20. April 2009 by David A. Peterson.

Just last week I wrote about the Atlanta Tea Party event. Since then there has been a lot of chatter from the media trying to dissect exactly what happened on 4/15/2009.

The general questions are:

• What were those Tea Party events?
• What are those people complaining about?
• What types of people attended those events?
• Who organized the events?

From the “fair and balanced” Fox News to the ultra liberal NBC News the media in general just doesn’t get it. You can tell by the articles being written and the news programs being aired that this new grassroots movement is being misunderstood.

The people being interviewed for commentary on the Tea Parties are struggling to wrap their arms around the events. I can understand the problem with defining the movement. When you have hundreds of thousands of people trying to be heard all at the same time the message gets lost in the translation. 

It’s like 250,000 10th graders trying to define “amore.” To a 10th grader amore is pizza. The Tea Party activist are trying to define exactly what America is to its people. Try wrapping your hands around that!

As an example - here is a clear translation problem:

Yesterday Fox News reported that David Axelrod who is a senior Obama advisor said “The thing that bewilders me is this president just cut taxes for 95 percent of the American people. So I think the tea bags should be directed elsewhere because he certainly understands the burden that the people face.”

I have heard that exact statement several times since the tea parties occurred. It must be a new White House talking point because it is repeated over and over again. The funny thing is every time they (they = other than tea party activist) use that statement it DRIVES home the point that another tea party event is needed.

Let me make one point before I continue… The people at the tea parties are not misguided and do understand the policies being proposed by today’s politicians. Their direction is clear, however the movement has not found clear leadership. Once the national leadership is in place the message can be clearly translated and then properly delivered.

I’ll give you a reference point to begin the translation…

Last week I wrote that the 4/15/2009 events had a message of “Shut up and Listen. You work for us, we don’t work for you!” But what are “we” saying? (We = those attending and participating in a Tea Party event).

Much has been written that the “we” in last week’s events included Democrats, Republicans, Libertarians, Moderates, and Conservatives. Within those groups there are a multitude of programs and policies that each individual group would like to see occur.

Some want a strong national defense, some want entitlement reform, some are strict constitutionalists, some may even want universal health care -  the list of wants goes on and on.

So what are “we” saying in this initial translation… The message is not what we want; the message is what do we need. The Tea Party activists realize that socialist ideas, even the ones that sound good to certain groups of Tea Party attendees, cost money. And even though some in the crowd may want some of the programs, every single person in the crowd knew… we don’t need any new programs and we certainly can’t afford them.

The people in the crowd understand how government and life in general works. You can’t get something for nothing. If you plan on buying something, a road, a bridge, universal health care, social security, then you need to find the money - and “we” in the crowd don’t want our kids paying for unsustainable inefficient programs.

The crowd understands that even if the Obama administration took employer and employee payroll taxes to 0% you still would have had Tea Party events around the country. The crowd understands you would still have to get the money somewhere to pay for the new programs.

The crowd understands that holding expenditures on entitlements at today’s dollars for a period of 5 years is not a tax cut. That raising the taxes on a pack of cigarettes is NOT cutting taxes for 95% of Americans. That asking federal department heads to cut programs while allowing their overall budgets to increase is not a “savings.”

The crowd understands that a Cap and Trade energy policy is a TAX not a policy.

The initial translation from the Tea Party crowd is every time our government open’s its mouth to propose a new program we are getting taxation with misrepresentation. Now that is a whole lot different than taxation without representation.

The Tea Party activists are trying to say that there is a difference between wants and needs, a difference between a tax and a tax cut, and there is a clear difference between representation and misrepresentation.

To all Tea Party activists in the crowd, have a heart and keep pushing. The thought that “they” don’t get it doesn’t mean that “they” won’t get it. In a representative government they work for us, they just don’t know it yet.

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16. April 2009 by David A. Peterson.

The 1974 edition of The Merriam-Webster Dictionary defines the meaning of Grassroots as “society at the local level as distinguished from the centers of political leadership“

I’m as grassroots as you can get. In fact I may not have actually rooted yet. I’m not a professional writer or a journalist. I’m not rich or poor. I’m not a politician, nor do I aspire to be one. 5 months ago I realized that I had not actively participated in the 2008 election cycle. As my penance I created USA Reference - A moderate conservative blog.

The Atlanta Tea Party was the first political rally I have ever attended. I brought my son with me and I think we both knew it would be special when the first person we saw in the crowd was my neighbor passing out pocketed sized booklets containing the U.S. Constitution.

Then I ran into an ex co-worker who said she just saw another friend. Truly this was a community coming together for one purpose. There were a sea of people at the event. There were 15,000 people packed onto one street in front of the Capital building. The event was energetic, fun, and well organized. I would like to give a shout-out to AtlantaTeaParty.net who organized the event.

The mainstream media tried to ignore the Tea Party events happening around the country. They labeled the attendees as Right Wing Extremist, misguided and misinformed masses.

One CNN reporter, Susan Roesgen, went so far as to berate a poor guy holding his baby at a Chicago event. Then she when on to say that these were anti government and anti CNN protests. I bet after she reviews the tape today is going to be very embarrassed. I feel sorry for her, she definitely left her objectivity in the car and got a little to close to this story. She’s probably hiding in bed right now with the covers over her head.

After the event I turned on ABC Nightline to see how they would cover the Tea Parties. Here is a program that got its start covering the Iranian Hostage Crisis in 1979 with Ted Koppel reporting. Last night the Tea Party story managed to get squeezed in right behind the kid who is a genius, and a story on pirates. Wouldn’t you know the host confidently stated that the attendees were misguided.

Misguided? What is really misguided is how our media and our politicians have missed this movement. I’m about as moderate of a Republican as you can get. I have strong conservative fiscal views but my social views tend to be more centered. I am so fiscally conservative (okay - cheap) that my dictionary is from 1974! Yet here I was with my son in the middle of 15,000 people - just like me.

So what makes these 15,000 people just like me? What are our political views that united 15,000 in Atlanta and probably around 250,000 in the U.S. yesterday?

Here are just a few of the themes that may have ultimately united us:

• Down with big government - Hmm
• No to government health care - Could be
• Fair tax - A bunch of these folks were there
• Government out of control - Heard that one
• Government debt - Another theme of the night
• Government intrusiveness - Heard that one too
• Tax and spend - Certainly
• Elite politicians - I wouldn’t want to be a national politician today their phones are probably ringing off their hooks

There were all of these themes and more last night. However… All of the messages above have been around for years. In fact we hear them in every election cycle. So what was the ultimate message of last night? One that was meant for all local, state, and federal politicians throughout the land?

I’ll sum it up for you:

SHUT UP AND LISTEN - YOU WORK FOR US, WE DON’T WORK FOR YOU!

That is the message that brought Democrats, Republicans, Libertarians, Moderates and Conservatives together yesterday all throughout the United States. I wonder if your favorite politician heard that message yesterday? I can guarantee our state politicians who work at the Georgia State Capital heard it last night.

The Atlanta Tea Party was definitely a grassroots effort. The local community came out to separate themselves from the elite political class. The elite political class had better shut up and start listening or they will be joining some of their consituents in the unemployment line in 2010.

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