tea party

Tea Party, Taxes and Founding Fathers

April 16, 2010 By mario piperni

Tea Day is over but teabagger protests will surely linger on into summer and beyond. They will rail on about big government and communist takeovers and supposed restrictions on their rights and freedoms. It’s funny how when asked specifically which rights or freedoms are being infringed upon, there is seldom, if ever, a clear response. Broad generalities and outright falsehoods are a trademark of the teabagging crowd.

But loudest of all will be the anger these people express over taxation. Sheila Kennedy of Indiana University paraphrases the teabagger mantra…

I worked hard for my money and government has no right to tax it for anything other than police and armies to protect me and my property.

Teabaggers are fond of quoting the Founding Fathers as a means of making their point and as a source of inspiration. Fine. So let’s see what Thomas Paine had to say on this very topic.

“Separate an individual from society, and give him an island or a continent to possess, and he cannot acquire personal property. He cannot be rich. So inseparably are the means connected with the end, in all cases, that where the former do not exist the latter cannot be obtained. All accumulation, therefore, of personal property, beyond what a man’s own hands produce, is derived to him by living in society; and he owes on every principle of justice, of gratitude, and of civilization, a part of that accumulation back again to society from whence the whole came.”

When you strip away the bullshit and over-heated rhetoric and allow common sense and wisdom to prevail, Paine’s words are the type which ring as true today as they did over 200 years ago. In its most literal sense, Paine’s words say this.

Patriotism isn’t just about being willing to die for your country. It’s also about being willing to pay your fair share to maintain the social infrastructure that makes life more pleasant—and more profitable—for us all.

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Filed Under: taxes, tea party Tagged With: political issues, politics, taxation, tea party, teabaggers, thomas paine

TeaParty-ism

January 15, 2010 By mario piperni

Here’s an interesting take on where the Tea Party movement might be headed.

Keep in mind that there isn’t one big monolithic tea party movement; this convention is being run by Tea Party Nation — which, as the Washington Independent’s David Weigel and others have pointed out, is being accused by other teabaggers of an excessive focus on money (RedState’s Erick Erickson has disparaged the high ticket prices and the exorbitant fee paid to Sarah Palin) and too cozy a relationship with the GOP.

Well, isn’t that precisely what Rupert Murdoch wants? …the supposedly non-partisan tea party movement is a Judas-goat operation meant to gull right-wingers into reembracing precisely the party they began (sort of) souring on during Bush’s waning days and during the McCain campaign. Certainly this aspect of it fits that bill.

Here’s how it’s going to happen: the Murdoch media and the slicksters at Tea Party Nation are going to build a brand of tea-party-ism that’s more and more Republican … and a lot of people will undoubtedly just follow along. The rebel cachet will still be there, but tea-party-ism (or this aspect of it) won’t really threaten the GOP. Eventually, you’ll look at Fox, the GOP, and the movement and it will be impossible to tell where one ends and the other begins. Fox looks radical; the GOP looks radical; the movement becomes less and less threatening to established interests.

This isn’t what a lot of teabaggers want. But it’s what Murdoch wants. And he’s going to win this battle.

This makes a lot of sense. Republicans need to find a way to harness the energy being generated by the Tea Party movement without giving the appearance of a takeover. The little guy holding the ‘Obama-is-Hitler Mao Stalin’ sign wants to see himself as a patriot fighting for the very survival of his nation and not as an established party stooge. From a teabagger’s perspective, everything Glenn Beck says is the god’s honest truth and they feel they’re the last defense against the socialist takeover of their country. For the schmuck on the battle lines, it’s all too real.

The key for Republicans is to find a way to let teabaggers retain their ‘patriot’ spirit and illusion of independence while they actually run the show. The idea is to meld Republican-ism and TeaParty-ism into Bullshit-ism which they’re convinced would give them back Congress and the White House.

Its success will depend on how the stooges react.

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Filed Under: Republican Politics, tea party Tagged With: photoshop, political issues, politics, Republican Party, tea party, teabaggers

The Palin – Bachmann Show

January 7, 2010 By mario piperni

Early February would be a good time to plan your winter getaway.

Almost 1-1/2 years since she shook up American politics with her acceptance speech at the Republican National Convention, former vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin is set to headline another landmark political event: the first-ever Tea Party Convention next month in Nashville, Tenn.

Along with Palin, the brain trusts of conservatism will also be in attendance including Michele Bachmann and WorldNutDaily head honcho Joseph Farah. Rumors that tea partiers will attempt to shatter the current Guinness record for using the word ‘socialist‘ in a single three day period are yet to be confirmed.

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Filed Under: tea party Tagged With: michele bachmann, political issues, politics, Sarah Palin, tea party, WorldNutDaily

Tea Time With The GOP

January 4, 2010 By mario piperni

Continuing on with Michele Bachmann day…

“…there’s no question that the heartbeat of the tea party movement would be more in line with the mission state of the Republican party certainly than that of the Democrat party. So if the Republican Party is wise, they will allow themselves to be re-defined by the tea party movement. And I hope that that will be the case.”

She’s too late. It’s been done. The Republican party is already defined by the bigots, racists, twits and terribly misinformed imbeciles that make up the tea party movement. Intellectual conservatism has unofficially taken a back seat to Palinism.

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Filed Under: tea party Tagged With: michele bachmann, political issues, politics, Republican Party, tea party

Teabaggers: Playing Dead, Living Stupid

December 12, 2009 By mario piperni

Health Care Reform http://mariopiperni.com/

The teabagger kooks are at it again.

It is time, once again, to flex our muscle and exert that influence to hold the line in our fight against the government takeover of healthcare. The Senate is busy working on the details of a government run health care bill and they would like to pass it as quickly as possible. Some of them are under the false impression that we’ve given up and gone away just because they haven’t heard much from us in the past few days. And those Senators who have not made a final decision on how to vote are in danger of leaning in the wrong direction. We must remind them that our steadfast opposition to a government takeover of health care is as strong now as it has been all along.

So here’s the plan. On Tuesday, December 15 at 8:45 AM thousands of us will meet in Washington, DC at the fountain in Upper Senate Park. From there we will march to the Senate offices, go inside, and demonstrate our opposition to the government takeover of health care. We call this plan “Government Waiting Rooms”. The intention is to go inside the Senate offices and hallways, and play out the role of patients waiting for treatment in government controlled medical facilities. As the day goes on some of us will pretend to die from our untreated illnesses and collapse on the floor. Many of us plan to stay there until they force us to leave.

And while these uninformed morons lie on the floor pretending to die from untreated illnesses, free clinics are operating across the country so that people with real illnesses don’t die from untreated illnesses.
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