It’s getting rather exhausting listening to people try to use the Tea Party rallies as some sort of check on the Occupy Wall Street movement in order to demonize it. While the Tea Partiers do have some legitimate political concerns, for the most part, they were and still are pawns. Why was there constant mainstream media coverage of Tea Party demonstrations? Why were there so few incidents of clashes with police and zero arrests? Why were Tea Party protesters who carried guns, many semiautomatic riffles, untouched by law enforcement? Why were they taken so seriously? Why were they hailed as “patriots?” Why weren’t any Tea Party rallies shut down?
Because the Tea Party in no way threatened the establishment. They demanded completely privatized healthcare, eating right out of the hands of Big Pharma and healthcare insurance companies. They protested against corporate and environmental regulations, allowing big business to essentially steamroll over whatever they please, even if that meant destroying our Earth, with zero accountability. They demanded funding for services and programs that generally help the lower classes like Medicaid, employment insurance, Planned Parenthood, etc. be cut in order to “slash the deficit.” After billionaires like the Koch brothers poured money into their groups, they demanded it was unfair to tax big corporations and the rich because “they’re the job makers.” Maybe we should look at some of their corporate and mega-rich sponsors:
- Massey Energy
- Microsoft
- FreedomWorks
- Americans for Prosperity
- Armstrong Foundation
- Carthage Foundation
- Castle Rock Foundation
- Claude R. Lambe Charitable Foundation
- Earhart Foundation
- Exxon Mobil
- F.M. Kirby Foundation
- Gordon and Mary Cain Foundation
- Jaquelin Hume Foundation
- John M. Olin Foundation
- Leadership Institute
- Philip M. McKenna Foundation
- Richard and Helen DeVos Foundation
- Rodney Fund
- Samuel Roberts Noble Foundation
- Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation
- Sarah Scaife Foundation
- British Petroleum
- Bayer
- NewsCorp
- Heritage Foundation
- Manhattan Institute
- George C. Marshall Institute
- Reason Foundation
- American Enterprise Institute
- Scaife Family Foundation
- Shelby Cullom Davis Foundation
- MetLife
- Americans for Tax Reform
- Family Research Council
- John Birch Society
- Ensuring Liberty Corp.
- AT&T
- Verizon
- Polaris Consulting
- Southern Co.
- Comcast
- American Airlines
- Time Warner
- Kirby Corp.
- Ernst & Young
- Publix
- Caterpillar
- Fed. of Amer. Hospitals
- Tyco International
There’s a major incentive to allow the AstroTurf Tea Partiers, which make up only 18% of the population, to stomp their little feet. There is, however, virtually zero incentive to allow the Occupy movement, which denounces such overreaching corporate power, to even open their mouths and let out a single utterance. So, how do you suppress an all-inclusive movement with legitimate and striking concerns regarding the unequal balance of power? You beat them in the streets and try to do everything possible to cut off their resources because your corporate overlords, guys like Bloomberg who made billions by doing business with Wall Street, said, “jump.” Because you’re part of the 40% the top 1% owns. They buy you with their massive amounts of wealth to do their bidding in order to increase that wealth.
I will give these critics of the Occupy movement one thing though: it’s difficult to figure out how the system really works because of how horribly broken it is. However, it doesn’t take a great mind to understand the very fact that it’s broken in the first place or pinpoint who broke it.
