Strategic Marketing and Design

Why The Tea Parties Are Silly?

April 20, 2009 at 8:28 AM by Donald Pack

It would seem to me that a couple of disconnects exist for these protesters:


1) The principles of the bailout, however you want to define them, started under pubs and with pub support. I would venture if McCain had won or W got reelected to a third term the support of our financial institutions, car companies and AIG would look exactly like what Obama has done.


2) Regardless of who got elected in Nov. we were going to have a $750B (more or less) stimulus bill. It was going to have a mix of tax cuts and support for the states and infrastructure spending. It might have a little more of this or a little less of that depending on who was elected. Why? B/C you can’t take business spending (which collapsed in the 4th Qtr.) and consumer spending which dropped like a stone out of our economy and survive.


3) So the only legitimate complaint IMHO is over Obama’s PLANS for healthcare reform, education and energy spending. All legitimate things to gripe about. None of which has happened.


The vast majority of what has been spent or committed to be spent whether stimulus or bailout money is coming back to the US treasury in terms of receipts that would have been lost at the state and fed level w/o the spending (lost jobs that would result in a catastrophic loss of tax revenue at local/state/fed levels) and the money that will be repaid by everyone that has been extended money. So the doom and gloom about spending is nonsense.


My gripe is that I want to know where these protesters plan to CUT SPENDING? Specifically how will you reduce spending by up to $1T a year? My bet to anyone wanting to take it is that you can’t find a majority for anything approaching a balanced budget when you reveal what you’d have to cut.


For example, if you don’t have an energy plan that moves us to self sufficiency whether it’s drill baby drill, higher taxes, alternative energy and/or consumption cuts we can’t survive as a nation by continuing to be held hostage by OPEC’s pricing ups and downs.


If we had an energy policy that set gas prices at $4Gal. for sake of argument then alternatives would have a pricing strategy that would attract investment, oil companies would know they could drill and get a ROI and consumption would be cut b/c people could not afford not to cut consumption.


If you don’t reform healthcare (reduce healthcare spending from 17% of GDP to the 8% or so that is was 15-20 years ago) we won’t have a nation going forward. Medicare will bankrupt government and business purchase of healthcare as a benefit will simply disappear if we can’t stop the rate of increases.


If we don’t output smarter people from our education system we won’t do the innovation etc. we need as a nation.
So you can bitch about what Obama wants to do but what has to be done is part of what he proposes for the survival of our country. So complain about his goals and strategies but what your yours?


Free enterprise can’t create an energy policy. We’re shutting down drilling right now b/c the price has made new discovery unsustainable. So we need price stability: read that as a tax on energy to prop up the price when it falls and evaporates when the price spikes.


Free enterprise will not reform healthcare. The present system is broken in terms of slowing or stopping the rate of increase. To many vested interests for that to happen.


I might not agree with Obama on healthcare. In fact, I disagree with what he wants to do. Reforming healthcare will only happen when we give the system a finite supply of money and force it adopt best methods to reduce costs. There is simply no mechanism for slowing the growth curve. Manufacturing reform in this country didn’t occur until China had an alternative for every product. Then cost cutting began with a vengeance. Now you make better products for less money or you go out of business.


So reform is coming, what’s your plan?



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