A blog about politics and issues with Kathleen McKinley.

Tea Party. Wow.


The Houston Tea Party was fantastic. I was blessed to have been a part of it. Thousands attended. The police had to block off streets for those who couldn’t get in. Here are some pics. But Michelle Malkin has pictures from the over 800 Tea Parties across the country.

I saw an overview pic taken from a nearby building, I’ll post it when I find it.

I know that many readers here don’t agree with me on many issues, but when it comes to what this government (starting with Bush and including Republicans and Democrats alike) is doing with reckless spending and printing money we don’t have, we must do something to stop it. We cannot keep spending money we don’t have. This is something we should all be concerned about because all of us will pay dearly for it.

Anyway, I met tons of wonderful people yesterday. People who love this country. It was great. Get ready for the 4th of July Tea Party!

Categories: General
Kathleen McKinley

34 Responses

  1. J. Reynolds says:

    I attended the downtown Houston 4th of July Rally for America a few years ago, with Glenn Beck and Pat Gray. It was debilitatingly hot — perhaps not the best of times in our town for such a gathering.

  2. Aubrey says:

    You might have really liked the part at the end where the crowd moved down the street and encircled the Chronicle building. The video will be on Youtube a little later this morning.

  3. RealRick says:

    We couldn’t get to the one in The Woodlands/Spring because of the traffic from all the people who showed up!

    Still, the whole tea party thing is a waste of time unless it leads to the same thing the original one did: “When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another…”

  4. Miss Zelda says:

    I fully support the people’s right to protest, but I’m sorry, I think this tea party nonsense is ridiculous.

    I am for a fair tax rate and responsible spending by our government, and I’m not saying that everything the current administration does is right, but where were these people during the Bush administration’s wasteful spending of *our* tax dollars in Iraq? Where were these people during the Bush administration’s *years* of irresponsible tax cuts for the very wealthy?

    Come on out and protest, but protest the issue, not the party in power – and let’s be honest. That’s really what this was about.

    *note: AGAIN. We were angry at Bush (see links below). 2nd Bush didn’t give just tax cuts for the wealthy. THat is a liberal myth. the 2001 tax cut reduced taxes for every income-tax payer in the country. Bush reduced the bottom tax rate to 10% from 15% and increased the refundable child tax credit to $1,000 from $500 per child.-TexasSparkle



  5. Jason says:

    It is great to see the turn out, great to see that people want to stop the runaway train in Washington. But, I can’t help but be a little baffled by the person holding the sign “Stop punishing successs/Stop rewarding failure.” Taxes aren’t a punishment. I could for example say, I didn’t have a fire this year, why should I pay taxes for the fire department? Success isn’t being punished, however, failure is being rewarded. As a socialist, it seems that the tea partiers and I have the same view point. Those who WORK (that’s why our logo is the hammer and sickle, not the armchair), are being asked to support the idle rich of Wall Street, those who produce nothing and who ran our economy aground. Also, our country’s tax revenues mainly go to support the bloated military. Military spending is something like 50% of the budget. We need to make signs that say “Stop punishing success/Stop rewarding the Pentagon.” Marx never envisioned an empowered government.

    *note: Taxes aren’t punishment. But OVERTAXING is. When the top 10% pay over 70% of the taxes and 40% of us pay no income tax at all, something is really wrong. Of course I disagree about the military spending. We have the greatest fighting force on this earth and it keeps the bad guys at bay. The “idle” rich of Wall street represents very little of the hardworking sucessful people in this country.-TexasSparkle

  6. ntelekt says:

    Finally someone who recognizes that Dems and Repubs have both contributed equally to uncontrollable spending. I’m glad protesters have the freedom to express themselves and not be labeled unpatriotic, communists, etc. When war protesters take to the streets they are accused of treason, unpatriotic, etc. Everyone has the freedom to express themselves and should be able to do so without being demonized. I didn’t participate in the tea bag protest because I think it’s misguided, but I do support the rights of protesters to express themselves.

    *Note: I never called the anti-war protesters “unpatriotic” and know of no one who did.-TexasSparkle

  7. Texan99 says:

    We need a flat tax or a consumption tax, or both. The progressive income tax puts the spending decision in the hands of the ones who don’t pay.

  8. Randy says:

    You know government is too big when 5 minorities protesting the Houston Rodeo get air time for 3 days on every network, but 15,000 people gather to protest taxes and only one station carries it locally for 5 minutes and the Chron wont put it anywhere on their site.

  9. Jason says:


    Well, my response here is that: you are OK with government overspending for things that you support; in this case military spending. The top 10% pay a high percentage of taxes because they control a disproportionate amount of wealth. The top 1% of Americans controls something like 90% of the wealth. This disproportionate distribution accounts for the unbalanced taxation. The median income in the US is around $40-50K per year, so most of us–the workers, the middle class, are scraping by. I find it absurd to see people who make $25K per year saying things like “Obama isn’t going to redistribute my wealth.” And, by the way, Obama is not a socialist–he is a business as usual, pro business politician: why do you think he populated his administration with Wall St. insiders? And he has welched on campaign promises left and right…

  10. ProPalin says:

    “On the other hand, they’re not called “tea-bagging parties.” (That, of course refers to the cocktail hour at Barney Frank’s condo in Georgetown.)

    You know what else would be hilarious? It would be hilarious if Hillary Clinton’s name were “Ima Douche.” Unfortunately, it’s not. It was just a dream.

    Having run out of things to tax, now the California legislature is considering a tax on taxes. Seriously. The only way out now for California is a tax on Botox and steroids. Sure, the governor will protest, but it is the best solution …

    California was, in fact, a laboratory of Democratic policies. The rabbit died, so now Obama is trying it on a national level.

    That’s what the tea parties are about.”

    Awesome Ann Coulter

  11. Sully says:


    Last year I was laid off and unemployed for six months. Those unemployment checks helped me out alot. I realized I’d rather pay the 40% tax of every dollar I make over 250,000 than pay a low tax rate of a low income. Last I checked, 0% of 0 is still 0.


    Really? Do you think an 18 year old chinese soldier straight from high school with 3 months basic training who doesn’t speak english can come to this country and separate the cripps and the bloods in any inner city? So why would you send our “greatest fighting force” to Iraq to do police work and prison work?


    There are alot of people in Wall Street who are not idle rich and work 80hr weeks. And no they are not all greedy b$trds. I am not for higher taxes but most of these people attending the tea party are hypocrites. They’ll be the first ones lining up for handouts the minute they get a pink slip.

  12. blacksteelinthehourofchaos says:

    What I am confused about, and maybe part of it is party devotion and the other part lunacy is why people cannot take the tea parties for what they were, it was a protest- period.

    Can we please stop reading between the lines and for once stop the party division? Now Sparkle this is not meant at you, however many of the posts yesterday in the tea party forum were absolutely rediculous.

  13. Chronicritic says:

    Here are my photos from the event:





















    Counter Protesters:


  14. Didereaux says:

    Well, there is one thing that can be said about the people who attended the rallies and support the cause: They picked a most apt nickname for themselves…’Teabaggers’.

    Of course others with better knowledge of slang and word useage in general would never refer to themselves with such a term.

    *note: Maybe that’s because we don’t know sick disgusting slang words that your side is obviously oh too familiar with since I’ve had to delete about 20 comments dealing with the subject. Maybe people who work and don’t spend all their time on porn sites just don’t know the “slang” definition.-TexasSparkle


  15. Bonnie says:

    I attended the Woodlands tea party, which was attened by thousands. They were signing in people to get a count and expected a max of 2000. They ran out of forms at 3000 and the crowds were still coming. They found notepaper to start up again. I don’t know what the final count was, but when I left over 2 hours later, people and cars were still streaming in. Dismiss us if you like, but we are tired of sitting home waiting to see what huge new spending program will be imposed on us next. Those of us who work and actually pay all of those taxes know that you do not extract yourself from a financial crisis by going on a spending spree. That’s not creating jobs, that’s just moving around money… our money!

  16. DeepDish says:

    Sparkle, I understand your claim to have also been angry at Bush, but why not protest back then? And if you acknowledge that Bush’s spending was out of line, then why tout the tax cuts he supposedly made for all incomes? It would seem to me that if you were really concerned about Bush opening up a line of credit against future generations, you wouldn’t have been happy about the tax cuts either.

    It seems to me that it wasn’t until after McCain started to distance himself from Bush, that the rest of the GOP followers decided it was okay to publicly denounce Bush’s policies.

    Also, I find it odd that someone would rush to the defense of rich people paying too much taxes. Not that I disagree with you, but it seems to me that if ANY group is in dire need of representation by Congress and Lobbyists, its certainly not the wealthy. Those guys can afford to fight their own battles (or pay lobbyists to do it for them). The rest of us should worry about the middle class to which we belong.

  17. ProudLiberal says:



    Sparkle, Sparkle, Sparkle…..The wealthiest Americans aren’t overtaxed. Everyone else is underpaid.

    That’s why the rich pay so much more in taxes than everyone else. It’s because over the past two generations, there incomes have gone up at a much higher rate than the rest of us. The top 2% of wage earners in this country earn about 80% of the income. If we followed the “pay what you earn” model, the highest wage earners would be paying much more than the extra 3% that Mr. Obama has proposed.

    If you are truly concerned about the richest Americans carrying too high a tax burden, then you should be in favor of taking a bottom up approach to growing the economy as opposed the top down(trickle down) approach, which is what has led to the rapid increase in the income gap.

  18. TruthtoPower says:


    Federal taxes in this country have not been raised since 1993. Spending under Clinton was controlled and we had surpluses in the federal budget. Under Bush taxes were cut while at the same time the growth of the federal government was tremendous and we’ve been involved in two wars where the only people called to sacrifice are the members of the military and their families. THAT’S wrong, Sparkle.

    The top 10% control in excess of 70% of the wealth of this nation and the percentage of wealth controlled by the top 10% continues to increase. Every single worker in this country pays payroll or self-employment taxes, which is taken from – everyone single worker’s income. So to characterize the tax system as “unfair” rings hollow.

    Want proof? For only the second time in 50 years of polling on the matter, more Americans believe they are paying an “about right” or “too low” amount of taxes than “too high”. In just the last year, across the political spectrum, the percentage of folks moving from the “too high” to “about right” category was between 5-8%.


    Perhaps this is why attendance at the Tea Party rallies fell short of projections and were not all that impressive. Why do I characterize them as unimpressive? Because immigration reform rallies drew millions of attendees across the country in 2006 and a 2003 anti-war rally in NYC alone drew as many people as attended all the Tea Party rallies in the whole country (between 250,000 and 350,000).

    I applaud the civic participation, though, and hope there will be more from all sides of the political spectrum.

    *note: Do you all go to one site to get your leftwing talking points? First of all, people don’t “own” wealth. THEY EARN IT. I know the word games might work with those with class envy, but they don’t work here. Clinton governed like a Republican when it came to fiscal policy. He implented welfare reform that Republicans had fought for years and brought welfare down. I’ll give him all that. But he didn’t have 2 wars to deal with and the biggest attack on our country AND the biggest natural disaster to hit us either. Isn’t it interesting that just about the same percentage of people who think our taxes are “just about right” IS THE SAME PERCENTAGE OF PEOPLE WHO PAY NO INCOME TAX? Lastly, the tea parties FAR EXCEEDED the estimates of the people planning them. We didn’t have nearly enough room at the Houston Jones Plaza one. The police had to close the streets surrounding it because of the crowds. Lastly, it doesn’t take a economics teacher to see that with Obama adding more to our debt than all the previous Presidents in our history COMBINED isn’t going to increase our taxes in the future. He can play the word games all day long, but printing money and spending money that we don’t have is going to all come crashing down on us sooner or later. But you can’t say we didn’t warn you.-TexasSparkle


  19. ProudLiberal says:



    Here’s the problem, our military spending is larger than the next seven countries COMBINED.

    If we spent more than, say, the top two or three countries combined, we would still have the best military in the world.

    And much of our spending is on outdated, coldwar weapons systems that have had huge cost overruns. As a conservative, I would think that you’re concerned about ALL wasteful spending.

    Sec. Gates made an excellent point when he pointed out that ever dollar that’s spent on an unneeded weapons programs is a dollar that is taken away from something that is necessary.

    *note: You will have to excuse me if given that N. Korea and Iran are stepping up their nuclear weapon programs, that I think the spending programs on weapons IS necessary. Good grief.-TexasSparkle

  20. Miss Zelda says:


    Wow, seriously? Maybe *you* didn’t, TS, but when I protested the war I was called such vile, filthy things by counter demonstrators I wouldn’t print them here. And I feared for my safety. Come on…right wing talk radio including people like Michael Savagae and friends openly called us treasonists. (Wasn’t that the title of Ann Coulter’s recent books?)

    I’m so tired of the fighting and double standards in this country by the extremes on both sides. We have been divided for too long. Can we give the president a chance for five minutes, please? (And yes, I did give Bush a chance.)

    *note: First of all, Savage is a nut and he isn’t on “our side.” He HATED Bush and McCain as much as you probably did. I can only tell you that people I know never called you treasonists. We strongly believe in people’s right to protest. You may have given Bush a chance, but no one on your side did. It was a relentless smearing campaign that we got pretty tired of as well. But with Bush it wasn’t just on policy. No, it was personal mean and disgusting. When Obama let the pirates be shot, I gave him credit. When he kept Gates on, I gave him credit. When he kept the wiretapping that your side bashed Bush so much about, I gave him credit. When he listened to Petraeus and didn’t immediately pull troops out of Iraq AND decided to send more troops to Afghanistan, I gave him credit. But when he is spending our children’s future away and damaging the economy in ways that we may never recover from, I cannot give him “a chance.” Sorry.-TexasSparkle

  21. ProudLiberal says:



    Good grief indeed!!!

    Did you miss the part about OUTDATED, COLDWAR, weapons systems that are taking away from MODERN weapons systems???!!

    *note: So you are fine with spending more money on modern weapon systems? Please send a memo to Obama about that-TexasSparkle

  22. Let us be fair says:

    I think it is only fair to address ProPalin’s comments concerning “tea-bagging” as a Barney Frank party in his condo and calling Hilary Clinton “Ima Douchebag” as unacceptable as the response made by Dideruaux; or does being pro-Palin give this person a free pass?

    Chronicritic protesting opposite your views does not make one an anti-protester. Anti-protesters do not protest because they are against the act itself.

    I am all for people exercising their rights guaranteed by the First Amendment whether I agree with them or not. However, I am disconcerted by the implication of your original post that those who attended this protest love America as if those who were not a part of the festivities do not. I suggest you peruse some of the general comments posted on the article the Chronicle provided on the first page if you have time to read over seven hundred posts. The majority of them are truly frightening from both sides of the spectrum.

    It is inaccurate to state this was a protest filled with diversity. It was not. Also, many were carrying signs and making comments which focused more on Obama than the true issue as you have stated TexasSparkle; big spending by the government past and present.

    *note: It wasn’t her comment. She was quoting Ann Coulter and not in a good way I might add. I in no way implied that those who didn’t attend the protests didn’t love America. How absurd! I also disagree with the diversity comment. I saw people of all kinds of backgrounds. Was it mostly white? Yes, but no more so than the % of the general population. But they were also young, old, well off, not so well off, tattooed, bikers, and rockers. Do I wish it was more diverse? You bet I do. I also disgree with you on what the signs said. The majority were about reckless spending and only a few bashing Obama. Also, I have said here many times that sad bitter people from all sides seem to delight (maybe it’s their only pleasure?) in rude crude comments on blogs. So the comments you refer to would not surprise me.-TexasSparkle

  23. Mark says:

    Thank you Texas Sparkle! Good to have you back. You have plenty of support here, I hope you don’t feel like you have only detractors :). I SO wish I could have gone to the Houston tea party!


    *note: Nah, I get a lot of positive feedback! I love my readers!-TexasSparkle

  24. Bill in Spring says:

    (Sparkle, I won’t mind or complain if you want to edit out anything I’m saying here. It’s your blog and you do what you feel is best. I don’t even care if my remarks are published. I do enjoy your blog and I’m really just commenting to you more than the blog readers. You are at least respectful and intelligent and so many blog commenters are not.)

    The protests themselves deserve recognition as being peaceful, large, widespread and making the point. I agree that the amount of pretend money being thrown around is just crazy. We don’t have the money; we’re borrowing it from Communist China, making us slaves to them. China is a terrible country in many ways with regard to human rights, pollution, unfair competition, all kinds of things. And they hold our future in their hands, literally, now.

    (Someone please tell me why we are still mad at Cuba but we’re all OK with China? We can travel there and do business and all kinds of things that we can’t do with Cuba. Our principles and moral authority went out the window a long time ago when we started playing all nice with China. Yes I know Obama lifted some restrictions on Cuba recently, but my point is not Cuba – it’s China – clearly a bad government and not our friend yet we play nice with them. Yuck.)

    Sometimes I think Ron Paul is the only sane politician in the country. Then I realize, it’s not so much that he’s sane, he’s principled. If Ron Paul were our President, and if he had everything he believes in implemented, all at once, it would be mad, mad crazy to the point of nearly impossible. Go back to the gold standard? Abolish the IRS? No international intervention except in the course of stricly self-defense? Pretty hard to just do all that stuff because it’s completely opposite of what we’re doing now. Imaging the upheaval. Yet I believe in those principles! So he has, I believe, the right principles in his mind, but they are impossibly difficult to implement unless we were just going to start all over from scratch.

    Sparkle, I learned what that tea-related term meant from the Drudgereport and other non-porn news sources when it was in the context of some reported student hazing incident a while back involving some stupid athletes or frat boys. I never understood how any males could participate, watch or laugh at that and think it was an acceptable “initiation” or hazing thing and still consider himself “manly” or truly 100% heterosexual. Weird. Never understood the whole locker room athlete towel-snapping thing but I guess it works for them, so whatever.

    (And I’m not bashing homosexuals; I don’t care what they do; it’s their business. I’m wondering about supposedly hetero athletes doing this in a hazing/initiation context. Truly weird.)

    It’s pretty immature to keep dwelling on the slang term. Unfortunately, there’s plenty of immature commentary going on all around. Each side says the other is doing it and they’re correct.

    Stick to the important issues, propose real solutions and alternatives and raise your credibility, not just your voice. Despite the hysterical people claiming otherwise, we still have democratic elections. If there’s enough votes, conservatives will be back in power in 2010 in both the House and Senate. The Tea Parties are one step in that direction. Obama could be a one-term president. Republicans need to continue to build on the energy generated by the tax revolts and steer their destiny and retake power through elections.

    To me, the beginning of the end of Republican grasp of power was the Iraq war. I told myself then that things go in cycles. People would be mad about the Iraq war when it became apparent that it was not a cakewalk as the Bush neocons predicted. I hate to be right when it’s something like this. It turned out even worse than I predicted, so I was wrong about how bad it would be. Sometimes when I’m not feeling very kind toward the Iraqis I feel like they didn’t DESERVE democracy and that they deserved to live under their dictator until such a point as they got the fire within them to do their own revolution and overthrow him. I even think sometimes that it is just culturally not within them to embrace democracy and that they are actually comfortable living under the rule of an iron fist. It’s been that way for most of those countries for a very, very long time. Kings and dictators and puppet governments, but very little real democracy going on over there.

    Sparkle, I choose to believe you when you say you never called any war protesters unpatriotic and don’t know anybody who did. That means you have class and so do the people you know. However, calling war protesters unpatriotic (and much worse, like “commie”, “pinko” etc.) has happened for a long time, was prevalent during Vietnam war protests, Iraq war protests and others including WWI and WWII even.

    I fully supported Bush’s war in Afghanistan to go after the Taliban and Osama bin Laden. I also think it was a big mistake to think of Pakistan as an ally. We should have chased bin Laden on into Pakistan and killed him if possible. I still want his head on a plate, which may be the only way we’ll ever get our hands on him because he is sworn to suicide or death at the hands of his own guards before he is captured. I’d rather he be captured and put in prison for life and deny him his desired “martydom”. Oh yes, to me nothing would be a more fitting end for him than to live a very long time in a sparsely accomodated cell and die in complete oblivion, a side-note reported as an obscure event 40 years from now. But I’ll settle for his death in the field because he is in for a big shock when he finds out the afterlife is not going to be what the “martyrs” think it is going to be.

    I never went to any protests; maybe I’m not patriotic enough; maybe I was chicken or both. But I did oppose the Iraq war for many reasons, mainly that it just didn’t make a lick of sense to me. Yeah, I’m glad Saddam is dead and his insane, psychopath sons too. But I was content in how neutered he was, much like Castro in Cuba, rendered pretty powerless and insignificant by the results of the first Iraq war and sanctions. We had him pretty well contained with no-fly zones in his own country! Pretty humiliating and he deserved that.

    Typical of me – got way off primary topic – sorry!

    Bill in Spring

  25. Chris Pando says:


    Income is earned. Wealth is inherited.

    *note: Do you think the majority of the Forbes 500 earners inherited it? No dear, they earned it.-TexasSparkle

  26. Texan99 says:

    “Sparkle, Sparkle, Sparkle…..The wealthiest Americans aren’t overtaxed. Everyone else is underpaid.”

    Imagine my surprise when I realized that this faintly amusing joke was meant seriously.

  27. johnny833 says:

    For the nut job that stated that we called ourselves “teabaggers” that is incorrect. The MSM did that to us. And then proceeded to have a great laugh about it. Anyone interested to see how fast the FCC investigates them for all the sexual inuendo being bantied about? You can bet that won’t happen.

    As far as folks whining about the military….one of the few legitimate jobs of the government is to provide for a military to defend the nation. Defending the nation does not mean just at the borders. It means national defense of national interests.

    If we would pass the Fair Tax, we would see some great changes in the country. For one thing, companies that now do business from afar would come running to do business in the new tax haven the USA. Citizens would only get taxed on what they spend ABOVE a predetermined amount. You would get a check monthly, depending on family size,to off set the taxes on normal expenditures such as food and drugs so that those in poverty and the working poor would not be effected. The consumers would pay, those that save and work would not. I can’t think of a better way to run a country.

    To all of us, I hope and pray that we make it thru what I think is a government hell bent on interferring with the economy. There are firms that must go bankrupt just as there are firms that will prosper. That is the way of the economic cycle.

    Great blogsite by the way.


    *note: Yes, the left has had their perverted fun with the term “teabagging (not known to me before this of course) but for people who spend all their time on porn site, I can see how they would automatically know the slang. You will enjoy Redeye’s take on on their pervese humor. See link below. Pretty funny.-TexasSparkle


  28. Miss Zelda says:

    Sparkle dear, you are dreaming if you think all rich people in this country earned their money. Many did and deserve to be able to earn as much money as they want. I am no socialist.

    But you’ve got to be dreaming still if you think that inherited wealth doesn’t make up for quite a large percentage of wealthy people in this country. Think Paris Hilton.

    Or my husband and me. Thanks to the generosity of his parents, we were able to make a down payment on our home. Sure, we worked hard, but we didn’t earn all of the money through our own sweat and tears.

    This notion that all rich people work hard and earn their money and are overtaxed and all poor people are lazy and living off welfare is as ridiculous as the extreme left wing fallacy that socialism will solve all our problems.

    And who says Savage isn’t on “your side” as you put it? Or Coulter? Or Hannity? If you asked them, would they not label themselves conservative? Who gets to pick and choose what a conservative is?

    This debate has me remembering a classic conservative platitude: Freedom isn’t free. Well they’re right. It isn’t free. The bravest pay for it with their blood. The rest of it should do our part and pay for it with our taxes.

    *note: If you think Paris Hilton represents the people who have earned their money, you are the one dreaming my dear. My hubby and I come from families that grew up with nothing. True poverty, and worked hard and became very successful. My hubby and I worked hard, with no help from family, and we also became successful. I think we represent most of those who are successful. I never suggested or implied that all poor people are lazy or on welfare. But there is something wrong and unfair for 40% of Americans to not pay any income tax. It’s wrong to increase taxes on people who have worked hard their whole lives, with small businesses, and call them “rich” and tax them even more. Many of us do “our part” without the government forcing us to. And that would be..conservatives. Liberals seem to be only generous when using other people’s money. Read the link below and learn.-TexasSparkle


  29. Miss Zelda says:

    TS, you completely missed my point. I was using Paris Hilton as an example of someone who HASN’T worked for her money yet still has it in an effort to prove the oft-used conservative argument that all rich people earned their money and all poor people are lazy. Maybe you and your husband earned every dime, but not everyone with money did. Paris Hilton certainly didn’t. She inherited her wealth.

    Also, conservatives often fail to take into account the ways race and class and gender can affect the ability to accumulate wealth.

    *note: Really? You might want to inform people like Oprah, Bill Cosby, and Obama about that.-TexasSparkle

  30. Rory O'Such says:

    You are all missing the point that our forefathers, namely Patrick Henry, Thomas Jefferson, and George Washington, were trying to make: forcing a man to give up the fruits of his labor is immoral. This debate should not be about who should pay taxes and how much. The real issue is that taxation is theft, not only is it wrong, it is unnecessary.

  31. RiceOwl says:

    I often why those who seem to be pro-tax often focus their arguments on “the rich being greedy” or something to that effect instead of wondering if the politicians who are taking our money really need, are being good stewards of our money and if they themselves (the politicians) are the ones who are greedy. You have the liberal scion, Teddy Kennedy, who opposes repealing the estate tax YET his family is the poster child of generational wealth (obviously the estate tax doesn’t work). I see no inherit right that the government has to take money a family has earned. Inherited or not, it was earned by someone. Nobody complains about the Kennedy family who earned their money from bootlegging.

    I don’t understand why people have a problem with the wealthy. If we lived in a country with limited abilities to move up the income ladder, i could see justification in class envy. But there is no excuse in this country, if you want it bad enough. The problem is by the time people see the rich on the Forbes list, it looks easy. Do people not realize that many wealthy people in this country came from humble backgrounds, that they failed at businesses in the past, and thye took a risk to do something? That’s the best part of this country. If you want to be rich, you can do it. Its risky, it may not pan out, but you can give it a try as many times as you want. OR, you can play it safe (relatively speaking, I know nothing seems safe these days) and work for someone who took that risk and it paid out. But its up to you and what you want. But its not easy. People who attain a certain level of success give up on many things – free time, family time, etc. You can’t expect to get rich putting in 8 hours a day, half of that time surfing the web, then watching American Idol at 7.

    There are “bad” rich people, just as there are “bad” poor people, bad middle class people, etc. Instead of worrying about other people and envying someone else enjoying the fruits of their hard work and success, peopel should focus on themselves. If you aren’t rich and want to be, ask what you need to do to get there. And if a rich guy wants to leave his money to his children, this shouldn’t be the business of the government – that money has been taxed already. Just sick and tired of the class envy. I’m more solution oriented – if I want to be something, I figure out what I need to do to be that and do the work it entails. I guess I never understood, and never will understand, why people seem to resent success in others.

  32. Edward says:

    This is silly. I bet half of those “patriots” wearing “patriotic” attire are wearing Chinese made clothing. I sat here shaking my head when I saw this. But, that’s what’s great about the country, you are allowed to protest and I’m allowed to disagree.

  33. Miss Zelda says:


    TexasSparkle, you forgot Michael Jordan in your line-up of the same four celebrities conservatives always trot out to fight back against years of research showing the opposite is true – race, class, and gender *do* matter.

    (Smacks forhead, rolls eyes, sighs and walks away…)

    *note: Really? Conservatives have always rolled out Obama? Right. You will have to excuse me if I believe that anyone can succeed no matter what color or gender they are. You will have to excuse me if I think that it is insulting to blacks and women to say that they can’t overcome any obstacles (everyone has obstacles you know). I believe that most blacks and women would never want someone making excuses for them.-TexasSparkle

  34. TruthtoPower says:


    Perhaps your confusion lies in equating a progressive tax code with hating the wealthy? Most seem to understand that those who benefit the most from a system provided by all have a bit more responsibility to sustain that very system (in fact they have a vested interest in doing so).

    I have a friend who has an MBA and is a hedge fund manager. He makes tens of millions of dollars per year. We have another friend we grew up with who has a doctorate and teaches high school math in a Title 1 school. He makes around $50K per year.

    The teacher does not resent the hedge fund manager for the incredible difference in their pay while the hedge fund manager admits he feels a bit guilty about the limited pay for our teacher friend. All of us understand and accept a system that rewards a hedge fund manager at 1000x what a teacher makes is a system that can allow for the fund manager to pay back to the system at a higher rate.

    That’s not class envy. It’s acceptance of responsibility and the vested interest those at the upper end of the income brackets have in maintaining the system.

    Further the notion that inheritance taxes are wrong because the inherited income has already been taxed is faulty – unless any and all taxes other than income and payroll taxes are also to be deemed “class envy”.