The Taxpayer's Alliance and the Tea Party Movement

As a land with forthrightly "Atlanticist" orientation, it was bound to be the case that the latest idiot populist movement from the USA was going to come to Britain. The Guardian reported, on Thursday 9 September 201o that,

British anti-tax campaigners are taking advice from leaders of the rightwing Tea Party movement in the US in a bid to import the mass-protest techniques that have seen a million activists march on Washington DC to call for lower taxes and smaller government.

The Taxpayers' Alliance, an influential campaign group that calls for tax cuts and low government spending, is being advised by Freedom Works, a powerful Washington organisation credited with helping to destabilise the Obama administration through its mobilisation of 800,000 grassroots activists.

Libertarian US Tea Party organisations attended a conference in London today to share tactics with British and European taxpayer lobby groups, and described their activities as "an insurgent campaign" against their government's tax and spending policies.

The move reflects an increasing desire within rightwing circles to establish a British version of the Tea Party "uprising", and a growing belief that expected union action against the coalition government's programme of cuts could be harnessed to mobilise vocal counter-demonstrations.

This pseudo-populist initiative is essentially a media creation and a perfect example of what the future might hold as regards staged revolutions choreographed by huge corporate interests who can dominate the media agenda and co-opt politicians who then can pretend they are "reacting" to the "will of the people".

There is nothing unusual about the Tea Party proselytising for "Freedom" in the UK as Freedom Works, the organisation behind the Tea Party, has been endorsed by those wonderful exponents of American Freedom and intellectual fire power everywhere, the Bush Family.

"Folks, you've got to get to know this organization ... They have been doing a great job all over the country educating people."

-President George W. Bush

To be endorsed by this dimwit should be the kiss of death as far as the notion of educating the folks is concerned, though Bush II was not entirely as cretinous as he tried to portray himself, even if Sarah Palin seems to represent a new departure here.

In Britain, there is no reason why the Taxpayers Alliance will not be supported by those like Richard Littlejohn and given coverage by Sky News just as Bush and his regime was backed by Fox News, both of which are owned by Rupert Murdoch, a key donor to the Tea Party, though he has publicly lied about not supporting it.

A key figure is Steve Forbes, the businessman and "libertarian thinker" who was a signatory to the Project for the New American Century and very much an Establishment figure, having worked for Radio Free Europe during the Cold War. He is on the Board of Directors at Freedom Works.

As Freedom Works states,

In addition to FreedomWorks Foundation, Mr. Forbes serves on the boards of The Ronald Reagan Presidential Foundation, the Heritage Foundation and The Foundation for the Defense of Democracies. He is on the Board of Overseers of the Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center and on the Board of Visitors for the School of Public Policy of Pepperdine University. He served on the Board of Trustees of Princeton University for ten years.

Such a figure as Forbes means that the Tea Party and Taxpayers Alliance are not simply as comical as those in Britain would assume: these are media men practised in the dark arts of spin, dissimulation and media manipulation. They wield power and influence and intend to spread it cynically.

A close pal of Forbes is David "Axis of Evil" Frum who wrote for Forbes Magazine. Forbes has media outlets in "New Europe" such as Latvia and Poland where flat tax rates have been introduced or posited for the future in Poland's case.

The presence of the Tea Party in China might have something to do with the fact Forbes set up with Fosun Media, one of China’s largest private conglomerates. monthly publication in February 2003. He has set up media in Romania and Turkey as well to advance his interests.

"You guys are everywhere."
- Florida Governor Jeb Bush

Freedom Works supports a number of policies that coincide with Cameron's New-ConDem regime in Britain, including offering more "choice" in schools ( i.e the involvement of business and the private corporations ) of the sort proposed by the neoconservative chump Michael Gove ( writer for Murdoch's Times ).

This is the very Michael Gove who argued recently that,

I believe in value for money. It is maybe a concept that was alien to the last government and it may not be a concept that the BBC would like to see applied to public expenditure, but I believe that it is important that the taxpayer gets protection for the money that it spent on his or her behalf.

Naturally, whilst the Tea Party and Taxpayers Alliance are against taxes, this libertarian agenda is curiously absent when it comes to supporting militarism and the military industrial complex as well as supporting "state intervention" in Iraq.

Hardly surprising, as the Tea Party is bankrolled by Murdoch, supported by Forbes and Koch Industries, those heavily involved in the oil industry

Jane Mayer ran an article in The New Yorker which according to one source in the NYT,

... found that Koch-controlled foundations gave out $196 million from 1998 to 2008, much of it to conservative causes and institutions. That figure doesn’t include $50 million in Koch Industries lobbying and $4.8 million in campaign contributions by its political action committee, putting it first among energy company peers like Exxon Mobil and Chevron.

Since tax law permits anonymous personal donations to nonprofit political groups, these figures may understate the case. The Kochs surely match the in-kind donations the Tea Party receives in free promotion 24/7 from Murdoch’s Fox News, where both Beck and Palin are on the payroll.

These guys are everywhere. And soon in one form or another they will be over here, constantly meddling in the affairs of the UK, promoting the interests of those like Murdoch and a crude version of neoliberalism of "libertarian" anarcho-capitalism of a very authoritarian and nasty kind.

The Taxpayer's Alliance is, in reality, the alliance of the super rich and an extension of the US nationalism, the best democracy money can buy and very little to do with the principle of "no taxation without representation". If little people feel they are not already represented, then the cynical idea is that taxation should only go on "defence".

Yet, as foreign policy under the Bush II regime proved, in practice this means the collossal expenditure on military hardware and war, some 21% of the USA's total amount.

Needless to say, there are no indication that cuts are supported here or in carbon emissions, not least as in the UK the TPA is supported by big oil and "climate sceptic" Nigel Lawson.