In defense of tea parties

Published on April 21, 2009 by Kevin Schmidt

The government is “teabagging” taxpayers
Last Wednesday thousands of angry Americans at 300 locations in 50 states gathered to protest on the day when taxes are owed to Uncle Sam.  In the days running up to the protests, Fox News played up the events meanwhile the rest of the media and liberal commentators denigrated the event, writing off those participating as just right wing idiots.

In his Monday column, Paul Krugman predictably dumped on the events by arguing that the reason for them is that “he [Obama] wants to raise the tax rate on the highest-income Americans back to, um, about 10 percentage points less than it was for most of the Reagan administration. Bizarre.”

Marc Cooper in the Los Angeles Times argued along similar lines. “What, exactly, are the protesters protesting? The marginal tax rate rising 3% for millionaires?”

They completely miss the point, not to mention that it’s completely obvious they haven’t actually read the reasons for the protests. I hope I can clarify the reasons here.

On the tax end, it is more than just a 3% rise in the income tax that will not just hit the “rich” but 663,608 small business owners according to the left-leaning Urban-Brookings Tax Policy Center. It’s about the coming energy tax in the form of “cap and trade”. It’s about the taxes on a pack for cigarettes that is a largely regressive tax.

Looking outside the federal government, many states are out of control when it comes to taxation.

Democrats in Oregon are trying to put through a tax increase on beer. Sounds reasonable enough at first, until you find out they want to raise the beer tax by 1900% from $2.60 to $52.21 per barrel.

Let’s take New York State as well. A “millionaire’s tax” has been proposed in the legislature. The only caveat being that it goes into effect when you start making $300,000 a year or more. Democrats are finding creative ways to make millionaire’s these days.

Most hard working Americans pay their taxes in full and on time, despite the abomination we call a tax code. But while the average slub would get punished if he didn’t pay his taxes, our Treasury Secretary and Head of the IRS Timothy Geithner gets off not paying his taxes because he was “uniquely qualified.”

Charlie Rangel, Chairman of the Ways and Means Committee that deals directly with tax law, had to pay $10,000 in back taxes after failing to report a rental villa he owns in the Dominican Republic.

But the larger problem connected to the taxes, however, is how the tax money is being spent.

In the past two years, we have spent $9 trillion on bailouts in the economy. We’ve deemed numerous corporations “too big to fail” and thrown them taxpayer (and borrowed) money to help keep them solvent. We allow the small business owner to fall under his own weight, but the politically well connected and wealthy corporations get free money. We are socializing the losses while they get to keep their profits.

The Republican Party has its fair share of the blame as well. They’ve done much to brand themselves the party of big business, much at the neglect of small business. A perfect example is the bill that passed the Georgia legislature that allows Georgia Power to finance nuclear power plants on the backs of taxpayers instead of shareholders.

They let a republican president start the calamity of bailouts and ill-advised “stimulus” that President Obama can now continue. He allowed spending to explode at a point not seen in decades, although some of that was rightfully spent on the military after September 11th.

We’ve spent over one trillion (both stimulus packages and interest on debt) on spending and “tax  cuts” sent to consumers trying to get the ailing economy going. Even if the Keynesian economic assumptions work (which is doubtful), the amount spent (while still too much for taxpayers to foot) only amounted to 6 percent of our Gross Domestic Product, virtually a drop in the bucket.

Can anyone really say this is what the founders intended our government to become with a straight face?

But apparently many commentators believe that Americans have no reason to be angry. “Didn’t you get a tax cut this year?” they ask clearly missing the point.

Luckily the good folks at MSNBC and CNN found out they had a comedy streak among their ranks. They decided to make fun of the tea parties by invoking the term “teabagging,” which if you don’t know what it means, you’ll have to look it up yourself.

People who protest taxes, how government spends our money and the overall size of government in our lives deserve ridicule yet animal rights, environmental, and WTO protesters deserve the utmost respect and due diligence. We, after all, are just right wing-extremists; meanwhile they are fighting for “social justice” and other good buzzwords.

They can ridicule all they want, but the fact of the matter is that many people are mad as hell, myself included. It’s about time we prevented the government from “teabagging” us anymore.

Responses to "In defense of tea parties"

  • Berlin made a comment on April 22, 2009:

    Strong article. Beefed up with observation and fact. Kudos.

  • Garrett made a comment on April 22, 2009:

    I found this to be a more rational explanation for the tea parties, but I was confused by one thing.

    You mentioned that the protests were about (among many other things) the cigarette tax on the basis that it’s a regressive tax. But on the other hand, I know you personally are for the FairTax, as were (from what I gather) many of the people at the protests. Isn’t that a bit ironic seeing as the FairTax is also a largely regressive tax?

  • Kevin Schmidt made a comment on April 22, 2009:

    I’m personally not a big FairTax guy, but the argument goes that the “prebate” would take care of that problem (please no Fairtax debate, I’ll shoot myself first).

    There are more problems with the cigarette tax than its regressive nature. For example, President Obama promised to tax hikes on anyone making under $250,000. Also, it is used to fund children’s healthcare. Problem is the declining number of smokers that we are using to fund the program which will eventually lead to a tax increase somewhere else.

  • Kevin Schmidt made a comment on April 22, 2009:

    fix “to” in the second paragraph to “no”

  • Garrett made a comment on April 23, 2009:

    Let’s face it though, we all know his 250k number was a reference to income taxes. While I guess you could argue the other way, that would kind of contradict the argument many on the right throw out about his lower class tax cuts being “welfare”. When you consider all the other taxes the people that pay no income taxes pay, even with the tax cut they are still paying a net positive value in federal taxes.

    Of course for the FairTax I’d say that while the prebate does help the lower class, when you look at it on middle class on up it’s still a regressive tax. I’ll leave it at that though.

  • Kevin Schmidt made a comment on April 23, 2009:

    That depends on a number of factors. It might be right, depending on their income, if they are HEAVY smokers, but there would be few and far between that still would pay net positive in federal taxes. The making work pay credit, earned income tax credit (and I’m sure there’s tons more, child credits ect), and the generous deductions make me skeptical.

  • Amber made a comment on May 4, 2009:

    History Majors have an advantage; they don’t buy into hyperbolic speech and instead go for facts. Check it out:

    Historical rates (married couples, filing jointly)
    Table

    Tax year Top marginal
    tax rate (%) Top marginal
    tax rate (%) on
    earned income,
    if different Taxable
    income over–
    1913 7 500,000
    1914 7 500,000
    1915 7 500,000
    1916 15 2,000,000
    1917 67 2,000,000
    1918 77 1,000,000
    1919 73 1,000,000
    1920 73 1,000,000
    1921 73 1,000,000
    1922 58 200,000
    1923 43.5 200,000
    1924 46 500,000
    1925 25 100,000
    1926 25 100,000
    1927 25 100,000
    1928 25 100,000
    1929 24 100,000
    1930 25 100,000
    1931 25 100,000
    1932 63 1,000,000
    1933 63 1,000,000
    1934 63 1,000,000
    1935 63 1,000,000
    1936 79 5,000,000
    1937 79 5,000,000
    1938 79 5,000,000
    1939 79 5,000,000
    1940 81.1 5,000,000
    1941 81 5,000,000
    1942 88 200,000
    1943 88 200,000
    1944 94 200,000
    1945 94 200,000
    1946 86.45 200,000
    1947 86.45 200,000
    1948 82.13 400,000
    1949 82.13 400,000
    1950 84.36 400,000
    1951 91 400,000
    1952 92 400,000
    1953 92 400,000
    1954 91 400,000
    1955 91 400,000
    1956 91 400,000
    1957 91 400,000
    1958 91 400,000
    1959 91 400,000
    1960 91 400,000
    1961 91 400,000
    1962 91 400,000
    1963 91 400,000
    1964 77 400,000
    1965 70 200,000
    1966 70 200,000
    1967 70 200,000
    1968 75.25 200,000
    1969 77 200,000
    1970 71.75 200,000
    1971 70 60 200,000
    1972 70 50 200,000
    1973 70 50 200,000
    1974 70 50 200,000
    1975 70 50 200,000
    1976 70 50 200,000
    1977 70 50 203,200
    1978 70 50 203,200
    1979 70 50 215,400
    1980 70 50 215,400
    1981 69.125 50 215,400
    1982 50 85,600
    1983 50 109,400
    1984 50 162,400
    1985 50 169,020
    1986 50 175,250
    1987 38.5 90,000
    1988 28 29,750
    1989 28 30,950
    1990 28 32,450
    1991 31 82,150
    1992 31 86,500
    1993 39.6 89,150
    1994 39.6 250,000
    1995 39.6 256,500
    1996 39.6 263,750
    1997 39.6 271,050
    1998 39.6 278,450
    1999 39.6 283,150
    2000 39.6 288,350
    2001 39.1 297,350
    2002 38.6 307,050
    2003 35 311,950

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