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God Help Us, We’re All Teabaggers Now
By David Glenn Cox
I was stuck in a quandary; here I was all hitched up and ready to write about teabaggers when the stock market dropped like an old man's erection. So, do I write about the banditos on Wall Street? Or the mercenary fumducks on Fox Street?
Then I decided, what the hell, I’ll write about them both! It occurred to me that there really wasn’t that much difference between them anyway. It's like the difference between Chef Boyardee canned spaghetti and Chef Boyardee canned lasagna, just stir them up and they are pretty much the same.
The teabaggers have been in a tumult recently over the high ticket prices charged for their gathering at the Opryland Hotel. They claim that they are a leaderless movement, sort of like anti-Nazi’s with no Fuerher. Well then, who booked the hall? Who put up the deposit? That’s the problem when you are a devout follower of a belief with no dogma other than, “Sit. Stay. Do as you're told.” Their ideology is a hodge podge of rightwing talking points with little or no basis in reality. So when a crisis of confidence emerges, they’re stuck.
Cries of "birth certificate," or "Communist," just can’t answer the more pressing question of who is putting up the money and who is walking away with the money. That is truly how you determine the legitimate from the illegitimate organization. Grab twenty citizens off the street and you will get a dozen opinions on a dozen different issues. Then you take a curried, and petted, and vetted, homogenized teabagger mob and they all shout about pretty much the exact same things.
Many years ago in China, after the death of Mao Tse Tung, the ruling clique blamed every failing in the country on the “Gang of Four.” Four individuals were responsible for all the problems in a nation of one billion people. Former President Jimmy Carter was to address the Peoples Congress, but when he sat down in his chair on the stage the leg broke. Carter, almost without thinking, blamed the “Gang of Four,” bringing the Party Congress to howling laughter. They weren’t supposed to laugh at that, but Carter had inadvertently exposed the myth as being preposterous.
So this Fuerherless, rudderless mob in Nashville, when asked where the money is going says, “Sarah Palin, birth certificate, Communist.” A smart huckster would climb up on the back of the medicine wagon and shout, “You’re damned right ticket prices are high, of course they’re high. We want them to be high! This is America, God damn it! Would you rather have some government-subsidized convention with cheese and crackers like the French? We’re proud to make a profit and you’re damn proud to pay into it."
This is also the strategy being used by America’s major banking institutions. Why, just a few weeks ago the big banks began paying back their borrowed TARP funds to the government. Repayment of those funds allowed them to pay out huge bonuses to top executives and what they like to call their top producers. The headlines read:
“Why Banks Traders Make Record Profits...” - TPMMuckraker May 8, 2009
“Bailed-Out Banks Raking In Big Profits”- Washington Post October 16, 2009
“Wall Street Profits on Pace For Record, Industry Recovering ‘Faster Than Expected’" - Huffington Post November 18, 2009
“Banks Set for Record Pay, Top 38 Firms on Pace to Award $145 Billion for '09, Up 18%,” -The Wall Street Journal January 15, 2010
“Bank of America Expects Record Bonuses for some Top Performers" - Business Week January 10, 2010
But all that was like a Sarah Palin speech; something coherent was missing. Then came this week's headlines:
“Before the Bell: Futures Fall as Bank of America Reports Big Loss” - Business Week January 19, 2010
“Citigroup reports $7.6 billion quarterly loss, but its stock has small gain" – Reuters January 20, 2010
“Bank of America Posts Loss After Firm Repays Bailout” – Bloomberg January 20, 2010
Bank of America reported its largest quarterly loss, the third in five quarters, its largest yearly loss in two decades. The reason that was blazoned out in banner headlines, “...After Firm Repays Bailout.” Damn those government bureaucrats! Of course it didn’t help that Bank of America increased its borrowing from the government from $2.4 billion to $5.2 billion. Even if Bank of America hadn’t returned one dime to the government, it still lost $194 million in ninety days.
Bank of America lost a billion dollars on credit card services and $993 million on insurance and real estate loans, but yet somehow, some way, this all came out of the blue and blindsided the lot of them, because,
“Bank of America Expects Record Bonuses for Some Staff” - Bloomberg January 8, 2010
Yes, just two weeks ago they couldn’t see this coming! “Bank of America’s management is determining the total earmarked for incentive-based compensation," Stickler said. "The sum must get approval by the company’s board around the end of January," he said.
“We have to compensate our people competitively,” Stickler said. “If we don’t do that, we lose our talent.”
A smart huckster would climb on the back of the medicine wagon and shout, “You’re damned right bonuses are high, of course they’re high. We want them to be high! This is America, God damn it! Would you rather some government-subsidized brokerage with cheese and crackers like the French? We’re proud to make a profit and you’re damn proud to pay into it."
“If we don’t do that, we lose our talent.”
God help us, we’re all teabaggers now, no accountability, organized crime masquerading as legitimate businesses. We have a federal government that threatens to throw Nerf balls and marshmallows at the bankers if they don’t promise to behave.
Cries of "birth certificate," or "Communist," just can’t answer the more pressing question of who is putting up the money and who is walking away with the money.
Then again, it's just another day in the land of the rising dumb.
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