Right Now: The Tea Party Protests
EconWatch will be covering the San Francisco and New York City "tea party" protests in person – click here for background on the protests – but in the meantime we wanted to get you up to date on some of the protests that have already gone on or are going on now.
In Cumberland, Md., "peaceful protesters braved a steady early-afternoon drizzle out of their concern for current governmental policies and the well-being of future generations," according to the Times-News. The protesters reportedly carried signs proclaiming "Do Away With the IRS" and "Stop Spending Our Kids Money."
In Lafayette, Ind., "a large box of tea bags was dumped from a Lafayette bridge into the Wabash River" as hundreds of protesters cheered.
In Champaign, Illinois, about 400 people watched keynote speaker Randall Stufflebeam say "We don't need a flat tax or a fair tax. We need no tax, the way it was in 1913," according to the News-Gazette.
In Madison, Wis., "Speakers at a sometimes angry rally Wednesday accused Gov. Jim Doyle and lawmakers of smoking crack cocaine, said government spending was ruining the country and called for the ouster of all elected Democrats. One sign in the crowd compared President Barack Obama to the anti-Christ."
More than 3,000 people showed up to protest in Cincinnati, the Enquirer reports; the protest organizer said he was looking "to adopt the legal and effective tactics of the Left Wing."
CNN reports, meanwhile, that protesters have wielded signs that read "You can't put lipstick on socialism" and "Stop generational theft."
According to the Associated Press, some Boston protesters dressed like Revolutionary War soldiers and carried signs that said "Barney Frank, Bernie Madoff: And the Difference Is?" and "D.C.: District of Communism."
Reports the AP: "There were several small counter-protests, including one in at Fountain Square in Cincinnati, where about a dozen people protested the protesters, one carrying a sign that read, 'Where were you when Bush was spending billions a month "liberating" Iraq?'"
More: "In Lansing, Mich., outside the state Capitol, another 4,000 people waved signs exclaiming 'Stop the Fiscal Madness,' 'Read My Lipstick! No More Bailouts' and 'The Pirates Are in D.C.' Children held makeshift signs complaining about the rising debt."
The AP also notes that the Montgomery, Ala., protest featured "We're Not Gonna Take It" blaring from loudspeakers, while in Atlanta, thousands are expected to gather on the steps of the Georgia Capitol to protest and watch a special broadcast of Sean Hannity's Fox News show.
The protest in Washington did not go as planned, according to the Washington Post; protesters were kept from dumping tea bags into the Potomac River and kept from unloading one million tea bags into a park after being told they lacked the proper permits.
They also had to abandon their plans for a formal rally in front of the Treasury because they lacked the necessary permits; still, hundreds gathered in "dreadful weather," and, according to one booster, the atmosphere was "electric."
Over at the White House, meanwhile, "a robot was inspecting a suspicious package on the North Lawn…after tax protesters threw what appears to be a box of tea bags over the White House fence," according to the AP. "That prompted officials to clear Pennsylvania Avenue."
Click here for a first-hand account from the San Francisco protest. And come back to EconWatch tomorrow for a first-hand account from New York.
Click here for more photos from across the country.
© 2009 CBS Interactive Inc.. All Rights Reserved. In Cumberland, Md., "peaceful protesters braved a steady early-afternoon drizzle out of their concern for current governmental policies and the well-being of future generations," according to the Times-News. The protesters reportedly carried signs proclaiming "Do Away With the IRS" and "Stop Spending Our Kids Money."
In Lafayette, Ind., "a large box of tea bags was dumped from a Lafayette bridge into the Wabash River" as hundreds of protesters cheered.
In Champaign, Illinois, about 400 people watched keynote speaker Randall Stufflebeam say "We don't need a flat tax or a fair tax. We need no tax, the way it was in 1913," according to the News-Gazette.
In Madison, Wis., "Speakers at a sometimes angry rally Wednesday accused Gov. Jim Doyle and lawmakers of smoking crack cocaine, said government spending was ruining the country and called for the ouster of all elected Democrats. One sign in the crowd compared President Barack Obama to the anti-Christ."
(AP)
CNN reports, meanwhile, that protesters have wielded signs that read "You can't put lipstick on socialism" and "Stop generational theft."
According to the Associated Press, some Boston protesters dressed like Revolutionary War soldiers and carried signs that said "Barney Frank, Bernie Madoff: And the Difference Is?" and "D.C.: District of Communism."
Reports the AP: "There were several small counter-protests, including one in at Fountain Square in Cincinnati, where about a dozen people protested the protesters, one carrying a sign that read, 'Where were you when Bush was spending billions a month "liberating" Iraq?'"
More: "In Lansing, Mich., outside the state Capitol, another 4,000 people waved signs exclaiming 'Stop the Fiscal Madness,' 'Read My Lipstick! No More Bailouts' and 'The Pirates Are in D.C.' Children held makeshift signs complaining about the rising debt."
The AP also notes that the Montgomery, Ala., protest featured "We're Not Gonna Take It" blaring from loudspeakers, while in Atlanta, thousands are expected to gather on the steps of the Georgia Capitol to protest and watch a special broadcast of Sean Hannity's Fox News show.
The protest in Washington did not go as planned, according to the Washington Post; protesters were kept from dumping tea bags into the Potomac River and kept from unloading one million tea bags into a park after being told they lacked the proper permits.
They also had to abandon their plans for a formal rally in front of the Treasury because they lacked the necessary permits; still, hundreds gathered in "dreadful weather," and, according to one booster, the atmosphere was "electric."
Over at the White House, meanwhile, "a robot was inspecting a suspicious package on the North Lawn…after tax protesters threw what appears to be a box of tea bags over the White House fence," according to the AP. "That prompted officials to clear Pennsylvania Avenue."
Click here for a first-hand account from the San Francisco protest. And come back to EconWatch tomorrow for a first-hand account from New York.
Click here for more photos from across the country.
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You need to be "cristicized" for your spelling also, you bozo.
Posted by glenncinca-2009
thanks for not getting it, ********!.....typical republican!
I am not so sure about that though. Most networks are pandering to Obama.
Posted by TheMasses01 at 2:37 PM : Apr 16, 2009
I thank you for your discussion on the media, in all honesty the people the media calls on for a discussion are invariably republicans and are pointing Obamas every nit-picking thing they can. They so not paint the whole picture in there 2 minute sound bites they have so a commercial can be run I think they are doing as much harm as the right wingers, news and money go together so pick the tabloid of the day and boom you have today's media.They forgot how to investigate first.Or even investigate at all.
You are confused.
"It will continue to behoove Obama to woo Republican help -- no matter how tough the odds," wrote Washington Post columnist David Broder on Sunday. "Presidents who hope to achieve great things cannot for long rely on using their congressional majorities to muscle things through."
But if Obama takes the advice of Broder and other pundits and dilutes his proposals to make them acceptable to Republicans, the President will surely draw the wrath of the Democratic "base," which will accuse him of selling out. The vicious cycle will have rotated once again.
Instead of seeing a pattern -- that Republicans may hope to torpedo Obama?s presidency and reclaim congressional control , as they did in 1993-94 -- the Washington press corps describes the Republicans as holding firm to their small-government principles and the Democrats as refusing to give due consideration to GOP alternatives.
Already a new conventional wisdom is taking shape, that "polarizing" Obama would be wrong to use the "reconciliation" process to enact health-care and environmental programs by majority vote, that he should instead water them down and seek enough Republican votes to overcome GOP filibusters in the Senate, which require 60 votes to stop.
To get enough Republican votes on health care would almost surely mean eliminating a public alternative that would compete with private insurers, and on the environment, cap-and-trade plans for curbing carbon emissions would have to be shelved.
The commentariat class also has continued to frame the Republican hatred of Obama as Obama?s fault, describing his "failure" to achieve a more bipartisan Washington or -- in its latest formulation -- calling Obama "the most polarizing President ever."
It might seem counterintuitive to call a President with approval ratings in the 60 percentiles "polarizing" -- when that term was not applied to George W. Bush with his numbers half that of Obama?s. But this notion has arisen because Republicans have turned harshly against Obama, while Democrats and Independents have remained supportive.
This gap of about 60 points between Democratic approval and Republican disapproval is called the largest in the modern era. (Bush presumably was less "polarizing" because his Republican numbers slumped along with his approval from Democrats and Independents.)
What is rarely acknowledged is that the Republican Party has both shrunk in size and retreated toward its hard-line "base," meaning that the "polarization gap" could simply reflect the fact that a smaller, more extreme Republican Party hates Obama, while other presidents faced a larger, more moderate opposition party.
On CNN?s "State of the Union" Sunday, in an interview with Gen. Ray Odierno, host John King pushed a favorite media myth about President Bush?s successful "surge" in Iraq. King never mentioned that many factors in the declining Iraqi violence predated or were unrelated to Bush?s dispatch of additional troops, nor did King note the contradiction about Bush?s supposed "success" and Odierno?s warning that he may have to urge more delays in withdrawing U.S. troops.
With Barack Obama as President, these "news" personalities almost reflexively returned to the Clinton-Gore paradigm, feeling the freedom -- indeed the pressure -- to be tough on the White House.
Though MSNBC does offer a few shows hosted by liberals and there are a few other liberal voices here and there, the national media remains weighted heavily to the right and center-right.
For every Keith Olbermann or Rachel Maddow or Paul Krugman or Frank Rich, there are dozens of Larry Kudlows, Sean Hannitys, Bill O?Reillys, Joe Scarboroughs and Charles Krauthammers who take openly right-wing or neoconservative positions ? or the likes of Lou Dobbs, John King and Wolf Blitzer, who reflect Republican-oriented or neocon views out of personal commitment or careerist caution.
"There have been times, living in America of late, when it seemed I was back in the Communist Moscow I left a dozen years ago," wrote Rupert Cornwell in the London-based Independent. "Switch to cable TV and reporters breathlessly relay the latest wisdom from the usual unnamed ?senior administration officials,? keeping us on the straight and narrow. Everyone, it seems, is on-side and on-message. Just like it used to be when the hammer and sickle flew over the Kremlin." [Independent, April 23, 2003]
Bush?s Slide
Bush skeptics were essentially not tolerated in most of the U.S. news media, and journalists who dared produce critical pieces could expect severe career consequences, such as the four CBS producers fired for a segment on how Bush skipped his National Guard duty, a true story that made the mistake of using some memos that had not been fully vetted.