Tea Partiers

Are they legit?

An article about following the money.

Regardless if there are elements of a lunatic fringe within the tea partiers, it strikes me as unwise to be dismissive of the larger message, ie the size and scope of the federal government.

Point is - America is at a crossroads right now. We are broke. There are ascendant economic threats on the horizon - China and India. We have allies in decline - both economically and militarily - most of Western Europe. We have pesky threats in the form of terrorism and their masters - various governments in the Middle East and Central Asia.

What we do today matters for a long time forward. Obama knows it. The tea partiers know it. We put in place policies today that will either enrich or further indebt us. It is scary, isn't it, to think of the massive amount of government debt? It is too difficult to wrap our little heads around. And that should freak us out. We are democratic citizens and therefore supposed to be engaged and aware of what our government is doing. Part of the whole problem and anger from the financial crisis is no one freaking understands it or how it happened. We trusted the bankers and the regulators and meanwhile, they took the most sophisticated and rich and powerful financial system in the history of the planet and nearly crushed it overnight. Granted, the collapse was 20 years in the making, but the shocking thing was how ignorant and in-the-dark 99.9% or all non-Nouriel Roubini Americans were about the threat. To us, and for all we know, it almost DID happen overnight.

It is why I'm not a fan of the snarky liberal commentators dismissing the tea partiers as tea-baggers and writing them off as lunatics. There is a valid concern beneath it all.