Progressive Media Advocates
Berry Craig: If a tea party Republican wins this November’s election, the Scott Walker agenda will be on Kentuckians with a vengeance. We will be another step closer to right to work for less, repeal of prevailing wage and attacks on public sector workers and their unions.
Lee Fang: In response to the growing protests in Madison, Koch fronts are busing in Tea Party protesters to support Walker and his union-busting campaign.
Dick Price: Perhaps Common Cause can be a kind of can opener in offering its resources as a clearinghouse for information about progressive causes and as an organizing agent to pull together like-minded individuals and organizers as it did last Sunday.
Tom Degan: Michele Bachmann maintains that the Founding Fathers ended slavery, huh? She is off by years. Four score and seven years, to be exact. She also pegged John Quincy Adams as one of “the very founders that wrote those documents.” He must have been quite the prodigy. When the Declaration of Independence was adopted by the Continental Congress on July 4, 1776, 8 year old John Quincy Adams was one week shy of his ninth birthday!
Thousands of protesters gathered this weekend in Palm Springs to express opposition to the secret meeting held by David and Charles Koch. The Koch brothers, owners of the 2nd largest privately held corporation in the United States, were conducting their bi-annual retreat where they and a cadre of well heeled power brokers hold strategy sessions.
Berry Craig: Tea Party types are cool with Bachmann because she loves what they love — guns and the Good Lord, for instance. And she disdains what they disdain — immigrants, gay people and the “Kenyan” “Muslim Marxist” in the White House whose “plan” is “white slavery” come to mind.
Peter Dreier: For years Glenn Beck has spewed lies about Fran Piven, a distinguished political sceintist and sociologist. In recent months, Beck has escalated the rhetoric against Piven, which has led to a growing chorus of death threats against her. It is time to challenge the right-wing forces like Glenn Beck, Fox News, the Tea Party and the billionaires like the Koch brothers who fund them. We have an opportunity on January 30th.
Walter Brasch: While most Tea Partiers are White, middle-aged or senior citizens who are angry but not violent, whenever there is violence, whenever there is racism, discrimination, or homophobia, there are Tea Party sympathizers present.
Scott Prosterman: The Tea Party Nation issued a statement, “We didn’t intend for this to result in violence.” Huh? How did they think it was going to end up?
Robert Reich: Next week starts the new Congress, and with it the Tea Party conservatives. What are they going to do about government spending? Knowing they don’t stand a chance of getting a direct repeal of the healthcare mandate, they’ll try to strip the federal budget appropriation of money needed to put the healthcare mandate into effect. This could lead to a standoff with the White House over government funding in general, and a possible government shutdown.
Charles Hayes: If America is going to have a better future, we need to put our Stone Age feelings of exceptional identity aside and intellectually guard ourselves against emotional manipulation while reasoning our way forward.
Berry Craig: Paul, who beat moderate Democrat Jack Conway, ran unabashedly as a tea party Republican. In Kentucky and elsewhere, a lot of latter day Johnny Rebs seem to be tea party Republicans.
Steven Hill: When puzzled Europeans ask me to explain the American voter, the best metaphor I can give for understanding the American electorate right now is that of a coyote with its leg caught in a trap, suffering in pain, so now it is chewing off its own leg to get out of the trap.
Tom Hall: Sure, the Tea Party will win this fall’s election cycle. Yes, they will do every thing they can to disrupt any progressive efforts of the President. But even now, before their election victories have been counted, they are already beginning to war amongst themselves. They are eagerly acting to disprove any belief in the “values” they proclaim. Their hypocrisy will be their undoing.
Denis Campbell: Almost all feared what looks to become the continual flip-flopping of the government every two years that will prevent a single problem from being fixed and create an even more polarized and angry electorate. Said Marilyn from Delaware, “This will be like Israel, where no one can agree and they just fight all of the time.”
Steven Hill: “Where are you Americans? Why aren’t Americans out in the streets? If Americans are angry, why aren’t they out in the streets like we are?” He said something quickly to his comrades in French, then reverted back to English. “It’s like Americans have gone to sleep or something. You used to have many protests.”
Tom Degan: We’re two weeks and two days from one of two things: We’re about to observe the biggest electoral upset since 1948 (“DEWEY DEFEATS TRUMAN”) or we’re about to commit economic suicide. Take your pick.
David Love: People of color and other minorities need membership in the Tea Party like they needed membership in the White Citizens’ Council during Jim Crow. And the notion of Tea Party diversity is just as implausible.
Michael Sigman: The Right’s genius for manipulating people’s sense of grievance — combined with liberals’ weak brew of tepid policy proposals and corporate coziness — leads ordinary voters to cast their ballots against their own economic interests time and time again.
Jerry Drucker: The Tea Party People have GOP reign drops falling on their heads and most seem totally unaware how they’re being used.
Tom Hall: Every time that they’ve had the chance, Republicans have given our tax dollars to corporations for the specific purpose of moving our jobs to China and other anti-democratic Asian nations.
Robert Illes: Christine O’Donnell; Her idiocy, past and present, has made her a national figure, with millions of dollars flowing into her campaign.
Tom Hall: Tea Bag Republicans were coached for months to shout about “restoring the Constitution,” without ever risking any details of what parts of the Constitution need “restoration.” But the growing influence of the Tea Bag faction has forced the party managers to be more specific.
Tom Degan: Glenn Beck – The louse that roared. Does the FCC have any rules about incitement to violence? If they don’t, they really should. The other day on his nationally syndicated radio program Beck made the claim that America can expect violence in the very-near future — and that the president of the United States will be the instigator!
Rev. Irene Monroe: A mind is a terribly thing to waste. But for conservatives and Tea Party activists who want to indoctrinate our kids rather than to educate them, a mind is a terrible thing to have. Now with far-right activists like Glen Beck pushing for more Jesus and less Darwin — working to reshape the academic landscape in schools, colleges and universities across the country — we will soon know without having to wonder “Why Johnny Can’t Think Critically.”
Michael Sigman: Newt’s bilious public statements, along with damning quotes in the Esquire piece from his second wife (out of three, so far) Marianne and from former long-time Republican congressman Mickey Edwards, suggest that Newt’s regeneration does not appear to have included a new heart.
Robert Reich: Whatever the outcome of the upcoming midterm elections, the activist phase of the Obama administration has likely come to a close. The President may have a fight on his hands even to hold on to what he’s already achieved because his legislative successes have been large enough to fuel strong opposition but not big enough to strengthen his support. The result could be disastrous for him and congressional Democrats.
Sherwood Ross: Get it straight: the best remedy for what ails America is to pay working people fairly. It is the toil and dollars of the American people that made America great.
Randy Shaw: Obama could regain young people’s support by lowering student loan rates, enacting immigration reform and rejecting the Keystone XL Pipeline, but time—and his political capital—is running out.
Steve Hochstadt: The women’s liberation movement of the 1960s and 1970s finally made an issue of fathering. If women were going to get out of the house and into the workplace, men had to change their roles, too.
The Frying Pan: A successful mayor and council cannot be satisfied with merely coping as issues arise, but must be able to anticipate and define the city´s needs for the next four years. As our newly elected leaders prepare for their roles, we´ve asked writers to share their thoughts about what lies ahead for Los Angeles.
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The Revolution Will (Barely) Be Publicized
Sylvia Moore: The pro-corporate, anti-tax Tea Party movement has gotten wall-to-wall press coverage, even though only about 30 percent of the population actually supports it. Saturday’s event did get some national coverage from the major television networks, but that paled in comparison to the kind of attention the Tea Partiers are getting on a routine basis. Locally, all I could find was this 37-second clip from ABC7 News. Kudos to ABC for showing up.