The Grassroots movement , and the Tea Party

[turbo]

That is the kicker, per presidential term. Presidents don't spend money, congress does, Clinton spent less, during a republican controlled congress. Bush spent more, during a democratically controlled congress.

And Obama should get credit for rolling back deficit-spending with a Democratic Congress. But that will never happen, will it?

 

[WhoWee]

And Obama should get credit for rolling back deficit-spending with a Democratic Congress. But that will never happen, will it?

I'll ask again turbo - did you read the document you linked to and are now using to make your point?

 

[Gokul43201]

That is the kicker, per presidential term. Presidents don't spend money, congress does, Clinton spent less, during a republican controlled congress.

Not only is this an oversimplification, it misses some key facts:

For instance, Clinton started out with a Dem Congress for two years and cuts deficits with them at roughly the same rate that he was cutting deficits under a Rep Congress.

Bush spent more, during a democratically controlled congress.

Bush's worst deficits were not in 2008, with a recession growing, and a Dem Congress in control (although Bush did contribute significantly to the 2009 deficit with the Dem Congress he had in '08). They were in 2003 and 2004, under a Rep Congress, and with a healthy economy (GDP growth during those years was the highest it's been in the last decade).

 

[edward]

Not only is this an oversimplification, it misses some key facts:

For instance, Clinton started out with a Dem Congress for two years and cuts deficits with them at roughly the same rate that he was cutting deficits under a Rep Congress.

Bush's worst deficits were not in 2008, with a recession growing, and a Dem Congress in control (although Bush did contribute significantly to the 2009 deficit with the Dem Congress he had in '08). They were in 2003 and 2004, under a Rep Congress, and with a healthy economy (GDP growth during those years was the highest it's been in the last decade).

Yet it really wasn't a sustainable economy. GDP is a measure of spending and most of the spending was done on credit. The people were on a spending spree, as were businesses and government.

It all looked great on a paper until it blew up in our faces.

 

[WhoWee]

And Obama should get credit for rolling back deficit-spending with a Democratic Congress. But that will never happen, will it?

I agree, Obama should get full credit for his efforts. From your link.


http://www.bullfax.com/?q=node-us-deficit-shrinks-still-tops-one-trillion

"US deficit tops Obama forecast by 1.2 trillion dollars: CBO

The US government budget deficit for the next decade is expected to be wider by 1.2 trillions dollars than projected by President Barack Obama's administration, estimates by Congress showed Friday.Under Obama's latest budget projections, the cumulative deficit over the 2011-2020 period was 8.532 trillion dollars.But the Congressional Budget Office estimated Friday the deficit would snowball to 9.761 trillion dollars"

 

[BobG]

Interesting. If the process is similarly easy in other states and the fee is minimal, then the legal objections to AZ's proof of citizenship requirement are specious.

Not only that, but it would cut down on fraudulent social security numbers. An illegal immigrant could order a birth certificate for a person that died sometime during childhood (no sense taking an identity that already has a credit history), and then use the birth certificate to get their own social security card, driver's license, etc. They'd become a taxpaying citizen, able to vote and to receive social security benefits once they retire.

Well, maybe not receive social security benefits since now a child has to have a social security number if you want to claim it as a dependent. (Being dead on social security rolls is about the only way a person would get caught assuming the identity of a person that died in childhood).

 

[mheslep]

Finally. The WSJ has an excellent in depth article (series) on the history of the Tea Party creation, movement.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702304173704575578332725182228.html
[no subscription rqd]

The Koch family is mentioned, but the article makes clear the Tea Party is a grassroots phenomenon, if anything deserves the term. The following is typical, occurring late 2008:

In Washington Township, N.J., Stacy Mott, a stay-at-home mother with a toddler and twin babies, had grown disgusted with both parties. A final straw came when, on Dec. 16, Mr. Bush defended the bailouts, saying, "I've abandoned free-market principles to save the free-market system."
[...]
"It appeared that he was going to continue to bail out the banks, the auto industry, and of course he did."

Ms. Mott decided to start a blog for conservative women, Smart Girl Politics, and launched a social-networking site by the same name. That drew in Ms. Kremer [former Delta Air Lines flight attendant] and Ms. Martin from Atlanta [software manager by training and part-time blogger, was cleaning houses to help pay the bills], who still didn't know one another. [...]

And by Feb, 2009:

...about 50 events took place across the country. Most drew scores or low hundreds of participants. Ms. Carender, at the same Seattle park where she'd held her first event, drew a bigger crowd of 300. At one point, she called the office of U.S. Sen. Patty Murray (D-Wash.) and had the group yell a chorus of "Boos!" all at once into the phone.

Crashing Phones
The tea-party conference calls began looking ahead to April 15—federal tax-filing day. The group at first hoped to stage events in at least 40 cities that day. "We lost track at 830" cities and towns, Mr. Leahy said later.

The weekly conference calls grew so large, phones sometimes crashed. Organizers put up a Wikipedia-like website providing protest techniques and advice. Traffic hit 50,000 and 100,000 visitors a day, according to a volunteer tracking the activity.

On the first big electoral victory, Scott Brown in Mass.:

Mr. Brown's public vow to be the 41st vote in the U.S. Senate against Mr. Obama's proposed health-care overhaul energized tea-party support. Tea Party Express began generating money for Mr. Brown (about $350,000) and attention among activists all over the country.

"There was all of a sudden, this unbelievable flurry of Internet traffic about, 'Hey, what if we could take Kennedy's seat?'" said William Temple, a 60-year-old pastor south of Savannah, Ga., and vice president of the Golden Isles Tea Party there.

 

[CRGreathouse]

mheslep: Does it have any numbers on the "grassroots" thing, or just anecdotes? I'm every bit as cautious about those stories as I am about those from the other side.

(No, I can't think of a good way to mention this, but perhaps the article author is smarter, or at least has thought about it longer.)

 

[mheslep]

mheslep: Does it have any numbers on the "grassroots" thing, or just anecdotes? I'm every bit as cautious about those stories as I am about those from the other side.

(No, I can't think of a good way to mention this, but perhaps the article author is smarter, or at least has thought about it longer.)

Well I'm not sure what you mean by numbers. Clearly if we want a recent head count of TP association or support then the pollster is what we want. If you want grassroots information, then, by definition I think, you want first movers history and how it progressed. The WSJ reporters apparently back tracked to the first organization of any kind they could find on the TP, interviewed them to ascertain what motivated them, and the followed the progression of a few threads. Once an amorphous movement like that takes off ("830 towns" as above) then there's no way to do a biographical any more. After all, there is no Tea Party Convention (nor will there be) for which delegates are selected and gathered where they can be interviewed by the press, etc.

 

[CAC1001]

Not only is this an oversimplification, it misses some key facts:

For instance, Clinton started out with a Dem Congress for two years and cuts deficits with them at roughly the same rate that he was cutting deficits under a Rep Congress.

True, but I think Clinton's deficit would have ended up larger if he had been able to get his government healthcare program passed. He also raised taxes. His tax increase would have been okay if he had clamped down on spending, but he was seeking to increase spending with HillaryCare.

 

[Gokul43201]

True, but I think Clinton's deficit would have ended up larger if he had been able to get his government healthcare program passed. He also raised taxes. His tax increase would have been okay if he had clamped down on spending, but he was seeking to increase spending with HillaryCare.

All of this is plausible. But none of it changes the facts about the deficits, which was all I set out to correct.

 

[Gokul43201]

Finally. The WSJ has an excellent in depth article (series) on the history of the Tea Party creation, movement.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702304173704575578332725182228.html
[no subscription rqd]

Gave it a quick look-see. Definitely learned a lot that I had no idea about. Some of it though, raises an eyebrow. The Santelli rant where he refers to the mortgage bailout going to "losers" gained immense popular support? Seems a little unlikely to me.

Brown's campaign got only about 2% of its total loot (he raised over $15 mill) through Tea Party advertising. For someone that was holding million dollar fundraisers (and outspent his opponent - who was already doing lots to sink her own campaign - by a nearly 2:1 margin) and later refused to attend Tea Party rallies in Boston, or recognize that Palin called to congratulate him on the win, I think the somewhat one-sidedness of the Brown-TP relationship is completely missed.

 

[mheslep]

Brown's campaign got only about 2% of its total loot (he raised over $15 mill) through Tea Party advertising. For someone that was holding million dollar fundraisers (and outspent his opponent - who was already doing lots to sink her own campaign - by a nearly 2:1 margin)

I don't think looking at that one collection figure of $350k from the faction of the TP and concluding the financial TP support to Brown writ large was 2% is accurate. All we can say is that particular PAC made up 2%.

or recognize that Palin called to congratulate him on the win,

It is a mistake I think to suggest former Gov. Palin is synonymous with the TP. Yes she's been a popular speaker at a couple of events, but she's not a TP organizer of any kind. You'll find that the WSJ Tea Party creation article contains not a single reference to Palin.

To my mind her popularity comes from an assumption by the crowds that she's just an average Jane with some unusual moxie, who was repeatedly told to shut the hell up by the ruling class; that she had no right to a voice in the process. In my view it is sympathy with that last part that makes her popular.

 

[Gokul43201]

I don't think looking at that one collection figure of $350k from the faction of the TP and concluding the financial TP support to Brown writ large was 2% is accurate. All we can say is that particular donation made up 2%.

It's very possible I misread - I was in a hurry.

It is a mistake I think to suggest former Gov. Palin is synonymous with the TP.

Given that it is such a loosely organized (I don't mean that with any negative connotation) group, I doubt that anyone figure or ideal can be considered synonymous with the movement.

Yes she's been a popular speaker at a couple of events, but she's not a TP organizer of any kind. You'll find that the WSJ Tea Party creation article contains not a single reference to Palin.

Agreed. I don't see her as an organizer, but as an icon and spokesperson for at least a significant fraction of the movement. 'Icon' is going by the keynote speeches she is invited to give at their largest rallies (also the results of the NYT poll about the TP from several months ago), and 'spokesperson', going by how the media treats her. Fox, for instance, goes straight to Palin for discussion about the TP. Recall also the images in the WSJ article I cited about the Tea Party and the Chambers of Commerce - two pictures: one of Beck, and one of Palin.

To my mind her popularity comes from an assumption by the crowds that she's just an average Jane with some unusual moxie, who was repeatedly told to shut the hell up by the ruling class; that she had no right to a voice in the process. In my view it is sympathy with that last part that makes her popular.

I think that's a big part of it. But there must be something within or in addition to that perception that makes her significantly more popular among people that identify themselves as a part of the TP movement than the general populace (ref: the same NYT poll).

 

[mheslep]

and later refused to attend Tea Party rallies in Boston,

That was one Boston rally in April 2010 that I'm aware of, which he didn't denounce but had a spokesman give the usual polite 'The Senator is committed elsewhere' or the like line.

 

[Gokul43201]

That was one Boston rally in April 2010 that I'm aware of, which he didn't denounce but had a spokesman give the usual polite 'The Senator is committed elsewhere' or the like line.

That's very possible (and it certainly wouldn't make any sense for him to denounce them). But to my knowledge, he has not attended or made any notable effort to associate himself with any Tea Party activity in Eastern Mass. As someone who was living in the Boston area while this was happening (though I wasn't nearly as engaged in that race as I have gotten in the past), it felt to me as if more connections between Brown and the TP were being drawn immediately after the election than before it. Your WSJ article demonstrates that there was a clear effort by some part of the TP to get behind Brown early, and I don't deny that. I wonder though, about how much of that effort was for the sake of the symbolism (would they have supported most any other Republican fighting for the Kennedy seat?) rather than the specific stances of the candidate. I personally find Brown to be a lot more centrist than I imagine the typical Tea Party supporter would like their representatives to be. But then again, I imagine the TP in Mass. looks significantly different from the TP in Georgia.

 

[mheslep]

[...] I wonder though, about how much of that effort was for the sake of the symbolism (would they have supported most any other Republican fighting for the Kennedy seat?)

Depends. Not another "I abandoned the free market ..." Republican, the GW Bush line from the article that so infuriated some founders.

I personally find Brown to be a lot more centrist than I imagine the typical Tea Party supporter would like of their representatives.

Hmm, I agree on national basis, but for local MA resident Tea Party folks I suspect he's about what they expect.

 

[WhoWee]

If tomorrow wasn't election day, I'd be sending the local Tea Party some money right now - instead of typing this post. I went to the US Post Office at 4:30 PM (about 19 minutes ago). I had a VERY important document to mail.

The workers are members of AFSCME (American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees). They are participating in local ads indicating not to vote for candidates (Repubs) that are part of the problem.
http://www.afscme.org/index.cfm?set800=Y
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AFSCME

The window closes at 4:30 PM - the exact time I arrived. The woman inside raced me to the door (beat me by about 3 seconds) and locked me out. I was VERY nice and cordial and asked "is there ANY way you can weigh this for me - nothing else?". Her response was to run back behind the counter and pull down her steel wall and smugly laugh and say "no way".

After posting this I'm going to drive 25 miles to a location that is still open.

Government workers AND THEIR UNIONS are a big part of our problems. I hope ALL of the Tea Party candidates win.

 

[Gokul43201]

I think people rarely make wise decisions when they act in the heat of an emotionally charged event.

Isn't there a UPS or FedEx location nearby? Unless you've moved recently you have to have used this USPS facility several times so far. If they were consistently giving you terrible service you probably wouldn't be going to them again. So this must be either a one-time incident or there is some other benefit you perceive in using their service. Do you think you'd be better off if USPS were shut down?

 

[Astronuc]

Across America and into D.C., people are fed up with partisanship
http://news.yahoo.com/s/yblog_askamerica/20101101/pl_yblog_askamerica/across-america-and-into-d-c-people-are-fed-up-with-partisanship

. . . . "If we can't be civil and listen to each other, our nation won't be able to continue like it has for the past 200 years."

Sherry Fackler-Berkowitz, 58, feels that extreme partisan rhetoric between politicians has trickled down to the American public.

"It really upsets me to see the hate and anger in the people around us," she said. "To allow politics to divide our country isn't just a bad sign for our political system, but for our society in general."
. . . .

VOTE! And be nice!

 

[Evo]

I went to the US Post Office at 4:30 PM (about 19 minutes ago). I had a VERY important document to mail.

The window closes at 4:30 PM - the exact time I arrived.

So they were closed.

Moral of the story, if you have something important to do, don't do it when the place is closed.

 

[WhoWee]

I think people rarely make wise decisions when they act in the heat of an emotionally charged event.

Isn't there a UPS or FedEx location nearby? Unless you've moved recently you have to have used this USPS facility several times so far. If they were consistently giving you terrible service you probably wouldn't be going to them again. So this must be either a one-time incident or there is some other benefit you perceive in using their service. Do you think you'd be better off if USPS were shut down?

It gets better. After being locked out of the Post Office and posting about the incident, I drove 30 minutes to the main branch. They were also closed, but I wasn't concerned as they've always offered a well equipped self serve option for such circumstances.

Well SURPRISE! Apparently the cost of maintaining vending equipment has become a problem. The equipment was gone and in it's place, a sign directing after hour customers to a variety of grocery stores and discount pharmacies for our postal gratifications.
Being an obedient citizen, I drove another 15 minutes farther to a large supermarket location as instructed. Unfortunately, they didn't have a rate schedule nor a scale to weigh my parcel. They did have a digital scale near the got foods counter that informed me the parcel weighs .34 pounds. The grocer advised me to "slap $5 on each way and forget about it". I chose to purchase a book of stamps for $8.80 and continue my journey.
I climbed back in my vehicle and drove another 10 niles to yet another Post Office location. There, I found a digital scale that worked and determined the postage due was $1.73 each way. I attached 4 stamps to the parcel as well as the return envelop and sent it on it's way - elapsed time 5 hours. Now all I need to do is drive home and rest - so I can vote tomorrow.

 

[mheslep]

Across America and into D.C., people are fed up with partisanship
http://news.yahoo.com/s/yblog_askamerica/20101101/pl_yblog_askamerica/across-america-and-into-d-c-people-are-fed-up-with-partisanship

So says some joker attending the Stuart/Cober rally, not "America". I suggest they talk to the President first:

"If Latinos sit out the election instead of saying, 'We're going to punish our enemies and we're going to reward our friends who stand with us on issues that are important to us,'

http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2010/11/01/obama-backtracks-enemies-comment/

 

[turbo]

It's official. Maine has it's first Republican governor in a couple of decades, and he's a darling of the Tea Party. He is an outspoken critic of food stamps, Medicaid, and other social services, BUT the company that he manages is a prime beneficiary of those very services. The company is a retail operation that sells overstocks, insurance-claim merchandise and other distressed items. They pay minimal wages to their workers, who are part-timers, with NO benefits, not even access to unemployment benefits. These are people who have to rely on food stamps and local food-banks to feed their families, heating-fuel assistance to help heat their homes in winter, Medicaid (it's called MaineCare here) to get basic medical treatment, etc.

Paul LePage has spent an entire campaign slamming people who need such aid programs to stay afloat because employers like him won't pay a living wage, nor allow employees to work full-time and become eligible for unemployment compensation or other benefits. In tough economic times like these, even the crappy jobs that his company offers have takers because people want to have some kind of a job, no matter how poorly compensated. LePage has said that we should buy bus tickets to Massachusetts for people who need public assistance. We're in for a rough 4 years.

 

[Ivan Seeking]

LePage has said that we should buy bus tickets to Massachusetts for people who need public assistance. We're in for a rough 4 years.

We used to do that here in Oregon for abusers of the system - we gave them a bus ticket and sent them to California. I know because my mother was an eligibility worker [fraud detection] in California. She was on the receiving end of this.

 

[WhoWee]

We used to do that here in Oregon for abusers of the system - we gave them a bus ticket and sent them to California. I know because my mother was an eligibility worker [fraud detection] in California. She was on the receiving end of this.

LOL Well that explains the CA problem. As for Maine, don't send them S, send them to Canada.

 

[turbo]

LOL Well that explains the CA problem. As for Maine, don't send them S, send them to Canada.

You should find out what it takes to survive in Maine, and what jobs are available. It's tough times here. We were deep in recession well before the rest of the country and we'll still be in it when many other regions have pulled out of it. Many of the people who need some form of public assistance are already working multiple part-time and/or seasonal jobs. The couple down the road each have a couple of jobs (both of hers as a store clerk, and his as a rafting guide in the summer and/or a ski-resort worker or mill-worker in the winter). They have two little children and would have a very tough time of it if his mother and grandmother didn't help support the family.

Timber/lumber/building products are big business here, and long before the housing bubble burst, we felt the leading indicators. Chip-board mills shut down, sawmills shut down, woods operations got shut down and truckers lost their trucks to their creditors. There is only one large sawmill operation left in the state, and the owner is trying to stay afloat (at a loss) so that he can keep his most skilled workers, hoping for an upturn in the building industry. His mill is in a very remote location on the Canadian border, and if his employees have to leave to try to find work elsewhere, he'll never get them back.

 

[mheslep]

It's official. Maine has it's first Republican governor in a couple of decades, and he's a darling of the Tea Party.

Congratulations Gov. (elect) LePage! Some hope ahead now for better times in Maine. Next up, that state legislature ...

 

[CAC1001]

You should find out what it takes to survive in Maine, and what jobs are available. It's tough times here. We were deep in recession well before the rest of the country and we'll still be in it when many other regions have pulled out of it. Many of the people who need some form of public assistance are already working multiple part-time and/or seasonal jobs. The couple down the road each have a couple of jobs (both of hers as a store clerk, and his as a rafting guide in the summer and/or a ski-resort worker or mill-worker in the winter). They have two little children and would have a very tough time of it if his mother and grandmother didn't help support the family.

Timber/lumber/building products are big business here, and long before the housing bubble burst, we felt the leading indicators. Chip-board mills shut down, sawmills shut down, woods operations got shut down and truckers lost their trucks to their creditors. There is only one large sawmill operation left in the state, and the owner is trying to stay afloat (at a loss) so that he can keep his most skilled workers, hoping for an upturn in the building industry. His mill is in a very remote location on the Canadian border, and if his employees have to leave to try to find work elsewhere, he'll never get them back.

Maine needs to take action to reform its economy to attract some other industries. Not good to be reliant on just one area.

 

[turbo]

Congratulations Gov. (elect) LePage! Some hope ahead now for better times in Maine. Next up, that state legislature ...

Legislature has already flipped GOP. Better times? I doubt it. Maine is a very high-taxed state in part because of our climate and expensive infrastructure in a very rural state with low population density (excluding the two or three most southern counties. It's not because of welfare cheats. LePage's rants make good tea-party sound-bites, but it's hard to see how he can possibly cut, cut, cut, to fix this situation. As governor, he doesn't have that authority. He can sign bills into law or veto them. The people that voted him in because he promised to "create jobs" probably never had to try to live on the kind of jobs that he created in the private sector. Jobs that put all responsibility for social standards on the public sector. Privatize profits and socialize liabilities.

 

[turbo]

Maine needs to take action to reform its economy to attract some other industries. Not good to be reliant on just one area.

We have defense jobs, high-tech, machining, etc, but in northern Maine, there is not the population density to support that. We have some very talented academics and engineering students at the University of Maine, and some very talented machinists/welders/fabricators at Cianbro. A smart governor would try to find a way to meld those pools and make Maine a manufacturing/shipping hub for renewable energy (wind/tidal), but LePage says that Maine can't afford to pursue green power alternatives. The guy is an idiot. Imagine huge wind-tubines being produced at Cianbro's Brewer plant and others, and being shipped all over the Atlantic basin... LePage wants to open up Maine's multi-billion dollar offshore fisheries to drilling instead, in some of the most treacherous waters on the East Coast. He is a Palin-caliber moron.

 

[mheslep]

Legislature has already flipped GOP.

Hey! http://www.mpbn.net/Home/tabid/36/ctl/ViewItem/mid/3478/ItemId/14084/Default.aspx" , as of Tuesday.

Better times? I doubt it.

The Democratic party has held either the Maine statehouse or Governorship since 1964, riding along with all your complaints about bad times. The Democratic record includes: driving all but one of the insurance companies out of the state, a budget shortfall 34% above revenues, expensive electric power rates http://www.eia.doe.gov/electricity/epm/table5_6_a.html" in a state blessed with 50% hydroelectric & wood fueled power, and a refusal by Cutler to even consider offshore drilling while the Canadians make a fortune off the same in Nova Scotia waters. Apparently ME voters have become familiar with the name for trying and failing at the same thing again and again while expecting a different result.

 

[CAC1001]

We have defense jobs, high-tech, machining, etc, but in northern Maine, there is not the population density to support that. We have some very talented academics and engineering students at the University of Maine, and some very talented machinists/welders/fabricators at Cianbro. A smart governor would try to find a way to meld those pools and make Maine a manufacturing/shipping hub for renewable energy (wind/tidal), but LePage says that Maine can't afford to pursue green power alternatives. The guy is an idiot. Imagine huge wind-tubines being produced at Cianbro's Brewer plant and others, and being shipped all over the Atlantic basin... LePage wants to open up Maine's multi-billion dollar offshore fisheries to drilling instead, in some of the most treacherous waters on the East Coast. He is a Palin-caliber moron.

Are forms of green power like wind turbines viable though? Is that a profitable industry, or is it subsidized...? Regarding off-shore drilling, I think that could work well, I mean Norway is the thrid largest exporter of oil and they do drilling in some treacherous areas. Also the British in the North Sea I believe.

 

[mheslep]

LePage says no, Cutler yes. I think Cutler would have sacrificed every last job in MN to the alter of his wind turbines.
http://www.nytimes.com/cwire/2010/1...-new-england-stew-over-climate-and-10325.html

 

[Gokul43201]

Another TP endorsed creationist. It's not surprising to find that someone rejects climate science once you know they've rejected evolution.LePage has said he'd like to see Creationism taught in public schools. I hope he doesn't have a legislature that is empathetic to that idea.