Teabags, Taxes and the “new” Republican Right

“Watch yourself. Be on guard. This place is full of vultures, vultures everywhere. Everywhere.” – Casablanca

There is a “movement” of idiots afoot protesting President George Bush’s tax structure, though they claim they’re against President Obama’s bailouts (like TARP, which started under . . . President Bush). They’ve mistaken the stimulus package passed by President Barack Obama and the 111th Congress for something that affects them as they file their taxes for 2008. What’s more, Faux News is promoting this farce and trying to make it sound like a news story instead of a (permanent opposition to a Democratic president) publicity stunt. Fashioned after the famed Boston Tea Party, where American colonists disguised themselves as Native Americans and destroyed private property in protest of taxation without representation, today’s ‘tea baggers’ are protesting against the wrong people for the wrong reasons. However, they haven’t realized that much like the Virginia Republican Party, which was displaying softcore lesbian pornography on its website a few days ago “by mistake”, that their preferred method of protest, teabagging, is a rather vulgar masculine display of power and authority it modern parlance.

This confusion about what is good for the United States, and what is Right in the United States, and what is simply peeing into the wind is exemplified by the people who speak for the Republican Party in public. Take House Minority Whip Cantor’s comments about tax increases today.

“At a time when American families and small businesses are facing difficult challenges and financial uncertainty, Washington must not make their situations worse by imposing the largest tax increase in American history.”

His comments have absolutely nothing to do with the taxes we’re filing. He (and the teabaggers . . . giggle) are trying to link together President Obama, the economic crisis, and the fact that our government must have taxes as revenue in order to function. How did he vote on Congressional salary increases? How do the teabaggers expect that the services they depend on like police departments, fire departments and public schools to name a few, are to be paid for?

The tax structure today is lower than it was under that paragon of conservative economic virtue, President Reagan. President Obama’s tax cut for the majority of American families (including those who run small businesses) took effect in March of 2009 – which means that they affect next year’s tax returns, not today. The New Right is so wrapped up in fighting President Obama (even though they lost the election, remember) that they can’t see straight.

I’ve grown tired of the whining, the preening, the Rushing. Protest is the right of every citizen of the United States, and really the world. But you should know what you’re protesting for (or against) before you open your mouth, paint a sign, or threaten to tea bag someone.

Anti-Tax ‘Tea Party’ Protests Expected Across U.S.

The Fine Art of Teabagging

April 15th is Patriots Day

Right-wing extremism may be on rise, report says

Nationwide ‘tea party’ protests blast bailout

My Cup of Tea

I teach seventh and eighth graders. I asked my students what they thought the purpose of our class is . . .  this is what I got:

“ We are here not only to learn about others’ stories, but also [to learn] how to write our own.”

Education is the key to empowerment – that’s why slave owners in the South forbade literacy among slaves; that’s why the Taliban forbade the educating of girls; that’s why I am a teacher of his- and her-story.  Access to information coupled with expectations of success and responsibility to succeed both allow and motivate children to improve themselves and the world we live in.

Greg Mortenson understands this necessity, too, though he’s too old for my class.  He is writing the stories of thousands of boys and girls in Pakistan and Afghanistan, an area of the world that we as Americans only pay irritated attention to when we pay attention at all.  Better said, he is helping them to write their own stories.

His book, Three Cups of Tea, should be the next book you read. Period.

Those of us fortunate enough to have internet access, to learn our letters indoors, to be taught, and who can conceive of a world beyond our immediate dwelling because we’ve been shown that it is here have a responsibility to make those gifts a reality for each person on this earth.  It is our responsibility to lift up our fellows, to insure that none of us lives in squalor, in poverty, in ignorance.

“From those to whom much has been given, much is expected.”

“Dr. Greg” is giving life to that message, is giving a foundation and walls and roofs to those words.  The translation of that spirit into physical acts is usually where human beings fall short.  The words are said, but the body doesn’t move to make them incarnate.  Greg Mortenson is making them real.

There are many people I look to for inspiration – Mohandas Gandhi, Martin Luther King, Jr., Barack Obama.

I’ve just added one more, because Greg Mortenson and his mission are my cup of tea.