[Peace-discuss] Matt Taibbi: Tea Party Parasites

Tue Oct 19 09:08:15 CDT 2010

"NONE of these libertarian-right-wing-nut jobs claim to be Progressives"

to their credit.

________________________________
From: Jenifer Cartwright <jencart13 at yahoo.com>
To: David Green <davegreen84 at yahoo.com>; naiman.uiuc at gmail.com
Cc: Peace Discuss <peace-discuss at lists.chambana.net>
Sent: Tue, October 19, 2010 9:03:23 AM
Subject: Re: [Peace-discuss] Matt Taibbi: Tea Party Parasites

Good post, Bob, thanks. 
And of course, NONE of these libertarian-right-wing-nut jobs claim to be 
Progressives, nor  do they support- and fight for ANY Progressive causes. 

 --Jenifer

--- On Tue, 10/19/10, Robert Naiman <naiman.uiuc at gmail.com> wrote:

>From: Robert Naiman <naiman.uiuc at gmail.com>
>Subject: Re: [Peace-discuss] Matt Taibbi: Tea Party Parasites
>To: "David Green" <davegreen84 at yahoo.com>
>Cc: "Peace Discuss" <peace-discuss at lists.chambana.net>
>Date: Tuesday, October 19, 2010, 8:53 AM
>
>
>Well, I guess we'll just have to agree to disagree about what is
>"shocking," "dishonest," and "utterly reprehensible." For me, people
>who wear the mantle of "progressive" while carrying water for the
>violent and racist far-Right are "shocking," "dishonest," and "utterly
>reprehensible." So, as I said, we'll just have to agree to disagree.
>
>On Tue, Oct 19, 2010 at 8:47 AM, David Green <davegreen84 at yahoo.com> wrote:
>> Bob, this just really shocks me, I guess. Paul's hypocrisy is allegedly to
>> take money from the government whiling being "anti-government." The
>> hypocrisy of the "democratically-elected" Democrats is to condescend to
>> people who are "mad as hell" (for lots of good reasons, although not often
>> clearly articulated), and then drop bombs on Pakistan and support Israel's
>> behavior, etc. I'll take the hypocrisy of "the people" any day, even someone
>> is problematic as Rand Paul. For you to play the McVeigh card is dishonest
>> and utterly reprehensible. How did you feel about the government dropping a
>> bomb in Waco?
>>
>> David
>>
>> ________________________________
>> From: Robert Naiman <naiman.uiuc at gmail.com>
>> To: E.Wayne Johnson <ewj at pigs.ag>
>> Cc: Peace-discuss List <peace-discuss at lists.chambana.net>
>> Sent: Tue, October 19, 2010 8:28:18 AM
>> Subject: Re: [Peace-discuss] Matt Taibbi: Tea Party Parasites
>>
>> 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
>>>2
>>>
>>> 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
>>> _______________________________________________
>>> Peace-discuss mailing list
>>> Peace-discuss at lists.chambana.net
>>> http://lists.chambana.net/mailman/listinfo/peace-discuss
>>>
>>>
>>
>>
>>
>> --
>> 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
>> _______________________________________________
>> Peace-discuss mailing list
>> Peace-discuss at lists.chambana.net
>> http://lists.chambana.net/mailman/listinfo/peace-discuss
>>
>>
>
>
>
>-- 
>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
>_______________________________________________
>Peace-discuss mailing list
>Peace-discuss at lists.chambana.net
>http://lists.chambana.net/mailman/listinfo/peace-discuss
> 

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