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Dick Armey makes me want to punch myself in the face every time I have to be subjected to his "Why can't I opt out of Medicare and Social Security?" lament. In his latest appearance on CNN's Parker/Spitzer yesterday, he did it again:

ARMEY: I think they will do that. If it's going to happen, if will come out of the energy of the newly elected Republicans. But quite frankly there is so much work that has to be done, start with rolling back the new commitments that can't be fulfilled, which we did with the vote on Obamacare. But the fact of the matter is, on social security, just let it be voluntary on Medicare. I'll give you one, Eliot.

SPITZER: All right. OK.

ARMEY: A simple little thing.

SPITZER: It's not going to work, but that's --

ARMEY: Why can't the United States government allow Dick Armey, a 71-year-old fellow --

SPITZER: Right.

ARMEY: -- who makes a darn good living --

SPITZER: Right. ARMEY: -- opt out of Medicare without being punished? Just let Medicare be voluntary. I promise you there are a lot of wealthy old geezers and their wives in America --

PARKER: I don't think there are enough.

ARMEY: -- that would say to the federal government don't let us be a burden to you, we'll take care of our own health care. But this government is so devoted to the requirement that we be submitted to their dictatorship of our health care that they can't even let rich people out of Medicare. It's goofy.

Why can't Eliot Spitzer just pick up the ball and run with it, instead of giving an anemic response about how Mitt Romney understands mandates? It would have been simple enough to answer him with the truth, which is that Medicare and Social Security work because they are NOT optional?

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Wow. This is such a typical deflection of responsibility from a stalwart of the Party of Personal Responsibility. "Don't blame me for creating the tea party...it was that mean ol' George W. Bush that made me do it!"

Former Rep. Dick Armey (R.,Tex.), whose Freedom Works organization has helped the Tea Party grow, said Tuesday in Philadelphia that the movement was conceived the moment President George W. Bush endorsed Sen. Arlen Specter (then-R, now D) over Pat Toomey in the 2004 Republican primary.

Conservatives have long been angered by that endorsement, viewing it as a triumph of political maneuvering over principle. Specter went on to defeat Toomey by 17,000 votes out of more than 1 million cast. Former Sen. Rick Santorum (R.,Pa.), who also endorsed Specter in 2004, has apologized again and again for the move in early primary states as he explores a run for the 2012 GOP presidential nomination. Of course, Toomey's decision last year to challenge Specter again drove him to the Democrats.

Toomey is now the Republican nominee for Senate, facing Democratic Rep. Joe Sestak Nov. 2. So far Toomey hasn't been taking credit for sparking the Tea Party as he campaigns, though he shares many of the movement's views on government spending, regulation and the need to reduce taxes.

Toomey was also the head of Club for Growth, which is supporting Republican candidates that pass their purity test for wanting to privatize Social Security and no taxes. In fact, they're so extreme that even Mike Huckabee calls them the Club for Greed.

But think about this: Pat Toomey has brought us Sharron Angle, Christine O'Donnell, Allen West, Carl Palladino, Joe Miller, Ken Buck, Marco Rubio and Rand Paul. Can you think of a better reason to vote for Joe Sestak?

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Meet Lawrence A. Hunter, the executive director of the Alliance for Retirement Prosperity, senior fellow at the Americans for Prosperity Foundation (AFP) and the Institute for Policy Innovation (IPI). He might sound more familiar to you as the director of the Social Security Alliance, a 501(c)(4) group with the following mission statement (from their 2008 990 filing):

Working to promote the retirement security of today's seniors and the seniors of tomorrow. SSI's top policy priorities are to stop the raid on Social Security trust funds, prevent cuts to Social Security and Medicare benefits, and protect seniors from health care rationing and other limitations on their access to health care.

SSI was a recycle of an organization originally launched in 2004 at the time of the Great Social Security Privatization Debate. That organization was also known as the "Alliance for Retirement Prosperity", and was spun off by Jack Kemp and Dick Armey from Citizens for a Sound Economy, known today as FreedomWorks, and Kemp's Empower America. The IPI That organization's stated purpose was as follows:

Advocacy and lobbying activities aimed at reforming Social Security by dedicating a substantial portion of the payroll tax to large personal accounts.

The newest incarnation of the "Alliance for Retirement Prosperity" is a bit different, as Hunter indicates in the video. For starters, it's a for-profit group, purporting to be a "true alternative to the AARP". To that end, it offers members the opportunity to "ensure a prosperous, enriched and secure retirement" for the low, low price of $60 per year for the premium membership, and just $16 for an individual membership.

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It's kind of sad, isn't it? And infuriating at the same time, because the people in this country who understand or care the least about policy as a legitimate tool to improve society are being used as tools by the powerful and the wealthy on their own behalf, and they're too dumb to see that. Oh well!

With electoral victories racking up - and a greater-than-ever chance that Republicans will take back the House this year - it's time for the "tea party" movement to transition from winning elections to influencing policy in Congress, former House majority leader Richard K. Armey said Monday.

At a breakfast hosted by the Christian Science Monitor, Armey, who is chairman of national tea party organizer FreedomWorks, spoke to reporters about the upcoming elections and the need to translate tea party victories at the ballot box into a legislative focus on reducing government spending, rolling back the health-care overhaul and, if possible, reducing taxes.

"These grass-roots activists are not going to retire from the field once this battle of 2010 is won," the Texas Republican said. "This whole activist movement is about policy."

Focusing on legislative achievements perhaps distinguishes FreedomWorks and Armey from other tea party activists, some of whom are focused more on changing the Republican Party - sometimes at any cost. In Delaware, for example, the Tea Party Express, Sarah Palin and Sen. Jim DeMint (R-S.C.) all have endorsed conservative Christine O'Donnell against moderate Rep. Mike Castle - even though O'Donnell, who has endured a series of personal financial problems, could have a hard time beating Democrat Chris Coons in November. The GOP primary is Tuesday.

FreedomWorks President Matt Kibbe, who spoke with Armey on Monday, said his organization decided to stay out of the primary because "we're not convinced that Christine O'Donnell can win."

Kibbe also announced that FreedomWorks later this week will launch a new effort to attract support among minorities, calling it "Diverse Tea."

"There is this nagging perception that we're not diverse enough," Kibbe said.

Do you think that might have something to do with the preponderance of middle-aged white people with Obama-as-Kenyan T-shirts?

With Democrats proposing to set the top two income tax rates at 36% and 39.6% respectively, Republican leaders waged a ferocious battle on behalf of the wealthiest American taxpayers. Former House Majority Leader and current Tea Party moneyman Dick Armey warned, "This program will not give you deficit reduction." Ohio's John Kasich cautioned, "It's our bet that this is a job killer." And for his part, 2012 White House hopeful Newt Gingrich promised, "This is the Democrat machine's recession, and each one of them will be held personally accountable."

As it turns out, the year was 1993, not 2010. At issue was President Bill Clinton's $496 billion program of stimulus and upper income tax increases. And what Republicans then decried as disaster ushered in the longest economic expansion in modern American history, a period which produced 23 million new jobs and a balanced budget.

But that hasn't stopped the GOP brain trust from resurrecting their 1993 predictions of gloom and doom, forecasts which were spectacularly wrong.

Launching his campaign for House Speaker, Minority Leader John Boehner on Tuesday decried President Obama's "job-killing tax hikes" and called the expiration of the Bush tax cuts for the rich "a recipe for disaster - both for our economy and for the deficit." His Senate counterpart Mitch McConnell told Fox News, "It would be a disaster." On Meet the Press last week, Dick Armey rejected the notion of returning the tax rates for the top 2% of earners back to their Clinton-era levels, mocking Obama's "new cockamamy ideas" and insisting the President "not raise taxes and take away the return on an investment" And as Newt Gingrich predicted in July:

"This economy will sink deeper into recession. There will be higher unemployment. The recovery will be longer."

If this all sounds familiar, it should. After all, as ThinkProgress, Congress Matters and Andrew Tobias all documented, pretty much the same people said pretty much the same thing back in 1993.

If Barack Obama's experience with Republican obstructionism has been painful, Bill Clinton's was unprecedented. When Clinton's 1993 economic program scraped by without capturing the support of even one GOP lawmaker, the New York Times remarked:

Historians believe that no other important legislation, at least since World War II, has been enacted without at least one vote in either house from each major party.

Inheriting massive budget deficits and unemployment topping 7% from Bush the Elder, Clinton's $496 billion program was nonetheless opposed by every single member of the GOP, as well as defectors from his own party. As the Times recounted, it took a tie-breaking vote from Vice President Al Gore to earn victory:

An identical version of the $496 billion deficit-cutting measure was approved Thursday night by the House, 218 to 216. The Senate was divided 50 to 50 before Mr. Gore voted. Since tie votes in the House mean defeat, the bill would have failed if even one representative or one senator who voted with the President had switched sides.

(It's worth noting that while Bill Clinton met with total opposition from Republicans over his economic program, neither Ronald Reagan before him nor George W. Bush after was similarly subjected to scorched-earth politics from Democrats.)

Throughout 1993, President Clinton faced venomous - if completely baseless - charges from his Republican opponents. Newt Gingrich announced that February, "I believe that that will in fact kill the current recovery and put us back in a recession," while also warning the day before the budget vote, "This is the Democrat machine's recession, and each one of them will be held personally accountable." Bob Dole, Clinton's future reelection opponent, complained, "People out there in the real world just don't understand how record-setting tax increases and a taxpayer-financed spending spree by Congress will solve the deficit or put Americans back to work." While John Kasich (R-OH) told Clinton and the Democrats, "your economic program is a job killer," Dick Armey looked into his crystal ball to claim:

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Aw, poor Dick Armey. It's a terrible, terrible thing to be under siege. At least it is to Paul Bedard at US News & World Report, who is evidently so far out of touch with Tea Party structure that he describes Dick Armey as a "supporter", rather than one of the principal architects of their so-called movement.

As chairman of FreedomWorks, Dick Armey is the lobbyist-leader and organizer of the Tea Party, not just some ardent supporter of their work. Evidently his hard work isn't going unnoticed, by friend and foe:

"FreedomWorks and Dick Armey receive dozens of threatening and harassing calls and E-mails each day. Many imply violence and use of weapons," spokesman Adam Brandon tells Whispers. "As we get closer to the election we expect the harassment to increase."

He says that FreedomWorks will hire additional security, meaning less money for its election-eve, get-out-the-vote, or GOTV, campaign. "Unfortunately, we may have to use resources for security guards that we would rather use for GOTV," he said.

Awwww. Perhaps they should give Charles Koch a ring and see if he'd be willing to kick in an extra million or so. Or, they could just run down the hall to their media buddies:

The group plans to move to 400 North Capitol Street NW, a secure building two blocks from the U.S. Capitol. That building also houses Fox News Channel's Washington Bureau and several other media outlets.

Call me cynical, but I doubt these guys are all that worried about death threats. It's really just a way to let the world know they're moving in with their BFFs over at Fox News, because you know, there was so much doubt about which way Fox News leans politically. Right?

FreedomWorks provided some of the recordings of the threatening calls to Whispers and they include physical threats and profanity aimed at the group, Tea Party spokesmen and even conservative talkers. "You guys better watch it," says one caller. "Now, we are going to destroy and obliterate Rush [Limbaugh] and Sean Hannity," said another. "Those two guys are dead."

Even conservative talkers? Again, maybe it's just me, but when Media Matters has an entire blog devoted to debunking Rush Limbaugh's persistent lies on a daily basis and 119 pages of search results on Sean Hannity's hackery, I'd say the phony shock over them receiving death threats is, well...phony.

See more videos at InvisiblePeopleTV.

One of the things that I always keep in mind as I watch these Sunday shows and listen to the elite opine on the state of the world is that very real people are affected by this insular navel-gazing. People that I promise you never cross the mind of Dick Armey or Sarah Palin. Please take a few minutes to look at some of Mark's videos of homeless people--people who are not lazy or entitled or unwilling to work or better their situation--and remember that it is these invisible people who are being affected by our insane trust in Republican economic policies of free markets and deregulation. And we're adding to their rolls every day by not changing.

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Meet the Press was its usual strange collection of overly-flogged stories and opportunities for marginal political viewpoints to be propounded as if they're mainstream. But there was one small snippet from Dick Armey where he slid in his pet peeve: Medicare.

Since this is the second time in a week that he's returned to this theme, a reality check is in order.

FMR. REP. DICK ARMEY (R-TX): I believe the folks that want to build the mosque there are making an unwise decision. But I think, when, when I look at the 18 percent of the American people that are enthusiastic about this grassroots movement, we see this as while it's an important issue. It's an issue that ought not to be distracting the president from the critical issues of unemployment, fiscal responsibility, a nation headed for bankruptcy. And the larger issues that affect the future of our children make this issue pale. On the question of should the president be sticking up for the Constitution, our folks say, "Well, great, I love him sticking up for the--we should have done that on medical--Medicare," where, in fact, he trashed the Constitution in the view of most of our folks. And in terms of him being here and then there, it reflects again our fear that this president is whimsical and doesn't really quite know where he is on any subject, even the larger subjects that are driving our folks in, in the street trying to make change in America.

Flash back with me to the August 16, 2009 edition of Meet the Press, where Dick Armey appears on Meet the Press with Rachel Maddow, Tom Daschle, Sen. Tom Coburn and...Dick Armey!

Death panels, anyone? While teabaggers are in an absolute froth over "death panels" and seniors are trembling over the potential loss of "their" Medicare, a position that Dick Armey used frequently to stir up town hall uprisings and the like, Rachel Maddow quietly calls him out on his personal radical views then.

MS. MADDOW: This is a really important point. The anti-healthcare reform lobby thinks that Medicare is tyranny, OK?

REP. ARMEY: I did—I said...

MS. MADDOW: This is an—I mean, you said in 1995 that “Medicare is a program I would have no part of in a free world.”

REP. ARMEY: Right. Absolutely right.

MS. MADDOW: You said in 2002, “We’re going to have to bite the bullet on Social Security and phase it out over a period of time.”

REP. ARMEY: And I’m going to enumerate exactly what I’m talking about. Medicare...

MS. MADDOW: Americans need to know this is your position and this is the position of the anti-healthcare reform lobby.

Dick Armey and Paul Ryan march to the same tune. That's not altogether surprising, and Armey has remained consistent in his objection to "mandatory Medicare." But that's where his honesty begins and ends, because while he believes it should be abolished, he's also aware that Medicare and Social Security are: a) wildly popular programs; and b) not going to be made "voluntary". Knowing that, he used their popularity and the security they give seniors to whip up anger against health care reform, and in particular, the public option, which is where the whole "government-run healthcare" is terrible (for all but seniors) except where it isn't (for seniors only).

Meanwhile, Dick Armey remains healthy and fit, thanks to his Medicare which he cannot opt out of without also opting out of Social Security benefits, which he evidently has no problem receiving.

The only whimsy I see is Dick Armey's.

This reminds me of that old joke about the guy who killed both his parents and then threw himself on the mercy of the court because he's an orphan...

Lindsay Beyerstein did some great reporting on this. Don't miss the hypocritical Republican punchline!*

One of the featured corporate sponsors of the Tea Party Express had to pay millions of dollars to settle lawsuits for its role in a bus fire that killed 23 elderly nursing home residents fleeing Hurricane Rita in 2005.

The BusBank, a Chicago-based charter company, a "Tour Partner" of the Tea Party Express, a rolling protest sponsored by the Our Country Deserves Better PAC under the supervision of former Republican state legislator Howard Kaloogian, now a PR exec for the GOP-linked firm Russo, Marsh & Rogers.

BusBank is also arranging to ferry Tea Baggers to their 9/12 march on Washington to voice their demands for unfettered capitalism. (Update: Commenter Casual Observer asks if there's a Dick Armey connection here. There is. Dick Armey's FreedomWorks Foundation is the premiere sponsor of the 9/12 march; and Kaloogian's OCDB PAC is a "Gold Co-Sponsor.")

In 2005, a bus carrying seniors fleeing Hurricane Rita burst into flame outside of Dallas, immolating 23 nursing home residents. Investigators later found that the bus was: driven by an undocumented migrant without a valid U.S. driver's license, lacking adequate fire extinguishers, and not registered to operate in Texas. When the bus had mechanical problems before the crash, the driver took it to an unqualified mechanic who failed to notice the critical fault--an unlubricated axle that eventually melted and caught fire.

BusBank (aka Global Charters) hired the subcontractor, Global Limo. BusBank boasted on its website that it had a "rigorous operator certification process" to ensure the safety of contracted bus drivers. BusBank used Global even though the subcontractor had a long record of federal and state safety violations, had entered bankruptcy, and was being sued.

BusBank's association with Global appears to have been more than a one-off, Global Limo's owner Jim Maples even listed Global Charters as his employer when he gave $5000 to the RNC in 2004.

*BusBank CEO Bill Maulsby blamed insufficient federal oversight, "We're not safety experts," he said. "We clearly need to depend on the federal government."

In November 2006, a federal court convicted Maples and sentenced him to five years' probation for failure to maintain his buses. Investigators found 168 violations in Maples' four-bus fleet.

The following month, US Fed News reported that BusBank had been awarded a Homeland Security contract worth up to $55 million.

In June, BusBank and Global Limo settled out of court for a total of $11 million, a pittance when split between the families of the 23 victims and the patients who survived the crash. BusBank's legal troubles are far from over. According to one report, more lawsuits are getting underway this month.

The firm filed for bankruptcy in Delaware in August.

Poor, poor Glenn Beck. Faced with plummeting ratings, advertisers abandoning ship like rats in a storm, and a boss on a tear about the help doing political things, what else is there to do but look for an arranged marriage?

Lucky for Beck, Dick Armey is always on the lookout for a good dirt hill upon which to plant his AstroTurf. Need meets need, and ... a partnership is born. FreedomWorks, meet Glenn Beck. He only slept with Americans for Prosperity a few times ... he's still pure enough for you.

Listen carefully to the very beginning:

BECK: This half-hour is sponsored by FreedomWorks

Then the long explanation of how the elopement happened. From the beginning, I'm guessing the NRA didn't want to sponsor him? Toward the end of his little speech, there's this:

And we must, must, must link arms with people. Everybody plays a different role. My message to you is to shore yourself up personally, with history, with faith, and with your own personal finances. That is my course that I am charting. I’ve got to move away from the political stuff. That is what kept me up last night. But political stuff has got to be done. You have to pay attention. There are things that are happening in Washington that you have to know about. We need the Tea Party protests to continue. We need to organize and reach out to each other. So I want you to go to Freedomworks.org, because freedom works.

See, Rupert already smacked Hannity down, and Beck has a benefit planned for August. Enter FreedomWorks, ready to accept all the Glenn Beck faithful into their fold.

As if they're not there already.

(h/t Think Progress)