I understand the most famous plumber that isn’t a plumber will be gracing our fair county soon. Sam Wurzelbacher (aka Joe T. Plumber) is coming to Livingston for the second time in just a few months. His first visit was with the traveling herd known as the Tea Bag Express which partied down at the Brighton Mill Pond. I’m told his moment with the microphone was charitably called unscripted as he was reported to have randomly ranged from gun possession to something about snakes on a leash, a difficult image to envision.
It’s not that I was too busy to attend that party, but there are many reasons why I preferred to observe the Tea Bag phenomenon from afar.
1.)The Boston Tea Party occurred to protest “Taxation without Representation”. The fact that folks like U.S. Representative Addison “Joe” Wilson shows up at these events kind of blows that conceit out of the water.
I have a representative whose name is Mike Rogers. The fact that I’ve never voted for him doesn’t mean that I’m taxed without representation.
Last year we all voted for our representatives from President to dog catcher. Some voted for winners, some didn’t. I suspect the tea baggers didn’t get their wishes from the vote fairy. Sorry.
2.)The Tea Parties attracted a gaggle of protesters. One group was there to protest the TARP (Troubled Asset Relief Program), the multi-billion dollar program to stabilize American commerce and finance. I can only assume that these folks thought that if the world banking system collapsed they would be immune to the effects. We may get a sense of the consequences from this week’s CITI bankruptcy. It may, unfortunately, provide a real lesson when small and medium size retailers not only can’t borrow money for inventory, they may even have their credit lines called in just in time for the holiday shopping season.
To understand what happens when a country’s (let alone the world’s) banking system collapses, consider Iceland where borrowing money will cost you well over 15% (if you can actually find someone with money willing to loan you money) and the currency is less stable than Zimbabwe’s. McDonalds even closed all of its restaurants there! The cost of the failure of Iceland’s three main banks is seven times more than Iceland’s GDP (the total value of everything Iceland produces in a year).
Immune? Sure, in a bomb shelter full of food, guns, and krugerrands. You’ve got all three? I see no reason for you to tolerate this society any longer and think you should relocate underground immediately.
3.)Anti-health care reformers apparently showed up in droves. They worried that granny will face a death squad just like the Republican legislature and Governor George W. Bush created in 1999 in Texas. Or force people to make life ending decisions when face to face with their Doctor like Sarah Palin touted in Alaska on April 16, 2008, her self proclaimed “Healthcare Decisions Day”.
The case for overhauling the health care system is obvious to everyone not on Medicare, an irony lost on the tea baggers. Blue Cross Blue Shield of Michigan raised their premiums 20% in May and has applied for increases of as much as 31% going forward. As a former employer I know that providing health insurance at these levels and with these annual increases simply won’t be possible. And forget about raises if you’re lucky enough to have employer paid health insurance.
Just about every opinion poll except Fox News gives the health care reform with the “public option” an over 50% favorable rating (Fox admits 49% for the public option). The New England Journal of Medicine shows 62.9% of American Doctors support the public option. It’s not often I go with the flow but I will on this issue.
4.)When the busses rolled into Brighton for the party there was much concern that a black man was giving a 15 minute talk in some lily-white schools. That arbiter of all things stupid, Glenn Beck, announced he was keeping his children home from school so they wouldn’t be forced to watch the President of the United States of America speak to the nation’s youth about education.
I agree with Randy Speck, superintendent of Oakland (County) Christian School who noted “This kind of outrage gives conservative Christians a bad name.” Those wild and crazy liberals, Laura Bush and Newt Gingrich, thought it was a worthwhile message, but Beck’s kids will never know.
5.) Hucksters like Addison “Joe” Wilson, who hides his racism by claiming he’s simply trying to restore pre-Civil War Southern culture, goes to Tea Bag parties. Wilson is a member of the Sons of the Confederate Veterans, a group in good standing with white supremacist organizations around the country.
6.) Some Tea Baggers are still whining about the government bailing out General Motors and Chrysler. Mostly they’re anti-union people anxious to repeal Frankie Roosevelt’s administration. I laughed my butt off when the Southern legislators kept demanding that GM and Chrysler should be allowed to fail and then cried like babies when the local auto dealerships started closing. Did they really think the dealerships were going to stay open if GM and Chrysler closed? Were they really concerned when they talked about the necessity of the hardships Michigan workers were going to have to face? Apparently lots of jobs in Michigan don’t matter as much as a few jobs in Armpit, Alabama. Do those guys stand for anything besides the bad old days and fat campaign contributions?
7.)There are a lot of complaints about the national debt at these parties. I agree. I worry about the debt our children and their children will bear because of us. But I wrote often about the ballooning debt during the Bush years when low and middle class wages were stagnant or falling and only the wealthy prospered. I didn’t get any angry arguments from anyone in Livingston County when the deficit grew by more than 4 trillion dollars then.
Throwing money at the economic wreck Bush passed on to us is scary, but the economy was slipping into depression and token gestures like Bush’s “rebate checks” weren’t going to turn the tide. A robust, expanding economy will cure a lot of ills and that’s what the stimulus money is meant to do.
8.) Sorry, but I didn’t want to listen to Joe the Plumber, the guy who isn’t Joe and isn’t even a plumber yet. Joe’s claim to fame was announcing that he wouldn’t go into business because of increased taxes on the wealthiest 5% of Americans. Having run a small business for 16 years, let me tell Joe if he’s basing his desire to own a business only on the tax situation, he should just open a bank in the Grand Cayman Islands. If he doesn’t like taxes in the U.S. there are a lot of countries with almost no taxes. I hear Pakistan needs plumbers badly.
Or just maybe America’s infrastructure, that benefits both citizens and businesses and was paid for with taxes, has some advantages that aren’t enjoyed by many low tax countries. A legal framework to open and operate a business, trade laws to ensure fair and equal commerce, rails, rivers and roads kept open and operable for bringing goods to markets, and an educated work force are possible because of taxes. Since you can’t pick and choose which taxes you want to pay, communication with your representative (see No. 1 above) is the way to affect tax policy, which, by the way, is what the original Boston Tea Party protesters were demonstrating for.
9.)Some of the partiers were protesting the possibility of strong carbon emission controls. Since both Presidential candidates backed such action last year it seems like the timetable is more when than if.
We’ve done a great job of mucking up a beautiful planet. I’ll bet God’s not too pleased with how we’ve taken care of his creation. Whether the changes in our weather are man made or natural occurrences doesn’t mean we should keep treating the atmosphere as a dumping ground for the poisons that we generate.
Why do the same people who wring their hands over leaving their kids a large national debt have no problem leaving their children and their children’s children life on an ultimately toxic planet?
10.)Another group in attendance was the birthers, a movement so discredited that even Ann Coulter ignores it. I just find the word “birthers” hilarious and try to work it in to as many articles as I can.
Plus, the protesters at the Boston Tea Party wore Native American Indian costumes, presumably so they wouldn’t wake to British Red Coats knocking on their doors the next morning. That seems pretty brave as well as pretty cool.
But stapling tea bags to your clothes? Mmmm, I don’t think so.
