I am Asian!  Give me back my tea, you scumbags!  Besides, the original BOSTON (not American) Tea Party was in protest of the British taxing the colonists when the colonists had no representation in the Parliament.  In other words, taxation without representation.  In the current invocation of Tea Parties, however, they Teabaggers are protesting, well, um, I’m not exactly sure what they are protesting.

President Obama’s higher tax rates!  Except, he cut taxes for 95% of Americans.  In addition, he did not raise taxes on the other 5%, he merely let the Bush taxcuts expire.  Now, that particular tax rate is the same as it was under Clinton.  In addition, it is 10% lower than it was under that great Communist leader, Ronald Reagan.  So, we can dismiss higher tax rates as a legitimate concern.

President Obama is bailing out the banks with OUR money!  Except, the bailout was passed under the LAST president.  Obama has nothing to do with the current bailout.  

President Obama is ripping off our children and grandchildren!  Except, the massive deficit/debt/negative money flow started under Bush (the Younger).  It skyrocketed when Bush decided to invade Iraq to protect our oil interests.  However, he never put the military spending of the two wars into the yearly budget, so now, it looks as if Obama is spending way more than Bush (and yes, ‘way more’ is a technical term) because Obama included the monies spent in Iraq and Afghanistan as part of the budget.

Am I worried about our deficit?  Hell, yeah.  It’s not comfortable seeing a number in the trillions and knowing that it’s only going to climb.  However, it is more than a little disingenious for the Teabaggers to be protesting the deficit now when none of them did so under Bush.  Worse, the left was basically told to support the president or shut the fuck up.  It was considered almost treasonous to disagree with Bush, and yet, today, we have the governor of Texas talking about secession.  Seriously.  The governor of Texas advocates for secession.  No, no, he doesn’t.  His people might, but he doesn’t.  But he’s going to keep mentioning it.    He was against the stimulus.  Until it became excruciatingly clear how idiotic that was.  Then he was for it, but only if he could use it to pay for things that would have had to have been paid for, anyway.  WTF?   Then, he evokes the Tenth Amendment because he believes the federal government has overstepped its boundaries.  Oh, but he just asked the feds for troops to patrol the border.  

Washington Monthly helpfully points out another blogger who explains that the Teabaggers are protesting an indeterminate tax hike some time in the indeterminate future.   Read the section entitled, “With an Eye on the Future”.  This, too, is a bunch of bollocks.

May I politely speak to the Teabaggers for a moment?  Dudes, you lost.  What we have now is taxation WITH representation, and most of you likely benefit from the new tax brackets.  Did you pay less taxes this year than last?  Did you get a refund?  Did you get your stimulus money?  If so, then I suggest you STFU or return the money.  What a bunch of fucking hypocrites.  Y’all stood by and watch Bush decimate the laws and the economy of this country.  He sank us so far into debt, I am not sure we will be out of it by the time I die.  

In addition, it would behoove you to actually have a message other than you hate Obama and black people and brown people and yellow people and the gayz and the feminazis and anyone else who doesn’t agree with you.  You have to get used to the fact that your leaders betrayed you and that you are no longer in the majority with your way of thinking.  

For god’s sake, people!  Obama has been in office for three months, and you’re already losing it.  What a bunch of wusses you are.  I lived for eight fucking years under that asswipe Bush, and that even bigger asswipe Cheney, and I didn’t get to this point until well into the second ter–no, I take that back.  I was never as crazed and incoherent as you.  

Let me tell you a little personal story.  My dad is a fierce believer in an independent Taiwan. After moving to MN to obtain his Ph.D. in economics, he really threw himself into the movement.  I remember marching the streets of Minneapolis when I was a kid, holding up signs proclaiming independence for Taiwan.  My dad was interviewed, and I remember seeing him on the teevee.  

As a result, he was blacklisted from Taiwan for over twenty years.  If he had returned, he would have been thrown into jail or killed in an ‘accident’.  He missed the funerals of both his parents because he couldn’t go back.  

Once he was allowed to return, he threw himself into the independence movement there.  He helped found the Democratic Progressive Party, and eight years ago, they elected a DPP president for the first time ever.  Unfortunately, he was a bad president, and the KMT (think GOP on steroids) reclaimed the presidency (and most of the congress) this past year.  They started throwing all the DPP leaders in jail for doing things (yes, bad things) that they themselves do ten times worse.  Sound familiar?

So.  Did my dad whine about how unfair it was after the election?  No.  Did he complain that his lifetime of work had gone down the drain?  No.  He sucked it up and moved on.  Most likely, Taiwan will be absorbed by China, maybe in his lifetime.  It must be incredibly painful to him to have to deal with all this, but he acknowledges that the KMT was democratically elected by the people.  Why?  Beause he’s a fucking patriot, man–the real kind.  

So, Teabaggers, STFU and do something productive to effect the changes you want.  And, drink some tea while you’re at it.  Chamomille.  Maybe it’ll calm you the fuck down.

In honor of Governor Perry, here is a parody of the NOM’s anti-gay marriage ad, “Gathering Storm”.  

Addendum:  I forgot to add that the Ron Paulites are miffed because apparently, they started the whole tea party thing (in protest of taxes), and they hate that it’s been co-opted by the right cabal in order to promote its (the right cabal’s) political talking points.  So, the Teabaggers are baggin’ each other.

In the meantime, the administration is shocked and aghast, but, hey, their hands are tied–so says Larry Summers.   These are contracts, and we can’t just break them.  Um, yeah we can.  Employers do it all the time.  It’s called renegotiation.  Basically, the employer says, “If you don’t accept this cut, we’ll fire you.”  Try it, Edward M. Liddy–you might be astonished at how successful you could be.  Please, though, do not trot out that tired old line about ‘having’ to give the money to retain the best and the brightest.  I demolished the validity of that mentality yesterday, and let me add, where the fuck are they going to go?  Who the fuck is going to want someone who killed the economy–wait, I shouldn’t ask that.  With the nifty little Ponzi scheme all you CEOs are running, someone will pick up the dregs because they have been pushed as the best and the brightest.

You know, I’ll do the damn job for a hundred thou a year.  I’m intelligent, quick to learn, good with numbers, and I’m fucking honest.  I have no interest in ripping off people and getting rich quickly, so maybe I wouldn’t be the best CEO ever.  However, I most likely would not have failed on such a spectacular level, and I definitely would not have had the balls to award myself and/or others bonuses after crashing the US economy.

But I digress.  Here’s the thing.  Yeah, I’m pissed and mad and all that good stuff, but am I shocked?  Hell, no.  Just as I wasn’t shocked after the two towers fell.   See, with the AIG folks, it’s that culture thing again.  I’m not explaining it one more time, so just read past posts if you want to understand.

Today, I am focusing on what I would like to do to the AIG execs as well as the execs of other ‘too big to fail’ companies.  I want to stress that this is totally an exercise in imagination born out of frustration with the idiots.  This is not to be taken at all seriously.

First, all the names of the people who receive bonuses are published on-line so we know who they are.  Their names are accompanied by pictures, so we can spot them on the streets.  Any time anybody spots one of them, she should run over and demand her money back.  Everywhere these leeches go, they should be hounded for money.  We can be like collection agencies, only more personal and in-your-face.

Another solution–they are told if they take the money they go to jail.  What, I need a reason?  No, I don’t.  I’m taking a leaf out of W.’s playbook.  We can call them enemy combatants and toss their asses in jail.   What?  Obama’s abolished the term?  I’ll come up with something else.  How about, “Supreme Leeches, Scumbags of the Earth”?  Look, these assholes are doing more to threaten the security of our nation than any so-called terrorists.  Surely we can ‘disappear’ them and no one outside of their family would give a damn.

It’s not legal, you say?  Tell that to W.!  Ok, ok.  How about this.  We tell them that they will have to pay a hundred percent tax on those bonuses, forcing them to go Galt on us.  Of course, they will have to whine about it because they are sooooo specially-talented, they should be able not to pay any taxes, but in the end, they will go Galt and leave the rest of us the fuck alone.

Actually, the hundred percent tax thing doesn’t sound like a bad idea.   President Obama?  Think you could make that a bill?

Next up.  We nationalize that fucking company already, or let it go bankrupt.  Either way, the contracts are null and void, and we can kick their asses to the curb.  I really would like to take these CEOs on a tour of the shanty towns that are popping up–Boehnertowns?  Cantortowns?–so they can see real destituition.  Or how about all the people who have been evicted from their homes?  I would make the CEOs volunteer at soup kitchens and homeless shelters every day for a month.

In the end, even though the administration and Congress are making a lot of noise, I fully expect nothing to happen.  Why?  Because that’s exactly what’s happened before.  I happen to think it’s because the ones in charge care more about businesses than they do about the people, though I dearly hope they prove me wrong.  Somehow, the beggars are the one driving this TARP ship, and we’re all just along for the ride–until they toss us overboard like the jetsam we are.  Buckle up, boys and girls!  Let’s see how else they can fleece us.

Just kidding.  I really have solved it, though.  Get comfy because it’s going to take awhile for me to explain how I reached my conclusion.  Make a pot of herbal tea…ooh, that’s a good idea.  Excuse me.  I’m going to make some ginger tea.  Be right back.

Ok, here I am.  Ready?

First of all, let me state the obvious–the stock market is not real.  Oh, I can hear your protests.  “Wait a gol-dang-minute, Minna,” you’re saying to yourself.  Well, actually, if you’re reading me, you’re probably saying something more akin to, “That’s fucking bullshit, Minna.”   Ah, yes, the dulcet tones of insurrection sounds mighty fine in the morning.  Ok, yes, it’s night, but still….

Anyway, let me tell you something about our economy.  My dad, who is a pretty big economic muckety-muck in Taiwan (and he has a Ph.D. in economics) is basically optimistic about the American economy because the real stuff is still there.  We still have the land and the people and the materials.  He wasn’t blowing steam up anyone’s ass the way McCain did, but his point was that our actual commodities, to loosely use that word, are still intact.

So, then, what about this big stock market hoo-ha, and what about Bernie Madoff?  Didn’t he rip off billions and billions?  Well, yes, he did.  However, he was partly able to do so because the market is mythical.  Basically, he told people, I am taking your money (which itself doesn’t seem so real now that we no longer use cash on a daily basis, which is partly the reason it’s so easy to run up a credit card debt, but let’s save that for another day), putting it in the market, where the money elves will give you back a thirty percent profit, no matter how poorly the rest of the market does.  You just sit back and don’t worry your pretty little head about it.

You know, what he did was shitty, and, yes, the SEC (that’s a college sports’ conference!) completely failed in their job, but I have a hard time not being a tad incredulous at all the people who fell for Madoff’s shit–hey!  I was writing his name as Madeoff.  Freudian slip, anyway?  Oh, and Alan Rickman HAS to play Madoff in the bioflick–without questioning any of it. 

Joe Nocera, a financial columnist for The New York Times, wrote this fine column on the Madoff victims.   He followed it up with this blog entry.  I really am a strong advocate of not blaming the victim, but in this case, they deserve a bit of it.  As Mr. Nocera points out, there were very few financial types who actually invested with Madoff.  Why?  Because they knew after talking to him that something wasn’t right.  It’s not coincidental, I think, that most of Madoff’s victims were celebrities, rather than financial people. 

Madoff succeeded for the same reason W. was able to propoganda us all the way into a fictitious war–nobody actually questioned what he was doing.  Those who should have (SEC in the first case, and the press in the second) either looked the other way or actively colluded in the deceit.  Then, we, the people, followed along.  Now, Madoff’s victims think the government should reimburse them because the SEC didn’t do its job.  As is pointed out in Mr. Nocera’s column and blog, the victims actively participated in their own demises as well.

Anyway, back to the fairy tale of the market.  Once upon a time, there was no market.  I know!  Can you believe it?  It’s true, though.   Then it was created, and all was good.  Then, the market gods rested up for the onflux of hedge funds, toxic assets (I guess they weren’t toxic to begin with), and much screwing around–in an economic sense.  People have carnally screwed around since the beginning of time. 

Suddenly, people who moved Monopoly money around for a living were GODS.  They could do no wrong.  They deserved a zillion dollars in risk-free bonus just for existing.  Hell, fucking AIG is still giving out $165 MILLION in bonuses because they are ‘contractually obligated’.  To me, this is just a Ponzi scheme of a worse order.  They are taking OUR money and giving it to the very people who drove the company into the ground.  The same old bullshit of having to reward the best and the brightest–what the fuck???????  And is Edward M. Liddy related to G. Gordon Liddy?  Hm.  Doesn’t appear to be so, but I don’t feel like doing any more research on the matter.

Anyway, let the so-called ‘best and brightest’ leave.  Let them ‘go Galt’ and disappear.  There are plenty of other bright and probably better people who can take their places.  I am fuming over this newest tidbit from our biggest welfare king (AIG), but that’s not the point of this entry, either.

The point is, the market is purely created.  Let’s take the Dow Jones.  Apparently, it tracks thirty stocks (!) and then extrapolates how the economy is doing based on how these stocks perform on a daily basis.  Now, let’s take a stock, say, AIG.  Yes, it’s fucking pick on AIG day.  EVERY day should be a fucking pick on AIG day until they are beaten into the ground.  Anyway, before they were removed from the Dow–just an aside, if they are no longer on the Dow (but are now on the dole), then do they still exist?–they went from $70 a share to less than $2 a share.  So, if you had one share of stock in AIG, you would have lost $68 on that share.  However, if you had sold it, say, before they collapsed in a big, steaming pile of shit, you might have made money on it.  Then again, if you bought it now, and somehow, they miraculously recover and reach $70 a share again, then you will be rich! 

The share, which isn’t even a piece of paper or written down or anything, is, to put it bluntly, an illusion.  We imbue it with whatever power it has, much like anything monetary.   The share is worth whatever people deem it to be worth.  That’s why it’s easy to rig the market (I learned that from Jim Cramer).  You just talk down a stock when you want it to tank, then you buy it, then you talk it up, and then you sell it.  Sure, it’s illegal, but only Shug Martha had to go to jail for insider trading–and that’s mostly because she’s a woman who succeeded without being nice.

So.  Over a thousand words later (I had to make you pay for the solution somehow), here it is.  Remember, I am not an economist.  I was, however, a psych major, and my mom is a psychologist.  She and I both know that this crisis is more psychological than economical.  Therefore, this is my solution.  Remember how this week, Citibank circulated an intra-office memo about how even though their stock isn’t worth the paper it isn’t printed on, they are still fine, fine, fine?  By the way, FUCK YOU Citibank for using taxpayers’ money to bust unions before they even start up.  Anyway, the Dow went up for three days straight after the Citibank memo was ‘leaked.’  Really.  A bankrupt company gives a pep talk, and the market goes up.

Here’s the money shot (pun intended):  Make ALL the failing companies to write pep-talk memos and circulate them around their offices, and the Dow will soar over ten thousand again!  People will think the crisis is over, and they will buy back into the fairy tale.  Then, we can rebuild our house of cards and do it all over again.  There.  Problem solved.  Next up, world peace.

We are in the middle of a fierce recession which is sliding its way into a depression.  Unemployment figures are nudging their way into double digits.  People are getting laid off by the thousands on a daily basis.  Actually, www.eschatonblog.com  is excellent for economic news because he’s an economist.  And he’s funny.  He posted this link from Calculated Risk that says 651,000 jobs were lost in the month of February.  More than a half a mill in one frickin’ month!

What is government doing about it?  Well, Prez. Obama and his posse (the Dems) are trying to stimulate the economy by, you know, spending money.  See, if money is not spent, then the economy will not get better.  That seems pretty basic to me.  However, the other faction (Reps and Blue Dawg Dems) don’t wanna hear anything about this spending nonsense.  They know the REAL way to stimulate the economy–tax cuts and a freeze on government spending. 

Really.  Tax cuts and a freeze on spending.  Even David Brooks is calling that insane, and it takes a lot to get Brooks to buck the party line, albeit, in a moderate way.  Because, you know, he’s a moderate conservative.  Yeah, only if you’re judging by the Limbaugh/Hannity/Colter crazy stick.  Seriously, folks.  We are in a fucking crisis, and the Republicans want to cut taxes and freeze spending?  I proposed this to my father (pretending to be serious), and he was flabbergasted.  He thought I was joking, and when I told him I wasn’t, that Republicans were proposing this as their solution, he tried to figure out a way it could possibly make sense.  He couldn’t. 

Now, John McCain is saying that he’s gonna find an answer to our economic crisis.  You know, the guy who suspended his campaign because the crisis was so serious–oh hell, I am so fucking sick of McCain.  DUDE, YOU LOST!  Suck it up and shut the fuck up.  You have shown yourself to have a seriously-appalling lack of knowledge on the subject so do yourself and us a favor–retire already!  Here is Digby’s take on this farce.   Here is The American Prospect on Grampy McCain getting so much damn face-time for a LOSER.  WTF? 

I am channeling my inner Bill Maher to come up with a new rule.  New Rule:  If you are the assholes who got us in the mess in the first place and have roundly been defeated at the polls following such disasters, YOU DO NOT HAVE THE FUCKING RIGHT TO ACT LIKE YOU KNOW SOMETHING ABOUT THE ECONOMY!

New rule part II:  If you are the same assholes who got us into this financial crisis, criticize the prez for being ‘too ambitious’ and ‘inciting class warfare’–by the way, can I just point out that the dreaded tax increase will make the rich have to pay what they did under Clinton?  In addition, Obama is not increasing their taxes–He is just allowing the tax cut W. implemented to expire.  Finally, the same fucking tax was 50% under Reagan.  In fact, take a look at this graph from John Cole’s Balloon Juice.  It’s pretty instructive.  Newt and his ilk complained vociferously then, and they are doing the same now.  Same complaints during Bill Clinton’s presidency.  Somehow, asking the rich to pay their fair share was a burden on an economy.  You know what’s a real burden?  Not having health insurance.  Having to choose between food and meds.  Having a house whose mortgage is now more than the house is worth.  Those are real burdens.

Shit.  Where was I?  Oh, yeah. 

New rule part II:  If you are the same assholes who rammed our country into the ground by forcing excessive dereg, by creating ‘too big to fail’ banks, and by, frankly, looking the other way from/participating in the rampant corruption that choked Wall Street, then you turn around and criticize The Prez for doing something differently, YOU DO NOT HAVE THE FUCKING RIGHT TO OFFER THE SAME SOLUTION THAT GOT US IN THE MESS IN THE FIRST PLACE. 

In fact, let me state this as plainly as I can.  If you are not going to act like responsible grownups and clean up after you soil your diapers–then at least shut the fuck up while an adult changes it for you!

Finally, just because he cracks me up and the title is somewhat tangentially-related, I am linking to Weird Al Yankovic’s It’s All About the Pentiums.  Oh, and White and Nerdy just because.