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By Punkerslut
To: http://www.tucsonteaparty.org/contact/ Greetings,I've spent some time reading the material available on your website, and I thought I'd make a brief response. Your primary point of focus is that you are "against the over $12 trillion dollars in government bail-outs, stimulus packages, loans, entitlements, and guarantees since September 2008." None of this is new, though. In the past 15 years, California farmers and growers received almost $10 billion in subsidies from the government. (http://farm.ewg.org/region.php?fips=06000) This is just one state. Kansas received almost $15 million for the same period of time, while the subsidies to Texas near $25 million. These subsidies are coupled with political domination and control. Courts have refused to rule against these companies or to enforce the law at all in regards to human rights violation, environmental destruction, or "creative accounting." (Stealing.) For instance, in an Oregon case, where the company charged people hundred's of dollars illegally, they were -- at most -- entitled to $16 in compensation. (http://www.oregonlive.com/business/index.ssf/2011/02/comcast_settles_oregon_late-fr.html) While a company has a right to directly charge your account, and transfer funds to its bank account, without permission -- doing this as a civilian is prohibited under the "Computer Fraud and Abuse Act." The company stealing, Comcast, has all of its equipment, its fiber optic lines, its computers, etc., etc., all paid for by the US government (and this is besides just using the direct results of government-sponsored research, like the research that created the Internet). Halliburton gets millions in contracts from foreign wars. The Monsanto Corporation holds dual responsibility for Agent Orange and DDT, the two chemicals most responsible for human deformities in South East Asia today. They were paid tax funding to do that, with profit ratios of over 100,000%. The entire supply of the Vietnam War's Agent Orange could've been made in an hour by a single, well-skilled chemist. Billions, instead, get funneled to military contractors. The bailout of capitalist banks today is nothing new. The Bank of Rome, the Catholic, Fascist-dominated institution of the 1920's, was bailed out by Benito Mussolini for hundreds of millions of dollars. This has been happening everywhere, so long as there has been some type of government in power. Capitalists have always used the government to control the people. Why is it so hard to think that those who control all wealth, and those who control all obedience, should work themselves into an alliance against that is good and just? If you want to fight the government's gift of wealth to the Capitalists, then try fighting the Capitalists! Form unions, boycott organizations, community councils, worker reappropriation committees, and strike meetings. Organize all the laborers together, so that if government ever wanted to give them guns and money, we could shut everything down at once -- if the Capitalists want to send our children to die in our foreign war, then we will turn away their children from hospitals; if Capitalists want to take funding intended for the poor and underprivileged, then the workers of the banks will open the vaults and cooperate with every bank-robber, conveniently destroying evidence and obstructing the activity of the police. You need to organize everyone who labors, everyone who could possible produce anything of value, anyone who might be exploited by some idle baron. That means organizing all of the working class into a voice that can unite against the Capitalist system. That means unions, strikes, boycotts, sit-ins, factory occupations, sabotage, demonstrations, protests, and that one beautiful thing, which flows forward everywhere like it is the same substance, Revolution. If you think government is just bailing out a bunch of failing, Capitalist institutions, and that this is something new, then pick up a history book. This has been the situation for the past few thousand years, going back even to ancient Athens -- read the history of Plutarch, and you'll read about a man named Alcibiades, who led a Proletarian revolt and overthrew the Capitalists after having been expelled from the city. ("Parallel Lives," by Plutarch.) Your reaction, as though this is all something new, fails to take into account the past 2,500 years of recorded history. If you hate government for bailing out Capitalists, then hate the Capitalists, too! Who do you think is paying for that campaign funding? Where do you think those police get their guns? Where do those soldiers get their guns? Where property is nine-tenths of the law, who owns the factories that produce tanks and missiles? There is no resisting the systematic exploitation of the people without resisting the exploiters. But, I doubt this will make any dent on you. "We are mothers, fathers, and small business owners." So, you make money off of government subsidies? YOU are the ones who take in hundreds of billions every year in agricultural subsidies? And YOU want to complain about other people, doing the same exact thing? As Adam Smith once said, "Our merchants and master-manufacturers complain much of the bad effects of high wages in raising the price, and thereby lessening the sale of their goods both at home and abroad. They say nothing concerning the bad effects of high profits. They are silent with regard to the pernicious effects of their own gains. They complain only of those of other people." (Adam Smith, Wealth of Nations, Book 1, Chapter 9.") Of course, if you had read Wealth of Nations, you'd already know the truth -- the Capitalist class is a global conspiracy of the wealthy to keep the poor in as miserable conditions as possible for as long as possible. (Book 1, Chapter 8.) But, if you've read it, I doubt you'd think running a small business would be a way to live a virtuous life. Sincerely, Andy Carloff
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