Jesus said to the people, “I am the light of the world. If you follow me, you won’t be stumbling through the darkness, because you will have the light that leads to life.”
~ John 8:12, NLT
A quote by the late Adrian Rogers, 1931 - 2005
"You cannot legislate the poor into freedom by legislating the wealthy out of freedom. What one person receives without working for, another person must work for without receiving. The government cannot give to anybody anything that the government does not first take from somebody else. When half of the people get the idea that they do not have to work because the other half is going to take care of them, and when the other half gets the idea that it does no good to work because somebody else is going to get what they work for, that my dear friend, is about the end of any nation. You cannot multiply wealth by dividing it."
Dr Rogers put it rather succinctly don't you think? What part of the above quotation is difficult to understand? People who work hard and have strived to provide for themselves and their families in the manner that they would like to live, are now, by our politicians going to be penalized to support those who don't work.
On April 15, Tax Day, those of us who believe in free markets and limited government have an enormous opportunity.
This opportunity is the Nationwide Tax Day Tea Party.
We're fed up and we're not gonna take it anymore.
Such is the rallying cry building across the country as taxpayers take a stand against what they see as reckless spending in Washington -- all part of a peculiar and rather sudden movement called "tea parties."
Some small, some large, locals converge at the parties to voice their frustration over the federal government's economic policies. The protests have sprouted up from coast-to-coast and city-to-city since late February.
The biggest one so far is scheduled for April 15, tax day, when hundreds of cities will play host to a coordinated, nationwide tea-party protest.
"People are getting killed -- they're getting hammered with taxes and it's not the way this country is supposed to be run. ... We want to fight back," said Kristina Mancini, who's helping organize the April 15 rally in Fishkill, N.Y.
"Sitting back and being quiet never helps."
The grassroots phenomenon, while largely ignored in the mainstream press, has caught fire on the Internet, where platforms like Facebook and Twitter have served as launching pads for demonstrations.
Though nobody -- so far -- is dressing up like a Mohawk Indian and throwing barrels of Darjeeling into Boston Harbor, organizers draw their inspiration from the original Boston Tea Party of 1773.
Whereas colonists back then were revolting against, among other things, unfair tax policies, the impetus now lies in federal spending and intervention that many fear will lead to a crushing tax burden.
Margaret Hyland, who's helping organize the rally in Astoria, Ore., said the parties are just gatherings for "regular people."
"We just feel that the government is not listening to the people," she said, adding that the stimulus package was a big factor in her decision to get involved.
"I do not understand how we can throw money at this problem and solve it," Hyland said. "If I was doing my personal budget and discovered I was deeply in debt, I don't think I would go out and borrow a lot of money to throw at it."
The Tea Party for those of you who live around me will be in Cate Square.
From the New York Times:
Richard K. Vedder - Economist at Ohio University says "By artificially keeping prices and wages high both Hoover and Roosevelt prevented the economy from adjusting which is why unemployment remained in double digits until the United States entered the war. Mr. Vedder playfully offered another analogy: the recession of 1920. Why was that slump, over and done with by 1922, so much shorter than the following decade’s? Well, for starters, he said, President Woodrow Wilson suffered an incapacitating stroke at the end of 1919, while his successor, Warren G. Harding, universally considered one of the worst presidents in American history, preferred drinking, playing poker and golf, and womanizing, to governing. “So nothing happened,” Mr. Vedder said.
Of course Mr. Vedder does not wish ill health — or obliviousness — on any chief executive. Still, in his view, when you’re talking about government intervention in the economy, doing nothing is about the best you can hope for from any president.
