SUDDENLY, WE TEABAGGERS THINK TAXATION WITHOUT REPRESENTATION DOESN'T LOOK SO BAD

Literally, the elected officials sent to office by the people in the tricorn hats are now depriving their political enemies of representation:

[Wisconsin] Senate Majority Leader Scott Fitzgerald wrote this afternoon in an email to his caucus that Senate Dems remain in contempt of the Senate and will not be allowed to vote in committees despite returning from their out-of-state boycott of the budget repair bill vote.

"They are free to attend hearings, listen to testimony, debate legislation, introduce amendments, and cast votes to signal their support/opposition, but those votes will not count, and will not be recorded," wrote Fitzgerald, R-Juneau.

This dovetails nicely with the disenfranchisement threat in Michigan:

Perhaps lost in the Wisconsin shuffle is the story of what exactly is happening in Michigan. Newly elected Republican governor, Rick Snyder, is set to pass one of the most sweeping, anti-democratic pieces of legislation in the country -- and almost no one is talking about it.

Snyder's law gives the state government the power not only to break up unions, but to dissolve entire local governments and place appointed "Emergency Managers" in their stead. But that's not all -- whole cities could be eliminated if Emergency Managers and the governor choose to do so. And Snyder can fire elected officials unilaterally, without any input from voters. It doesn't get much more anti-Democratic than that.

Except it does. The governor simply has to declare a financial emergency to invoke these powers -- or he can hire a private company to declare financial emergency and take over oversight of the city. That's right, a private corporation can declare your city in a state of financial emergency and send in its Emergency Manager, fire your elected officials, and reap the benefits of the ensuing state contracts....

The entire "tea party" idea -- the notion that these guys were effectively disenfranchised by Democratic control of the government in D.C. -- was just a massive bit of projection. Disenfranchisement is what they wanted to do. It's what they meant when they said "take our country back" and "take our government" -- they meant take it away from people eligible to vote who disagree with them.

In Wisconsin, in an ideal world, there'd be a mass withholding of taxes by citizens in Democratic Assembly districts, until their legislators were restored to full voting privileges. Maybe a few crates of tea would get dumped in some bodies of water. These people really do lack representation now, which would violate the principles of rank-and-file teabaggers if those people had any principles except "Just win, baby."

(Michigan story via Joan McCarter and Digby.)