The Billionaires behind the Tea Parties--

This is nearly nine minutes, so I hope it isn't too long:



When Rick Santelli popped off two years ago--was that grassroots? Is Freedomworks about the grassroots, or is Virginia Thomas' interest in the Tea Party movement about grassroots? The tea party movement strikes me as a deception, a distraction. It's a sleight of hand to prevent the political discourse from actually blaming the people who really ought to be blamed--the wealthy. The barely-regulated bankers. The central problems leading to this mess were deregulation and hubris--and the Randroids organizing the Tea Party focus on entitlements and government "tyranny" in the form of trying to impose stop-lights on financial traffic--

Oh, yeah, I like the metaphor "stop lights". Can you imagine traffic without stop-lights or signs? Well, that is what more deregulation would mean for businesses--accidents. Collisions. A real big mess. What sane person would be rooting this on?

A person with a cushion of wealth that didn't require any entitlements and would stand to benefit from eradication of "tyranny" in the form of regulations. That would be the message of rich people--not working-class people. That isn't real populism, but something fake imposed on people who might not be aware they are being imposed on, not strictly having ever paid attention to politics before.

I look at all these pasty, middle class, upper-middle-aged and senior folks and feel a little sad. They are manipulated and they don't get it. They think Glenn Beck is a teacher. They think FOX is news.