TEA'D UP: AN OBVIOUS QUESTION
Well, they had the "Tea Party" yesterday (tragically missing was Mark Baker: "for families and against taxes..")
To get there, the anti-tax protesters walked on tax-supported sidewalks, were protected by tax-supported policemen, drove on tax-supported streets and highways and finally arrived a tax-provided, tax-supported and tax-maintained public land, owned by a taxing body.
With the aid of all these tax-supported activities and assets they then protested taxes. Peachy. The question kind of asks itself: Which ones?
Are there good taxes and bad taxes. Should there have been no public lands, streets, sidewalks, safety professionals to enable this protest? Since they were at the site of the last few historic flood fights, I wonder if they all opposed the use of taxpayer funds to keep the flood out of the public water supply just down the street.
Maybe the gesture would have been more meaningful if they found some zero tax footprint location for it.
It was a good thing ol' Davey was there, though, to keep an eye out for "convicts". I, for one, missed the camo look and the obsession with children in the park.
posted by UMRBlog @ 10:56
8 comments
8 Comments:
Here is something I don't think they probably referenced in their stump speeches. The taxpayers in Congressional District 17 (Hare) will pay $1.4 billion for total Iraq war spending approved to date. For the same amount of money, the following could have been provided:
572,069 People with Health Care for One Year OR
1,821,179 Homes with Renewable Electricity for One Year OR
28,179 Public Safety Officers for One year OR
23,885 Music and Arts Teachers for One Year OR
138,584 Scholarships for University Students for One Year OR
9,929 Affordable Housing Units OR
943,781 Children with Health Care for One Year OR
202,706 Head Start Places for Children for One Year OR
21,049 Elementary School Teachers for One Year OR
19,978 Port Container Inspectors for One year
You surprise me UMR---I didn't expect you to be so Manichean.
The police and sidewalks are funded by local taxes and local government which is more responsive than state or federal government. The good people of Quincy can vote out their councilmen and mayor but have no control over Chris Dodd or Barney Frank.
Can you see the difference?
Obviously I wasn't at the Quincy Tea Party yesterday (we're having ours on the 15th), but my guess is that most of the rage is against the drunken-sailor style spending of the federal government and not against firefighters.
Are you OK with your money being poured into the doomed GM? AIG? Earmarks to eradicate pig odor in Iowa? Hillary's Woodstock Museum? Do you think whatever Obama wants is OK?
If so, I have seriously misjudged you---my apologies.
QCE,
First, this was very non-specific (thus my beef about "generically" being opposed to "taxes"). Second, the centerpiece of this caper was the local candidate for mayor, a guy who was on our county board for years and never saw a "no bid" contract he didn't love. He now claims to be a born again fiscal conservative and this little party just happened to be accelerated before our local muni election.
Third, and this was is just a personal thing and off your topic, one of the organizers of this thing actually thanked "The Lord" for our Freedom of Speech and left out about 235 years of noble GI sacrifices. You're welcome. I'm sure she'll protest taxes for VA care of our fallen heroes.
I'm sure yours will be better thought out and not the product of personal ambition. Still, I think the idea of having a tax protest hosted on a taxing body's land is still inherently contradictory.
TYFCB.
Anon 1201,
Interesting input but I guess I'd argue that ship has sailed and we need to decide what line items we like and don't like.
There are taxes I'd like to protest too but it's issue by issue, line item by line item.
The original idea of electing CongressPeeps every two years was to render the House the most responsive body. The Hammer's redistricting tended to eliminate competitive districts and earmarks and increased tax votes became safer.
While you have to give Obama props for rolling the war expenditures into the actual budget instead of supplementals, his proposed budget is shockingly liberal. If that's what this tea-ball league was protesting, they have a point. They just need to be more specific if they want to be anything more than a re-rack of the old "know-nothing" party.
BTW, the container inspection line item is one of my pets. You hit a nerve there.
TYFCB
Great GOTV move and free press
OK, I'm grokking now.
I get your "idea of having a tax protest hosted on a taxing body's land is still inherently contradictory" explanation.
Which is why our QC tea parties will be held at the office of the IAQC's congressman's office in Davenport and at the ILQC's congressman Phil Hare's office in Moline.
As a lawyer, I'm sure you know just how important it is to tie the criminal to the crime. :-D
Ah, that is completely different.
In Constitutional Law that is called "Petitioning the Seat of Government.."
And, no, I really don't want the obvious bad joke in response.
TYFCB
As you say in comments, they should be more specific about which taxes. But I doubt anyone showed up to protest taxes for streets or sidewalks.
The anger is boiling over about trillions in bailouts, while those insiders and bankers that caused the mess seem to still be steeping in the largesse.
People seem numbed by the stock market moves and the recent crisis ... so now spending a trillion is no big deal. But in time it will be very big ... and we are again just running up debt, but in even grander fashion.
We apparently have not learned a thing about irrational exuberance, or weapons of mass financial destruction.
I spend a lot of time reading this "stuff" ... and it is hard to keep up. I can't imagine the ordinary working stiff has much time to really sort it all out. My view is that as bad as it seems, it is probably much worse, and it is coming to a town near you. These friendly protests may well become violent in time. (hopefully not here though)
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