed 40% of the premiums we pay in. That’s why the former CEO of one of the largest health insurance companies pocketed $1B dollars for himself. Obamacare puts limits on that. In several states, policyholders received rebates when it was found the companies pocketed more that the 20% limit imposed by Obamacare.
If you forget the conservative liberal crap what you have here in this reform is basically some pretty commonsense changes – all aimed at breaking the status quo in and old outdate health insurance system that is not sustainable. I refer again to all the business polls over the last 20 years citing health insurance inflation as a number one business problem. Don’t be so negative.
Dana, re: my business strategy. One of my businesses employed about 12 people. The others were solo consulting companies. I paid my people as professionals, a salary, way above hourly wages and above my competitors; plus gave bonuses and for some, ownership of the company I founded. I contained costs by working my ass off creating more business, more volume, not by chiseling costs. if cost needed cutting from time to time, my take from the company decreased. Plus, I gave them very good health and life insurance, a cost out of the company’s budget, not theirs. So, shut the fuck up.
I don’t understand how a plan conceived by the Heritage Foundation, is a socialist takeover of health care.
constitutes nonsense
It’s nonsense because you aren’t even ready what you post. Costs *will* go up on a plan that includes more required services. I pay into a plan that gives me mental health and substance abuse coverage even though I don’t need that. But this is the way that insurance works — there is a contracted set of services and you contribute to the pool that pays for that. Plenty of people paying more for coverage are paying for better plans. Even if they might not use some of those services.
How can you even be in this conversation if you don’t know how insurance works?