It’s No Tea Party for New Yorkers

When our beloved Congress returns to work in September after a brief five week vacation, one of the first things on their agenda will be sticking it to us New Yorkers.

For that we can thank the similarly beloved Tea Party, which although comprising only a small fraction of Congress managed to parley that into making sure the filthy rich keep their money and then some, while the rest of  us get royally screwed.

Amazing how they managed that, isn’t it? While the Republicans seem to have turned into a lovely combination of the No Nothing Party and rabid dog fanatics, a special shout out should go to the timid Democrats who didn’t call them out as the bullies, hypocrites and flunkies they have become.

Now that this fake debt ceiling crisis they created has been temporarily resolved,  we can now look forward to not only having our Medicare messed with big time, but our Homeland Security funds seriously compromised.

As the Daily News’ Michael Daly observes, the Tea Party fancies itself as patriots and champions of the average American,  a ragtag army tossing crates of tea into the ocean to protest unfair English levies, but in truth are more like a tea party in the uppercrust British sense, expecting the lower classes to serve crumpets to their overlords. That’s because “nobody could be more servile to the interests of the wealthy than the Tea Party,” notes Daly.

This hypocrisy has led to our city becoming less protected against terrorist attack as funding is slashed, while cuts to Medicare providers will also hurt us due to the fact that New York trains one in five new doctors through funding of its teaching hospitals, which will similarly be cut.

At the same time, the poverty rate in New York is now 19% and climbing, while a record 20% of us are on food stamps. Meanwhile another 78% or so of us are increasingly struggling to get by.

Which leaves the other 2%. A New York Times story this week reported that luxury items are flying off the shelves, as the very richest among us now have more money than they know what to do with. These “job creators”, as Republicans with sick senses of humor call them, have created virtually no new jobs since the Bush tax cuts for them went into effect–unless you count the jobs they created for clerks at Tiffany’s, whose first quarter sales were up a stunning 20% this year.

Meanwhile, BMW reported more than double its quarterly profit from a year ago. As many New York families skipped meals, sales of $250 Ermenegildo Zegna ties were also flying off the shelves.

Who does research show purchased these obscenely priced, conspicuous consumption products? If you guessed teachers, cops and other union members,  you may qualify for Tea Party membership. Nope, it’s salt of the earth hedge fund managers and their ilk. Go figure.

But all is not lost. Chelsea’s Dickson Farmstand Meats is now offering a mouth watering combo of beef, chicken and sweet potato at $10 for a one and a half pound package__for dogs. As Daly points out, this comes to $70 a week, or $140 a week for a full-sized dog, more than double what a New Yorker on food stamps allocates for food. And business for these upscale doggie banquets is brisk.

To paraphrase the news anchor in Network, “We are mad as hell, and we are going to continue to take it!”

Something is seriously wrong with us.