Dear All,
I believe it was Eric who recently posted an article which portrayed Tea Party participants as lackeys of the rabid right. Sally (founder and organizer of the Bay Area Patriots Tea Party Group) has a pretty good response in The American Thinker
http://www.americanthinker.com/2009/08/the_chutzpah_of_the_town_hall.html
Sally's article is pretty passionate. It's main thrust is that it takes a lot of uninformed cheekiness to call a bunch of diverse folk, who are simply sick of being taxed into oblivion, lackeys of anybody!!
I thank Eric for posting the article he did, there is no intention here to slam Eric. However, a response such as Sally's might be good to provide a differing view.
Regards,
Marcy
I found two main problems with this article:
1. She seems to argue that, since the Left has employed the same tactics for years, the Right is justified in copying them. I think the Far Right has been copying both the policies and the tactics of the Left for far too long. These tea parties were dreamed up by Newt Gingrich even before Obama was inaugurated---his plan was to protest anything the democrats did. True, the budget bill was obscenely high, but the republicans themselves were responsible for 4/5 of it. If these protestors gathered around RNC headquarters and threw teabags (and maybe some other objects a little more solid) at their own leaders and demanded accountabilty, it would have been better.
When we see the politicians at these Tea Parties---people like Gingrich, Palin, Perry, and Sanford---none of whom complained one bit when Bush was looting the economy; it's hard to take their motives seriously. It's especially hard since not one of them, nor their trained seals in the media has offered ANY kind of a plan for dealing with these enormous deficits. In fact, whenever someone like Ron Paul proposes bringing the Bush gangsters to justice, they're ostracised by the party and denounced as 'liberals.'
2. These same big-money special interests are staging town hall protests against Obamacare. True, we don't want the government running healthcare. But where were all these protests when the GOP was forming alliances with the medico-pharmacuetical cartels and pouring billions of taxpayer-funded subsidies into them? Again, there's no free-market counterproposal, just fake protests calculated to undermine Obama.
Someone should ask the people financing these events what they propose to do about healthcare instead of Obamacare. The answer is: they don't have a plan. They either WANT Obamacare to succeed (so that they can control it themselves later on and blame its failings on the Democrats) or they want to continue Bush's policies which aren't radically different.
Dear Eric,
You make good points. However, 1) Sally does not advocate two wrongs in order to make a right; I believe she was making a theoretical comparison between the Democrats' reputation for financing/bussing in protesters, and the accusation in Mr. Press's article. 2) Eric, do you view me, a lowly housewife/small business owner as the big money big wigs you visualize? Or a liberty loving Libertarian like me being anyone's lackey? If so, I can see your viewing Sally and the other members of the Tea Party Groups as you describe. But I do not believe you do.
It goes without saying that the Newt Gingrich, Fox News types are probably delighted to see economic conservatives taking to the streets. But, I believe, it's a stretch to acknowledge that possibility and affirming that these economic conservatives are financed by the Newt Gingrich and Fox News types.
Regards,
Marcy
Eric,
Newt Gingrich didn't come up with the Tea Party protests -- Ron Paul supporters were doing them in 2007, and Libertarians have done Boston Tea Party style events years before. It's pretty much a given that one side or the other of the two-party cartel is being hypocritical at any given time. What's important it opposing whatever the current efforts are to impose more control on our lives, whether it's Bush and warrantless snooping, or Obama and health care, otherwise we will just have more government control, and the other side will have a more authoritarian base to start from when they get back in power. Right?
Love & Liberty,
((( starchild )))
Look closer. There are plenty of libertarians who have clear and well articulated proposals. We don't need a plan. we need no plan. We need the government completely out of health care, and perhaps some transitional help for poor folks to get us there, but personally I think that cold turkey woud work best for all concerned as a crisis will focus the mind on how to help those in need through private and family and community efforts. the best exaample of governemtnt getting out of the way and bringing health care to those who could never have afforded it before is the guy in India who through focused entrepeneurship has driven the cost of cataract surgery down to I believe it 50 dollars or maybe it was 200 an eye, at least 50 times less than here
Hi Marcy;
I don't think most of the 'lowly housewives' (and others like them) are lackeys: I think they're being exploited. The special interests who organise these protests are painting them as expressions of rebellion against state socialism in favor of a free market. But the Gingrich/Murdoch types don't want a free market. They want to derail the Democrats so that they can strengthen the corporatist state that the Bush Gang were well on the way to promoting.
Starchild,
I remember joining tea party protests with Ron Paul's supporters in 1988! LOL. I realise the idea isn't new, but Gingrich co-opted it and Murdoch publicised in the interests of the Far Right.
What I actually hope for is that their schemes will backfire on them and, while the protestors are protesting socialism, they see the evils of corporatism as well. But only the hard-core right-wing types will ever get any media attention.
I agree in principle, but the bottom line with the healthcare crisis is that's not affordable anymore. The reason it's not affordable is only partially because of government. The main reason is because medico-pharmacuetical cartels run the system to their own advantage; with the collusion of the insurance and trial-lawyer monopolies. Of course, they do this by greasing the palms of politicians who wipe out their competition for them by selective regulation and taxation.
Here are some reforms that would work;
1. Go back to the old system of state medical review boards (composed of actual doctors) determining if malpractice was committed before a case can go to trial. This alone would bring down the cost of medical care substantially.
2. Repealing regulations requiring insurance.
3. Abolishing the FDA.
4. Abolishing the Department of Health & Human Services.
5. Repealing all regulations against alternative medicines.
6. Anti-trust laws enforced against the corporate medical establishment.
That would be start of the way to go---it would make health care affordable to the point where no one would need government medicine.
Dear Eric;
Your ways to reform medical care and insurance are too little too late. For true reform of the medical industrial complex this is what has to be done.
1. Repeal all federal and state licensing for doctors and nurses and medical technicians and pharmacists. Go to certification.
2. Repeal Medicare and Medicaid and the HMO Act of 1970.
3. Kill off the AMA and the FDA and all DEA regulation of doctors and medications..
4. Repeal all licensing standards for clinics and hospitals.
5. Allow any college to have a school of medicine even if it is profit making college. There used to be a lot of them in the late 1800's who offered degrees in medicine and were open to horror of horrors Jews and Blacks and Women.
6. Repeal all state mandates that private insurance companies must carry to operate in their state. These mandates can run from a low of 15 to a high of 53 and jack up the premiums of everyone to pay for coverage they will never use but are forced to subsidize
Like males paying for maternity care for females except of course the father of the child or everyone paying for psychiatric care for everyone using it..
7. Make the premiums paid by an employeron corporate insurance as taxable income.
8. Do not require employers to buy insurance. Do away with workers compensation.
9. Completely and totally and fully and wholly get all government agencies state and federal out of the health insurance business.
Ron Getty - SF Libertarian
Hostis res Publica
Morte ai Tiranni
Dum Spiro, Pugno
Great list Ron. Don't forget tort reform though, which is a huge factor of
the high costs.
d
Dear David;
I personally prefer tarts instead of torts - strawberry and peach and plum wise. 
and an occasional chocolate or custard eclair.
Malpractice reform would mean pain and suffering and medical care for the claimant or the family if a death occurred anything above that nope not gonna happen no punitive.
This would also apply to all awards of any kind dump punitive awards completely.
Ron Getty - SF Libertarian
Hostis res Publica
Morte ai Tiranni
Dum Spiro, Pugno
Dear Eric, Ron, and All,
So, I can see Eric and I better amicably agree to disagree on the nature of Tea Parties; mainly because I will continue to see only the grassroots, and Eric will continue to see the Astroturf!!
But, I would like to offer two cents on the 1) corporation and 2) healthcare: 1) I agree with Eric that corporations are a pain. Unfortunately, the public at large has a tendency to associate libertarianism with capitalism/corporations, and we do not do nearly enough to explain our position. 2) I have been ranting against the Libertarian (big L) tendency to offer only obliteration of government institutions as solutions for economic and societal ills. Thusly, we are justifiably viewed as wackos. So, here, I would side with Eric's more realistic suggestions, than Ron's, in essence, let's do nothing stance. PS: As a caveat: Ron's suggestions might make all kinds of sense if the owners of our great nation (Chinese, Saudis, etc) pull the rug, and we are left destitute, with resources only for the bare necessities. No?
Marcy
That was the advantage of having medical boards determine malpractice before a case went to trial. That system was done away with in most states about the time of the HMO Act Ron mentioned. Under that system, a malpractice case couldn't even get to trial unless specialists had decided malpractice had actually been committed. The greedy trial lawyers soon found it was easier to convince 12 morons who couldn't find their own thumbs that a doctor had committed malpractice. Of course, the insurance cartels capitalised on the situation, and rushed in for their share of the plunder.