Yesterday, Melissa Brookstone, a Tea Party blogger, called for a strike of small business owners against what she believes is a global socialist movement working with President Obama and the Democrat-controlled Senate. The strike would be accomplished by these small business owners refusing to hire any new workers until "this war against business and [the United States] is stopped." Ms. Brookstone, in this post and others on the same website, accused President Obama of having dictatorial powers. She has also accused the media and Hollywood of working with so-called progressive socialists against business, the free market, individual rights, and capitalism.
Melissa Brookstone is a blogger for the site Teabook.org, which identifies itself as "social networking for the Tea Party." Anyone can sign up and get a blog on the site, although upon sign-up one is asked "Are you currently involved with the Tea Party?" and must choose between "Yes", "No, but would like to be," "That's why I'm here," and "I'm here to start trouble and will leave now." One must also list a political affiliation, and can choose Republican, Democrat, Libertarian, Independent, Socialist, and Other. All members are approved by a moderator.
Melissa Brookstone is also the author of "The Planetary Bill of Rights Project: A Blueprint for Peace, Prosperity and Freedom," described on Amazon as a "modernized extrapolation of Jeffersonian philosophy and the United States Constitution, individual rights and self-ownership, now offered to the world."
The official current unemployment rate, as of August 2011, is 9.1 percent. While some other economic indicators have improved over the past few years, for the most part, this has been a jobless recovery. (The S&P 500, for example, has improved on average since 2008, but the unemployment rate dropped to 9.3 percent in 2009 and has not improved, noticeably.) A great fear of many is a double dip recession, and one of the best ways to prevent against that is to get people working again, and get people spending money again.
A recent Gallup poll also showed that Herman Cain, who is running a campaign that relies heavily on his 9-9-9 tax plan, is widely supported by people who identify themselves as members of the Tea Party. The 9-9-9 plan would raise taxes on 84 percent of the American population. If the so-called "global progressive socialist movement" is somehow forced out of government by a Tea Party blogger-led (writing from a grassroots Tea Party site) call to stall the economy, how can this even be an idea worth discussing? (And why is the Tea Party, which got its start as an anti-tax protest movement, backing Herman Cain in the first place?)
Melissa Brookstone is not a prominent politician, and the requirements for being accepted as a blogger on Teabook.org are unclear, but she is an example of the Tea Party process. The true Tea Party is not politicians like Cain and Michele Bachmann--the true Tea Party is the grassroots organization that spawned sites like Teabook.org, and it is these sites that birth ideas that derail the important political action that needs to be undertaken (such as the birther movement.)
Melissa Brookstone is irresponsible and she is dangerous. It's time for this kind of absurd rhetoric to stop.
