[Peace-discuss] Matt Taibbi: Tea Party Parasites

[Robert Naiman]

Cheap shot? It is an essential fact to understand. Someone who is a
darling of the "anti-government" Tea Party Right is taking government
money as a major source of their income. This is a key fact that
people should know in evaluating whether the Tea Party offers a
political alternative that progressives should have sympathy for.

Most people who count themselves progressive could never agree to your
claim that just because a group of people are "mad as hell about the
status quo" we should count ourselves among their number. Timothy
McVeigh was "mad as hell about the status quo." In a showdown between
the fellow travelers of Timothy McVeigh and the democratically-elected
government, I will be on the side of the democratically-elected
government.

On Mon, Oct 18, 2010 at 9:49 PM, E.Wayne Johnson <ewj at pigs.ag> wrote:
> I like the way that Matt Taibbi points out many ills in the society
> generally without compromise.
>
> Matt Taibbi rightly points out the hypocrisy, and I am not a big fan
> of Rand Paul (he ain't Ron), it is a pretty cheap shot saying that an eye
> doctor
> has a blind spot in his ideology because he treats patients who are
> funded by government programs.
>
> The Tea Party is a highly diverse group of people who are mad as hell about
> the status quo.
>
> We all ought to be Tea Partiers on that account.
>
> The Powers That Be in both parties hate and fear the Tea Party.  .
>
>
>
> ----- Original Message ----- From: "Robert Naiman" <naiman.uiuc at gmail.com>
> To: "Peace-discuss List" <peace-discuss at lists.chambana.net>
> Sent: Monday, October 18, 2010 10:43 PM
> Subject: [Peace-discuss] Matt Taibbi: Tea Party Parasites
>
>
> http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/matt-taibbi/blogs/TaibbiData_May2010/218982/83512
>
> October 12, 2010 4:16 P.M. EDT | By Matt Taibbi
>
> More Tea Party Hilarity
>
> Quelle surprise! So it turns out that one after another of the Tea
> Party candidates is in one way or another mooching off the government.
> The latest series of hilarious disclosures center around Alaska’s
> GI-Joe-bearded windbag Senatorial candidate, Joe Miller, who appears
> to have run virtually the entire gamut of government aid en route to
> becoming a staunch, fist-shaking opponent of the welfare state.
>
> Miller’s pomposity and piety with regard to government aid programs
> has all along been in line with the usual screechingly hysterical
> self-righteousness Tea Party candidates bring to such matters, railing
> against Obamacare and other “entitlement” programs and promising to
> end the “welfare state.” That makes it all the more delicious now that
> he and his family have been exposed for taking state medical aid,
> unemployment insurance, farm subsidies, hell, even for using state
> equipment to run a private political campaign.
>
> Back in June, Miller was saying this about his Republican primary
> opponent Lisa Murkowski, blasting her for supporting a state health
> care program:
>
> As you are aware, just last week the Anchorage Daily News reported
> that the Denali KidCare Program funded 662 abortions last year.
> Senator Murkowski has been a champion of this program, voting against
> the majority of her Republican colleagues for CHIPRA (HR 2) in January
> of 2009.
>
> Of course it now turns out that back in the Nineties, Miller himself
> and his three children (with one on the way; he now has eight) were at
> one point receiving assistance via a program almost exactly like the
> Denali KidCare program, which is only for low-income earners. Various
> reports note that Miller received this assistance after he’d bought a
> house and been hired by a prestigious law firm; he also got low-income
> hunting and fishing licenses during that time. It’s also come out that
> he received some $7,000 in farm subsidies and that his wife received
> unemployment insurance benefits.
>
> So now of course Miller, who said he and his family “absolutely” used
> Alaska’s state medical program, is backtracking and saying that he’s
> not against the modern Denali Kidcare program, only against the
> “expansion” of it. But even more telling was his longer answer about
> the program, as reported in the Anchorage Daily News:
>
> Miller said what he's advocating is complete state control of the
> programs. "That doesn't mean we cut off the programs. That is
> ultimately a state decision. And I think there is a use; in fact the
> most effective use is probably those programs that help transition the
> populations from more of a situation of dependency" to one where they
> can be economically independent, Miller said.
>
> You see, when a nice white lawyer with a GI Joe beard uses state aid
> to help him through tough times and get over the hump – so that he can
> go from having three little future Medicare-collecting Republican
> children to eight little future Medicare-collecting Republican
> children – that’s a good solid use of government aid, because what
> we’re doing is helping someone “transition” from dependency to
> economic independence.
>
> This of course is different from the way other, less GI-Joe-looking
> people use government aid, i.e. as a permanent crutch that helps
> genetically lazy and ambitionless parasites mooch off of rich white
> taxpayers instead of getting real jobs.
>
> I can’t even tell you how many people I interviewed at Tea Party
> events who came up with one version or another of the Joe Miller
> defense. Yes, I’m on Medicare, but… I needed it! It’s those other
> people who don’t need it who are the problem!
>
> Or: Yes, it’s true, I retired from the police/military/DPW at 54 and
> am on a fat government pension that you and your kids are going to be
> paying for for the next forty years, while I sit in my plywood-paneled
> living room in Florida watching Fox News, gobbling Medicare-funded
> prescription medications, and railing against welfare queens. But I
> worked hard for those bennies! Not like those other people!
>
> This whole concept of “good welfare” and “bad welfare” is at the heart
> of the Tea Party ideology, and it’s something that is believed
> implicitly across the line. It’s why so many of their political
> champions, like Miller, and sniveling Kentucky rich kid Rand Paul (a
> doctor whose patient base is 50% state insured), and Nevada “crazy
> juice” Senate candidate Sharron Angle (who’s covered by husband Ted’s
> Federal Employee Health Plan insurance), are so completely
> unapologetic about taking state aid with one hand and jacking off
> angry pseudo-libertarian mobs with the other.
>
> They genuinely don’t see the contradiction, much in the same way that
> some Wall Street people genuinely can’t see the problem with their
> company, say, taking $13 billion in bonuses in the same year that they
> accepted $13 billion in state bailouts. You wave a pitchfork at them
> with little post-its of the relevant figures taped to the ends, and
> ask them to confess – and they can’t, because they literally don’t see
> your point.
>
> After all, these bankers will protest, we needed to pay out those
> billions in bonuses to stay competitive! It’s not like we’re just
> taking the money willy-nilly, like those dreadful people in ratty army
> coats who shop with food stamps in the bodega downstairs!
>
> The rationalization continues: If I can’t help my department heads buy
> Porsches, they say, the whole system collapses, and the system is
> what’s important. It’s not like simply handing out money to people who
> can’t pay their mortgages, which of course is real waste. As Berkshire
> Hathaway investment titan Charles Munger put it, it’s those people who
> have to “suck it in and cope.” But bailouts for companies like the
> ones Munger invests in, like Wells Fargo and Goldman, that’s
> preserving the system – and we should all “thank God” for that kind of
> state aid.
>
> The reason these arguments are inherently ridiculous is that if you
> live in America, you have a pretty good chance of being in some way or
> another dependent upon government aid. Whether it’s aerospace or
> military contracting or farm subsidies or grants in academia, medicine
> or the arts… most of us are in some way living off of this spending,
> directly or indirectly. Defense spending in particular has been a
> primary engine of American capitalism for more than half a century
> now. And government subsidies of agriculture and financial services
> have begun to rival defense largesse.
>
> All of which would normally make it unfair for any journalist to go
> after a politician for taking government aid. After all, pretty much
> everybody has in some way or another lived off the government in his
> life – whether by working in a firm that takes government contracts,
> or attending a state school, or getting into a college thanks to
> affirmative action programs, or serving in the military or law
> enforcement, or collecting Medicare or food stamps or unemployment.
>
> But these Tea Partyers make themselves fair game with their
> preposterous absolutist stance on government. If you call Obamacare
> radical socialism and unemployment insurance a parasitic welfare state
> program—well, guess what, asshole, you’re going to get rung up when we
> find out you had your whole family living off state medical aid and
> farm subsidies.
>
> Even beyond that, though, is the way that Tea Party candidates and
> activists demonize the consumers of “entitlement” programs, branding
> them as lazy parasites who are taking from hard-working folk by
> supporting “redistributionist” politicians. You probably heard about
> the story of David Jungerman, the Kansas farmer who created a
> billboard that read as follows:
>
> ARE YOU A PRODUCER OR A PARASITE?
>
> DEMOCRATS – THE PARTY OF PARASITES
>
> Of course it now turns out that Jungerman himself took over a million
> dollars in farm subsidies since 1995.  When asked about the apparently
> contradiction, Jungerman offered the Miller defense:
>
> “That’s just my money coming back to me,” Jungerman, 72, said Monday.
> “I pay a lot in taxes. I’m not a parasite.”
>
> In Tea Party legend the “parasites” would I suppose be people who
> don’t pay taxes, or pay few taxes, and receive government support in
> excess of what they pay. Maybe they mean the 39-odd million Americans
> (about 1 in 8) who are now receiving food stamps. In the Hobbesian
> jungle the Tea Partyers would prefer we all live in, it’s true, most
> of those 39 million people (including the just under 50% of all
> children, and 90% of black children, who will at some point in their
> lives eat a meal bought with food stamps) would indeed be sucking wind
> instead of eating cheese.
>
> These are the parasites they’re probably talking about. You know,
> children. Meanwhile, a slick grownup yuppie politician with a GI Joe
> beard and a breeder wife and eight kids, leeching off the state at
> every turn and gunning for a U.S. Senate salary and pension on an
> anti-welfare platform, he’s just a hardworking citizen who simply
> needed a lift during a “transitional” period. Man, did they break the
> mold when they made these assholes.
>
> --
> Robert Naiman
> Policy Director
> Just Foreign Policy
> www.justforeignpolicy.org
> naiman at justforeignpolicy.org
>
> Urge Congress to Support a Timetable for Military Withdrawal from
> Afghanistan
> http://www.justforeignpolicy.org/act/feingold-mcgovern
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>



-- 
Robert Naiman
Policy Director
Just Foreign Policy
www.justforeignpolicy.org
naiman at justforeignpolicy.org

Urge Congress to Support a Timetable for Military Withdrawal from Afghanistan
http://www.justforeignpolicy.org/act/feingold-mcgovern