Tea Party Pot Bellies: Michigan's Tea Partiers - What's in their Kettle?

Whistling from their ears, full of steam piped in from the boilers of Koch Petroleum, these angry men and women are pawns of the first order.

Dunces with dulled intellects and greedy with selfish desire to hold on to what little their corporate masters, have deigned to allow them to retain of all their years of work, labor, and endless toil, "Steamed" Tea Party Pot Bellies are in a manipulator's manufactured rage. It's actually one of the saddest stories to be told; it spells out how the public can be conned, hornswoggled, beguiled, into working exactly against what has always been in their best interests, futures, and well-being.

Centers of Civil Discourse Drown Out: American conversation on local concerns in the
corner of the hardware or general store replaced by Big Media and AFP Money
(General Store in Haysi, VA National Archives 1938)

The Michigan TeaPublican (Tea Party Republican) Super Majority back inside the Capitol, all comfy in their leather swivel chairs, faces lit by taxpayer provided laptops, saw an opening to their advantage. True to form,
GOPer's took the easy path: stick to the Corporatist scripts and rad right discipline: Put the burden of revenue off on children, the elderly, the pensioner, the poor, the public servant. By all means protect the business and corporate community!

If only these Republicans strove to serve the real needs of the public as much as they pride themselves in being errand boys/"buds" to business!

What a nunce Snyder is! Says he was "hired" by Michigan to be their "CEO"! Find that in your state constitutions, you uber-strict constitutionalists. It's not there.

Michigan Americans for Prosperity Propaganda Troupes for Senior Citizen as Shock Troops:
Michigan TP'ers at AFP / Mackinac Sponsored Rally in Lansing, MI April 14, 2011 (DailyKos)

Taking a reach-back look at the Lansing Capitol Rally of the Michigan Chapter of Americans for Prosperity (led by Scott Hagerstrom) last spring, one sees photos of row after row of ball capped, balding older white males, supported by carefully placed courtesy folding chairs. They are angry and frustrated waving provocative signs to prove it's just right to be ginned up for projecting anger and blame on someone else and advantage the Rovian Backroom Boys. Steampotters are ripe for backing the blacklash, then when their handlers have taken all the advantage they can, Tea Party Pot Bellies will be toast!

Staring at the ongoing effects of the worst economic catastrophe of our time, the ruinous, failed Bush regime and its unbearable and destructive rampage of eight years (misdirected wars, unprecedented debt, and unequal taxation) was bad enough; not seeing a clear way out, still forced to confront the seemingly intractable flaws and effects of G.W. Bush cataclysm, has left the worried public to sip the bitter dregs resulting from his bad judgment.

Steampotters are forced to stare at a resultant, potential economic and political collapse worldwide. That's too much for a potbellied TeaPartisan under duress and stress. They're ready for a brawl. But with whom? Their neighbors, their grandchildren, the first responders? The cause of their troubles which has them in a kink? They are supporting the very Corporatist interests that have been eroding their nest eggs and killing their democracy. How odd!

Steampotters are damn mad at the demise of their retirement assets stolen by Wall Street and speculators, the trouble their children are enduring, and the loss of their home equity value-stripped as it was in the Bush Bust of 2008. THEY NEED SOMEONE TO BLAME. They are ready to led by the Kochs MEGA-cash-campaigning. As chance would have it, Koch Brothers had shipped in that unsavory character, Dick Morris - and didn't fetish Dick strut his stuff?

Steaming potbellies are addicted to Right's Noise Machine and Rupert Murdock's pap-and-slap
Actually more than 70% of Republicans with cable access watch FOX News exclusively. Nothing satisfies an angry depressed curmudgeon more than more anger and depression. Bad news fuels fear, resentment and aggression.

As dailies, such as the Detroit News and the Grand Rapids Press, slide down the waste pipes, FOX News enriches itself and its Machiavellian owner. An alien with "bought" power and influence. It's a place of influence and profit FOX and Rupert do not deserve.

This is possible because of these same gullible discontents-the more they are depressed the more they want someone else to ante up and bear their far share of load. Many citizens from out the past paid for the infrastructure that was the life-long support of these Tea Party Pot Bellies-now whiners and malcontents.

The whole attitude is: I've got my "little bit" and I'm scared witless it will be lost to someone else. Their mantra: Me, my son John, his wife and my wife, us four and NO MORE. This kind of self-centered selfishness leaves behind both Christianity and neighborhood democracy.

Given permission to lash out and accost others, goaded on by Svengalis re-pleat with talking point books designed to manipulate and exploit exaggerated blame; as long as it distracts the November voters from the Bush Depression (still in bubble wrap) the danger plays right into the hands of the negativists who inhabit both the Detroit News and the dank dens of the deceitful enemies of public life and service.

Warming the Factories of Manufacturing and the Middleclass: Garland Stove Company's
World's Largest Stove, Postcard Detroit MI 1893 (Michigan Historical Archives)

Amway's Richard M. DeVos Sr. and the Brothers Koch are thought to be Depression proof. However, if they can manipulate the TeaPartisans to do the heavy lifting to lobby to remove regulations, and overturn customer protections, and collective bargaining rights, etc. to greatly benefit them and the other greedy Corporatists - this would be perfect timing.

And to assuage the pent-up anger and the angst tearing at the gut of Tea Potbelliers, what do the current Rad Republicans offer?

Actually Harry Truman laid out the genuine GOP "offers" best:

• Republicans approve of the American farmer, but they are willing to help him go broke.
• They stand four-square for the American home - but not for housing.
• They are strong for labor - but they are stronger for restricting labor's rights.
• They favor minimum wage - the smaller the minimum wage the better.
• They endorse educational opportunity for all - but they won't spend money for teachers or for schools.
• They think modern medical care and hospitals are fine - for people who can afford them.
• They consider electrical power a great blessing - but only when the private power companies get their rake-off.
• They think American standard of living is a fine thing - so long as it doesn't spread to all the people.
• And they admire of Government of the United States so much that they would like to buy it.

Harry T. enjoyed the blunt truth of strongly brewed black coffee in a big cup, not a steamy tea made with the deadly Kool-Aid of the Koch Bros. subversions, et. al. served up in a Koch Industries-made throwaway paper cup.

On the Reader:
History on the Garland Company Giant Stove and what happened to this Michigan landmark.
Gazette posts on the Americans For Prosperity run Tea Party Rally April 14, 2011 pictured above in "Greedy Bros Koch-Bought & Paid for Visi-Galts: The Randian Libertarian Spawn - Gleefully Storm the Gates of the People’s House in Lansing, MI" and "Americans for Prosperity’s Cotton Head Grump Out, High on Motrin 800, Fizzles.

Related Posts:
In Detroit: Resentment, Malice & Roaring Opportunism Ride a Wave of Harsh Tea Party Ideology (April 2012) - Revisit Occupy Detroit: the Tea Party is Different – Hank Payne’s Myopic View (November 2011) - The Occupy Wall Street Activists & Grassroots Tea Party Activists Have a Lot in Common (October 2011) - It Was No Frenzy Island: Neanderthals & the Nerd (Republican Leadership Conference on Mackinac Island) (September 2011) - Teaparty leader: The More We Pay Attention - The More Hopeless it Can Seem, Political Parties Only Exist to Get and Keep Power (February 2011) - Saint Ayn - Extolling Great Evil - Used As Source of Tea Party Political Punch Lines

Original.

In Detroit: Resentment, Malice & Roaring Opportunism Ride a Wave of Harsh Tea Party Ideology

A Scummy Tide of Power-Grabbing & Vengeance Sweeps Over Michissippi (Michigan). The threatening tsunami that is: the powerful have put Detroit in a stagnate Sargasso Sea of neglect for years.  Now the elites blame it all on minorities and labor--trapped and struggling amid the congealed flotsam and debris.

Reckless Abandonment: Corporate logos were removed, but the castaway
company carcasses remain (Fisher Plant - The Moter(less) City 2009)

Over the last decades hundreds of firms have simply walked away from stewardship and management of their real estate and concerns in Detroit.

In the book, "THE RUINS OF DETROIT" and others like it feature pictures of the grand and ornate high rise office buildings, libraries, schools, and hotels just left to rot. This reality sends a signal to the present. In some cases with fixtures and contents in place, we see places as though the management simply walked out, valuable real estate abandoned! And walk out they did!

It wasn't minorities who abandoned the billions dollars of capital assets moldering down as rotting, moldy architecture and as the visually evocative "war zones" comprised of abandoned industrial sites. It was the elites, the powerful, the men of money, and the politically connected who made/allowed this to happen, not the workers and the service staffs.

Putting the "walk-away" abandonment curse on the shoulders of an underclass is not and was not a "class act"; it was and is dishonest--a crime.

The vicious world of the landlord, rampant graft, and the spoils of the speculators is all around. This crisis was and is fueled further by greedy mortgage companies and fraud-promoting banks.

Detroit was deep, deep in trouble before the Great George W. Bush Recession. There were indicators revealing the impact of a devastating Michigan 'One-State-Depression' to be seen everywhere in Detroit prior to fall 2008. Events triggered then have loosed the bonds of civility and escalated urban hopelessness, thus creating a tinderbox for social unrest.

Charlie LeDuff made this salient point in his article, "The Ghost Mayor", March 17, 2012 stating:

"The governor might then use the only stick left in his bag. LET THE CITY DROWN."

"Already vendors and contractors are not getting paid and the city will run out of cash in a month. That means cops, paramedics and tax collectors won't get paid. Ambulances won't get fixed. Parks won't open.

"Under that scenario, you can expect a long, hot, bloody summer."
(emphasis added)

Let’s hope that such is not the case.

-----

Detroit has corporate rot at its very heart. It's former opulence and importance has been replaced with decadence, social decay, crime, and abandonment--all topped with a rich coating of cynicism and blame-speaking as a direct result of corporate malfeasance and neglect. Now, to walk away, to maliciously place exaggerated blame on the current elected officials and the managers of infrastructure (in tatters for years) is perverse.

To exalt at the destruction and ultimate downfall of what remains of this once great international city is a civic sin of huge magnitude and scope.

Golden Age of Upper Class Fun: Downtown Detroit Fisher Building
Penthouse Playground in 1925 (Michigan Historical Society Archive)

'One Tough Nerd' Snyder & Company of corporatists (BLM) have lots of plans. They hope to move in and take over, by dictatorial/undemocratic means. What which remains (be it fallow ground or crumbling ruins) is visioned as theirs to rebuild, making a portion of the city into a renaissance of re-invention. To do this they must do the "down and dirty" to those who for years have been trapped in a city with over three fourths of its residents who are on some form of assistance. Power must transfer directly into their hands.

Can we untangle the city from its mass of floatsam and start a New Detroit?  To do so will take a profound, pro-active commitment, determination, a new vision, and yes, a ocean of capital both financial and human.

On the Reader: 
Observations and iconic images on the blog "The Motor (less) City: Post-industrial Detroit" and Photo Archive.

Related Slates:
"Detroit: Behemoth 'Motor City' Whale Fights for Its Life as Snyder's EM & Scavengers Circle" - "Michigan GOP's Power Grab Thievery: Patterson's 30 Year Jim Crow / EM Plot to Steal Detroit's Royal Jewels & Liquid Assets" and the ongoing Emergency Management Jim Crow / EM Plantation SERIES.


Original.

Revisit Occupy Detroit: the Tea Party is Different – Hank Payne’s Myopic View

This is in Response to Michigan View's Henry Payne's piece "Occupy Detroit: The Tea Party Difference" in Michigan View / Detroit News on October 14, 2011, which was reposted in the National Review on October 16, 2011.

An analysis of Hank Payne's put down of Occupy Detroit comes up short and defective; Payne's bias rules fact.

Here is a breakdown of Henry Payne, Detroit News, Friday Oct 14, 2011, and his wobbly apology for Tea Partyism over and against Occupy Wall Street protests.

HANK: "Detroit, Grand Circus Park - Desperate to show the Left's grassroots, the MSM [Main Stream Media] has taken to comparing the Occupy movement with the tea party. THERE IS NO COMPARISON."
(Emphasis Added)

ANALYSIS: Everywhere comparisons are being made; and the central role of Americans for Prosperity (AFP) fronted by the notorious KOCH BROTHER'S stick puppet, DICK MORRIS, and other backers and paid provocateurs are being outted and discussed.

HANK: "The 99 Percenters are professional protesters. There is nothing new here. Survey the Occupy Detroit crowd and for the most part it is the usual suspects: anti-war protestors, racial grievance activists, left-wing students, unionists. Activism is their avocation - only the theme changes. In 2006 they protested the Iraq War. In 2007, global warming at Live Earth. In 2010, racist cartoons in the New York Post. This spring they protested public sector union reforms in state capitals. Now they protest corporations. They are supported by the usual names: Al Sharpton, Michael Moore, Bob King, UAW, SEIU. They know how to organize - and just as importantly - the MSM sympathizes with them and covers their every move."

ANALYSIS: The Occupy Protests are moving toward a lasting movement, and a movement that will have a significant impact on not only Wall Street, but alter the political universe centered on K Street and in the smoke-filled caucuses of hamstrung politicos.

Cartoonist Hank Payne Warps and Manipulates His Carefully Chosen Materials to Put Down Occupy's Impact

ANALYSIS: Video from the Detroit News on Occupy Detroit (chosen by Payne) is replete with a black woman with classic racial features, (purposefully-the first frame of the set " placed thus, done for maximum racial impact); especially when Hank uses this kind of slanted material as a compare-and-contrast impact piece with the commentary on the Tea Party-business strip protest-at Birmingham, MI.

HANK: "By contrast, what makes the tea party such a compelling story is that it is not your standard protest. It is a true grassroots movement."

ANALYSIS: Hank must CERTAINLY know better! Across the country the Occupy activity has taken hold in the conversations of the 99%ers. They know things are not as they ought to be-not right by any standard, and they want regress of their grievances with the System.

HANK: "Indeed, as it first took shape, the MSM barely gave it a look. Compare the extensive pre-Occupy Detroit coverage in Michigan's media this week to the nearly non-existent coverage of (the larger) tea party protests in Congressional districts in the summer of 2009."

Hank Payne tries to make a logical conclusion, and fails to grasp the factual details of TP vs. Occupy Wall Street dust-up.

BIRMINGHAM TEA PARTY PROTEST

HANK: "In part this was because the liberal MSM is out of touch with the middle class, conservative voter (as the videos above show, these are two very different protestor demographics). But also it was because the tea partiers were new to the protest game. They were soccer moms, they were doctors, and they were retirees who had never protested anything before. They weren't backed by special interest groups."

ANALYSIS: This Payne assertion is patently untrue and a proven misstatement:

1.) The Koch Brothers political machine Americans for Prosperity (AFP) is a group fronting special interests started by oil billionaire David Koch and Richard Fink (a member of the board of directors of Koch Industries). AFP has been accused of funding astroturfoperations but also has been fueling the "Tea Party" efforts. AFP's messages are in sync with those of other groups funded by the Koch Family Foundations and the Koch's other special interest groups, included is A.L.E.C. The American Legislative Exchange Council with upwards of 200 past and former members in the Michigan Legislature.

2.) Karl Rove operations - "Rove is the embodiment of everything the tea party resents. He supported Bush's decision to bail out the banks in 2008, a major bone of contention with deficit hawks. And it was Rove, as White House political adviser, who pushed for some of the most expensive Bush programs, like the  Medicare-prescription-drug bill, the passage of which cornered the troublesome State of Florida for Bush in 2004 but has already cost more than $1 trillion. The national debt nearly doubled under Bush, from $5.7 trillion to $10.6 trillion. Rove knew he had to inoculate himself against tea-party insurrectionists if he was to keep his footing in the party." Source: The New York Magazine, March 2011

3.) Dick Armey's group - Freedom Works - "(L)et us be clear about one thing: The tea party movement is not seeking a junior partnership with the Republican Party, but a hostile takeover of it." Source: the Wall Street Journal in 'The Tea Party Manifesto" on August 17, 2010.

4.) Central to the TP movement: endless promotion of and for the Tea Party - giving time and place and (adding promotional hype) by Rupert's FOX media empire, made/makes the Tea Party a national force.

HANK: "But suddenly faced with a power-hungry, Obamacare-forcing, Democratic Socialist Washington political class intent on poaching their liberties, they rose 'to take back America.'"

ANALYSIS: TPer's organized to defend the Corporate/Congressional/Wall Street status quo, THESE MEGA-MONIED/SPONSORED 'RABBEL' ARE DEFINITELY NOT TAKING AMERICAN FORWARD.

HANK: "They are well on their way to doing so with the tsunami election of 2010 - and now have their eyes on the ultimate prize: the presidency."

ANALYSIS: Take a sharp look at the Republican primary candidates as they go down one pin at a time " the public is not "buying" their extremism and lack of fundamental knowledge of the issues and foreign affairs, and especially their dance away from Wall Street and Financial reform and proscriptive regulations to prevent more fraud and in-your-face abuse.

HANK: "The tea party agenda, however, endangers the special interests of professional protestors. Not surprisingly, they are striking back."

ANALYSIS: Actually the strength and power of the Tea Party has dwindled and been diminished/fractured THE MORE THE 99%ERS SEE THE TEA PARTY IN CLOSE-UP THEY MORE THEY REJECT THEIR ATTITUDE, ANGER, STICK PUPPET LOGIC. The more the people at the real grassroots learn about these angry protesters; pumped by savage, cynical media, the more they distance themselves from those TP types; some of whom showed up at rallies with loaded weapons at-the-ready.

HANK: "That's the meaning of the 99 Percenters. They aren't a liberal grassroots answer to the tea party. They are the Big Government special interests that are threatened by it."

ANALYSIS: Would Hank know a "special interest" if he met one? Everyone, and imagine the size of the 99%ers numbers hundreds of millions of Americans - who are expressing: personal interest in jobs, freedom from oppressive student loans, foreclosures, anger at their inability to obtain small business loans, credit card interest at historic levels labeled "usury", and seeing the huge ($2 trillion corporate and 1%ers hold-out of capital from the marketplace) CAN BE LUMPED INTO A "SPECIAL INTEREST".

SEE ALSO: Hank Payne's Suggested Video posted on YouTube in August of 2009, with the title "Tea Party Protest Birmingham Michigan" - Introduced BTW by the former Head of the MacComb County Republican Party (circa 2004-2006) saying "... this is another legitimate 'grassroots' gathering...."


The OWS events are morphing into a significant social and political movement across America and into all parts of the world. Michael Moore's "Capitalism: A Love Story" has come into its own, as a model for what must be dealt with:

"WE WANT OUR MONEY DOMINATED POLITICAL SYSTEM BACK, AND WE WANT IT NOW!"

"WE WANT SCORES OF SLEAZY FINANCIAL FRAUDS AND CRIMINALS TO GO TO JAIL!"

"WE WANT 'PLAIN ENGLISH' TO BE THE STANDARD FOR INVESTMENT INSTRUMENTS, BUSINESS PRACTICE, AND PROBITY IN FINANCE AND INVESTMENT INSTITUTIONS!"

These Occupy Wall Street (OWS) issues and many more have grabbed the attention of the general population, whom polling shows side, not with Hank Payne or the TP, but with the OWS protests. Even with the recent removal of Occupy from the Wall Street, NYC park, the polling shows that 58% of New York State supports their movement over and against the establishment. 

Occupy Wall Street proclaims today:

"We are here because we believe a better world is possible. We are willing to endure mistreatment, if by doing so WE CAN HELP RE-ENFRANCHISE THE 99% AND RECLAIM OUR DEMOCRACY FROM THE STRANGLEHOLD OF WALL STREET AND THE TOP ONE PERCENT." 
(emphasis added)

Original Part 1 and Part 2.

The Occupy Wall Street Activists & Grassroots Tea Party Activists Have a Lot in Common

What has become clearly obvious is that much unites the concerns of the Tea Party leaning Americans and Americans of the Occupy Wall Street protest- many of their individual concerns are in many ways shared.

Both Groups are vastly unhappy and uncomfortable with corporations and ineffective and hidebound congressional members in this our time of our ongoing economic and jobs crisis. Change is demanded.

The one and only Independent Member of Congress, the Honorable Bernie Sanders has succinctly listed Six Demands to be made of Wall Street and they are worthy of our attention:

1. If a financial institution is too big to fail, it is too big to exist,
2. Put a cap on credit card interest rates to end usury,
3. The Federal Reserve needs to provide small businesses in America with the same low-interest loans it gave to foreign banks,
4. Stop Wall Street oil speculators from artificially increasing gasoline and heating oil prices,
5. Demand that Wall Street invest in the job-creating productive economy, instead of gambling on worthless derivatives,
6. Establish a Wall Street speculation fee on credit default swaps, derivatives, stock options and futures.

More from Sanders statement:

"Making these reforms will not be easy. After all, Wall Street is clearly the most powerful lobbying force on Capitol Hill. From 1998 through 2008, the financial sector spent over $5 billion in lobbying and campaign contributions to deregulate Wall Street. More recently, they spent hundreds of millions more to make the Dodd-Frank bill as weak as possible, and after its passage, hundreds of millions more to roll back or diluter the stronger provisions in that legislation."

Sanders Summary of the Wall Street Debacle:

"Let us never forget that as a result of the greed, recklessness, and illegal behavior on Wall Street, this country was plunged into the worst economic downturn since the Great Depression. Millions of Americans lost their jobs, homes, and life savings as the middle class underwent an unprecedented collapse. Sadly, despite all the suffering caused by Wall Street, there is no reason to believe that the major financial institutions have changed their ways, or that future financial disasters and bailouts will not happen again.

"More than three years ago, Congress rewarded Wall Street with the biggest taxpayer bailout in the history of the world. Simultaneously but unknown to the American people at the time, the Federal Reserve provided an even larger bailout. The details of what the Fed did were kept secret until a provision in the Dodd-Frank Act that I sponsored required the Government Accountability Office to audit the Fed's lending programs during the financial crisis."

There is more in these 6 REFORM PROPOSALS that unite both genuine grassroots, independent Tea Partiers - and those now thousands of The Silent Majority who are intent on seeing real changes, and very soon.

Did you get that? THERE IS MORE THAT UNITES THAN DIVIDES PEOPLE WHO WANT TO TAKE BACK AMERICA TO A CORE SET OF VALUES AND AN HONEST GOVERNMENT - overseeing and enforcing honest and business/finance practices which once again will carry us forward.


Original.

The Lansing Capitol Aviary: Peacocks Claiming to be Carrier Pigeons

Ignore the citizens & claim you know best how to govern without their participation: Snyder's Socialist "Central Planning" comes home to roost.

At least twice the Michigan Public said via polling by a 2 to 1 margin that they would accept and favor an increase in taxes to sustain the state and its many vital functions until this present economic distress passes. Never once did the Rick Snyder led TeaPublican majority respond or accept the will of the people -constituents they boast they represent and know best how to act on their behalf.

If a small increase of .3 to .5 percent increase in Michigan's income tax would have carried the state through the crisis that TeaPublicans egregiously and fraudulently used to put through a horrendous tax increase on the elderly, the poor, and pensioners.

The TeaPublicans are tone deaf to the cries of the unemployed-over a half a million Michigan workers without jobs and without prospects of jobs. These stone cold newbies and go-along remnants of former elections (being deathly afraid of being TP'ed in the next primary) have rolled-over to become lap dogs to extremism and paroxysms of anger and reprisal legislation.

A SIGNIFICANT "DEMOCRATIC" DEFICIT
In fact, the two profs uncovered a significant "democratic deficit":

"In Michigan, where the Governor's approval ratings hover at just over 32 percent as of August 2011, IT'S QUITE OBVIOUS THAT VOTERS ARE NOT AT ALL HAPPY WITH THE IDEOLOGY-BASED "FIXES" BEING IMPLEMENTED BY POLS. Lax and Phillips write, "[S]tates effectively translate majority opinion into policy only about half the time, a clear 'failing' grade on the congruence test. This is true even when majorities are large and when salience is high, which raises significant questions about the democratic performance of state government." This is certainly the case in Lansing, where POLICIES BEING IMPLEMENTED DO NOT represent THE RELATIVELY LIBERAL OPINIONS OF THE MAJORITY OF THE VOTERS."
(emphasis added)

SEE: "New Study Shows Michigan Ranks in Top 10 Among States in Which State and Local Politicos Ignore Public Opinion" by P.D. Lesko (As covered by A2Politico October 10, 2011 or READ the original REPORT).

PROMISED CUTS VERSUS FEATHERING THEIR OWN NESTS
The public wants to see the unrealistic ' bennies' of State legislators (serve 6 years in the legislature and get lifetime benefits) cut. So what actually happened ?

Tim Skubick reports:

"Whatever happened to the legislative mantra that all benefits for public workers be tied to those in the private sector where getting vested in six years is only a dream?

When the Michigan House took up this bill, THE MEASURE WOULD HAVE ENDED THIS BENEFIT FOR 109 OF THE 110 MEMBERS. In the state senate 32 of the 38 senators would have been exempted from the law. In other words they would keep their health care from the state until they turned 65.

Well a curious thing happened as the House measure moved around the capitol rotunda and arrived in the Upper Chamber a.k.a. the House of Lords or the state senate.

Instead of one representative keeping his benefits, the bill was changed to include 14. And instead of 32 senators, the number was kicked up to 36.

There must have been a reason for that and it was, MANY HOUSE AND SENATE FOLKS DIDN'T WANT TO LOSE WHAT THEY HAD, SO THEY WROTE THE BILL TO PROTECT THEMSELVES."
(emphasis added)

SEE: Tim Skubick in "Michigan Lawmakers Pull a Fast One on Health Care Benefits" October 11, 2011.

SO DOWN THOSE PEACOCK FEATHERS !

Original.

It Was No Frenzy Island: Neanderthals & the Nerd (Republican Leadership Conference on Mackinac Island)

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.


Original.

Absolute Michissippi : All Business/Profit All The Time

Absolute, peat tinged 18 yr old Scotch Whiskey, and Cuban Cigars...

It's all Celebrations on elite, remote Mackinac Island this coming week for the "business bail out" victors. Gov. Snyder will arrive with the Brinks horse drawn lorries laden down with nearly $3 billion in booty, a neatly gift wrapped taxpayer bailout bundle, to be laid dutifully into the hands of his biggest backers and contributors.
Business trumps the little guy once again.

A huge new tax is forced on the seniors and elderly, cuts to the tune of hundred of millions to public schools serving our children, heartless cuts to the unemployed by removal of a quarter of their access to unemployment benefits, the imposition of new and more draconian powers to the Emergency Finance Managers, and many other detrimental steps in the Nerd Herd's downward spiral of quality of life now being inflicted on the ordinary family and the workers here in Rick's Michassippi.

Served by smartly dressed Jamaicans and sporting designer polo shirts, the kings and princes of Michissippian business elite will prowl the green, green grass of the manicured greens at the Grand Hotel, howling with glee and fattened with assurance of a nearly 3 billion bailout for their bottomlines in the Snyder Budget for the next 2 years.

It's the Michigan Chamber of Commerce on parade on the island. We won! We Won! At long last, we've reeked revenge on our perennial political opponents and have now we've spoils of this battle all to ourselves. Snyder and crew have just fattened the pot, swilled the trough, and stoked the pokey for business-at the huge expense of the common man and woman here in Snyder's re-invention, Michissippi.

But there is more to the story. This windfall, product of pure partisan blitz-legislation, has a viper's sting in its very soul. Huge new taxes were raised. Many, who had pledged to Grover Norquest et. al. never to raise "new taxes," are trying to hide behind their political-speak Speedos the fact that (what they would love to see stick in the minds of voters was a "tax shift" is), will always be, a humungous new "tax hike." Got that, A HUGE NEW TAX HIKE. Inevitably, the naked truth is out.

Across the state names are being outted: Republicans, both Senators and House members, are showing up on recall lists. Who's sponsoring these recalls? The True Believers. The rock-ribbed Tea Party advocates, who are purists and determined to see that these who betrayed the cause of lower taxes, smaller government, and more local control pay the ultimate political price-a ignominious defeat, recall from office!

Puff, Sip and Swill-on Chamberites. Your victory party is soon over. Look sharp for the proverbial handwriting on the wall. You've won, but at an incalculable, exacting cost.  

Original Post.

In Michassippi; With or Without Unions, TeaPublicans Have Come to Hate Teachers

Response to Ingrid Jacques in "Teachers feel the heat" in the Michigan View, Detroit / Mackinac News on May 20, 2011.

Chirpy Jabberwocky Jacques writes about teaching-stand-alone-outside-a-union- as a right wing, beguiled "teacher" hoping to separate herself from all teachers' unions. Ingrid states that among suspect organizations "teachers unions" are "some of the worst offenders."

Mouthing the "bumper sticker" style slogans of Frank Luntz-speak, via Andrew Coulson, anti-teacher association operative for the infamous Koch Bros.' CATO Institute of hate and dissension, Ingrid makes her assumptions which are fallacious.

Teachers may only be dedicated and pure if they are "STAND ALONE" in relation to their employer, as we may be sure, Ingrid feels she is. ("Teachers feel the heat", Ingrid Jacques,DetNews, 5/20/11)

If teachers, however, choose to associate with other teachers in a "union"; then they summarily may be dismissed from status and vilified as corrupted; such as the Mackinac Center has been so well-known as propagandizing here in Michassippi - the new Snyderesque "state" where teachers are stripped of rights and status, radically reduced in salaries and collaboration; as proposed in pending Michigan Tea-partisan legislation; and as projected by the on-going TeaPublican proto-pogrom (yes, this is becoming the fitting term), a purposeful and vicious, on-going attack on instructors/mentors (as a specific category of persons and professionals) unworthy of public and political support or esteem, subject to being shunned and legislated against.

Teachers, who are targeted for reprisals and revenge for their association together for the betterment of public schools, neighborhood public school children, and for their standing in their professional chosen association, are much maligned and subject to nasty "trash talk." The blogs of the Detroit/Mackinac Center News are a continuous and egregious example.

If we read Jabberwocky Jacques correctly:

• A small business person is degraded and tainted by membership in the Chamber of Commerce-a powerful lobby with overweening influence in government.
• An attorney has less probity if she/he is a member of the State Bar which defends the rights and privileges of lawyers and takes political stances favoring the legal profession.
• A manufacturer is without credibility and stature if it belongs to the National Association of Manufacturers (NAM)-a group set up to collectively defend and promote their forward progress as industries.
• A doctor is discredited and undermined as a reliable professional if she/he belongs to the American Medical Association which lobbies for her/his concerns and the physician's livelihood, working environment, and professional advancement.
• A legislator is to be discounted as dishonest and forthright if they belong to the "union" known as the American Legislative Exchange Council (A.L.E.C.) which works diligently to convey into the law the wishes of its dominate corporate control structure.
• An Evangelical or Strict Catholic is less credible or endowed with a questionable moral standing by becoming a member and participant in the strict union with individuals and groups known as Right-to-Life - armed with a powerful agenda.
• A Christian Radio operator/owner looses respect and moral high ground simply when she/he joins in with the National Religious Broadcasters (NRB) in an association/union promoting the goals and objectives, the financial and regularity environment of religious broadcasting.

All this we "just love and admire teachers" comes with a caveat" Just don't let us catch teachers coming together in an association which effects change or promotes laws and legislation that enhances and protects public education, neighborhood schools, and pupils. Should you do that... we will turn on you with a righteous vengeance. Or as one marauding newbie TeaPublican has said, "I don't care if I get don't re-elected, I'm here to do God's work." And oh the strange "god" work he does!

TeaPublicans obviously find it easy to HATE TEACHERS for any variety of reasons-unions being only one of their chosen categories.

If you remember only one thing Ingrid, hating teachers will include you.

Original Post.

Teaparty leader: The More We Pay Attention - The More Hopeless it Can Seem, Political Parties Only Exsist to Get and Keep Power

Commentary on Wendy Day piece "The four phases of the Tea Party" on Detroit / Mackinac News web site Michigan View on May 18, 2011

Opines Wendy Day, Common Sense in Government, Day was instrumental in the first of Michigan's Tea Party organization:

"Politicians will lie and manipulate us. They will go to Lansing and Washington and make really stupid decisions....

"We marched into the streets in 2009 full of vigor and hope. We were angry and ready to do battle with someone. For a year we developed our groups and tryied [sic] to learn all we could about how to save our Republic - but then we realized things were not changing as quickly as we hoped."

Wendy summarizes her views:

"Our country wasn't going to be saved in one election cycle. The battle is almost too big to wrap our arms around and the more we pay attention, THE MORE HOPELESS IT CAN SEEM. Politicians will lie and manipulate us. They will go to Lansing and Washington and make really stupid decisions.

"Tea Party groups have worked to find a path that they think will lead to some success. Some groups are working to change the Republican Party from the inside. BUT THEY ARE FINDING THAT POLITICAL PARTIES ONLY EXIST TO GET AND KEEP POWER. The Republican Party is committed to electing people with "R" behind their name."

This being said: What does the Tea Party do about the new huge income tax levied on the citizens of Michigan? What does the Tea Party do to limit the current rapid expanse of State Control over local government? What is the Tea Party's official position on the radical expansion of state dictatorial powers as in the alarmingly expanded office of the Emergency Finance Manager?

Now that the Tea Party has been instrumental in the election of many Michigan Legislators: What power of influence does it have over the new legislature? We thought it was the purpose of the Tea Party to limit government and prevent new taxes.

Were we wrong?

Original Post.

My, My... How the TeaPublicans Revel Over Revenue Deficits

Response to a piece by Dr. Gary L. Wolfram (Hillsdale / Mackinac Center) in "Leadership is the difference" on the Michigan View on May 13, 2011.

The smacks of high 5's and the thumping of chest bumping echoed from the bowels of the People's House as diehard teapartians took to celebration over their take-downs accomplished in Nerd Snyder's budget proposal victory last Thursday. It all fits the "drown the baby in the bathtub" MO of these harsh anti-public service creatures.

Snide Gollum of all the trolls, at Mackinac Center, is Professor G. L. Wolfram. From his fertile Rolodex brain, trained and muddled deep in extremist ideology and "gottcha politics" comes this wonderful insight:

"As a certain Presidential chief of staff once said, YOU SHOULDN'T LET A CRISIS GO TO WASTE. We have a chance to introduce structural reforms on our educational system, our business tax, our corrections system, and our Medicaid system because THE BUDGET PROBLEMS HAVE FORCED AN EXAMINATION THAT WOULD NOT OTHERWISE HAVE TAKEN PLACE. THE BUDGET CUTS CAN BEST BE ACCOMPLISHED BY ADDRESSING HOW SERVICES ARE DELIVERED AND WHICH SERVICES ARE PROPERLY THE ROLE OF STATE GOVERNMENT. It will be interesting to see how this ends up."

Prof. Gary follows the path set by Milton Friedman and others. These cuts benefit corporatists the Koch Brothers et. al. and are designed to enhance the bottomlines of business at the hard hits expense of many others, including the middle class of Michigan.

Class warfare is on the rise in Michigan and its results are not yet fully known, but are predictable and tragic.


The "bums rush" to ramrod the Snyder Budget and agendas (assembled and implemented by the Mackinac Center, Koch Bros. Americans for Prosperity, special interests e.g. Michigan's Chambers of Commerce, The American Legislative Exchange Council "model" legislation with its "fill in the blanks and file" format, and the remnants of the crusty old Englerites (given cushy, high-salary positions in the Nerd's brain trust) had to be put in place quickly, before the people of Michigan come to fully understand its impact and implications on their economic and social well-being.

Even now newspapers across the state are fleshing out the harsh details how the new taxes and service cuts will impinge on the lives of the poor, the elderly, and school children. It's not a happy or pretty scenario.
The rush to pass Snyder's budget proposal legislation and unprecedented TAX HIKES had to fall in place before the public learns that the upward trends coming out of the work of the Granholm Era and the early signs of national economic recovery under President Obama are set to yield increased state revenues. Increased revenues are a problem for Snyder's team.

Now the Nerd's Nixon wants to play "piggy bank with the potential increases and keep them from plugging the humongous holes Nixon and the Nerd created in public education, public service everywhere, corrections, and the like across our state.

These are desperate times we were told over and over. Now, rather than act in targeted ways to sustain such programs as public education Snyder's team will demand a "rainy day" piggy bank. Rainy day, we have one now! But if the love is of deficits that produce crisis and allow for radical cuts and attacks on programs and groups viewed as arch-foes (in the manner of the Mackinac Center and such lower lights as Professor Gary), then let the deficits and the shortfalls pile up!

Don't the TeaPublicans just love the opportunities this crisis has developed. 

Out-state influences are also in the game. Never rule out the Heritage Foundation, Koch's CATO, and the word weasels at Heartland, whose spokesman made this searing cynical comment about our Nerd:

"No one could have anticipated such bold budget moves after hearing Snyder's embarrassingly awful state of the state speech, which sounded more like a middle school nerd asking out the best-looking girl in class than One Tough Nerd our state was promised. Sometime between then and now, THE GOVERNOR PULLED ON HIS BIG-BOY PANTS and offered real long-term solutions to Michigan's heretofore insurmountable problems."

Enter now further evidence of misguided "rush to pass" a huge tax-increasing budget, Snyderism on steroids: The Detroit News headline reads, "Business tax cut will wipe out rising Michigan revenue, House agency says." The story outlines the following: "An improving economy means the state could realize up to $700 million more in revenue this year, according to financial estimates by the House and Senate fiscal agencies.
"But the growth in this year's revenue won't make up for the loss of $1.8 billion in 2012 as the result of the elimination of the Michigan Business Tax."

One Michigan daily right up front with this analysis: "It's a big bet that tax cuts will promote job creation and economic growth in Michigan. Critics are right: There is no way to predict or quantify how many jobs the business tax cut will create, and Snyder hasn't attempted to do so."

Other Outcomes? Reports an expert business news: "You can bet, for instance, that if an improved Michigan economy results in a surplus of tax revenues, there will be intense pressure by Republicans to cut taxes again, rather than increase spending on higher education or cities."

Prof. Wolfram holds forth: "Governor Snyder, Speaker Bolger, and Majority Leader Richardville will face political pushback from plenty of special interests as they put state government back on a path to providing basic services and make Michigan a place where entrepreneurs are welcome. It's up to us to let them know that we believe in a government limited to the protection of life, liberty and property, individual responsibility.

"With determination, Michigan will lead the nation in liberty and prosperity."

This above is Wolfarm's professorial clap trap, pure ivy-choked arcane academic conjecture, Libertarian pipe-dreaming and back steps prattle. With this kind of hectoring, Wolfram encourages the TeaPublicans to remain harsh and uncaring, injurious to our state.

Michiganders have lives to lead and real work to do of the type Prof. Gary knows nothing of. Move aside and let us get on with our lives.
Original Post.

Michigan’s TeaPublicans Have Just Raised Your Taxes by Nearly 2 Billion Dollars to Bailout Their Business Buddies Without Proving Why...

Michigan’s TeaPublicans Have Just Raised Your Taxes by Nearly 2 Billion Dollars to Bailout Their Business Buddies Without Proving Why Business Needs This Massive “Gift” of Cash

A malignant miasma has overtaken Michigan Legislative Republicans. This party, so opposed to "new taxes," has just A-bombed a sizable section of the state with a massive tax increase, a nearly 2 billion dollar "gift"/"bailout" to business interests-now firmly in total control of all four branches of Michigan governance:
1. The State House, 2. The State Senate, 3. The Executive Branch, and 4. The Michigan Supreme Court.

Stonecold Ugly is the rule of the day.

Radicalized Republicans, known as TeaPublicans, have become the owners of a massive tax increase on a defenseless section of the public: The old, the poor, the school children. Passage of Snyder's budget proposal yesterday literally stolen from them an unprecedented-targeted tax takings.

The "bum's rush" is on, with much more to follow.

Particularly, Snyder wanted his budget passed before next week's report that there is a sizable uptick in revenue from recent economic activity.

Two deceptive elements included in the Nerd's budget are: The clever K-16 treatment (lumping into the K-12 budget higher ed) of the $650 million school fund surplus, which coupled with the uptick in collectable revenues (about to be released) would offset, to a large degree, the harsh cuts to school funding imposed and inflicted by anti-public education GOP Teapartisans.

Specious is the Snyder Nerd-O-nomic claim that this massive taxation is "fair." It destroys the Nerd's claim that his budget-based on a huge tax increase for a targeted group-includes, somehow, a "shared sacrifice" on the part of business.

There's no sacrifice involved here for businesses, but there is a real possibility of dozens of "Kalkaskas" statewide.


Original Post.

Americans for Prosperity’s Cotton Head Grump Out, High on Motrin 800, Fizzles.

Yesterday's GRAND GRUMP OUT, with a tiny, few dozen "Mad Mobsters" (as one sign in the tiny gathering proudly proclaimed) was a HUGH HUMILIATING FAILURE.

And to believe Snyder & the green pea legislature are DEADLY AFRAID of this motley crew of naysayer fans of the notorious "paid lady-toe sucker"- FOX's weasel-Dick Morris, and the Brothers Koch-- little-known behind-the-scenes manipulators of public policies and avid promoters of useful pro-corporate agitators.

What can we learn from this Mackinac Center/Americans for Prosperity/Tea-publican PR disaster? 

This "NO NEW TAXES/AXE GOVERNMENT GROUP which has been touted (as so much to be feared by newly elected officials-now sold out to BIG MONEY and the McMasters led TAXHATERS) is really NOT that POWERFUL.

So why all the homage? What the voters of Michigan really wanted was a change from the Granholm/Bishop/Dillon deadlock debacle. Desperate for a return to good government, they voted for CHANGE. In exchange these voters GOT SOLD OUT to two unknown Lucky Sperm Club Billionaires, backers & funders of Americans for Prosperity- the Koch Brothers. These are two Libertarian/CATO troublemaking Corporatists with giant greed-driven desire to rule the country, fascist style.

Voting for what they called "CHANGE," the Teapartians have brought Michigan CHAOS AND CORRUPTION. 

What is their strength? Michigan's Tea Parties Delivered A PITIFULLY INSIGNIFICANT GATHERING OF CIVIC VULTURES

What a sight! A thin cotton-head smathering of grumpy old men, assisted by personal lawn chairs, drew a small circle around AG Bill Schuette and SOS Ruth Johnson looking out over a crowd of arthritic dozens. The organizers included careered second-tier political hacks, whio did what they could to make awaken the dozers and them gin up.

Background literature claims there are 50,000 members(?) of AFP in Michigan-a movement backed by such folks as Amway, Kochs, the Wal-mart Waltons' billions, and so dearly loved by the Detroit News/Mackinac Center consortium.

All headliner Dick Morris and crew could muster, in response to the previous day's tens of thousands of energetic and mobile workers, was a feeble klatch of aged aginners? How humiliating, yet revealing! 

Bill and Ruth attempted to center focus of the disproportionate number of TV news video crews on themselves (TV crews were left to make something-out-of-nothing for themselves for the 5 0'clock news cycle, having driven many long miles to cover this event) in a desperate attempt to justify their appearance at this giant fizzle--a billionaire's Teapartisan event with scant attendance or energy, gone flat.

Michigan's new Attorney General and Secretary of State were OBLIGED TO BE THERE YESTERDAY. For them it was A PAYBACK to the Koch Brothers division of the Tea Party- funded, controlled, and fronted by the Koch's Americans for Prosperity. 

It was from these followers of the Koch's that Schuette and Johnson clamored for backing, sought support, at the cantankerous 201O Michigan GOP nominating Convention last fall. In a divisive and hard fought battle with rivals, Schuette and Johnson had to win over, by selling out, to Tea-publicans in order to be allowed slots on the GOP's slate for the statewide offices they sought, which in turn allowed them to appear on the Republican ticket in November where they were elected.

Over in Wisconsin a parallel civic war between the Koch-backed Tea-Publicans and the working Middle Class has struggled in a highly visible nationally televised imbroglio involving battle after battle and rally after rally. It's all part of a national coup mounted by factions including the billionaire Koch's, Heritage Foundation, Michigan's Mackinac Center, rogue Libertarians, Kochs' CATO, and a ragtag assemblage of Know Nothings-all constantly egged on by the slick Newt Gingrich and Grover Norquist.


Original Post.

Greedy Bros Koch-Bought & Paid for Visi-Galts: The Randian Libertarian Spawn - Gleefully Storm the Gates of the People’s House in Lansing, MI

Commentary on Americans for Prosperity arranged Tea Party Rally in Lansing on April 14, 2011.


Greed mars man's earliest defiant quip was a departure from God's plan for mankind: "Am I my brother's keeper?"

Today, haughty and aggressive mavens and devotees of a "godless" Ayn Rand dain to gather on the Lansing capital lawn to demonstrate, to the bodaciously broadcast to the entire populace the grand scope of their rebellion against paying their rightful share in civic order and loudly lauding their pride in personal irresponsibility.

Tea Party rogues should be contributing citizens and taxpayers-problem solvers not trouble makers! Responsible Citizenship is vitally important to the common good of Michigan, local community and brotherhood.

Dick Morris and the "GOING GALT" - "JUST LEAVE US ALONE" rabble have captured the Michigan Republican Party. 

The threat that Tax Party rabble rousers have engendered is purposeful, it is intended to force a "John Galt" rebellion on Michigan thereby inflicting harm on the institutions of the state, turning away the needy, the poor, the elderly, and further punishing the already unemployed (400,000) with less help. This rally calls for a somber dirge, not a wild-eyed celebration of Know Nothing triumphism by radical tax-haters.

Perchance we ask, why shouldn't some delusional individuals be caught up in the current angst, anger and confusion? We've seen such before. We are now being reminded of other cults that arose in the land, that had in their misshapened mindsets. Cultist ardently belived in revolutionary "good they would do" in compliant submission to the exaggerated perception created by their cunning leaders. Such cult movements have arisen out of a yearning for a "shortcut" to more personal power outside the rules and order of democracy and the rule of law which underpin a just, functional, and caring society. We have recently been reminded of other cults e.g. the Ku Klux Klan which marched, 17,000 strong, on Lansing in the 1920's to express their anger and fear, attempting by doing so to call attention to their regressive agendas. This recollection is not to equate the Koch created and owned Americans for Prosperity, Dick Armey's Teapartisans, and associated groups gathered today with the Klan per se; it is but to warn; extravagant and radical deviation from the personal part we all must play in the welfare of our community and stubborn withholding of our caring attention to our fellowmen are on the slick and selfish path to chaos and ruin.

"Going Galt" is going to godless ruin! 

Be warned. We should not glory in repeating the error of serious destabilizing regression into the annals of dangerous ideologies in the regretful past. Tearing down is much easier than building up. Neglect of civic institutions and proper government is much easier, and less costly than their proper maintenance and enhancement.

Ayn Rand's Visi-Galts, marching on Lansing today, are entirely convinced that they and they alone can make things "better" by cutting down America and Michigan-as we have known it. They are activated because they feel their property and assets are threatened by government and the hated tax. Fixing things civic is not in their toolboxes. They are radical "Taxhaters." This could, and can only, happen because of the Wall Street/Bankster economic crisis (brought on by complete and utter dedication to the worship of Corporate Selfishness and Greed) has undermined our nation's stability and way of life. It is true: There is great turmoil and there are great fears. These Tea Party/Koch Libertarians, political usurpers, all glory in their opportunity created by this great historic economic crisis.

The Visi-Galts, the Teapartisan/civic barbarians, fervently denying personal responsibility to the community, selfish and greedy, thrive on fear and aggression which enhance their campaign. Disaster Capitalism suits Teapartiasns in their delusions.

The Tea Party rally today is a neo-pagan bacchanalia; a bold display worshiping their "godless" goddess, Ayn Rand, creator of the factious John Galt. - It's an UGLY & UNHOLY veneration of SUPER SELFISHNESS drawn across the background of our monument: The Peoples'House.


Original Post.

Saint Ayn - Extolling Great Evil - Used As Source of Tea Party Political Punch Lines

A "godless" Goddess becomes the Tea Party's Saint Ayn. This week's Michigan Tea Party Rally goers gloat that they have all become, in essence, " John Gaults".

Going Gault is all the rage. Greed, selfishness, and double dealing have so benighted and beguiled this Tea Party Libertarian (maximum freedom, minimum government) faction that they are intent on staging a Lansing Capitol steps rally glorifying a complete fiction. They purport to thus reveal the real character of a "true American hero" who never lived outside the musty pages of a huge tome of godless blather. How has St. Ayn become a rally point to further the Tea Party tax starvatin of civic society? Through Delusion.

If unchecked, the strident demands of those who cotton to the howls of this populist insurgency will take the country over the edge. To so strip down Michigan and the country, as is planned by the rancorous Tea factions, may well take the state and national economy over the edge, beyond a double dip recession into a true modern economic depression. The impact of such an event would be catastrophic in degree and intensity.

Tea Party Politics Are Unsustainable and Dangerous 

Ordinary Americans, regular Michiganders, want a working government, they want an honest government, they want a caring government. Michiganders have expressed, in recent statewide polling, that they would support an INCREASE IN TAXES to get the state through the present crisis. This sentiment has fallen on arrogantly deaf Teapartisan ears.

Concerned citizens clearly understand that good government comes with a price tag.

Our caring citizens know that, in this modern age, the costs of health care are horrendous; spiraling out of control-even for the insured. They know that providing a safety net for some is essential.

Sensible citizens know and want many kinds of service (necessities) that only government can provide:
1) Well-maintained highways, bridges and roads
2) Affordable colleges and universities,
3) Excellent public schools in the neighborhood,
4) Care for veterans given by employees of government not mercenary care providers,
5) Professional police forces and able firefighters,
6) Safe food and drugs,
7) Honest measures for gasoline purchases,
8) Regulated investments,
9) Federal insurance on savings,
10) A highly skilled national disease control agency,
11) National defense,
12) Maintenance and construction of national monuments,
13) Wildlife preserves, greenways and parks,
14) Standards for safe drilling for oil and gas,
15) High standards protection by regulation and inspection of our aging nuclear power plants,
16) Clean water and air,

And much more....
Tea Party Dogma; "no new taxes" and "cuts-only budgeting" are disrespectful and dead set to remove from our lives many of the qualities of the services and standards listed above. There is no going back to their idealized "freedoms" in a primitive world of governance Teapartisans fancy-the world of Going Gault. Paying taxes makes them very angry! They firmly, yet wrongly, believe they can go it alone; no reverence for common goals or community good.

Yet, honest politicians, where you can find them, know that we find ourselves victims of much recent bad policy and corrupted leadership. No one speaks of G.W. Bush. The blunders and bad judgment of his tenure are anathema, even to conservative Republicans. They act as though Bush II never existed, and deny the heavy burden he placed on us. It is the greatest Republican hypocrisy not to own the immense damage done America by George W. Bush, et al..

GWB was not a fiction. His legacy is a tremendous dead weight on our land. His war making, his overspending, and lack of restraint on corruption, his unprecedented running up the national debt, and inability to deal with fraud on Wall Street and in the nation's largest banks; all this lingers like a dead albatross hung on the national spirit and decimating the nation's economy.

What was done with TARP, automaker and bank bailouts, was in direct response to George W. Bush's ineptitude and failure to lead, to act appropriately. Shifting the emphasis on Bush's rightful portion of a unprecedented national debt, putting it on the present administration is specious. It will take years to recover from the origins of our national debt under Bush. It will years to extract ourselves from the Near Eastern turmoil and Asian war. The regional Mediterranean/Arab unrest agitated by the Bush Doctrine is most alarming and dangerous.

"Who is John Gault?"  Ayn Rand 

If we are to hail a "John Gault" to lead us out of this our national morass, it won't be because of a new film flick extolled by Ron Paul and the Tea Party, depicting the godless, atheistic, and anti-society rants that come ripped from the fiction filled novel, Atlas Shrugged and the twisted mind of Alisa Zinov'yevna Rosenbaum, (1905 "1982), known to most as the beguiling Ayn Rand.

Enlightenment, will come from a real man who will lead America out of its distress with adroit skills and great dedication. He will be man not given to fatuous fictions:

"Man-every man-is an end in himself, not a means to the ends of others; he must live for his own sake, neither sacrificing himself to others nor sacrificing others to himself; he must work for his rational self-interest, with the achievement of his own happiness as the highest moral purpose of his life." - Ayn Rand

There you have it. The Randian antithesis of the Judeo-Christian ethic: John Gault does what is "right in his own eyes" ergo "his own happiness" is the "highest moral purpose of his life." One man alone is more important than his place in family, religious community, the public commons or join endeavors.

How does this fit the Michigan GOP/Tea Party's brouhaha? The Teapartisan Mantra: Paying taxes makes me unhappy, thus it is not in my personal, individualistic "self-interest," it must be evil. I will not pay what may be called "my share" to maintain and enhance community, it's my money and the government taking it by taxation is coercion. How benighted! Would the GOP/Tea Party have us believe: A man has no real responsibility outside himself and his own selfish greed? Ayn Rand Raises Egoism to a Virtue.

"I am not primarily an advocate of capitalism, but of egoism; and I am not primarily an advocate of egoism, but of reason. If one recognizes the supremacy of reason and applies it consistently, all the rest follows."
-- Ayn Rand, September 1971 in "Brief Summary", The Objectivist

Original Post.

To the Original Tea Party Members of Our Republic We Owe Our Liberties...

"We are reluctant to admit that we owe our liberties to men of a type that today we hate and fear -- unruly men, disturbers of the peace, men who resent and denounce what Whitman called 'the insolence of elected persons' -- in a word, free men."
-- Gerald W. Johnson (1890-1980)

However to corporate servants like governors Snyder, Walker, Kasich and we owe much resistance, for they are the elected men of "insolence," against such sell-outs it was the Founding Tea Party leaders became "unruly men, disturbers of the peace..."

The leaders of workers' associations laid down their lives and their occupations in order to achieve a voice in their workplaces and a seat at the counting house table on behalf of their fellows-the common men.

Now these brazen Retro-Republican Governors, backed, funded and encouraged by such as the Brothers Koch, the wealthy Waltons, and the Amway clan, in our hour of great economic woe, seek to lock the workers and public servants out of their place in the commons.

These wealthy elites attempt to bar the workers from their place in the bill-making legislative halls of states (via Koch funded A.L.E.C. private/corporate serving legislative members, inserting A.L.E.C. -ala cart bill writing into state law) across the country.

Such corporate benefiting, usurpation of democratic process has virtually denied ordinary Americans' their voice in the workplace. A.L.E.C. private legislating has given great advantage to corporations in all areas of the workplace, elections, and in the arenas of governance and public finance. Even resulting in Michigan in direct take-over of local governmental units by corporate firms being given the powers of Emergency Finance Managers.

Yet:
- Who harvested the grain, that made the dainty tarts and goodies on the table at Vanderbilt's Biltmore?
- Who dug the sooty coal from unsafe pits that heated the vast caverns of the J. P. Morgans' palatial homes?
- Who forged the molten steel that made Henry Ford's autos?
- Who carts, by semi, the millions of crates and boxes bearing Chinese goods to Wal-Mart's Super Stores all across America?
- Who peddled the special MLM soap that made the Amway twins billionaires?
- Whose retirement funds were brazenly harvested by the banksters and crooks via dishonest investment instruments and chicanery on Wall Street in 2008?

This aggressive and Koch et.al. funded/coordinated attempt to effect a coup against American labor is a vast and endangering overreach.

When it is all said and done, if the mega-wealthy are to be the arbiters of all values and wages, working conditions and privileges, what is left for the common man and woman in a nation said by Abraham Lincoln to be "of and for the people?"
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Tea Party Principles Oppose Centralized Government

Governor Rick Snyder's regime is "Centralized Government" moving Michigan top-down into corporatist-style consolidation of local governance and affairs; centralizing power away from our neighborhoods directly into the hands of a few "smarter-than-thou bureaucrats dispensing "our money." Local taxes are taken from us, then doled back to us under bureaucratic, tight, and complete centralized Lansing control.

Centralized government, which Tea Party supporters oppose, is being put in place with a superior and arrogant attitude: "We, bureaucrats and lawyers alone, know best what is good for you."

Snyder's CEO delusion: You hired me to run Michigan like a business organization; just do as I say. I'm now totally in charge.

Forget local control, the right of self determination, and the importance of free elections, my "Man, the EFM (Emergency Finance Manager), has his instructions from me, do as we say or your units will be taken over and your local/civic assets sold off as we decide.

"The greatest advances of civilization, whether in architecture or painting, in science and literature, in industry or agriculture, have never come from centralized government." -- Milton Friedman

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Tea Party Mantra: Freedom! Freedom! Freedom!

Tea Party fans must defend local freedoms, not surrender them to little dictators...With EFM's there is no Freedom !

One of the important and little noticed "abilities" given the Emergency Finance Manager, who has acquired control of a school district in a "finance emergency"- so determined, by Dillon or Flanagan-is the control of the curriculum. Meet a known Emergency Finance Manager: W. Howard Morris, of whom The State Board of Education comments, "The law gives the Emergency Financial Manager (EFM) authority over all fiscal matters of the school district, supplanting the school board. EFM had ultimate responsibility for all financial, operational and CURRICULUM MATTERS since there was no superintendent." (The EFM, W. Howard Morris, replaced the Superintendent and the voice of the people).

"At every hour of every day, I can tell you on which page of which book each school child in Italy is studying."
-- Benito Mussolini (1883-1945), Italian dictator during WW2

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Tea-publicans hate government "takings" ...

Rick Snyder, Mackinac Center, A.L.E.C. all represent the elites & corporatists.Their game this round-TAKINGS....

"I begin by taking. I shall find scholars later to demonstrate my perfect right." -- Frederick the Great (1712-1786) King of Prussia

Snyder Leading a State in Rebellion

Tea-Publicans are mired in placid subservience to Imperial Corporatists such as: Amway, the Koch Bros., and Wal-Mart; all these and others are to be found hand-in-glove, sponsoring and bankrolling radical take-overs by right wing coups in Ohio, Wisconsin, Michigan and elsewhere.

This is national movement utilizes the Koch empowered and funded Tea Party, other right wing corporatists and operatives, and it's going forward (spurred on by Murrdock's FOX News), determined to sweep the nation clear of all their political enemies' access to shared power. Their goal, Karl Rove's vision: A ONE PARTY NATION.

1) Radical wealthy have taken over our cities streets and the local economies: (shuttering the local, mom & pop establishments) 2) Economic Elites moved our commerce to a "private place,"(the Mall-No public discourse or debate/no campaigning allowed) 3) Profiteers having stripped our public schools of viability by unequal proto-segregationist educational apartheid (for profit, faux public Academies)and tax starvation 4) Radical revisionists have removed Affirmative Action from colleges and the workplace 5) Sweatshop mavens have now destroyed Collective Bargaining 6) Anti-fair banking and investment standards tycoons have stolen taxpayer trillions to bail out banksters and multi-national Corporations (GM & Chrysler) dumping additional hundreds of millions back on taxpayers 7) Wild-haired Wall Streeters-fat with loot from "betting against" America's success - have reaped unbelievable bonuses from taxpayers' funds A revolutionary Tea-Publican rabble moves on toward civic discord and disaster.

It's no wonder we, as a people, are losing control of citizen government.

Look long at the national register of who owns what, and by what percentages they control that massive wealth.

The richest are now in control of a great imbalance of wealth. Wealth is all powerful in America. Democracy, as we knew it, is now at the tipping point. In Michigan it's been lost to the coming corporate ownership and control of local units of government under the EMERGENCY FINANCIAL MANAGER scheme, enhanced with many dictatorial powers and no voter recourse.

Today, the polling place is run like a stock company election. We believe we have a system of one man, one vote. It took generations to achieve that maturing understanding of the rights of the individual to participate in one nation under God with liberty and justice for all. Slowly, nearly imperceptive the needle on the dashboard of democratic rights and privileges has suddenly fallen off the dial.

Now the effective power in politics is all about who's got the money, who has access to creating legislation: A.L.E.C. It's no longer one man one vote, now it's who owns the most shares, the more shares the greater the voting power. It's he, who has this larger "economic power" to control the vote and the corresponding degree of power and influence, who is more and more often the winner. One man, one vote has been shown the door.

Once left, now right, once up, then down, once monarchy, then republic, once pro-corporatist, then friendly fascist.

The "clever dogs" of the Ayn Rand (author, The Virtue of Selfishness) cult and school of privatizing public policy, long burrowing away in the background, are having their day. FYI -- This crowd includes many who were rooted in Socialism and some who admit to being former Communists such as Marvin Olasky, The Politics of Disaster, and Father Bob Sirico, Grand Rapids Acton Institute.

How could such revisionist radicalizers, as are besieging America, pull off this nationwide corporatist coup? Answer: Ignorance of the systemic dangers.

Never has Lansing government been more dominate and intrusive; attacking the right of the individuals, as now under Snyder. Never.

Snyder's Michigan, a state in rebellion, is out of citizen control. 

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Hell hath no fury as in a state built by industrious working men and women, good people now scorned and disenfranchised by Michigan Teapartisans

The passage H.B. 4215 et al, dictatorial EFM take over, voter disenfranchisement, 'corporate' direct control of local units of government breaks all previous records for reckless and thoughtless partisanship.

This all sadly grows out of the nasty Engler Revolution and the bad blood Engler engendered.

The giddy 'gotcha trolls' in the News blogs are high with grit in their teeth!

Many villages, towns, fire and police departments, schools and all their sweet children have been summarily turned over to Plunkett/Cooney high powered/high fee attorneys.

Emergencies, not yet declared, will mount up into the hundreds as the Nerdomomics of Tricky Rick unfold. This will include scores of public schools, sent to the dustbin by Rick Snyder's Nerdonomics.

Do the math yourselves.

There are already units in a financial fix. SNYDER'S INTENTIONAL TAX/REVENUE STARVATION of other units who are surviving, but struggling, will led immediately to many more undefined, but certain, declarations of 'finance emergencies.'

The We-are-much-smarter-than-thou GOP State Senators will rue the day they stepped off into this muck. We already know that $470 or more is cut from the neighborhood schools. We are fully aware that revenue sharing back to our communities of our own tax dollars via Block Grants is axed. This situation alone means there will be real trouble locally, real soon.

This is Snyder creative crisis built on a national economic downturn, not the first, but one of many very similar, over the years in Michigan.

Former Gov. William Milliken knows personally the hurt and the struggle of these cyclical events in Michigan. He led the state in pro-active and collaborate ways to overcoming and recovery.

SNYDER AND HIS TEAM OF HARD-HEADED,HARDCORE ENGLERITES HAVEN'T A CLUE They, like Engler, love the political battle and its spoils more than the peace, preferring strife over 'genuine, sincere, honest sacrifice' by all including corporations, the mega wealthy, and businesses-each according to ability.

The kind of EFM turmoil, headed up by corporations and 'firms' handed the undemocratic assignment(granted wages not to exceed $177,000 per year) is the kind of quality of life, culture buster, that drives away outstate investors.

Fancy this, what incoming corporate CEO wants to live in the wasteland this debacle has fueled. Culture to a German Company is equal to capital profits.

Germans get it. GOP'ers don't. The more cunning of the Teapartisan fearing ninnies, that timorous covey of poultry, should not be surprised by the ugly outcomes. The other sheepish, including the clueless newbees, will be stunned and very adversely effected by the collapse of units in their districts. The acrimony and the gnashing of teeth; viewed as the parsimonious landscape of "hell" will be their abode.

The 'real people' are coming for your leather swivel chairs and your platinum promise of State-Funded Health Insurance for Life, and all those other bits and pieces that lured you, the current GOP'ers into public office.

Now you've been elected, you turn on your people; to become judas goats, bitter enemies, to your own district's working families; turning against your own first responders, teachers, and the school children who populate our hopeful futures.

Remember...Dictatorship is Ugly! Hell's fury via angry, offended voters is real.

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