Message to Tea Party: Don’t Be Fooled Again

JACQUELINE MARCUS FOR BUZZFLASH

On my way home to California from Maui where I’ve been trying to launch a solar power business, I was seated next to a woman in her mid to late 50s.  After settling in, we began to chat about the islands, weather, etc.  It didn’t take long to learn that she was a libertarian/Christian, and a big fan of Glenn Beck’s FOX Fraucasting TV show. 

What do I have in common with this woman and what does she have in common with me? 

We began to talk about one of the Tea Party’s repeated rants: government regulation.  I told her about how there are times when government can drive small business proprietors crazy with countless conditions that seem unnecessary.  I faced this problem in Maui where the local government discourages production of solar power because Maui, insanely enough, is relying on coal and oil for energy.  In short, rather than harness the sun year round, pollution free, Hawaiian Commercial and Sugar has a “power purchase” agreement with Maui Electric to sell excess electricity.  For years they’ve been burning a combination of coal and diesel.  Last year alone, Maui combusted about 480,000 tons of coal.  Moreover, Maui Electric Company burns more than 1 million gallons of petroleum diesel weekly. 

It’s very costly and polluting.  Maui Electric doesn’t want solar energy to interfere with “business as usual.” In short, the government makes it exceedingly difficult for not only solar proprietors, it’s complicated for individual homeowners to install solar as well. 

County regulators can drive a person crazy with demands regarding new home regulations and permits.  I’ve seen how they’ve shut construction down because they didn’t comply with this or that requirement.  So I “get it” on government over-regulation in certain circumstances, but that’s not what the oil sponsors of FOXTV and the Republicans are talking about when they speak of “corporate deregulation.” 

Big Oil and Koch industries are giving millions of dollars to sponsor the Tea Party because they want public support to cover for their filthy refineries that pollute our water, land, air, and oceans without safety and health regulations.  Thus they use the Tea Party message to promote the perception of “public support” that actually works against them and in terms of public health and safety concerns.   

Trust me, the minute the Tea Party members begin to demand justice when industrial polluters poison their food and water, watch how fast the money will dry up—and watch how fast the corporate media will condemn them.

My question to the Teabaggers is who will protect us from these major polluters if not the government?  Are we supposed to allow them to poison our air and water and say, “Oh well, that’s capitalism?”  It’s nearly common knowledge these days that government works for Big Oil and the mega corporations. 

Admittedly, we’ve seen how easily government officials were bought off on the cheap for a lousy pair of football tickets and free vacations in exchange for stamping “approved” for BP’s deepwater drilling, knowing full well that there were no safety mechanisms in place.    

If an ordinary homeowner tried to bribe a government official, he’d be fined and possibly jailed.  But BP can offer government agents, who are supposed to be protecting us, free tickets to a game in exchange for permits no one is punished.  The consequences have been deadly to say the least: millions of Gulf residents, sea and wildlife have had to pay dearly for that cheap bribery: the worst oil disaster in history. 

So if the Teabaggers have an idea on who can actually do the job of protecting us from being poisoned by Big Oil and other polluting industries—I’m all ears.  Will they be willing to “lock & load” on BP executives? But so far, that should be the role of government.  Government should make sure that chemical, oil and food industries are not poisoning our air, water and food with their toxic pollutants or by gross negligence. 

The Tea Party is being exploited by oil industrialists.   The Koch brothers could care less about God or God’s Creation.  They want to poison the earth so they can continue to make their billions of dollars from that polluting industry.  They use the Tea Party to push for deregulation NOT for the average American in the cases I’ve described but for corporate welfare.  They don’t want their pollution to be regulated, and they don’t want to pay taxes, even though the Koch brothers earn up to $100 billion a year.  The Teabaggers are the oil industry’s stoolpigeons.  

Ironically, Big Oil, including Koch Industries, pay much more money fighting government regulations via lobbying and sponsoring right-wing organizations than it would cost to pay for new technology that lowers toxic emissions from their chemical plants and oil refineries.  So why won’t they replace antiquated equipment with the new technology to reduce pollution? 

My guess is that they don’t believe in God’s Creation of this earth.  They’re Darwinian-nihilists to the ultimate extreme. The earth is here for the taking—and take they will, the rest, including the Idea of God, be damned.   There is no other explanation for why they won’t do the right thing by reducing green house emissions.  They spend much more money on fighting against installing the pollution reduction equipment, and far more money fighting against the taxes they should pay to help reduce the national debt. In other words, it would be a thousand times cheaper for the Koch brothers and Big Oil to buy the new technology and to pay their fair share of taxes than it is costing them to sponsor right-wingers and to lobby Republicans.   

It’s in their best interest to deny global warming.  They acknowledge its destruction but they deny the demonstrative connection between man-made pollution and global warming.   

Teabaggers are being exploited and told what to say and think like sheep for the oil industry’s political gain.   

The Koch brothers know burning oil is destroying this God-Created earth, and what is their answer to the Teabaggers and everyone living on the planet? When the earth is uninhabitable, your kids or grandchildren can live in underground cities. 

I’m not making that up.  According to the David H. Koch’s Hall of Human Origins at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History, the text reads, as amplified by the exhibit’s Website: “People may build underground cities, developing short, compact bodies or curved spines so that moving around in tight spaces will be no problem.”  (Jane Mayer, “Covert Operations” The New Yorker; 08/30/10, page 10) 

That’s easy for David Koch to say, the billionaire knows he won’t be around to witness the rising global temperatures to an uninhabitable point of destruction.     

My question to the Christian Teabaggers is why would you want to be manipulated and exploited by amoral nihilists such as David Koch for the oil industry’s greedy, ambitious reasons, when they’re determined to destroy this God-created earth, including your children’s future as we know it?  Your anger is misdirected.  You should be mad as hell at the polluting corporations that are using you for all the wrong reasons.   

Go down to the Gulf and ask the fishermen if they aren’t mad as hell at BP for destroying their livelihood—ask if they don’t want to “lock & load” on Tony Hayward and the BP oil criminals.  

“The Kochs have long depended on the public’s not knowing all the details about them,” wrote Jane Mayer. Indeed!

Wake up, Tea Party protestors!—you’re being exploited and bamboozled.  Let’s stand together: Join the millions of people who want to take the country back from the corporate polluting billionaires!