Who cares?
We all should. The Tea Party is not a fake. It's not just a creation of Fox News and Dick Armey's Astroturfing operation. It's a genuine expression of populist anger that is driving our politics from below. There's a reason it is polling higher than either of the two parties. There's a reason it helped destroy the Democrats' super-majority in the Senate.
Commentators like David Brooks also are wrong to assume that populism is a movement of the less educated against the educated elites. Of course there are those in the Tea Party who discount the science of evolution and global warming, who think Obama is a foreign-born Muslim agent, and who are racist, sexist and anti-Semitic to boot. But to equate the entire notion of populism with retrograde ignorance is to fall into a dangerous stereotype. Populism is not about education: whether expressed by the left, right, or middle, it's a revolt against concentrated power and economic injustice.
The financial crisis has made clear to millions of Americans that we now live in a billionaire bailout society where economic elites can gamble, lose, get bailed out and then refill their coffers with our money in preparation for the next round, while millions of the rest of us are thrown out of our jobs and homes. Frankly, we'd be stupid not to join a populist revolt against that kind system.
For the moment the Tea Party represents much of this anger. But its ideology rests on an enormous contradiction that could tear it apart. Teapartyites hate big government. They hate Wall Street. And they believe the two have teamed up to screw everyday Americans on Main Street. But if government doesn't rein in Wall Street, what will? The markets? Even Alan Greenspan doesn't buy that anymore.
There are echoes in this revolt that go all the back to Thomas Jefferson and the anti-Federalists who also feared big government and concentrated economic power. They were particularly incensed by Alexander Hamilton's successful effort to establish both a large national debt and a national bank (publicly chartered, privately owned). Hamilton, our first Secretary of the Treasury, convinced George Washington that the new federal government should assume the revolutionary war debts amassed by the States. In fact, due to Hamilton's machinations, the federal government redeemed these debts at face value, even though many of these bonds were nearly worthless and had been snapped up at deep discounts by speculators. As a result, Hamilton's plan produced an enormous windfall for the rich. This didn't bother Hamilton at all because he wanted to "bond" the wealthy to the new national government. (He also wasn't bothered by the fact that poor farmers would service the debt through very unpopular excise tax on whiskey.) Hamilton believed that government debt was the glue to uniting a collection of disparate states into a strong union. (When Geithner and Paulson allowed AIG to use taxpayer money to pay Goldman Sachs at face value for billions in bad bets, they unwittingly were carrying out the tradition first established by Hamilton.)
The Tea Party certainly has inherited the anti-Federalist fear of big government. But it shows no signs of having the Jeffersonian backbone to attack concentrated economic power.
This weakness couldn't be clearer as Wall Street awards itself $150 billion in bonuses for a job well done during the worst economic year since the Great Depression with 30 million unemployed or forced into part-time work. Instead of bonuses there would have been mass unemployment on Wall Street had the taxpayer not bailed out the banks to the tune of $6 to $12 trillion in taxpayer grants, loans and asset guarantees. There is no way to view that $150 billion in bonuses as anything other than welfare for Wall Street.
This should be the ultimate populist litmus test for the Tea Party. Do they have the nerve to defend the average taxpayer from Wall Street's rapaciousness? Are they going to demand a windfall tax on these outrageous bonuses? Or are they going to oppose all taxes and let Wall Street waltz off with the loot?
Hey Tea Party, which side are you on?
Unfortunately, at the moment there is no national progressive populist movement to call the question. In Oregon, progressive populists bucked the anti-tax, anti-government tide to win two ballot measures for more progressive taxation. (See "Watch Out Tea Party: Progressive Anger is Alive and Kicking")
The next step should be a call for a national windfall profits tax on the $150 billion in Wall Street bonuses. Millions of Americans would understand that it's our money and that we should get it back.
If the Tea Party fears taxes and big government more than it fears taking on Wall Street, then it will forfeit the mantle of populism. For no matter how much populist outrage it can express in the short run, the Tea Party will discredit itself if it shills for Wall Street.
But first progressive populism has to form into a national movement to take on the big banks. There are $150 billion good reasons to do so right now.
Les Leopold is the author of The Looting of America: How Wall Street's Game of Fantasy Finance destroyed our Jobs, Pensions and Prosperity, and What We Can Do About It Chelsea Green Publishing, June 2009.
Follow Les Leopold on Twitter: www.twitter.com/les_leopold
Who cares about slick glossys walking around in 2k suits, I sure don't. But the backbone of this country is everyday chumps like me who keep employees way longer than I can afford to, work 70plus hours a week and get paid if there is any left and that is not much. I own assissted living homes. I allow people to stay after their money runs out because I don't have the heart to kick them out. I buy extra groceries and give them away to single moms who can't make it. I am not a registered repub or anything else. I just want someone to go to Washington and work like I do and get it right. Care about someone and something besides getting re-elected.
When you have to build a populist movement purely from scratch, it's going to be a struggle. Grass roots America has been thrown to the Wall Street wolves by both corporate parties, so the Tea Party movement has to take on two parties at the same time.
Leopold: "The Tea Party ...shows no signs of having the Jeffersonian backbone to attack concentrated economic power."
Really? Much of the Tea Party movement seems to be a cousin to the Ron Paul crowd, and they seem to be universally opposed to the unconstitutional Federal Reserve. They show more of a stomach for a fight with concentrated economic power than any Democrat other than Kucinich.
Yes, the populism is good. However, I have a feeling that there is big right-wing seed money and organization (e.g., the Heritage Foundation). behind it.
Consider the three items below which are part of their convention agenda this week. Something is very wrong with that picture--
Feb. 5th morning talk:
"Young Americans for Freedom: 'How to Involve the Youth in the Conservative Movement'."
Feb. 5th afternoon talk:
"Defeating Liberalism via the Primary Process"
Feb. 6th Keynote speaker: Sarah Palin (insider estimates of up to $100,000 speaking fee for her)
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But the big question still remains--How can progressives organize and maintain a viable populism and a third party?
Wall Street toadies. Next question?
The "tea partiers" were nowhere to be found while Bush and the GOP piled up the deficit they left and crashed the economy with the "tax cuts for the rich" which didn't work out so well.
The "tea partiers" didn't say a word when Bush and the GOP indulged in the Medicare expansion and the highly unpopular Medicare RX bill, they didn't ask one question about the deficit then.
They only popped up after the election since they are racists and they really want to push a religious agenda.
They lie when they spew stuff about the "Founding Fathers" because they are the group that wants to overturn the Separation of Church and State.
The Founding Fathers allowed the Separation of Church and State so religion would never be persecuted and by the same token so that religion would never rule politics or government.
They ignore the fact most of the founders weren't religious, they just believed in God.
The TEA party was a tax-protest born of the Clinton era. Although it has enjoyed much support from Conservatives (including prominant Republicans primarily eager to co-opt it's purpose of tax reform, to a tool for unseating Democrats), the TEA party is NOT the invention of the Republican party. It evolved from the anti-tax sentiments of two newspaper journalists in their booklet, "Taxpayer's Teaparty". Here's and interesting link, a blog from a decidedly left-leaning perspective, detailing the earliest days, and references one of the first "organized" protests in 1994.
http://nomoremister.blogspot.com/2009/04/right-wing-tea-party-idea-born-in-1994.html
And you are right about the fact that not everyone who is a Tea Party activist is an under-educated red neck. MANY people are angry about the corruption and incompetence in Washington. We desperately need POLITICAL REFORM more than anything right now.
My hope is that the Tea Party folks and we progressives can work together for the common good.
History shows there emerges critical junctures where space opens up for substantive change by political revolt. This was the case in American history during the last third of the 19th century when farmers revolted against the deterioration of prices for their produce which forced many of them to leave their farms and move into cities and seek factory work. At least during the nineteenth century, farmers could turn to factories as an alternative way to earn a leaving. Today, the masses have no such option: global agribusiness has killed local & community farms and farmers, and global corporations have shipped factory jobs to the cheapest places around the world in order to maximize their profits. American workers have been thrown to the sharks. They are no longer cost efficient for the global corporations. So they are on their own. And since the corporations have killed off the Unions, they have no voice and no leaders to take up their needs and interests.
There has been repeated recently that many US jobs are going overseas, and it is a fact.
However when bemoaned by the Progressive I question the premis that the Progressive is the most compassionate among us. Don't these people overseas need jobs? Don't they also need food and shelter? How is it compassonate to cry over one humans plight in the world and not celebrate the relief of the suffering of another?
a real Third Party to challenge this Monopoly over American Politics Money has