Ian Murphy is the Green Party candidate in the NY-26 special election. He was denied entrance to a Tea Party endorsement meeting (spoiler alert: they endorsed the Republican, Jane Corwin), so he hung out in the parking lot dressed like a founding father, handing out literature. I set up the video to start when he encounters a tea partier who’s extremely concerned that raising taxes on the rich will make them move away, thus wrecking the economy.
I may just be in a nutpicking mood this morning, but this is the rawest example of pure serfdom I’ve seen in a long time. If the king moves away, how will the peasants eat?
Buffalo Pundit’s whole post on the Tea Party fail parade in NY-26 is worth a read.
Hermione Granger-Weasley
haha, hilarious!
But you also can’t have a “free” market without bankstahs, chu kno.
jibeaux
That spoiler alert makes me giggle.
mai naem
Maybe that woman was p o’d that she didn’t end up being Rush Limbaugh’s 5th wife when he moved to Florida because of NY’s high taxes.
salacious crumb
seriously at what point in our history where we told that blowing millionaires and billionaires in hope that they throw us scraps was a good thing….
stupid tea party fuckers…
OzoneR
1980
magurakurin
I guess technically a serf and a peasant aren’t exactly the same thing. A peasant is an agricultural laborer who owns or rents a small plot of land and has certain obligation, but a serf is actually bound to the land and cannot move from it without permission. So, if the king or lord were to move away the serf needn’t worry since he will simply become the property of the next owner of the land to which he is bound.
But yeah, that’s a pretty pathetic argument against raising taxes on the rich and serfdom seems as good a word as any to describe such a pathetic state of mind.
jon
I just love the notion that all those millionaires will move to those islands where they can raise their millions doing whatever it is they do over there.
Rich fuckers stay in America because that’s where the money is. That was true under Roosevelt (both of them,) true under Jimmy Carter, true under Herbert Hoover, and true under Barack Hussein Boogitty-Boogitty-Bama. For rich people, this is the place to be.
We’d do just fine without all our major corporations, major banks, and major financial houses of insurance investments. They’re the parasites and we’re the host. How it came to be accepted fact that the opposite is true is one of the great mysteries of our day.
Gina
I’m stealing this, and using it every chance I get. Thanks!
jibeaux
The line in the post about people with 15 year old Oldsmobiles defending the rights of billionaires not to pay taxes is dead on.
Also too, got to love a blogger who responds to comments just to say “fuck you, too.”
Hermione Granger-Weasley
@salacious crumb: dude you all believe it. its the invisble hand of the market. Its the American way.
balconesfault
@jon:
Ding Ding Ding! Give that man a kewpie doll!
(also they stay here because rich people really have it good here – you don’t have to worry about your children being kidnapped, you don’t have to worry about carjackings, you don’t have to worry about some tin-pot dictator throwing your whole family in jail …)
Zifnab
@jon:
I don’t know if that’s entirely true. If the Coca-Cola company just vanished off the face of the earth, I don’t think we’d be better off for it. But only until the thousand other competing businesses flooded the gap.
Where there’s people with money, there’s businessmen pitching their goods. That’s the free market. Even if a businessman did run off to live in the Caymans, he sure as hell wouldn’t close down operations in your town so long as you kept buying his shit.
Why is that so hard to understand? The bottom line isn’t so tenuous that a business goes from billions in profits to profitless enterprise just by bumping up taxes 3%.
OzoneR
don’t ever say Dems don’t even try to fight back
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/04/14/fox-news-neil-cavuto-johnson-deficit_n_849047.html
Ash Can
That whole Buffalo Pundit article is a hoot. “Fail parade” indeed.
jibeaux
@Zifnab:
I tried the Whole foods stevia version of Dr. Pepper once. Don’t ever make me do that again. Please.
Redhand
This is the essence of the “Tea Party” movement, no?
Comrade Javamanphil
America is so exceptional and unique that all the rich people will leave if their marginal tax rates increase even 1%.
RosiesDad
There is a Tea Party group near my home/office that congregates to protest in front of the King of Prussia Mall every Saturday morning. The messages on their signs (“Repeal Obumacare”[sic] “Stop Obama From Tripling the National Debt” etc) range from racist to just factually incorrect). One Saturday I stopped to try to engage one or more of them in a discussion about their signs, their positions and their regular presence at the mall. What I came away with is that they are for the most part ignorant and uninformed (can’t distinguish between the budget deficit and the national debt) but are driven by their fear that those in DC are driving the country off the cliff. What was unbelievable to me–and this is the Democrats’ key problem–is that they uniformly believe that Democrats are the prime culprits and that Republicans are more likely to solve the nation’s woes, as they see them.
That attitude is evident in Ian Murphy’s video. These people are their own worst enemy.
suzanne
@salacious crumb:
Right?! It has not escaped my notice that the only people I know who are teabaggers are unsuccessful at life.
cleek
@RosiesDad:
yup.
when the problem itself is imaginary, the solutions don’t have to make sense.
suzanne
@Hermione Granger-Weasley: I know you’re on the spectrum, so I’ll say it all clearly-like: Repeating yourself ad infinitum is annoying. Trying to start shit with people who most likely agree with you is also annoying. You know what, print that out in some nice big type and hang it up over your desk. And on your fridge. Resume being charmingly ridiculous, please, or eat pie.
Is no one else reminded of Wendy from “The Howard Stern Show”?
NonyNony
You’ve got it almost right, but I think you’ve got it backward. You’re looking at the rationalization (“if we raise taxes on the rich they’ll go somewhere else and take their money with them”) and confusing it for the actual reason.
Most of the tea partiers are flat-out neo-feudalists. They want a king (of the right type, of course) that they can bow down to and swear allegiance to. They’re authoritarians – to the “right kind” of authority. And rich people are the right kind of authority – rich people are better because they are rich. If they weren’t better they wouldn’t be rich.
People mistake the Tea Party rhetoric for beliefs. The Tea Party wraps themselves in patriotism but they aren’t patriotic – they’d rather see the country fail than give Democrats anything perceived as a victory – that’s not patriotism. And they wrap themselves up in populism but they decidedly are NOT populist. They’re anti-populist. Its like how the Nazis used socialiamalist rhetoric in their lead-up to power but they were never actually socialists, they just wrapped themselves in the rhetoric of socialiamalism.
(Note that I am not calling the TPers Nazis. Also I repudiate Stalin.)
ETA: Forgot the Grod-damn filter that won’t let me use the word socialiamalism without Homer Simpsoning it up first.
UncommonSense
Matt Taibbi discussed this phenomenon in his essay The Peasant Mentality Live On in America:
That pretty much sums it up, wouldn’t you say?
Hermione Granger-Weasley
@suzanne: you know, im just a lil bit peeved that people wanna concern troll Obama or firebag him, that people here all lapped up all the pity/charity liberalism bullshytt while there is NO FUCKING EVIDENCE that PCL is “indifferent” or “hostile” to organized labor.
Tough titty. You and crumb are mocking those poor dumb teabaggers while you fall for the same exact same thing with a gloss of higher cognitive ability glibertarian reasonableness. ridikkulous.
Deal.
Like I give a shit if you pie me, It would at least save you the humiliation of your consistant wrongness and intransigent stupidity.
Pompous blowhard.
You and Hall Monitor Allan should start a club.
geg6
@suzanne:
Well, could be that I don’t know who Wendy is because I don’t listen to misogynist assholes who think the world’s greatest entertainment is listening to him being spanked by strippers?
As for our Hermione, I don’t find her all that annoying. I have great respect for people, especially people on OUR side, who can actually stay on message and relentlessly pound away at it. I don’t agree with her all the time, but we need a few more focused people here on the left/center left of the spectrum.
robertdsc-iPhone 4
@OzoneR:
Not interested in going to HuffPo. Can you summarize, please?
Scott
@suzanne: I’m pretty sure Hermione = matoko chan.
Ash Can
@suzanne: I don’t know about your comparison, since I avoid Howard Stern. I’m reminded instead of the kids I knew in junior high and high school who devoted all their time and energy to getting the more popular kids to notice them. Often humorous, usually kind of pathetic.
atlliberal
I wonder why all the rich people would leave if we raise the top rate to 39%, but they didn’t leave the country when the top tax rate was 90%?
This is my standard response when I get that argument from people. they don’t know how to respond. It’s not in their talking points.
rikryah
this is absolutely pathetic.
geg6
@rikryah:
Agreed. But I’m sure you wouldn’t be surprised to know that there are a whole of those pathetic idiots out there. And a lot of them live all around me.
I am surrounded!
sjw
Magurakurin at #6 said:
“Americans, while occasionally willing to be serfs, have always been obstinate about being peasantry.”
– F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby, Ch. 5
(Just re-read TGG recently enough that your comment brought this to mind.)
"Serious" Superluminar
@Scott: Yeah that’s pretty much established at this point. Especially as no one else would use terms like “bullshytte” and “ridikkulous”.
Rock
Since someone mentioned Gatsby…This is totally, totally off-topic, but for the vast numbers of White Sox (or maybe just baseball) fans out there reading this blog I found this impersonation of Ozzie Guillen reviewing the Great Gatsby to be pretty amusing:link
Efroh
I laughed and then I cried.
Stooleo
Here is a recent posting from some of my idiot FB friends. I remember reading this and thinking that he sounds like a peasant.
Ben : It’s like this: The US. America is a ship that’s sinking fast. Cutting 38 billion is alot better than adding it, but the ship is STILL SINKING. Who’s fault is it? Ultimately it’s everyone’s fault for electing liars and thieves- but how do we get it back? we have to cut about a trillion dollars.
Frank : I hate to say it….. someone over there also has to raise taxes as well as cut….
Ben : Oh, but I would like to thank the rich people who have paid the magority of the taxes and create jobs. Don’t have to raise taxes, implement the Fair Tax and oversea businesses can come back and sink trillions of dollars back into our economy. But the fair tax takes power away from Govt so I don’t see that happening.
May I black your boots governor?
4jkb4ia
That link was hilarious.
More on the preceding important matter: Louisiana redistricting approved You might have to squint at the map, but they made LA-02 include all the significant AA population in the state. The district is 63% AA. A commenter was able to draw a map where you had two VRA districts, one for New Orleans and one for Baton Rouge.
Hermione Granger-Weasley
Well mistermix got spoofed too.
AMG you retards. PCL isn’t killing the labor unions. The invisible hand is choking them off. How can you fall for this obvious bs again? bend over. Freddie and mistermix can hold the vaseline.
Citizen_X
Imagine what these “Tea Partiers” would have said to the original Tea Partiers: “How can you attack the East India Tea Company? Don’t you realize how much business they bring into the colonies? You probably hate our King, don’t you?”
Hermione Granger-Weasley
And its pretty rich how you juicers are mocking the poor teatards for the EXACT SAME SHIT you fall for every time.
4jkb4ia
The point in 35 was that majority minority districts can be used to help Democrats if they are spread around enough.
Kirk Spencer
@atlliberal: it also explains why there are neither large businesses nor millionaires in New York and California. (snark)
Omnes Omnibus
@Hermione Granger-Weasley: You really are a simplistic twit, aren’t you?
Kirk Spencer
@Hermione Granger-Weasley:
If the invisible hand were the cause, it’d be happening in other nations as well.
It isn’t just PCL, though. There is also the active attack from the other side of the discussion.
Joey Maloney
@balconesfault:
Yet.
Bobby Thomson
@RosiesDad:
You do realize those cats are Republicans, right? Not exactly a shocker.
Chris
@NonyNony:
And they wrap themselves up in self-sufficiency and rugged individualism, but they’re decidedly NOT rugged individualists – see the red states surviving on federal subsidies, the rich folk surviving on government contracts and the regular folk with the “keep your government off my Medicare.” And they wrap themselves up in Biblical and Constitutional rhetoric, but decidedly to NOT follow either text… it goes on and on and on.
But thanks for pointing it out, because the disconnect between rhetoric and reality’s fucking huge. Central to their movement, actually.
Chris
@Stooleo:
FairTax is a fucking magic god to these people (and the fact that it has no chances of being implemented is probably a plus – it means they’ll never know how fucking bad it could have been), isn’t it?
But seriously, if you think overseas businesses are going to come back, you’re on drugs. In order to make yourself competitive with businesses in China, you have to repeal virtually every labor law ever made and be willing to work for far under the poverty line and turn over the country to a military-backed government that you will then entitle to shoot you if you, the worker, ever put a toe out of line.
That’s what it takes to make yourself as “attractive” as a third world dictatorship.
chris
@atlliberal: That answer wasn’t in the video. /teacher from Invader Zim
piratedan
@Chris: the FairTax concept = Uncle Rico from Napoleon Dynamite
Hermione Granger-Weasley
@Omnes Omnibus: nope, im brutally honest. And if I smell blood im going for the kill. I am a fucking social justice ninja warrior. People complain RIGHT HERE that the left is wussy.
I’m not.
I don’t care about your fee fees.
If your argument is weak and sophist Im going to clean, scale and gut it and chop it into sushi.
NonyNony
@Chris:
The Tea Party makes a lot more sense when you realize that nothing that they say actually connects to who they are or what they do.
In a way they’re engaged in a kind of live-action role-playing – they’re pretending to be self-sufficient, patriotic, populist agitators, when in actuality they’re often dependent on government assistance to get by, willing to see the country burn rather than see their ideology challenged, and more monarchist in bent than populist. And they dress up in tricorner hats and pretend to be American Revolutionaries ca 1776.
Wait did I say role-playing? I meant self-delusion.
BruinKid
So my Green Party friend had this idea. I have no idea how legal or not this is, and it’s almost certainly a pipe dream anyway. But here it is.
He says we should pass a law so that any American corporation that wants to be housed in the Cayman Islands or outsource American jobs… LOSES its status as an American corporation, and then we treat ’em like a foreign company and impose huge fucking tariffs on all their shit. Also, he says any CEO who outsources should LOSE THEIR AMERICAN CITIZENSHIP. Just strip them of it. Make them go be a citizen of the country they sent our jobs to. Hell, do it to the entire Board of Directors, if need be.
So, now please explain to me if this passes muster legally. After all, this would be a change in the law itself. Would it be violating any part of the Constitution? If so, can we amend that part of the Constitution? Are there any downsides that could result from a law like this, were it to pass Constitutional muster?
Stooleo
@Chris:
I know, it’s insane. And where is the American exceptionalism? ” I for one, welcome our corporate overlords….”
Paul in KY
@balconesfault: It also seems you never have to worry about backlash from the poor people you are daily fucking over. Great place to be rich.
Paul in KY
@Hermione Granger-Weasley: Go on with your bad self, HGW ;-)
Chris
@Stooleo:
Yeah, their patriotism really is a freaking joke. Sure they love their country, as long as they get to stay on top. Shades of the French monarchy and nobility helping the kings of Europe to attack France after the revolution. The elites’ only country is themselves.
Linda Featheringill
The lady in the video illustrates why a bit of Marxist education is liberating.
Rich people don’t make their money by choosing a particular place to live, they make their money by paying the workers that fabricate the good less than they are really worth and/or by charging their consumers more than the good are worth. Period.
It doesn’t really matter much whether we piss off the fatcats or not, as long as we help them become ever richer.
OzoneR
@BruinKid:
pretty sure it’s unconstitutional to treat them like a foreign company if they are headquartered in the US.
West of the Cascades
He needs to run on a platform of promising that the Sabres will win the Stanley Cup this year and passing a federal statute to keep the Bills in Buffalo – and start publicly taking credit for any series wins the Sabres get before special election day. Either he will be that miraculous politician who actually delivers on his promises or just another one who says one thing but does something else after the election (sadly, in Murphy’s case, that will probably be going back to blogging — Western New York needs this man in Congress!).
Temporarily Max McGee (soon enough to be Andy K again)
@Citizen_X:
Oh, sure, bring history into it, communist.
DonkeyKong
Questioner: But the fact is, isn’t it, that Reagan does get to the Wallace voter and to the racist side of the Wallace voter by doing away with legal services, by cutting down on food stamps?
Atwater: You start out in 1954 by saying, “Nigger, nigger, nigger.” By 1968 you can’t say “nigger” — that hurts you. Backfires. So you say stuff like forced busing, states’ rights and all that stuff. You’re getting so abstract now you’re talking about cutting taxes, and all these things you’re talking about are totally economic things and a byproduct of them is blacks get hurt worse than whites. And subconsciously maybe that is part of it. I’m not saying that. But I’m saying that if it is getting that abstract, and that coded, that we are doing away with the racial problem one way or the other. You follow me — because obviously sitting around saying, “We want to cut this,” is much more abstract than even the busing thing, and a hell of a lot more abstract than “Nigger, nigger.”
Replace Nigger with Turks, Catholics, Injuns, Communists or Jews and it’s the same as it ever was.