The Tea Party is definitely not the party of intellectuals, but the crazy conspiracy theories just never end.  Apparently, one of the new cooky ones is that Obama is going to ban all fishing in America.  Where do these people come up with this stuff?  They claim that taxes for the middle class have gone up since he was elected, which is clearly false.  They believe that Obama is a Muslim non-U.S. citizen with some obsession for a one world government or some other non-sense.

You can see a video below by NewLeftMedia interviewing Tea Party protestors on April 15.  What exactly are they protesting?  They have no idea.

Today is “Tax Freedom Day.”  It’s the conservative day to remind all Americans exactly how much they pay in taxes.  They say if you work from January 1st until today all of that money goes to the government in taxes and from this day forward for the rest of the year you can keep your money.  It’s an estimate of the amount of “slavery” or “involuntary servitude” Americans face through government.

Of course, all of this ignores the fact that the U.S. has one of the lowest tax rates of the industrialized world.  We rank 5th lowest for tax revenues as a share of GDP.  In fact, taxes have remained stable since the 1950s and have decreased during most of the last 100 years.  Corporate and excise taxes have actually gone down.

Maybe all of the anger is directed because the U.S. redistributes American wealth as they claim?  Not really.  The U.S. is the least redistributive first world nation.  The U.S. actually offers some of the best government services in the world, for some of the least amount of taxes.  It’s not common to hear that the American government is incredibly efficient compared to other similar nations.

Conservatives harp on the amount that our government spends, but they don’t focus on how little our tax burden actually is compared to other similar countries.  They also tend to ignore the fact that nothing new has dramatically changed in our taxation.  It’s easy to complain about taxation, but our government provides valuable services for an incredibly inexpensive cost.

Tea Party protesters are headed to Washington today to voice what many in the group consider their last chance to protest against sweeping changes in the health care system.  Democrats in the House and Senate were encouraged by their leadership to have meetings with the protesters to answer any questions that they might have about health care.  Below is a portion of the email that Democrats received encouraging them to meet with the protesters.

Many polls have been conducted that show most people are in favor of all of the reform changes that are included in the health care bill, but they oppose the bill because of misinformation that the bill is a “government takeover” or that it includes “death panels.”  Once these myths have been addressed and voters learn about the actual language in the bill the polls shows a net increase in approval.  Democrats believe having an honest and open debate about the merits of the bill and confronting the misinformation will ultimately lead to greater public approval, even among the people currently most opposed.

1. Be prepared. Activists are expected to begin arriving around 9am and they have been given instructions to wait in your office until they can have a meeting. Please have an orderly process and enough staff and interns to welcome what could be a very large number of visitors throughout the day:

· Have staff and/or Member time set-aside to visit with attendees in small groups;

· Ask for extra chairs or seating to be brought to your office or the hall in case there are seniors or disabled visitors that need to be accommodated;

· Consider having some light snacks, H2O, and coffee available;

· Ask visitors to leave all signs and banners outside the office.

[...]

3. Listen and communicate in small groups:
· As we learned in August, small groups are typically the best venue for exchanges on this complicated topic.

· Many of the conservative activists are not opposing the actual provisions in the bill, but are instead reacting to a caricature of the reform bill presented by right-wing media outlets. In fact, many conservative and GOP ideas and concerns are addressed in the legislation:

· Reduces the deficit;

· Cracks down on Medicare waste, fraud, and abuse;

· Provides historic tax credit for small businesses and individuals to purchase health insurance;

· Allows consumers to shop for health insurance across state lines via multi-state compacts;

· Inaugurates medical malpractice reforms, (an area where the GOP failed to take any action when in charge of Congress for 12 years).

· Also, don’t assume common myths about this bill have been debunked. Be prepared to explain that there are no death panels, that Medicare is in fact strengthened, and that reform is not a government take-over, but it is an attempt to crack down on the abusive practices of health insurance companies by providing oversight and increasing competition.