Right-wingers all over America – including little old Bend, Oregon – are gearing up for their big “Tax Day Tea Party” next week, and the rhetoric is getting pretty hot.
Inspired by a rant by Rick Santelli of CNBC, who called for a 21st Century version of the Boston Tea Party to protest President Obama’s attempt to clear away the economic train wreck inherited from George W. Bush, the movement (slogan: “Revolution Is Brewing”) has gone national. It’s been helped along in no small measure by the “fair and balanced” Fox News Channel, which has exhaustively covered the preparations for it and actively encouraged viewers to join up.
Sean Hannity is planning a special Tax Day Tea Party show, and his fellow Fox bloviator Neil Cavuto told his audience that the tea party movement is taking off because “folks are fed up with out-of-control spending” and huge federal deficits.
Oddly enough, Hannity, Cavuto et al. were not nearly so exercised about deficits when Bush and a Republican-controlled Congress were running up record ones to finance tax cuts for billionaires and a phony war based on lies.
Boiled it down to its essence, the message of the tea partiers – The Eye will refrain from the cheap shot of calling them “tea baggers” – is “Obama = Lenin.” They’re incensed about Obama’s “tax increases” (i.e., letting the aforesaid tax cuts for billionaires expire) and “nationalization” of American industries (i.e., requiring companies that get taxpayer bailouts to display some accountability).
On the Oregon Tea Party website, right-wing activist and blogger Geoff Ludt is beset by dark visions about the sinister machinations of the eeeeee-vil Obama supporters.
“As you likely know by now,” he warns, “the statists [sic] are going to hold a rally on April 11th. … My understanding is that many [in the Oregon Tea Party movement] are suggesting a counter-protest to demonstrate that this is not the ‘Tax Day Tea Party’ as they fear the aim of this statist protest is to cause disruption to the point that permits are canceled for the event occurring on Tax Day.”
Ludt advises his followers against staging such a counter-protest because it “could cause EXACTLY what is feared and, divert our attention in the closing hours from planning for our event to dealing with a petty nuisance designed to play on emotions. If you have the statists, by themselves, the potential exists for them to cause some chaos yes but, if you have the statists, with our people, not only does the potential still exist for chaos but, I believe it puts our people in jeopardy and, sets the stage for a potential clash that could lead to the revocation of permits.”
Punctuation and sentence structure evidently aren’t the strong suit of the tea partiers. Just the same, being called “statists” is a refreshing change from being called “socialists” and “communists.” Thanks, Geoff.
As of this writing, 21 tea parties have been planned for April 15 in Oregon. The one in Bend is supposed to take place at Troy Field downtown across from McMenamin’s from 3 to 7 pm. If you want to know more about it you can e-mail teaparty1@rocketmail.com or phone 541-317-5052.
The Eye’s gut feeling is that the tea party is going to fizzle rather than sizzle. But since the “American Idol” results show won’t be on until 9 pm, we just might wander over and check things out if the weather is halfway decent.
UPDATE: Lucy Brackett, the Deschutes County Chair of Americans for Prosperity, a national organization based in Washington, DC that supports the standard assortment of right-wing causes, has informed The Eye via e-mail that the event will feature speeches by “everyday citizens,” patriotic music, a march, “historical re-enactments,” a signing of a giant replica of the Constitution by the participants, and, of course, the “tossing of the tea.” (Where and how tea will be tossed is not specified.)
“We are expecting a large crowd,” Brackett said. We’ll see.
This article appears in Apr 9-15, 2009.
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This article by Mr. Miller is a prime example of the legt wing media spin. Mr. Miller obviouly does not understand that the Tea Parties are not right or legt wing. They are about America, and the Capitlaistic System which allowed our country to become what it is today. Those of us who attend the Tea Parties, regardless of the weather, are speaking out to save our country from becoming a weak, socialistic state governed from the far left.
Wake up Mr. Miller, and smell the tea bags.
The Republican party is a joke. They have no plan of their own so all they have left is to sling mud. They are the party of the Ostrich, bury their heads in the sand to all the important issues in the world and force their issues on us that none of us have any interest in. They are so out of touch and have truely kept us following the world instead of leading in areas like technology, medicine, education, art, energy efficiency, need I continue? Republcans…GO AWAY!!! And believe me when the economy recovers I’ll bet they will claim that they are the ones that did it. Pathetic!!!! This is why I am no longer Republican!!
You like most drive by media forget it was the Clintoon admin who loosed the lending practices for Fanny Mae and Freddie Mac lending to those who shouldn’t been give home loans. Ah, short term memories eh. Typical Liberal sh__T…
Ah, Where is the Obama admin in Iowa vs Bush’s Hurrican in New Orleans.. You never hear a PEEP about that do you. New Orleans was forcast, Iowa floods weren’t…
Bush tried in 2007 to put back the STANDARD practices of qualifying individuals loans vs loaning to ANYONE who cannot afford in the long run to pay but the DEMO congress shot it down Barny Franks who gets re-elected after knowingly running a MALE prositue ring in his basement in Boston but yet still gets relected. What’s wrong with society today? I know.
What happened to 10% down with PMI or 20% down with no PMI that I like many other good abiding citizens had to follow back in the 70’s & 80’s? ? A majority of those no-qualify loans that NOW have caused this debacle in our economy are one of the MAIN reasons for this financial crisis just to name a few thanks to Clintoon and the demo’s..!!!!
Now OBAMA-nomics HAS caused the biggest deficit ever in our country. Our children, grandchildren and greatgrand children will be paying forever.
No you liberal media types will never get it til your children, grandchildren are burdended with the payback to this communist govt. You JUST DON”T GET IT, DO YOU!!!!!!!!!!!!lol
Polosi, Reed, Shumer, Durbin Obama and all the UN-Patriotics are out of office. It’s really scary to think our general public really believed in Obama when it was know of his connection to Rev Wright, Aires (head) A community leader running this country is out of this world. Just think how DUMBed down this country is to have voted him in…!
How about you being fair and balanced? Liberial can’t stand the TRUTH>>>>>>>
I’ll be the one to tell you I TOLD YOU SOOO>>> and later you’ll say Duh.. I should have opened my ears and eyes eh>>>>>>
I received a random phone call encouraging tea parties–and here I thought we were trying to create a kinder, gentler nation. ๐
My thought is that since the original tea parties were staged when tea was being overtaxed, what we really need to be “tossing” is a few wealthy people. Any takers?
Yes a tea party is a peace full protest to unfair taxes, taxes with out representation,yes, still existing today. And unfair government royalty fees. All these taxes are a way for our nation and states to pay people working for the government. When the economy is not making any money and is out of money. Who then will pay the people working for the Government?
Dear Mr. Miller please dont fall for the main stream media and the political 2 party system that has failed us! Arron Russo made a film a couple years ago about our Banking system and how our federal tax system got started. Just GOOGLE his name and the movie title FREEDOM TO FASCISM in the google video area.
The federal tax code is illegal. The IRS is illegal. The federal Reserve is not a federal bank… it is a Delaware Corp controlled by the ultra wealthy and they control our taxes and the lawmakers like puppets. Study , learn and come together. It doesnt matter what party you claim your government is failing you. Dems AND Reps are controlled by the same group of people thats why things dont get better and the poor are allowed to be put to death with starvation, sickness and non action in countries we dont care about because they are poor. If you mess with our riches like OIL we will be all over you and act like we care because we are such a great caring country. Crooked,
Scammers, and con men are a great way to describe our Leaders and their connection to the bankers who are raping our country. The enslavement of the American people must end, the Constitution has to be upheld. Stop being Sheep, dont believe the controlled news and wake up people! Come together. I will see you at the Tea Party.
“You like most drive by media forget it was the Clintoon admin who loosed the lending practices for Fanny Mae and Freddie Mac lending to those who shouldn’t been give home loans”
Naturally, the Republicans find a way to blame it all on poor people and Bill Clinton.
Yes, many people got mortgages who shouldn’t have. But without the deregulation of the financial industry pushed by REPUBLICANS (and, yes, some Democrats) which led to massive fraud and the proliferation of financial instruments with nothing to back them up but smoke and mirrors, the meltdown never would have happened.
And you, my friend, are a dupe. The “tea party” movement is just an Astroturf PR operation funded by the usual right-wing moneybags who are conning uninformed voters like you into thinking they’re defending their own “freedom” when all they’re really doing is protecting the plutocrats’ billions. It’s a game the plutes have been playing for more than a hundred years in this country, but the rubes never wise up.
Agog at the underlying hoopla, I snooped around a bit: it appears “teabagging” is alternatively teenage lingo for a sexual act demonized in the biblical book of Leviticus as an abomination, specifically the (not necessarily) dominant act of the female rubbing genitals against a participantsรข โข face*, more generally an act neutral to the domineering gender or sexuality of the participants; and law enforcement for a criminally sexual deviance long a right of passage in outlaw motorcycle clubs, gangland barrios and college fraternities and sororities around the country, specifically a) the rubbing of genitalia in the face of or b) the ejaculation, flinging, spitting or otherwise application of human bodily fluids or excrement to another human.
If this is indeed the message – I want to fling excrement and rub my genitals in your face – you want to send to the President, please, feel free to join others of like common lack of cognitive reasoning abilities and Ambien, Prozac, and Viagra Kool-Aid induced grasp of reality (copulating buffoons) Wednesday 15 April afternoon on the ball field across Bond Street from the B/LP Adm building for a CNN/Faux News sponsored and Multi Millionaire Mainstream Media Personalities Bill O’Reilly, Glen Beck and Rush Limbaugh (calculating buffoons) endorsed “Tax Day Tea Bag Protest”.
For those not inclined to such a message, the ball field – Adams Park or Field, I think, though not officially a “park” – is a unique little place, a legacy holdover from the former indoctrination center cum third rate downtown “resort” whose beer sucks and the rest goes downhill from there. A fully fenced enclosure, it is alternatively a ball field, archery range, dog park, duck wallow and fish pond, a fully fenced in enclosure I find under the circumstances poetically appealing.**
* Teabagging. Teabagging!!? How lame is that? Whatever happened to creative lingo, like รข mustache ride”, “69” or รข box lunch @ the รข ~yรข โขรข ย?
** Did I mention it’s a fully fenced in enclosure?
“the Capitlaistic [sic] System which allowed our country to become what it is today”
How right you are — the capitalist system, as practiced in America for the past 30 years, made our country what it is today: the laughingstock of the rest of the developed world.
People like you want to think the French, the British, the Germans, the Scandinavians, etc. “envy” us. They don’t — they laugh at us. It’s not 1955 anymore and we are not “the greatest country in the world” anymore, except in terms of military power and debt. Thank 30 years of conservative “crapitalist” policies for that.
Thomas Ware: After reading your recent post “If this is indeed the message – I want to fling excrement and rub my genitals in your face – you want to send to the President, please, feel free to join others of like common lack of cognitive reasoning abilities and Ambien, Prozac, and Viagra Kool-Aid induced grasp of reality (copulating buffoons)”. Mr. Ware the only BUFFOON is you, and I am convinced you are the one that is on the Kool-Aid mixture. Only a person ingesting this concoction could write such disgusting garbage and believe they were being witty and enlightened.
HBM: If Mr. Ware is an example of a “left wing” supporter I think it would be wise to rethink your convictions about how the “right wing” is responsible for the demise of our country.
This individual is a prime example of a “Troll”( I thought no trollish behavior was allowed on this blog) who prides himself on being a free thinking “left winger” with all the answers for our country, what a scary thought !! If this person represents your cause we are all in for bigger trouble than your so-called “capitalist plot” of a “tea bag party”. Mr. Miller if you are agreement with Mr. Ware I fear you are the one being duped.
Wow! This tea party thing is the most exciting grass-roots movement I’ve seen in my 50+ years in America – rivaled only by the anti-war and civil rights protests of the 1960’s. Count me in. The kind of change we’re getting definitely ain’t the change we were promised. This’ll scare the crap out of those crooks!
Caveat: When I point out that the รข ball fieldรข ย, a fully fenced enclosure, is alternatively a ball field, archery range, dog park, duck wallow and fish pond, a fully fenced in enclosure, I am in no way suggesting that the รข teabaggersรข ย may want fresh vegetables with their tea (though considering the weight of the tax burden they claim to bear it would be a neighborly, charitable, thing to do). Nope, not me.
Nor when I direct folks to that unique little place, that legacy holdover from the former indoctrination center cum third rate downtown “resort” whose beer sucks and the rest goes downhill from there, am I in any way suggesting that on a fine three hundred day plus afternoon folks pour out en masse to demurely, as is our wont, stroll around the (fully fenced in enclosed) รข parkรข ย in รข counter-protestรข ย; nope, nor would I ever suggest bearing signs countering their รข patrioticรข ย message, unlike the anti-health terrorists terrorizing the health clinic at the north end of Division Street: extremely graphic yet somehow vague depictions ofรข ยฆ รข teabaggingรข ย.
And really, when I supposit a common lack of cognitive reasoning abilities and an unwitting dependency on the Kool-Aid KKKocktail of Ambien, Prozac, Viagra and panty-shots on CNN/Faux TV, how could you possibly think I am suggesting that these creatures are, uhm, you know, maybe, like, uhmmmรข ยฆ not thinking clearly? Or at all? Not my business, man.
Never would I ever even think of calling for on a fine three hundred day plus afternoon folks pour out en masse to demurely, as is our wont, stroll around the (fully fenced in enclosed) รข parkรข ย in clown (and every republic president since Nixon) suits, honking horns, banging on bongos – a Procession of the Species dress rehearsal, if you will – bearing extremely graphic yet somehow vague depictions of รข teabaggingรข ย, charitably offering fresh fruit and vegetables to those apparently so less fortunate than the rest of us and generally doing everything possible to support and draw attention to these bozos [respects to Bozo] and their message to the President.
Nope, not me. Too busy. Not my business. Not that kind of guy.
Never happen.
csante: last time I looked my voter registration read No Party Affiliation, my National Rifle Association membership “lifelong” and my birth certificate “Redneck”. Don’t call me a “liberal”, unless you’d care to step outside…
“Mr. Miller if you are agreement with Mr. Ware I fear you are the one being duped.”
I agree with his sentiments, though I would not have expressed them so coarsely.
BTW he is correct about the slang meaning of the term “teabagging.”
Good comment by Chuck Sheketoff on BlueOregon today: “Isn’t is it ironic that the anti-public spending folks are holding their rally in Salem on property maintained with our tax dollars?”
As far as that goes, Troy Field is too.
Found the following:
There are five individual tax provisions in the president’s budget that could be described as a tax increase. So yes, there will be some higher taxes. What’s confusing to me is that the vast majority of these taxes affect only those households with an annual income of greater than $250,000. And the vast majority of these increases would have happened anyway if the Bush tax cuts were allowed to expire on schedule.
One by one:
1. Eliminating the Advance Earned Income Tax Credit. This isn’t a proposal to eliminate the EITC — it’s just a proposal to eliminate a particular way of claiming the EITC that is extremely complicated, that almost no one uses, and that leads to a high level of tax error.
2. Letting the top two income tax rates revert from 33 to 35% and from 36 to 39.6%, respectively. This is obviously a tax increase. But it is also (1) Something that would happen anyway were the Bush tax cuts to expire on schedule; (2) Something that isn’t happening till 2011; (3) Something that Obama repeatedly said he would do; and (4) Something that will affect only those households with annual income over $250,000.
3. Eliminating the phaseout of personal exemptions and itemized deductions for high-income taxpayers. (This is complicated because it involves … a phaseout of a phaseout of a complicated law. Explanation here.) But the end result will affect the exemptions and deductions of only those households that earn more than $250,000 a year.
4. Limiting the top charitable deduction rate to 28%.
5. Increasing the top capital gains and dividends tax rate to 20%. Again, this (1) will start in 2011; (2) would have happened were the Bush tax cuts allowed to expire on schedule; and (3) affects only those families with annual income above $250,000. It is the same rate as during the Reagan years.
So are the majority of the protesters worried about taxes that won’t affect them? Perhaps when the tax-day protesters worry about higher taxes, they mean to protest anticipated future taxes that will result from higher present debt. (I’m certainly concerned about that!) But I’m not sure a protest in favor of the abstract notion of Ricardian equivalence has the same drama as a protest against higher taxes.
UPDATE: The tea partiers had a good turnout for their event in Bend yesterday. I’ll post a report later today.
Two of the signs that stuck out and may have defined the mindset of many:
“Kenya wants its Marxist President Back”
and
“Smaller Government–Bigger Guns”
The event was well attended and those there had quite a laundry list of complaints, from the race of the President, Gun Control, Taxes, Gay Marriage, Religion, and Government intrusion. After trying to engage a couple of them in conversation, it was painfully obvious that this was a pretty representative group of the ‘I listen to talk radio and I believe in (Rush, Sean, Glenn)! I stopped trying to talk when the woman I was speaking with about the realities of the tax plan explained to me that it didn’t matter if she was wrong or not, she ‘hated’ Obama. Her words–not mine.
I heard someone likening the Tea Bag ‘movement’ to the peace and civil rights movements of the 1960’s, even though she was just a child back then and really couldn’t remember much about them. Obviously.
Let me state for her, the peace movement of the 60’s had its share of meaningless gestures–loud noise–hubris and anger. A lot of us didn’t know what we were doing or talking about then, too.
Clearly, I need an editor to help with punctuation — I’m sorry it interfered with your understanding of what we accomplished.
7000+ in Portland, it was a lot of fun! You should have come, you could have made a point of snarking at all the misspelled signs and poor punctuation — then maybe you could have written an opinion piece on the failure of the public education system.
Here’s an enjoyable video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PqZHLHGirAs&feature=player_embedded
Geoff.
Mr. Miller, seems that way back on April 10th it was “the Eye’s gut feeling that that tea party is going to fizzle (in Bend) rather than sizzle.” The numbers proved otherwise, with somewhere close to 1,400-1,500; attendees coming from as far away as Monument, Burns, Crescent, and all parts of Central Oregon.
Regarding this crowd, you closed your blog with a “we’ll see”. Hmmm…downtown Bend saw a lot, with over 75% of the tea partiers marching down Bond and Wall, peacefully making a statement. Clean-up was a snap—less than a grocery bag full of debris.
We saw everyday citizens coming together and speaking out against the destructive policies that Congress and this administration are employing, and the extent that they will go to further tax, spend, go into more debt, and cheat the American people of their hard-earned money and retirement as they push their nanny-state agenda.
We are not slaves of the government, to be shackled to debt for generations to come, because the powers that be think the “drones” of America don’t mind.
We don’t serve government, government is to serve the people. Tea partiers are engaged and enraged, grassroots activists; representing several political parties, organizations, and also, many independents with no affiliations. Everyday people enraged by those who would love for everyday Americans to fall under the hypnotic spell of big government, posturing that they “are the people” speaking for the everyday American.
No, it is “We the people…” Read your history books, no, not the modern ones who have left out the speeches, quotes, and historical narratives of our founding fathers and early American patriots. Might want to dig up a US history book from forty years back or more. Better yet, simply google the names of those courageous and principled men, and read their actual words, and what those words led to…the bedrock of the USA.