Tea Baggers Front for the Money Baggers

by: Teddy Goodson

Wed Apr 15, 2009 at 21:13:29 PM EDT

(worth noting -  you can take the entire nationwide turnout for these events and it was less than 50K - for comparison think of a single Obama rally down the stretch, or even a good college football game - also see diary by 200 south on event in Martinsville - promoted by teacherken)

"Hundreds" of protesters gathered in the cold rain today in Lafayette Park, intending to dump a million tea bags in the park as a symbol of their anger at the Obama administration's economic policies, according to Michael Ruane, writing in the Washington Post on 15 April.  The dump was prohibited because they had no permit, and the intended speeches by Grover Norquist, Alan Keyes, and Thomas Schatz (all important  conservatives) were cancelled.  The protesters carried signs saying "Socialism----Change we can't afford," "We will not bow to higher taxes," and "Defend Our Constitution."  As many as 700 similar rallies were scheduled today across the country, including some set up for Reston, Woodbridge, Annapolis, and Frederick locally, all to be featured steadily on Fox News. Despite the claims of being a grass roots movement, the entire tea. bag "movement" is a scam funded by big conservative money, including the very banks and bankers which caused the meltdown in the first place. This is a top-down "astro-turf" movement not a bottoms-up grass roots effort.  
The T.E.A. (Taxed Enough Already) movement supposedly began on 19 February with the shrieking rant of Rick Santelli on CNBC, who called for a "Chicago Tea Party" to protest Obama's planned to help distressed homeowners. Mysteriously, a "whole ring" of web sites spouted overnight, each supposedly independent, but all mysterious professional and all completely in sync, "sleeper-cell blogs waiting for the trigger to act, all claiming to have been inspired by Santelli's allegedly impromptu outburst." (http://www.alternet.org/story/136688) "It was if all of them were reading from the same script.

Where did this synchronized blog blast come from? The key but hidden players were from the conservative advocacy organization called Freedom Works, which was begun in 2004 by Dick Armey (former House Majority Leader from Texas) and Steve Forbes (millionaire publisher). It consolidated two stale older think tanks, Citizens for a Sound Economy and Empower America, which had fought health care and minimum-wage reform while pushing for more de-regulation and corporate tax cuts. Freedom Works in 2005 provided President George W. Bush with a "regular single mom" who promoted privatizing Social Security, but the "regular single mom" turned out to be phony, and was in fact the Iowa State Director for Freedom Works.  

Thanks to an expose in 2008 by, of all people,  The Wall Street Journal, we also know that Freedom Works was behind AngryRenter.com, which, far being an amateur populist blog was in fact set up to attack a $300 billion bill intended to help distressed homeowners.  That the blog was actually paid for by wealthy Republicans behind the scenes was concealed so as to suck in honest protesters.  It served as a sort of dry run for the tea bag exercise. Instead of using one central blog, "The Tea Party improved on the AngryRenter.com model by diversifying its AstroTurf assets," so that, if one was exposed as a fake, the rest could continue.

The first T.E.A protests staged by Freedom Works on 27 February were a flop; only a few people showed up for what was clearly nothing more than a staged-for-TV event. Not only that, Mr. Santelli published a statement renouncing his role in the rebellion and "throwing himself at the feet of Obama."  Freedom Works could not let this flabby, pathetic result stand (or, they were told not to let it stand).  So they took T.E.A. over openly, selling T.E.A bag merchandise for profit, getting Republican celebrities as speakers, and arranging for Fox News to provide around-the-clock coverage of today's mega-protests (the biggest grass roots demonstration in history, said Rebecca Wales, leader of the Washington demonstration). Glen Beck is supposed to hold a $500-a-plate fundraiser, Newt Gingrich will keynote a tea party of his own in New York, and Governor Rick Perry of Texas will do the same.

The time-line of this tea party movement is very revealing.  Freedom Works was silent, as was Rick Santelli, while the federal government bailed out the banks; not a peep from them while Citibank and GE sucked billions from the federal teat. (GE, interestingly, is a big donor to Freedom Works).

"Freedom Works kicked off its anti-tax, anti-spending movement only when the government announced it would give money to regular Americans to help avoid a wave of housing foreclosures."

How, or why, are ordinary people now bamboozled into supporting the ridiculous right-wing program of tax cuts, deregulation, no to health care reforms, slashing entitlements, and leaving homeowners in the ditch?  Think about the time line: the right-wing operatives simply got in front of, and co-opted, the populist outrage over AIG bonuses and the steady trickle of billion-dollar bailouts for banks and the apparent cronyism evident in how Paulson, Geithner, and Summers kept pouring money into the hands of their Wall Street buddies.

The Right has twisted the issue, focusing popular rage not on the bankers but on the government, and they intend to ride it all the way...as Ms. Wales said in the Post article, "people really need to know what to do next... elections are not that far away.  People need to see that there are alternative to this administration."

For some reason, the Left and the Democrats have dropped the ball, perhaps out of misguided loyalty to Obama. They should be leading this protest.  There have been plenty of us, including me, who warned that Obama's advisors were too much a part of the very Wall Street they were supposed to be controlling. Paul Krugman and other liberal economists have demanded that the big banks be nationalized, broken up, and returned to private ownership.  Tiffiniy Cheng, whom I mentioned in an earlier diary, "Populist Thunder on the Left and Right" (http://www.bluecommonwealth.com/diary/61/populist-thunder-on-left-and-right) with the help of Zephyr Teachout and Joe Trippi, organized "A New Way Forward" on the internet. NWF set up a petition to break up the banks, which now has 40,000-plus signatures.  The first sentence in their manifesto is "Big Bankers ruined our economy, and now they are gaming the political system so they can profit even more off the crisis they caused.  They must be stopped."  In contrast to the astro-turf of Tea Parties, a New Way Forward is genuine grass roots.  

The purpose of NWF is to stop the big bankers from plundering America; that is what protesting the administration's economic policy must be about.  Freedom Works, in contrast, is covertly using the suckers in the Tea Party movement to ensure that the bankers and big money continue the plunder through more deregulation, lower taxes for the rich, fewer government programs for distressed homeowners, and absolutely no health care reform. They have seized the momentum, and I fear that Obama and the Democrats may be in more trouble than they realize.  
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