Tea Baggers Plan Another Opportunity to Define Themselves, Their Party (Updated)

New! UPDATE below. Scroll down.

Re: Tea Party planning national strike – ContraCostaTimes.com, James Rufus Koren, Staff Writer, Posted: 01/02/2010 10:03:28 PM PST, Updated: 01/02/2010 10:17:17 PM PST 

As President Barack Obama’s first year in office draws to a close, Tea Party groups are planning to mark the occasion with a 

Don't taxes also pay for Defense?

national strike – something local leaders say could demonstrate the conservative groups’ burgeoning strength. 

The strike, planned for Jan. 20, the first anniversary of Obama’s inauguration, is being promoted online through Facebook and Web sites run by various national Tea Party groups. 

I love it. I wish they would hit the streets every day. The more they wave those hate filled signs in front of the cameras, the more the nation sees just what kind of folks make up the Republican party. 

What’s even better is that these tea party protests are funded by huge PR firms and some of the nation’s wealthiest corporatists. They, too, wish to be associated with the hate and bigotry that these protesters proudly spew in such a public forum. 

What’s even better than that is the picture that the public will get when GOP leaders, who are not far from being fringe whack-jobs themselves, jump at the chance to get out in front of this parade of clowns and fools. 

But, I can understand their intentions. The tea baggers want to create some sort of tidal wave of sentiment against President Obama by using the same tactics that worked so well for the hippies back in the late 1960’s. What they fail to realize is that while they despise having a Democrat in office, especially a black Democrat, their basic underlying premise or cause does not share any of the same sense of moral rightness as did the anti-war protests of the sixties. They have no high ground and are unconvincing. I do understand what they are trying to accomplish, but they are going about it in a manner that reflects only the worst possible image of themselves and their cause. 

What should they do to polish up their image and create a more main-stream, user-friendly atmosphere that would attract the moderates? For a start, kill the racial undertones and dog whistles. Leave the guns at home. Stop portraying President Obama as a Nazi bent on killing your grandma. All that stuff scares people away. 

If they are against high taxes then they should protest a specific tax while offering a better solution, rather than protesting taxes in general. That tactic is just plain stupid. Everyone knows that we cannot totally eliminate our local community revenue. We would be without the protection of police and fire and the majority would never go for that. 

What the organizers want this time is a nation wide boycott on…well, on everything. Stop buying everything. For a day. 

“What’s proposed is a nationwide strike by all Tea Party members, no matter where they are,” said Lloyd Rekstad, an organizer of the Yucaipa Tea Party. “The idea is to strike where we are, in our communities, at our employment, to make an impact that will be diverse and spread out.” 

That would mean, Rekstad said, not going to work, not buying groceries, not going to restaurants or movie theaters. 

“You just stay home,” he said, “so that the person participating would become, for that one day, a nonentity – that they would give no support to the economy.” 

Another thing they could do to bring in more supporters would be to come up with a better plan than a nation wide boycott. Boycotts don’t work. 

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UPDATE, Jan, 7 2010 

The Huffington Post has run another story on the Tea-bagger strike planned for January 20th. Tea Party Strike Led By GOP Campaign Strategist, Mortgage Lender, Alex Brant-Zawadzki Posted: December 21, 2009 01:11 AM, Produced by HuffPost’s Eyes & Ears Citizen Journalism Unit 

The Tea Party movement is gearing up its membership for a major nationwide action in several weeks, an initiative that they claim will demonstrate the seriousness of their cause. Their tactic: Doing nothing. 

On Jan. 20, 2010, Tea Partiers hope to bring America to a screeching halt. According to the inaugural blog post by the National Strike’s Operations Director Allen Hardage, succinctly titled “National Strike-We The People Strike Back against an out of control government”: 

“We The People will strike at the life blood of that parasitic congress by denying them the tax revenue for one day. We will not work. We will not shop, or buy anything that is taxed. We will not renew any licenses, tags, file any government filings and we will not remain silent. On This day we will fire a shot across the bow of Congress that we rule them not the other way around. 

Excuse me, but what about the other 99% of America who will continue to buy gas, go to work, pay their babysitters, etc? These fools can’t see that a nation wide boycott is the most ignorant methods available to get their message out. It may not be the boycott they are after, but hte news coverage of it. In that case they will have a great oppertunity to show off their hate and bigotry. 

The danger of this, of course,  is that they will wind up going to the well too often. Their antics were shocking back in August, repetative in October, and now are becoming boring. 

The author goes on to explain how the National Strike’s Operations Director Allen Hardage is connected to the big money. The planned Tea Party for January 2oth is just another GOP strategy disguised as “grassroots”: 

Hardage is a Republican strategist who is currently running a campaign “for his long time friend Stephen Northington,” according to Hardage’s LinkedIn profile. Northington is running for Georgia Insurance Commissioner and is described as “the only licensed Insurance Professional in the race for the Republican nomination.” Hardage’s directorship of the National Strike was announced on the strike’s Ning group by the Strike 120 group’s creator, Ken Cook. 

Cook is a senior mortgage lender at mortgage broker AmericaHomeKey and worked from 2001-2009 at Novation Mortgage, where he specialized in “start-up real estate investors, commercial funding, super jumbo (luxury homes), and people just like you,” he writes on his LinkedIn profile. In 2002, Novation, then called NovaStar Home Mortgage — and two other lenders — was hit with a $46 million judgment on charges of making false mortgage rate postings on the website Bankrate.com. Cook was NovaStar’s Director of Operations at the time. Alongside his Tea Party duties, Cook also currently acts as National Vice Chairman for the Patriot Caucus, a conference scheduled in April to immediately follow the 2010 Tax Day Tea Party protests in Washington D.C. 

Eric Odom, co-organizer of the Patriot Caucus, is executive director of American Liberty Alliance, which is a host of the 2010 Tax Day Tea Party along with FreedomWorks, a purportedly grassroots organization run by former Republican House Majority Leader Dick Armey. FreedomWorks spent the summer working alongside American Liberty Alliance in opposing everything from the economic stimulus to health care reform. Cook is on American Liberty Alliance’s Georgia Leadership Team. 

I wish to thank Alex Brant-Zawadzki for his hard work digging up this information.

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