Guest Blogged by Sue Wilson
Just days after resigning as Chairman of the Tea Party Express, Mark Williams, former talk show host at Sacramento’s KFBK radio, began encouraging people to file claims for the BP fund which is being set up to provide financial assistance to those damaged by the Gulf oil spill. He’s not just encouraging residents of the Gulf or those who do business with Gulf Coast fisheries to file claims; he is encouraging everyone in the country to file a claim against BP, and brags about having done so himself.
Williams asserts on his blog, MarkTalk.com, that in so filing, people are not stealing. He writes, “You are only recouping some of your own money that the Obama regime is stealing from you to redistribute,” and he cites fund administrator Ken Feinberg as telling people “we should ‘…all file a claim…’ because specific criteria for valid claims has not yet been set.”
He further writes, “Let’s show the Marxists who occupy our government and their flying monkey supporters what life under socialism is really like when the productive stop producing and join the gravy train.”
The BP fund, according to a conversation I had with Feinberg’s office this week, “is paid entirely by BP.” Even the administration of the fund is paid by the private corporation which caused the spill. “There are no merits to claim that U.S. taxpayers are footing the bill.”
Nonetheless, Williams describes the fund as run by “Marxists”, constituting “life under socialism”, and as nothing short of a “gravy train”. Yet, oddly enough, it’s the “conservative” Mark Williams, whose agenda could lead to the waste of untold numbers of tax-payer dollars…
To be clear: A multinational corporation drilling for public resources off our shore in international water causes a disastrous oil spill which imperils not only wildlife, but the opportunity for Gulf residents to earn a living through private business. The President of the U.S. puts political pressure on said oil company to pay not just for clean up, but for compensation for loss of business opportunity.
Yet, there is one federal government agency which will likely use taxpayer dollars as part of the administration of the BP Fund. Again, according to Feinberg’s office, “As with the 9/11 fund,” which Feinberg also administered, “Mr. Feinberg will be working with the US Department of Justice Fraud Division to ensure there is no fraud in the fund.”
So in other words, it is Mark Williams who, by knowingly promoting ineligible people to apply for BP money, is costing taxpayers untold dollars to ferret out fraud. So much for “conservative” fiscal responsibility. And oh, yes, so much for a “conservative” talk show host getting facts straight.
Funny, too, that Williams’ blog uses the tag line – very similar to one long-used by The BRAD BLOG — “It’s Not Right vs Left, It’s Right vs Wrong.” Readers will have to make their own judgment about that.
It’s interesting to note that Sacramento, the state capital of “liberal” California, somehow manages to launch national Right Wing voices. Williams, Rush Limbaugh, Joseph Farah of rightwing media outlet WorldNetDaily, and the Tea Party Express itself, all hail from Sacramento. Must be something in the water, and not just in the Gulf. It’s certainly not anything in the air, as Sacramento offers no progressive radio stations on the public’s local airwaves.
Sue is media activist, director of Public Interest Pictures’ Broadcast Blues, and a 22 year veteran of broadcast journalism. Her numerous awards include Emmy, AP, RTNDA, and PRNDI for work at CBS, PBS, FOX, and NPR. She blogs at Sue Wilson Reports.
• A version of this article was published at ‘Sue Wilson Reports’…
• For a related-ish story, see Brad Friedman’s short video “Rise of the Tea Bags”, documenting kick-off day for last year’s Tea Party Express national bus tour.
I don’t see a problem here. PROSECUTE the hell out of anybody who commits fraud, but allow them to “roll over” on whomever convinced them to do it or suggested they should. Four or five charges of promoting a crime, and he should be put away for a while.
Freedom of speech doesn’t protect you from provoking a criminal enterprise — it’s called CONSPIRACY.
I’m sure the tea-bagger idiots who listen to the likes of him and take his advice will be more than willing to rat him out to get off the hook.
I am thinking maybe we should file a class action suit against BUSH & the Rethuglicans then to recoup the 11 TRILLION those bastards stole from the country.
Just conspiring to commit fraud is a Federal crime
How much will it cost taxpayers to imprison Mark Williams for fraud? I suspect they’ll have to keep him separate from the general population, as with pedophiles. That’s gonna set us back.
By the way, has anybody filed a formal complaint yet? With the confession and all…
[Ed Note: Comment removed. No, it is not okay to advocate violence or someone’s death here. Thank you. – BF]
Didn’t the producers in this country stop producing after American companies were allowed to outsource all of the manufacturing jobs?
There oughta be a law, and probably is, perhaps several. Until we see the actual claim, this is essentially BS. And he’s an expert.
it’s people like this douchebag who make it impossible to get anything done in this country. Divide and conquer.
How anyone can promote taking money away from the people who are really suffering in this tragedy and claim to be some sort of “patriot” is truly astounding.
I hope he enjoys the time he could spend in one of our now privately operated jails.
Hi Sue Wilson,
That was an excellent and very revealing article.
The irony which you have detailed certainly is more than noteworthy, and i hope this issue with Williams gets more air play. He needs to address and explain the purpose of his fraud-scheme in public, especially in light of its bizarre inconsistencies and fiscal consequences.
The thing is, Tea Baggers have such a well demonstrated propensity to just ignore the fallacies in their arguments, or even the truth about the outright lies which they are fed.
Following the lead of Rush Limbaugh, their only purpose is to make the Obama administration fail, no matter the cost or burden to the country.
Its an ideological point, not a practical one (and certainly, by no means fiscally responsible.)
They have trained themselves to never reflect on their actions or the consequences of these. They have trained themselves to never be accountable. They have trained themselves to see terms like “compassion” or “sympathy” as buzz-words for tyranny. They are that stupid.
They have been cited again and again on the veritable encyclopedia of blatant misinformation, violent hyperbole, and contradictory rhetoric that they have become so famous for.
But their anger is so all consuming, that i doubt any reasoned argument which they truly ought to consider stands a snowball’s chance with a single one of them.
I know that I am painting the movement with a pretty broad brush, but it is only because of the efforts which the movement has made to represent itself as such. They have made such an effort to be explosively irrational (not to mention COMPLETELY undemocratic), and so its only appropriate that they be described as such.
Nevertheless, i think its great that you are holding Williams accountable for the irony of his mission, and I hope the matter gets more attention.
As much cognitive dissonance as the Tea baggers regularly exercise in their daily rants, they must see the truth of their words/actions, and address the contradictions which they wear too comfortably.
Also, i’m not surprised that Williams co-opted a well-known Brad-Blog tag-line.
People in the Tea bag movement seem to be an extremely un-aware and poorly schooled lot. They always look for 10 dollar words to disguise the fact, but sadly, Glenn Beck seems to be the only person in their camp with anything resembling an original idea (and his ideas can only be described as original simply because of their utterly schizo make-up.)
Look at how many from that crew took Hannity’s recent favorite words, “excoriated”and “impugned”, and threw them into every conversation they could. Look at how ignorant toe-heads like Breitbart or Patterico just grabbed at those terms and plugged them even into sentences that really didnt accommodate them.
Its like the famous beauty contestant with her “… Such as and the Ayrack and the South Africa and such as.” They are trying to sound profound without actually being profound, and educated without going to the trouble of learning anything. It’s a poor attempt to hide their stupidity.
I know that, indeed, recent polls attribute a solid educational background to most members in the group… but anyone who rashly assumes that the Third Reich was based on Health Care Reform, or that the grim horrors of Triblinka were fueled by policies of compassion, that person is a complete idiot, despite his/her degrees in accounting, banking or what not.
(A person who doesnt know something simply doesnt know it, and cannot be faulted for that. But someone who embraces what they know to be a blatant lie [and does so under the impulse of an unsubstantiated, but all-consuming political anger], and then tries to enforce that lie with the most violent rhetoric, that person is dangerous.)
That being said, I find a sizeable portion of the Tea baggers to not be just ignorant of facts… but a group who, for purely political reasons (and under the supervision of the same men who sold them the Iraq War) is intentionally making its own members more and more stupid.
Umm… Nice post, SreeBee.