The following “press release” was just received from the newly created Mission Viejo Republican Club
New Republican Group Forms
April 11, 2010 Press Release
The Mission Viejo Republican Club (MVRC) met on March 30 to discuss the new club’s focus. Among other activities, club members will organize a voter registration drive and participate in Get Out The Vote (GOTV) for Republican candidates.
MVRC will provide an opportunity for its volunteers to meet other Republicans and work together toward common goals. The new group comprises Tea Party Patriots, SOC912 activists, Leadership Alliance members, ACT for America supporters, Saddleback Republican Assembly members and Republican Women Federated members.
MVRC joins other South Orange County Republican organizations, including units of the California Republican Assembly. Other groups include Aliso Viejo Republican Women Federated and Capistrano Valley Republican Women Federated.
MVRC members will participate in the Mission Viejo Tea Party on Thursday, April 15, at La Paz and Marguerite from 5:00 to 6:30 p.m.
For additional information, contact Frank Fossati, publicity coordinator, Mission Viejo Republican Club, at frank.fossati@cox.net.
Sounds like another Republican attempt to capture the Tea Party folks. Will be interesting to see if they want to be captured.
Glad to see it. Good luck.
Older than.
As I received this press release over the weekend I have not contacted Mr. Fossati to ask him a few questions. Planning to attend the TEA Party in Mission Viejo on the 15th I am sure to find many of these members in attendance.
I will go to several Tea Parties on April 15 including the Mission Viejo one.
I would like a club that has the “right” ideas! If you want to capture the Tea Party folks (whatever capture means), just be consistent and not a RINO.
TEA PARTY!!!
Leave it to Vern to present a fair and unbiased video at just the right moment. Darn those tea partiers exercising their First Amendment rights. Where is the ACLU when you need it?
Oh, I’m all for the first amendment, free speech and assembly. I think I might show up to one of these myself out of curiosity. I’ll be holding a sign saying “Obama lowered your taxes, do you know that?”
Newbie,
This may be lengthy, but it is a must-read for all tea-partiers;
The Misinformed Tea Party Movement
Bruce Bartlett, 03.19.10,
On March 16 the Tea Party crowd showed up for yet another demonstration on Capitol Hill in Washington. Curious about the factual knowledge these people have regarding the issues they are protesting, my friend David Frum enlisted some interns to interview as many Tea Partyers as possible on a couple of basic questions. They got 57 responses–a pretty good-sized sample from a crowd that numbered between 300 and 500 people. (Survey results are here.)
The first question that was asked concerned the size of government. Tea Partyers were asked how much the federal government gets in taxes as a percentage of the gross domestic product. According to Congressional Budget Office data, acceptable answers would be 6.4%, which is the percentage for federal income taxes; 12.7%, which would be for both income taxes and Social Security payroll taxes; or 14.8%, which would represent all federal taxes as a share of GDP in 2009.
Not everyone follows these numbers closely, and Tea Partyers may have been thinking of figures from a few years ago, before the recession when taxes were higher. According to the CBO, the highest figure for all federal taxes since 1970 came in the year 2000, when they reached 20.6% of GDP. As we know, after that George W. Bush and Republicans in Congress cut federal taxes; they fell to 18.5% of GDP in 2007, before the recession hit, and 17.5% in 2008.
Tuesday’s Tea Party crowd, however, thought that federal taxes were almost three times as high as they actually are. The average response was 42% of GDP and the median 40%. The highest figure recorded in all of American history was half those figures: 20.9% at the peak of World War II in 1944.
To follow up, Tea Partyers were asked how much they think a typical family making $50,000 per year pays in federal income taxes. The average response was $12,710, the median $10,000. In percentage terms this means a tax burden of between 20% and 25% of income.
Of course, it’s hard to know what any particular individual or family pays in taxes, but according to IRS tax tables, a single person with $50,000 in taxable income last year would owe $8,694 in federal income taxes, and a married couple filing jointly would owe $6,669.
But these numbers are high because to have a taxable income of $50,000, one’s gross income would be higher by at least the personal exemption, which is $3,650, and the standard deduction, which is $5,700 for single people and $11,400 for married couples. Owning a home or having children would reduce one’s tax burden further.
According to calculations by the Joint Committee on Taxation, a congressional committee, tax filers with adjusted gross incomes between $40,000 and $50,000 have an average federal income tax burden of just 1.7%. Those with adjusted gross incomes between $50,000 and $75,000 have an average burden of 4.2%.
Even though the Tea Partyers were specifically asked about federal income taxes, it’s possible that they were thinking about other federal taxes as well, such as payroll and excise taxes. According to the JCT, when all federal taxes are included, those earning between $40,000 and $50,000 have an average tax rate of 12.3%, and those earning between $50,000 and $75,000 pay a rate of 14.5%.
In short, no matter how one slices the data, the Tea Party crowd appears to believe that federal taxes are very considerably higher than they actually are, whether referring to total taxes as a share of GDP or in terms of the taxes paid by a typical family.
Tea Partyers also seem to have a very distorted view of the direction of federal taxes. They were asked whether they are higher, lower or the same as when Barack Obama was inaugurated last year. More than two-thirds thought that taxes are higher today, and only 4% thought they were lower; the rest said they are the same.
As noted earlier, federal taxes are very considerably lower by every measure since Obama became president. And given the economic circumstances, it’s hard to imagine that a tax increase would have been enacted last year. In fact, 40% of Obama’s stimulus package involved tax cuts. These include the Making Work Pay Credit, which reduces federal taxes for all taxpayers with incomes below $75,000 by between $400 and $800.
According to the JCT, last year’s $787 billion stimulus bill, enacted with no Republican support, reduced federal taxes by almost $100 billion in 2009 and another $222 billion this year. The Tax Policy Center, a private research group, estimates that close to 90% of all taxpayers got a tax cut last year and almost 100% of those in the $50,000 income range. For those making between $40,000 and $50,000, the average tax cut was $472; for those making between $50,000 and $75,000, the tax cut averaged $522. No taxpayer anywhere in the country had his or her taxes increased as a consequence of Obama’s policies.
It’s hard to explain this divergence between perception and reality. Perhaps these people haven’t calculated their tax returns for 2009 yet and simply don’t know what they owe. Or perhaps they just assume that because a Democrat is president that taxes must have gone up, because that’s what Republicans say that Democrats always do. In fact, there hasn’t been a federal tax increase of any significance in this country since 1993.
One other possibility is that taxpayers are operating on the basis of a sophisticated economic theory called “Ricardian Equivalence.” According to this theory, budget deficits have no stimulative effect on the economy because taxpayers implicitly discount the future tax increase that will be necessary to pay off the additional debt. People increase their savings now, the theory posits, in order to prepare for this future tax increase, thus offsetting all of the stimulative effect of the deficits with an equal and contractionary increase in saving.
While Ricardian Equivalence is a legitimate economic theory that economists continue to debate, one often hears a variation of it on talk radio shows and such, where it is said that deficits are a tax on the economy. The problem is that many people conclude from this arguably true statement that raising taxes to reduce the deficit would in effect constitute a double tax. We’re being taxed once by the deficit, people think, so why should they have their taxes raised to reduce it?
Of course, this is a non sequitur. People can’t be taxed twice by the expectation of a tax and again by the actual tax itself. But more important, the underlying assumption of Ricardian Equivalence–that taxes will eventually rise to pay off the debt–is now seriously in doubt. Perhaps once it was true when people genuinely cared about a balanced budget. But today’s Republicans and Tea Party members oppose all tax increases for any reason, no matter how big the deficit is. I really believe that many would rather default on the debt than raise taxes by a single penny. If this is true, then Ricardian Equivalence is a dead letter–to the extent that it ever existed at all.
Probably the simplest motivation the Tea Partyers have is the one that Howard Beale (actor Peter Finch) gave in the 1976 movie Network. “I’m mad as hell, and I’m not gonna take it any more!” he said to cheering crowds. In other words, tea parties just represent unfocused anger at current economic conditions. Those who feel this way have latched on to the Tea Party movement not because they really believe that their taxes are too high, that taxes are rising or that taxes are at the root of our economic problem. Rather, they have joined because it’s the only game in town; the only organized force with at least the potential of bringing about change that might make things better.
In this sense, the tea parties are simply the latest manifestation of populism, which has arisen periodically throughout American history. In the 19th century populist anger was based in rural America and directed at the banks and railroads as well as government. Populists thought that free coinage of silver, an inflationary policy that would have raised prices for farm commodities, was the solution to their problems in the same way that today’s Tea Party crowd thinks that the Federal Reserve, bailouts to big businesses and a looming government takeover of the health industry are at the root of our economic malaise. Tax cuts are like free silver–a one-size-fits-all policy response.
Unfortunately for the Tea Party populists, there is no evidence in American history that populism has ever had a meaningful effect on policy. Even when the movement had a charismatic and articulate leader in William Jennings Bryan, the populists only elected a handful of members to Congress and never achieved the presidency. One reason is that the major parties co-opted populist issues and leaders, which bought time until the populist impulse burned itself out like a brush fire.
Whatever the future of the Tea Party movement in American politics, it’s a bad idea for so many participants to operate on the basis of false notions about the burden of federal taxation. It only takes a little bit of time to look at one’s tax return to see what one is actually paying the Treasury, calculate the percentage of one’s income that goes to taxes, and compare it with what was paid last year and the year before. People may then discover that their anger is misplaced and channel it into areas where it is more likely to bring about positive change.
ANONSTER.
PLEASE! For the sake of the other Juice readers can you please simply summarize the points you wish to make intead of publishing an entire encyclopedia of someone elses opinions.
Your comment is longer than the Press Release.
Thank you for your cooperation to this request.
Anonster,
I actually read your whole post, and your views are perfectly clear. Unfortunately, you ignored the other key facet of the Tea Party movement, the fact that government spending is out of control. I won’t cite you to the numbers, but suffice to say Obama’s policies will dramatically increase our deficit. The Tea Partiers do not want to have to pay for more inefficient and destined-for-failure government programs. You also ignored the massive tax increases that will come from Obama and the Congress allowing the Bush tax cuts to expire (everyone’s taxes will go up), as well as the huge taxes in Obamacare, cap-and-tax, and the other regressive policies his administration is pursuing. Again, Tea Partiers are unhappy about having to pay those taxes as well. As for your implication that Tea Partiers are ignorant of the facts, I would encourage you to check out the following: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mm1KOBMg1Y8. And they were asked much easier questions than were put to the Tea Partiers. The long and short of it is Tea Partiers, and those of us who support them, are tired of government waste (I’ll include some of the Bush years in there as well), and the government takeover that the Obama adminstration is hell bent on imposing on this great nation.
Anonster,
I actually read your entire post, so I’m pretty clear on where you stand. However, you ignore a second key aspect of the Tea Party movement, the massive government spending that is bankrupting our country (literally and figuratively) and creating a generation of government-dependent voters. I won’t quote the numbers, but Obama’s policies will dramatically increase the deficit over the next 20 years (not even taking into account what Obamacare is going to do to the deficit). You also ignore the massive tax increases that are coming by Obama letting the Bush tax cuts expire (EVERYONE’s taxes will increase) and the huge taxes from Obamacare, cap-and-tax, and other regressive policies from the current administration that will hit the poor and the “middle class” much more than the wealthy. Tea Partiers, and those who support them, are simply sick and tired of paying for such wasteful, inefficient, and costly programs. As for your implication that Tea Partiers are ignorant of the real facts surrounding the issues, I would encourage you to watch the following: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mm1KOBMg1Y8. And by the way, the questions asked there were WAY easier than those asked to the Tea Partiers.
Newbie, both of these went into spam for some reason so I rescued them. I see you got impatient and rewrote it, so I would have deleted one but they’re not identical and I don’t have time to see which one’s better, so here’s both. Tell me if you want one deleted.
Thanks Vern. I tried to re-create the first one when it wasn’t posted. I made another pithy response to you in the Correra posting that also apparently didn’t make it. But I did have a post to one of Crowley’s blogs that did make it up. I was concocting some pretty good conspiracy theories about you using your new position to silence the right. Thanks for putting them up.