How Bout a Bake Sale?

Has anyone noticed that the Republicans have stopped calling liberals, liberals, and started calling them Socialists. Socialist is a pretty scary word. It is one that conjures up images of people marching in unity carrying red flags, down wide city streets. Liberals are no longer frightening to the public because a ‘liberal’ is someone who wears tie dyed shirts, and smokes marijuana. They may be among the great unwashed but being smelly simply isn’t frightening—it’s just unpleasant.

The Republicans, not all, but those who are desperate to ride a new wave of hatred on the backs of the Obama Administration, are looking for a symbolic way to scream about an increase in taxes—for the wealthiest Americans. The way they thought they could do this was by saying that the Socialists had taken over the White House and were playing politics with the hard earned money of Mr. and Ms. Everyday citizen. (But people knew it was just those pesky liberals, so who cared) When this didn’t work, they thought they could send a visible message, to which everyone who ever voted could relate. “Let’s get people who are angry about everything to march around with signs protesting tax increases.” But as anyone who has ever organized or worked in politics knows, an organized protest costs a great deal of moola. (Don't you think calling it moola is a lot more colorful than saying money.) The question is, who’s paying for this newest Republican attempt to develop a grass roots effort to protest paying higher taxes. Dick Armey for one. You remember Dick Armey, the former Congressman from Texas who supported Newt Gingrich’s “Contract with America”. I think protest would be fine if it was the average guy (who was actually paying higher taxes—which they are not) was underwriting this project. But that isn’t happening. The ‘tea parties’ are bought and paid for by the rich. The only people who will pay higher taxes are the really rich people who are funding the protest. It’s a bit circuitous but are you following? “Aye” my pirate friends would say, “there’s the rub”. On April 15th the mega rich Republicans paid for tea parties. Middle class people did the protesting, even though they will pay less taxes than they did under the Bush Administration. It makes no sense unless you don’t want to support anything this Administration is doing. To be perfectly Frank, or Harvey, or Mildred, I would prefer a bake sale, because I love a bake sale, but the Minutemen in Boston didn’t toss their cookies, they tossed the tea into the Boston Harbor. And so the Republicans are holding tea parties. Well not tea parties exactly, but protests. It’s not only confusing but a little light in the pants if you ask me. And I mean that in the nicest possible way.

Here’s what I, and I’m sure millions of people, find ridiculous. Obama has been in office for about 80 days. For the past eight years, (this is before the last election), the people in power did nothing, absolutely nothing to deal with the economy, the environment, the crisis in education, or the greed of their friends who were running corporations. They did nothing, and now that the Obama administration is attempting to do something, but they find the intrusion of government so appalling that they will do anything to sabotage every effort that is made to deal with all the crises. Let us not forget that under the Bush Administration the government was the largest it had ever been. It was also the most incompetent it has ever been and certainly the most intrusive – OK I don’t remember all governments ever, but no other government deserted the number of people in need (remember New Orleans and “Brownie, you’re doing a heckuva job”) the way this one did.

It’s all about politics. What isn’t? But at a time when the country could really use a show of bipartisanship, it does not exist. I say it’s bad breeding. Clearly, most of these people did not have parents who taught ‘do unto others’. What a shame. I wonder if they take those attitudes with them to church on Sundays? We’re just sayin’….Iris