Tea Party, Coffee Party—next up, The Wine Party

Commentary by Kay B. Day

The Coffee Party website features a video with a young female spokesperson explaining the Party's origins as snow falls all around.Having failed to derail the various Tea Party groups around the land, ‘progressives’ have come up with a new tactic—start a Coffee Party as a response to those “obstructionists.” In the video explaining the group’s origins, the narrator said Party members “believe we are in the majority.” As snow falls all around—I have to wonder why it seemed a good idea to film this in the snow because the kid must’ve been freezing—she talks about diversity and being “completely comfortable with the changing demographics of our country.”

Ironically, the speaker also chastises those who would use those changing demographics for “political gain” by using “fear and anxiety.”

Hopefully the day will come when the speaker realizes both major parties have used the issue for political gain—the fact the government is importing 10 times the number of H-2B workers from a single country compared to other countries should be grounds enough for a thinking person to wonder why.

And that same thinking person could then take a look at the large corporations whose pursuit of cheap labor has had a dramatic impact on communities, education, healthcare and crime. The Center for Immigration Studies has an excellent backgrounder on the explosion in H-2B guestworkers, and the backgrounder reflects a federal government catering directly to large corporations at the US taxpayers' expense. The backgrounder isn't written from an advocacy position; the report primarily crunches numbers and data.

One example—a large landscaping company imported 3,872 workers in 2008. Wage range for those workers was $6.65-9.68. Out of that amount, the worker would have to reimburse the employer for housing.

Just for fun ask a Mom and Pop landscape company if they can afford all the legal fees to import what amounts to slave labor.

Or ask an American citizen who's unemployed if he might look for a job in the hotel, machining/welding or ski resort industry. Those industries are at the top of H-2B employers.

Companies seeking increases in H-2B workers have had dramatic impacts on federal policy under both Democrat and Republican administrations.

As our Coffee Party spokesperson shivered in the snow, it was obvious she is genuinely concerned about her country, as many of the rest of us are. On the flip side of her coin, more than 150 years ago, the political Party known as the Locofocos was born in backlash against the national bank, monopolies and federal cronyism. That Party dissolved but the name is so catchy it’s a wonder no one’s resurrected it in these troubled times.

In the US, the Republican and Democrat Parties prevail over the smaller Libertarian, Constitution and Green Party.

Speaking earnestly and looking directly at the camera, the Coffee Party spokesperson, who for some reason looks familiar to me,  talked about how divided Americans are—“Our process has broken down.”

I’d say it’s rather the opposite. For the first time, perhaps, Americans are intensely interested in process despite what some leading Democrats claim. Technology puts information readily available that our forebears didn’t have access to. Washington remains clueless about how informed Main Street really is.

The new Party did inspire a trivial question—will the likes of Keith Olbermann roll their eyes and call these people ‘coffee baggers?’

It remains to be seen whether the Coffee Party will have an impact on Main Street. The group strikes me as an organization of young idealists who sincerely believe ‘progressivism’ is the answer to society’s problems despite the fact progressivism, in the hands of both major Parties in the past, has created some of the biggest problems our country has faced in its short, remarkable history, rendering the US the largest charity in the world and creating a welfare state that may eventually be the largest in world history.

I’m looking to start a Wine Party. We may not get much done but we could surely have fun letting the good times roll. Besides, I like the sound of ‘Wine Baggers’ almost as much as I like the sound of Locofocos.

I'm still trying to figure out where I've seen that young woman.