Last Saturday, I attended a second local TEA Party. This one was held at Losie's on Oneonta's Southside.
Once again, I was impressed with the organization of the event and the probably 200 normal, patriotic, good Americans who simply wanted to say they have had enough of too much government.
This event was about three times larger than the one held in Milford earlier this year, and it seems the thousands of similar gatherings across the United States experienced the same kind of growth. Atlanta had more than 12,000 attendees.
No one can say that this was a nationally coordinated Republican Party event. The media and the left will try, but they are simply lying. They are afraid this movement will continue growing.
Rather, it was an event where ordinary people _ Republicans, Democrats and independents _ simply wanted to express their feelings and frustrations about the direction in which our government and politicians are going.
Thank you to those who put in the necessary hours to make the event happen and the many people who took the time to attend. It was certainly a success. Congratulations, Tim and Jim.
There are certainly many actions our politicians have in progress that should make ordinary Americans very nervous and angry.
As we have all seen just this last week, House members acted very irresponsibly by ignoring the majority of their constituents' feelings and passing the Waxman-Markey Cap-and-Trade Bill.
This bill and its related amendment, 1,000- and 300-plus pages respectively, are ones they hadn't even read before voting on the bill.
It was exactly the same situation with the economic stimulus package passed earlier this year. No one read it before it was voted on. As a result of that fiasco, we are discovering every day more and more pork hidden in the bill.
Can anyone tell me how this is responsible representation? I think not. This is the kind of action you can expect to have happen when the Democrats are in charge, especially when you have radical left-wing leadership in both legislative houses and the White House.
I was one of the probably few news junkies who actually watched the Cap-and-Trade Bill vote occur. The House membership is made up of 253 Democrats and 178 Republicans.
The final vote looked to be very close when the count was 219 for the bill and 212 against. Nothing could be further from the truth. With 12 Democrats left to vote out of a total of 253, with only minutes left, only 8 had voted against the bill. When the final tally was taken, 44 Dems had voted against it.
What courage! What conviction! Instead of basing their vote on conviction of principle, they had to wait first to see if the bill had a chance of failing or not before they timidly switched their votes against the measure, apparently to appease their constituents and save their elected seats.
Why should a person be allowed to switch his or her vote after casting it? I hope the people these congresspersons represent are able to see right through this act of shallow political maneuvering, and especially remember their behavior in November 2010.
We now have a bill going to the Senate that would be a disaster for our economy. The Congressional Budget Office estimates that the poorest 20 percent of families could experience their annual energy costs increase by $700 while other families could experience increases of up to $2,200 annually.
And these estimates are only for 2012, the year when the bill's provisions kick in. Families, especially low-income families, are already stretched to the limit!
Where's the sympathy, Barack? Pay attention to the working class. You are not a community activist anymore. You've got to grow up.
Did I also mention that it is estimated that we will lose approximately $400 billion a year in gross domestic product? How about the estimate of 1.1 million NET jobs lost each year?
No, Barack, we can't count saved jobs that the Department of Labor has already stated can't be measured.
Oh yes, I almost forgot. Since China and India aren't in any way required to restrict their carbon output levels, this bill's passage will result in a decrease of a tiny 0.1 degree Fahrenheit by 2050 instead of doing nothing. This was testimony by a research climatologist by the name of Paul Knappenberger.
So there you go, libs. You are soon going to have to defend the policies of this incompetent, inexperienced, unqualified man-child that you elected to be your leader.
And to make matters worse, you aren't going to be able to blame the Bush/Cheney administration for all this anymore. People will just laugh at you. I can't wait to hear what you have to say.
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Tom Sears is a professor of accounting at Hartwick College in Oneonta. He can be reached at SearsT@hartwick.edu. His column appears every other week.
