“Tea Bagger” Twisted Dupes to the Plutocracy – Our Forefathers Are Not With You Nor Are “We” the People!

Response to “The Start of the Second American Revolution?” by Paul Joseph Watson Issue 3 August 2009 The Sovereign – Hey “Tea Bagger” Twisted Dupes to the Plutocracy – Our Forefathers Are Not With You Nor Are “We” the People!
by Andrew H. Dral

We have it in our power to begin the world over again. Thomas Paine

A version of this article was published in Issue 17 January 2010 of The Sovereign -- a small New York monthly. It was written in response to an article written by "Tea Bagger" Paul Joseph Watson Issue 3 August 2009 of The Sovereign. You might find this updated version of interest.

I found Mr. Watson’s diatribe in the August edition of you paper completely misdirected and without merit. He ruthlessly attacked the U.S. government and President Obama, but what about the true enemy of working class America -- corporate America’s plutonomy -- the corporate aristocracy. Mr. Watson has been duped. He has been made a willing fool and a tool of the corporatists, along with those that would follow the will and policies that benefit the corporations and the plutocrats. Had Mr. Watson and his “tea-baggers” been around during our Revolutionary War times they would have sided with the British loyalists, the Tories.

The privatized corporate entities are taking our freedoms and liberties. Most of all they are destroying our livelihoods, similar to the unfair privileges bestowed upon the British West Indies Co. working against the interests of the colonists. The British West Indies Co. was given special rights -- tax breaks, access, and trading routes -- to trade between the colonies, not afforded to the colonists. Today, we have the privileged big New York money center banks, the coal and oil companies, the defense industrial complex, the big three auto companies, telecommunications and media companies, and the health care companies exercising the same hegemony exercised by the British West Indies Company. These entities are waging war on the working class: exploiting the system, abusing the citizenry, monitoring our activities, over-charging for their goods and services, monopolizing our markets, polluting our environment, packing our courts, usurping our public tax coffers, bribing our politicians, and manipulating our political system for their own benefit. Men and women alike, wake-up to this assault on your way of life.

The banker bail-out, Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP), was a travesty, the looting of our treasury was pay-back to the plutocracy for the tremendous Wall Street back-sheesh bestowed upon the politicians. The $700 billion TARP should be just a small fraction of the outrage, the Federal Reserve and Treasury Department committed $14.4 trillion to bailout the banks, for example $3.8 trillion for money market funds, $1.8 trillion to jump-start the commercial paper market, $1.3 trillion to buy-back mortgage backed securities, $1 trillion for asset backed securities, $400 million to buy government sponsored entity stock, $300 million to guarantee Citigroup assets, $138 million Lehman guarantee for J.P. Morgan Chase, $118 million Bank of America guarantee, just to name a few, among many other bank oriented funding programs. Back-stops and guarantees for the banks cost trillions of hard earned tax dollars. Rep. Ron Paul has it right, we must investigate, audit, and completely disclose the operations of the Federal Reserve (Fed). On the other side of the aisle, Rep. Dennis Kucinich and Sen. Bernie Sanders are also trying to rein in the Fed that provides a low interest rate life-line to Wall Street. The same Fed that has never seen a bubble worth deflating, whether it be in tech stocks, real estate, oil, or some other commodity. So don’t only blame the off-shore bankers, the on-shore money center banks in New York, along with the American Bankers Association are working against the greater good of the American citizenry. You should be working with your representatives to rescind the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act of 1999 and Commodities and Futures Modernization Act of 2000. We need to resurrect the 1933 Glass-Steagall Act (the separation of deposit banking from investment banking and brokerage activity) and rein in non-transparent over the counter derivatives (credit default swaps), unregulated energy trading, and asset backed securitization trading. Glass-Steagall served us well for 67 years, until Senator Phil Gramm decided it was time to award the bandits on Wall Street.

Even though cap and trade was a bad idea, reducing CO2 in the atmosphere is a laudable goal. Cap and trade was another giveaway pandering to Wall Street traders. However, reducing exhaust emission and reining in C02 is worth the sacrifice. We need restrictions on those big, wasteful gas hogs, and aggressive regulation of corporate average fuel economy (CAFÉ) mileage standards. Too many kids in the Central Valley of California suffer from asthma, the air is polluted from inefficient, dirty farm vehicles. The mandate in California to supply the populace with a percentage of electronic cars by 2001 was gutted by “Big Auto,” bribing the politicians and replacing the California Air Resources Board with their own corporate scientific hacks. If you don’t believe in global warming then you don’t believe in science. You “tea baggers” don’t believe in facts. You can’t critically think. What you do believe in is carrying out the corporate agenda of greed, vile exploitation, and fouling the earth provided by our forefathers and spoiling the habitat of all living creatures.

You say our sovereignty has been handed over to globalist interests, well if that’s the case, why weren’t all you “tea-baggers” in Pittsburgh demonstrating at the G-20 summit? The G-20 is the ultimate organ or conduit for globalization for the plutocracy. Your corporate masters, the astro-turf groups, like Freedomworks, evidently didn’t give you the go-ahead to go to Pittsburgh, why? What, can’t you take a few blasts of high pitched sound? Here was your big chance to demonstrate against the “off-shore” bankers, but you “tea-baggers” were no where to be found, because your transnational corporate puppet-masters didn’t want you infringing on their globalist franchise for worldwide hegemony over working people. You’re not a grass roots organization, your just corporate puppets taking your marching orders from corporate hacks.

We are the government, the people, we can vote our representatives out of office, so the government can be used as our source of power to control and fight against the tyranny of the transnational corporate monster. We cannot control the corporate chieftains without working together through organizations like ACORN, MoveOn.org, National Council of LaRaza, and the Center for American Progress. These organizations work to help the laborer, fight fraud, injustice, oppression, and criminal behavior committed by the corporate beast. We need strong government regulation and the powers espoused by Teddy Roosevelt to simply break-up these corporate behemoths. The power brokers are the corporatists that need to be reined in, the oppressors, not the reformist government. We need the health care public option to stop the corporate rape of our citizens. Our government has been neutered by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, by totalitarian big business.

ACORN has been instrumental in bringing predatory mortgage lenders to justice. They did it before it was in vogue. The red lights were flashing and ACORN was out there protesting against the most criminal of the subprime mortgage lenders at the turn of the millenium. In October 2002 ACORN helped to bring Household International, Inc. (Household) to justice for subprime predatory lending or deceptive lending practices. Long before blaming the greatest economic crash since the Great Depression on the corruption in the mortgage lending industry, ACORN was representing the poor and disenfranchised. Household settled with 34 State Attorney Generals (AGs) across the nation for $484 million in restitution, to extricate homeowners from deceptive high interest rates, fraudulent subprime loans sold beginning in 1999.

The Chief Executive Officer (CEO) at Household, William F. Aldinger, drove his mortgage brokers mercilessly to perform, setting unrealistic sales targets. Mr. Aldinger rewarded himself with roughly 20% of stock options offered annually, along with an outrageous pay package. He was so focused on Household’s stock price that he had license plates made-up with a $100 price target placed on them. The $484 million AG settlement with Household was heralded as a landmark agreement, but it did nothing to thwart the halcyon years of subprime lending in 2006 and 2007. Even though praised as the largest settlement of its kind to date, it did nothing, nothing to thwart corrupt mortgage industry practices.

Mr. Aldinger was a lightning rod of corporate greed in the United Kingdom (U.K.). After HSBC Holdings PLC (HSBC) merged with Household, Mr. Aldinger became the highest paid executive in the U.K. He was only a piker in the U.S., in regards to take home pay, but in the U.K. his U.S. pay package put him on top of the plutocratic heap, among U.K. executives. You see, the rest of the world doesn’t understand how a CEO can get paid 500 to 1,000 times the average worker at a corporation, $10s to $100s of millions of dollars, this kind of greed just doesn’t happen in the rest of the world. Nor did it happen here either, until Ronald Reagan pushed the laisez-faire plutocracy down the throats of working people. Mr. Aldinger was the epitome of corporate greed. Run your company into the ground and make out like a bandit. After leaving HSBC, his psychopathic tendencies and track record as a looter were not lost on corporate America, he was the ideal candidate for a number corporate board rooms. We can learn something about looting from this guy – avaricious psychopathic greed -- the expert.

In January 2006 Ameriquest settled predatory lending charges for $325 million with 49 state AGs. Again, ACORN had a lot to do with bringing Ameriquest to justice. Both companies signed-up to a new business frame-work for fair lending, disclosure, elimination of prepayment penalties, and the appraisal process, however the penalties were ineffective. What’s amazing is how little an impact these settlements had on changing the industry, beginning in 2006 according to the Web site, ml-implode.com, as of December 2009 374 mortgage lending operations have gone out of business. We don’t need AG settlements, we need the government to close down rogue operations and for their senior officers to be thrown in jail.

The Obama administration is trying to bring our economy back to economic health after eight years of job destruction and laissez faire economic policies during the George W. Bush (Bush) regime that created the worst economic crash since the Great Depression. When Bush was selected president he promised to create 8 million jobs a year, at best, he created 2 million jobs in one year, after two years of job losses and absolutely anemic job growth most years. Bush killed job creation in our country, it was an overseas job exportation policy. If you’re upset with the state of jobs, blame Bush. He gutted manufacturing in this country through free trade and globalization.

Job growth under George Bush grew at the slowest pace in any eight year period since the Truman administration. The number of jobs continued to fall 18 months after the 2001 recession ended. The 2001 recovery ranked eighth in economic growth – out of 10 post war recessions -- for the four years after a recession ended. The 2001 recession only surpassed Bush Senior’s 1990-1991 recession and Reagan’s July 1980 recession. After four years the job count rose only 2.6%, the slowest pace ever, surpassing the previous low of 4% set in the four years after the 1953-1954 recession. Under Bush more people slipped into poverty. The poverty rate is now at 13.2%, the highest since 1997.

Where is Mr. Watson getting his assertion that we have an “establishment left media?” Isn’t this an oxymoron, establishment and the left. The left is not in control, if it were we might have the workers taking over the factors of production, worker ownership of the means of production, but we don’t. We would actually have a thriving Communist party, but we don’t. Private businesses might actually be unionized, instead of the paltry 8% unionization we have now. Howard Dean might have become president, instead the corporate media took him down, because just days before the “Dean Scream” he threatened their livelihood by saying he would enforce the Sherman Antitrust Act to break-up the corporate media. Dan Rather might actually still have a job at CBS. The corporate rulers are in control of the media. You’re delusional to think we have a left-wing media, completely irrational.

What we have is a corporate controlled media. A media that sucks-up to the power elite, no matter whom is in the White House. It has failed in its job to question and expose the corruption in Washington. Since President Bill Clinton passed the Telecommunications Act of 1996 we’ve had massive, massive corporate media consolidation, where roughly six to eight media giants control 90% of our media, before the consolidation the numbers were roughly 90 companies controlled 90% of the media. The only message that gets through is the corporate message. The echo chamber, the propaganda machine, and misinformation are pounded into the people that follow the lead of Mr. Watson.

American worker is on his back. The change we voted for was for the Republican Party to get out of the way and let the intelligent minds repair the massive damage to our economy brought about by free trade programs, tax cuts for the rich, runaway health insurance costs, flat wage growth for workers, run-away corporatism, and the corporate take over of our government. If Mr. Watson hasn’t noticed the unemployment rate, at 9.7%, is at the highest rate in 26 years, we’ve lost 8.4 million jobs since the beginning of 2008. You can blame the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT), and the World Trade Organizations (WTO) Free Trade initiative with China for sending our jobs overseas, along with the use of massive outsourcing to developing countries, special mention goes to India. In New York City, run by a fascist plutocratic mayor – Michael R. Bloomberg – shows his disdain for the American worker by purchasing man-whole covers made in India. China’s unfair currency peg is killing our industrial base, while the politicians ignore our plight, in a just world these free traders would be run out of the country on a rail to China, the country they truly represent. We need to reinstitute the trade policies that served us well for over 180 years -- those espoused by Alexander Hamilton – foster, nourish, and grow native industries through tariffs and trade that does not cost us even the loss of one job at home. No more outsourcing, every job is important to this country.

Mr. Watson doesn’t want a totalitarian health care system, please, are the health care systems in the U.K., Canada, France, Germany, and Spain, totalitarian? All providing care to the entire citizenry and ranked much higher than our system by cost, effectiveness, longevity, infant mortality, and impact on GDP. Does our health care system make us economically competitive? If we don’t fix the massive overhead of a for profit, price gouging, ineffective, over-use of prescription drugs, penchant for operating on citizens, lack of preventive care, and immoral health care system built on the denial of care then we will not flourish economically on the world stage. The promotion of a healthy lifestyle is not part of our health care system. The journalist, T.R. Reid commented in his book, “Sick Around the World,” we are the only for profit health care system among developed nations, truly unique, and truly a failure for the citizenry.

Mr. Watson opposes Obamacare, the so-called, totalitarian health care proposals, so I assume the current state of our health care system is fine with him. From our declaration of independence how can you pursue happiness without adequate health care. It is a necessary condition for happiness. Too many people in this country are underinsured or have no insurance.

The only way to get out of a severe economic downturn is to spend your way out. The private sector has no money, so the government has to supply the stimulus to jump-start the economy. Keynesian economics has worked time and time again. When President Franklin D. Roosevelt took office in 1932 the unemployment rate was ~25%, he brought the rate down below 10% in 1936 and again in 1940, two years prior to World War II. It was not World War II that brought us out of the depression, it was Roosevelt’s economic policies. He was elected to four, four year, terms because his policies worked. He was able to rejuvenate the banks by making the Reconstruction Finance Corporation work, something President Herbert Hoover failed to do. Hoover failed because of cronyism in the funding distribution process, similar to Bush’s flawed cronyism in the TARP program, aimed at helping the New York money center banks, but not the regional banks in the hinterlands. The Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. (FDIC) closed 140 banks in 2009 and 20 banks so far this year. The FDIC is close to running out of money. It closed 25 banks in 2008, only five in the last five years before that. The FDIC has asked for a three year advance payment of fees to shore-up its depleted reserves. According to the FDIC 702 banks across the country are on the verge of closing, the problem list. If President Obama doesn’t rescind Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act of 1999 and the Commodities Futures Exchange Act of 2000 then we might fall into a worse crisis. We must strongly regulate the deposit banks, credit default swaps, energy trading, and asset backed securitization trading.

Bush bankrupted our country by massive borrowing and giving tremendous tax cuts to the rich that did nothing to stimulate the economy. Bush created the big government agenda, then didn’t pay for it, but exacerbated the deficit with massive tax cuts for the rich. Cutting taxes only makes the rich richer, but does nothing to stimulate the economy. Bush’s tax cuts for the rich were done at the unprecedented time of a war, an unnecessary war in Iraq, which will cost us $2 Trillion dollars, bankrupting the U.S. Bush built a military bigger than the rest of the world’s militaries combined. The top-20% of income earners received 68% of the benefit of Bush’s tax cuts. A person earning $1 million dollars received a $40,000 tax savings. Over ten years, the Bush tax cuts will cost our treasury $2.1 trillion, half of that from the richest top-5% of our population. In addition, this same top-5% of income earners receive 67% of all the capital gains filed by taxpayers, maybe for the sake of our country we could raise the 15% capital gains tax rate with limited impact on the vast majority of U.S. citizens? During the Bush years the wealthiest 1% earned 23.5% of all income in 2007, up from 19% in 2004, which contrasts to only 9% in 1977. The tax cuts for the rich started by Reagan have redistributed wealth in this country to the top wage earners.

The current privatized – for profit -- health care system is a failure. We have about 46 million uninsured U.S. citizens and many families that are underinsured. Roughly 14,000 people a day lose their health insurance, many can’t purchase insurance because of pre-existing conditions. According to a Harvard Study 45,000 U.S. citizens die every year, because of the lack of health care. Roughly 62% of all personal bankruptcies and 25% of home foreclosures are caused by overwhelming health care costs. Unless we change our health care system, costs doubling every ten years, it will bankrupt our nation. You can expect premiums to rise roughly 10% every year. In 2001 the rate of health care inflation peaked at 11.3%, in 2008 it was 6.9%, far surpassing wage rate growth. Health care premiums have risen over 120% since 1999.

We are 37th in the world by the World Health Organization (WHO) in overall health care performance, yet the most expensive health care system in the world by percent of GDP and per capita, according to the Organization of Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD). So, “tea-bagger,” what’s your solution? There was no solution in your article.

Many of our founders, most vociferously Pennsylvania’s Dr. Benjamin Rush, wanted health care -- as a right -- written as an amendment in the U.S. constitution. A number of constitutions around the globe have health care as a right, written into them. Spain ranked #7 by the WHO, for one, has it written into its constitution. We are way behind Europe in the egalitarian delivery of health care, which no doubt, would confound Thomas Paine. Mr. Paine was a good friend of Dr. Rush. We have been working on health care reform since the Revolutionary War. Teddy Roosevelt championed health care for all in 1906. It’s way passed time that we all get single-payer health care for all, without the for profit, greedy, insurance companies.

Wouldn’t an intelligent person believe the “tea-baggers” are being compromised and exploited by health care lobbying efforts? To destroy the Clinton health care initiatives in 1992 and 1993 the health care industry spent $200 to $300 million in lobbying efforts. The health care industry has roughly 2,084 lobbyists working in Washington to disrupt reform. Freedomworks, for one, a proponent of the “tea-bagger” initiative has a leading representative -- Dick Armey -- that has received health care lobbying funds. Fox News not only covers the “tea bagger” events, but also participates cheering on the dupes for the fascist plutocracy. No doubt, the health care lobby has spent more this time around to thwart reform and kill more Americans not insured, under-insured, or denied care by the criminal insurance companies running our health care system.

Mr. Watson’s editorial, would have caused Thomas Paine to vomit! He acts as a mouthpiece for the reactionary plutocracy, the top-1% that has 95% of the wealth and consumes 24% of the take-home income. Thomas Paine fought against inequality, injustice, hypocrisy, and the great concentration of excessive wealth. He loathed great aristrocratic wealth. If Thomas Paine were around today, he would be leading one of the groups Mr. Watson railed against, ACORN, Moveon.org, or LaRaza. In his world excessive wealth was looked upon with great disdain. He antagonized the powerful, made the propertied nervous, and the prestigious frightened to death.

Thomas Paine fought for an egalitarian franchise, a belief in the vote of the common man, which infuriated the aristocrats. The corporate backers of Mr. Watson want to maintain the most unfair, exploitive system in the world – a position of a reactionary. You “tea-baggers” have sided with the status-quo – the corporate loyalists. As a radical’s radical Thomas Paine wanted a safety net for the working man, public initiatives, public assistance, and a public solution to address poverty. He campaigned for worker bargaining power. In Thomas Paine’s world, the poor would not be oppressed and the rich would lose their tyrannical power. There would be no vagaries of the markets, everyone would have secure pensions. His, was a message of resistance to the aristocratic frauds now running Wall Street, those that work against the public good to satisfy their own pompous greed.

How do we stand-up to the corporations while these misguided protesters, “tea baggers,” thwart reform and improvement of any form? Maintaining the status-quo, means, for profit, health care CEOs continue looting our nation with their $15 million a year compensation packages through the denial of care. Executives, like former UnitedHealth Group CEO William McGuire will continue looting their companies by taking over $1.7B dollars out of them. While Wall Street banks continue to practice usury, the pillaging of our retirement accounts, and the free trade decimation of the U.S. heartland, pushing the middle class into poverty.

Mr. Watson rails against Planned Parenthood, yet I guess he wants more children raised by immature children. Sarah Palin’s daughter gives the best example of a child being raised by a child. Her daughter was used as an out of wed-lock symbol of motherhood. Every chance she got her daughter and baby were used as on stage props, a national disgrace. Planned Parenthood provides a service, a vital function to society, simply, it provides parents the tools to plan their families, the ability to get a good start in life, a far cry from Mr. Watson’s claim of practicing eugenics.

Benjamin Franklin, would be aghast, outraged, at Mr. Watson’s use of the symbolism of the “Gadsden Flag,” and motto, “don’t tread on me.” The flag has its origins when Mr. Franklin wanted to send the British a message to stop using the colonies as a dumping ground for criminals – a penal colony. Likewise, this message could have been sent to the corporatocracy, to the G-20, why not to Cigna, instead you attack a reformist government trying to rein in corporate hegemony. By calling for disturbing or disrupting town halls, you tread on our rights, our freedom of speech, our First Amendment rights, what gives you the right to snuff-out our voices? Shouting down or intimidating speakers or free speech that you disagree with is why you are referred to as “Brown” shirts. This is exactly, exactly what Hitler’s core of thugs specialized in, snuffing out free speech, in Germany.

In regards to an enemies list, the Bush regime targeted anyone dissenting from its policies. The policies Bush adhered to, the fascist playbook, destroy the character of the dissenter. Contrive some transgression, like under age sex, and persecute the messenger. This was clearly rolled out against Scott Ritter, the former U.S. Marine, U.N. weapons inspector, and critic of the Iraq war. Bush kept lists of those who couldn’t fly on our airplanes. He had candidates for public service jobs screened, breaking civil service laws, making sure they were loyal to Bush and the Republican far, far extreme right, fascist agenda, particularly in the Justice Department.

Bush spied on Americans. Bush broke the Foreign Intelligence Service Act (FISA) laws by spying on Americans by commandeering private telecommunications operations – tapping our phones, invading our homes and offices, and infiltrating our meetings. His regime over reached by investigating and intimidating Democrats in inordinate numbers, progressive talk show hosts (Bernie Ward, Phil Donahue, Bill Maher, and Bill Moyers), protest groups, reporters (Helen Thomas, Amy Goodman, and Dan Rather), and anyone trying to disclose transgressions on Wall Street (Eliot Spitzer and David Einhorn). Anyone questioning the administration was attacked and reputations besmirched: Joe Wilson, Valerie Plame, Cynthia Mckinney, Ward Churchill, Norman Finklestein, The Dixie Chicks, Mark Cuban, the Jersey Girls, Hans Blix, and Mohammad El Baradei.

Republicans could get away with almost any graft and corruption under Bush. Protestors at the Republican Conventions were beat-up by Gestapo thugs and illegally thrown in jail, for non-violent protests or prior to even protesting. Nine years ago in New York protestors were illegally rounded up and held in squalid west side warehouse detention facilities. Last year in Minneapolis Democracy Now’s Amy Goodman and her staff were attacked outside the convention by police and illegally arrested. Attorney Generals (David Iglesias and Carol Lam) that didn’t adhere to Karl Rove’s orders to investigate voter recruitment groups were fired (8 were removed). The Bush regime was the closest our country has come to the Third Reich – a time of great despair and tyranny for our nation. I don’t see anything close to this fascist tyranny now.

Our forefathers would not be with you, they would fight you, because yours is not a compassionate, egalitarian, or just cause. Yes, we need a second American Revolution, but not targeting government reformers, but against the corporatocracy and plutocracy controlling our reactionary politicians through unlimited back-sheesh in a system that needs overwhelming improvement, to again represent the will of the people, not the will of the plutocracy!

Andrew H. Dral ("The Rabble" -- "Janosik")