Barton, who will be chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee if Republicans win control of the House in November, called the escrow account a “shakedown.” But that was too mild for Phillips, who upped the ante.
“I’d call it extortion!” Phillips said, referring to the escrow account. He then launched into the standard tea bagger tirade of lies and insults against the president and his administration. “If I tried something like that, I’d be looking at a long sentence in a federal prison,” Judson said, which is a lie — there’s nothing illegal about the escrow fund to help the Gulf’s small businesses and others. “There is a legal system in place to assign liability and assess damages. The regime simply wants to bypass that. By hammering BP, they can draw attention away from their own incompetence. What I think it more damaging than the spill itself is the drilling moratorium, which will put more people out of work and put more upward pressure on oil prices.”
This statement from the head of Tea Party of solidarity with corporate interests over the is an important development that will undoubtedly be ignored by what Sarah Palin calls the lamestream media. It’s important because leaders of the tea party movement have, until now, tried desperately to hide their ties to the corporatist wing of the Republican Party. With this statement, the head of Tea Party Nation has finally come out of the corporatist closet.
Rank and file tea partiers are in denial that their “movement” is in league with corporatist Republicans, and it is quite possible, okay, let’s say likely, that the vast majority of tea baggers have not done their due diligence in checking out the background of their leadership. These leaders present themselves as Obama-hating patriots, which is all the average tea bagger needs to know.
That’s why most of them don’t know that Dick Armey, head of FreedomWorks, the right-wing corporate-funded astroturfers, is a corporatist tool who’s paid a half a million dollars a year to dupe tea baggers into believing their fighting big gubmint when what they’re really doing is helping him push the corporate line for his fatcat bosses.
Similarly, most tea baggers don’t know that Tea Party Express is operated by the Republican Party consulting firm Russo, Marsh & Rogers. It was these Sacramento-based professional political operatives who funneled corporate money to the nation wide bus tours that raised the profile of the mob phenomenon. There’s no evidence that anyone who attended the rallies on the tour ever bothered to ask who paid for the buses or the salaries, lodging and other expenses of the dozens of paid “volunteers” who formed the advance teams or ran the logistics of the rallies — or who paid for the permits, the stages, the sound systems, the media relations people or security staff.
Until now, tea baggers have spending off charges that what animates their movement is racism. Dale Robertson, operator of the Tea Party website, teaparty.org, did not help their cause when he showed up at rallies carrying a sign that read “Congress=Slave Owner; Taxpayer=Niggar.”
Now, thanks in part to the disaster in the Gulf, the true motives of their leaders are being revealed. Both the tea bagger rank and file and their secret corporate funders say they want “less government.” Tea baggers, of course, still want socialist government benefits like Social Security, Medicare, community hospitals, public education, police and fire protection and the rest — they just want less government help for poor people.
On the other hand, when their corporate puppet masters say they want less government what they mean is less interference in the form of deregulation — which is precisely what they got under the tea baggers’ ideal leaders, Bush and Cheney, and which, like the economic meltdown and recession that started in 2008, is the precise cause of the disaster in the Gulf.
No wonder regular Americans’ disapproval of tea baggers has risen from 39 percent in March to 50 percent now.
The BRAINLESS Tea Bugger movement dis-credit themselves more and more everyday. I wish they would go down to south Louisiana and make these statements in public. I DARE THEM!!!
These conservative hacks have no idea what they are talking about. American citizens are losing their way of life, losing homes, boats, land. BP is still making millions, but have been moving WAY TO slow paying out claims. I hope they go belly-up like all the fish they are killing because of THEIR oil leak. ANYBODY, that feels sorry for BP, should have their citizenship taken away and deported, simple as that. Go to HELL Tea Buggers!!!!
This is another example of the tea party crowd not paying attention to who their puppet masters are, and who they really represent. I find it strange that few of the TPers seem to know that when Exxon went to court that it led to them not paying the full costs associated with the Exxon-Valdez spill. The defendants of the suit have never been made whole, and the environmental damage still persists 21 years after the accident. As governor of Alaska, Palin celebrated the settlement but paid no attention to the environmental damage, or the citizens whose lives were forever changed by the spill who did not receive adequate compensation for their losses. Many on the right are, once again, on the wrong side of history, but it doesn’t matter to them as long as they can de-legitimize President Obama and progressive policies/actions, even if the policies/actions help themselves and their fellow citizens.