# The Trouble With Tea-Baggers And Progressives. **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [April 22, 2010, 2:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-trouble-with-tea-baggers-and-progressives/536984 "2010-04-22T14:51:54Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 4
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [April 23, 2010, 2:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-trouble-with-tea-baggers-and-progressives/536984/61 "2010-04-23T14:53:03Z")
> [@elbows](#): > > They are like Republican Yippies, no leader, no agenda, street theatre but more disturbing than amusing. At least the Yippies amused us by trying to levitate the Pentagon, created a riot on the floor of the stock exchange by chucking in bags of 1$ bills. The teagagger seem just a bunch of people too dim to spell ‘nigger’ or ‘moron’ correctly. That’s not amusing it’s just sad. Agreed. The Yippies nominated the pig Pigasus for president. The Teabaggers want Sarah Palin. Makes the Pigasus campaign look serious and dignified by comparison. ---
**Author:** ![Czarcasm](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/czarcasm/32/4050_2.png) [@Czarcasm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Czarcasm)\ **Post date:** [April 23, 2010, 3:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-trouble-with-tea-baggers-and-progressives/536984/62 "2010-04-23T15:35:39Z")
> [@adhay](#): > > The only possibly workable one I’ve been able to come with is that 28th amendment. > > . Postponed it into something that’s likely to be worse.Hey, dude, check my posts here. I am not blaming Reagan, Bush or Obama. You call our wars ill-advised? I call them criminal enterprises. And they are happening right now on Obama’s watch. I also watch with interest Obama’s Wall Street reforms. Reinstatement of Glass-Steagall with provisions to eliminate hi-frequency trading? I doubt it. You are pretty good at pointing out the problems, although you tend to miss the fine points that show where to assign blame, and when, but this in no way means that libertarians are the solution. I could see that the company computer system has crashed and tell everyone about it, but this in no way qualifies me to either diagnose the problem or provide a solution. ---
**Author:** ![adhay](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/ecd19e/32.png) [@adhay](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/adhay)\ **Post date:** [April 23, 2010, 3:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-trouble-with-tea-baggers-and-progressives/536984/63 "2010-04-23T15:55:28Z")
> [@Czarcasm](#): > > You are pretty good at pointing out the problems, although you tend to miss the fine points that show where to assign blame, and when, but this in no way means that libertarians are the solution. I could see that the company computer system has crashed and tell everyone about it, but this in no way qualifies me to either diagnose the problem or provide a solution. I have pointed out THE problem, assigned blame and suggested a solution. And if I see someone unplug the computer system, I don’t need an expert to tell me why it’s down. ---
**Author:** ![Czarcasm](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/czarcasm/32/4050_2.png) [@Czarcasm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Czarcasm)\ **Post date:** [April 23, 2010, 3:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-trouble-with-tea-baggers-and-progressives/536984/64 "2010-04-23T15:59:47Z")
> [@adhay](#): > > I have pointed out THE problem, assigned blame and suggested a solution. And if I see someone unplug the computer system, I don’t need an expert to tell me why it’s down. You have merely pointed out that “The computer is down!” without opening it up to see that it is composed of many different parts that work together in many different ways, and your solution is to toss it out the window and buy another computer that has never been burned in or tested on a large scale. ---
**Author:** ![Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/e8c25b/32.png) [@Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Really_Not_All_That_Bright)\ **Post date:** [April 23, 2010, 4:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-trouble-with-tea-baggers-and-progressives/536984/65 "2010-04-23T16:49:18Z")
Public funding of elections, anyone? ---
**Author:** ![Czarcasm](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/czarcasm/32/4050_2.png) [@Czarcasm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Czarcasm)\ **Post date:** [April 23, 2010, 4:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-trouble-with-tea-baggers-and-progressives/536984/66 "2010-04-23T16:56:00Z")
> [@Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](#): > > Public funding of elections, anyone? Not possible until you solve the “money = free speech” problem. ---
**Author:** ![Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/e8c25b/32.png) [@Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Really_Not_All_That_Bright)\ **Post date:** [April 23, 2010, 5:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-trouble-with-tea-baggers-and-progressives/536984/67 "2010-04-23T17:01:53Z")
It’s not a problem. It’s an absurd leap of logic that Carl Lewis couldn’t make. ---
**Author:** ![elbows](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/b3f665/32.png) [@elbows](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/elbows)\ **Post date:** [April 23, 2010, 5:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-trouble-with-tea-baggers-and-progressives/536984/68 "2010-04-23T17:15:09Z")
Yeah campaign funding reform would help too. But damn is there any problem, created over the last 50 years, you’re not looking at this guy to fix overnight? ---
**Author:** ![adhay](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/ecd19e/32.png) [@adhay](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/adhay)\ **Post date:** [April 23, 2010, 5:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-trouble-with-tea-baggers-and-progressives/536984/69 "2010-04-23T17:19:55Z")
> [@Czarcasm](#): > > Not possible until you solve the “money = free speech” problem. It’s only a problem because corporations, according to SCOTUS, are people. Only a Constitutional amendment will be able to undo 110 years of egregious judicial legislation. ---
**Author:** ![Czarcasm](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/czarcasm/32/4050_2.png) [@Czarcasm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Czarcasm)\ **Post date:** [April 23, 2010, 5:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-trouble-with-tea-baggers-and-progressives/536984/70 "2010-04-23T17:22:57Z")
> [@adhay](#): > > It’s only a problem because corporations, according to SCOTUS, are people. Only a Constitutional amendment will be able to undo 110 years of egregious judicial legislation. Then it will be a problem forever. Such an amendment will never see the light of day, because it would have to be proposed and supported by the same congress that took the money in the first place. ---
**Author:** ![Wesley\_Clark](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/wesley_clark/32/20581_2.png) [@Wesley\_Clark](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Wesley_Clark)\ **Post date:** [April 23, 2010, 7:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-trouble-with-tea-baggers-and-progressives/536984/71 "2010-04-23T19:22:12Z")
> [@adhay](#): > > Howdy, **Wes**. > > Yes, TBs have little in their minds but Fox buzzwords while progressives have arrived at their political views after years of honest research and the unbiased weighing of alternatives. 🙂 LOL. The funny part is that is actually somewhat true. > **[Right-wing authoritarianism](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Right-wing_authoritarianism)** > > In psychology, right-wing authoritarianism (RWA) is a set of attitudes describing somebody who is highly submissive to their authority figures, acts aggressively in their name, and is conformist in thought and behavior. The prevalence of this attitude in a population varies from culture to culture, as a person's upbringing and education play a strong role in determining whether somebody develops this sort of worldview. > Right-wing authoritarianism was defined by Bob Altemeyer as a refinement of t... > [@](#): > > Milton Rokeach’s dogmatism scale was an early attempt to measure pure authoritarianism, whether left or right. The scale was carefully designed to measure “closed mindedness” without regard to ideology. Nevertheless, researchers found that it correlated with political conservatism.[7] In a similar line of research, Philip Tetlock found that right wing beliefs are associated with less integrative complexity than left wing beliefs. People with moderate liberal attitudes had the highest integrative complexity in their cognitions.[8] Plus liberalism is associated with higher scores on openness on the factor 5 personality test, and openness is associated with curiosity and novelty. So that was a joke, but there is some truth to it. > [@adhay](#): > > My point is that the tea-baggers, progressives and everybody else face THE problem of our corporate kleptocracy. Unregulated Capital, by it’s nature, is a killer. Capital with corporate faces has bought the govt and they are not about to go back on the deal. With Congress in their pocket, corporations regulate themselves and a lot of legislative debate is merely about how to “fairly” divvy up the US Treasury. > > I don’t blame Reagan or any President for where we are today. Ronnie was merely the right man for the job at the time when corporations were ready to publicly declare war on regulation. W was the right man for the job when corporations decided to wage overt war in the Middle-East while Wall Street scammed the market. And Obama, regardless of his personal views, is doing his “reform” dance to cosmeticize the obvious results of corporate self-regulation, in particular, our incredible “public” debt owned by our banks. > > I think the one thing the left and right could get together on would be a 28th Amendment to the Constitution which denies corporate ‘personhood’ and provides for strict regulation of how they do business. > > But given that a good percentage of what’s left of our middle-class believes that tax cuts for the rich, the scaling back of social programs and waging endless war somehow benefits them, it would be an uphill battle. > > As far as the % of cost of govt corruption goes and given the govt lies justifying our Middle-East adventures, you can add their cost in money, lives and material to the total. And while you’re at it, add in the cost of the bank bailouts. Maybe not 90% but we’re getting there. Opposing citizens united is something that has bipartisan support. [http://blogs.abcnews.com/thenumbers/2010/02/in-supreme-court-ruling-on-campaign-finance-the-public-dissents.html](http://blogs.abcnews.com/thenumbers/2010/02/in-supreme-court-ruling-on-campaign-finance-the-public-dissents.html) > [@](#): > > Obama raised eyebrows at his State of the Union address last month by criticizing the high court’s ruling throwing out limits on corporate spending in political campaigns. Turns out he’s got company: Our latest ABC News/Washington Post poll finds that 80 percent of Americans likewise oppose the ruling, including 65 percent who “strongly” oppose it, an unusually high intensity of sentiment. > > Seventy-two percent, moreover, support the idea of a legislative workaround to try to reinstate the limits the court lifted. > > The bipartisan nature of these views is striking in these largely partisan times. The court’s ruling is opposed, respectively, by 76, 81 and 85 percent of Republicans, independents and Democrats; and by 73, 85 and 86 percent of conservatives, moderates and liberals. Majorities in all these groups, ranging from 58 to 73 percent, not only oppose the ruling but feel strongly about it. I think more and more people are waking up that supply side economics is a sham. Obama ran on a platform of higher taxes on the wealthy and he won. Polls show a strong majority support progressive taxes. Progressive taxes and corporate regulation are pretty popular opinions right now. Many people are more afraid of corporate hegemony than they are of ‘socialism’. So it isn’t the public, it is political leaders. Politicians are to the right of the public on economic issues. ---
**Author:** ![ElvisL1ves](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/5daacb/32.png) [@ElvisL1ves](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ElvisL1ves)\ **Post date:** [April 23, 2010, 8:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-trouble-with-tea-baggers-and-progressives/536984/72 "2010-04-23T20:37:16Z")
> [@Czarcasm](#): > > Then it will be a problem forever. Such an amendment will never see the light of day, because it would have to be proposed and supported by the same congress that took the money in the first place. The number of states that have passed bills calling for a new Constitutional Convention, a process for throwing the whole thing out and starting over under the terms of the Constitution itself, is worrisomely close to the magic number. ---
**Author:** ![Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/e8c25b/32.png) [@Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Really_Not_All_That_Bright)\ **Post date:** [April 23, 2010, 8:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-trouble-with-tea-baggers-and-progressives/536984/73 "2010-04-23T20:58:30Z")
Even more worrying when you consider how inept state legislatures are. ---
**Author:** ![jcppp](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/ccd318/32.png) [@jcppp](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jcppp)\ **Post date:** [April 23, 2010, 9:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-trouble-with-tea-baggers-and-progressives/536984/74 "2010-04-23T21:42:11Z")
OK, now that the anarchists, Libertarians, and Liberal Democrats have explained the Tea Party Movement, let me (a TPM supporter) give it a try. First of all, I do not see anyone in the movement that is against a progressive tax code. The wealthy should be taxed at higher rates. When we talk about progressivism we are not talking about the tax code, but about the Fabian, progressive march toward socialism that we see. This goes to two basic approaches to achieve the Socialist utopia, the Marxist revolution, and the Progressive frog-in-a-pot model. So I’m not sure how much study the OP did on the TPM. What motivates most of the TPM people I know is their fear that our deficits are unsustainable, their disgust with the waste and crony capitalism that has corrupted the free market, their revulsion that they have to continue sending money to DC so that corrupt government, corporations, and unions can basically steal it. We are not against government but against government waste. A lot of us are conservatives because, I think, most conservatives believe that we are all crooked timber and as such can not be trusted to control large sums of other people’s money (OPM). The only way to reduce corruption is SMALL GOVERNMENT. The OP seems to agree with a lot of what I have said, so it’s a shame he does not know more about the movement. ---
**Author:** ![magellan01](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/45deac/32.png) [@magellan01](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/magellan01)\ **Post date:** [April 23, 2010, 9:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-trouble-with-tea-baggers-and-progressives/536984/75 "2010-04-23T21:57:10Z")
> [@adhay](#): > > I also agree with most progressives that these public services should be paid for by taxing the citizenry progressively according to net worth. The more you own, the more you owe. The way you describe it here, a flat tax would be “progressive”. It would have someone who makes $500,000 pay ten times the amount someone making $50,000 pays. Are you okay with that? I know I am. ---
**Author:** ![scr4](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/59ef9b/32.png) [@scr4](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/scr4)\ **Post date:** [April 23, 2010, 9:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-trouble-with-tea-baggers-and-progressives/536984/76 "2010-04-23T21:59:47Z")
> [@jcppp](#): > > We are not against government but against government waste. _Everyone_ is against “waste”. The problem is, what some see as waste, others see as essential government spending. ---
**Author:** ![adhay](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/ecd19e/32.png) [@adhay](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/adhay)\ **Post date:** [April 23, 2010, 10:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-trouble-with-tea-baggers-and-progressives/536984/77 "2010-04-23T22:05:43Z")
I consider corporate ‘personhood’ the core issue facing us today. Elitist entitlement document that it is, our Constitution says nothing about corporations other than, by implication, leaving their regulation to the states in which they are chartered. In 1889, SCOTUS read corporate personhood into the Constitution. It’s been all down hill from there. I will not try here, I’ve done it many times elsewhere on these boards, to trace the pernicious advance of corporate personhoodery and its effects on govt policy thru the 20th century. Anyone genuinely interested should check this out. [http://www.ratical.org/corporations/ToPRaP.html](http://www.ratical.org/corporations/ToPRaP.html) Obama is a Harvard trained Constitutional lawyer. He knows that the idea of corporate personhood is pure bullshit and lies at the heart of our darkness. Wow! He even decried SCOTUS’s recent ruling which officially declared the US Treasury a corporate slush fund! But words are cheap. If Obama ever gets off his fat tan ass and takes to his bully pulpit the one idea that what really ails us is corporate personhood and presents us with a SCOTUS nominee free of corporate taint, I’ll suck his dick on CNN. I predict that my (almost) pure heterosexuality will remain in tact. ---
**Author:** ![adhay](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/ecd19e/32.png) [@adhay](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/adhay)\ **Post date:** [April 23, 2010, 10:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-trouble-with-tea-baggers-and-progressives/536984/78 "2010-04-23T22:19:48Z")
> [@magellan01](#): > > The way you describe it here, a flat tax would be “progressive”. It would have someone who makes $500,000 pay ten times the amount someone making $50,000 pays. > > Are you okay with that? I know I am. Notice I said net worth, not income. I propose that net worth over $10M be annually taxed progressively. No federal taxes on income but share what you’ve manged to steal in tax free “unearned income” to date. ---
**Author:** ![Gangster\_Octopus](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/a8b319/32.png) [@Gangster\_Octopus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Gangster_Octopus)\ **Post date:** [April 23, 2010, 10:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-trouble-with-tea-baggers-and-progressives/536984/79 "2010-04-23T22:29:19Z")
So what are the solutions **adhay**. A call for folks to “take back their government” in some sort of amorphous way that isn’t exactly outlined? Becasue I will be honest those kind of platitudes, whcih is rife in your OP, are not soutions, they are problems, but until you can tell me a systematic, practical way to meet the problems you are disussing, it is pissing in the wind. ---
**Author:** ![jcppp](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/ccd318/32.png) [@jcppp](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jcppp)\ **Post date:** [April 23, 2010, 10:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-trouble-with-tea-baggers-and-progressives/536984/80 "2010-04-23T22:53:19Z")
> [@magellan01](#): > > The way you describe it here, a flat tax would be “progressive”. It would have someone who makes $500,000 pay ten times the amount someone making $50,000 pays. > > Are you okay with that? I know I am. When I am sitting in business class and don’t have a Forbes, or Beck disk handy, I sometimes write down my thought on tax rates. My ideal tax would not be flat, but progressive with NO deductions. Say 0% for first 30K, 10% (marginal) up to 100K, 15% up to 200K, and topped out at 20%. (again everything marginal) The key is to lose all the deductions since they are nothing more than payoffs to special interests. We can’t all get a deduction and they do a lot of harm to the economy. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-trouble-with-tea-baggers-and-progressives/536984.md?page=3) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-trouble-with-tea-baggers-and-progressives/536984.md?page=5)