The rogue elements comprising the Americans for Prosperity (AFP/Koch Bros. Political Arm) had a bodacious and oversized party on Mackinac Island last Saturday night after the Mitt Romney speech at the Biannual Republican Leadership Conference. Loud, crowded, and a must-be-seen-there event, the AFP bash (with a live band) topped off the behind-the-scenes manipulation of the Nerd's first island confab.
In nearly every conference event there were mentions of Right-to-Work, crack downs on unions/collective bargaining, bashing of teachers and other public servants, no new taxes, and lots of talk about rolling back taxes e.g. personal property taxes. Any mention, however slight of these topics brought out the hooters, hoopers and the clappers were especially loud and bodacious, over-powering and dominate. Any mention of breaks for business brought on swoons and loud applause.
The plaid-shirted ordinary folk, who are the core of the ill-defined Tea Party, the anti-brain bucket ABATE bikers with oiled leather, colorfully patched vests, were noticeably absent. Gone too are the long hair, long, ankle length gingham-dressed fundamentalist women folk with suckling babies. The aggressive independent Libertarian, Hillsdale College crowd and Alumni were, however, everywhere present.
What had the greatest potential to excite the Neanderthals was raw red meat; finding it in the presentations and in the standard speeches was hard, like picking over old, stale offal. The Nerd, Governor Rick Snyder, wants a cap on outward shows of incivility-blame-laying and extraneous and counter-productive partisan exaggerations and accusations.
To the Nerd's credit, he wants to stay focused on results and achievements toward what he has set out as the "doable" goals of his plan. In his Friday night speech he emphasized this point to the sound of one hand clapping.
The Nerd doesn't support the Neanderthals and their voracious appetite for carrion and bloodletting, raging politics. Flying flint spears and crude arrows of personal media attack-ad assassination were left to be mentioned off center dinner stage, at pundit/spin doctor panels.
In spite of the Nerd's savage legislative attacks on the poor, the public service providers, and the old/retirees on pensions; Rick Snyder persisted in his low key, CEO (self-defined) manner.
The Nerd has a set of goals and is ready and anxious to get on with the next pre-planned project: his new health and wellness proposals. Snyder is convinced emphasis on reducing the fat on the belt lines of Michiganders will result in "real savings" in the future.
The Neanderthals are seething at the Nerd's health concepts and are ready to cannibalize the Nerd's proposed health and wellness program. They see it as egregious government overreach to wipe out "individual responsibility" The grunts, the snorting, and hoof-to-ground (dust-up-hove-pawing) were everywhere-the undertow.
The Nerd has suggested, received, and signed into law; a "$400 million dollar assessment on health insurance claims" which is designed to relieve the corporate insurance companies of a "6% use tax on Medicare managed care" organizations-the "broad-based claims assessment" tax. The NEW TAX will be on everyone (little people) who have a health care claim. It's a classic case of shift and shaft. TeaPublicans are being besieged with legislation addressing those laws and regulations, taxes that defeat and confound their previous outrage and anger. Snyder has thrown them some "pickin's," some scraps. But the cave dwellers want more.
What are the TeaPublicans to expect, their TP supporters, being Neanderthals, they were purposefully chosen by Dick Morris and the Brothers Koch to lead the sheep to slaughter, to effect obfuscation and confusion, paving the way for the more ambitious and all-pervasive AMERICAN LEGISLATIVE EXCHANGE COUNCIL (ALEC) to sweep the bill writing slate with pro-corporate "put-and-take" bills they are pressing into pro-business legislation across America.
To Morris and handlers, Neanderthals are simply "tools."
With the Neanderthals in tow, it is intended there will be little resistance; after all the TeaPublicans control the entire apparatus of Michigan governance and see no limits to their power and ability to do as they wish.
So after Snyder's homily, Chief Justice Robert Young, Henry Payne (See "MACKGOP: YOUNG GIVES 'EM RED MEAT") took to the podium with a zip-lock bag of bits and kibble, freeze dried red meat, intent upon getting the thrust and plunge spear carriers tuned up in a warpath frenzy. Henry Payne's plaintiff pout, "It was a stark contrast to a governor who never mentioned Obama's name once in his speech."
However, it was then too late to make Young's desired impact; to get the Neanderthals to chant and stomp. The main act was over. The dinner guests were sliding back their chairs and deep in yuck-yuck. Young was drown out with meet-and-greet, and the exit sounds of attendees rushing out, headed to Cuban cigars and Jack Daniels in the big tent at the Grand Hotel's Jockey Club-the sponsored late-night past-midnight bash.
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