tea parties

I wanted to post on the sheer stupidity and desperation of the tax protest "tea parties" around the US today, but first, I had to stop giggling at the ridiculous and seemingly oblivious moniker given to these "protests"; seriously, do they not know what "teabagging" is?

Then, my friend Scott, a brilliant ethicist in Chicago, said it so well my writing would just be redundant:

First of all, let's remember that the heart of protest in the Boston Tea Party was "no taxation without representation." But the teabaggers are represented! In some cases, owing to the unrepresentative character of the U.S. Senate, they're overrepresented, given the size and population of their states. Far from being an undemocratic and non-consensual imposition on the U.S. people by a distant and disinterested foreign government, this is the legislation that their own elected legislators passed, and that their popularly elected president signed. This is is all the opposite of taxation without representation.

Second, although these protests are demonstrations of inchoate anger toward Barack Obama, it's worth noting that the current tax code, the one that people are out protesting today, has got nothing to do with Barack Obama, but is in fact the tax code as it was enacted under largely Republican congresses and signed over the past eight years by a Republican president. So to the degree that this is directed toward Obama and the Democrats, it misses it's desired mark.

Third, and more to the point, the Democratic Congress enacted, and Barack Obama has signed, the largest middle class tax cut in America history, of which most of the protesters today will be the beneficiaries. Far from protesting today, many of these people should be thanking the U.S. government.

Fourth, the complaints about deficits are inane. Under Bill Clinton, when the economy was booming, we actually had a chance to reduce and even eliminate the deficit. Under George Bush and a Republican Congress, the deficit exploded, along with thousands of bombs in an unjust and immoral war in Iraq, which contributed to the deficit. To the degree that Barack Obama and the Democrats are adding to that deficit, it is, and it is intended to be, a short term means of stimulating the economy in order to spark businesses to produce and thus employ workers, and banks to start lending again. In fact, for this purpose, the stimulus package was actually probably small, and so we ought to be spending more.

Finally, where were all of these people when Bush was running up those deficits?They were nowhere to be seen! So to complain now in a crisis, about deficits when they were silent for eight years when their own guy was in power,
is a prima fascia demonstration of their hypocrisy.

The only thing I would add to Scott's analysis is the assertion that these teabagging (hee hee)parties are hardly the grassroots uprising the media is making them out to be. Why won't people realize they are just being used?