National Tax Day Tea Party
You might have heard about the “tea parties” that are occurring across the country today. They are, according to their website, “to expose the bankrupt liberal agenda of the White House Administration and Congress. Specifically, the flawed “Stimulus Bill” and pork filled budget.”
I felt the need to comment on these so called “patriotic acts” since the original act (The Boston Tea Party) not only occurred in my home state (MA representin’) but was organized by a group of college students from the then hardly known Harvard College.
I was trying to figure out the best way to express how I feel about this little charade but I think Tina Dupuy from the Huffington Post put it best, “The Boston Tea Party was standing up to tyranny after years of neglect. Not standing up to being mad that your candidate didn’t win.”
I would love to rip apart the economic and moral argument that the organizers of these tea parties have but they don’t seem to outline their argument anywhere on their website. Well unless you count the below video of Glen Beck dressed up as Thomas Paine… I am honestly not sure who I am happier is a Republican, Glen Beck or Rush Limbaugh. Limbaugh gives you that gut I-want-to-puke-my-brains-out-at-this-ignorant-horse-crap feeling but Beck… well, just watch the video, it’s self explanatory.
Just for the record, if Paine was alive, I would bet my live savings (which actually as a college student isn’t much but my future life savings) that he would kick Becks ass all up and down Boston harbor.
So, without knowing their argument since they decided to not display it, let me tell you why the National Tax Day Tea Party is a stupid idea.
1. The stimulus package, like it or not, is absolutely necessary to ensure long term growth in the economy. It really doesn’t matter what the government spends it on, that money is going to provide jobs and increase our overall GDP. We could buy porn with the money and it would grow the economy. If you are concerned about our debt, watch what happens to our debt when our GDP decreases.
2. If you are worried about our national debt, fighting taxes will not help it. Even if you want to cut all of the spending that Obama and the Democrats have put into this years budget and the stimulus package, we would still have a deficit. To get a surplus we would have to cut all government spending beyond entitlement commitments and defense spending. So unless you want to completely shut down all government programs, we simply have not choice but to raise taxes to chip away at the debt. A debt, I might remind you, that was mostly amassed during a Republican administration.
3. This one is my favorite. These people claim to be noble patriots fighting for the American people. But they do so by arguing against job creation, universal health care and social security. How is it that you can be for the “average Joe American” yet fight for no action to combat 11% real unemployment, 50 million uninsured and 1 in 5 children living below the poverty line?
All I am saying is that anyone who puts Glenn Beck on the homepage of their website shouldn’t be allowed to try to sway public opinion.