Teabaggers Redux. Where were these guys 8 years ago?

[stephendare]

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/hale-stewart/where-were-the-teabag-pro_b_187066.html

Today there are supposed to be many teabag rallies across the country. They are getting together to protest reckless government spending or the large deficits the Obama administration is racking up implementing their policy. My only question is this: where were these people 8 years ago? More importantly, where were these people 30 years ago?

Under Reagan, the budget was never balanced and debt ballooned. In fact, under Reagan the total debt/GDP ratio increased from a little over 30% to a little over 60%. Yet there were no protests. And the fact the budget was never balanced didn't seem to bother anybody. Of course, you could argue that the current teabaggers weren't around then so this doesn't count.

But when Bush took office the exact same thing happened. According to the Cato Institute, the Republican Party became the "Grand Old Spending Party." Bush was the biggest spender since LBJ. Here is what the Cato Institute wrote:

    President Bush has presided over the largest overall increase in inflation-adjusted federal spending since Lyndon B. Johnson. Even after excluding spending on defense and homeland security, Bush is still the biggest-spending president in 30 years. His 2006 budget doesn't cut enough spending to change his place in history, either.


    Total government spending grew by 33 percent during Bush's first term. The federal budget as a share of the economy grew from 18.5 percent of GDP on Clinton's last day in office to 20.3 percent by the end of Bush's first term.

    The Republican Congress has enthusiastically assisted the budget bloat. Inflation-adjusted spending on the combined budgets of the 101 largest programs they vowed to eliminate in 1995 has grown by 27 percent.

Yet there were no protests. And here is a report from the Bureau of Public Debt of the annual federal debt outstanding at the end of the last 8 federal fiscal years:

09/30/2008    $10,024,724,896,912.49
09/30/2007    $9,007,653,372,262.48
09/30/2006    $8,506,973,899,215.23
09/30/2005    $7,932,709,661,723.50
09/30/2004    $7,379,052,696,330.32
09/30/2003    $6,783,231,062,743.62
09/30/2002    $6,228,235,965,597.16
09/30/2001    $5,807,463,412,200.06
09/30/2000    $5,674,178,209,886.86

To anyone with an ounce of common sense, it's obvious what's going on. Republican/conservative rank and file are protesting because they are out of power and their leadership is terrible. But they aren't protesting spending; they are protesting the Democratic Party's governance. And that is fine. But please, don't tell me it's about spending or debt. If that were the case, you guys should have taken to the streets years ago.

[Sigma]

I agree with your article about the Bush spending. It was my biggest beef with the bush administration, but also with the GOP during his 8 years.  But your article leaves out the "growth" part. 

I'm glad you brought this up.  It warrants some discussion.

http://www.ibdeditorials.com/IBDArticles.aspx?id=324516474442231

Taxpayers Get Really Tea-ed Off
By INVESTOR'S BUSINESS DAILY | Posted Monday, April 13, 2009 4:20 PM PT

Tax Revolt: The Boston Tea Party helped free us from an oppressive king. This week's nationwide anti-stimulus tea party demonstrations have a tougher goal: ending the tyranny of big-spending politicians.

"If you want to stimulate the economy, you just need to reduce the taxes and regulations," Kansas real estate agent John Todd told the Wichita Eagle, explaining in the clearest terms why he is organizing one of 500 anti-stimulus "tea parties" to take place in cities and towns across America on Wednesday, April 15, Tax Day.

If that is the message heard loud and clear from this unprecedented national movement against the liberal Democratic rule in Washington, and if Republicans endorse those tax-reducing principles, then this grass-roots uprising could succeed.

What the tea parties aim to accomplish is really a much taller order than gaining independence from a tyrannical monarch and far-away parliament two centuries ago.

They are trying to persuade Congress and the states to reject what comes perfectly naturally to them: the opportunity to fritter away a fortune in other people's money, and the idea that we should spend our way out of this economic downturn.

That is not the tried-and-true means of lifting ourselves out of distress. When America suffered the worst recession since the Great Depression at the beginning of Ronald Reagan's first term of office more than a quarter-century ago, the president spurred Congress to cut income taxes across the board.

The longest, strongest expansion in history soon began, extending well beyond Reagan's two terms in office.

And when our country, already suffering from a shaky economy, was in 2001 hit by the first attacks on domestic soil since Pearl Harbor, President George W. Bush similarly rallied Congress to cut the rates of everyone who paid income taxes, as well as investment taxes.

The result was the same: a recovery generating many millions of new jobs.

But the ideology now dominating Washington sees those successful steps as capitalistic greed. As such, it was not Reagan or John F. Kennedy or Bush 43 who had it right when they cut taxes. Rather, it was Franklin Roosevelt, who may well have extended a bad recession into a full-scale collapse by using it as the rationale for a massive expansion in the size and scope of the federal government.

Or so the statists on the left believe.

In the case of today, the notion that "we have nothing to fear but fear itself" as trillions of taxpayer dollars are about to be spent is not being accepted by one and all.

Standing on the floor of the Chicago Board of Trade in February, CNBC commentator and former financial trader Rick Santelli told viewers the reality of what Congress was doing.

The government was rewarding bad behavior, having American taxpayers pay their neighbors' bad mortgages, he pointed out.

And it was Santelli who, as traders cheered him on, suggested a repeat of the famous Boston Tea Party in 1773, in which cases of British tea on ships in Boston Harbor were dumped by colonists dressed as Indians in protest of new British taxes on the beverage.

Millions saw computer postings of the Santelli clip. The result is that Wednesday's protests will see armies of protesters from sea to shining sea wearing, burning or mailing tea bags to politicians in a 21st-century version of the colonial protest.

Can it work?

Howard Jarvis' Proposition 13 movement to cut California's property taxes started small, then expanded to other states in the Midwest and Northeast, and even helped inspire the Reagan tax cuts.

There is an opportunity here for Republicans to bring some fiscal integrity back to their tarnished brand.

GOP senators and House members can appear at their local tea parties and apologize for squandering more than a decade of control of Congress because they wouldn't resist the spending impulse any more than Democrats would. Or they can sit in their offices and hope the storm of anger passes them by.

If Republicans commit to becoming a new "Grand Tea Party," this week's demonstrations could be as consequential as the events in Boston that inspired them.

[Deuce]

While I think the gov't has been throwing to much money at recovery, I agree that this whole tea-party idea is partisan. Sounds like a bunch of whiny sore losers to me.

[BridgeTroll]

 Many of them are libertarians promoting the fair tax idea.

[vicupstate]

Rather, it was Franklin Roosevelt, who may well have extended a bad recession into a full-scale collapse by using it as the rationale for a massive expansion in the size and scope of the federal government.

What a load of revisionists history bull shit this is.  For the four years PRECEEDING FDR's first term, the economy was in a downward death spiral the likes of which this nation had never seen. Yet it is described as a 'bad recession'.  The 25% unemployment that FDR inherited was not a 'bad recession', it was the GREAT DEPRESSION. 

And as is typical of right wing revisionism, the article TOTALLY ignores the fact that REAGAN, BUSH -41 and CLINTON all raised taxes and the result was,  -- economic expansion and a reduction of the deficit.  Also, that jobs expansion that Bush 43's tax cut supposedly created, came after a multi-million loss of jobs. 

I guess the right is going to ride that one trick pony until it collapsed beneath them.  After all, it's the only idea they have.         

[copperfiend]

While I think the gov't has been throwing to much money at recovery, I agree that this whole tea-party idea is partisan. Sounds like a bunch of whiny sore losers to me.

It basically came from and was promoted by Fox News.

[Deuce]

"But it was all right, everything was all right, the struggle was finished. He had won the victory over himself. He loved Big Brother."

[Tripoli1711]

These events were not originated by Fox News nor were they initially sponsored by any large group of any sort.  The first "tea party" was started by some bloggers.  Then a few more popped up around the country.  Jacksonville has already had one. Fox News wasn't there nor did they act as organizer or cheerleader.  These were and still for the most part are grassroots organizing efforts.  Liberals are not the only group of people in the nation that understand the power of the internet to network and organize.  That is precisely what happened here.  When the guy on CNBC had his famous rant from the floor of the market in Chicago calling for a Chicago Tea Party on July 4th, these movements had a common banner to call themselves and more and more began to organize.  It was decided to not wait until July 4th, as people were outraged now and April 15th was plenty symbolic.  I am disappointed that several of these are having any politicians speak at these rallies, as I do not think that is what these should be all about.  The organizer of the Chicago event today had totally correct when he was quoted in today's Wall Street Journal saying "This is an opportunity for Americans to speak, and elected officials to listen, not the other way around."  These people are not sore losers, they are people who are genuinely fearful of the trillions of dollars in debt that the nation has embraced and the further expansion of the federal government into other sectors of American society, bringing with it the inefficiencies and wasteful spending that almost always seems to come along. 

It is surprising just how many frequent contributors to this site would have the government meddle in unprecedented areas of American life.  Are you not the same people who constantly bemoan the pathetic vision, leadership and fiscal decisions of local government?  Are many in Washington actually cut from a radically different cloth?  In Jacksonville our local officials are mere minutes away.  Our officials serve a relatively small number of people.  Yet just how often do the motivated members of our community actually get their message across and see results from Hemming Plaza?  Not nearly enough for anyone's liking.  Yet we wait in staggering numbers with glee for the Federal government in Washington, proven to be totally detached from the average citizen, to answer our problems and provide solutions that serve us and not them. 

Yet these people will be villified today.  They will be cast as malcontents and sore losers.  The same people hurling these verbal barrages were blindsided with the same when they protested the Iraq war.  People branded them cowards and traitors.  I disagreed with them, but applauded their exercise of their right to organize and protest.  Those same people will today disparage and typecast every tea party participant as "some conservative nut job" or "people who just can't get over the fact that Obama won."  I suppose those generalizations apply equally to the war protesters who were "a bunch of hippie pinkos".  Or is it only big government collectivists who are allowed to stage demonstrations?

I am not going to a tea party.  I think largely their spirit has been hijacked by politicians who want to use the opportunity to give a stump speech and tell the people "I'm on your side", then return to Washington and insert a pork project into a defense bill.  I am not going to a tea party because I think it will ultimately be an ineffective way to get our point across to the leaders of this nation. 

I do, however, stand steadfast by the ideological basis for these demonstrations in the first place.  Running trillion dollar deficits and putting a massive debt on Americans who will not even be born for another 30 years is something I cannot stomach.  Abdicating personal responsibility for one's own well being to a federal nanny in DC who watches over us and intercedes in all aspects of life is something I am not willing to do.  It's not sour grapes and it isn't Fox News telling me what to think- and I say kudos to the tea parties, may your message be heard loud and clear.

[Sigma]

Stephen, while you are sitting there reading at the cafe, read my first line of the post. It was not fine, which is my biggest complaint.  The Republicans, as I have said before squandered billions, and they have no right to represent conservatives.

[Tripoli1711]

Rather, it was Franklin Roosevelt, who may well have extended a bad recession into a full-scale collapse by using it as the rationale for a massive expansion in the size and scope of the federal government.

What a load of revisionists history bull shit this is.  For the four years PRECEEDING FDR's first term, the economy was in a downward death spiral the likes of which this nation had never seen. Yet it is described as a 'bad recession'.  The 25% unemployment that FDR inherited was not a 'bad recession', it was the GREAT DEPRESSION. 

And as is typical of right wing revisionism, the article TOTALLY ignores the fact that REAGAN, BUSH -41 and CLINTON all raised taxes and the result was,  -- economic expansion and a reduction of the deficit.  Also, that jobs expansion that Bush 43's tax cut supposedly created, came after a multi-million loss of jobs. 

I guess the right is going to ride that one trick pony until it collapsed beneath them.  After all, it's the only idea they have.         

You are correct that FDR inherited the depression and not just a "bad recession".  However his massive government expansion may have actually extended the length of the depression rather than stopping it.  That is the key point to take away from FDR's economic policies.  His own Treasury Secretary and friend admitted as much to members of the House Ways & Means Committee on May 9, 1939.  He said "we have tried spending money. We are spending more than we have ever spent before and it does not work... I want to see this country prosperous. I want to see people get a job. I want to see people get enough to eat. We have never made good on our promises... I say after eight years of this Administration we have just as much unemployment as when we started, And an enormous debt to boot!"

[Sigma]

These events were not originated by Fox News nor were they initially sponsored by any large group of any sort.  The first "tea party" was started by some bloggers.  Then a few more popped up around the country.  Jacksonville has already had one. Fox News wasn't there nor did they act as organizer or cheerleader.  These were and still for the most part are grassroots organizing efforts.  Liberals are not the only group of people in the nation that understand the power of the internet to network and organize.  That is precisely what happened here.  When the guy on CNBC had his famous rant from the floor of the market in Chicago calling for a Chicago Tea Party on July 4th, these movements had a common banner to call themselves and more and more began to organize.  It was decided to not wait until July 4th, as people were outraged now and April 15th was plenty symbolic.  I am disappointed that several of these are having any politicians speak at these rallies, as I do not think that is what these should be all about.  The organizer of the Chicago event today had totally correct when he was quoted in today's Wall Street Journal saying "This is an opportunity for Americans to speak, and elected officials to listen, not the other way around."  These people are not sore losers, they are people who are genuinely fearful of the trillions of dollars in debt that the nation has embraced and the further expansion of the federal government into other sectors of American society, bringing with it the inefficiencies and wasteful spending that almost always seems to come along. 

It is surprising just how many frequent contributors to this site would have the government meddle in unprecedented areas of American life.  Are you not the same people who constantly bemoan the pathetic vision, leadership and fiscal decisions of local government?  Are many in Washington actually cut from a radically different cloth?  In Jacksonville our local officials are mere minutes away.  Our officials serve a relatively small number of people.  Yet just how often do the motivated members of our community actually get their message across and see results from Hemming Plaza?  Not nearly enough for anyone's liking.  Yet we wait in staggering numbers with glee for the Federal government in Washington, proven to be totally detached from the average citizen, to answer our problems and provide solutions that serve us and not them. 

Yet these people will be villified today.  They will be cast as malcontents and sore losers.  The same people hurling these verbal barrages were blindsided with the same when they protested the Iraq war.  People branded them cowards and traitors.  I disagreed with them, but applauded their exercise of their right to organize and protest.  Those same people will today disparage and typecast every tea party participant as "some conservative nut job" or "people who just can't get over the fact that Obama won."  I suppose those generalizations apply equally to the war protesters who were "a bunch of hippie pinkos".  Or is it only big government collectivists who are allowed to stage demonstrations?

I am not going to a tea party.  I think largely their spirit has been hijacked by politicians who want to use the opportunity to give a stump speech and tell the people "I'm on your side", then return to Washington and insert a pork project into a defense bill.  I am not going to a tea party because I think it will ultimately be an ineffective way to get our point across to the leaders of this nation. 

I do, however, stand steadfast by the ideological basis for these demonstrations in the first place.  Running trillion dollar deficits and putting a massive debt on Americans who will not even be born for another 30 years is something I cannot stomach.  Abdicating personal responsibility for one's own well being to a federal nanny in DC who watches over us and intercedes in all aspects of life is something I am not willing to do.  It's not sour grapes and it isn't Fox News telling me what to think- and I say kudos to the tea parties, may your message be heard loud and clear.

Very well said. I think the tea parties may be getting some attention to the Fair Tax as well, which is positive.

[BridgeTroll]

Thanks for the pix Stephen... Looks like a very big crowd.  What was the mood?  Can you provide some insight or commentary?

[hooplady]

Ahem.  The Libertarian Party of Duval County had a "Tea Party" in '93 or '94 at Friendship Fountain.  I was afraid we'd get arrested for throwing tea, so we threw fish food into the St. Johns.  We tried to make it more festive than whiny.   

Since that era I think the Libertarians and Fair-Taxers have become more blended and more vocal; these pics show a heckuva lot larger crowd!

[reednavy]

This is a waste of time, just because the Reps. had their toys taken away and now they want to cry because they've been told to go to their room.

[Tripoli1711]

Stephen- Where is the proof for the Playboy Blog?  All the blogger does is cite the traditional old white man in a dark room who is a head of the "vast right wing conspiracy".  What factual proof at all is offered?  The fact is that there are hundreds of facebook groups, etc, devoted to these events.  I personally know a couple of people organizing events in some small towns.  Maybe they were sworn to secrecy, but there was no mention of a right wing oligarchy contacting them and infusing them with big bucks handed down from "the man".

The quoted comments from the Secretary of the Treasury were given in 1939, just after the outbreak of war in Europe and a full 27 months before Pearl Harbor.  In 1939 the United States had a paltry military.  It was smaller than places like Portugal.  FDRs massive increases in government spending during the 1930s had nothing to do with  military spending, although I do agree that military spending IS government spending.