Why The Silent Majority Is Finally Speaking Out

The mainstream media doesn't seem to get it. Congress doesn't get it and certainly the current administration doesn't get it. Why on earth, they wonder, should they pay any attention to those rabblerousing Tea Party extremists?

On October 2nd, over 400 left-wing groups made up of unions, communists, antiwar activists, and socialists bused truckloads of members to D.C. to attend a One Nation rally. The union members were paid $60 each to make the trip and were provided with box lunches, which were left strewn all over the littered grounds after the rally. The event was supposed to compete with Glenn Beck's Restore Honor rally of 500,000 ordinary citizens who left the mall spotless.

Those work ethical, salt-of-the-earth Americans were not organized; most made the trip on their own and paid their own way. The One Nation rally didn't compare well with the Beck rally but C-Span either deliberately or inadvertently used the Beck rally photo on its Web site, which gave the impression that the leftist turnout was just as large. It wasn't but that won't stop the mainstream media from demonizing the grassroots movement sweeping the country and threatening status quo politicians.

Comedian Jon Stewart is promoting a Restore Sanity Rally for October 30th, just before the midterm elections, and if it's anything like the One Nation rally, C-Span and the mainstream media may inflate the numbers of those attending. This tactic will only fool those who are so blind they will not see.

In the 1750s, it was a Massachusetts politician and Harvard graduate, James Otis, who coined the phrase, "Taxation without representation is tyranny." This sentiment and the resultant outrage led to the American Revolution. Many of the Tea Party advocates feel the same way about the current administration and this Congress, which are not listening to their concerns, and come November 2nd, voters who feel this way will use the power that the Founders of our country gave us to rectify this situation.

Let's consider the reasons why the American people are so disenchanted with the policies of the current administration. When the economy tanked in 2008, I lost my job along with many other Americans. The unemployment rate soared and one would think that the government would have addressed this crisis. Instead, President Obama and his Democrat minions pushed through a radical health-care reform bill that not only wasn't needed but also succeeded in halting any job growth in the private sector, especially with small businesses that would be mandated to provide costly health care to potential employees. Why hire anybody?

As if that wasn't bad enough, the way the bill was passed was beyond belief. Why on earth does a bill have to be a thousand pages long? Politicians who voted for it didn't even know what was in it. Even the author of the bill, Senator Max Baucus (D-Montana), arrogantly admitted he didn't know what was in it: "We hire experts," he said at a Town Hall meeting. Excuse me, did he really say that? Too bad we have to wait till 2014 to get rid of this elitist. The Speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi, said, "We have to pass the bill so that you can find out what is in it." This is pure insanity.

Many voters sent in the tags of tea bags to Washington to remind their representatives of the Boston Tea Party, a key event in the American Revolution. Congress didn't listen.

Then, of course, there was the trillion-dollar stimulus package that was supposed to lower the unemployment rate by creating jobs, and it might have helped if the government knew the meaning of the word "stimulus."

On Meet the Press, presidential advisor Valerie Jarrett said, "The Recovery Act saved thousands and thousands of jobs. There are schoolteachers and firemen and - and - teachers all across our country, policemen, who have jobs today because of that recovery act. We're investing in infrastructure. We're investing in public education so that our kids can compete going forth into the next-generation."

There is a huge difference between creating a job for the unemployed and saving a job that might be cut. Also, many of those who lost their jobs were white-collar workers who might be unsuitable for highway repair jobs. Those jobs will go to skilled workers already employed. Washington created jobs for census workers but now they're unemployed as well.

Incidentally, there have been reports lately that about 72,000 stimulus checks, costing $18 million, went to dead people and to people in jail. I never received a stimulus check nor did anyone in my family. One would think that taxpayers would be on the receiving end but I suspect that those $250 checks went to people already on an entitlement program.

I keep hearing these ads for incumbents warning that the Republicans will take us back to the Bush years and I keep thinking that this is a foolish way to campaign because all one has to do is compare those statistics with today's. Remember, the Democrats have been in power since January 2007. At the time, the Dow Jones closed at 12,621.77; the Gross Domestic Product for the previous quarter was 3.5% and the unemployment rate was 4.6%. Today it's 9.6%. President Bush had a record of 52 straight months of job creation.

In January 2007, Rep. Barney Frank (D-Mass.) took over the House Financial Services Committee and Senator Chris Dodd (D-Conn.) took over the Senate Banking Committee. When the economy failed 15 months later, it was in the banking and financial services part of the economy.

Mr. Bush tried 17 times to stop Fannie and Freddie toxic loans because they were risky but the Democrat-controlled Congress and moderate Republicans gave him no support.

Mr. Obama complains that he inherited the Bush deficit but in fiscal year 2007, the last budget proposed and passed by the Republican-controlled House and Senate helped close the deficit gap to a net deficit of $162 billion. The current Obama deficit is over $1.4 trillion.

At the end of this year, the Bush tax cuts will expire and Democrat candidates are saying that extending them would be giving tax breaks to the rich. The sad truth is that everyone's taxes will go up, especially for those wealthy enough to create jobs.

These politicians forget that this is our own money and not a gift from the government.

Maybe there's a collective national amnesia that forgets exactly who's been in power since 2007, but the Tea Party advocates are doing whatever they can to remind the voters that those in power have done enough damage and need to go.

Now do you get it?

Alicia Colon resides in New York City and can be reached at aliciav.colon@gmail.com and at www.aliciacolon.com