"They’re not Independents, they’re not fake, they’re not all nuts."
Has anyone notice that as the Tea Party Movement gains momentum, it is igniting a grassroots political fire akin to than Senator Barack Obama's "CHANGE"/ "Yes We Can" movement which took root during his 2008 Presidential campaign?
Ironic isn't it?
Tea Party Protesters borrowed Pres. Obama's "CHANGE" movement theme and flipped it to run him out of office.
Remember Scott Brown's victory?
This is why Democrat Leaders need to stop pretending the Tea Party Movement is a joke and take this movement seriously.
Those Tea Party protesters are angry for a reason.
Its not Racism or Foolishness!
Those people are hurting and afraid.
While Pres. Obama's "Chicago Politics" team sat back celebrating his victory for an entire year, millions of people lost their homes and jobs.
It doesn't matter what he inherited! (Everyone is sick of that tired "Bush blame game" anyway.)
As of January 20, 2009 he became America's 44Th President and the Economy was placed in his hands.
However instead of helping the little guys first or even a little bit during this terrible Recession, Pres. Obama propped up Wall Street, passed a half-ass Stimulus Package and allowed Governors to use Stimulus Funds to lie about Job Growth.
Instead of creating Jobs most Governors used Stimulus Funds to help balance state Budget Deficits.
For example in North Carolina Gov. Bev Perdue (Dem) used $8.1 Billion in Stimulus Funds to balance a $4 Billion Budget Deficit which was created by NC Democrat Lawmakers who previously wasted or foolishly spent Federal money.
In 2009 after receiving Stimulus Fund, Gov. Bev Perdue cut thousands and thousands of Teacher jobs (just as she has proposed to do this year).
This didn't just occur in North Carolina, it also happened in other states.
Why was this fiscal malfeasance allowed?
Bev Perdue endorsed Barack Obama during his bid for President.
What did the Obama Administration and liberal Media Networks like MSNBC do?
They lied!
They lied about the number of jobs lost and the number of jobs actually saved.
Health Care....
As it relates to Health Care Legislation the bill was a complete failure because Democrats tried to secretly slip Omnibus legislation loaded with goodies for Health Care companies through congress.
What did this secret legislation include: High Taxes, Mandates, No Portability and No Reform!
It also included allowing Health Care companies to keep their Anti-Trust exemption status and to continue Price Fixing.
Pres. Obama's Admin did nothing to address America's Failing, Segregated Public Schools nor help College Students, especially Low Income & Middle Class Students pay for college.
He also did nothing to address Employment Discrimination but sign the Lilly Ledbetter bill into law.
A law that will protect White Women in the Workplace while hundreds of thousands of African-Americans continue to be fired first and hired last, if hired at all.
Pres. Obama promised to help Small Businesses however thousands of Small Businesses closed in 2009 due to lost capital because Big Banks refused to lend or expand credit.
He claims his administration stopped banks from receiving kickbacks for Student Loans, NOT true!
Companies like Discover, Wells Fargo, BOFA, etc. are still handling Student Loans and charging high interest rates.
In addition many Private Colleges are receiving kickbacks or secret deals from those companies for referring Students to them.
Pres. Obama's Admin did almost nothing to help Homeowners except put together his ineffective, poorly managed HAMP program (Foreclosure Prevention).
The result? Millions of people lost their homes in 2009.
He did nothing to address state-to-state Unfair Taxation which hurts millions of citizens. Especially citizens who live in North Carolina.
Now he wants to give Stimulus Funds to Mayors so that Mayors can lie about Job Growth like Governors did in 2009.
In essence Pres. Obama is cultivating, encouraging "Chicago Politics" Corruption to fester and take over our entire nation.
You see in Chicago Wealthy citizens reign by stepping on the Middle Class and Low Income, keeping them immobilized with Corruption.
Obama promised "CHANGE" yet Wall Street Bankers experienced their most profitable year in 2009.
He promised "HOPE" but instead turned our nation into a Socratic Think Tank.
In other words Barack Obama is the Professor and regular Voters are the Students.
Now he wants to tamper with the U.S. Military's "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" Policy (to win back Gay Voters) while Pentagon officials are focused on fighting two Wars and play political games with a Terrorist (Umar Mutallab).
In 2008 I too was fooled but now I've seen the light.
Barack Obama cares about nothing more than his Political Career.
Nothing else matters!
This is why Tea Party participants are angry and afraid.
This is why the Democrats are going to lose big time in 2010 during Mid-term elections.
This is why despite biased, partisan reporting from MSNBC or CNN, etc., Republican Candidates will most likely win back the White House in 2012.
To Tea Party participants Republicans are not seen as the "Party of No".
They are being viewed as the party in Congress who listens to average Voters versus being Arrogant or Tone Deaf like Democrats.
As for Barack Obama's legacy, he will be known as the President who allowed his slick "Chicago Politics" Mentality and Arrogant "Chicago Politics" White House team to destroy the Democratic Party.
Just think the same people Pres. Barack Obama looked down upon (Conservatives, Uneducated, Middle Class, Low Income, Senior Citizens) will be the same people voting him out of office.
Tea Party Protesters!
Remember Scott Brown's victory?
Its NOT about Communication or "the Message". Its about Action and Results!
He who laughs first doesn't always laugh last.
Top 5 Misconceptions About The Tea Party Movement
One year ago, the first Tea Party Protest hadn't even been held yet and the phrase remained safely ensconced in American history textbooks. This weekend, the first national Tea Party Convention will be held in Nashville, and the fractious movement has secured a place in the history of the Obama administration. But for all the attention it has earned, misconceptions abound. Here are the top five:
1.) Tea Partiers = Independents:
Independents are the largest and fastest-growing voter segment—a new CNN poll puts independents at 42 percent of the American electorate. Given the Tea Partiers' anger at overspending under Bush as well as Obama, it's been tempting to equate them with independent voters—but there are fundamental differences. Polls of independents' policy positions consistently place them in between Republicans and Democrats—closer to the GOP on economic issues and closer to the Democrats on social issues.
But the Tea Partiers tend to be to the right of the Republican Party on both fiscal and social issues. Their opposition to the Obama administration is overheated and absolute. Independents are angry at the polarization of the two parties; Tea Partiers want more polarization between the two parties. Independents tend to be centrists; Tea Partiers attack centrist Republicans as Republicans in Name Only, or RINOs. Tea Partiers are conservative populists.
2.) Tea Partiers Are All Wingnuts:
The guys with the Obama-as-Hitler signs get all the attention, for obvious reasons, but the reality is that the Tea Parties began as a fiscal conservative protest in response to the $787 billion stimulus amid bailout backlash. Their ranks are full of folks who've never attended a protest before, small businesses owners who were angry at the way they were struggling to pay their bills while big business and big government could rack up debts and pass the buck onto taxpayers in backroom deals.
There is common-sense anger at unsustainable deficits that are seen as generational theft. Reagan's rhetoric won Americans' hearts and minds when it came to Keynesian spending. Unified Democratic control of Congress and the White House also provokes in many a distrust that is consistent with a Madisonian desire for checks and balances. Extremists are always ultimately their own side's worst enemy, and I've seen plenty of people with ugly cases of Obama Derangement Syndrome at Tea Party protests. But it is by no means the whole crowd.
3.) Tea Partiers Are "Astroturf":
On Tax Day 2009, Tea Party protests were held in 346 towns and cities, drawing an estimated 300,000 people, according to the dependable fivethirtyeight.com. At the time, liberal columnists joined with Nancy Pelosi in trying to downplay the events, dismissing them as artificial "astroturf" protests rather than a genuine grassroots movement. True, groups like Americans for Prosperity and FreedomWorks helped fund organizational costs while Fox News helped make the protests a national conservative happening by airing more than 100 commercial promotions for the protests in the ten days before Tax Day.
But these were the equivalent of conservative public service announcements. For all the "astroturf" asides, the crowds were homegrown. They may have been pumped up by partisan interests, but they were not purchased. There is real grassroots anger going on, based in deep policy debates over the proper role of government as well as shallow partisan politics.
4.) Tea Partiers Are All Libertarians:
This is the opening pitch to any young Tea Party attendee, a revealing attempt at finding common ground. The libertarian label accounts for the anger at overspending under the Bush administration and gives the movement a modern-sounding spin, recasting the Obama opposition into a clear-cut fight between individualism and collectivism. By contrast, social conservatism has an ideologically inconvenient collectivist streak embedded in it, particularly an intrusion of the government into questions of sexual and reproductive freedom.
Past icons, like libertarian Barry Goldwater and Ronald Reagan, couldn't have passed the party purity measures pushed by some conservatives. And current Tea Party icons like Sarah Palin and Rush Limbaugh enforce the social and fiscal conservative straightjacket—they embrace the idea that there are no enemies on the right and RINOs on the left. Accordingly, they are hugely popular with conservatives but kryptonite to independents and centrists. Libertarians are given plenty of lip service, but they are not trusted with leadership roles in the conservative populist movement to date.
5.) Tea Partiers Will Take Over the GOP:
Rep. Michele Bachmann has said she wants the Tea Partiers to take over the GOP. Sarah Palin's hopes are more modest—a "merger" of the two forces. There's no question that conservatives are trying to surf the Tea Party wave into increased influence while also trying to purge RINOs from the GOP. But if you take a close look at what's happening in key campaigns, a different story emerges. The greatest symbol of the Republican resurgence to date is the election of Scott Brown to succeed Ted Kennedy in the Senate.
The full 2010 trifecta would include taking Obama and Biden's Senate seats—and the once-implausible scenario now seems increasingly likely because of the centrist GOP nominees running. Illinois' Mark Kirk and Delaware's Mike Castle have been targeted as RINOs by grassroots conservative groups because they describe themselves as social moderates. Like Scott Brown, they are pro-choice. Like Brown, they are also fiscal conservatives and national security hawks. The secret behind the GOP's improved electoral chances is in fielding centrist candidates who can win over independent voters.
John Avlon's new book Wingnuts: How the Lunatic Fringe is Hijacking America is available now by Beast Books both on the web and in paperback. Advance orders can be placed here. He is also the author of Independent Nation: How Centrists Can Change American Politics. Previously, he served as chief speechwriter for New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani and was a columnist and associate editor for The New York Sun.
Big Bang Explodes On Democrats
Moderate Democrats, coping with the electoral fallout of President Barack Obama’s grand and ground-down legislative ambitions, have a message for their leaders: Stop supersizing us.
If the first year of Obama’s term was dominated by the so-called Big Bang push for enormous, politically risky initiatives — the stimulus, cap and trade and health care — Year Two is fast shaping up to be year of small ball, retrenchment and backlash.
“I’ve always maintained that I thought that they were doing too much, too fast,” said Rep. Mike McMahon (D-N.Y.), an endangered freshman who represents a Staten Island district long occupied by Republicans.
“Without question, the biggest complaint I’m hearing from constituents is that there were too many things being tackled all at once, and they didn’t have time to understand and digest all of them,” he added.
The Big Bang, made famous by Obama’s chief of staff, Rahm Emanuel, is giving way to a wary brand of incrementalism. It’s not the small-bore, Clintonian agenda of V-chips and school uniforms but an admission that expectations are diminished — not dashed — and a determination to attack the same huge problems in smaller, smarter ways.
Former Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott (R-Miss.) believes Obama still has time to adjust, but he says he’s put moderate Democrats “in great jeopardy” because he hasn’t been able to match his aspirations with the same levels of toughness and legislative know-how possessed by Hill veterans like Presidents Lyndon Johnson and Richard Nixon.
“They were foolish to take all those big votes on cap and trade and the stimulus,” said Lott, now a lobbyist. “One of the lessons that Obama has not learned is that you can’t feed Congress too much at any one time — you can’t feed it more than they can consume, or it becomes engorged.”
The downsizing impulse has seized Democrats at all levels — with the possible exception of the president himself — but it’s strongest among those closest to the ground: endangered Democratic incumbents in conservative districts. Ironically, Emanuel himself recruited many of these members when he was head of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee.
Obama has reshuffled his political operation, emphasized his centrism and vowed to focus on jobs and the economy. But he has also refused to abandon his big-ticket aspirations, urging Democrats not to run for the hills and telling his party’s senators to steel themselves by ignoring the blogs and the cable-TV talking heads.
And House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) argues that the bigger-is-better strategy wasn’t a choice — that the magnitude of the financial crisis dictated the size of the stimulus and that the complexity of health care reform required a massive bill with many interlocking pieces.
“Many of the things that work when you are doing comprehensive health care reform go hand in glove; you have to have them together,” she said. “All of these things are a heavy lift.”
Yet in the weeks between Scott Brown’s Senate victory in Massachusetts and his Thursday swearing-in, Hill moderates have been busily shrinking Obama’s agenda, chopping it up into politically digestible, palatable pieces.
A few weeks ago, the White House seemed on the cusp of finally passing comprehensive health care reform through both houses. But by Thursday, Pelosi was speaking with pride about the House’s intention of revoking the insurance industry’s antitrust exemption. That attempt, like almost every other House initiative, seems destined to die in the Senate.
She charted a similar course for a massive jobs bill — the centerpiece of this year’s legislative agenda, saying she was open to an approach that dices the measure into bite-size bills.
Pelosi’s determination to protect her incumbents is a welcome development for moderates, who blame the wholesale defection of the white independents from the party on Pelosi and other liberals.
Arkansas Sen. Blanche Lincoln, a moderate facing a 27 percent home-state approval rating in an election year, took that argument directly to Obama during the Democratic Senate retreat Wednesday, urging the president to challenge the party’s “extremes.”
“Are we willing as Democrats to push back on our own party?” she asked.
“If the price of certainty is essentially for us to adopt the exact same proposals that were in place for eight years leading up to the biggest economic crisis since the Great Depression ... the result is going to be the same,” Obama shot back.
“I don’t know why we would expect a different outcome pursuing the exact same policy that got us into this fix in the first place.”
That answer rankled many of the Democrats who witnessed the exchange in the Newseum, drawing only moderate applause from a group that greeted him as a rock star a year earlier.
“It was a bit too much,” said one Democratic staffer in attendance. “But we can’t really challenge him publicly too much because we need to get his [approval] numbers up before we can get everybody else’s numbers up.”
Yet for all the frustration of Lincoln and other Senate Democrats, it’s less than that expressed by many House Democrats, who have been forced to take tough votes against the unified opposition of Republicans.
California Rep. Dennis Cardoza, one of the founders of the fiscally conservative Blue Dog Coalition, says he’s been counseling a slowdown approach for months, to no avail, in conversations with administration officials, including Office of Management and Budget Director Peter Orszag.
“I don’t think the [Big Bang] strategy was very useful,” said Cardoza. “I told him I thought this schizophrenic thing — it’s like a child with [attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder], every day a new initiative, a new announcement,” Cardoza told POLITICO.
“Everyone was talking about spending capital — now I think we wish we had some of that capital back. You build confidence by passing legislation that people understand and work that way. I still believe in the president, but you can’t be everything to all folks.”
Deepest Cuts At Charlotte-Meck. Schools May Bring Lay-Offs
Superintendent Peter Gorman is preparing three scenarios for the 2010-11 budget, ranging from no change to this year's $1 billion-plus bottom line to a 5 percent cut.
The worst-case scenario will require planning for layoffs, officials and a consultant said at a budget meeting Monday. Cutting 5 percent would mean eliminating $31 million to $33 million, Chief Financial Officer Sheila Shirley said.
"The only place to find real money is with people," school board member Joe White said. "That's sad and that's unfortunate."
Gorman said the layoff planning will follow roughly the same timetable as last year, when he got the board's OK for teacher layoffs in March and teachers got pink slips in late May. Some other CMS employees got layoff notices as early as March 2009. When the state approved a tax hike during the summer,increasing its share of school funding, CMS rehired some of laid-off staff.
Jonathan Travers, a consultant with the nonprofit Education Resource Strategies, told the board they'll have to make tough choices: Are they willing to increase class sizes slightly to shift money to coaching, training and other programs that make teachers more effective? If they have to choose between spending for "core courses" such as math and English or paying higher per-pupil costs for optional classes, where will they cut?
"In a perfect world, we would like all of those things," Travers said. But because so much of CMS's budget is tied up in teacher salaries, he urged the district to begin planning for layoffs that are based on effectiveness rather than seniority, and that give schools some flexibility.
Simply cutting the newest hires isn't best for students, Travers said, and because new teachers are paid less, "you have to cut more of them to save the same dollar amount."
Board member Richard McElrath said he wouldn't support cutting vocational/career classes, which were identified as some of the most expensive, because most students don't go on to four-year college degrees. They need practical skills to earn a living, he said.
At Monday's meeting, board members got cost information about magnet programs, middle school sports, changes to busing and merging services with other local governments.
Specific proposals for cuts haven't come out yet. Board members will consult with Gorman as he prepares a budget plan to present March 9.
After board members work through that plan, they take a request to county commissioners, who provide about one-third of CMS's budget.
Information about state spending, which covers about 60 percent, usually comes even later. Gov. Bev Perdue asked the state Department of Public Instruction to prepare budget plans ranging from a 3 percent increase to a 7 percent cut, but Gorman said Monday he decided to focus on the scenarios in the middle of that range.
Among the cost items presented at board members' request:
Extra staff and supplies for magnet schools cost CMS $3.8 million a year. Gorman said after the meeting it would not be practical to cut magnets for 2010-11 because CMS is already taking magnet applications.
The district spends an average of $1,542 per student to bus kids to magnet schools, compared with an average of $413 per student for neighborhood-school busing.
Middle school sports will cost almost $1.4 million next year. During 2009 budget talks, Gorman mentioned eliminating middle school sports but board members rejected that.
To keep up with CMS, go to www.cms.k12.nc.us and click "Budget information" in the red box at the left of the page.
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Sources: The Daily Beast, Politico, CNN, Youtube, Google Maps
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