By Peter Hannaford on 4.22.09 @ 6:06AM
They know the dissatisfaction is deeper than reported.
It's been a week since several hundred thousand Americans met in
some 750 cities at TEA ("Taxed Enough Already") parties to
protest high taxes and government spending. One group sent a
million tea bags to the White House. The self-styled "mainstream"
media had studiously avoided covering the phenomenon in advance
and, led by the New York Times, belittled it afterward.
They were joined by the Obama Administration and its acolytes as
being only the ventings of disgruntled conservatives.
These all tended to say that the TEA parties were the
brainchildren of Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity or the Fox News
Channel. In fact, the tea party idea was first mentioned by a
commentator on CNN, followed by a mid-February TEA party in
Orlando, Florida, that drew some four thousand participants.
Oddly, the Obama Administration, which quickly dismissed the
events as trivial and inconsequential, kept right on doing so
nearly a week later. If something were inconsequential wouldn't
they comment, then drop it? Instead, Last Sunday, as a guest on a
TV public affairs program, Obama advisor David Axelrod said, "The
thing that bewilders me is this president just cut taxes for 95
percent of the American people. So I think the tea bags should be
directed elsewhere because he certainly understands the burden
that people face."
This mantra was repeated by others. It belies the fact that the
"tax cut" referred to amounts to an average $8-a-week reduction
in Social Security taxes deducted from paychecks (and does not
relieve those workers from the tax liability at year's end). And,
for those who pay no income tax, it is in the form of checks
called "rebates." If you don't pay taxes there is nothing to
rebate. What they amount to are transfers from Americans who pay
taxes to those who don't, a.k.a. welfare.
Axelrod's hyperbolic defense of Obama's policy was widely covered
on Monday. Then, on Tuesday, President Obama, at the opening of a
cabinet meeting, allowed tape recorders to keep rolling after the
obligatory group photo, so that he could trumpet "savings" being
effected by his appointees. One of these was the "news" that the
Department of Homeland Security would save $62 million over the
next 10 years by engaging in bulk purchases of supplies. One
wonders why they hadn't been doing that all along. The other
savings were, accordingly, also minor against the backdrop of
record deficits and a $7.6 trillion federal budget.
The Obama recitation, combined with the continuous criticism of
the TEA parties by his tribunes, tells us that the White House
has been reading its internal polls and finding that the TEA
parties were a much more worrisome demonstration of public
dissatisfaction than it wants the public to know.
Despite Obama's cool exterior and occasionally soaring rhetoric,
he is not immune from making mistakes. The jolly handshake with
Hugo Chavez is one; the budget and deficit are two very large
ones.
