Tea party bigotry on parade

Nicole Colson looks at the disturbing politics of the tea party fanatics--and how leading Republicans are doing everything they can to encourage them.

March 25, 2010

THE VICIOUS underbelly of the "tea party" movement was on full display in the run-up to last weekend's vote on health care.

The days before the vote were filled with protests in Washington by supposed "grassroots" tea party groups. From the start, they displayed the same naked racism (and naked stupidity) as similar protests in the past--references to Obama as a Nazi, dressed in Hitler garb; questions about where he was born; references to the health care bill as a communist plot that would mean "death panels" for senior citizens.

But tea party protesters sunk to a new low when they verbally abused Georgia Rep. John Lewis, calling him "nigger."

Lewis, a civil rights movement veteran who was brutally beaten by a white mob--and not for the only time--in 1961 when he participated in the Freedom Rides, was outside the U.S. Capitol building on March 20 when protesters began chanting "Kill the bill, kill the bill" at him. When Lewis responded by saying "I'm for the bill," people in the crowd reportedly chanted, "Kill the bill, nigger."

"It was a chorus," Rep. Emanuel Cleaver (D-Mo.), who was behind Lewis and heard the chants, told McClatchy Newspapers. "In a way, I feel sorry for those people who are doing this nasty stuff--they're being whipped up." Cleaver, who is also Black, was spat on by a protester.

"They were shouting, sort of harassing," Lewis told McClatchy. "But, it's okay--I've faced this before. It reminded me of the '60s. It was a lot of hate and anger and people being downright mean."

Also targeted by the tea partiers was openly gay Rep. Barney Frank (D-Mass.), who was called "faggot." Some reportedly mocked Frank with "lisping" chants.

The openly racist and anti-gay slurs seem to have finally dented the consciousness of the mainstream media--newspaper and cable TV reports gave greater prominence to the tea partiers' hate than in the past.

But the bigotry didn't stop, even after the vote. Rep. James Clyburn (D-S.C.), another veteran of the civil rights movement, told MSNBC's Keith Olbermann that his office received racist faxes, including an image of a noose, following the House vote for health care legislation.

Meanwhile, the offices of Democrats were vandalized before and after the vote in several areas. The Tucson, Ariz., office of Rep. Gabrielle Giffords appeared to have been shot out with a pellet gun, and bricks were tossed through windows of the New York offices of Rep. Louise Slaughter and the Monroe County Democratic Committee headquarters, as well as through the window of the Democratic headquarters in Sedgwick, Kan.

According to CNN, a note was reportedly attached to one of the bricks, which read "extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice"--a quote from 1964 Republican presidential candidate--and civil rights opponent and "states' rights" supporter--Barry Goldwater.

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IN SOME cases, Republican lawmakers were directly responsible for inciting the ugly crowds. According to a report from Dana Milbank in the Washington Post, before the vote:

Republican members of Congress stood on the balcony of the people's House and stirred an unruly crowd. As lawmakers debated their way to a vote on the legislation, dozens of GOP members walked from the chamber, across the Speaker's Lobby and out onto the balcony to whip up thousands of "tea party" protesters massed on the south side of the Capitol, within about 50 feet of the building.

Some lawmakers waved handwritten signs and led the crowd in chants of "Kill the Bill." A few waved the yellow "Don't Tread on Me" flag of the tea party movement. Still others fired up the demonstrators with campaign-style signs mocking House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, and offering messages such as "Let's Meet 'em at the State Line."

And then, of course, there was Republican Rep. Randy Neugebauer of Texas, who--not content with an Obama executive order denying women any federal funds for abortion--shouted "baby killer" at Democratic Rep. Bart Stupak for changing his vote in favor of the bill.

While most Republican officials were smart enough to distance themselves from the racist and homophobic slurs directed at Lewis and Frank, at least one--California Rep. Devin Nunes--claimed that the Democrats' "totalitarian" tactics were to blame for the tea partiers spewing their hate. On CSPAN, Nunes stated:

The left loves to play up a couple of incidents here or there, anything to draw attention away from what they are doing...When you use totalitarian tactics, people begin to act crazy. And I think, y'know, there's people that have every right to say what they want. If they want to smear someone, they can do it.

This sentiment was echoed by right-wing bloggers like Glenn Reynolds, who had the nerve to ask "Does Clyburn owe tea party protesters an apology?" He added, "The bogus racism card has been played so often that I no longer find such charges very credible."

Meanwhile, as Gawker.com noted, while Republican National Committee Chair Michael Steele and House Minority Leader John Boehner condemned the protesters, these are "the same protesters who they encourage and inspire with dog-whistle phrases and sly hints."

Sarah Palin, meanwhile, twittered to her followers: "Commonsense Conservatives & lovers of America: 'Don't Retreat, Instead RELOAD!'" and linked to a map of Democratic districts with rifle targets on them.

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SUCH RHETORIC is a barely disguised attempt to whip up the worst elements of the right wing. These kinds of tactics are hardly surprising, however. For all the claims that the "tea partiers" are an independent "grassroots" movement, the truth is that they represent, for the most part, the same old reactionary core of the Republican Party.

Not only is the tea party movement propped up--sometimes behind the scenes, sometimes openly--by various political action committees tied to well-connected Republicans like Dick Armey and Steve Forbes, but the "stars" of the tea party movement include prominent Republicans like Sarah Palin. Likewise, the tea partiers themselves are likely to support Republicans when it comes to voting.

In February, a CNN/Opinion Research poll found that some 11 percent of Americans described themselves as having given money, attended a rally or engaged in some other "active support" for the tea party movement.

The demographic is striking. Of those "active" supporters, 60 percent were male, 80 percent were white, and 66 percent made more than $50,000 a year. In fact, the largest income group of tea party activists (34 percent) was those making $75,000 or more per year. More tellingly, 87 percent said they vote for Republican candidates for the U.S. House of Representatives (as opposed to 46 percent of all respondents), and 77 percent described themselves as "conservative."

In other words, tea party activists are not working-class populist independents, but one of the core demographics of the Republican Party--the same reactionary base that the Republicans have appealed to in nakedly racist fashion for decades.

As Keeanga Yamahtta-Taylor wrote during the run-up to Obama's election:

[The race card] has been a staple of American politics since African Americans could vote, most successfully since the invocation of the so-called "Southern strategy" employed by the likes of Richard Nixon and then Ronald Reagan.

The Black political movements of the 1960s and 1970s made it impossible for politicians to be brazenly racist, and so different racial monikers and codes were developed to implicate African Americans without mentioning them by name. Richard Nixon implored the rights of the "silent majority"--as opposed to the vocal minorities demanding civil rights. Ronald Reagan created myths and lies about "welfare queens," law and order, and demanded a war on drugs. All of these inferences and many others were meant to tap into the insecurities and racism of whites, without being accused of racism.

Today, the tea party protests are part of a "movement"--and it should be emphasized that it is by no means the mass movement that the media portrays it as--that recycles these same myths and lies for a new generation.

Hence, the emphasis on Obama's "Muslim-sounding" middle name or the repeated assertions that he wasn't born in the U.S. While most Republicans may be smart enough to disavow nakedly racist rhetoric and distance themselves--for example, from the tea partiers who yelled "nigger" at John Lewis--many are more than willing to hitch their wagons to the tea party movement.

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RATHER THAN call out these racist and bigoted attacks for what they are, the leadership of the Democratic Party, has been all-but-silent.

Last September, former President Jimmy Carter asserted that racism was a major factor in the tea party opposition to Obama. As he told students at Emory University:

When a radical fringe element of demonstrators and others begin to attack the president of the United States as an animal or as a reincarnation of Adolf Hitler, or when they wave signs in the air that said we should have buried Obama with Kennedy, those kinds of things are beyond the bounds. I think people who are guilty of that kind of personal attack against Obama have been influenced to a major degree by a belief that he should not be president because he happens to be African American.

But rather than take up the issue, the Obama White House immediately distanced itself from Carter. Press Secretary Robert Gibbs told reporters that Obama did not believe the criticism directed at him and his policies was "based on the color of his skin," but a reasonable frustration with government.

Worse still has been the response of the Democrats to the furor over the health care bill. Rather than focus on the Republicans' incitement of bigotry, the Obama administration took one opportunity after another to talk about how much Republicans should appreciate the bill--because it delivers major items on their wish list.

As author Matt Taibbi noted:

Only in America could we have a situation in which the GOP punts away a political opportunity by having a some Texas congressman shout "Baby Killer!" during a debate--and then the Democrats fumble that punt by celebrating the Republican-ness of the historic bill they just passed.

As she inched toward the triumphant win, Nancy Pelosi issued a fact sheet about the bill that cheerfully quoted an E.J. Dionne editorial. The passage: "An op-ed by E.J. Dionne on Friday reveals that the current health reform legislation pending before Congress was 'built on a series of principles that Republicans espoused for years.'"

The Democrats not only won't fight the bigotry and right-wing attacks used against them, but they celebrate what they have in common with the bigots--and make concession after concession to accommodate them, as the health care debate showed all too plainly.

The result is that racism and hate only fester. According to a recent Harris poll, 67 percent of Republicans (and 40 percent of Americans overall) believe that Obama is a socialist; 57 percent of Republicans (32 percent overall) believe that Obama is a Muslim; 45 percent of Republicans (25 percent overall) agree with the "birthers" that Obama was "not born in the United States, and so is not eligible to be president"; 38 percent of Republicans (20 percent overall) say that Obama is "doing many of the things that Hitler did"; and 24 percent of Republicans (14 percent overall) say that Obama "may be the Antichrist."

While there are questions about the Harris survey's sampling and methodology, this poll isn't unique in showing the large number of Republicans who have reactionary ideas, particularly about Barack Obama. But the Democrats refuse to actively take on such ideas, preferring to talk up "common ground."

Right-wing extremism, whether racism, anti-gay bigotry or Islamophobia, has to be challenged--period. There can be no common cause with bigotry.

http://socialistworker.org/2010/03/25/tea-party-bigotry-parade

The Health Care Hindenburg Has Landed

By Chris Hedges

Rep. Dennis Kucinich’s decision to vote “yes” in Sunday’s House action on the health care bill, although he had sworn to oppose the legislation unless there was a public option, is a perfect example of why I would never be a politician. I respect Kucinich. As politicians go, he is about as good as they get, but he is still a politician. He has to run for office. He has to raise money. He has to placate the Democratic machine or risk retaliation and defeat. And so he signed on to a bill that will do nothing to ameliorate the suffering of many Americans, will force tens of millions of people to fork over a lot of money for a defective product and, in the end, will add to the ranks of our uninsured.

The claims made by the proponents of the bill are the usual deceptive corporate advertising. The bill will not expand coverage to 30 million uninsured, especially since government subsidies will not take effect until 2014. Families who cannot pay the high premiums, deductibles and co-payments, estimated to be between 15 and 18 percent of most family incomes, will have to default, increasing the number of uninsured. Insurance companies can unilaterally raise prices without ceilings or caps and monopolize local markets to shut out competitors. The $1.055 trillion spent over the next decade will add new layers of bureaucratic red tape to what is an unmanageable and ultimately unsustainable system.

The mendacity of the Democratic leadership in the face of this reality is staggering. Howard Dean, who is a doctor, said recently: “This is a vote about one thing: Are you for the insurance companies or are you for the American people?” Here is a man who once championed the public option and now has sold his soul. What is the point in supporting him or any of the other Democrats? How much more craven can they get? 

Take a look at the health care debacle in Massachusetts, a model for what we will get nationwide. One in six people there who have the mandated insurance say they cannot afford care, and tens of thousands of people have been evicted from the state program because of budget cuts. The 45,000 Americans who die each year because they cannot afford coverage will not be saved under the federal legislation. Half of all personal bankruptcies will still be caused by an inability to pay astronomical medical bills. The only good news is that health care stocks and bonuses for the heads of these corporations are shooting upward. Chalk this up as yet another victory for our feudal overlords and a defeat for the serfs.

The U.S. spends twice as much as other industrialized nations on health care—$7,129 per capita—although 45.7 million Americans remain without health coverage and millions more are inadequately covered, meaning that if they get seriously ill they are not covered. Fourteen thousand Americans a day are now losing their health coverage. A report in the journal Health Affairs estimates that, if the system is left unchanged, one of every five dollars spent by Americans in 2017 will go to health coverage. Private insurance bureaucracy and paperwork consume 31 cents of every health care dollar. Streamlining payment through a single nonprofit payer would save more than $400 billion per year, enough, Physicians for a National Health Plan points out, to provide comprehensive, high-quality coverage for all Americans. Check out www.healthcare-now.org. It has some of the best analysis.

This bill is not about fiscal responsibility or the common good. The bill is about increasing corporate profit at taxpayer expense. It is the health care industry’s version of the Wall Street bailout. It lavishes hundreds of billions in government subsidies on insurance and drug companies. The some 3,000 health care lobbyists in Washington, whose dirty little hands are all over the bill, have once more betrayed the American people for money. The bill is another example of why change will never come from within the Democratic Party. The party is owned and managed by corporations. The five largest private health insurers and their trade group, America’s Health Insurance Plans, spent more than $6 million on lobbying in the first quarter of 2009. Pfizer, the world’s biggest drug maker, spent more than $9 million during the last quarter of 2008 and the first three months of 2009. The Washington Post reported that up to 30 members of Congress from both parties who hold key committee memberships have major investments in health care companies totaling between $11 million and $27 million. President Barack Obama’s director of health care policy, who will not discuss single payer as an option, has served on the boards of several health care corporations. And as salaries for most Americans have stagnated or declined during the past decade, health insurance profits have risen by 480 percent.

Obama and the congressional leadership have consciously shut out advocates of single payer from the debate. The press, including papers such as The New York Times, treats single payer as a fringe movement. The television networks rarely mention it. And yet between 45 and 60 percent of doctors favor single payer. Between 40 and 62 percent of the American people, including 80 percent of registered Democrats, want universal, single-payer not-for-profit health care for all Americans. The ability of the corporations to discredit and silence voices that represent at least half of the population is another sad testament to the power of our corporate state to frame all discussions.

Change will come only by building movements that stand in fierce and uncompromising opposition to the Democrats and the Republicans. If they can herd Kucinich and John Conyers, the sponsors of House Resolution 676, a bill that would create a publicly funded National Health Program by eliminating private health insurers, onto the House floor to vote for this corporate theft, what is the point in pretending there is any room left for us in the party? And why should we waste our time with gutless liberal groups such as Moveon.org, which felt the need to collect more than $1 million to pressure House Democrats who had voted “no” on the original bill to recant? What was this purportedly anti-war group doing anyway serving as an obsequious recruiting arm of the Obama election campaign? The longer we tie ourselves to the Democrats and these bankrupt liberal organizations the more ridiculous and impotent we appear.

“I’m ready to listen to the White House, if the White House is ready to listen to the concerns about putting a public option in this bill,” the old Kucinich said on the “Democracy Now!” radio and television program before he flipped. “I mean, they can do that. You know, they’re still cutting last-minute deals. Put the public option back in. Make it a robust public option. Give the people a chance to really negotiate rates with the insurance companies … from the standpoint of having a public option. But don’t just tell the people that you’re going to call this health care reform, when you’re giving insurance companies an even more powerful monopoly status in our economy.”

http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/the_health_care_hindenburg_has_landed_20100322/

Revealed: Ashcroft, Tenet, Rumsfeld warned 9/11 Commission about ‘line’ it ’should not cross’

By Sahil Kapur
Wednesday, March 17th, 2010 -- 9:11 am

Senior Bush administration officials sternly cautioned the 9/11 Commission against probing too deeply into the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, according to a document recently obtained by the ACLU.

The notification came in a letter dated January 6, 2004, addressed by Attorney General John Ashcroft, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld and CIA Director George J. Tenet. The ACLU described it as a fax sent by David Addington, then-counsel to former vice president Dick Cheney.

In the message, the officials denied the bipartisan commission's request to question terrorist detainees, informing its two senior-most members that doing so would "cross" a "line" and obstruct the administration's ability to protect the nation.

"In response to the Commission's expansive requests for access to secrets, the executive branch has provided such access in full cooperation," the letter read. "There is, however, a line that the Commission should not cross -- the line separating the Commission's proper inquiry into the September 11, 2001 attacks from interference with the Government's ability to safeguard the national security, including protection of Americans from future terrorist attacks."

The 9/11 Commission, officially called the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States, was formed by President Bush in November of 2002 "to prepare a full and complete account of the circumstances surrounding the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks" and to offer recommendations for preventing future attacks.

"The Commission staff's proposed participation in questioning of detainees would cross that line," the letter continued. "As the officers of the United States responsible for the law enforcement, defense and intelligence functions of the Government, we urge your Commission not to further pursue the proposed request to participate in the questioning of detainees."

FireDogLake's Marcy Wheeler speculates that this was an attempt by the Bush administration to ensure that its torture of certain detainees, which has since been widely documented, remained secret.

"[W]hoever made these annotations appears to have been most worried that Commission staff members could make independent judgments about the detainees and the interrogations," Wheeler wrote on her blog. The official "didn't want anyone to independently evaluate the interrogations conducted in the torture program."

Eventually, the commission's co-chairs harshly criticized the administration for having purportedly "destroyed" tapes of its interrogations with terror suspects, as Raw Story reported last year.

9/11 Commission members Thomas Kean and Lee H. Hamilton wrote that although US President George W. Bush had ordered all executive branch agencies to cooperate with the probe, "recent revelations that the CIA destroyed videotaped interrogations of Qaeda operatives leads us to conclude that the agency failed to respond to our lawful requests for information about the 9/11 plot."

"Those who knew about those videotapes — and did not tell us about them — obstructed our investigation."

They continued: “There could have been absolutely no doubt in the mind of anyone at the CIA — or the White House — of the commission’s interest in any and all information related to Qaeda detainees involved in the 9/11 plot.

"Yet no one in the administration ever told the commission of the existence of videotapes of detainee interrogations," Kean and Hamilton wrote.

The letter can be found on page 26 of the ACLU's set of unveiled documents.

http://rawstory.com/2010/03/revealed-ashcroft-tenet-rumsfeld-warned-911-commission-line-should-cross/