NEW YORK (TheStreet) — Chalk up one more victory for the Tea Party muscle within the Republican Party in its battle against all things green energy. On Thursday night, omnibus spending legislation approved by the House and Senate to avert a government shutdown removed light bulb efficiency standards that would support the adoption of higher-efficiency bulbs.

The light bulb issue — the government plans to require higher-efficiency bulbs that would lead to greater adoption of compact flourescent and LED bulbs starting next year — caused a light bulb to go on above the heads of the Tea Partiers, who realized late in 2010 that it was one more way to call President Obama a totalitarian dictator: The man had the gall to dictate what kind of light bulbs Americans use in their homes. Not on the Tea Party’s watch!

As Daniel Weiss of the Center for American Progress noted in a previous conversation about the politics of the light bulb (when this issue first came to prominence last year) the “totalitarian light bulb state” is just one more wedge issue in an election cycle, in the same way that the right to bear arms is a great way to get the masses excited, or to get people out to the polls or for the big oil and gas lobby to raise money for the Republican party ahead of elections across the country. The right to choose your own energy-sapping, outdated light bulb is at the heart of the basic tenets of the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness on which this nation is founded, at least according to the Tea Party. Read more at www.thestreet.com

California, the land where the tax revolt was born in the 1970s, is facing several ballot initiativesthat would increase taxes, most heavily on the rich, to prevent more savage cuts in programs like education and health. Meanwhile, New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo is mulling a tax hike as well, and again placing a larger burden on the wealthy.

Keep in mind, too, that national polls show huge majorities of Americans supporting higher taxes on the rich. In some polls, a majority of Republicans agree.

Let’s hope this is the start of something big. Because we are cutting too deeply, across the board. It’s landing hardest on the middle-class and the working poor, and it’s killing any chance that we can tackle big jobs, like rebuilding the nation’s infrastructure, or weening ourselves from dependence on foreign oil by rebooting the energy industry. Read more at blog.nj.com

On January 24, 2009, in Binghamton, New York, four days after President Obama’s inauguration, two-dozen college-age protesters showed up carrying placards saying BORN FREE AND TAXED TO DEATH.

They had assembled to protest Gov. David Paterson’s proposed “obesity tax” on soft drinks. The protesters were led by Trevor Leach, who had just been named as the first New York state chairman of a group called Young Americans for Liberty, an offshoot of the 2008 Ron Paul for President campaign. Leach, then twenty-four years old, sported a feathered headdress intended to evoke the original Boston Tea Party that helped launch the American Revolution.

In the first decade of the twenty-first century, the Boston Tea Party made a comeback, sometimes as a metaphor, sometimes as farce. The college students in Binghamton in January 2009 were engaged in a purely symbolic protest: These modern-day tax protesters poured a few gallons of generic-brand soda off the Washington Street Bridge into the icy waters of the Susquehanna River, hoping to attract a bit of media attention. Read more at www.realclearpolitics.com

The Tea-Party-is-racist meme is nothing new. Observers note that the media, Congressional Black Caucus, NAACP, and various leftist academics have been retailing it for some time.

In March, two executives at NPR, including chief executive officer Vivian Schiller, lost their jobs after one of them was caught on tape calling the Tea Party “scary” and “seriously racist.” The executive who uttered the imprecation, Ron Schiller, also said evangelical Christians are “weird.”

A few weeks ago, Rep. André Carson (D-Ind.) flatly stated that his Republican colleagues who are sympathetic to the Tea Party wanted to lynch him. “Some of these folks in Congress right now would love to see us as second-class citizens,” he declared, adding,

Carson is the congressman who falsely accused Tea Party members — gathered outside the Cannon House Office Building on the day the House passed Obama’s healthcare reform — of spitting and shouting racial epithets at members of the Congressional Black Caucus as they emerged from the building. Carson never offered any substantiation of the incident even after Andrew Breitbart, proprietor of the Big websites, offered $100,000 to the United Negro College Fund for proof of such incidents. Read more at www.thenewamerican.com

Protests against Wall Street and economic inequality have grown in New York, Washington and other U.S. cities, as citizens speak out against corporate interests.  These protests in some ways mirror the rise of the so-called “Tea Party” movement two years ago.  The Tea Party wants to cut taxes and reduce the size of the central government, and it now plays a major role in the battle for the Republican Party’s presidential nomination. It has influence, but it remains a loosely-organized movement with no central leadership.

The first Tea Party rallies drew a lot of people who had never been involved in politics.  The Tea Party expressed public anger over the 2008 economic crisis, the government bailout of large banks and the growing national debt.

In past elections, conservatives focused on issues like abortion and gay marriage, but Tea Party supporter Amy Long says the nation’s fiscal health is paramount. Read more at www.voanews.com

The coalition of thousands of anti- Wall Street protesters in New York and cities across the U.S. has the potential to grow into the “Tea Party of the Left,” said Brayden King, who’s written on social and political movements at Northwestern University.

“They have to figure out what it is they are about in order to become the force of change in the Democratic Party like the Tea Party has been in the Republican party,” King, an assistant professor of management at the Kellogg School of Management, said by telephone from Evanston, Illinois. “Without that, it will be hard for politicians to figure out how to position themselves without just saying that ‘we’re mad too.’”

The conditions are ripe for those concerns to become part of mainstream political dialogue if the protesters can transform their disparate list of grievances into targeted talking points and policy prescriptions, King said. They’ve gotten the public’s attention and are well-mobilized, he said. Read more at www.washingtonpost.com

New York magazine recently tracked down actor Samuel L. Jackson to show him the Rick Perry nearly-invisible-N-word “scoop” and then asked him if he agreed with Morgan Freeman that the Tea Party was racist. Of course, he said.

He also thought the Perry story was a political plus: “it’s not going to hurt Perry’s reputation in a whole lot of places, so it’s not a big deal.” New York magazine said What? He replied: “Are you serious? He’s a Republican and this is America.”

Update: I see that a number of farkers don’t know why I would say that Obama is an epic failure. Predictably, they can’t throw down the race card fast enough. Well, here’s handy video that explains Obama’s epic, colossal and continuing failure in simple terms. Read more at pajamasmedia.com

The recent election of Republican Bob Turner to the 9th Congressional District seat in New York represents a pivotal event in American politics in the second decade of the 21st century. We are nearly three years into the presidency of Barack Obama and, it seems, the electorate has grown less and less enamored with the far-left policies of the Democrat agenda in general and the Obama presidency in particular. The significance of this election is evidenced by the fact that Democrats have held this seat in Congress for nearly ninety years.

It brings to mind the Billy Joel song, “New York State of Mind”. But, to an even greater degree, it represents a “TEA PARTY State of Mind”.

The Tea Party state of mind lurks in the psyche of many millions of Americans. Many already know it. Millions of others – like those in the 9th Congressional district in New York – are coming to the realization that they, also, have a Tea Party State of Mind. Read more at canadafreepress.com

Neither is Congresswoman Nan Hayworth, a freshman Republican who made a name for herself during the debt-ceiling debate and serves a Hudson Valley/Westchester district that was hit hard by the storm. Yesterday, echoing Cantor, Hayworth seized the opportunity to make it crystal-clear that her fiscal conservative bona fides are as strong as they come, telling a local paper that “We’re facing a natural disaster in the middle of an economic disaster. The federal government has to balance its budget the way our families do.”

Hayworth’s opponent in the traditionally moderate 19th District next year, Richard Becker, quickly sought to tie her to the tea party and the hostage-taking tactics of the debt ceiling. But while Hayworth might look the part — she’s a member of the Hudson Valley Patriots and she wears Palin-red pumps — and sound like one of the bombastic female tea-party-affiliated GOP politicians currently having a (long) moment, there are more than a few very New York differences between her and someone like Bachmann. Read more at nymag.com

Is Joe the Plumber going to become Joe the Congressman

‘Joe The Plumber’ is the famous Toledo, Ohio man who got candidate Barack Obama to admit that he wants to take money from the rich and “spread the wealth around.” The Youtube video of Samuel Joesph Wurzelbacher asking him about the democrat’s crippling small businesses polices gained national attention instantly

Samuel Joseph Wurzelbacher became a political icon after John McCain mentioned his name several times in debates in New York. Since then, Joe has been a celebrity speaker and part of the ever growing peaceful and constitutional following “tea party.” Read more at www.postchronicle.com