COFFEE BREAK 207

+ updated on Friday, October 8 at 1:56pm

+ If you don't believe that racism is the primary motivation of the Tea Party movement, read this TruthDig article: "The Tea Party: It’s Worse Than You Think" by The Rev. Madison Shockley.  A.H. Ellett, A Tea Party leader who was once a Utah Supreme Court justice, is actually saying that Blacks can not be citizens according to his understanding of the Constitution.  Unbelievable.  Of course many Tea Party folks won't go that far but their motivations can be seen in many ways as this article reveals.

+ TruthDig offers "Tea Party Socialism" by Yasha Levine. Excerpt: "If tea party candidates were serious about stopping runaway spending and bringing fiscal responsibility to Washington, they would have to address one of the most egregious wastes of taxpayer dollars: federal farm subsidies."

+ Paul Krugman offers "Transit Economics."  He begins: "The usual suspects on the comment board are, inevitably, arguing that rail transit should pay for itself. The obvious response is that road transit doesn’t; why should only public transit have to self-finance, when private vehicles generally drive on free roads built and maintained out of taxes? But in a way that misses the larger point: urban transportation is an area in which we know that market prices bear very little relationship to true social costs."