TAX DAY- Sacramento Protest

 

I was apprehensive today as I left work to attend the Tea Party a few miles away at the State Capitol. As I drove down Capitol Mall, I realized there were no street closures, and soon I was at the traffic circle where the State Library and Treasury face each other; much to my shock I actually found a parking space, marked for One Hour Only…no big deal, I wasn’t going to spend all day here, I needed to go back to work.

I saw a few speakers, and found myself involuntarily blurting out AMEN when there was a call on the crowd to respond to “Shouldn’t your government serve YOU?”

There was a LOT of mounted police, not just the usual two that patrol the Capitol grounds, but the city mounted unit, which last saw downtown duty in these numbers when the damn anarchist were protesting the WTO conference in 2003. but unlike then, when the horses were stabbed, hit, spit on and all other manner of ill treatment at the hands of the anarchists, today’s crowd mostly wanted to take a picture with the horse mounted cops, or have the kids or grandkids pet the horse.

I got to hear speeches, but also see thousands of people who like me think the government is like a runaway train, fueled by imaginary money, our future taxes. I mean to spend money to keep the economy going is one thing and we can discuss that (if they bother to read the bill?) But spending is crazy right now, and for the future and it needs to be slowed down and rethought.

I looked up the deficit and surpluses in the federal budgets for the last 12 years. Clinton had surpluses, and Bush did in 2000, but after 9/11, the economy tanked. Then bush went to Afghanistan, followed by Iraq…deeper deficits. But by 2007 the federal budget was heading back towards lessening the deficits that is until the economy slowed and then tanked big last year. Bush ended office with grew to nearly a trillion dollars because of TARP.  The project federal deficit for 2009 is a whopping 1.8 trillion, and piles on nearly a trillion more every year.

So for that reason people like me who worry about the future of our kids and grandkids went to show in a civil way that we are plenty upset with the way the government is spending our tax dollars.

So I was a little disappointed to see some of the cable news this evening so dismissive of the Tax Day Tea Parties.

Critics of President Barack Obama marked national tax day Wednesday with "tea party" protests that Republicans are calling the birth of a grassroots opposition, but Democrats dismiss as a fraud.

Right off the bat they've got the entire premise of the events wrong. What's the point of writing the story if you get that wrong? They're anti-tax protests, spending protests, etc...They’re not "anti-Obama" protests.

And now for some blatant twisting of the truth:

For now, Obama's far-reaching economic policies, including a 787-billion-dollar anti-recession stimulus package, have broad support.

And this, THIS is absolutely PRICELESS. A purported NEWS ORGANIZATION goes to, wait for it...THE DAILY KOS for backing of the ludicrous liberal meme that the protests aren't legitimate grassroots efforts (easily disproved by reading back through blog histories as the movement was developing, not so easily noted if you rely on the most prominent, disgusting, LIBERAL BLOG for your NEWS SOURCE:

But Democrats scathingly attacked the tea parties as an imitation grass roots movement manufactured by fringe elements of the right.

The tea parties "have been largely a creation of the same gang that already ran conservatism off the rails," wrote David Waldman on the liberal Daily Kos politics blog.