Tag: Tea Party

The Right’s Target List

Trish

This list was started on Twitter, by Peter Daou:

As I’ve said, the right’s target list speaks volumes: unions, scientists, academics, public broadcasters, health providers, women.

We can think of a few more.

  • Gay people, especially those in long-term, loving relationships who want to marry and/or adopt children
  • Veterans, once they’ve been injured, maimed, or traumatized in defense of our country
  • Children, when they are out of the womb and require food, health care, or education
  • People who adhere strictly to religious faiths, unless it’s Christianity
  • Anyone who wasn’t born an American citizen but yearns to become one
  • Doctors who want to protect children from accidental shootings
  • Mass transit, renewable energy, and anything else that does not involve paving more land for more cars and SUVs

We’ll stop now but please keep this list going. What else do Republicans, tea partiers, and the right want to get rid of?

Senate Democrats Defeat House Tea Party’s Job-Killing Budget Bill

Jon Ponder

The U.S. Senate saved between 700,000 and 1 million American jobs today by defeating the House tea party’s budget bill which contained $61 billion in budget cuts:

The cuts would have plunged the economy into the second Republican-driven recession in two and a half years.

The House-passed budget bill (HR. 1) was voted down 44-56. Lawmakers voting against the measure included two Independents and 51 Democrats, as well as [Tea Party Caucus members] Jim DeMint (SC), Mike Lee (UT) and Rand Paul (KY).

The three tea party senators presumably voted against the bill because they felt the $61 billion in cuts were not sufficient. Sen. Paul recently called for $500 billion in cuts, a move so drastic it’s unlikely the U.S. economy would recover from it for decades.

A study released at the end of February from Mark Zandi, chief economist at Moody’s Analytics who also served as the chief economic adviser to the McCain-Palin presidential campaign in 2008, found that the tea party budget cuts would put around 700,000 people out of jobs.

Just days before Zandi’s report was released, a confidential Goldman Sachs analysis of the bill predicted it would slow growth by 2 percent, which would translate into the loss of at least 1 million jobs.

Analysis of the tea party’s budget bill by the Center for American Progress also found that the bill would lead to the loss of about 1 million jobs.

Based on these reports, it’s clear that had the tea party budget bill passed, the cuts would have plunged the economy into the second Republican-driven recession in two and a half years.

Don’t Tell Floridians in Support of Public Workers That the Numbers Aren’t With Them

Trish

While the news media in Florida featured heavy coverage of tea party members at “Awake the State” budget protest rallies, YouTube video and eyewitness accounts tell a different story. Here is just one gathering in Jacksonville, where a mayoral primary was being held. Other events were staged around the city, and repeated throughout the state.

Florida Residents Unite to “Awake the State”

Trish

AwakeStateSign at an “Awake the State” rally in Orlando

When the Florida legislature opened its 2011 session, there were a lot more people than usual in Tallahassee. The tea party sent in folks from all over, not just Florida, to support Gov. Rick Scott’s proposals to give away billions in revenue breaks to corporate interests and make it up by slashing paychecks and benefits to public service workers like teachers, rescue personnel, and law enforcement officers. But across Florida, counter-protests by these public servants and their supporters carried the day.

Ocoee Elementary School media specialist Isabel Chipungu electrified the Orlando crowd, declaring that teachers are being demonized.

“I love my job, but I’m angry,” she screamed from atop a picnic table in Senator Beth Johnson Park in downtown Orlando. “Teachers in this state are once again being made the scapegoat for all of the budget problems our politicians created. And we are again asked to pay the price. We have not had a raise in five years.”

While tea party zealots cultivate an air of chronic aggrievement and persecution, their leaders think nothing of taking back promises – and legal contracts – to union employees.

“People seem to have forgotten that the middle class is made up of hard-working individuals — firefighters, police officers, teachers, the people who pick up your garbage,” said Ron Glass, an Orlando firefighter who is secretary-treasurer of the International Association of Firefighters-Orlando, Local 1365.

Huckabee Is the One Distorting the Facts of Single Motherhood

Trish

Fundamentalist Republican candidate for president Mike Huckabee said, “Most single moms are very poor, uneducated, can’t get a job, and if it weren’t for government assistance, their kids would be starving to death and would not get health care.”

Facts:

  • 79.5% of custodial single mothers are employed
  • 27% of custodial single mothers and their children live in poverty; the other 73% do not
  • 22% receive Medicaid; 78% do not
  • 23.5% receive food stamps; 76.5% do not
  • 12% receive some form of public housing or rent subsidy; 88% do not

Wisconsin Poll Shows Governor Would Lose Today

Trish

52%

Amount of votes for the Wisconsin governor’s race that candidate Tom Barrett would get if the election were held today, according to a new Public Policy Polling survey. Scott Walker, who narrowly won the actual contest last fall, would take only 45% of the vote. Only 32% of those surveyed said they or someone in their household was the member of a union.

Americans Confused About Health Care Law

Trish

48%

Total proportion of Americans who are confused about the Affordable Care Act, according to a new Kaiser poll. 22% said they thought the law was recently repealed, while another 26% weren’t sure if it’s still in effect. We’re betting this 48% refers to the reforms as “Obamacare.”

Poll: Wisconsin Voters Heavily Favor Public Employees, Protesters

Jon Ponder

graph-wisconsin-protest-poll

HuffPost:

Respondents heard a list of people and groups involved in the controversy and were asked, for each one, if they agreed “with the positions they are taking in the current situation in the state capitol.” The results presented in the following chart prepared by the pollsters show large majorities agreeing with “public employees” (67 percent), “protestors at the state capitol” (62 percent) and “unions” (59 percent) but far fewer agreeing with “Republicans in the Legislature” (48 percent) or Scott Walker (43 percent agree and 53 percent disagree).

Corporate Media Gives Tea Party Way More Attention Than Its Numbers Warrant

Jon Ponder

If you listen to the Beltway media and Fox, the tea party is now the dominate political force in the country. Do the numbers back them up?

NO. Polls consistently show that around 20 percent of Americans self-identify as tea partyists. However, when it comes to actually participating in rallies and donating to tea party causes, the number falls to 4 percent. In Congress, 11 percent of the 535 members — 52 in the House, four in the Senate — have joined the tea party caucus.

SSDD: Republicans Proposed Same Cuts in 1995

Trish

Let me read you a news story about some of the proposed budget cuts. Republicans are proposing cuts in youth training and education programs, foreign aid, assistance to homeless youth, federal subsidies to the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, Head Start, energy assistance for the needy to pay their fuel bills. That’s a list from 1995. So Republicans now are proposing a very similar list of cuts that go after the programs that they have always targeted, things that conservative voters don’t like very much, that liberal voters do. So in that sense there is Republican unity.

Cynthia Tucker, Atlanta Journal Constitution columnist, appearing recently on NPR’s “Tell Me More.”