Rebels Without Reason -- The TEA PARTY!
Take a look! Are these people rugged individualist,mavericks, or sheep? I say they are Rebels Without Reason! The result of too much home schooling! It is absolute stupidity! They think they are Revolutionary but they are the puppets of the Koch Bothers and the rest of the Super Class!. They wrap themselves in the flag and attack things like NPR, Planned Parenthood, the EPA, and Head Start.They are NOT brave individuals fighting for a cause, What progress we have made in the Economic Recovery is being jeopardized by this foolish assault on middle class Americans.. They want fiscal responsibility but absolutely ignore Multi-billion dollar corporations that get away with not paying a penny of income tax, and get rebates from the IRS! We do not hear them rant about the many many billions thrown away. Not a word. They ignore the tax cuts given to the super rich and the money we have to borrow to pay for them. They ignore getting more revenue from those cheating the system They ignore getting revenue from those who have gained tremendously over the last ten years.The Tea Party claims they want fiscal responsibility, but they go after the wrong people. Here are the facts:
1) Exxon Mobil made $19 billion in profits in 2009. Exxon not only paid no federal income taxes, it actually received a $156 million rebate from the IRS, according to its SEC filings.
2) Bank of America received a $1.9 billion tax refund from the IRS last year, although it made $4.4 billion in profits and received a bailout from the Federal Reserve and the Treasury Department of nearly $1 trillion.
3) Over the past five years, while General Electric made $26 billion in profits in the United States, it received a $4.1 billion refund from the IRS.
4) Chevron received a $19 million refund from the IRS last year after it made $10 billion in profits in 2009.
5) Boeing, which received a $30 billion contract from the Pentagon to build 179 airborne tankers, got a $124 million refund from the IRS last year.
6) Valero Energy, the 25th largest company in America with $68 billion in sales last year received a $157 million tax refund check from the IRS and, over the past three years, it received a $134 million tax break from the oil and gas manufacturing tax deduction.
7) Goldman Sachs in 2008 only paid 1.1 percent of its income in taxes even though it earned a profit of $2.3 billion and received an almost $800 billion from the Federal Reserve and U.S. Treasury Department.
8) Citigroup last year made more than $4 billion in profits but paid no federal income taxes. It received a $2.5 trillion bailout from the Federal Reserve and U.S. Treasury.
9) ConocoPhillips, the fifth largest oil company in the United States, made $16 billion in profits from 2007 through 2009, but received $451 million in tax breaks through the oil and gas manufacturing deduction.
10) Over the past five years, Carnival Cruise Lines made more than $11 billion in profits, but its federal income tax rate during those years was just 1.1 percent.
Why don't we hear the Tea Party clamoring about them? Because Corporations are sponsors of the Tea Party. The biggest organizational contributors to Tea Party caucus members are the people and political action committees associated with AT&T, Honeywell International, and the American Bankers Association,
A Center for Responsive Politics analysis shows that the top contributors to the 50 members of a newly-established congressional Tea Party Caucus -- which so far includes only Republicans -- are health professionals, the real estate industry and oil and gas interests.
And of course, the sugar daddies of the Tea Party, the billionaire Koch brothers
Koch Brothers Support Tea Party
So don't be offended if I show my disdain for the Tea Party. They show disdain for the middle class Americans through their lack of information. They spend their energies working on behalf of those that continue to oppress working Americans. They are for those that are trying to dismantle the social progress made over many decades. Teddy Roosevelt was a conservative, but he would not be acceptable to the Tea Party! He was far too progressive for them! This Nation came in with a Tea Party. I hate to see it go out with the new Tea Party!
Teddy Roosevelt - New Nationalism Speech
The true friend of property, the true conservative, is he who insists that property shall be the servant and not the master of the commonwealth; who insists that the creature of man’s making shall be the servant and not the master of the man who made it. The citizens of the United States must effectively control the mighty commercial forces which they have called into being.
There can be no effective control of corporations while their political activity remains. To put an end to it will be neither a short nor an easy task, but it can be done.
We must have complete and effective publicity of corporate affairs, so that the people may know beyond peradventure whether the corporations obey the law and whether their management entitles them to the confidence of the public. It is necessary that laws should be passed to prohibit the use of corporate funds directly or indirectly for political purposes; it is still more necessary that such laws should be thoroughly enforced. Corporate expenditures for political purposes, and especially such expenditures by public-service corporations, have supplied one of the principal sources of corruption in our political affairs.
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The absence of effective State, and, especially, national, restraint upon unfair money-getting has tended to create a small class of enormously wealthy and economically powerful men, whose chief object is to hold and increase their power. The prime need to is to change the conditions which enable these men to accumulate power which it is not for the general welfare that they should hold or exercise. We grudge no man a fortune which represents his own power and sagacity, when exercised with entire regard to the welfare of his fellows. Again, comrades over there, take the lesson from your own experience. Not only did you not grudge, but you gloried in the promotion of the great generals who gained their promotion by leading their army to victory. So it is with us. We grudge no man a fortune in civil life if it is honorably obtained and well used. It is not even enough that it should have been gained without doing damage to the community. We should permit it to be gained only so long as the gaining represents benefit to the community. This, I know, implies a policy of a far more active governmental interference with social and economic conditions in this country than we have yet had, but I think we have got to face the fact that such an increase in governmental control is now necessary.