By John Brummett
Before I proceed to avoid studiously the word “crazy” and rely instead on “destructive” and “paranoid,” allow me to explain what I mean in today’s context by “tea party-inclined movement.”
I understand that there are myriad autonomous tea party groups and that not all of them, much less all the people assembling at their meetings, think or advocate in lock-step.
But there is a radical political insurgency today that encompasses tea party-ish themes and also includes such entities as Americans for Prosperity and Secure Arkansas, which, I fully understand, are quite different themselves from each other.
Still, for these purposes, this is a general movement that espouses a common view that government is to be distrusted and that individual liberation from government’s taxes and regulations is the utopian virtue.
What I want to do today is expose one example of how this tea party-inclined movement is … uh, not crazy, but destructive and paranoid.
I refer to illogical opposition to efforts to protect the land around the water supply for Central Arkansas, Lake Maumelle, and assure the bountiful long-term flow of this source of basic sustenance and good health for hundreds of thousands of people.
More to the point of what I really want to say: These tea party-inclined insurgents — along with Teresa Crossland-Oelke of the Americans for Prosperity and that zany Jeannie Burlsworth of Secure Arkansas — should keep their noses and their pollutants out of my drinking water.
When it comes to making sure hundreds of thousands of people enjoy the common benefit of plenty of clean and safe drinking water for now and for future generations, government regulation is a far more virtuous thing than some lone individual property owner’s frontier-spirited right to erode the ecosystem around the lake.
I’m not saying you chain the property owner to a bed post. I’m saying that, in this case, the virtue is in deterring him from discharging harmful material into the lake, in part by limiting development to five-acre lots more than half of which, by mandate, would be left undeveloped.
That, according to this Teresa Crossland-Oelke in Rogers on her blog as the Arkansas director of the arch-conservative Americans for Prosperity, is a frightful infringement on precious liberties. She is trying to mobilize tea party-inclined insurgents to lean on the ever-squishy Pulaski County Quorum Court not to adopt these regulations for all this green-space nonsense.
Crossland-Oelke is less extreme than some. She tells me sufficient environmental protections are in place already without telling a landowner how he can use his property. So the question is: Do you trust her or do you trust the water quality specialists?
She pleads that I not lump her with Secure Arkansas and Burlsworth, a “nice lady,” she says, but “conspiratorial” whereas Americans for Prosperity, Crossland-Oelke insists, is simply about conservative philosophy and personal liberty and opportunity.
Fine.
Indeed, you would not believe — or perhaps you would — what certain nests of these arch-conservatives are saying.
It is that ongoing government efforts in Pulaski County to design watershed protection rules are part of a one-world conspiracy hatched out of the United Nations to deliver America to global tyranny by using the dirty trickery of talking about making growth “sustainable.”
“Sustainable” is euphemistic for commie, you see. Or maybe it means Muslim. I forget.
One night I heard that zany Burlsworth tell a tea party audience that North Little Rock Mayor Patrick Henry Hays is a leader in a global conspiracy to leverage this sinister notion of sustainable growth to remove American sovereignty.
P.S. While cautiously avoiding the word “crazy,” I did refer to Burlsworth as “zany.” Be aware that I looked up zany and found this definition: “Fantastically or absurdly ludicrous.” That seems to fit for the last time I saw Burlsworth. She was on a downtown Little Rock sidewalk shouting through a bullhorn at Attorney General Dustin McDaniel several floors above. I forget what it was about. Hispanics or some such.
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John Brummett is a columnist for the Arkansas News Bureau in Little Rock. His e-mail address is jbrummett@arkansasnews.com; his telephone number is (501) 374-0699.
August 21st, 2011 at 9:10 am
John have you had any experiences with dirty water? We got it good today. Milton Friedman rightly pointed out that the water is cleaner today than it was 100 years ago. Who wants to go back to the conditions 100 years ago? Little Rock’s streets were filled with horses and you know what that meant!!! I can’t think of a worse kind of pollution.
August 21st, 2011 at 11:23 am
And the reason it is better today is the environmental regulations we have! However, just because it is better does not mean it shouldn’t be protected or improved.
August 21st, 2011 at 12:30 pm
“Who wants to go back to the conditions 100 years ago?”
Republicans, that’s who. Their ideal of a society is unregulated robber baron capitalism ca. 1890. Our drinking water (which “inefficient” government provides me at a rate of a quarter cent per gallon) is protected – to some extent – from pollution by laws and regulations such as the Clean Water Act, signed into law by Republican president Nixon but hated by his successors who would like to flush the nation’s bipartisan environmental legacy down the drain.
Oh, and what irony that those who oppose conservation and who believe in a god-given right to plunder and pillage the environment call themselves *conservatives*. The political misnomer of the century: a radical fringe party intent on destroying the nation’s institutional framework calling itself conservative.
Arkansas Media Watch
http://arkansasmediawatch.wordpress.com
P.S. Senator Boozman insults half his constituents, http://arkansasmediawatch.wordpress.com/2011/08/20/senator-boozman-insults-half-his-constituents/
August 21st, 2011 at 3:58 pm
I heard a leader of the “Tea Party” movement talking about how the
name of their group refers to how the American Revolution was all about
eliminating government influence. He must have studied American History
with both Sarah Palin (remember her story about Paul Revere) and Michelle
Bachmann (doesnt know the difference between John Wayne and John Wayne Gacy
and wants to wish Elvis a happy birthday and the anniversary of his death?,
the colonists were not about eliminating government they wanted to govern
themselves. They believed in taxation and government regulation so please
leave regulation of the environment where it belongs with the government
and not to your best-friends–big business.
August 21st, 2011 at 4:32 pm
OldSkool, I am glad you want to get back to the way the Founding Fathers wanted to run the tax and spending policies. They wanted the federal government to spend about 1/4 of the tax money and the state governments to spend the other 75% of the tax money. In fact, for the first 150 years of our country’s existence the federal government NEVER SPENT OVER 3% of GDP except in wartime and the state governments spend less than 10%. This year the federal government will spend around 25% and the state governments will still average around 10%.
Today I spend the day on the Freedom Trail here in Boston and we visited the places that the sons of liberty planned the Boston Tea Party. What if Samual Adams could see us now!!!
August 21st, 2011 at 4:33 pm
OldSkool, I am glad you want to get back to the way the Founding Fathers wanted to run the tax and spending policies. They wanted the federal government to spend about 1/4 of the tax money and the state governments to spend the other 75% of the tax money. In fact, for the first 150 years of our country’s existence the federal government NEVER SPENT OVER 3% of GDP except in wartime and the state governments spend less than 10%. This year the federal government will spend around 25% and the state governments will still average around 10%.
Today I spend the day on the Freedom Trail here in Boston and we visited the places that the sons of liberty planned the Boston Tea Party. What if Samuel Adams could see us now!!!
August 21st, 2011 at 5:57 pm
“They wanted the federal government to spend about 1/4 of the tax money and the state governments to spend the other 75% of the tax money.”
Exactly, which is why they wrote that into the constitution. Oh wait, they didn’t.
And if Samuel Adams could see you now, he would be disgusted by you people abusing his name to push the agenda of anti-American billionaires working to destroy the institutional framework they put in place so that they could continue pillaging and plundering the land.
August 21st, 2011 at 6:57 pm
“OldSkool, I am glad you want to get back to the way the Founding Fathers wanted to run the tax and spending policies.”
halting, you are such a joker. I know I shouldn’t feed the troll but it’s hard to resist. You just asked “Who wants to go back to the conditions 100 years ago?” and I replied “Republicans”. And sure enough you follow up bu suggesting that we should go back to how society happened to be structured 200 years ago. For no reason other than that’s how it was 200 years ago. Nobody wants to go back! Precious.
“In fact, for the first 150 years of our country’s existence the federal government NEVER SPENT OVER 3% of GDP”
Complete nonsense. Apart from the fact that there was no GDP accounting before the 20th century, the federal government played a huge role for example with construction of the transcontinental railway. The federal gov subsidized it with huge land giveaways. Sounds like spending to me.
Also, if federal spending should not exceed 3% of GDP, darn why didn’t anybody tell Reagan that. As you know, even though you still try to lie about it on your blog, Reagan spent like a drunken sailor, up to 23.5% of GDP. Why ow why didn’t you care about it then?
http://arkansasmediawatch.wordpress.com/2011/07/11/bradley-gitz/
August 21st, 2011 at 7:53 pm
Too much zaniness on the left and right..
August 21st, 2011 at 8:26 pm
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA or sometimes USEPA) is an agency of the federal government of the United States charged with protecting human health and the environment, by writing and enforcing regulations based on laws passed by Congress.The EPA was proposed by Republican President Richard Nixon and began operation on December 3, 1970, after Nixon submitted a reorganization plan to Congress and it was ratified by committee hearings in the House and Senate.
August 22nd, 2011 at 1:39 pm
“Arkansas Media Watch,” please do not misquote me. I stated, “In fact, for the first 150 years of our country’s existence the federal government NEVER SPENT OVER 3% of GDP except in wartime,” which is a true statement. You misquoted me by leaving the last three words out. Then you ridiculed me on the misquote. Why not quote me properly and then see if I have given you the truth or not? Let’s play fair.
By the way, your name-calling doesn’t bother me at all. I do respect the time you spend looking up statistics and attempting to back up your arguments. Let’s both stay the course with that method and not resort to name-calling. You are too good for that.
August 22nd, 2011 at 1:42 pm
Sorry about the duplicate copies. My computer tells me that the comment did not get through and when I try it a second time it then reports that two copies have been sent.
August 22nd, 2011 at 4:52 pm
what you have to say is so profound that it bears saying twice.
August 22nd, 2011 at 6:41 pm
Halting, where did I misquote you? Do you mean to say that the last three words make your statement true because wartime is pretty much all the time? That might be almost true but it doesn’t make your argument any more convincing. The 3% figure is misleading. Even in the 19th century, the federal government had a huge economic impact, as demonstrated with the railway example I gave. Apart from that I would honestly like to know why you weren’t concerned about Reagan deficit-spending 23.5% of GDP but now you are suddenly concerned. Also, I am really curious whether you can explain why so-called conservatives oppose conservation. Frankly I am probably more “conservative” than 90% of today’s Republican party, if honesty, moderation, and responsibility are still regarded as conservative values.