President Obama had a town-hall meeting yesterday, and someone asked him about the Tea Party. I could spend all day going over that appearance, but I just want to address one statement.
"America has a noble tradition of being healthfully skeptical about government. That's in our DNA." (Obama-bots, surprisingly, applaud.) "We came in because, uhhh, the folks, uhhh, over on the other side of the Atlantic been, uhhhh, oppressing folks without giving reputation."
Where did Obama learn his U.S. history?! Indonesia? Oh wait, he probably did. His grasp on history is tenuous, at best. Sure the Puritans came over here because they wanted a place to practice their religious freedom, but others came over to start a new life. But that's not the problematic part. The "no taxation without representation" (not reputation!) did not come until the American Revolution, over a hundred years later, when we were already here! We revolted not only because we were "skeptical of the government," but because they weren't listening to the people. Which is why, in the First Amendment to the Constitution, the Founding Fathers gave the people the power to tell the government what we think. Government works for the people, not the other way around, and that is an American principle. We're skeptical of the government, but that's not why we've got the best democracy in the world. We've got it because of freedom.
The problem with the debate that's taken place, uhhh, and, uhhh, with some of these Tea Party events I think they're misidentifying who the culprits are here. We had two tax cuts that weren't paid for,
Rush went nuclear on the idea that tax cuts need to be "paid for," and I agree. When taxes are cut, the economy grows, and government gets more revenue. It's called the Laffer Curve, and it's been proven correct because of human nature, not pie-in-the-sky academic analysis. Obama might know about such things if he or anyone in his administration had private sector experience. The money people make does not belong to the government. The money people make belongs to them, and the government taxes them to pay for services for the people. The reason liberals hyperventilate about tax cuts is that they think that all wealth belongs to the government and that tax cuts means the government gets less revenue. They then spout rhetoric like Obama did, hoping that everyone gets as panicked as they do when the idea of a smaller government gets floated around.
two wars that weren't paid for.
When the Right points out all the services that could be trimmed, the Left demands that we cut back on war spending. This is baseless. The war in Iraq cost less than the failed stimulus of early 2009. The war in Afghanistan is ongoing, so we don't have the numbers for that yet, but we do know that Obama did not want to commit resources in the form of troops as his generals asked. Why is it that whenever the budget gets cut, the Left goes after the Pentagon? The military has a Constitutional imperative to protect the country, and the Left does everything they can to undercut them. There is no Constitutional imperative for Social Security, Medicare or government-funded housing, and as painful as it would be, Americans know deep down that those programs need to be trimmed.
We've got a population, uhhh, that's getting older. We're all demanding services but our taxes have actually substantially gone down,
But we don't have money for anything. Before the Democrats took over Congress in 2007, we had a deficit, but we were trying to get things under control. Then the Blue Wave came, and spending went through the roof, compounded by Congress' refusal to do anything about the ticking time bomb of sub-prime mortgages. The Democrats are hoping to rewrite history by blaming the recession on the Bush tax cuts, which makes no sense whatsoever. What does increased federal debt - which they claim is from the Bush tax cuts (which is false) - have to do with the economy taking a dive after the markets tanked? That's pure Keynesian thinking, and it's ridiculous. The reason the economy took a nosedive is that the government, because of the Democrats, forced banks to lend money to people that couldn't pay it back, and then the whole scheme collapsed. Barack Obama doesn't want you to know about that. He wants you to think that Bush waved an eeeeeeevil magic wand and the recession happened. Oh, and have you heard that the government will still help you get a home even if you can't pay for it?
and so the -- the challenge I think for the Tea Party movement is to identify specifically: What would you do?
They've told you what they want to do! TEA originally stood for Taxed Enough Already, because the American taxpayer is fed up with high taxes and a byzantine tax code. They want Washington D.C. to stop spending and putting their grandchildren into debt. Read their signs, Obama! Unlike the idiots that Andrew Breitbart confronted, they'll stand by their signs and explain them to you, and even make fun of the media for obsessing over their signs.
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