Excellent LTTE dismantles Tea Party fallacies

[theHandpuppet]

I can only furnish a portion of this LTTE here as per DU rules, but I highly recommend reading this missive in its entirety.

From the Athens News, Athens, Ohio

Link: http://www.athensnews.com/ohio/article-33263-minister-and-his-tea-party-have-misidentified-problem.html
Minister and his Tea Party have misidentified problem
By Robert L. Wiley

This is a comment in response to the Rev. Bob Nickester’s “Tea Party is Necessary to Save Our Nation from Liberals” (The Athens News, Feb. 3).

EXCERPT

While Rev. Bob does not have the corner on patriotism, he makes it clear that liberals (despite the unfortunate Democratic Party symbology) are far from having the corner on “donkeyism.” To blame a problem on any kind of an “ism” qualifies as either lazy barstool philosophy or the fearfulness of closet monsters. Bob, the Tea Party has identified the wrong target, and in doing so has become not the patriots but the new Tories for the new aristocracy: large corporations. You get credit for at least mentioning General Electric as a symbol, but you fail to follow through with the necessary understanding that both parties have been dominantly populated by creatures of corporations for years. They pass laws that give corporations rights, privileges and exemptions from taxes that go a long distance beyond our rights as individual citizens. Such legislation has turned us into mere consumers (read grazers) of whatever spoiled hay we might be offered to consume.

The Marine Corps taught me how to identify the enemy based on gathering accurate intelligence on his location, strength and operational procedures. Bad intelligence results in a bad action plan. It is so embarrassing when a company of combat Marines takes a hill only to find it occupied by a Presbyterian day camp defended only with hotdog skewers. Find and focus on the real enemy of the state: corporate influence in politics, gone even further awry as they claim personhood and constitutional rights and protections reserved for people, in the wake of egregious Supreme Court decisions such as Citizens United v. FEC. Look it up, Bob. Learn how it degrades real democracy.

There are sound, documentable reasons why the country is headed in the wrong direction. A large majority of them are traceable to the freeing of corporations from any kind of ethical or regulatory restraint over the past three decades. Corporations are vital because they can produce the goods and service we all need. They cannot, however, be allowed to make the rules, because they must stilt them in favor of their realistic but single-minded reason for existence: profit.

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