rssTea for the Bitter Man
Wednesday, February 25, 2009 at 11:42 am
- 7 Comments
IF you read the blog of Glenn Reynolds, the libertarian-leaning Instapundit who reigns over the right-ish blogosphere with a carpal-tunnelled fist, you see mention after mention of a “new American tea party.” There’s more in an ad by Pajamas Media, a new media network of which Mr Reynolds was a co-founder. “America is on the brink of another revolution,” reads the ad, “and protests about our government’s financial decisions have already begun.”
That’s sort of an overstatement.
There is, indeed, a viral movement afoot to stage protests against President Obama’s spending plans. They are really very small protests. The largest “tea party” Facebook group has a bit less than 3000, and it’ll probably pass that, but many members belong to other smaller “tea party” groups.
Look, I covered the Ron Paul campaign for more than a year, from his launch in early 2007 to his “vote for some third party candidate” press conference. I waded through crowds at Paul rallies that drew 4000 people, ten times the size of any “tea party” we’ve seen so far.
This isn’t to say that the “tea parties” will never, ever take off. Just that it’s quite easy to get attention for an anti-government cause, especially in the blog era, and easy to forget that it doesn’t really matter politically.
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7 Comments
Comment posted February 25, 2009 @ 2:31 pm
Paying taxes this year is different. It’s going to be impossible to figure out which distressed homeowners were duped, dumb, or avaricious, and treat each category accordingly. It’s going to be impossible to weed out the shady mortgage brokers, and the white-shoe firm hotshots who bundled together a bunch of toxic waste and sold them as bouquets of roses. And what exactly do you do with the greedy idiots who bought the stuff? Recapitalize them with your money, and with mine?
http://www.loosekannon.com.
Comment posted February 25, 2009 @ 4:13 pm
“It’s going to be impossible to figure out which distressed homeowners were duped, dumb, or avaricious, and treat each category accordingly.”
One way to make it faster would be to group them by loan originator. If you can get an idea of the business practices of the originator, you can get a better idea of whether bad loans are the product of borrower mishap, or borrower fraud, or whether they're because a shady mortgage broker lied or induced the borrower into fraud.
Comment posted February 26, 2009 @ 8:24 am
As Obama and the congress become more and more of a dictator/ socialist government the rebellion will build.
Don't be so self assured that this movement doesn't matter; ther is a reason why America has been so successful, unique, and popular across the the world. Some of us are not willing to give that up.
J law
Comment posted February 26, 2009 @ 4:48 pm
These people really are idiots. They forget that the first frickin' tea party that is their supposed model was done over taxation WITHOUT REPRESENTATION. The founders didn't think all taxes were bad or necessarily that taxes should always go down (i.e., they weren't superficial, know-nothing idiots after all) – what they objected to were taxes that were taken from them and transferred to the King's coffers (and not used for the benefit of the people of the colonies on which the taxes were being disproportionately levied) without the people of the colonies having any say in what was happening. I believe this was covered in US History, though they could probably get a refresher from an old Schoolhouse Rock episode that's more their speed. For pete sake, these people have representatives (so they should work through them) and until recently like-minded representatives controlled most if not all of the government (and at the very least, still had the power to stop anything they didn't want to happen over the last two years). AND THEY BOTCHED EVERYTHING. Or as my financial friends like to say – they had a massive party and woke up to find that they had sh** the bed something awful. Now, here we are trying to clean up this massive sh**pile, and they're running around yelling “WHO DID THIS? I”M NOT PAYING TO CLEAN THIS SH** UP!” all while they're still wearing their sh**-stained pajamas. They are historically-challenged, amnesiac, shameless morons. Or to paraphrase, Montgomery Burns. Morons, Pathetic morons in my public discourse, wrecking our precious democracy.
Comment posted February 27, 2009 @ 9:00 am
I don't really mind bailing out the billionaires or funding financial institutions that issued CDS on leverage to parties not participating in the initial transaction. I am very comfortable with rich people having money, because rich people know what to do with it.
But if my hard-earned tax dollars happen to go to poor people or minorities, color me pissed-off.
Comment posted February 27, 2009 @ 5:00 pm
I don't really mind bailing out the billionaires or funding financial institutions that issued CDS on leverage to parties not participating in the initial transaction. I am very comfortable with rich people having money, because rich people know what to do with it.
But if my hard-earned tax dollars happen to go to poor people or minorities, color me pissed-off.
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