Tea Parties My Ess

So, today is "Tax Day," the IRS income tax filing deadline, and people are gathering to mark the occasion with "Tea Parties" across the nation. These "Tea Parties" are modeled after the famous Boston Tea Party of yore, and are supposed to highlight the plight of the hard-working people who are being oppressed by burdensome taxes levied by an insensitive and bloated government, out to preserve its privilege at the expense of the populace.

What a total crock. I'm not going to mince words here - why should I? What we've seen today is a large number of stupid people who have been led into political rallies staged by the Republican Party, in order to protest the fact that the extremely well-off are finally being made to once again contribute to paying for the benefits they receive from our country, in more-or-less just proportion to those benefits. The people doing the protesting, let me note, are, for the most part, not among those being asked for a more just contribution, and, furthermore, many of the protesters will likely end up with a reduced burden, finally, after almost three decades of shouldering a disproportionate share of the economic load. Perhaps I offend some people, but, there you go. They are just plain stupid; there's no other word that does justice to the idiotic display these people are making of themselves. Why not just find the richest guy in your town and pay his kids' college bills for him? I mean, maybe he finds them too expensive, and you can
help him out. While you're at it, why not let him know that you think you make too much money for the work you do, and that he deserves to have some of yours? Or, you can suggest that he'll get better value if he fires you and gets someone in China to do your job.

Honestly, just how stupid are these people? For around thirty years now, American workers have been told that they're too expensive - lazy and unproductive, we cannot possibly compete against people in East Asia, Europe, or pretty much anyplace that's not here. Our benefits are too costly. Of course, in many countries where labor is "cheaper," the government also supplies health benefits (as in most of Europe, Japan, and Korea. Even China is developing a universal health care insurance system). We can't do that here, though. That would be "socialism." So, the price companies pay for labor here includes health benefits, which are govenment-supplied in those countries our workers compete against. The solution here, of course, is to simply not provide such insurance, or to offshore industrial production, thereby fobbing the health insurance costs off to those foreign governments. Oh, by the way, how, do you think, do those governments pay for those benefits? Why, through taxes, of course. Citzens in those countries, incuding the rich ones, have a generally higher tax burden than we do here. In all the industrialized world, we have among the lightest tax loads. But, hey, why let facts get in the way of a good bitch session? And then these working people attend rallies to show their support for the very people who have done this to them. How stupid are they, anyway?

Oh, well, we hear, pensions are too rich, and too expensive. Excuse me, but, if companies (and governments) would simply stop raiding their pension funds to hide operating losses, most of them wouldn't find pensions so expensive. As I mentioned, governments do this, too. Here's an example:

In New Jersey, we're being told that the state workers' pension expenses are outstripping the value of the pension fund. Workers enjoy pensions that are far too large, goes the argument. How could we have let ourselves in for such a predicament? Let's go back a few years, to the administration of one Christie Whitman (who, incidentally, did such an execrable job as Governor that her own party, the Republican Party, doesn't like to talk about her). During her adminstration, she and her advisers came to the conclusion that the state pension fund was "overfunded." This was during a boom in the markets. Her party ran on the premise that taxes were too high, but they didn't want to cut off programs that were either necessary or just popular (like the "Homestead Rebate," which is nothing more than a bribe to taxpayers. "Rebate?" Just adjust the tax rates, cowards). So, what did Ms. Whitman and her cohorts do? They stole the money from the pension fund. Stole it. That's the only word that accurately describes what they did. They stole the money from the pension fund so that they wouldn't have to tax people to pay for what they get from the state. Now that the markets aren't so high anymore, those funds are no longer "overfunded." In fact, they are seriously underfunded, and they've become a drain on the state budget. Does anyone point the finger (justly) at Ms. Whitman? No, indeed, the blame falls on those very workers whose money was stolen by the aforementioned Whitman and her cronies. And who is it that's making all this noise? The very same Republican Party that perpetrated the theft of funds from the workers' pensions. Now, there's justice for you.

So, now, that party is staging these "Tea Parties." The party that steals from public workers, and whose loathing of legal constraints on business has led to the greatest theft of people's savings and investments in our recent history, the party who has engineered the raising of expenses of working people, while cutting the incomes of those same people, the "Robin Hood-in-reverse" Party, who have taken from the poor and given to the rich - these people are organizing "Tea Parties" to complain about the awful burden they carry.

For shame.

For utter shame.

The Republican Party has forsaken any sense of civic duty. They pander to the basest instincts of the electorate. They encourage petty greed, anti-social behavior, and outright criminality. They preach anarchy. They have no shame.

As for working people who support these shameless thieves that have ravaged our country and its people:

They are unutterably stupid.