Let me be clear that I do not equate the two, but that I see similarities between the two. There is no formal paramilitary wing of the Tea Party, for example. (Although, there is the matter of Sarah Palin’s “hit list” that resulted in an attack on a Democratic congresswoman…) However, both movements were funded by wealthy industrialists that sought to take their grassroots anger and make it more business-friendly.

I would refer the interested reader to chapters 5 and 6 of Shirer’s excellent Rise and Fall of the Third Reich. As you follow along, starting on page 135 of the PDF file, make note of the similarities.

First to be seen is the funding from industrialists, as described by Walther Funk, who later joined the NSDAP. His modern equivalent would be the Koch brothers, who have plowed extensive amounts of cash into the Tea Party to keep it from denouncing ethanol subsidies, among other things. Hitler was eager to adopt an Ayn Rand-like attitude towards business when it meant large amounts of cash would flow his way. The Tea Party is the same. When the Nazis introduced a bill in 1930 that would have made interest rates over 4% illegal, Hitler stopped that bill immediately. The Tea Party is equally quick to do the bidding of its industrial masters.

Both parties gained a great deal of popularity during hard economic times. While this is natural for populist movements, both these movements have sought to worsen conditions in order to increase their own popularity and, hence, power. The Nazis chose to start massive street battles with their political opponents, while promising strict law and order if they were elected to power. The Tea Party held the nation’s finances hostage in the debt ceiling debates, while demanding that those very finances be put in order. As a result of Tea Party intransigence, the nation’s finances took a big hit with the downgrade of our debt rating. Shirer’s description of Nazi-led parliamentary maneuvers (on p. 161 of the PDF) echo the ways in which both the Tea Party and the GOP in general have sought to rule as a minority through exploitation of rules created to facilitate legislation. They have taken those rules and twisted them into procedural weapons.

Both parties also refused to work with the majority of the people of their nations in order to impose their views upon their respective nations. The Nazis had it easiest, given the highly fragmented nature of Weimar Germany’s political parties. The Tea Party grew as a movement within the GOP and has come to dominate much of the GOP’s political discourse. The Tea Party is seen as being closely connected to the GOP base and while it cannot count on a fragmented opposition, it can count on an opposition unable to move any bills through the House without Tea Party approval. By withholding that approval, the Tea Party has effectively brought Congress’ ability to pass laws to a halt. That means the whole of America is subjected to a de facto Tea Party veto on any legislation, even though a majority of Americans oppose the Tea Party’s extremism. It’s straight out of the Nazi playbook: Gregor Strasser, one of the top Nazi leaders in 1931 said, “All that serves to precipitate the catastrophe . . . is good, very good for us…”

And what of the opposition to the Nazis and Tea Partiers? Shirer’s words about the German scene in the 1930s could easily describe the USA of the 2010s: “… too absorbed in looking after the special economic and social interests they represented to be able to bury their differences.” Dead on, I would say. “Parliamentary government had become a matter of what the Germans called Kuhhandel – cattle trading – with the parties bargaining for special advantages for the groups which elected them, and the national interests be damned.” Did Shirer have a crystal ball, or are humans that prone to such failures in representative democracies?

Both the Nazis and Tea Party movements worked with conservative political factions, with varying degrees of accommodation. In the case of the Nazis, they saw no true common purpose with the old-line conservatives and hoped to bring about a new sort of conservatism in Germany. Likewise, the Tea Party does not always play well with the rest of the Republican caucus, and has flaunted party discipline on ideological matters. There’s another similarity: the placing of ideology above all else, using it as a guide to shout down truths that would give the lie to their positions. The Nazis would hear nothing to contradict their lies about Jews and Communists: the Tea Partiers can stand no word against their position on global warming (or the lack thereof) and the free market.

Within two years of the Nazi’s big political showing in 1931, their leader was in power. If the economy doesn’t turn around soon, a Tea Partier may very well be elected to the presidency of the USA within two years of the Tea Party’s big splash in 2010. This is where differences between the Tea Party and the Nazis become critical. Hitler was not a puppet of the industrialists and they badly miscalculated in supporting him. I don’t see anyone with the same energy and drive as Hitler in the Tea Party leadership, so it’s likely that a Tea Party president would be very much like a worse(!) version of George Bush II: a plaything for the industrialists, given free hand to inflict a disastrous social and foreign policy on the nation.

Sadly, there’s one difference I wish the Tea Party had, but does not. While the Tea Party itself is not a racist movement, white supremacist groups report that they have excellent recruitment opportunities whenever the Tea Party stages a protest. That means that although the Tea Party itself does not advocate a racist agenda, its ranks are shot through with radical, racist elements.

Could a Tea Party candidate win, even if a majority of the nation was opposed to the Tea Party itself? Absolutely. If people are mad enough at Obama to either vote against him or not vote at all, a GOP led by the Tea Party could find itself in control of the White House and both branches of the legislature.

The man that had the nerve to deny federal aid to help pay for teachers is now looking for that same federal aid to help put out the fires in his state. Rick Perry. What a disappointment.

Perry, I thought you were actually going to be the guy to get Texas to secede, you were such a states’ rights kind of guy. You really stuck it to all those money-grubbing bureaucrats we call “teachers” when you told ’em to take a hike and that Washington’s dollars weren’t welcome here. Now you’ve done a 180 and gone hat in hand to the White House and begged a DEMOCRAT, of all people, for a charity handout.

Sir, you have insulted The Great State of Texas. One way or another, you have insulted the state I call home. Either you should have cared enough about the children of the state to not make them pawns in your power politics or you should stay consistent and let Bastrop burn for all your pandering, pathetic, and just plain poor so-called principles.

Perry, I hope Obama tells you “No.”

Then takes a picture of the look on your face.

Then he says, “Psych! Just kidding.” After that, he pulls out a sign and says, “There’s just one condition: you have to wear this at the next debate.” The sign reads:

I TOOK AID FROM BARACK OBAMA AND I *LIKED* IT!

Where there’s a will, there’s a way. It’s not that Perry is the sole rogue in this case, either. These methods are available to all the candidates.

What is the impact of all this money on the candidates? It means the influence of people with that kind of money to invest in a campaign are going to get something tangible for that investment, plain and simple. Opensecrets.org is a great resource for looking at where all the politicians are getting their money from. You can see the major contributors and their politicians of choice. It helps to explain why, in the middle of a deep economic crisis, the boys in the Capitol seem to be more concerned with protecting Goldman Sachs than you or I.

Bank of America made an offer to buy a big chunk of Rick Perry. This is how it’s done, although not usually on camera while the sound is rolling.

The man telling Mr. Perry that Bank of America will help him is James Mahoney, BoA’s directory of public policy. Since Perry didn’t say something like, “Get thee behind me, Satan!” or “Us Texans don’t need no WALL STREET banks to help us out!” or “How about you take your dirty money elsewhere!”, one can only conclude that Mr. Perry will be happy to receive some funding from BoA, most likely in exchange for smiling favorably upon proposals that they place before him.

The going rate for Perry is $25,000 per year, on average. I presume a President Perry would command a higher fee, commensurate with his greater station in politics.

Is Obama better than Bush? The same? Worse? Given that quite a few historians have already rated Bush II as the worst president ever, it’d take a tall order to actually hit lower than Dubya. I honestly don’t think Obama is worse than Bush. But is he actually better?

First of all, Obama is a much better public speaker, with or without a teleprompter. Hands down, Obama can win a diction and rhetoric trophy over Bush II. Obama’s abilities as a public speaker do help a great deal in maintaining his public image, no question about that. But we have to go beyond that public image to arrive at the reality of his presidency.

Obama continued the US detention center in Guantanamo Bay. To me, that’s on the level of “same as.” Obama changed a Bush policy on abortions, but it wasn’t a far-reaching one. I don’t see it as any real difference. Personally, I do not want anyone to have an abortion, but I also know that the issue is by no means resolved as neatly as that in the USA. It seems as though Presidents will give us six of one and a half dozen of the other when it comes to abortion policy. Looking over the rest of Obama’s policies during his presidency, I’m not seeing many that jump out… until…

Ah! Health care reform! I’ll say this about that: at least it wasn’t an invasion of Afghanistan to help out buddies over at Chevron. Until the Taliban refused to concede on the trans-Afghan pipeline, they were solid citizens providing a firm hand on the government of Afghanistan. Once the negotiations broke down, the USA prepared to go into Afghanistan and secure enough real estate to get that pipeline built. Since the US invasion of Afghanistan, it’s had record opium harvests, with last year’s harvest being off due to adverse weather. The drug lords control large forces in Afghanistan that shift from one side to the other, depending on local political realities. One of Bush’s gravest errors as a president was the invasion of Afghanistan, followed by his invasion of Iraq.

But Obama has maintained operations in Afghanistan and expanded US involvement to include Libya and Syria, with Iran not too far off. These are mistakes, as well. We have no plan of ending the conflict in Afghanistan that does not involve letting drug lords have close to free run of the country. Iraq remains a mess, but now it has fewer US troops getting in the way of the bullets: Afghanistan will be the same once the USA reduces its presence there.

The world likes Obama more than they do Bush, but the armed forces dislike Obama more than they did Bush. As far as foreign policy goes, I’m going to say Obama’s about the same as Bush. Bin Laden died on Obama’s watch, but Obama didn’t pull the trigger. Neither did George “Mission Accomplished” Bush, for that matter.

So what about that health care? I think it was a wasted opportunity. Obama’s team caved in to the big donors, the insurance, pharmaceutical, and health corporations. Those guys produced the final bill, not Obama. People blame him for it, but they fail to account for the fact that it’s the richest of the rich that ultimately gave us the health care regime that exists now. It was impossible under Bush, and it’s more confusing after Obama. Again, a wash.

How about the economy? OK, Bush II picked up a national debt at the start of 2001 at just over or around $5.8 trillion, according to the US Treasury Department. That page shows the debt on 9/30, so there’s about a third of a year between that figure and Inauguration Day. The spending and tax cuts of the Bush II era took the US debt to $10.0 trillion by 9/30/2008, but I remember checking the debt on the day Obama took office and it was just under double what it was when Bush took office, already over $11 trillion.

$3.2 trillion of Bush’s debt increase was spread over 6 years. After 9/30/2007, another pair of trillions got added due to the collapse in the US economy. That’s a very rapid increase in a very short time, and goes right along with Reinhart and Rogoff’s research that shows in the event of an asset-devaluation bubble, the national debt for a country increases roughly 80% over the course of the crisis. The debt will hit $18-$20 trillion before the USA is done with this economic malaise, barring a partisan effort to thwart the tides of history.

That does bring me to the efforts to curtail the debt: yes, that should be done. Just not now. The economy needs to run its course, and ordering it to not get any more debt is like trying to yell at a tidal wave about to obliterate you that you don’t approve of that sort of thing. The process will take its course and it’s best to get out of the way so you’re alive to clean up afterward. It’s a shame that the Bush administration, with Congress, increased the debt so much, but now that we’re in the current mess, we have to draw the line at a level trillions higher than where the debt is now before we can start to roll it back.

So back to the economy: neither Bush nor Obama held the financial elites responsible for the economic catastrophe they created. Both did not press Congress for more effective reform of the financial sector and neither has produced better enforcement of existing regulations. Dodd-Frank is barely a beginning to restoring order in the financial sector. Both presidents have been unable and/or unwilling to tell the big boys on Wall Street to quit gaming the US economy, so they’re roughly the same on the matter of the economy.

One should note why deficits rise so dramatically in times of financial crisis. Basically, people lose their jobs so they have greater demand on government aid. Also, with no jobs, they pay less taxes on their income, their incomes being zero. Spending goes up and revenue goes down and the deficit gap widens. This is why Keynes said it was a good idea for governments to spend more in hard times. Keynes also said governments should pay off those debts in good times, a point that both Democrats and Republican presidents and Congresses have ignored to our current detriment.

I’ve heard a comparison of Bush’s average unemployment to Obama’s, and that is statistical deviltry. The US economy lost 2.6 million jobs in all of 2008, when the financial crisis began. Bush could not turn back that tide, and neither could Obama. Although unemployment is down now from its high of 10.1% (and no, that’s not counting the discouraged workers… I’m leaving them out because the numbers are still bad without them…), unemployment is about to get much worse as the banking crisis in Europe continues to unwind, affecting banks in the USA. We’re going back to recession and this time around may look a lot like 1931’s slide into 1932. Obama can’t do much about that: if Congress – Tea Partiers in particular – tie his hands with fiscal policy, we’re sunk. We’re already at the limits of the effectiveness of monetary policy, so there’s nothing left to do but watch this economic thing take a deeper toll on the USA as it proceeds to the endgame.

Obama has a 26% current approval rating on his handling of the economy, which puts him in the ballpark with Bush’s overall rating, but still above it. Given that the economy is going to get much worse, I think that number is going to go much lower. One should note, however, that Bush’s numbers went down from a 90%+ approval rating after 9/11/2001, with spikes at the Iraq War and Saddam Hussein’s capture. Once the economic crisis started, Bush’s ratings were firmly in the toilet, as well. Obama’s current overall approval rating is still around 42%, which is about right for a president coming to the end of his second term. He’ll have a spike around re-election time unless the economy is in a major depression.

So what about the loss of the US’ credit rating? Honestly, I don’t get these ratings agencies. None of them properly rated the CDS and MBS stuff flying around. They pocketed fat commissions to rate that garbage AAA and ignored the fundamental risks of those assets. That led to the collapse of the economy. Now the USA has a AA+ rating, but France still has a AAA? There are other corporations, municipalities, and nations with worse economies than the USA that still enjoy a AAA rating, so go figure. And is it Obama’s fault that the downgrade happened? When I read the downgrade report, it blamed Congress and the President collectively. The Tea Party was the most belligerent faction of Congress, threatening even their own party discipline over the debt ceiling deal. Obama had nothing to do with the chaos in the GOP’s ranks.

Obama’s even taking heat over gas prices. Yes, they’ve spiked recently, but they’re not as high as they were at the tail end of the Bush administration. Gas Buddy shows a 6-year price history, and one can see the volatility in gas prices. Economic uncertainty goes with spikes in prices, except for that sharp dip that started in September 2008.

That dip went with the period between the bailout and the first wave of quantitative easing. That dip was not a good thing: it was deflation entering the US economy. Deflation destroys economies in its path. Bernanke, Bush, and Obama did all that they could to head off deflation. Yes, that may produce an inflationary situation, and I’ll be thankful for that if it happens. Because if we have deflation, we’re going to have the Second Great Depression on our hands.

Whose fault will that be? We’ll try to blame a president, but it’ll really be the fault of the financial elites that gamed the economy for their benefit and our ruin. They benefit when we try and prove one president was better than another, when really both were about the same: pawns in their hands.

Rick Perry has been governor of Texas for a long time. Now he’s the darling of some GOP boosters who think he’s the man to become president in 2012. Having lived under Mr. Perry for so long, my gut reaction is a Perry presidency would be worse than George Bush II. But are my emotions getting in the way of the facts? Could it be that Perry would be a better man for the job than anyone else?

Perry supported Al Gore’s presidential campaign in 1988, but went Republican in 1989, around a time when it seemed like being Democrat was the kiss of death in Texas politics. I call that opportunism. In 2002, Perry increased Texas health funding by $6 billion, and he’s been hacking away at that amount ever since. He did cap malpractice damages, lowering Texas malpractice insurance rates. Perry also denied that Texas was in a recession in 2009 – which I find to be particularly cruel, as that was the year we started to notice people using termination notices as proof of residency when they enrolled children in school.

Perry claims that Texas created a lot of jobs: Well, Texas has the second largest population of any state and California’s in the toilet, so, yeah, it’s going to create a lot of jobs. The state’s unemployment rate is around the median for the 50 states, and its rate of minimum-wage jobs is 9.5%, compared to the national rate of 6%. Texas’ rate is the highest in the nation, as well. Over a fourth of Texas’ population does not have health insurance, while the national average is 17%. That’s a poverty issue: Perry has essentially presided over the deepening poverty of the people of his state, much as other governors have done. Perry’s nothing special as a governor. He certainly doesn’t have some kind of magic bullet that needs to be used on a national level. He is, at best, unremarkable.

Like other politicians, Perry has been venal in promoting his donors over other candidates for jobs and contracts. On average, paying Perry $25,000 per year is enough to secure some very juicy benefits and state contracts. As president, I’m sure his rate would increase. I don’t think he’d be better than Obama’s promotion of friends and big donors: at best, he’d be the same. Pretending that being a venal Republican is better than being a venal Democrat is an exercise in lying to one’s self, and should not be done.

Perry did get in bed with Countrywide, showing how he’s ready to ride closely with the people responsible for the looting of America, kind of like the oil industry. That’s why Perry says global climate change isn’t proven. If Perry was getting huge money from the insurance industry, he’d be a staunch believer in the solid science behind climate change.

As a governor, Perry slashed taxes and increased government spending on both health and education. He rode a general boom in land and property prices to provide the funds for his programs. When the economy headed south, he chose to slash both of those budgets, costing the state around 100,000 teachers – which shows how good he is at not creating jobs. Texan public schools under Perry are worse than ever: they rank at or near the bottom in national accountability standards.

Meanwhile, Perry was more than happy to use Texas state funds to pay for his tour of the Far East. He suppressed the news in Texas, claiming that access to his travel expenses would constitute a security risk. This shows that he’s ready to lie to cover his butt. At best, that’s just like every other average politico in the USA. Again, Perry’s nobody special.

Perry has not only criticized the 16th Amendment – Income Tax – but also the 17th – Direct Election of Senators. The 17th Amendment places election of senators in the hands of easily bribable state legislatures. OK, so doing away with it would make for cheaper Senate elections, but somehow that doesn’t seem like a step in the right direction.

For those hoping for Perry to have a streak of nativism, oddly Mr. Perry supports providing education and other benefits to the children of undocumented workers. While I find a ray of sunshine there, I’m sure this is a black mark against Perry in the minds of his core supporters.

Perry recently saw fit to make veiled threats against the Fed Chairman, Ben Bernanke, which serves to make Fed policy more politicized than before. A politicized central bank makes poor monetary policy, so Perry’s comments make for poor governance.

While Perry wants to have reduced federal involvement in some aspects of our lives, he’s very much in favor of using federal power to limit other aspects of our lives. To me, it’s as twisted as the Southerners before the Civil War demanding that federal laws be nullified when it came to tariffs, but that the federal government should have super-authority to return fugitive slaves. Again, this sort of thing smacks of opportunism. When it came to using the government to interfere in the lives of teenage girls, a nice donation from Merck got Mr. Perry to demand that every teenage girl in the state get inoculated with Merck’s HPV vaccine.

What seems dangerous to me was his willingness to ignore the Supreme Court ruling banning state-sponsored prayer in schools. That sort of Jacksonian disregard for the court smacks of authoritarianism, not freedom. Sure, it’s fun for all the people who believe his way. What about the people who don’t? I’m one of those, and I have to confess a discomfort for the way he’s used the state to essentially favor one religion over my own.

Speaking of injustice, Mr. Perry refused to pardon or even commute the sentence of a man scheduled to be executed, who was convicted on the basis of a severely flawed forensic report. Worse, while a Texas forensics board was reviewing the case, Perry changed the membership of the board and packed it with his supporters, so they would ignore the evidence that proved Texas was going to execute an innocent man on Perry’s watch. This sort of government oppression is supposed to be what Perry is against, yet it’s what he’s bringing to the party.

Mr. Perry is unremarkable and as venal as the rest of the crooks in politics at best, and is a populist that brooks no rival to his own power, a real Willie Stark, at worst. He’s Christian until the money shows up, kinda like Judas.