The Tea Party’s Cause

Looking to the Glory Days of Teddy Roosevelt

Nov 4, 2010. There have been a couple of editorials trying to figure out the tea party’s slogans, "Take our country back" and “We’re taxed too much.” Harold Meyerson writes “When Tea Party Wants to Go Back, Where is It To?”
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/10/26/AR2010102605216.html saying tea partiers believe our President is leading the nation down the path to “socialism,” a word he believes they don’t truly comprehend. Eugene Robinson in “Decoding the Tea Party's Ire” http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/11/01/AR2010110106731.html?referrer=newstrust says, “the answer is pretty obvious: He’s black.” They both have some valid points but leave all of us (including the tea partiers) somewhat confused about their aims. Since federal taxes in 2009/10 were down for 98% of the people and the Bush tax cuts saw to it that 52 million (19 million more than in 2000) had to pay no federal income tax (about 47 percent of US tax payers), well it is left up to me to provide a better perspective on tea partiers' aspirations. Here then is that crystal clear explanation of that phenomenon sweeping our country.
http://finance.yahoo.com/news/Nearly-half-of-US-households-apf-1105567323.html?x=0

President Obama is taking the country towards socialism, not for the first time, rather it’s back to the future, the socialism of the 50’s when income redistribution favored the masses – those middle class people that punched a nine to five time clock. Obama wants to take the country back to those days of socialism, i.e., Robin Hood taking from the hard working rich to feed the free loaders, many too lazy to work. Fortunately for our country, over the last 30 years, we’ve seen this redistribution of wealth undone with much less of the income going to the bottom 90 percent of Americans. We’ve stopped this hemorrhaging of the socialist period between 1950 and 1980 when the average income for the bottom 90% grew from $17,719 in 1950 to $30,941, a scandalous 75 percent increase in income. Starting in 1981 Reagan halted this deplorable increase and the share of all income going to the bottom 90 percent started declining, going from 65 percent to 52 percent in 2007. The Reagan Revolution caused unions to lose their clout and forced people in the middle class to get off their rear ends and start once again working hard for their wages. In the mean time the lives of the rich brightened considerably. The share of income going to America's wealthiest one percent rose from nine percent in 1981 to a respectable 23.5 percent in 2007. Looking at these numbers, people in the Tea Party need to be ecstatic, but at the same time scared to death that about half of them may actually have to start paying any taxes at all. Obama wants to take our country back to the period between 1950 and 1980 when the vast majority of Americans enjoyed more of the American pie than they deserved, a time when socialism flourished. Today’s American woes are traceable back to Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal which produced the only three decades in American history -- the '50s, '60s and '70s -- when economic wealth was widely shared with the masses, socialism run amuck, a time of socialist INCOME REDISTRIBUTION! It was the only period in American history when unions were big and powerful to ensure that corporate revenue was taken away from the rich and given to the workers – Robin Hood in his finest hour. And during this time taxes on the rich were significantly higher than taxes on the middle class with the top bracket at 91% under that socialist Eisenhower. Tea partiers don’t want to look at that side of Eisenhower since he saved the world from Hitler and since Obama is Hitler reincarnate. And Eisenhower made sure that the minimum wage kept pace with the cost of living, another socialist redistribution of the wealth gimmick. And it was the only time when rich Americans felt uncomfortable about their ominous economic burden to support continued American expansion. But since the ascent of Ronald Reagan, America's claim to being a land of the rich has become once again a reality. Unions have dwindled; colleges have become unaffordable for the masses; manufacturing has gone abroad where factory owners can get a decent profit; and most importantly - taxes on the rich have plummeted. Now Obama wants to return to the socialist America of the 50’s and again raise taxes on the rich. So tea partiers should look for a return of the glory days before the New Deal – the time of Teddy Roosevelt when Social Security, unions, and the minimum wage were unknown; a time when our country fought wars for glory; a time when the Monroe Doctrine meant something; a time when Imperialist America was expanding west across the Pacific taking the Philippians and to the south taking Cuba; a time when there were no child labor laws and kids could work hard instead of sitting around twittering; and a time when the brightest like the Wright Brothers and Henry J. Ford could lead the rest of the world in new directions without all those socialist government controls. Now we have a president of color who has turned the country away from tea partiers’ European heritage of class and race distinction. Well, tea partiers are going to get exactly what they deserve, that is for those rich one percent of them. After all who drinks tea and who drinks beer?