Article: A Letter To A Tea Partier-- Seeking Common Ground between Tea Partiers and Progressives

I received an email titled: Tea party Multi Email No. 48

Every now and then, I check out the opposition and see what they're talking about.

This particular email surprised me. There were a number of topics where there seemed to be agreement between the tea party and progressives. So I wrote an email to the sender. Here it is:

It's interesting. You publish some of the same people in your email that I publish in my progressive news and opinion website, opednews.com-- Bev Harris, Pepe Escobar-- and there are more than a few issues that we seem to agree on.
On my site, most of my writers and readers are disgusted with the two party system-- with both Democrats and Republicans. THey go with the lesser of two evils-- which my readers usually consider democrats. But there's more and more talk about not doing that, about fighting the two party system.

I realize there are a lot of things we drastically disagree on (we don't like Obama but would rather see him as the lesser of two evils, for example) But given the things we DO agree on, it could produce some real waves and generate some real power of the progressives and the teaparty could come together to work on some issues.
-Corporate influence on government
-Corporate welfare
-Citizens United-- allowing unlimited corporate money and even foreign money into US elections
-congressionally mandated lack of competition for drug pricing and prevention of sourcing drugs outside the US
-Electronic voting threats to election integrity
-globalization effects on US industries and jobs-- how it helps a few hundred big corporations, not US middle class.
-GMO health dangers-- Monsanto forcing farmers to use their GMO seeds.
-The Two party system that is really two parties supporting corporatism.
-The failure to prosecute banker and finance company criminals.
-The aggressive attack on a prosecution of Whistleblowers.
There's no doubt that any alliance would be fragile and fraught with potential for friction. But the potential that an alliance could make a difference makes exploring the possibilities worthwhile.

I've also published this on my website. I'm going to assume that some angry progressives will call names, but I do hope you consider posting this to your mailing list with an invitation for comments. Starting a civil dialogue and finding common ground could be a huge step forward on some of these issues.

rob kall