Tea Party Leaders Talk on Tax Day

April 15^th, 2010

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Tea Party Leaders Talk on Tax Day

Tea parties take the nation by storm.

Happy Tax Day!

Taxpayers may be getting a raw deal.

The War on the Young: The Government Debt Burden

Future generations of Americans are being permanently shackled to a debt that cannot be paid.

The Job-Loss Recovery

In March 2010, according to the BLS, the unemployment rate rose from 9.687 percent to 9.749 percent.

Union Leader: Oops, we did that? More health care surprises

We are only beginning to discover what this bill will actually do versus what its advoca claimed it would do.

Tea Party Leaders Talk on Tax Day

By Rebekah Rast

The TEA Party movement will be in full swing today — all over the nation.  From marching through downtown streets to rallying together in front of courthouses, the mission is the same.  TEA Partiers don't approve of where the federal government is leading America and are taking a stand against it.

Various TEA Party leaders spoke with Americans for Limited Government (ALG) about the movement and their plans for tax day.

What is your opinion of the USA Today op-ed by Steny Hoyer and Nancy Pelosi, where they refer to the activists opposing healthcare (many part of the TEA Party movement) as "un-American?"

A. Henry Kriegel: "These people don't know the history of this country.  We are America's 2^nd Revolution and we honor the freedoms given to us that are inscribed in the Constitution.  It's the pot calling the kettle black.  They are the ones who are un-American and have manipulated the democratic process."

A. Mark Lloyd: "It is not un-American to speak out against an intrusive over-reaching big government and an administration that is bound and determined to take this country into a form of socialism, controlling every aspect of our lives and taking away our individual liberties as well as bankrupting my children, my grandchildren and future generations."

A. Bradley Bentley: "The constitution is about freedom.  It does not provide means of freefor having entitlement to everything America wants to offer. It just provides these opportunities of freedom to go after what I choose. The American people have tried to get their representatives and their senators to do the right thing but they would not listen.  Part of the TEA Party movement is staying active and staying strong and staying vocal in a positive way to force our representatives and hold them accountable.  If they won't listen we will work and actively remove them from office by running candidates that will oppose them and stand for what's right."

 What are your TEA Party's local plans for Tax Day?

A. Henry Kriegel: We are going to march to the library up Main Street to the courthouse. We will then go back to library where the staff of Senators Baucus and Tester will be. We will voice our dissent. "Since you ignored us over the months we are going to vote you out of office." We expect around 700 to 1,000 people.

A. Mark Lloyd: We've got a tax day rally tomorrow evening here in town and we've got some local speakers and a get together. At our last rally we hosted here in Lynchburg we had around 500 or so and I can't even start to tell you how many we are expecting.  "I'm going to be speaking on how it's time now for the TEA Parties to stand up and take the lead. Protests are great but all protests all the time, that's not leadership and it's now time for us to stand and lead."

A. Bradley Bentley: "We are having a TEA Party in Lubbock, Texas, for the surrounding communities. We hope to draw 1,500 to 2,000 people. We had about 1,500 people here last year.  We are meeting at Lubbock County Courthouse."

Tell me about yourself.  When did you get involved in the TEA Party movement? What does the movement mean to you?

A. Henry Kriegel: "I helped organize the movement in Bozeman last year. This is an opportunity to finally share with likeminded people the challenges our nation faces.  This is a way to show my love for freedom.  This is a way for us to show our defiance to our out-of-control government, which threatens our liberties."

A. Mark Lloyd: "I got involved because I had to do something. I cannot and could not continue to just sit on the fringe of politics. My country is much, much too important. I see the TEA Party movement from the inside out as citizens actually becoming engaged and involved in government like I've never seen before in my lifetime. The future of the TEA Party movement is it continues to grow and the people wake up and become engaged and involved in their government. They actually do stand up and start to appreciate their liberties. Very often we don't appreciate something until it's taken away from us. And more people are waking up now to the fact, and more and more everyday are waking up to the fact, that our liberties are being stolen from us by the government and if we are going to have them it's up to us to protect them and to reestablish a Constitutional government that doesn't just make up the rules as it goes. We need to go back to what the Founding Fathers intended."

A. Bradley Bentley: "We got involved last February after the election. We became aware the Obama Administration was taking over the country and I started to ask a few friends to gather with me and pray and see how we could get involved. And it grew from there. We had 1,500 people at the TEA Party. The TEA Party is an opportunity for American citizens to gather together to show a sign of force—vocally, visually and physically with our footprints on the pavement, just marching and showing that we are force to be reckoned with. We aren't going to stop until they listen to us fully and we see results. We're not a flash in the pan, we are here to stay and we will hope to bring our representatives, both congressman and women and their senators, and hold them accountable truly for what they're doing when they turn their backs on us."

Whether a TEA Party leader or part of the crowd, involvement in this movement is simply exercising America's most basic right—the 1^st Amendment.  No other liberty so proudly demonstrates the democratic system that America was founded upon.

Rebekah Rast is a contributing editor to ALG News Bureau.

http://blog.getliberty.org/default.asp?Display=2204

Happy Tax Day!

ALG Editor's Note: William Warren's award-winning cartoons published at GetLiberty.org are a free service of ALG News Bureau. They may be reused and redistributed free of charge.

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By Adam Bitely

The current national debt is $12,834,045,677,823.92. Each citizen of the United States' share of that debt is $41,642.80. Who will pay for this debt? The only answer that seems plausible is future generations of Americans.

In the old days, politicians often spoke of investing in America's future. Now, the Obama administration borrows against that future. It can be seen clearly when one looks at how current politicians have de-railed Social Security—aside from numerous other programs that they have also sunk into financial oblivion.

Veronique De Rugy, a Senior Research Fellow with the Mercatus Center, has produced a great chart showing just how off target estimates have been in regards to CBO predictions for Social Security:

There is a definite correlation here between this Congress' fiscal recklessness and programs falling into the abyss. Clearly, no one in Washington D.C. seems to mind bankrupting America's future. It is amazing to see the people that have driven Social Security off of a cliff being given the power and authority to fix the nation's debt crisis.

So bad off is Social Security, it has begun cashing in part of its $2.5 trillion in debt treasuries, as the AP recently reported. It gets worse.

The same Congress that has driven the debt up is attempting to drive it up further by way of increasing unemployment benefits. Senator Tom Coburn stands in the way of this bill claiming that attempts to extend benefits will only further plunge the nation into debt. Although the $18.5 billion extension may appear relatively modest compared to the gargantuan $12.8 trillion total debt, these extensions are adding up. Senator Coburn is right; benefits should not be expanded any further until the debt is reduced.

A recent New York Times editorial claims they are worried about Senator Coburn's arguments against expanding these benefits because they are catching on with others in the Senate.  Apparently the editorial board of the New York Times does not care about the nation's debt crisis and does not mind sticking the bill with young Americans.

Where is the outcry for Congress to stop running the tab any higher against America's future?

Failure to pay for this relatively small extension in unemployment benefits shows that this aging baby boomer congress is more interested in their future than America's future. It is time for the youth to tell mom, dad and grandpa and grandma to stop borrowing on our credit card, because we cannot afford it.

Adam Bitely is the Executive Editor of the Liberty Features Syndicate for Americans for Limited Government.

http://blog.getliberty.org/default.asp?Display=2202

The Job-Loss Recovery

By Robert Romano

In March 2010, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) household survey, the unemployment rate rose from 9.687 percent to 9.749 percent.  In other words, the economy shed some 134 thousand jobs in March: BLS' numbers show an increase in the unemployed from 14.871 million to 15.005 million.

One would not know this, of course, if one went simply by the world according to Barack Obama.  Or the BLS, which reported "the unemployment rate remained at 9.7 percent." Or by media accounts of the employment situation, for that matter.

"We are beginning to turn the corner," said a breathless Obama.  He added, "this month's increase of 162,000 jobs was the best news we've seen on the job front in more than two years."

Where did he get that number from? The BLS establishment survey of non-farm employers.  The problem with that number is that it does not include the entire population of jobs.

Neither did the media for that matter.  "[T]he unemployment rate remained at 9.7 percent for the third straight month," reported MSNBC.com.  "March unemployment rate unchanged at 9.7%" reports the unscrupulous Washington Post headline. "Unemployment Rate Unchanged" reads another headline at NPR.org.  

But it did change.  It went up — from 9.687 percent to 9.749 percent.  So, why did the media report it as "unchanged"? Because when BLS publishes its monthly percent number, it rounds the numbers. 

And, when it reports the "change" from month-to-month, it takes the difference between the rounded employment rates.  So, assures the BLS, the unemployment rate neither increased nor decreased in March.  The net change reported was "0.0".

And the media all went along for the ride! They bought it — hook, line, and sinker.

It gets worse.  Not only did the nation shed 134 thousand jobs last month alone, since July 2009, it has lost 543 thousand total.  Why is that significant?

Besides the tragedy for all of those families struggling to make ends meet, according to Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke, testifying on Capitol Hill yesterday, "a recovery in economic activity appears to have begun in the second half of last year."

Remarked Americans for Limited Government President Bill Wilson upon learning of Bernanke's testimony, "Obama has not even given the American people a jobless recovery.  He has given them a job-loss recovery."

Bernanke had more bad news on the jobs front: "a significant amount of time will be required to restore the 8-1/2 million jobs that were lost during the past two years." Significantly, Bernanke said that "in March, 44 percent of the unemployed had been without a job for six months or more," meaning the current joblessness will not be easily reversed.

Unfortunately, the Obama Administration is not doing anything that might actually help.

Instead, said Wilson, "Obama is recklessly driving up the national debt, destroying the dollar, taking over health care, taking over the financial system, proposing to raise taxes and punish wealth creation, artificially drive up the cost of energy with a punitive tax on carbon emissions, and all the while continuing the easy money monetary policies that caused the financial crisis to begin with."

It gets even worse than that.  Obama economic advisor Paul Volcker has proposed a new national sales tax to address steepening federal budget deficits.  The nation is facing the worst fiscal calamity in human history, the economy still cannot create jobs, and the best government can offer are more taxes to pay for yet more unsustainable spending.

In its ten-year budget plan, the White House projects that the national debt will grow by $10.6 trillion by 2020.  Wilson said that "will mean less opportunities for private job creation, as government sucks much-needed resources from the economy to finance its unsustainable trajectory that threatens to forever wreck the nation's finances." That's exactly right.

The economy cannot create enough jobs fast enough to pay for such an expansion of government.  But then, the American people should not expect the Administration to be honest about those numbers, either, should they?

Robert Romano is the Senior Editor of ALG News Bureau.

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ALG Editor's Note: In the following featured editorial from the New Hampshire Union-Leader, the board shows that lawmakers may not be fully aware of what they have created with ObamaCare:

 Oops, we did that? More health care surprises

The partisans on the left who preach with certainty about the effects of the new health care law -- it will reduce the federal deficit; it will allow you to keep your current coverage; it will lower premiums -- speak from ignorance. No one really knows what the bill will do, including the members of Congress who voted for it.

A new Congressional Research Service study has found that the law appears to boot members of Congress and their staffers off the Federal Employees Health Benefits Program before the alternative insurance options created by the law will be ready.

In a story headlined: "Baffled by health plan? So are some lawmakers," a national news organization on Monday reported the discrepancy and wrote, "The confusion raises the inevitable question: If they did not know exactly what they were doing to themselves, did lawmakers who wrote and passed the bill fully grasp the details of how it would influence the lives of other Americans?"

To those readers who might think the above quotes were pulled from Fox News, we quote the Russian ambassador, speaking to the President in "Dr. Strangelove": "Our source was The New York Times."

The Times reported that even the staff members of the people who voted to pass this bill will likely lose their coverage. Except, the Times notes, staff in the leadership and committee offices in Congress. The law appears to exempt some people employed by Congress' most powerful members.

This comes after the news that the law did not extend insurance coverage to "children" as old as 26, as intended, and would be highly unlikely to reduce insurance premiums or health care costs (also reported in The New York Times after the bill passed).

We are only beginning to discover what this bill will actually do versus what its advocates claimed it would do. The more that comes out, the clearer it is that rushing such a colossal piece of legislation into law was a huge mistake.

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