Politics

On ABC’s This Week, Vice President Joe Biden stated that he does not think the ultra-conservative Tea Party is racist. Taking a page from the Whoopi Goldberg-Mel Gibson debacle, he stated, “I wouldn’t characterize the Tea Party as racist,” but “there are individuals who are either members of or on the periphery of some of…

In his first campaign appearance, South Carolina’s surprising U.S. Senate candidate Alvin Greene made his first public speech, in which he tackled education, jobs and justice. He started off with a joke and moved into those issues quite quickly, rattling off statistics. In the 6 1/2-minute speech given at the local NAACP’s monthly meeting, Greene…

Tea Party Express spokesman Mark Williams and his organization have been kicked to the curb by the National Tea Party Federation, the loose coalition of organizations around the conservative movement. The federation says it ousted Williams’ group, a Sacramento, Calif.-based political action committee, because it refused to rebuke him for his comments about the NAACP.…

Since January of last year, worries about the ballooning deficit and the Obama administration’s spending excesses have been driving the polls and the political debate. The only thing that seems likely to prevent massive conservative victories in this year’s midterm elections would be missteps by key leaders within the movement. Over the last week, we…

It’s common knowledge that, for myriad historical reasons, America’s black-white wealth gap is atrocious. In 2007 white households had 15 times the total wealth of African-American households. And this year a study showed that median wealth for a single black woman is just $100; for a single white woman, that sum jumps to $41,000. Exacerbating…

I regularly receive e-mails from the Tea Party movement. Sometimes I delete them, but mostly I read them. They’re interesting. Here’s a sample of some of the statements contained in the Tea Party e-mails I’ve received: The Army of Darkness will not be defeated easily; they lust for control of our beloved Nation. The guy…

In a lot of ways, I could be a Tea Party recruit. I’m a middle-class guy who grumbles every time I pay my mortgage. I’m a fan of paying state and local taxes for things I can see — traffic lights and libraries — and annoyed by federal income taxes that seem to get spent…

Finally, someone makes an interesting argument about the existence of the Tea Party and the complexity of dealing with white supremacists who wish to use the group as a platform for extreme racism. Some argue that the Tea Party is a white supremacist group, while others argue that it is not but attracts people with…