How do you invalidate the protests of the thousands of self-styled "tea-partiers" who demonstrated this past Wednesday against runaway government spending?
Ask them where they've been the past eight years.
That wasn't a joke. The second Bush administration ushered in some of the most gratuitous and ill-advised government spending in American history, and yet these people only come out in force now? That takes gall.
Even so April 15, tax day, saw more than 750 demonstrations nationwide against the Obama stimulus/bailout plans, as Americans proved for the second time in 300 years that they don't quite understand how to use a tea bag.
Despite claims of non-partisan roots, conservative media touted these protests as a sign that the average American is against the Obama administration's economic policies.
The fact remains, however, that if these people really cared about out-of-control government spending then they would have been on the frontlines of the anti-war movement, not to mention the anti-homeland-security, anti-tax-cuts-for the-rich and anti-bailout movements as well. Remember, folks, Bush bailed out too.
So logically, tea-partiers, you must be ok with the idea of government spending; you've been silent as church mice while our beautiful Clinton-era surplus mutated into a sickeningly large deficit. So what's the problem?
Why, it must be what the money is being spent on, not the fact that it is being spent.
But: the bailout, the stimulus, these strange economic programs that will soon turn into an Atlas-like tax burden for ensuing generations; they are here, and wearing a bunch of tea-bags on your head like a cheap Rasta wig won't change that. Here's a tip: protest about things that haven't happened yet; it's far more effective.
There are proper channels to this kind of thing, and the protest ship has sailed. The only option left open is to work within the system, so: cease this silly protest, go home and write your congressman if you have a problem with where the money is going.
But don't waste valuable news space playing activist; you're not very good at it.
Photo: Courtesy of Laron Fomby
