Common Sense Blog

The tea parties sicken me, Americans have it wrong the wealth is owned by society not individuals. When such a minority controol it society needs to take it back. Taxes here are minimal, especially when you consider the services rendered. Most importantly the greed I see in conservitive America is disgusting. "it's my money and I want to keep it" sounds very childish and immature. rather than rally for such a selfish cause rally for an inteligent way to prevent debt to be handed Dow to another generation. WE pay more, if not handing down debt were truly the concern you would he for tax increases. You have to pay some time, pony up and pay your tab. Also don't ever vote for sine one bcause he would be a good drinking budy, idiots.

You are at least the tenth tea bagger that I have heard reference the protests of the sixties and your tea parties, how insulting to those real protesters! The protesters of the sixties had more passion and actiivism in one of their little pinkie's then all of your tea parties combined! They marched down main street, burned bras, draft cards and flags what did you do, you took a day off you "REBEL"!! Maybe at your next soiree you can all bring nerf balls and hurl them at the capital, that and maybe more ten year olds holding up signs should get you on the cover of LIFE magazine. One other thing, after their protests they did not run home to see weather the MSM covered them or not.........

Yes, yes, and did you protest about being taxed without representation?

Oh, except you have representation. At all levels of government.

How noble of you to take a day of vacation! What a patriot!

"ALL THE PREVIOUS ADMINISTRATIONS COMBINED." All 43 combined. No way is that true! Need facts

Good for you Valerie, that you went!  I didn't have the opportunity, as other committments prevented me from attending.   Your post is very insightful as to who attended and what the event was all about.

I just hope that the conservatives and others who are disgusted with the direction Obama & Co. are taking this country don't let this movement die by the wayside.  We need to start voicing our opinions and staging events like this in the future - and keep 'em going.  It's the only way to get the message out.  

I found the media coverage of the Tea Parties across the country to be filled with disdain and snide remarks.  The CNN reporter who went off on a protestor sure showed her true colors - and the bias of the media was clearly evident in many of the reports in papers and on television.  Perhaps the left is a bit taken aback?  Maybe in the future if such events continue (hopefully), the mainstream media might consider trying to be open-minded when covering such things.....I can dream, can't I?  

Amy, Sorry you couldn't make it. It was nice to be with a group of people who made sense for a change. The media coverage was awful. I am sure you saw that CNN "reporter" who wouldn't even let a man explain why he was there and insisted on spewing that Obama is giving us all a $400 tax cut.  I was incensed by Janine Garafalo's reference to us as 'bigots, and racists' and various other filth. Intersting how the left can hang Bush in effigy and make clever little movies about "suppose he got assinated" and lie after lie about 9-11, but a group of people with common beliefs cannot get together and express their displeasure.

JB Despite the fact I am being taxed without representation, I didn't vote for Obama, Doyle, Kohl or Feingold; my target was Jim Doyle who sells out to every special interest group who is willing to write him a check. He has no values and no scruples and is pretty much the closest thing to a political prostitute that there is. No I am wrong, he actually IS a political prostitute.

David Otto, the liberal left and their intolerance sickens me. Your attitude that people are not permitted to express themselves and what they believe is typical liberal hypocrisy. Wealth IS owned by those who earn it. In this contry everyone used to have the same opportunity. Look at your buddy George Soros, an immigrant who came here with nothing and is now worth BILLIONS and uses it to try and tear down the very country that provided him with the opportunity.  As giddy as it would make me  for the government to swoop in, take every cent he has and send him back to the projects, I cannot support that kind of government power.

Now people like you have decided that the rest of us have no rights. Your attitude is really sad. As far as being taxed now to keep the debt from being passed to future generations, I do not want to be taxed to pay for endless spending we do not need. We don't need to be bailing out banks, car companies, insurance companies. We don't need to study pig emmissions, or fund ACORN or any of the other %$$@  that is built into the stimulus and the proposed budget.

Marred25. The protestors of the 60's, I was there, I knew many of them , were spoiled brats: unemployed crazies who wanted to turn the country over to the communists and the socailists. They burned lingerie for crying out loud, oh boy! Give me a break. How is it that only people who you agree with are allowed to voice thier displeasure?  

"unemployed crazies who wanted to turn the country over to the communists and the socailists."?

I thought the protests of the 60's were primarily against the Vietnam war and the carnage inflicted by the US.

"The war exacted a huge human cost in terms of fatalities, including 3 to 4 million Vietnamese from both sides, 1.5 to 2 million Laotians and Cambodians, and 58,159 U.S. soldiers."

Billions of dollars spent. Millions of lives wasted. And you have the audacity rail against those who protested?  

I find your narrow minded ideological interpretation of history absolutely disgusting!

The liberal comments to your post expose the total hypocrisy of the left.  The protests of the '60's were just fine - because the liberals were the ones protesting.  The mass gatherings to show support for Obama during his campaign to be President, according to the liberal media, were called wonderful examples of people getting involved in politics who usually didn't. They were united and raising their voices.  They were looked at as democracy in action.  What a great thing!

 Yet, when conservatives (and others) do exactly the same thing - organize mass protests against things we are unhappy with in our country, we get slammed by the mainstream media.  Laughed at.  Called names.  (Read the comments to your post from the lefties, for examples.)  Journalists didn't try to hide their bias in any way.  In summary, it's OK to protest and voice your opinions if you are a liberal.  If you are not, it isn't OK.  Conservatives just have to get used to that double standard.  We see it all the time.

So no facts? On my Q?

ABC, you are correct, I missed a phrase in my statement. What it should have said is that the spending increases will create as much debt as ...

see below

Column: Obama's budget will inevitably double the national debt

by Brian Riedl, guest columnist

Wednesday, April 1, 2009; 10:15 PM

Last fall, presidential candidate Barack Obama promised revolutionary change in Washington.

Too bad his budget policies have offered merely more of the same.

The president promised a "net spending cut." Then he signed a massive so-called "stimulus" bill that critics on the left and right agreed was deeply flawed, and that will dump $9,400 per household of new debt into the laps of our children and grandchildren.

Obama also pledged to "slash earmarks to no greater than 1994 levels" of 1,318. Then he signed an omnibus spending bill with 9,287 earmarks - the second most in American history, including money for tattoo removal, a Buffalo Bill museum, and a Totally Teen Zone.

The president promised his budgets would confront the "hard choices" that President Bush had avoided by relying on budget deficits. Then he offered a budget that would create as much government debt as every other president from George Washington to George W. Bush  combined.

President Obama's speeches loudly denounce Bush policies. Yet his budget doubles down on them. President Bush's spending spree expanded government by $700 billion.

President Obama's budget would expand government by $1 trillion (not even counting the stimulus).  

President Bush began a seemingly endless series of financial bailouts. President Obama's budget would accelerate those bailouts.

President Bush created an expensive Medicare drug entitlement and began a historic education spending surge. President Obama's budget creates a $634 billion health care reserve fund and would nearly double federal education funds.

President Bush's budgets included unrealistic assumptions and gimmicks. President Obama's budget unrealistically assumes an economic boom will begin next January.

President Bush oversaw budget deficits between $300 billion and $400 billion while fighting a war. Even after (assumed) peace and prosperity, President Obama would run permanent deficits between $500 billion and $700 billion.

Where are the hard choices? Where is the new direction? President Obama's only real divergence is his proposal to raise taxes steeply. Yet all these tax increases would go toward expanding government. None would reduce budget deficits even back to President Bush's levels.

Over 10 years, President Obama would raise taxes by an average $300,000 apiece for the 3.2 million individuals and small businesses with the highest incomes.

With the economy already in recession, this is downright reckless; President Hoover's tax increases, after all, helped turn a recession into the Great Depression. And delaying these tax increases until 2011 won't stop forward-looking businesses from immediately scaling back any investment and hiring plans in anticipation of the painful tax bite.

Everyone else's taxes would rise, too. Despite his promise that "if your family earns less than $250,000 a year, you will not see your taxes increased a single dime.

I repeat: not one single dime," the president has proposed an (at least) $646 billion cap-and-trade energy tax. This would immediately be passed onto all consumers at a cost that could average anywhere from $650 to $2,000 per household annually.

Overall, Washington spent $24,000 per household before the recession. The president's budget would increase real annual spending to $32,000 per household by 2019 - and that assumes he proposes no additional government expansions.

Anyone who believes all these costs can be paid by the wealthiest 2 percent of taxpayers is dreaming. We'll all be paying this tab for decades.

And after all the talk about confronting "hard choices," President Obama's budget offers no solution to the coming cost of paying Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid benefits to 77 million retiring baby boomers. Absent reform, those costs could push income tax rates to over 60 percent for the middle class not even counting the tax increases to fund the president's new proposals.

The president's proposals haven't restored the stock market's confidence. The Dow Jones Industrial Average - which had climbed from November's 7,500 trough back to 9,000 by New Year's Day - has already plummeted by nearly 25 percent this year. And Obama's call to raise investment taxes will further depress the market.

All in all, it's a blueprint for higher taxes, lower incomes and declining retirement funds.

The biggest winners are Washington lobbyists, one of whom gleefully declared the president's budget "is like Christmas" for lobbyists.

The biggest losers are those not yet old enough to vote. President Bush had already dumped $25,000 per household of new debt into their laps.

President Obama plans to add an additional $48,000 per household to their tab. Is that the kind of "change" America voted for?  

Brian Riedl is the Grover M. Hermann fellow in federal budgetary affairs in the Thomas

jmark , I find it interesting that your facts and figures hold the US completely to blame for the carnage in Vietnam yet fail to hold the Chinese and Soviet backed North Vietnamese communists responsible for their actions. Vietnam occured in the midst of the Cold War and as such was a larger issue than a bunch of communists in an obscure East Asian country. In retrospect was it worth it? One can argue whether  the ordinary people of N Vietnam are better off today under a communist regime than they would have been had we seen  the war through to its completion.

I place the blame for the loss of so many American lives squarely on the anti-war protestors and the politicians who were too concerned with playing politics than they were with actually winning the war.  I I I also will continue to hold in highest disregard those anti war protestors who gamed the system with college deferrals, fake medical conditions, and most popular of all, tucking their tails between their legs and running off to Canada. Then, in shameless acts of incredible gall and cowardice villianizing our returning soldiers.

You may wax poetic about the anti war protestors, but they were then and continue to be today, parasites, who dropped anchor in the 60's and never left.  

marred- I am of any age to have known many of them and what they were. I chose not to participate.

I bet you chose not to participate in lots of things over the years, my sympathize!

We all have to prioritize. I expect you have has well. Not everything is of equal importance all the time.