Tea Party Protests Rally Against Taxes

(CBS)  There have been fireworks for a different sort this Independence Day. Thousands of protestors held rallies in cities across the country, protesting big government, and big government spending, reports CBS News correspondent Terrell Brown.

"Letting Congress and the federal government know that we're displeased - we are very, very displeased with what they are doing to us and what they are doing to our future children," said Joe Stephanelli, from Morristown, Ohio.

Similar so-called tea parties sprang up around the country last April to blast the economic stimulus package, which was a movement championed by high-profile conservatives.

While many of the signs at the protests blame President Barack Obama for government overspending, the people CBS News talked to were just as upset with Republicans.

"I've been a Republican all my life, but I don't think I am anymore," said one woman at the rallies.

Political analysts say these rallies give conservative Republicans the unified front they desperately need.

"The movement certainly has given fiscal conservatives something to hold onto," said Poltico's Andy Barr. "You talk to a number of Republican strategists in Washington and they are all looking for ways to kind of grab that energy and put it into campaigns. So far they haven't done it."

It's energy Republicans seem to need now more than ever.

"The last few weeks they have taken a bruising from John Ensign, the senator from Nevada, Mark Sanford going down, and of course Sarah Palin resigning her spot yesterday," Barr said.

The organizers of the movement hope to take it nationally this fall.

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[sean58z]

The tyrant in this tax scheme is Ed Rendell. He still refuses to sign a budget for Pennsylvania unless the State House agrees to a substantial increase of personal income tax. On July 17, Commonwealth employees will no longer get paychecks for state fiscal year 2009 (starting July 1), until the budget receives Rendell's signature. Barack Obama should withhold federal money from Harrisburg to force Rendell's hand.

[stn_sage]

by enriquieGonzales July 4, 2009 6:11 PM PDT

And Obama...is spending what on the unbeatable afghan war. Obama Huessain is killing our soldiers. Get them out of Afghan and send in the CIA. Obungler do the right thing for once.
----------------------------

Obama is currently spending monies on those wars to end Bush's MESS!

IF he withdrew tomorrow, YOU'D be the FIRST ONE to COMPLAIN and scream,
cut'n run'!

The point is: no matter what he does, the fringe group YOU represents just wants to complain! And complain, and complain!

That being the case, you don't want---and shouldn't get---a place 'at the table' with the adults to deal with the problems!

You and the party you align yourself with---are irrelevant!

[Swift2]

The difference for the goofs who support this "Tea Party" business is that they approved of the fraud that made their houses "more valuable," despite the fact they were being sent to the poor house, and they approved of a war of choice based on lies. Now, I'm sorry if there are independents lured into this dead-ender movement. They should take a look around, and do some reading of various histories -- not just the wacko texts of the right wing -- and think for themselves. Like real independents, not the poor deluded fools of the FOX audience.

I think they do have a point in mistrusting MSNBC. One of the bad lessons the left learned from the GOP was to use the mass media for ridicule and propaganda. But what do you expect of a medium that has gone to a non-stop diet of MJ, a crazy recluse drug addict has-been, since he apparently OD'd on anesthetic.

[rednomo]

Only the rich in the gated community are getting richer and the working class is getting poorer. Mass E-mails to congress, as we noted yesterday, short of mass protests (like the ceaseless, impassioned kind that ended the Vietnam War) are a con. The fix is in.

As the Chinese crushed dissent in Tiananmen Square with brute force, corporations like EXXON/Mobil -- who just had the largest quarterly profit in the history of the world -- crush an economic fair playing field with hundreds of billions of dollars. Their are news conferences with e-mail petitions and then they are thrown in a garbage can or deleted from Congressional e-mail, if they ever make it through the spam filter. Progressive organizations and publications use them to create mailing and solicitation lists, not with a realistic expectation of matching the economic juggernaut of the oligarchy that is comparable to the military might exhibited at Tiananmen Square -- or by the tyrannical regimes in Iran, Honduras, and Burma among others today.

And the corporate media and the corporate ads that even fill progressive cites are the "mind framing" context in which positions are calibrated to favor the casino of corporate America, so that the fundamental injustices being done to America are disguised.

If the Dittoheads and FOX News watchers ever got accurate information on how they are being fleeced and robbed, there would be another revolution in American that would restore our original democracy of the people, by the people and for the people.

What is most unnerving, as I wrote yesterday, is that the enormous potential of American ingenuity and entrepeneurialism is being stifled by the gated community that wants to limit the nation's riches -- built currently on massive debt -- to residents who live in the garden of super wealth. Our unique American ability to progress without boundaries is being shut down by the brute force of unseemly sums of dollars.

Oh, we can complain that Harry Reid is spineless, that Barack Obama is too cautious and exhibits more timidity than audacity -- and we do -- but the problem is systemic. Weakness among the Democrats triumphs because too many of them are bought off. And Barack Obama probably quickly discovered that he wasn't top dog: Wall Street and the corporate oligarchy are. And so he made his piece with them.

Instead of change we can believe in, we are getting more of the same. In fact yesterday, President Obama chastised progressives -- yes progressives -- for criticizing the "centrist" Dems who are holding up a government healthcare payer option. That's not change; that's more of the same.

And the corporate media protects the gated village of wealth at every turn. And while thousands of progresssives have generously and passionately supported BuzzFlash over the years -- beginning when we were about the only feisty voice for democracy on the web in 2000 -- others just want to talk the talk, but rather spend money on "brand" products than support the new economy and new journalism on BuzzFlash. They'll pay for a corporate newspaper, cable TV and a large plasma screen HDTV, but won't buy progressive products to support progressive journalism.

Not until we feel the passsion that the members of the Green Revolution feel when they take to the streets in masses will we assume the power to restore our economic and political democracy.

Not until progressives with the financial wherewithal decide to put their country above their bank accounts and support corporate-free progressive media will we begin to counter the mainstream media, whose corporate coverage benefits its own owners.

Because unless we have and own the megaphone, the criticisms of the corporate media bounce right off their back.

We must get the truth through unfiltered. There is no reason we have left for letting the working class be played as pawns to allow the gated community to fix the game and play with loaded dice by creating scapegoats.

No reason at all.

By Mark Karlin

[ubrew12]

That is a helligood post.

[jbirdk]

If I remember correctly, the Boston Tea Party was concerning taxation without representation. So my suggestion is that for every tea party scheduled there should be twice as many activists to march in and stage a demand for equal rights - make it a gay pride day for instance, or a planned parenthood day and a demand for women's healthcare clinics in each state, etc. -- because without that, this event not only doesn't make any sense, it's just blatantly moronic. (And besides THAT would be something worth watching -- heh heh.)

[joe_x-2009]

The TEA Party "movement" may have a little more credibility if they had held their first event during the GWB Administration's 1st 6 years, when the Republican Congress was spending money like drunken sailors on shoreleave. Most, if not all, of the problems the AFA (umbrella organization of TEA)mentions either were started or greatly exacerbated by the George W. Bush administration. The TEA parties when seen this way are a not-so-well disguised attempt to arouse public passions against Obama--for problems that he inherited from Bush. The 4th of July is a time to celebrate our freedom and our way of life, not really a time to disingenuously protest the leadership of our Commander in Chief.

[mercywarren]

To rednomo: If YOU had a clue, you would know that one of the Patriots mantra's IS that it is NOT just about Republicans and Democrats. And the very things that you mention in your post ARE the things we are trying to fight.

[mercywarren]

Only one thing to say to the loons from the left: You are now outnumbered, we will not be shut up anymore by your rants and name calling. There is not one of you that have a plausible argument about what we stand for. You just keep up your frothing at the mouth, and while you are all in your rabid demise we will conquer and we will take back our country and we will revert it to what it was intended to be by the Founding Fathers. Your period of trying to shut us up and shut us down is over. And you can just bet this comes from ALL sides of ALL parties - it is just you rabid loons that are being excluded, and trust me there are a whole lot more of us than you - you have just made it look like there are more with your rabid attacks. Perhaps it would be best if you all just moved to Venezuela now, you would be much happier under Hugo - and please take all your loony cohorts, Sean Penn, Janeane Garofalo, Tim Robbins, etc. with you. We certainly don't need them either.

[ubrew12]

And now, a short break from our regularly scheduled programming of rightwingers wailing about the return of COMMUNISM in America. A simple statistic:

Since 1980, the share of the nations income going to her richest 1% tripled, while the share going to her poorest 90% fell by 20% (or one-fifth). This means that in order for the wealthiest 1% of Americans to triple their income in the last 30 years, the ordinary working American gets paid, on average, $10000 less a year today than he would have been paid in 1980 proportions.

And now, back to the dangers of COMMUNISM, SOCIALISM, AND ALL THOSE OTHER -ISMS rightwing America works overtime to save us from!!

[South-of-Heaven]

Caribou Madonna missed the Parties?
Shame on her, where was she?
Too Busy Quitting her day job?