On April 15th, Americans across the country will be paying their taxes, but this year is a little different. The seemingly endless stream of bailouts—some $11 trillion committed thus far in FDIC assurances, Federal Reserve “loans”, TARP disbursements, and more—has opened the eyes of the people. And now some are asking questions.
Questions like, “Why should I pay my taxes if the government can just borrow, print, and spend all this money?” Indeed, why should they? After all, most of the funds have not even been appropriated by a vote of their duly elected representatives in Congress.
Others are no longer asking why. They’ve had enough, and they’re organizing.
The tea party movement is one such coalition of tens of thousands of Americans arranging tea parties across the country on April 15th to protest their unaccountable government. The movement was inspired by CNBC on-air editor, Rick Santelli, who in response to President Barack Obama’s $75 billion mortgage modification plan famously asked traders on the floor of the Chicago Stock Exchange, “This is America! How many of you people want to pay for your neighbor’s mortgage that has an extra bathroom and can’t pay their bills? Raise their hands.”
Nobody raised their hand. There was just a chorus of boos. Mr. Santelli went on to promise to organize a Chicago tea party, and the rest is history. Americans began to organize on their own tea parties in protest of bailouts, “stimuli,” mortgage modifications, nationalization of the financial system, and everything else, and so far, they are springing up this spring in over 1,500 cities nationwide.
There is another protest, however, that is raising questions. And eyebrows.
A radical organization calling itself “A New Way Forward” has put together an underhanded sham designed to undercut the tea party uprising. Following columnist Paul Krugman’s lead, they believe, simply, that the bailouts have not gone far enough. That the level of government involvement in the financial system—which it has wrecked—should only increase.
“Wall Street has taken over,” they declare with a straight face, despite much evidence to the contrary.
The organization proposes that the federal government should outright seize banks, liquidate the shares, fire the boards that run them, and reorganize them “with strong, new regulatory and antitrust rules in place—new banks, managed by new people.”
From a propaganda vantage, the organization intends to generate media coverage as if Americans fed up with government bailouts support even more government control over financial institutions. Why?
The left is clearly scared of the tea party movement. They should be.
This hastily established effort may be designed to blunt the press coverage of the tea parties, and to make them look like afterthoughts to the “glorious” demand for full socialism.
But the tea party movement’s voice will not be silenced. The American people’s eyes are wide open. And they’re through asking questions.
Robert Romano is the Senior Editor of ALG News Bureau.
