“Oh, but the Tea Party isn’t predicated on racism and bigotry!”
Just after [Rep. Barney] Frank rounded a corner to leave the building, an older protestor yelled “Barney, you faggot.” The surrounding crowd of protestors then erupted in laughter.
Rep. Andre Carson (D-Ind.) said Saturday that healthcare protesters at the Capitol directed racial epithets at him and Rep. John Lewis (D-Ga.) as they walked outside.
Carson, a member of the Congressional Black Caucus along with Lewis, told The Hill that protesters called the lawmakers the N-word.
Bravo. The new face of the GOP is just an unfiltered version of the old face of the GOP.
Please share widely!
Thank you for highlighting this. Civilized Americans have been quiet long enough.
they should start working on the people’s business.
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p>The Tea Party keeps growing in Massachusetts because people are increasingly unhappy with Beacon hill.
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p>Last year the legislature cut local aid by 16% and restored a lot of cuts back to state level programs. By the end state level cuts were down to just 4%. So the cuts were done at the cost of cities and town.
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p>If you had kids in school, like I do you saw us having to cut electives, foreign languages, after school, sports etc. This year they want to cut another 4% on top of town health care costs going up 12% this year and the towns being unable to raise property taxes.
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p>There was a resolution to level fund local aid – but the Democractic leadership would not let it be debated – to give themselves political cover.
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p>Something has to give – and it needs to happen at the state level. Cuts to local aid hit the regular person the hardest.
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p>So more and more people join the tea party.
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p>Tea Party doesn’t have membership rolls and doesnt’t have an official platform. So you get kooks of all stripes that call themselves tea party.
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p>But the Tea Party movement by and large is not made up of those kooks – its made up of regular people who are very concerned about bread and butter issues like jobs, education and taxes.
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p>There is a backlash coming – and if politicians don’t start listening its only going to get much much worse.
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p>Doesn’t it bother you that they are cutting sevirces at you local school instead of at the State Department of Education, in the courts, at DCF, and insurance for state workers etc. They can’t even get the balls to cut the two extra holidays that state workers get. My daughter isn’t going to get the foreign language elective that my son got in 6th grade. That bothers me. Aren’t Democrats supposed to be the ones supporting money for education?
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p>Making fun of the few kooks that show up at Tea Party rallies isn’t going to make the problem go away.
You, like too many of us here, are suffering. I get that. Anger is a nearly universal response to suffering — I get that too.
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p>Your argument runs off the rails when you attempt to connect this anger and disappointment to support for the Tea Party.
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p>I have kids in school too. I’ve seen them suffer from the same cuts you describe. I see a different cause, however. The voters in my children’s town voted down an override to provide funding for electives, foreign languages, after-school activities (like theater) and so on.
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p>It seems to me that those of us who want these programs for our children have an obligation to pay taxes to support them. It appears that you, instead, want “somebody else” to pay. I know lots of public school teachers — I don’t know any who are overpaid. Yet you apparently want them work harder for less compensation.
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p>Local aid is cut because the state is bleeding money. The state is bleeding money because folks who look a lot like Tea Party supporters have been cutting taxes for decades without regard to the impact of those cuts.
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p>Your talk of a “backlash” therefore strikes me as an irrational temper-tantrum. Like a two year old, you seem to be rejecting the rather basic idea that actions have consequences. In this case, the actions are the decades of right-wing populist tax-slashing. The consequences are that services and local aid are — at last — being cut.
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p>An army of dedicated, hard-working, and underpaid public servants fought for decades to somehow find a way to protect the least powerful among us. Yes, there are a few bad apples. Most state workers worked longer hours than they signed up for, took cut after cut, and scrambled harder and harder to attempt to hurdle a constantly-climbing bar. They have finally succumbed.
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p>Now, when these predictable and predicted consequences are coming to pass, people of your ilk have the chutzpah to support even more tax cuts.
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p>Do you really want those educational opportunities to be restored for your children? Then:
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p>Cheering (or jeering) on the Tea Party is entirely counterproductive to the interests you claim to support.
Basically GOP leaders have said “Of course we disagree with the harmful comments of a few isolated individuals, BUT….” And they they get back to their talking points about the fear and distrust Americans have about this bill and Democratic plans.
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p>The GOP leaders aren’t really separating themselves from this rhetoric and tactics. Frankly, they are actively stoking it, and it is very dangerous.
the droll play on words by some of the teabaggers at that same protest:
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p>Nothing like responsible political dialogue.
This is Dale Robertson, owner and operator of teaparty.org and a self-proclaimed leader of the factious group.
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Absolutely disgusting:
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p>It also appears BMG’s own eb3 was present:
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Yeah, that’s the part of the article that caught my eye — buried many paragraphs deep. You’d think the connection between racism, xenophobia, homophobia, and the tea party crowd would be something worth pointing out a little more clearly by the MSM, if only their vision wasn’t quite so clouded by their love affair with these losers.
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p>One picture in the Globe article showed tea partiers with their hands over their hearts, with a caption that they were singing the national anthem. Either the Globe got it wrong or those folks are phony patriots; you put your hand over your heart to recite the Pledge, and you face the flag at attention, hat or cap removed, with hands by your side, to sing the national anthem, or while it is sung.
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p>I know this because I still remember anything I was taught in school, unlike these yahoos who are always trying to tell us how much more bleeping patriotic they are than the rest of us.