Secession in the Air
No, it is not 1860 again.
But with all the talk of the 10th Amendment, nullification and interposition, states rights and secession — following Gov. Rick Perry’s misstatement that Texas, on entering the Union in 1845, reserved in its constitution a right to secede — one might think so.
Chalk up another one for those Tea Party activists who exploded in cheers when Sister Sarah brought up the dread word in endorsing Rick Perry in the primary.
Looking back in American history, however, these ideas, these sentiments, decried as insane inside the Beltway, were once as American as “The Midnight Ride of Paul Revere.”
“I hold it that a little rebellion now and then is a good thing, and as necessary in the political world as storms in the physical,” wrote Thomas Jefferson to James Madison from Paris in January 1787, about Revolutionary War Capt. Daniel Shay’s anti-tax rebellion in Massachusetts.
In the Virginia and Kentucky resolutions, both of these founding fathers sanctioned the idea that states could interpose their own sovereignty and nullify acts of Congress. Both were enraged by the Alien and Sedition Acts of John Adams and the Federalists, written into law to combat sedition during the undeclared naval war with France.
On taking office, President Jefferson declared the acts unconstitutional, refused to prosecute those charged and freed the imprisoned writers.
In 1814, Timothy Pickering, another veteran of the revolution and secretary of state to both George Washington and Adams, was a force behind the Hartford Convention, which argued for New England’s secession and reuniting with Great Britain. Massachusetts opposed Madison’s War of 1812 that had caused the British blockade that destroyed their trade and prosperity.
The war’s end and Jackson’s victory at New Orleans, however, aborted the Hartford movement and finished off the Federalists forever.
In 1832, it was Vice President John Calhoun who inspired South Carolina to vote to nullify the Tariff of Abomination that was killing the cotton-exporting South and enriching Northern manufacturers. To the chagrin of Madison, Calhoun invoked his and Jefferson’s Virginia and Kentucky resolutions in defense of Carolinian defiance.
In 1845, it was Massachusetts again. Ex-President John Quincy Adams declared that admission of Texas to the Union as a slave state might constitute grounds for secession and civil war.
With Abraham Lincoln’s election in 1860 and Republicans, the Northern party, assuming power, South Carolina, Georgia and the Gulf states seceded.
But not until after Fort Sumter, when Lincoln called for volunteers to march south and crush the rebellion, did Virginia, North Carolina, Tennessee and Arkansas secede, rather than remain passive or participate in a war on their kinfolk.
Unlike the issues of yesteryear that tore the Union asunder, Tea Party issues are not sectional but national. Yet, they are rooted in a similar set of beliefs — that the federal government no longer serves their interests, but the interests of economic and political forces that sustain the party in power.
In 1860, the South saw power passing indefinitely to a new regime, a Republican Party that represented high-tariff industrialists and New England radicals and abolitionists who despised the agrarian South and celebrated the raid on Harper’s Ferry by the terrorist John Brown, who had sought to incite a slave uprising, such as had occurred in Santo Domingo.
What called the Tea Party into existence?
Some are angry over unchecked immigration and the failure to control our borders and send the illegals back. Some are angry over the loss of manufacturing jobs. Some are angry over winless wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. Some are angry over ethnic preferences they see as favoring minorities over them.
What they agree upon, however, is that they have been treading water for a decade, working harder and harder with little or no improvement in their family standard of living. They see the government as taking more of their income in taxes, seeking more control over their institutions, creating entitlements for others not them, plunging the nation into unpayable debt, and inviting inflation or a default that can wipe out what they have saved.
And there is nothing they can do about it, for they are politically powerless. By their gatherings, numbers, mockery of elites and militancy, however, they get a sense of the power that they do not have.
Their repeated reappearance on the national stage, in new incarnations, should be a fire bell in the night to the establishment of both parties. For it testifies to their belief and that of millions more that the state they detest is at war with the country they love.
The secession taking place in America is a secession of the heart — of people who have come to believe the government is them, and not us.
Obama’s problem, like the Bushes’ in 1992 and 2008, is that one thing these folks are really good at is throwing people out of power.
I’ve never attended a Tea Party rally, as I’ve an aversion to death via accidental discharge of a firearm. Thus, I can only base this opinion on what I’ve seen in television and print reportage.
The Tea Partiers are NOT protesting against Iraq or Afghanistan. Not at all. Rather, with a black man now in the White House, they have suddenly discovered their outrage over policies and practices that the previous Administration had been engaging in for the better part of eight years.
Mr. Rurik,
It seems as if you’re painting Tea Partiers into a bit of a corner, no? Are their only two possible motivations complete intellectual consistency or racism? Do you judge every other part of the political spectrum with such a smothering rigor as well? Hillary and Barack both had race-minded followers making racist associations and threats (in Obama’s case it was New Black Panthers engaged in voter intimidation), so does it then make case to understand both of their constituencies strictly in the context of racism? If not, then why are Tea Partiers different?
When the tea partiers want to rally against the evils of the passionate attachment that George Washington warned us against, one if not the greatest danger to America (as the war cries against Iran from the neocons and ilk reach near hysteric levels), then I will be there with bells on.
Let’s face it, Mr Rurik is correct. These people are a bunch of gun-toting racists.
They’re just unhappy because a more enlightened community has been given no choice but to take away their property and equal privilege under the law in order to end their selfish clinging to outmoded notions of personal property and nativist pride.
If the president wasn’t a non-white they would just keep their mouths shut.
Buchanan has a way too rosy view of the partiers. Those who are pulling their strings (Armey, the Kochtopus, etc.) aren’t in any way on his side. They’re libertarian-leaning supporters of loose borders and “free” trade. While some of their followers might be worried about immigration, as a group they could care less despite how much of an impact it has on the spending they claim to oppose. They’re living in a libertarian fantasy land where we can have low spending and loose borders. See, for instance, this NumbersUSA discussion of that fantasy land: peekURL.com/zq7sgur
Further, the methods used by the “partiers” are like those used by Ron Paul supporters and other libertarians: they have the “act out” gene rather than the “think things through” gene. Instead of, for instance, engaging politicians in debate in an attempt to show how they’re wrong, they do things like wave loopy signs, throw tantrums, play dress-up games, or engage in cheap stunts. Buchanan should oppose them at least for being completely anti-intellectual.
For my extensive coverage of them, see my name’s link.
At this point, the Tea Party is best characterized by its populist anger and ideological incoherence. It seems like a bunch of sincerely upset, fearful and disenfranchised people throwing a tantrum.
What started as a clever gimmick of the Ron Paul libertarians, has turned into an amorphous, quivering blob of…What exactly? Are they anti-government or just anti-Obama/anti-democrat? I hear no strong repudiation of the Bush administration, guilty of many of the same things, which now stoke their fury, since being associated with Obama. I see Sarah Palin, their de-facto leader, turning into more of a neocon sock puppet by the day. I see the prevalence of a brand of Christianity that yearns for the End-Times, and a foreign policy world-view informed by it.
This movement is a malleable, unshaped mass, with opportunists of the political class in a scrum for the chance to harness it’s raw electoral power through the same song and dance of empty rhetoric and empty promises.
Contra The Who, they will get fooled again.
Mr. Rurik’s criticism, that “they have suddenly discovered their outrage over policies and practices that the previous Administration had been engaging in for the better part of eight years” seems inescapably accurate to me. I don’t necessarily agree that it’s because America has a black president – although for many of the Teabaggers, this is a source of unfocused rage – but the mantle of “the federal government no longer serves their interests, but the interests of economic and political forces that sustain the party in power” fits the previous Republican administration like a glove.
There is none of the reasoned deliberation of the original “conservative” in the Teabagger movement – but then, there is nothing of the sort in the current incarnation of the Republican party, either. The Teabaggers don’t care to be seen as a rational alternative, while the Republicans occupy themselves with action as a substitute for thought. Both appear obsessed with destruction of Obama’s government to the exclusion of anything good for the country.
Dang Adam, you couldn’t wait at least a couple of comments before you played the tired ol’ racism card?
Well, Red, one has to ask oneself:
Where WERE these people when George W. Bush was racking up then-record deficits and debt?
Where WERE these liberty-lovers when John Ashcroft was shredding the Constitution?
Where WERE these people when Cheney, Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz were beating the war drums for Iraq?
Where WERE they???
No question there is a racial element to the Tea Partiers, fed up with over-reaching elites attempting to force their own “progressive” and atheist-materialist values down the throats of the rabble from the safety of their office towers, gated communities and secure jobs (although a lot less secure than they once believed).
I don’t think white people are inherently any more or less racist than any other race. But I do believe they are sick of the elites who encourage or coddle Jews (the Israel lobbby/Zionist interests) Hispanics (La Raza), and blacks (the Black Caucus) who organize into self-interested tribes, while simultaneously decrying whites who do the same as “racists.”
I think Buchanan puts his finger on a kind of sickness that exists in the souls of white elites who have been conditioned by left-liberalism and socialism to believe that the white race is the root of all evil. Yet millions of white Christians in the Soviet Union were murdered by the Bolshevik precursors to these same lefties who presume to sit in judgment of white conservatives today.
If progressives are going to oppose tribalism, they should oppose it for all races. But then again, such a position might too closely resemble Christianity for comfort, which these same white elites have also been inculcated to react to allergically.
It is not so much that the occupant of the white house is a person of color, but that he is yet another chameleon that changes to the environment he is in.
The article misses the bankster bailout which was quite buypartisan.
I voted Constitution party, but would have voted for either of the mainline candidates had they the gonads to vote against this new tariff of abomination.
Something strongly opposed by 70% of the electorate being rammed through generates a 30% approval rating.
Obama could have used his honeymoon to change the game but instead decided to stay in the Bush league. He changed which GS drone we had at Treasury (and apparently could not find any who did not cheat on their taxes). He is changing which quagmire we are going to sink blood and treasure into. He is moving the torture center from Gitmo to Bagram.
I’m not quite sure how to describe it when politicians are either so inept or so arrogant that they don’t even try for a facade of real change. For all the faux news outrage, has anything substantial changed? The banksters control congress, we have a defense policy written by Lockheed and Xe (or it’s illinois substitute), big pharma and insurance control health, and monsatoand ADM control
While the bubble was inflating, people generally ignored the problems. When it went critical, people noticed. Then noticed it was both parties. And noticing that this tiny corner of Manhattan could override the will of everyone from sea to shining sea by threatening something which if someone who was muslim did it would be sent to one of the aforementioned torture centers for being a terrorist.
The health care debacle simply proved the point. Now the IRS under Timmy the tax cheat will levy fines or imprison you if you don’t have proof of insurance – which may not actually pay since they will not regulate against them. No republican wants a corporatist (corporate socialist) gun at his head saying “you must buy insurance with your own money”, but neither does the most liberal democrat.
And Ben Burnthecurrency was appreved by a shockingly low 70% margin.
There is some hot-air but little action on life and gay issues which differentiate the parties, but what the Tea Party represents are those who have figured it out that the party has captured most candidated, and that the establishment – be it big pharma, farm, defense, insurance, finance, has captured BOTH parties.
This will change – remember “discharge petitions” which were secret until some other bill passed – so your congressman could say he supported something but for some reason although 400 congressmen said they supported it there were never enough signatures to bring it out of committee to the floor.
Corruption will find new outlets, but now they are having one last fling with the current system.
Adam, You are absolutely correct that Obama’s race is the cause for many Tea Partier’s outrage. However, the majority are outraged because he is a “liberal” and a Democrat. A Republican with similar positions ( “W”, McCain etc.) will be supported by these folks. In the big picture, Obama, like Clinton, will cause less damage than Bush, for the simple fact that his policies will be VEHEMENTLY OPPOSED by “small government,constitutional Republicans”,who would have supported the VERY SAME POLICIES if they were being implemented by one of their own. Simply put: “Gridlock” is about as good as it can get in the foreseeable future…….
What a bunch of dribble.
First off, I have never seen a gun at any Tea Party event I have attended. I know that other Tea Party had a few people with guns, but they were not loaded.
Secondly, we have people of many different races at our Tea Party functions. .
Thirdly, most of the people I have talked with have been criticizing a too strong federal overnment for decased, no matter which party was in power. My arguments against Zerobama are the same I had with George W. Bush
Most of you people need to get out more and truly listen to people instead of stuck in your elitist virtual world.
You seen to be acting like the politicans who are confronted. And when confroned what do they do? They start whining and chide people who ask them tough questions. Gene Taylor, at his meeting in southern Mississippi even told people to butt out and stop asking tough questions because it was his town meeting and not theirs.
Reason with the politicans? Get serious. All they understand is being voted out of office. Now that gets their attention.
I would say that Pat is right on target more than those who have criticized him with their comments. Does he bring out every aspect of the Tea Party movement? No, but those he does bring up are thought provoking and better thought out than most of the inane comments I see posted here.
“Where WERE they???”
A larger percentage of Tea Partiers have been consistent than have a comparative group of Republican Party regulars for example, that is for sure. But for the ones that do fit your categorization, let’s call them newcomers, they were busy being what they have always been, loyal Republicans who can’t see outside the current Democrat vs. Republican dichotomy.
I could similarly ask what happened to all the liberal “anti-war” protesters now that Obama is running the show. Many have proven to be nothing more than anti-Republican, anti-Bush, and anti-conservative protesters, not anti-war.
Now I suspect your charge of hypocrisy is from the left or you wouldn’t have played the race card. But I and many others, including this magazine/website, have been making the charge of hypocrisy from the right for a long time.
But that these newcomers are motivated by Obama’s race is simply not true. These are the same people who fall all over themselves to embrace any black conservative that comes along so as to prove they aren’t racist to placate people like you. Now this is unnecessary and counterproductive. They shouldn’t care what liberal PC enforcers think about them. But it is nonetheless true.
While I deny that these newcomers are motivated by Obama’s race, it is absolutely true that limited government has an almost entirely white constituency. There is no meaningful black or Hispanic limited government constituency.
Part of the rage expressed by the Tea Party membership is born of confusion. Many politicians tell the people that they can pay low taxes and get service from the government. Politicians who show that services and benefits have to be paid for get hammered at the polls because most people want to believe the former politicians. Tell the people to be respolnsible and the tea-party-goers and many others ask “what’s in it for ME? Why should I pay taxes for benefits to THEM?”
The best examples I can think of are entitlement programs (perfectly rational people believe they “pay into” a fund and that their benefits “come out” of the fund and represent what they “paid in”), and various large-scale welfare transfers such as farm subsidies and road project.
So long as the American People generally believe that they can get without paying and that taxes benefit others, and have no sense of a community for which some sacrifices have to be made, we’ll have populists and tea-party-goers.
Cheapskate: “A Republican with similar positions ( “W”, McCain etc.) will be supported by these folks.”
I’m sure that’s true for some of them, but McCain lost the election for a reason.
The Tea Party movement is in many important ways heir to the Ron Paul revolution. They all carry a basket of legitimate greivances, and in many of those baskets is a grudge against Bushcon/Neocon pseudo-conservatives.
To demonstrate this, for example, David Frum was upset that during a speech, Palin couldn’t get a cheer from the Tea Partiers for “keeping the democratic peace” when she was warmongering against Iran. McCain, then, might have been booed of the stage by these folks, because that’s about all he ever does.
http://www.libertariantoday.com/2010/02/neocon-discouraged-that-tea-partiers.html
Thank you, Chris Moore, for the most perceptive comments here. If we can exempt the tired old race card I do agree with
Adam.
24ahead.com, your comments are the same tired old conservative statism. Protectionism is a form of taxation
to protect our incompetent domestic producers from foreign
competition. It’s fallacious premise has been exposed from Adam Smith to Murray Rothbard to Ludwig Von Mises to
George Reisman. There should be totally free migration
of capital and labor. If we eliminated the welfare state there
would be no problem with immigration and less of it too.
It has dramatically declined during the current depression.
But demagogues like Michael “Savage” Weiner have tried to
exploit it for all it’s worth. And Pat, economics aside, I like
you but stop smooching Weiner’s outsized butt when you go
on his show. Tell him to take his Shoah business and put in
the southerly cavity.
Red, just check out some liberal websites and you will see their is PLENTY of discontent and anger about Obama’s escalation in Afghanistan, as well as innumerable complaints that the President isn’t “bringing the troops home from Iraq fast enough.”
As for my “coming from the left,” well, I certainly do hold some positions that might be classified as liberal, but, on foreign and defense policy, I’m quite hawkish. My only criterion is that American military power should be used exclusively against actual enemies of the United States, rather than the latest country that the Israelis have decided they don’t like.
The Tea Party movement was inspired by Rick Santelli of CNBC on February 19, 2009 at the Chicago Stock Exchange. See it on youtube.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bEZB4taSEoA
We keep describing the tea-partiers as fiscal conservatives. This is a bold face lie. Have you seen any signs like “Abolish Medicare,” or “Raise the Retirement Age” at these tea party rallies? I sure have not.
The tea partiers have no plans to cut serious spending whatsoever. Everything they stand for is about more spending, not less. Remember that none of these people were up in arms when Bush was adding trillions of debt with not even a gesture at funding any of it.
They love their Medicare (remember the town halls, last summer?) Plus, they want to cut taxes as well.
So why are they really there? They want their country back. They describe Obama as Satan’s agent, Hitler, a communist, a socialist, etc. This is about Christianism, permanent war against Islam, rounding up illegals and a culture war against the cities and “unreal Americans”. Unreal means not Christian.
The tea parties are an uprising against the changing demographics of America. As the population of Hispanics, Asian Americans, those with higher degrees and those with no religious beliefs grow, the population of the working class, Caucasian, Evangelical, lower level education population decreases. And with it, they slowly lose power as their voting bloc decreases as well. And they know it.
Where were they?
>>2 big reasons they woke up<>Radical Ideology<>The road to Hyper-inflation<<
http://blog.heritage.org/2009/03/24/bush-deficit-vs-obama-deficit-in-pictures/
The subconscience reason for the Tea Partys is the US economic machine is no longer able to provide for all things to all people. The Tea Party crowd wants us to return to the good old days. Unfortunately, as the global economy eats away at the manufacturing base of US employment and moves more fully toward an economy of financialization, the government will be forced to run up more debt or cut programs.
Of couse, no politican or party will get elected telling the truth which is the American dream is not the same for future generations. The issue of allocating diminishing resources will remain very contentious and will likely be very ugly.
24ahead.com, jbraunstein, Mike S,
Right, the TeaParty folks are just like those who voted for Perot: Lost and damned, because there CANNOT be a Spartacus revolt. Without intellectual guidance, a mass — no matter how discontented — can have no purpose or direction. Only ideas can provide that. When someone like Pat Buchanan does articulate a consistent program on their behalf, they are too ignorant to recognize it, and they reject him at the polls. — And that’s why the adenoidal airhead Palin should remain their rightful spokesperson.
To Golfer K,
I am a moderate. Sorry to disappoint you but the GWB era was just as ideologically far-right as the Obama era is far-left. The tea partiers did not “wake up” as you state now because of the risk of hyper inflation or a radical ideology. They “woke up” because they lost an election. It’s as simple as that.
George F. Kennan,
Folks like Buchanan are rejected for charisma not ideas. Look at every election since 1980. The winner was the most charismatic candidate in the field. In some cases, the losing candidate had the better ideas. The only possible exception is 1988 when both candidates made it more fun to watch paint dry.
Where WERE they???
I count myself as one of those indicted by your accusation. I was serving overseas in Iraq and Afghanistan during that time and it took all those experiences to radicalize me enough to question the administration. I didn’t vote for endless war, open borders, carbon caps McCain, I voted for Bob Barr. It took the first 7 years of the Bush Administration to realize their folly in prosecuting the War on Terror.
Please give the Tea Partiers the benefit of the doubt, they are slowly coming to see the wisdom you saw years before all of us. Thanks for leading the way and staying true to your principles, just give the rest of the ex-neocons in detox, like myself, some time to catch up. The Tea Partiers are mostly ex-Republicans radicalized into questioning the two-party sham. Give them time to learn.
JihadLizard,
Thank you for serving. I voted for Barr too. I think your description of the Tea Party folk is dead on. My concern is that most of the Tea Party folks in my home state of Ohio ARE neoconservative in philosophy.
Thanks, JihadLizard.
My sarcasm was my own angry response to people passing judgement on a “movement” that doesn’t yet know itself and may never be easily pinned down.
Your sincere response was a better response.
JihadLizard,
Republicans know how to do opposition. Look at 1994. That year, they won a spectacular victory in opposition to a new Democratic president. It was spearheaded by the Contract With America movement (the tea party of its time), inspired by broadcaster Rush Limbaugh (now Glenn Beck), and led by an intensely controversial figure, then Newt Gingrich (now Sarah Palin). Two years later, with the GOP in power, the movement deflated. And the party nominated Dole for president in 1996.
The same will happen here. The GOP will win control of the House in November and with their ideological brethren in power, the tea party movement will dissipate and the GOP will nominate milquetoast candidate Mitt Romney in 2012. Hardly a teabagger.
To JihadLizard, a question: Did you vote for Bush in ’00 and ’04? If so, what was it that you WEREN’T seeing then???
[...] Secession in the Air [...]
Adam, yes, unfortunately, I too am guilty of that also.
I didn’t understand what Big Government Conservatism abroad was doing to our domestic freedoms. I’m not pulling the I served card, but literally I wasn’t in the country much during my service and didn’t understand what was happening at our Ground Zero of freedom. Only years later did I realize the neocons hijacked the War on Terror, like the jihadists tried to hijack Islam, for their fantasies of world domination. It wasn’t until years later I learned that serving in Operation Enduring Freedom we might have lost sight of the whole purported aim of the War on Terror, to defend our enduring freedom, not sacrifice it to the whims of the National Security state.
Adam, thank you for shining the light for the rest of us neocons in detox to wake up to. I only urge you, be patient, more are joining our cause daily. It just took radicalization and more importantly weaning ourselves off of talk radio comfort food to see through the two party sham. Only when I realized my pop-con leaders like Limbaugh and Hannity were wrong about the Surge, did I start to ask questions about what else they could be wrong about. Patience.
It’s true that the tea party does not have and has never had a unified ideology, and that is why I ultimately left, never to return. About a year ago, I was a tea party organizer, and I can tell Rurik and the others for certain that what motivated me (a half-breed) to form a tea party had nothing at all to do with race — that idea is laughable, absurd.
What follows is the first reason I formed a tea party in Northern Colorado; it is a small sampling of Obama’s “recovery plan,” which Obama forced through before it had been read, and which he then had the temerity to say “is entirely consistent with free-market principles”:
$44 million for construction, repair and improvements at US Department of Agriculture facilities
$209 million for work on deferred maintenance at Agricultural Research Service facilities
$245 million for maintaining and modernizing the IT system of the Farm Service Agency
$175 million to buy and restore floodplain easements for flood prevention
$50 million for “Watershed Rehab”
$1.1 billion for rural community facilities direct loans
$2 billion for rural business and industry guaranteed loans
$2.7 billion for rural water and waste disposaldirect loans
$22.1 billion for rural housing insurance fund loans
$2.8 billion for loans to spur rural broadband
$150 million for emergency food assistance
$50 million for regional economic development commissions
$1 billion for “Periodic Censuses and Programs”
$350 million for State Broadband Data and Development Grants
$1.8 billion for Rural Broadband Deployment Grants
$1 billion for Rural Wireless Deployment Grants
$650 million for Digital-to-Analog Converter Box Program
$100 million for “Scientific and Technical Research and Services”
at the National Institute of Standards And Technology
$30 million for necessary expenses of the “Hollings Manufacturing Extension Partnership”
$300 million for a competitive construction grant program for research science buildings
$400 million for “habitat restoration and mitigation activities” at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration
$600 million for “accelerating satellite development and acquisition”
$140 million for “climate data modeling”
$3 billion for state and local law enforcement grants
$1 billion for “Community Oriented Policing Services”
$250 million for “accelerating the development of the tier 1 set of
Earth science climate research missions recommended by the National Academies Decadal Survey.”
$50 million for repairs to NASA facilities from storm damage
$300 million for “Major Research Instrumentation program” (science)
$200 million for “academic research facilities modernization” 64
$100 million for “Education and Human Resources”
$400 million for “Major Research Equipment and Facilities Construction”
$4.5 billion to make military facilities more energy efficient
$1.5 billion for Army Operation and Maintenance fund
$624 million for Navy Operation and Maintenance
$128 million for Marine Corps Operation and Maintenance
$1.23 billion for Air Force Operation and Maintenance
$454 million to “Defense Health Program”
$110 million for Army Reserve Operation and Maintenance
$62 million for Navy Reserve Operation and Maintenance
$45 million for Marine Corps Reserve Operation and Maintenance
$14 million for Air Force Reserve Operation and Maintenance
$302 million for National Guard Operation and Maintenance
$29 million for Air National Guard Operation and Maintenance
$350 million for military energy research and development programs
$2 billion for Army Corps of Engineers “Construction”
$250 million for “Mississippi River and Tributaries”
$2.2 billion for Army Corps “Operation and Maintenance”
$25 million for an Army Corps “Regulatory Program”
$126 million for Interior Department “water reclamation and reuse
projects”
$80 million for “rural water projects”
$18.5 billion for “Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy” research in the Department of Energy. That money includes:
$2 billion for development of advanced batteries
$800 million of that is for biomass research and $400 million for geothermal technologies
$1 billion in grants to “institutional entities for energy sustainability andefficiency”
$6.2 billion for the Weatherization Assistance Program
$3.5 billion for Energy Efficiency and Conservation Block Grants
$3.4 billion for state energy programs
$200 million for expenses to implement energy independence programs
$300 million for expenses to implement Energy efficient appliance rebate programs including the Energy Star program
$400 million for expenses to implement Alternative Fuel Vehicle and Infrastructure Grants to States and Local Governments
$1 billion for expenses necessary for advanced battery manufacturing
$4.5 billion to modernize the nation’s electricity grid
$1 billion for the Advanced Battery Loan Guarantee Program
$2.4 billion to demonstrate “carbon capture and sequestration
technologies”
$400 million for the Advanced Research Projects Agency (Science)
$500 million for “Defense Environmental Cleanup”
$1 billion for construction and repair of border facilities and land ports of entry
$6 billion for energy efficiency projects on government buildings
$600 million to buy and lease government plug-in and alternative fuel vehicles
$426 million in small business loans
$100 million for “non-intrusive detection technology to be deployed at sea ports of entry
$150 million for repair and construction at land border ports of entry
$500 million for explosive detection systems for aviation security
$150 million for alteration or removal of obstructive bridges
$200 million for FEMA Emergency Food and Shelter program
$325 million for Interior Department road, bridge and trail repair projects
$300 million for road and bridge work in Wildlife Refuges and Fish
Hatcheries
$1.7 billion for “critical deferred maintenance” in the National Park System
$200 million to revitalize the National Mall in Washington, D.C.
$100 million for National Park Service Centennial Challenge programs
$200 million for repair of U.S. Geological Survey facilities
$500 million for repair and replacement of schools, jails, roads, bridges, housing and more for Bureau of Indian Affairs
$800 million for Superfund programs
$200 million for leaking underground storage tank cleanup
$8.4 billion in “State and Tribal Assistance Grants”
$650 million in “Capital Improvement and Maintenance” at the Agriculture Dept.
$850 million for “Wildland Fire Management”
$550 million for Indian Health facilities
$150 million for deferred maintenance at the Smithsonian museums
$50 million in grants to fund “arts projects and activities which preserve jobs in the non-profit arts sector threatened by declines in philanthropic and other support during the current economic downturn” through the National Endowment for the Arts
$1.2 billion in grants to states for youth summer jobs programs and other activities
$1 billion for states in dislocated worker employment and training activities
$500 million for the dislocated workers assistance national reserve
$80 million for the enforcement of worker protection laws and regulations related to infrastructure and unemployment insurance investments
$300 million for “construction, rehabilitation and acquisition of Job Corps Centers”
$250 million for public health centers
$1 billion for renovation and repair of health centers
$600 million for nurse, physician and dentist training
$462 million for renovation work at the Centers for Disease Control
$1.5 billion for “National Center for Research Resources”
$500 million for “Buildlings and Facilities” at the National Institutes of Health in suburban Washington, D.C.
$700 million for “comparative effectiveness research” on prescription drugs
$1 billion for Low-Income Home Energy Assistance
$2 billion in Child Care and Development Block Grants for states
$1 billion for Head Start programs
$1.1 billion for Early Head Start programs
$100 million for Social Security research programs
$200 million for “Aging Services Programs”
$2 billion for “Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology”
$430 million for public health/social services emergency funds
$2.3 billion for the Centers for Disease Control for a variety of programs
$5.5 billion in targeted education grants
$5.5 billion in “education finance incentive grants”
$2 billion in “school improvement grants”
$13.6 billion for Individuals with Disabilities Education Act
$250 million for statewide education data systems
$14 billion for school modernization, renovation and repair
$160 million for AmeriCorps grants
$400 million for the construction and costs to establish a new “National Computer Center” for the Social Security Administration
$500 million to improve processing of disability and retirement claims
$920 million for Army housing and child development centers
$350 million for Navy and Marine Corps housing and child development centers
$280 million in Air Force housing and child development centers
$3.75 billion in military hospital and surgery center construction
$140 million in Army National Guard construction projects
$70 million in Air National Guard construction projects
$100 million in Army Reserve construction projects
$30 million in Navy Reserve construction projects
$60 million in Air Force Reserve construction projects
$950 million for VA Medical Facilities
$50 million for repairs for military cemeteries
$120 million for a backup information management facility for the State Department
$98 million for National Cybersecurity Initiative
$3 billion for “Grants-in-Aid for Airports”
$300 million for Indian Reservation roads
$300 million for Amtrak capital needs
$800 million for national railroad assets or infrastructure repairs, upgrades
$5.4 billion in federal transit grants
$2 billion in infrastructure development for subways and commuter railways
$5 billion for public housing capital
$1 billion in competitive housing grants
$2.5 billion for energy efficiency upgrades in public housing
$500 million in Native American Housing Block Grants
$4.1 billion to help communities deal with foreclosed homes
$1.5 billion in homeless prevention activities
$79 billion in education funds for states
That, mind you, is only a small sampling.
Anyone who would begin to defend Obama must begin by defending that. And more: you must defend ramming it through before it had been read, and you must defend Obama calling it “entirely consistent with free market principles.”
The so-called recovery package shoved through at breakneck speed to prevent “unemployment rising above 10 percent” is the main things that started the tea party, make no mistake about it. That’s why the tea party began right after that. So by all means, beclown yourselves by crying racism and xenophobia all you want — it doesn’t alter what Obama did and is still trying to do.
Hilarious that calling Obama what he actually is — a neo-Marxist — invites nonstop ridicule, despite the fact that Obama in his cheesy autobiography makes no real secret of his neo-Marxist leanings, let alone his economic illiteracy.
Remember Newsweek’s cover story that ran shortly after Obama was elected?
We’re All Socialists Now
That — the (correct) thought that the United States was on the brink of European-style socialism — is what precipitated the tea party. You need look no farther.
In answer to your question — “Where were all the tea parties when George Bush was enacting TARP?” — this quondam tea partier, at least, was railing against that catastrophic bailout (which Obama has taken to a whole new level), in article after article and in the book I wrote about a year ago: Leave Us Alone: A Capitalist Credo, a sampling of which, anent George W. Bush, you can find here:
http://rayharvey.org/index.php?s=george+bush
“The same will happen here. The GOP will win control of the House in November and with their ideological brethren in power, the tea party movement will dissipate and the GOP will nominate milquetoast candidate Mitt Romney in 2012. Hardly a teabagger.”
I agree that is the most likely scenario and I’d think it will be a positive development. Hard to know for certain what a Romney presidency would be like but I’d welcome the oppt’y to find out. Pat’s correct re enough vocal disenfranchised folks together are good at throwing pols out of power. I suspect one reason is that they are encouraged by the party currently out of power which ceases once they regain power and need to make compromises with established powerful interests in order to goveren. I don’t personally know any politicians or high ranking civil servants but it seems to me that the majority of our political leadership and their appointments are at minimum fairly decent and fairly capable.We can do better but I look at who is in charge of other countries throughout the world and compare our pols to them.In addition despite serious problems it’s still a good quality of life for most in the USA. If we can get a handle on balancing the budget and the poison of moral relativism is beaten back to the fringes and mainstream values once again reflect a higher moral law it should be good for most of our kids as well.
Andy,
You totally missed the point. Dole LOST in 1996. Romney will LOSE in 2012. Mid-term elections bring out the hard-core fringe (on both sides). Presidential elections bring out the country. The tea party movement is about the loss of an election not fiscal conservatism. If it was about fiscal conservatism, you would be seeing “Repeal Medicare” and “Raise the Retirement Age” signs at these rallies rather than Obama as Hitler signs.
The 2012 electorate will be a lot different looking than the 2010 one. If the GOP thinks they can ride the tea partiers into the White House in 2012, they are nuts.
Mike,
It’s way early to predict 2012 but based on the most recent elections in VA,NJ &MA I think Romney would beat Obama. Could be other candidates will emerge who can capture independents and some disgruntled democratic voters needed to win. Romney does not represent the tea partiers but I’m guessing that he is preferable to them over Obama. It would surprise me If the republican party nominated Palin or someone else who seems to more convincingly address the concerns of tea partiers which I believe you correctly pointed out.
Andy,
I agree it’s too early but 2010 standings are meaningless for an election in 2012. I am considering the following:
1. Reagan looked like a one-termer 1 year into his presidency too. But then the economy recovered and he won re-election easily. The economy will recover and be better in 2012 than it is now and Obama’s approval ratings will improve as they do.
2. The GOP will win the House in 2010 and 6-7 seats in the Senate. That’s a godsend to Obama. The GOP will misread their mandate (just as they did after 1994 and just as the Dems are doing now) and pull something like the Gingrich government shutdown or the DeLay Terri Schiavo affair.
3. As a result of the GOP misreading its mandate, Obama will be able to run arguing that re-electing him is all that stands in the way between the GOP and complete control of all the levers of government (I am presuming, reasonably so I believe, that if a GOP candidate won in 2012 the GOP would also retain the house and gain the 2 or so seats needed to control the Senate.) With the Bush era fresh in people’s minds, that should scare them to death.
4. Romney will have to win over the social conservatives to win the GOP nomination. They don’t trust him and dislike Mormons. And which Romney will we be getting. Will it be the liberal Republican Romney that ran against Teedy Kennedy for the Senate and lost? Will it be the moderate Republican Romney that won the governorship in Massachusetts? Will it be the social conservative Romney that ran for the 2008 GOP Presidential nomination? That is going to be a HUGE problem for him.
Growing deficits. Out-of-control federal spending. Rising debt. At every step, this administration has Exacerbated the Federal Budget Deficit with its shocking lack of fiscal restraint.-Fortune, March 8, 2004.
So, where were the Tea Partiers back then? Let me guess:
1. Watching their inflated home values go up and thinking they were rich.
2. Out shopping as their Commander and Chief ordered them to do.
3. Relishing in their tax cuts while the country fought the war-on-terror on yet more borrowed money.
4. Too busy to notice the decimation of America’s true economic engine-manufacturing.
4. Not focused or caring about overall US debt going from $5.8 trillion to $10 trillion from 2001 to 2008.
America desperately requires a strong grass roots movement to have any chance to reverse its fortunes.
Unfortunately, the Tea Partiers have forfeited their legitimacy of being considered grass roots by signing up Sister Sarah for $100,000 to get no meaniful discourse.
Peter G. Peterson described how the Democratic and Republican parties are bankrupting our future. Does America have the discipline and fortitude to reverse course? I know only one thing, this issue will not be resolved by either of America’s political parties.
Adam Rurik, I don’t think you have listened to what is being said at the Tea Parties. It is easier for you to accuse the participants of racism and anti-intellectualism rather than remain open-minded about what is actually being said. For years the race card has shut down any honest debate. The fear of being labeled “racist” has all to often caused the accused to become silent, even when there is no evidence of racism. This is a fascist tactic. I have heard plenty of Tea Partiers complain about the previous administration’s runaway spending and creation of numerous government bureaucracies. The anger comes from the fact that Obama ran on “Hope and CHANGE” Change meaning different. As soon as he was in office he passed a bill spending $787 BILLION. That is not fiscal change. Then the government takeovers started. That’s not the change that Americans were looking for. We wanted out of Iraq, we’re still there. Less government spending, that’s not gonna happen with the monstrous healthcare bill coming . Less regulations, not gonna get that either (cap and trade, etc.). So after all of that and lots more, the people of this country are pissed off. The people realize that neither party has their best interests in mind. The country is changing all right, it’s starting to look like Europe. If I’m not mistaken, Americans fought a revolutionary war to get away from the European model. It seems the powers that be want to take us back there. I think the point of the Tea Parties is simple. The people want their voices back. So go ahead and label me racist, ignorant, or whatever other liberal banter you want to use to make yourself feel like you won the argument. You can’t change facts. The Tea Partiers know GWB was a turd sandwich. At least conservatives admit when their guy sucks.
Secession is as american as you can get