Dear Tea Party Members

Dear Tea Party Members :

Sorry for the delay in sending this letter.  I attended one of your rallies in downtown Nashville a while ago and have been meaning to write this letter for some time.  I was fortunate enough to meet and speak with a number of your members and would like to acknowledge their attempts to enlighten me about the goals of your organization.  The first three people to whom I spoke were standing together holding similar signs that said words to the effect of government, Keep your hands off of my health care.  In our conversation I was made aware that two of them were Medicare beneficiaries but apparently did not know that Medicare was a government-run insurance program that was paid for by premiums paid by premiums deducted from their paychecks when they were employed and by premiums deducted from their Social Security checks now that they were retired.  The third individual with the hands-off sign was retired military and was provided medical benefits through the VA.  While he was very verbal in his opposition to “socialized medicine” he apparently was ignorant of the fact that the most socialized medicine in the country is the VA where the government owns the medical facilities, employees all medical personnel, and provides all medical drugs and equipment.  A couple of others were retired and receiving government guaranteed pensions as well as government cut Social Security checks.  I then spoke to two other individuals one, retired and one still working.  Both were farmers and both were objecting to socialized government.  Their objections did not seem to apply to the sales tax benefits given farmers by state government nor did it apply to government price floors for their crops or government agriculture subsidies they received over their farming careers.  None of the other “less government” adherents seemed to be too upset by protection provided by government employed police or seemed to upset to be rallying on government owned property.  None of them decided to come to the rally by avoiding government built and government maintained roads or bridges either. Oh, yes, I cannot forget the last person who seemed to be upset that a “communist, Nazi” was president. Seeing as how either of those terms describe the complete opposite ends of a political spectrum I wonder if that really means that the president was somewhere in the middle of the two extremes as he could not possibly be both at the same time.  Interestingly, all seemed to have one common thought: Taxes were too  high, they all said. Additional discussion of this issue with they had an eerie result in as much as all but one was retired, actually paying no income tax and even the one still working paid no tax in the past few years because of deductions available to him as a farmer. When asked how much lower than zero would be reasonable tax rates there was no answer.  I also asked if it did not seem odd that there were so many identical, professionally made signs. When asked if they each brought their own sign I was told that they were waiting for them when they arrived. My reply that perhaps they were being used by a very few, very wealthy people to further the ends of those other than themselves they seemed to be a little confused.  It was pointed out that much of their reasons for coming together was based upon erroneous data and misinformation and then  suggested that they should rethink whether they really wanted less government if it would result in a decrease in the benefits they were presently receiving. Finally, it would have been ironic if either of the first two individuals to whom I spoke got so upset about learning that their medical care was part of a government provided program that they had a stroke and had to be seen to by government employed first responders or taken to an emergency room in a government ambulance.