I found this item in the New York Times to day and had to laugh (better than crying, right?):
The Tea Party movement is as deeply skeptical of big business as it is of big government.
What’s funny about that? Well the rest of the article is all about the Tea Party’s support for big business, and its funding by (drum roll please) Big Business. In this case the NYT article focuses on an Indonesian Paper company with an environmentally unsound track record that – surprise – a Tea Party organization is supporting against the interests of American companies and workers.
[A] Tea Party group in the United States, the Institute for Liberty, has vigorously defended the freedom of a giant Indonesian paper company to sell its wares to Americans without paying tariffs. The institute set up Web sites, published reports and organized a petition drive attacking American businesses, unions and environmentalists critical of the company, Asia Pulp & Paper.
Last fall, the institute’s president, Andrew Langer, had himself videotaped on Long Wharf in Boston holding a copy of the Declaration of Independence as he compared Washington’s proposed tariff on paper from Indonesia and China to Britain’s colonial trade policies in 1776.
Tariff-free Asian paper may seem an unlikely cause for a nonprofit Tea Party group. But it is in keeping with a succession of pro-business campaigns — promoting commercial space flight, palm oil imports and genetically modified alfalfa — that have occupied the Institute for Liberty’s recent agenda.
In a quietly arranged marriage of seemingly disparate interests, the institute and kindred groups are increasingly the bearers of corporate messages wrapped in populist Tea Party themes.
In a few instances, their corporate partners are known — as with the billionaire Koch brothers’ support of Americans for Prosperity, one of the most visible advocacy groups. More often, though, their nonprofit tax status means they do not have to reveal who pays the bills.
Mr. Langer would not say who financed his Indonesian paper initiative. But his sudden interest in the issue coincided with a public relations push by Asia Pulp & Paper. And the institute’s work is remarkably similar to that produced by one of the company’s consultants, a former Australian diplomat named Alan Oxley who works closely with a Washington public affairs firm known for creating corporate campaigns presented as grass-roots efforts.
The tea Party is a creature much like Frankenstein’s monster, if Doctor Victor Frankenstein’s creation had been a financed by some of the wealthiest people in the world and then let loose on the peasantry for the benefit of Dr. Frankenstein’s finacial backers. The public face of the Tea Party has rarely been anti-business except in the immediate wake of TARP and the Too Big to Fail Bank Bailout. It has, however been, anti-health care reform, anti-taxes for the wealthy, anti-regulation for big business (including – surprise – Wall Street), anti-freedom for women to decide whether to have an abortion, anti-union, anti-teachers, and anti-Obama. <p.
Mr. Langer can seem disarmingly candid when discussing his work. In a recent interview, he explained how the institute pitched its services to opponents of the Obama health care plan, resulting in a $1 million advertising blitz.
“A donor gave us some money, and we went out on the ground in five states in the space of like six weeks,” he said.
It is also anti-any Democrat, anti-human rights, pro-torture, anti-jobs, anti-social security, anti-unemployment insurance, anti-environment and generally anti-Science (especially climate science and evolution). It is anti-poor people and pro-rich people. It’s pro-war if a Republican president started two of them unilaterally, but anti-war if a Democratic President is part of a coalition legitimized by the United Nations and backed by NATO.
The Tea Party groups are also very much pro-Big Agribusiness, including Monsanto:<p.
Last year, the two groups also supported the effort by the agribusiness giant Monsanto to ease federal restrictions on its pesticide-resistant alfalfa. (In February, regulators agreed to do so.) Mr. Langer said he decided “to try out our grass-roots method on that, and frame it as a dairy issue and access to affordable food.”
He got a column published in July in the Capitol Hill newspaper Roll Call, talking up Monsanto’s product and asking readers to consider the value of bioengineered foods as they “stroll down the aisle of the supermarket.” The institute’s Web site urged members to speak up, and Mr. Langer filed a petition with the Department of Agriculture.
Tea Partiers are also most definitely and defiantly pro-racist.
And anti-gay:
And anti-Muslim:
The Tea Party Groups are not, however, at least as far as I can see, anti-Big Business, even if that business is a foreign corporation and resides in a Muslim country. I guess its okay to hate Muslims as long as they pay the the Tea Party groups’ and Tea Party politicians’ bills.
Domestic paper companies and their employee unions, complaining that China and Indonesia were subsidizing exported paper products, petitioned federal trade officials several years ago to slap tariffs on them. The main target, Asia Pulp & Paper, is also under attack for its logging practices; several big retailers have stopped selling its paper.
Last year, with a tariff decision looming, Asia Pulp & Paper went on the offensive. It deployed lobbyists and retained Mr. Oxley, the Australian who runs a Washington-based policy group, World Growth International, which has long defended commercial forestry and palm oil interests in Southeast Asia.
I know that the Tea Party is a movement created and funded by Big Business, its lobbyists and Republican activists to protect their interests and get people to vote against their economic best interests by electing Republicans to office. You understand that, too. So why does the New York Times still feel obligated to put in this disclaimer in a story about the Tea Party’s deep connections to Big Business?
The Tea Party movement is as deeply skeptical of big business as it is of big government.
Beat’s me. Maybe you have an answer for me.
