First Coast Tax Day Tea Party

[JC]

Don't go yet, JC... I'll be there with my poorly worded, inflamatory signs in a few minutes.

I had to smack a couple republicans up, so I was delayed.

Ha!

This rally, or whatever, was what the organizers said it would be.  I cannot comment on other so-called tea parties but this was rather sedate. 

[JC]

My tea party photo!  I have more but I like this one best at the moment.

[BridgeTroll]

Thanks for the pic JC... looks to be a pretty diverse crowd.

[north miami]

BIG government means expanded MPO and BIG 'new' BELTWAY..........somehow I imagine this subject will go missing

[NotNow]

MPO?  Help me out.

[thelakelander]

MPO = Metropolitan Planning Organization.

[NotNow]

Thanks.

[finehoe]

I'd be interested in your opinion of this:

The last week has seen a lot of analysis of the Tea Party Movement. It's a Republican rump, according to the NYT, and a national majority, according to Pat Caddell. My view is that it's so amorphous that you can slice it any which way. A minority of Americans seem enraged by the Obama administration in ways that are hard to explain. But many Americans also retain a healthy distrust of government and debt (even though they keep voting for lower taxes and more spending). They have a real point. Over the last decade, it is surely evident that big government has come back with a vengeance. And one has to grasp that part of the tea-party anger is pent up from the Bush years. Most of the rational tea-partiers accept that the GOP has been as bad - if not worse - than the Democrats on spending, borrowing and the size and scope of government in recent years. They repressed this anger during the Bush years out of partisan loyalty. Now, they're taking it all out on the newbie. It's both fair and also unfair.

It's fair because Obama is a liberal who believes government can and should help the poor and disadvantaged and has proven it by providing access to insurance for the working poor. But it's unfair because Obama's fiscal and governing record is massively distorted by the impact of the bank meltdown, the steep revenue-killing recession, and the stimulus. Until its last months, the Bush administration could claim no such excuses for its awful debt-management. The big Bush jumps in discretionary spending, the big leap in entitlements under the unfunded Medicare D program, the long nation-building wars put off-budget, and the huge claims for executive power dominant in the first term: all these are far more damning to my mind than Obama's pragmatism in grappling with an economic collapse or even the healthcare reform, which at least formally claims to reduce the deficit and pay for itself (unlike Bush's Medicare-D). Even the protests at the manner in which the health reform was passed are disingenuous. The Medicare-D process - involving holding the vote open for hours and brutal arm-twisting on the floor of the House - was far, far more cynical and brutal.

And this is why, despite my own deep suspicion of big government, I remain unmoved by the tea-partiers. Their partisanship and cultural hostility to Obama are far more intense, it seems to me, than their genuine proposals to reduce spending and taxation. And this is largely because they have no genuine proposals to reduce spending and taxation. They seem very protective of Medicare and Social Security - and their older age bracket underlines this. They also seem primed for maximal neo-imperial reach, backing the nation-building efforts in Afghanistan and Iraq, favoring war against Iran, etc. Only Ron Paul, peace be upon him, extends his big government critique to the military-industrial-ideological complex.

So they are truly not serious in policy terms, and it behooves the small government right to grapple with this honestly. They both support lower taxation and yet bemoan the fact that so many Americans do not pay any income tax. They want to cut spending on trivial matters while enabling the entitlement and defense behemoths to go on gobbling up Americans' wealth.  And that lack of seriousness is complemented by a near-fanatical cultural alienation from the modern world.

In my view, this confluence of feelings can work in shifting the public mood, as seems to have happened. When there is no internal pushback against crafted FNC propaganda, and when the Democrats seem unable to craft any coherent political message below the presidential level, you do indeed create a self-perpetuating fantasy that can indeed rally and roil people. But the abstract slogans against government, the childish reduction of necessary trade-offs as an apocalyptic battle between freedom and slavery, and the silly ranting at all things Washington: these are not a political movement. They are cultural vents, wrapped up with some ugly Dixie-like strands.

When they propose cuts in Medicare, means-testing social security, a raising of the retirement age and a cut in defense spending, I'll take them seriously and wish them well.

Until then, I'll treat them with the condescending contempt they have thus far deserved.

http://andrewsullivan.theatlantic.com/the_daily_dish/2010/04/why-im-passing-on-tea.html

[BridgeTroll]

Opinion piece... nothing more...

[JeffreyS]

Most political analysis is opinion. Opinion is fine to consider.

[BridgeTroll]

I have always thought so too.

[Tripoli1711]

"It's fair because Obama is a liberal who believes government can and should help the poor and disadvantaged and has proven it by providing access to insurance for the working poor. But it's unfair because Obama's fiscal and governing record is massively distorted by the impact of the bank meltdown, the steep revenue-killing recession, and the stimulus."

He makes some worthwhile critiques, some of which do beg for an answer, but this passage is just total spin.  Yes, people are mad at Obama because he wants to help the poor and disadvantaged.  Anything he has done that is not good is not his fault.... If he is to point the finger at others it would make his position a bit more viable to acknowledge that Obama (you can add "too" in if you like) is spending money on many things about as quickly as it can be printed.

He makes cogent arguments in some spots, particularly about the inherent distrust in big government that many Americans have and the fact that Congressional Republicans from about 2000-2006 were awful on such topics.

[DeadGirlsDontDance]

I find it funny that the Mainstream Media "reports" that the Tea Party is filled with racism and hate (despite no arrests or violence) yet blatantly ignores stories like this one in where a Republican woman and her Male Friend were jumped by a group of Leftist Protesters outside the SRLC in New Orleans on 4/9 leaving her with broken leg. Getting violent on Women is a terrible way to get your message across, Leftys.

http://gatewaypundit.firstthings.com/2010/04/police-release-description-of-allee-bautsch-attacker-dirty-white-ponytail-auburn-hair-thin-beard/

http://thehayride.com/2010/04/the-brennans-beatdown-piecing-together-a-story/

Hmm. According to one of the articles you linked, the chick who got her leg broken played down the political angle.

She also said, without going into specifics of what was said, that “it was all about money.”

In other words, they got mugged, and now the right is trying to blame it on left wing protesters, because it is absolutely impossible that anybody could get violently robbed in New Orleans without some communist socialist fascist anti-American terrorist Democrats being behind it. Crime in New Orleans? Harrumph. Perish the THOUGHT.

[DeadGirlsDontDance]

Never mind the Whiskey Rebellion, what about the actual Boston Tea Party?

The teabaggers can't possibly be anything but uneducated boobs if they think they have anything in common with the original Boston Tea Party. As Bob Cesca points out in his WalletPop column today, they are grossly misinterpreting a significant event in American history.

The original Boston Tea Party was not about wanting to evade income taxes; our Founding Fathers were pissed off about a huge, unfair CORPORATE TAX CUT that threatened to put small, mom-and-pop companies out of business.

The only reason the colonists had a problem with paying taxes is because their interests were not represented in Parliament. Remember? No taxation WITHOUT REPRESENTATION?

Yet the teabaggers, this warbling pack of hydrocephalic troglodytes, they HAVE representatives in the government, and just got the biggest middle-class tax cut in the history of the United States, so what the frickety-fracking hoo-hah are they actually angry about?

Some of them say they want more transparency and accountability in government. That's perfectly valid. But if you ask one of them what government department or function or specific expense they want more accountability about, who they should be directly accountable to, and what would you like to see done to solve any problems the oversight committee finds, they just start chanting "USA! USA! USA!" which makes me inclined to think they have no earthly idea what they're talking about. They're probably just repeating some crap some right-wing jerkface said on the teevee without knowing what it means.

It is my personal opinion that every last thing teabaggers say is either racist or a smokescreen for racism. Come on, a commenter on the WalletPop article I linked above flatly stated that they think it's racist for white people to have to pay income taxes, because in their deluded little minds, all that hard-earned white money goes straight to non-white people. Because no colored people work or pay taxes, obviously.

Racist, deluded, misinformed, wilfully ignorant. And they can't spell for sour owl poop.

[buckethead]

Never mind the Whiskey Rebellion, what about the actual Boston Tea Party?

The teabaggers can't possibly be anything but uneducated boobs if they think they have anything in common with the original Boston Tea Party. As Bob Cesca points out in his WalletPop column today, they are grossly misinterpreting a significant event in American history.

The original Boston Tea Party was not about wanting to evade income taxes; our Founding Fathers were pissed off about a huge, unfair CORPORATE TAX CUT that threatened to put small, mom-and-pop companies out of business.

The only reason the colonists had a problem with paying taxes is because their interests were not represented in Parliament. Remember? No taxation WITHOUT REPRESENTATION? Yet the teabaggers, this warbling pack of hydrocephalic troglodytes, they HAVE representatives in the government, and just got the biggest middle-class tax cut in the history of the United States, so what the frickety-fracking hoo-hah are they actually angry about? You can't be that blind.

Some of them say they want more transparency and accountability in government. That's perfectly valid. But if you ask one of them what government department or function or specific expense they want more accountability about, who they should be directly accountable to, and what would you like to see done to solve any problems the oversight committee finds, they just start chanting "USA! USA! USA!" which makes me inclined to think they have no earthly idea what they're talking about. They're probably just repeating some crap some right-wing jerkface said on the teevee without knowing what it means.
A lot of that going around!

It is my personal opinion that every last thing teabaggers say is either racist or a smokescreen for racism. Come on, a commenter on the WalletPop article I linked above flatly stated that they think it's racist for white people to have to pay income taxes, because in their deluded little minds, all that hard-earned white money goes straight to non-white people. Because no colored people work or pay taxes, obviously.

Racist, deluded, misinformed, wilfully ignorant. And they can't spell for sour owl poop.

You are way off base. Being cute does not give you license to make stuff up. Being white does not disallow dissent.