Tea Party - LA Progressive

IRS, Benghazi “Scandals” Won’t Hurt Dems in 2014

Randy Shaw: Democratic success in 2014 hinges not on the impact of the IRS and other “scandals” but on passing comprehensive immigration reform, rejecting the Keystone XL Pipeline, and avoiding a budget deal that undermines Social Security.

Gullible’s Travails: Abuse and Scandal Around Obama

By John Peeler

John Peeler: Obama’s also gullible in failing, after more than four years, to grasp just how obsessed the Republicans are with making him fail, without regard to the consequences for the country.

President Cruz?

By Tom Degan

Tom Degan: Show me a guy whose antics are too weird for the GOP and I’ll show you a guy who really should be be watched – if only for our own amusement.

Teaparty.org: Stuck in 2008, Still Demented

By Julie Driscoll

Julie Driscoll: Although it’s not really necessary to “know the enemy” (since our enemies have already outed themselves as idiots and numbskulls hugging their guns and building underground bunkers), it’s on sites like teaparty.org where true radical right-wingers are born, bottle-fed, nurtured and set free to wreak havoc.

DINOs

By Berry Craig

Berry Craig: Some of the DINOs will lambast “liberal unelected judges” if the courts toss out the “religious freedom” law. Bless their hearts, these DINOs still won’t get to first base with the Lee-leaning “You can’t be a Christian and a Democrat” crowd.

Will Roberts Court Light a Fire in Gutting the Voting Rights Act?

By Tom Hall

Tom Hall: The Roberts Court’s formal gutting of the 1965 Voting Rights Act will be announced later this spring, after the weather has warmed up, after the school year has ended. After young black men in cities around the nation will join their fathers, standing on line to apply for jobs they won’t be given.

GOP Rolls Dice on Immigration Reform

By Matt Barreto

Matt Barreto: Can Republicans really draw more Latino support if they back a path to citizenship? The answer is unequivocally ‘Yes’. Or if they fail to support immigration reform with a path to citizenship, they could do even worse than Mitt Romney’s all-time low among Latino voters in 2012.

Sequester: Holding the American People Hostage

By Walter M. Brasch

Walter Brasch: The Congressional Budget Office says the sequester could cut more than 750,000 federal jobs. Republicans like that idea, especially since most federal employees are also members of unions. But, those jobs include public health officials, social service workers, teachers, air traffic controllers, and others in critical jobs.

Tea Party’s Last Stand

By Victoria DeFrancesco Soto

Victoria Defrancesco Soto: It was cute of the Senators’ to point out the filibuster’s shared date with the battle of the Alamo. But beyond a shared date and colorful personalities the battles are fundamentally different in that the Tea Party movement will not be able to rally for an ultimate win.

Qualitative Easing for the People: Comedian Grillo’s Populist Plan for Italy

By Ellen Brown

Ellen Brown: Default on the public debt, nationalization of the banks, and a citizen dividend could actually save the Italian economy.

Mr. Obama, You’re No Socialist

By Berry Craig

Berry Craig: One of the strangest—and for me, most annoying—perversions of politics in the Obama era is the meme pursued by so many on the right suggesting that this president is a raging socialist who seeks to install a permanent welfare state in America—despite all evidence to the contrary

Rand Paul, You’re No Henry Clay

By Berry Craig

Berry Craig: The well-heeled Rand Paul was not named for Ayn Rand, as has been claimed. But he shares her deep disdain for government programs designed to help the poor, the elderly and the working class.

Now the Battle Over the Debt Ceiling

By Robert Reich

Robert Reich: The White House’s and Democrats’ single biggest failure in the cliff negotiations was not getting Republicans’ agreement to raise the debt ceiling.

Vulgar Borkians: The Tea Party and the Judge

By Lawrence Rosenthal

Lawrence Rosenthal: The Tea Party’s feeling that something theirs was being taken away and given to others was precisely the feeling that Robert Bork was translating into a judicial philosophy.

Republicans Down, Not Out

By Berry Craig

Berry Craig: Don’t get me wrong. I fervently hope I’m off base in sweating a GOP comeback. Yet I don’t see the Republicans going the way of the dinosaurs, at least not any time soon.

Tea Party Quitter DeMint Cashes In

By Richard Eskow

Richard “RJ” Eskow: DeMint’s performed one public service by abandoning his post: He’s given us a glimpse of a half-hidden Washington where leaders don’t lead, think-tankers don’t think, and the house always wins.

Teahadis Demand Creation of Texassippi

By Tom Hall

Tom Hall: In Texassippi, there will be no taxes, of course, and no tax revenue to support governmental operations. Under Teahadi theory, that won’t matter. All functions that other governments perform for themselves will be handled by private enterprise in Texassippi.

Review: E.J. Dionne’s Our Divided Political Heart

By John Peeler

John Peeler: Our present plight is rooted in the loss of consensus about social justice, management of the economy, and most fundamentally, about who we are as a people.

Is the Tea Party Over?

By Victoria DeFrancesco Soto

Victoria Defrancesco Soto: Can the die-hard group hanging out in the kitchen keep the party going? Can Ted Cruz, Rand Paul, Sarah Palin, and the state-level Tea Partiers keep the music playing and the drinks flowing?

Obama Reelected! How?

By John Peeler

John Peeler: After all the anguish, all the hyperventilation, all the spin, we are pretty much back to where we’d thought we’d be.

Closing Argument

By Karen FInney

Karen Finney: Rejecting the false choice of either/or narratives, the idea that “we’re all in this together” and the focus on finding inclusive ways to embrace the bigger picture has been a consistent theme throughout President Obama’s life.

When Businesses Go Unregulated

By Tom Hall

Tom Hall: New England Compounding Center took advantage of deregulation to eliminate costs for safety measures. And “customers” died, killed by the contaminated drugs produced in the newly deregulated factories.

Why the Democrats Will Win This Election

By Steve Hochstadt

Steve Hochstadt: Despite the continuing economic disaster, despite lingering racism across white America, despite the daily uncertainties of the world outside our borders, Barack Obama wins again. His victory in 2012 means that Republican ideology is a failure.