... that Tea Partiers are oblivious too. I remarked on this kind of thing once before, people are setting themselves up to be played like fools, by sweet talking politicians.
Scott Brown was elected as the first Tea Party Express endorsed candidate. One of his campaign proposals was to eliminate wasteful government pork. Once elected, he petitions for a back-up engine to be built for the new F-35 JSF that Canada will actually be buying. Now the Pentagon is against this, they already have an engine which won the contract through competition like the other contractors. It's a waste of defense dollars, billions of them. Scott Brown petitions for this because the jobs are going to be in his district.
So, that seems an awful lot like pork...
Anyways, onto the article which prompted this thread:
How billionaires bagged the tea party
The Tea Party movement, which staged an impressive gathering in Washington last week, has often been celebrated as an outpouring of spontaneous populist rage, with hundreds of thousands of ordinary Americans taking to the streets to protest against government meddling in the economy.
In a widely noted recent article in The New Yorker, reporter Jane Mayer calls this populist storyline into question by bringing to light the largely hidden role of Dave and Charles Koch, two brothers whose personal fortune, rooted in the oil industry and manufacturing, puts them in the same league as Bill Gates and Warren Buffett.
As hard-core libertarians who oppose most government social policy, the brothers Koch have given tens of millions of dollars over the years to right-wing think tanks and political-action groups. Their largesse has been instrumental in turning the Tea Party movement into a force in U.S. political life. An adviser to Barack Obama has described it as “a grassroots citizens' movement brought to you by a bunch of oil billionaires.”
The idea of populist billionaires seems, on its face, absurd. The original U.S. populist movement arose in the late 19th century in opposition to big business, especially banks and railways, to argue for greater communal control of key economic decisions. This is exactly the tradition the Kochs have spent a lifetime fighting, spending a king's ransom.
It's an oxymoron, to be sure. I'm still impressed by the irony in a political movement that decries politicians, but still attempts to have them elected. If Scott Brown is the best they have to offer, I fully expect pitch forks at the next rally.
Scott Brown was elected as the first Tea Party Express endorsed candidate. One of his campaign proposals was to eliminate wasteful government pork. Once elected, he petitions for a back-up engine to be built for the new F-35 JSF that Canada will actually be buying. Now the Pentagon is against this, they already have an engine which won the contract through competition like the other contractors. It's a waste of defense dollars, billions of them. Scott Brown petitions for this because the jobs are going to be in his district.
So, that seems an awful lot like pork...
Anyways, onto the article which prompted this thread:
How billionaires bagged the tea party
The Tea Party movement, which staged an impressive gathering in Washington last week, has often been celebrated as an outpouring of spontaneous populist rage, with hundreds of thousands of ordinary Americans taking to the streets to protest against government meddling in the economy.
In a widely noted recent article in The New Yorker, reporter Jane Mayer calls this populist storyline into question by bringing to light the largely hidden role of Dave and Charles Koch, two brothers whose personal fortune, rooted in the oil industry and manufacturing, puts them in the same league as Bill Gates and Warren Buffett.
As hard-core libertarians who oppose most government social policy, the brothers Koch have given tens of millions of dollars over the years to right-wing think tanks and political-action groups. Their largesse has been instrumental in turning the Tea Party movement into a force in U.S. political life. An adviser to Barack Obama has described it as “a grassroots citizens' movement brought to you by a bunch of oil billionaires.”
The idea of populist billionaires seems, on its face, absurd. The original U.S. populist movement arose in the late 19th century in opposition to big business, especially banks and railways, to argue for greater communal control of key economic decisions. This is exactly the tradition the Kochs have spent a lifetime fighting, spending a king's ransom.
It's an oxymoron, to be sure. I'm still impressed by the irony in a political movement that decries politicians, but still attempts to have them elected. If Scott Brown is the best they have to offer, I fully expect pitch forks at the next rally.
