Sarah Palin takes $100,000 for populist Tea Party speech

When Thomas Paine wrote Common Sense, it was one of the great best-sellers in history and made a ton of money by 1776 standards. Paine donated all of the money, every penny of it, for the troops of the continental army. Sarah Palin, by contrast, gives a populist speech at a Tea Party convention, and donates the money to herself.

The word charlatan is defined as a person who practices quackery or confidence tricks in order to gain fame or money. Sarah Palin is America's leading Tea Party charlatan, in very good company with many on the Republican side of the aisle.

The next stage in the Tea Party drama will be the break between legitimate populist activists in the movement, versus the phonies and the exploiters. The phonies seek to buy the Tea Party movement with dirty money from certain Tea Party charlatans. These are corporate interests pushing for greed and profit for themselves. The exploiters are Republicans who stand for the populism of Wall Street, banks, insurers and Big Pharma.

There are many legitimate grassroots members of the Tea Party movement. Some of them have much in common with populist progressives who share opposition to rampant greed and Wall Street excess. But then there are the phonies, exploiters and charlatans.

Tom Paine was a populist who gave his money to the troops. Sarah Palin is a charlatan who ripped off the Tea Party movement for $100,000, kept the dough for herself, before taking her quackery and confidence game to another venue, for another $100,000, and a little more fame.