Tea Party of the Jersey Shore

I recently read an editorial in a local newspaper entitled "Frank Pallone's Tyranny" by one Ernesto Cullari of the Tea Party. It isn't very good, and is full of the usual Tea-Party lies such as the existence of foreign-controlled unions, democrats who are part of a conspiracy to squash the Constitution in the name of Big Government and descriptions of the kind, paternalism of huge American corporations.

It attempts to cast fear and suspicion on Congressman Frank Pallone's activities in Washington by zeroing in on one bill, H.R. 5175 (Democracy is Strengthened by Casting Light on Spending in Elections Act-an earful of a title!). Yet his rather uneloquent attempt to derail the New Jersey Democrat's bid for re-election not only fails, but it actually self-incriminates the Tea Party of the very undemocratic goals he wished to pin on the Congressman.

H.R 5175 is a bill drafted in response to an extremely controversial Supreme Court decision in January 2010. The Court's decision in Citizen's United vs Federal Election Commission overturned the prohibition on campaign spending on corporations and unions. In other words, Exxon-Mobil can spend as much as it wants on a candidate that will preserve or advance its interests. H.R. 5175 reimposes the restrictions on the corporations but not the unions, and this is the reason why Mr. Cullari is hurling his Lipton's at Pallone's campaign.

While it is true that unions do not have perfect track records, dismissing the bill on the grounds that it does not hold unions to the same standards as corporations is remarkably unreasonable. Who's campaign contributions would you rather restrict, Wal-Mart's or the AFL-CIO, AIG or the Change to Win Federation? I'd say that in terms of helping the Americans living on the ground, Unions have a better history. American rage has all-too-often been rightly directed towards the large and overbearing corporations. Just the fact that the bill doesn't include unions doesn't invalidate the need to restrict corporations.

Yet Mr. Cullari in his editorial points out that "all-American corporations like Pepsi" would be prevented from funding elections while unions will not. Yet the debate about the unions aside, do "all-American" multi-national corporations like Pepsi or Coca-Cola deserve to spend limitless amounts of money on campaigns? How can this be good for the average American who depends on unions to prevent abuse from corporations such as these? He notes that labor unions are foreign-influenced, but what about BP? This bill will protect the American public from truly foreign-influenced companies such as BP (short for British Petroleum). Upon not-so-deep digging into the quasi-logic of Cullari's editorial, his true agenda comes clear.

A bill such as H.R. 5175 overwhelmingly helps the American worker. Siding with the CEOs of corporations on issues such as this one serves as irrefutable proof that the Tea Party leaders are really not for the average American. They are just using the rage of ordinary Americans to push their agenda. This to me is the scariest aspect of the Tea Party Movement. Not the latent racism, not the homophobia, not the unwillingness to compromise, not the inability to accurately learn from history, but rather the adherents' willingness to let the leadership mold and distort them into supporting monsters that are bigger than the issues just mentioned. Overwhelming corporate influence of the United States government is a truly horrifying specter because it can steamroll everything. Corporations, if gone unchecked, do not care about rights, the environment, families and most human beings in general. They could usher in tyranny just as effectively as any dictator.

By using Pallone's support of H.R. 5175, Cullari exposes the true consequences of a Tea Party that is given real power come November. It really is a movement that supports corporate "rights" (interest is more accurate) over the needs of the citizens. This makes his own words against Pallone actually more relevant to himself and the Tea Party Movement, "if left unaddressed, will leave a lasting scar on your legacy that will take you, your family and our Republic years and perhaps a generation to recover from."