Opinion: In Friday’s letters to the editor
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‘Tea Party’ protests are all the rage, so to speak, in Friday’s letters.
So far, we’ve received around 100 letters about the tax day demonstrations, many from readers sympathetic to the small-government cause, like Studio City’s Gary Aminoff, who expressed disgust with this Op-Ed written by Marc Cooper, director of Annenberg Digital News at the Annenberg School for Communication at USC.
Writes Aminoff:
People like Marc Cooper can’t seem to get their arms around what the Tea Parties were about. He says the Colonists rebelled against injustice, but he can’t understand why people rebel today. I guess he assumes that bailing out failed private companies and incurring a multitrillion-dollar bill that we will pay off for generations is not an injustice. It is definitely an injustice to my grandchildren, who will likely have a lower standard of living because of it. The American people are fed up with our government assuming that it is its right to spend the taxpayer’s money in any way it deems important. That is what the Tea Parties are about. Cooper also thinks the Tea Parties are a Republican activity. He is wrong. Of the seven organizers of the Van Nuys Tea Party, of which I was one, only three were Republicans.
Of course, some readers saw the protests differently, including Stephanie Winnard, of West Hills:
I do not understand what the ‘Teabaggers’ were protesting. My understanding is that the Boston Tea Party was protesting taxation without representation. The last time I checked, we all have the right to vote in this country. I don’t think that idea really makes sense. Or maybe they were protesting higher taxes -- but Obama has given a tax break to 95% of all Americans, so it can’t be that. This ‘movement’ makes me laugh. Who can take it seriously when their analogy does not even make sense?
(For more on Tea Parties, check out this blog post from my colleague Jon Healey, who analyzes the online response -- more than 1,500 comments! -- the Times received in response to Cooper’s piece.)
Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa and pay cuts for city workers and Obama’s new Cuba policy, too.