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Tea Party Report: Washington, You're On NoticeKarl Denninger So yesterday the "drive by" media did its best to discredit the "Tea Parties" that were held across this nation. For the most part, they failed. I live in a little podunk town called Niceville (yes, really.) We have an old-fashioned "town square", containing our city offices, the police and fire departments, plus the public library and, believe it or not, the municipal putting green (such as it is.) Behind it is our "sports complex" which is really an excuse for a place to put the city water tower, but does house soccer and baseball fields. Our "claim to fame" (if you can call it that) is the annual Mullet Festival - a gathering in which the pre-eminent feature is overpriced fish. According to the latest estimates available, 12,446 people live here and our median household income is $27,941, with a cost of living index of 96%. A majority of residents have either a high school diploma or some college, but no degree; only 35% of adults can claim an associates or better. 61% of our adult population is married; 21% have never been, and about 15% are either widowed or divorced, with 10% of us in the latter category. 32% of our population are veterans. 93% of our population was US-born, and 92% of us speak only English at home. Why do I go into this level of detail? Because we're the prototypical "nothingburger" America - fairly prototypical of the thousands of small towns across this land, with the exception of the presence of a high number of veterans who distinguished themselves by serving our nation and protecting our freedoms. This comes from our concentration of military facilities - Valparaiso is the home of Eglin Air Force Base, right down the street, and the home of Air Force Special Ops is Hurlburt Field down the street in Ft. Walton. The only "notice" we had of our "Tea Party" was a few signs posted at major intersections - yard-style political signs. I didn't even know about our local Tea Party until I drove by one yesterday. There was no advertising on the TV, no big push to "make it happen." Our example of the "Tea Party" was about as close to authentic "grass roots" as one will ever find. I was late to the party but there was a nice crowd - a few hundred people. In a town of this size, at lunchtime (the party was at noon), that's fairly impressive, considering that most of the people that live here are very ordinary "working stiffs." The attendees were a fairly decent cross-section of men and woman with all ages represented; the kids were in school. There was much talk about The Fair Tax, which is a good thing. But there was not, until I got there, much in the way of real attention being paid to the podium or the people doing the speaking. Then they gave me the microphone for a couple of minutes. I delivered an ad-hoc and shorter version of my AIM Acceptance Speech , focused on one simple message: That this mess was not "unable to be foreseen", in fact, it was very obvious - if you looked. But what got attention was the following line: Stop the looting and start prosecuting. The crowd erupted into applause. Washington, wake the hell up. We the people are mad as hell and we don't intend to take this any more. About 15 years ago Washington was treated to a small version of The People's Ire in the form of the "Gingrich Revolution", where The House and Senate had major turnovers. The Media has roundly reported this event was some sort of "right wing" conspiracy. Hardly. While I'm sure you could find some examples of "Tea Parties" that were heavily partisan, here, in what many people call "God's Country" (we vote overwhelmingly Republican by insane margins) there was no Democrat-bashing or material partisanship in evidence. What was evident was strong resistance to government theft and covering up the culpability of those both inside the beltway and beyond in what has turned into a tax-fest for Washington while bailing out those who committed evil and in fact felonious acts. Democrats, Republicans, doesn't matter. You want to steal from Americans and then try to borrow and spend out of the hole that these policies of "hands-off" toward literal bank robbery generates? America has, if there's anything to be learned from yesterday, had enough of this crap. I signed a "petition for redress of grievances", styled as a scroll, along with a lot of other people who were there. I'm sure the organizers will get it to DC soon. There is great anger in America aimed towards these thieves, both within and beyond Washington DC. It is seething just under the surface. People have lost half of their retirement accounts in the main, they've lost their jobs and in many cases their homes. This did not happen as a result of some unforeseen incident. No meteorite hit NY City and wiped out our financial system. This was no Act of God, nor any random event. This mess came about due to greed allowed to run beyond the boundaries of the law, going from entrepreneurship, the positive outcome of greed, to blatant and outrageous theft, the negative outcome. Wall Street and Main Street alike was complicit, and both Wall Street and Main Street need to be held to account where fraud and embezzlement in all of its forms took hold. These crimes -and make no mistake, they are crimes - must be investigated and prosecuted, no matter where that trail leads. The "Captains of Finance" didn't get caught up in a whirlwind - they intentionally created loans to be made to anyone who could "fog a mirror" and they intentionally claimed these loans were safe when they were sold on to investors. The number of co-conspirators involved in this episode of generational theft numbers in the tens of thousands, and not only is it unjust to demand that Americans as a whole pay for it, it is flatly impossible for such a path forward to succeed. Never in the history of mankind has it been possible to violate the laws of mathematics for long. We have tried for more than 20 years across administrations both Democrat and Republican, and this is the result. WE MUST return to being a nation that spends less than we make, not more. Apr 16, 2009 321gold Ltd |
