More Tea Parties
Bensblurb # 538 April 9, 2010
More big Tea Parties are coming
A year ago in this space, I wrote:
“Raise your hand if you think the [IRS tax] system will change in our lifetimes. The hopelessness over reining it in undoubtedly fueled the crowds waving signs on Tax Day, April 15 this year. But I suspect it also reflected the frustration of folks being told by Washington how their toilets must flush, which light bulbs to use and whether paper or plastic will be allowed for bags.”
Well, turns out we’re certainly not reining in the tax system, just the opposite. It so happens that in the monstrous ObamaCare health law just passed the IRS is given a prime role in how we’ll get dunned in paying for it, like it or not.
But wait. Before I get all out of sorts in bawling about that crazily coercive aspect of the new law, let me talk about how all of us frustrated folks are getting our voices heard once again: By bunching up, cheering and waving signs.
Last summer I first wrote about our own local Tea Party, which held its first rally on July 4. I had expected to find a few malcontents grumbling there in front of Stafford Courthouse. To my surprise, a crowd of over 500 cheerful demonstrators showed up, and they behaved more like it was a church picnic. Impressive.
Those rallies soon ballooned into something big, as we all now know. So get ready: Stafford is having another one, this weekend, on Saturday, April 10, again on the Courthouse lawn. Y’all come. At least drive by and honk.
In my commentary a year ago, I mentioned frustration. That will be front and center this time around. For example, the other night, Bill O'Reilly tried to get Rep. Anthony Weiner (D., N.Y.) to admit that the IRS would have to enforce the penalty tax for people who refused both to get the mandated [health care]coverage and to pay the penalty. He wouldn’t. But it’s true. Over 16,000 more IRS agents, it’s said, will be necessary to assure compliance.
As William McGurn explains it in a recent Wall Street Journal piece, “There's no way to afford expensive provisions such as forcing insurance companies to cover people with, say, pre-existing conditions unless millions of healthy people who won't need insurance are forced to pay...the government gets more healthy people into the risk pool—and with the penalty, it gets their money whether they buy coverage or not.”
That’s why some 14 state attorneys general are charging the new law is unconstitutional, with Virginia leading the way. We’ll see, someday.
Meantime, if you don’t get the chance to vent your (civil) frustrations at the courthouse this weekend, there’s always April 15. That’s Tax Day and time for a huge Tea Party rally downtown on the Capitol steps. Momentum has been building for months and it should be another biggie--which mainstream media types will do their best to ignore or belittle.
You see, they’re doing their best to portray Tea Partiers as racists and malcontents who hate Obama. But when was the last time you heard of participants at those huge rallies getting arrested, hmmm? That’s long been par for the course at left-wing gatherings.
############
--Ben Blankenship
More big Tea Parties are coming
A year ago in this space, I wrote:
“Raise your hand if you think the [IRS tax] system will change in our lifetimes. The hopelessness over reining it in undoubtedly fueled the crowds waving signs on Tax Day, April 15 this year. But I suspect it also reflected the frustration of folks being told by Washington how their toilets must flush, which light bulbs to use and whether paper or plastic will be allowed for bags.”
Well, turns out we’re certainly not reining in the tax system, just the opposite. It so happens that in the monstrous ObamaCare health law just passed the IRS is given a prime role in how we’ll get dunned in paying for it, like it or not.
But wait. Before I get all out of sorts in bawling about that crazily coercive aspect of the new law, let me talk about how all of us frustrated folks are getting our voices heard once again: By bunching up, cheering and waving signs.
Last summer I first wrote about our own local Tea Party, which held its first rally on July 4. I had expected to find a few malcontents grumbling there in front of Stafford Courthouse. To my surprise, a crowd of over 500 cheerful demonstrators showed up, and they behaved more like it was a church picnic. Impressive.
Those rallies soon ballooned into something big, as we all now know. So get ready: Stafford is having another one, this weekend, on Saturday, April 10, again on the Courthouse lawn. Y’all come. At least drive by and honk.
In my commentary a year ago, I mentioned frustration. That will be front and center this time around. For example, the other night, Bill O'Reilly tried to get Rep. Anthony Weiner (D., N.Y.) to admit that the IRS would have to enforce the penalty tax for people who refused both to get the mandated [health care]coverage and to pay the penalty. He wouldn’t. But it’s true. Over 16,000 more IRS agents, it’s said, will be necessary to assure compliance.
As William McGurn explains it in a recent Wall Street Journal piece, “There's no way to afford expensive provisions such as forcing insurance companies to cover people with, say, pre-existing conditions unless millions of healthy people who won't need insurance are forced to pay...the government gets more healthy people into the risk pool—and with the penalty, it gets their money whether they buy coverage or not.”
That’s why some 14 state attorneys general are charging the new law is unconstitutional, with Virginia leading the way. We’ll see, someday.
Meantime, if you don’t get the chance to vent your (civil) frustrations at the courthouse this weekend, there’s always April 15. That’s Tax Day and time for a huge Tea Party rally downtown on the Capitol steps. Momentum has been building for months and it should be another biggie--which mainstream media types will do their best to ignore or belittle.
You see, they’re doing their best to portray Tea Partiers as racists and malcontents who hate Obama. But when was the last time you heard of participants at those huge rallies getting arrested, hmmm? That’s long been par for the course at left-wing gatherings.
############
--Ben Blankenship
posted by Ben Blankenship at
5:53 PM
