Time for a tea party

Discontentment and disappointment are being felt by more and more middle Americans. These feelings are shared by people of all faiths, genders and race. Middle Americans are the backbone of our great nation, but our voices are being ignored by the representatives we are paying handsomely to represent us.

Tea parties are being planned across our nation. We have called, e-mailed and faxed our representatives to no avail. The blame game and finger-pointing have become a joke. Covering their tracks is becoming increasingly difficult for this Congress. The American people are gathering to show their civil disobedience in a peaceful but determined way. We will not see our country destroyed from within and stay silent.

Malinda Handforth
Independence

Comments

[Casady]

Call it a conundrum, Kate. If one wants X amount for a house and, like any investment, wants it to maintain it's value, one would opt to keep their existing neighbors in their home and keep prices artificially inflated through government subsidies (in a sense anyway). If my best interest were for the greater good, yes I would let prices fall until they hit bottom. I guess I'm sort of playing devils advocate here. The conservative position is to be against the housing bill yet it is also a conservative position to protect ones personal investment without regard to the greater good. The irony here of course is that supporting the housing bill would most likely be in ones best interest if they which to keep their property values artificially inflated while being against may possibly cost you some change in additional declines in property values.

[Kate]

“isn't it better to pony up some tax revenue than to watch your property values plummet further because 10% of your neighborhood is on the foreclosure block?”

Cassady, is it fair to ask renters to support an inflated value for your home? Wouldn’t they, as well as first-time home buyers, benefit if property values came down?

[Casady]

Fair enough Eng, thanks. And I understand about the myriad of caveats as I have personally been involved in completing an analysis of whether various entities in my industry are better off accepting it's share of stimulus money in exchange for opting into open access arrangements that will require us to lease any facilities built with the stimulus money to competitors at rates which might possibly be below costs. There are also other conditions that would cost encumbents revenue in the long run. As a result, we are leaning toward the opinion that our industry as a whole is better off not taking the money.

With that said, I agree with your assessment that there is not much in the way of quick relief in the spending portion of the bill; that has come in the form of tax relief. Unfortunately, the tax relief is only a fraction of what we saw in 2008 and we all know how much good that did. There probably should have been more of an emphasis on tax relief and less on long term infrastructure improvements but hey, that's just my opinion. But to be throwing around the "S" word. I dunno. It seems a bit too dramatic to me.

[Engineer]

Casady
I don't know how many people are familiar with all of the provisions of the stimulus bill. I'm not, but my biggest problem with what I do know is that it seems to contain little that will serve as a quick stimulus. Some of the "strings" on the State finds could be considered objectionable. These "Tea Parties" actually may be more the demonstration of a deep seated distrust of the perceived aims and objectives of the Obama administration than a protest about specific acts.

[Casady]

I've been away so I may have missed something. I am seeing the dreaded "S" word being thrown around like crazy by right wing extremists lately, especially at footage of tea party rallies that I have seen on the news. They seem to be bent out of shape about the stimulus bill. Now since most of the funds in the stimulus bill trickles down to either the private sector and the state level (and a good portion of the private sector funds will not be spent due to the conditions attached with taking the money), I am confused about how this equates to socialism. Perhaps our more rational conservative regulars like Eng, Sammy or Mark R. can shed some light on this. While I am certainly not crazy about Keynsian like deficit spending and I am skeptical of it's results, it is a far cry from Socialism. As for the mortgage bailout, a lot of people screwed up; borrowers, lenders, regulators, etc and I'm certainly not crazy about this plan either but isn't it better to pony up some tax revenue than to watch your property values plummet further because 10% of your neighborhood is on the foreclosure block? I would think the cost of the latter option to me, personally would be greater than the cost of the bail out.

[Stifled Freedom]

Have your tea party, but it wont change anything. Remember that the original Boston Tea Party was preceeded by a war. The system is not going to change until it is forced to change. I dont know what that force will be, but it ain't words. They aren't listening.

[Kee]

My representative has an excellent voting record thank you. Keep up the good fight Sam.

[Marctnts]

Vote, vote, vote.

It may make you feel good to stand in a crowd, chant a little, and throw a few things into the water (setting aside the lack of relation to the actual events that precipitated the real tea party), and heck, you may even get a few seconds on the nightly news. You won't, however, affect much change this way.

You do, however, have the power to affect real and lasting change by voting. We have major elections every couple of years. Get your word out, mobilize voters for your cause, and convince a majority to agree with you, and you'll be amazed at the amount of actual change it can bring.

Or you can sit around and complain about all the "other guy's" representatives. After all, it's never your representatives that are part of the problem, is it?

[T. Hanson]

Wow.. add:

"ThankYou" at the end of that and I would figured it was Mark Robinson in drag.