April 15 Tea Party!

Fort Walton Beach has finally joined the ranks of the national Tea Party movement! We are trying to put together a protest event on Wednesday April 15th to coincide with hundreds of other Tea Parties across this great nation. There are some going on Sat April 18th, which may be a better date. I hope you will join us to put together a nice group of folks who are just tired of Washington DC spending all our children's money on pet projects and vote buying.

If you are unfamiliar with the Tea Party Movement, the Stimulus Package passed by the Congress and President earlier this year generated some unnamed protests. The idea was that by spending $787 Billion now of borrowed money, our kids will very likely have to pay back over $3,000,000,000,000.00 ($3 TRILLION) to pay for all the spending (factoring in spending programs unlikely to be canceled, debt servicing, etc). That amounts to over $30,000 per family in America. Now THAT would have been a Stimulus to people (Can you imagine what your family of 4 could have done with $30,000 in this economy?).

After the U.S. Government passed this unprecedented Spending package they called a "Stimulus," they decided another "leg of the 3-legged stool" was to pass a bailout housing package (The 3-Legs of the Recovery Plan are Stimulus Package, Housing Bailout, Financial Bailout). Well, the housing plan was to spend $275 Billion MORE to write down bad mortgages and really just reward 7% of real estate buyers who bought more house than they can afford, tried to flip properties for speculation or just don't feel like paying their bills any more. This plan is rewarding bad behavior while not providing any help to 93% of homeowners who pay their mortgages on time. This plan drew considerable backlash and an interview with Rick Santelli of CNBC coined the phrase "Tea Party" as associated with the backlash against wasteful spending.

Here is the latest wrap up of all the Tea Parties going on right now. Definitely a "grass roots" movement of us people who are just frustrated with the way D.C. works.

If you follow politics at all and just want to release some annoyance with the government, let's go bring some coolers and beer down to the landing (if we can have alcohol over there) and make up some signs. I bet many others feel this same way!