tea parties

Progressive Intolerance

by Michelle Minton on July 1, 2009

in Culture, Economy, Odds & Ends, Politics as Usual, Sanctimony

It is truly amazing to me that some people who call themselves “liberal,” “progressive,” and “tolerant,” are so irrationally afraid and intolerant of anyone who holds a differing viewpoint to the degree that they feel the need to lash out, discredit and attempt to purge them from the intellectual discussion of ideas. Recently, I was shocked to discover that such people were trying to accomplish this by employing methods I thought hadn’t survived beyond the Nuremberg trials.

I saw this spectacle when Keith Olbermann interviewed Janeane Garofalo on April 16th in which they discussed the phenomenon of the modern tea party protests. She received plenty of backlash from her statements that the gatherings were really about “hating a black man in the White House,” and from calling attendees “nothing but a bunch of teabagging rednecks.”

But not nearly enough attention was paid to her comment about the the motivation of right-wingers/republicans/conservatives (a.k.a. anyone not sharing her philosophy).

“You can tell these type of right wingers anything and they’ll believe it. You tell them the truth and they become — it’s like showing Frankenstein’s monster fire. They become confused, and angry and highly volatile. That guy, causing them feelings they don’t know, because their limbic brain, we’ve discussed this before, the limbic brain inside a right-winger or Republican or conservative or your average white power activist, the limbic brain is much larger in their head space than in a reasonable person, and it’s pushing against the frontal lobe. So their synapses are misfiring.”

It’s ironic that in the same breath she accuses the tea party-goers of being intolerant of the president’s policies because of the color of his skin, she can claim that the only reason someone would disagree with her and the other enlightened Obama disciples is due to a physical defect in their brains.

As a self-proclaimed progressive feminist it is absolutely shocking that she would recognize that she is using almost the exact same logic as anti-suffragists who claimed women shouldn’t be allowed to vote because of the physical differences between men and women. According to a prominant anti-suffragist back in 1911:

“The difference is fundamental owing to physiological reasons which no training can obliterate. Women are more easily swayed by sentiment, less open to reason, less logical.” To modern people that type of thinking is not only dismissed as ridiculous science but also as insulting and prejudiced.”

Perhaps soon Ms. Garofalo will demand that government rescind the right to vote for any registered republicans. Or worse, she might ask that anyone who isn’t a full-blodded, liberal, progressive feminist be rounded up and sent to reservation somewhere. That certainly would make the public debate a lot easier for her and other intolerant progressives who are unable to make a convincing intellectual case for their ideas.

For those of you who aren’t racist or brain damaged and yet still manage to find a reason to be angry and fed up with the direction America is heading, you’re welcome to come to the July 4th Tea Party in Washington, DC or a local tea party where, as Keith Olbermann’s suggested we won’t be offering franks n’beans.  But we will be serving a heaping helping of liberty.

Full disclosure [While I am not a liberal, I am not now nor have I ever been right-wing, republican, or conservative]

Tea Party Protesters Are Right

by Hans Bader on April 17, 2009 · 4 comments

in Bailout Watch, Economy, Legal, Politics as Usual, Stimulus to Nowhere

Tea party protests questioned the constitutionality of some of the massive bailouts over the past year, which amount to trillions of dollars. That drew bizarre attacks from leftists, who argue that these peaceful protests will somehow lead to another terrorist incident like the Oklahoma City bombing, and that the tea party protesters, like the Founding Fathers, are just a reactionary “bunch of white males who didn’t want to pay their taxes.”

Not all of the bailouts are illegal or unconstitutional, but some of them are. Some bailouts were sweeping, standardless grants of authority to spend money that violate the non-delegation doctrine, a Constitutional separation-of-powers safeguard enforced by the Supreme Court in the 1935 Schechter Poultry case. Others were never authorized by Congress.

For example, the auto bailout was either illegal or unconstitutional. Even Andrew Sullivan, a critic of the tea parties, reached that conclusion. So have liberal commentators like Clinton Administration Labor Secretary Robert Reich and conservative commentators like the Heritage Foundation and George Will. I earlier explained why the bailout is illegal or unconstitutional: either the bank bailout bill didn’t confer such vast discretion to spend money that it could be diverted to an auto bailout (in which case the auto bailout was illegal), or it did (in which case the bank bailout bill was itself an unconstitutional violation of separation of powers).

A similar auto bailout in Britain failed miserably, wasting billions in the process.

There was a bomb threat recently, but it wasn’t from conservatives or libertarians, but rather an advocate for illegal aliens. So much for the Obama Administration’s baseless suggestion that the next terrorist attack may come from opponents of illegal immigration or supporters of federalism.

Other criticisms of the tea party protests also were baseless. They have been criticized for supposedly offering no solutions or constructive suggestions about how to cut spending. But they have specifically identified two massive spending programs that need to be cut. The first is Obama’s $800 billion stimulus package, which was falsely sold to the public as needed to prevent “irreversible decline,” but which the Congressional Budget Office repeatedly pointed out would actually shrink the economy “in the long run.” The second is the Obama Administration’s mortgage bailout, which would benefit even high-income people with modest mortgages (scroll down to this protester’s “I can’t afford your mortgage” sign).

For having the temerity to protest Administration lies and out-of-control spending, the protesters have been attacked elsewhere in the most vicious terms as “redneck, racist Republicons” and as “a bunch of white old people and rednecks” who “got together and tried to start a revolution…to drive the Fascist/Communist n****r out of the White House and stop the fags from stealing their children.” As a Harvard-educated urban dweller with a multiracial family, whose office hosted the end of the Washington tea party, I find these claims baffling.

Andrew Sullivan dismisses the tea parties as “opposition to the Obama administration’s spending plans, manned by people who made no serious objections to George W. Bush’s.”

I certainly made “serious objections to George W. Bush’s” spending plans. I condemned his costly prescription-drug entitlement in the Washington Times, and repeatedly condemned the $160 billion Bush “stimulus rebates” in 2008. I called his $700 billion Wall Street “bailout bill dangerous, inflationary, unnecessary, and unconstitutional.” And I condemned his multibillion dollar auto bailout.

Slandering the Tea Parties

by Hans Bader on April 16, 2009 · 5 comments

in Bailout Watch, Economy, Politics as Usual, Sanctimony, Stimulus to Nowhere

The “tea party” protests against out-of-control government spending have been very clear in identifying what wasteful spending they object to. One example is Obama’s $800 billion stimulus package, which was falsely sold to the public as needed to prevent “irreversible decline,” but which the Congressional Budget Office repeatedly pointed out would actually cut the size of the economy “in the long run.” Another example is the Obama Administration’s mortgage bailout, which would benefit even high-income people with modest mortgages (see the “I can’t afford your mortgage” sign).

But the protesters are frequently criticized by journalists like Andrew Sullivan for supposedly offering no solutions or constructive suggestions.

For having the temerity to protest Administration lies and out-of-control spending, the protesters have been called “despicable” by a liberal Congresswoman, and attacked in the left-wing blogosphere in the most vicious language as “redneck, racist Republicons” and as “a bunch of white old people and rednecks” who “got together and tried to start a revolution…to drive the Fascist/Communist n****r out of the White House and stop the fags from stealing their children.”

As a Harvard-educated, arugula-eating, urban dweller whose office hosted the end of the Washington tea party, I find these claims baffling. I am certainly not afraid of my Asian, black, and Hispanic relatives, my French-born wife, or the gay neighbor whose children play with my daughter.

Andrew Sullivan derides the tea parties as “opposition to the Obama administration’s spending plans, manned by people who made no serious objections to George W. Bush’s.”

I did too make “serious objections to George W. Bush’s” spending plans. I condemned his costly prescription-drug entitlement in the Washington Times, and repeatedly condemned the $160 billion Bush “stimulus rebates” in 2008. I publicly called his $700 billion Wall Street “bailout bill dangerous, inflationary, unnecessary, and unconstitutional.” And I condemned his multibillion dollar auto bailout.

And contrary to Sullivan’s claims, I do indeed have a “constructive and specific argument about how . . . to reduce spending and debt and borrowing” — cancel the wasteful $800 billion stimulus package, most of which has not been spent yet, and may cause inflation when it finally is.

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