Chupacabra Report

News that Gets My Goat..

Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner testified before Congress’ Joint Economic Committee yesterday.

Rep. Kevin Brady of The Woodlands, ranking Republican on the committee, is a staunch conservative, going so far as to get himself convicted of drunk driving, the better to emulate his heroes George Bush and Dick Cheney. Yesterday he called on Geithner to resign.

“For the sake of our jobs, will you step down?” Brady asked. “The public has lost all confidence in your ability to do the job, and it is reflecting on your president.”

Republicans “gave this president an economy falling off the cliff,” Geithner told Brady, “I can’t take responsibility for the legacy of crises you bequeathed the country.”

The “worst financial crisis in generations” happened after “almost a decade, certainly eight years, of basic neglect of basic public goods, in health care, in education, in public infrastructure, in how we use energy,” Geithner said.

-Well, I’m glad that somebody’s saying it. The GOP is desperate to prevent this administration from addressing the crises we face, whatever the cost, be it national security, financial peril or public heath, in order to gain advantage in the next election. This so they can take back the reins of government and do Lord Knows What.
(http://www.smirkingchimp.com/thread/24918)

Remember this bit I ran recently from an Atlantic Monthly blog:

"One analogy I've thought of often, aligned with your interests, is an economic analogy of an aerodynamic stall. When commerical credit froze and consumers reduced spending, the prevailing economic "lift" was gone. Stall! Conservative knee-jerk reactions for tax cuts were the equivalent of "pulling up" on the stick- intuitive but deadly. Obama's expert advice was to gain speed by spending (diving), even at the cost of altitude (deficit/debt). High unemployment was destined from the moment the stall occurred. Only when sufficient airspeed/angle of attack (spending) had been reached could the economy begin to pull up, and the unemployment would be analogous to the altitude lost even after the decision to finaly "pull up" had been made. Passenger relief (consumer confidence) would follow long after the immediate recovery (i.e., GDP), and no one would be "satisfied" until the plane came in for a (economic) "soft landing."

The Republicans are willing to crash the plane, for their purposes, if we only let them.

Sarah Palin’s book is finally out, if you live in fly-over country she may soon be hawking it at a bookstore near you.

Myself, I’m not interested in her happy bullshit, or whatever her ghostwriter has to say. I just want to point out that, 1.25 million dollar advance notwithstanding, it’s common for books by celebutards to be best-sellers and remaindered at the same time. Amazon has been selling this book priced at nine dollars for weeks. Today it is priced at $14.50; half price. This is possible because at a certain rarified level, right-wingers take care of their own. Daddy Warbucks all over will open their checkbooks and buy boatloads of this book to pass out to illiterates or send to the landfill, doesn’t matter, it’s a “best-seller.”

If Palin really wants to prove that she’s a serious player, she ought to go on Jeopardy, they’re running celebrity contests the third Tuesday of every month now. I recently saw cable news bozo Wolf Blitzer get his ass kicked by comedian Andy Richter. It was hysterical. Blitzer finished double jeopardy in the red, proving that he’s no David Brinkley.

I wouldn’t care who Palin plays against, as long as there’s at least one comic in the mix. “The Great Satan” David Letterman would be choice, but any comic, the leftier the better. Michael McKean, Harry Shearer, and Al Franken have all won on Jeopardy. Tina Fey?

Chupacabra Report

News That Gets My Goat..

I hear that Republican buttcake Senator Tom Coburn of Jokelahoma is threatening to require the senate clerk to read the entire healthcare bill aloud in order to stall action on the bill. Apparently it takes a unanimous vote by the senate to stop this nonsense, and senators can call for such a reading every time an amendment is offered.

Damn; I know that the senate serves as a check on crazy moves by the wind-blown goniffs in the house. This is a fine and noble purpose but there must be some procedural remedy for such gridlock or else we’d still be mired in the eighteenth century.

Here’s hoping that Reed and Biden can sharpen their gavels and put a stop to this baloney. If the GOP trogs in the senate want to filibuster, let them stay up all night and talk themselves hoarse like Jesse Helms did trying to stop civil rights legislation, at least that will stop them prowling around the servants quarters at night.

-This from Susan at http://www.kissmybigbluebutt.com/

November 17 - Oh lookie, y'all. The Congressional Frat House is no longer tax exempt.
Residents of the C Street Christian fellowship house will no longer benefit from a loophole that had allowed the house's owners to avoid paying property taxes.

Previously, the house -- despite being home to numerous lawmakers -- had been tax exempt, because it was classified as a church. That arrangement had allowed the building's owner, the secretive international Christian organization The Family, to charge significantly below market rents to its residents. In recent year, Senators John Ensign (R-NV), Tom Coburn (R-OK), Sam Brownback (R-KS) and Jim DeMint (R-SC), and Reps. Zach Wamp (R-TN), Bart Stupak (D-MI) and Mike Doyle (D-PA) have all reportedly called C Street home.

A church? A church? Well, I guess paying taxes and extortion fees is just asking too much, huh? The boys of Sigma Epsilon Chi are going to have to pay their taxes just like everybody else. (Thanks to Carl up north for the heads-up.)

Olson Opponent?

I was at the Rice v. Navy game last month to see Pete Olson grammstanding over the moon rock that the Kennedy family donated to the university. I heard him promise to support NASA so that he could come back and give Rice a mars rock someday.

Tonight I was catching up on The Daily Show and saw video of Michelle Bachmann’s tea party on the Capitol steps last week, the one with the big picture of stacked holocaust victims labeled “national socialist health care.” Pete Olson was there too, pandering to Dick Armey’s stooges.

This got me wondering, are we going to be stuck with Olson for twenty years like we were with DeLay? Who have we got to run against him? I like Richard Morrison, but question whether he can win. Besides, Fort Bend needs him on the Commissioner‘s Court. Who else is out there for us? I can’t see running Nick Lampson again, there’s too many republicans in the Democratic Party already. Is Ginny Matranga rested and ready?

Crime and Punishment

The Supreme Court heard arguments today challenging the right of states to sentence juveniles to life in prison. The court ruled in 2005 that is “cruel and unusual punishment” to sentence juveniles to death. The cases before the court today both come from Florida, which has over seventy inmates serving life terms for non-homicide crimes committed as juveniles.

Sullivan v. Florida seeks parole for Joe Sullivan, who was convicted twenty years ago for raping a seventy-two-year-old woman. He was convicted on testimony provided by two older accomplices, who then received lesser sentences. His lawyer, who filed no appeals in the case, was later disbarred.

Florida is a draconian Bible-belt state much like our own. This story reminded me of The Chronicle’s Bill King’s story Saturday about Baptist preacher Emmett Soloman, who runs a friend in need program for some of the 50 to 100 ex-offenders who exit TDC everyday with $50 and a bus ticket. King writes..

“At the rate we put people in prison in Texas we need to be concerned about what happens when they are released. Worldwide, the incarceration rate is about 160 individuals for every 100,000 people. The second highest incarceration rate is Russia at about 650. The highest is the United States at 750. In Texas, the rate is about 1,000. That is, at any given time, about one person in 100 in Texas is in a prison or jail, six times higher than the world average and higher than even the world's worst dictatorships. Even if we stop putting people in prison at the current rates, we will be releasing 20,000 to 30,000 prisoners each year for many years to come just from TDC. Many thousands more will be released from county and city jails.

“Most of those released do not have a family to take them in. Solomon told me that only about 5 percent of the men released are met by family members. The odds are heavily stacked against those with no support system. With almost no chance of finding a job or a decent place to live, most fall back into trouble within a few years. TDC studies show that about one in three is back in prison within three years. If you extend the time frame to five years and include other prisons and jails, the recidivism rate is more likely 60 percent to 70 percent. Since most of these inmates are also fathers, long absent from serving as any positive role model for their children, the cycle will likely be handed down to the next generation. The fact that Texas has one of the nation's highest incarceration rates and still has three cities with violent crime rates in the top 10 in the nation suggests that what we are doing now is not working.”

Crooks and Liars’ Blogroll had this letter to Atlantic Monthly’s James Fallows:

"I'm really confused by how the Obama administration has handled the narrative and voter expectations for this recession. I clearly understand that they had to carefully balance early 2009 dire warnings against economic pessimism, while making a case for the stimulus package, etc. But once the stimulus was passed, I believe that they should have boldly stated how bad things really were, how their economic policies were the correct choices (even acknowledging Krugman's critiques of "too little"), and emphasizing that even the best possible management of the 2008 economic trainwreck would see significantly increasing unemployment as a lagging indicator.

"One analogy I've thought of often, aligned with your interests, is an economic analogy of an aerodynamic stall. When commerical credit froze and consumers reduced spending, the prevailing economic "lift" was gone. Stall! Conservative knee-jerk reactions for tax cuts were the equivalent of "pulling up" on the stick- intuitive but deadly. Obama's expert advice was to gain speed by spending (diving), even at the cost of altitude (deficit/debt). High unemployment was destined from the moment the stall occurred. Only when sufficient airspeed/angle of attack (spending) had been reached could the economy begin to pull up, and the unemployment would be analogous to the altitude lost even after the decision to finaly "pull up" had been made. Passenger relief (consumer confidence) would follow long after the immediate recovery (i.e., GDP), and no one would be "satisfied" until the plane came in for a (economic) "soft landing."

"There are probably numerous logical errors with this analogy [JF note: seems pretty good to me], but the simple point is this: If "Joe six-pack" clearly understands that Obama saved his economic life, while Conservatives would have driven the plane into the ground, he's more likely to appreciate and reward the unpalatable choices that Obama made. His appreciation would be enhanced if he understood all along that the pilot had no choice but to lose altitude, and the pilot explained that altitude (jobs) would take a long time to regain. This administration sorely needs a narrative that citizens can grasp and accept, otherwise the cynical partisan naysayers will continue to fill the void....”

Newt Gingrich still thinks he’s gonna be president. This giant of the GOP, one of their top prospects, a serial philanderer and hypocrite, a man with no moral compass; instead he has some sort of wheel of fortune going.
He’s just gone head to head against Sarah Palin of Alaska and Dick Armey of Texas over who was to be anointed the super-deluxe conservative Representative of New York’s 23rd District; but the voters instead elected their first Democratic Congressman since the nineteenth century.

See the resemblance?

Reviews: The Sons of Hercules/Snowbryd

I know I’m as old as the amount of hope I’ve lost.

Sometimes I wonder if things have truly changed for the worse, and not just changed. Like I have to bag my own groceries because I don’t want kids who have become mentally retarded by the constant exposure of depleted uranium, microwaves, and rapid fire electronic images mishandling my food purchases. Like the retired Castle Hills colonel screaming at children to get off his lawn, I have been hollering to an embarrassing degree about the death of the American music industry. The thing that makes me especially hopeless as I write this is that the answer to the question about what to do is so clear and yet unheard. But you have to keep hoping or you’re dead.

Before I talk about two great musical groups, (and their recent records) it would be helpful to back up a little and look at what has happened before that shaped these artists and, in turn, how they managed to shape things in return. Both The Sons of Hercules in A Different Kind of Ugly, and Snowbyrd with Diosado pay great homage to the legendary Taco Land, in loving and reverent ways.

Ram Ayala was a jolly old reprobate who ran the ramshackle tavern in the heart of the upper San Antonio river area, near the old Pearl Brewery, that was prime for River Walk development - the life blood of the city's economy. His bar was surrounded by a community of homeless people who had lived there for years. I knew a lady named Josie Flores, a retarded dwarf, who stayed in a rusty old jelly bean trailer with her man Joe, who beat her when he was drunk. She’d wash clothes in the river and survived that way, and was one of many such folk who didn’t panhandle, or make trouble, and who needed to be there because it was relatively safe. Ram was always providing support for the people there in exchange for odd jobs, so the area was always clean and free of serious crime.

The place was cherished by musicians as a forum where anybody could play, and had national acts stop in town for shows as well. If a band didn’t have any money to get home, Ram would give them money, tacos, and a case of beer to help them on their way.

Then some asshole pumped a slug into his stomach and then shot two of his close friends, one of whom died later. The timing was odd. There were sure to be no cops around because of a big game in the dome. It was then that the legend was born and the myths continue.

Look, San Antonio has always been a crooked town. Always. The powers at be always wanted that land. Those people had to go. If one is to believe the allegations of Otto Koeller, the Pearl heir who claims he was kidnapped and locked in the State Hospital for the insane and continually drugged while the city and county stole his land, then it is likely to be believed that the death of Ram Ayala was an assination to get his property, and clear out the homeless. Even if not true, the end result was the same.

The community of artists, musicians, and the lovers of music and art felt robbed and the tragedy of his death remains to this day.

The two times historically when music was on the ropes, 1975 and 1989, it was saved by youth returning to the basics. Making music without rules. That is what Rock N’ Roll is: rebellion. The punks saved it, twice. One man I know of was there on the front lines; in the trenches, fighting hand to hand. His name is Frank Pugliese. His band is The Sons of Hercules.

When the Sex Pistols did their second and last American tour in 1978, Frank was there shocking the public in The Vamps, who opened up for the Pistols at their Austin show. By then punk had opened up a flood of new music from new wave to techno, and turned the nauseas wave of disco and art rock back into the darkness where it belonged. Not completely defeated., the forces of stifling commercial banality threatened again to suck the life out of rock in the late eighties, only to be repulsed by the second punk movement, called “Hard Core,” The Sons of Hercules, served up ample portions to a starving audience of grateful fans.

Today the musical horizon is bleak. The mind numbing sterility of music has left the people in utter thorazine-tinged babbling catatonia. As kids use a fractured system of electronic downloads, and remain at home to consume their media, there is seemingly no community to shoulder a movement that would return creativity and energy to mass culture.

The Sons of Hercules are here. But can they fight?

A Different Kind of Ugly, as they say in their press, makes no great departure from their time-tested formula. You can hear at first run that this true, to a point. What has changed over time is they have become very, very good at what they do. The playing and production is impressively sure-handed. Dale Holon’s guitars are poised, powerful and polished, but still full of energy and verve. The rhythm section is as strong as anything you’d want. And Frank Pugliese is more Iggy than Iggy is Iggy.

They have helped make punk an American musical genre just as real as any other. Like anything that sells, punk has been bought and sold and raped senseless and is currently branded as “Neo-Punk.” Bands like Sons of Hercules are master practitioners of the art form they helped create as much as B.B King is to the blues, or Merle Haggard is to country western. Punk has established a musical and thematic orthodoxy they can claim to have carved and made rule. Attempts to pigeon-hole them for the sake of media promotions are stupid. They are the purist of the pure. It is like comparing Dylan to Springsteen for the sake of sales. Would you rather listen to Stevie Ray Vaughn or Albert Collins?

They cannot be dirivitive of themselves because they are the standard.

The Sons of Hercules are the Texas Godfathers of Punk and a national treasure.

My feelings about Snowbyrd’s new CD Diosado, come straight from my heart.

This record is, in part, a tribute to Manny Castillo, their drummer, who died of cancer before the release. This is to Manny,

Your drum playing is breath-taking, without over-shadowing the music. We saw you and the Lutz’s play at Taco Land all the time. But you guys were not just a bunch of jerks playing badly, loudly. You are a talented group beyond the norm; standouts in composition and pure creativity.

A lot of people seem obsessed with finding some way to categorize you by comparing you to some other band, which is lame. It’s so simple, really. Snowbyrd is original, and originality can never be categorized. When listening the first time, I did hear the 13th Floor Elevators screaming at me to put my doobie down and pay fucking attention to what y’all are doing. Thus chastened I was enlightened.

I always honor bands like yours who are unafraid to go the full monty by creating a total musical album that incorporates theme, style and concept. This record goes big, and stays there. It is challenging to the listener. That’s the way it should be.

If people don’t get you, fuck ‘em.

You might have known how sick you were when you making the record, but it doesn’t show, with you or anybody else. It is a suitable tribute to your life. You were much loved and will be remembered. Your musical legacy lives on. Good job.

“Light It Up,” is just plain bad-ass, and stays on my playlist.

p.s. how did you get all those bass players on one bus?

R.I.P.

To the rest of you, Taco Land is gone, and the space is all covered with tourists. Obviously, by making sure the place had a sound track of sorts, Ram made a big dent in things in what would otherwise be a forgotten story.

I hope that some place, kids who are growing up believing that there is no future find something to make a loud noise with to voice their rage, and to let the world know they’re here and that they matter.

Keep hope alive.

Serendipiday

I motored out to Aggieland yesterday under partly sunny skies; much better-than-expected weather. The bright day softened the culture shock for me until I stopped to browse in an army surplus store and found where all those stars and bars bumper stickers come from. If you’ve ever thought about ‘white flight’ and wondered where they all fled to, this might be the place. I stopped to visit Dickie Flatt but he wasn’t home, at least I didn’t see him around. Maybe he took me for a revenooer, come to ask him about that Swiss tax shelter Phil Gramm sold him.

On the way home, I pulled off the highway to look at an historical marker, and it was a doozy. Here’s the text..

Primus Kelly
A faithful Negro slave. Came to nearby Courtney, Grimes County in 1851 with his master, John W. S. West from North Carolina. West was a prominent and wealthy pioneer planter and landowner. At the outbreak of the Civil War, West sent Kelly to take care of his three sons-- Robert M., Richard and John Haywood-- who joined the famous Terry's Texas Rangers, where they served with distinction. Kelly was not content to wait on his charges but joined them in battle, firing his own musket and cap and ball pistol. Twice Kelly brought to Texas the wounded Richard, twice took him to the front again. After war, bought a small farm near Marse Robert, raised a large family and prospered. Died in 1890s. The courage and loyalty of Kelly was typical of most Texas Negro slaves. Hundreds went to war with their masters. Many operated the farms and ranches of soldiers away at war, producing food, livestock, cotton and clothing for the Confederacy. Others, did outside work to support their master's families. They protected homes from Indians, bandits and deserters and did community guard and patrol duty. At war's end, most slaves, like Primus Kelly, became useful and productive citizens of Texas.
1965

-This marker is a piece of history in and of itself: I can’t imagine such a thing today anywhere north of Paraguay. The real ending of the last line is implied, something like “useful and productive citizens of Texas, not like that troublemaker Martin Luther King.”

I found another sidetrack on the way home, stopping at Cut Rate, the world’s largest tackle shop. I got to talking to one of the sales crew, a retired gent who once fished with Bob Brister, granddaddy of the Houston Chronicle Outdoors staff. I heard some stories and tried to mine him for fishing tips. He pointed out the window at a formation of fighter planes flying low over the south beltway, and then moved on to help another customer. I finished up my window shopping and headed home.

Driving down the Gulf Freeway, I saw a mess of brakelights ahead of me and exited on Scarsdale to Old Galveston Road to avoid the slowdown. This took me past Ellington Field, where The Blue Angels, the U S Navy Flight Demonstration Squadron were preparing for the Wings Over Houston Air Show. I pulled off the road and watched for a half an hour. Those six planes were everywhere, appearing and disappearing, converging and diverging at supersonic speed, rattling windows throughout Clear Lake.

An awesome show. A reminder of why the U S economy of today is unsustainable, but also of what George Orwell was talking about when he said “We sleep safe in our beds because rough men stand ready in the night to visit violence on those who would do us harm.”

Plug I

I'm going to spend this weekend catching up on music reviews I am behind on which includes interesting bios and background stories from a handful of artists that I really enjoyed listening to.

It's funny after all the windmill tilting ZDD has done it's funny to recall that this place was originally built (ha!) as a band site for the Driftwood Artists Collective. They've been through major changes together; forging a new business model for the future and producing music to be proud of. Right now, things are in a kind of crisis stage that I hope ends soon with everyone in sympatico and fully syncronized.

Judge Hoarse is very good at distracting us from the fact that he is an extremely talented artist in many disciplines. Nails, Hank Floyd, and Dos Pachangas keep creating in spite of this mean old world. Frank N. Stein has hit his mind-blowing peak as a player. My mission to improve the lives of vulnerable young women everywhere continues, even with my ankle bracelet. And then there's our favorite, Lucy Hill.

Lucy Hill has an engagement at the historical Olmos Bharmacy on Wednesday, Nov. 4 at 8:00 p.m. No cover is required. I'll be there, probably with lots of left over, slightly used Pixie Sticks and shiny apples to pass out. Her rhythm section will be the notoriously bad-ass Loaded. No cover. Check out their site on the right.

Please try to make it. Share the love.

Chupacabra Report

The lead editorial in today’s Chronicle applauded the fact that Harris County has agreed to stop denying the vote to tens of thousands of eligible citizens. County officials of course deny any wrongdoing, but promise heretofore to process voter registration applications in accordance with state law, and to notify applicants in a timely matter if and why their application was rejected so that they can amend their application and re-apply.

The County further agreed that employees of the tax office, such as the voter registrar, will no longer be allowed to moonlight as partisan political consultants, as happened under re-elected-then-resigned Tax Assessor Paul Bettencourt.

Harris County Attorney Vince Ryan, who worked to bring about this settlement, praised it as ensuring that “everybody who fills out a valid registration application will be certified to vote.”

This settlement has been OK’d by the county commissioners, and now must be approved by the US Justice Dept.

Interestingly, the GOP lost ground in last year’s elections, despite their disqualifying more than 60,000 likely Democratic voters.
Let’s hope these thieving trogs really get their asses handed to them next year.

Break Out Your Brickbats

Just gimme some old time populist politics.

The state of the economy has finally caused folks to express some populist outrage. Thousands marched against the big banks in Chicago over the past couple of days, and Senate leaders are assuring a public option with a wink. Someone's been calling the switchboard.

A disturbing aspect of this is that Ron Paul Revolutionaries, Glen Beck 912-ers, and people of that ilk are in common-cause with a lot of people on the left especially with regard to monetary policy. Alex Jones calls this, "breaking the left/right paradigm." The difference is that the neo-libertarians on the right have a more, "what freedom is in it for me"-kind of attitude, whereas the left believes in political and economic justice.

However, there has not been a flamboyant fire-brand like Alan Grayson in the public eye since maybe Adam Clayton Powell, but certainly since the Kingfish. He keeps getting under the skin of conservatives by not being a weak blind salamander. I have taken huge portions of the following AP story from Huffpo because I thought the uninitiated should have a taste of what somebody who believes he's right (and probably is) looks like when they stand up to power:

WASHINGTON — The Florida Democrat who said Republicans want sick people to "die quickly" is again facing criticism for his rhetoric – this time for calling a senior Federal Reserve adviser a "K Street whore" in a radio interview.

Rep. Alan Grayson hurled the insult at Linda Robertson last month on the Alex Jones Show, a syndicated talk radio program, while discussing the Fed's resistance to stronger congressional oversight. Robertson is a former Enron lobbyist and Clinton administration adviser who was hired by Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke this summer to help with congressional relations.

Grayson took exception to Robertson's role, saying she has criticized congressional efforts to increase oversight.

"Here I am the only member of Congress who actually worked as an economist, and this lobbyist, this K Street whore, is trying to teach me about economics," he said.

Grayson never identified Robertson by name, saying he couldn't remember her name, but he made clear whom he was referring to from her background and job.

His spokesman, Todd Jurkowski, defended the insult Tuesday.

"She had the audacity to attack a congressman who used to be an economist," he said. "She's a career lobbyist who used to work for Enron and advocates for whatever she gets paid to promote."

Grayson, a liberal firebrand, drew strong criticism last month for saying that Republicans were ignoring sick people who die without health insurance, and that the GOP's health care plan amounted to wanting people to "die quickly" when they get sick.

He stood by the comments, leveraging the attention to do a series of national television appearances in which he ridiculed Republicans as "knuckle-dragging Neanderthals." He boasted that the attention has helped fill his campaign coffers.

Grayson did apologize for later likening the deaths of Americans without health coverage to a "holocaust." He then set up a Web site called "Names of the Dead," inviting people to list the names of loved ones who have died for lack of health care.

Andy Sere, a spokesman for the National Republican Congressional Committee, called Grayson "a vile and vulgar man."

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/10/27/grayson-calls-linda-rober_n_335447.html

Crooks and Liars has a post today about N.Y. Dem. Rep Anthony Weiner calling out 55 GOP Members of Congress who oppose federally funded single-payer healthcare even though they receive it themselves through Medicare. .

"Weiner: And why not have that type of a system that has lower overhead, lower costs and you don’t have to deal with the 30% of profits and overhead that insurance companies take. So we compiled this list largely to point a bright light on some of the hypocrisy of this debate, but also I hope it gets people thinking—if Medicare is good enough for 151 members of Congress, why shouldn’t a program like it be created for those who want to go out and buy insurance?
You have members of Congress thumping their chest how they’re against government health care, against government control of health care, socialized medicine and yet when it’s time for them to accept Medicare, they’re like, ‘Sign me up!’"

-You can add to that list former House Majority Leader Dick Armey, who has Medicare coverage, but is suing the US government to get his gold-plated congressional coverage back. Armey is now pulling in $500,000 a year as head of the corporately-funded Astroturf lobby “FreedomWorks” that organized tea baggers to Mau-Mau members of congress at their hometown town hall meetings on healthcare this summer.