Tea Parties

Posted on April 15, 2009

So it’s Tax Day, once again, the annual deadline for Americans to pay Uncle Sam his Protection Money to keep him from sending his goons to break our kneecaps or reposess our homes.  This year I’m glad to report that my official legal income was small enough that I had no tax liability, one of the few advantages of being a starving artist I suppose.

What makes this particular tax day interesting is that, thanks at least in part to the urging of Fox News and corporate-sponsored Astroturf (fake grassroots) organizing, there are “tea parties” happening in hundreds of cities all over America to protest Obama’s bailout and the absurd amounts of debt that the Dems are adding onto the already absurd deficits left by Bush.   Apparently it wasn’t enough for the ruling class to run up trillions of dollars in deficit spending to pay for 2 wars over the last 8 years, now that they’ve got a brand new puppet in place our corporate overlords have decided to keep right on spending our money to enrich themselves!  I’d like to say I’m surprised, but I’d be lying.

And, when people get outraged – as they should – the corporations set up a fake movement.  Unlike in France and the UK where working class rage at being robbed by the government to finance corporate bailouts has erupted into serious militant and autonomous protests, all America can manage is a made-for-tv series of staged event sponsored by the same corporate elites that got us into this mess.  Just another in an endless string of puppet shows, to let everyone who’s pissed at how we’ve been robbed rant and rave as much as they like without actually changing or challenging anything.  And then, through the magic of Spin, the corporate media will portray that outrage as a Conservative backlash.  Ha!  As though conservatives were the only ones objecting.  Just about every genuine leftist I know (and no, democrats aren’t leftists) is pissed at the bailout.  Ya’ll may remember that I even wrote and recorded a song about it a few months back.  And I’m hardly the only one who’s been speaking out on this issue.

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