IS HE ON TEA OR KOOL-AID?

The Rapid City Journal published a column by Jim Kent on 9/2/2010. Jim says he likes tea and I’m sure he is an aficionado in the tea world but he obviously knows nothing about the tea party movement. He says that the tea party movement is a phase but then he says it’s a “power-broker controlled movement” so I’m not quite sure his phases are in order. Perhaps his phase is waning when it should be waxing.

In any case, the tea party movement is anything but power-broker controlled. The tea party groups are not controlled at all. They are autonomous groups of people united by the belief that government has gotten too big and too intrusive in our lives. They believe in a strict interpretation of the U.S. Constitution. They believe in the Bill of Rights, all of them, including that pesky 10^th Amendment. They believe in fiscal responsibility, family values and Almighty God.

The tea parties are not led or controlled by anyone, not Glenn Beck, Sarah Palin, Rush Limbaugh or Sean Hannity. All of those great Americans supporters the tea parties because the tea parties stand on conservative principles of limited government.

Mr. Kent wants to know from whom the tea parties want to “take back America.” Here’s your answer, Jim. They will take back America from you!!! Drunk on the liberal kool-aid (not tea) you question the rationale of cutting federal spending only because South Dakota receives more in federal funds than it pays in federal taxes.

Whoa, let’s pause here a moment to explain that the State of South Dakota doesn’t pay federal taxes. The people of South Dakota pay taxes. So the monies we “get” from the federal government were collected from the people of South Dakota and from other hard working Americans. It was then “managed” and appropriated by bureaucrats who extracted a huge percentage of it for “management” and then disbursed some of it through dubious and incredibly inefficient agencies to programs cleverly designed to make every American dependent on, you guessed it, the federal government. The result is deficit spending extraordinaire.

It’s not the “road projects, school projects, law enforcement projects  and on and on that keep South Dakota going” as you stated. It’s the hard work of the men and women of South Dakota and South Dakota businesses that keep us going through the taxes that they pay. Do you work, Jim? Have you looked at your pay stub? The government rips money from your paycheck before you get to buy food, medicine, clothing, healthcare, housing, etc. If the working people of America had to write a check for their tax liability each payday, there would be more than just a tea party movement but a full scale tax revolt.

You also write about Glenn Beck’s “selective civil rights mentality.” I presume that you are alluding to his support of Arizona in the illegal immigration issue. When did it become wrong to expect immigrants to adhere to immigration law in the United States?

Perhaps you can better understand Arizona’s problem by looking at it this way. “What if the owners of the (Phoenix) Suns discovered that hordes of people were sneaking into games without paying? What if they had a good idea who the gate-crashers are, but the ushers and security personnel were not allowed to ask these folks to produce their ticket stubs, thus non-paying attendees couldn’t be ejected. Furthermore, what if Suns’ ownership was expected to provide those who sneaked in with complimentary eats and drink? And what if, on those days when a gate-crasher became ill or injured, the Suns had to provide free medical care and shelter?” This was posted by Arizona Governor Jan Brewer on FaceBook. Do you think that if you owned the Phoenix Suns that you would take some action to remedy this problem? Do you think that you might ask some fans to produce their ticket stubs?

Turns out we do agree on two things though. The first is that the Republicans must share the blame for the financial debacle. But the Republicans that must share the blame are the RINOs, those Republicans that have become liberals….those Republicans that have abandoned fiscal conservatism, those Republicans that the tea party candidates are defeating in primaries across the nation. Tea party members are not just Republicans, they are conservatives that will supplant the RINOs and return the GOP to the conservative principles on which this country was established and prospered. The second thing we agree on is that you really should stop whining, that would free up some time and mental dexterity to do your homework before writing about something based on supposition.

Ed Randazzo-Rapid City, SD