The Billionaires Bankrolling the Tea Party

[Bruce Gourley]

No wonder tea partiers love the rich: they believe what their sugar daddies want them to believe. .

[Dave Roberts]

I had wondered who was bankrolling all the Tea Party activities. Thanks for sharing this.

[Haruo]

And of course since Beck and Palin are on the payroll at Fox, that means they too are jihadists whose success in the limelight helps fund Hamas and its New York afifliate, Park 51... (TIC, but I'm not sure on which side of my mouth)

[Jim]

[ET]

So Moveon.org and the left have George Soros. The Tea Party has the Kochs. So?

Too bad nothing came of my resume that I sent in to Koch Industries when I got out of college. Had I known what fine, liberty loving folks they were, I might have pursued it a little harder.

Nice display of willful ignorance of political philosophy, however. I imagine that Rich's definition of "mainstream conservatism" is nothing but "government lite" or the typical RINO view of "more government, but just not as much as the Dems". Sort of like the mainstream media notion that "bipartisanship" means Republicans caving to Democrat demands. In the end, the "mainstream conservative" agrees to the bank bailouts, government takeover of auto companies, shake downs of BP, printing TRILLIONS of dollars under the name of "stimulus" and views the elites inhabiting government as being of superior wisdom and virtue to tell others how to live their lives. That's rich.

[Dave Roberts]

[ET]

[Dave Roberts]

Ed, thanks for fleshing out the sketch from the first one. I'm becoming a skeptic on most political movements because what I see is that all sides are staking out their talking points for the media while no one is bothing to talk to each other. You are definitely right about the unsustainable deficits that our country is running up. We are fighting two wars (well one and a half after the end of combat operations in Iraq) on borrowed money. Someday, someone will have to pay for our adventures. We have an economy in the tank that the only thing either party could figure how to do was to pour in money to stimulate it, not address the systemic problems. Bush tried a hands-off policy that put us in a near depression. Obama has tried a hand-on policy that hasn't succeeded in getting jobs back on the floor. (I speak as someone making about half of what he did a year ago and went six months unemployed.) All the folks who are pontificating need not to just sit down with the heads of Microsoft, GM, and Boeing. They need to spend a day in the employment commission talking to ordinary people who have no resources right now except unemployment benefits (for which I was not eligible). I think it may be necessary to spread some pain across this economy.

My congressman sent an email a couple of weeks ago declaring the evils of deficit spending. The next day he voted for $33-billion for our wars. If he meant the first email, Americans would be paying for what they are spending. Quit raiding the social security and medicare trust funds for government financing. Raise the social security limit to cover all incomes, not just the first $102,000 of earnings. Make corporate ceo's contribute the same percentage their production line employees do.

That is my morning rant!

[KeithE]

[Dave Roberts]

And, those mercenaries we employ don't get VA benefits either. Next week, the VA is opening an outpatient clinic here to take the pressure off the VA hospital in Richmond whose clinics can no longer accomodate the numbers of veterans who are visiting them from WWII, Korea, Vietnam, Iraq, and Afghanistan. That's another debt we are paying and must keep paying.

[Bruce Gourley]

And, is it a surprise that most Tea Partiers are ?

[Jim]