NEWSWEEK on the Tea Party movement:

“A Surge of Hate” reads the meta tag; “Hate: Antigovernment extremists are on the rise—and on the march” reads the actual headline. Yes, and if they succeed, they’ll … they’ll … make the government leave people alone and mind its own business! The horror!

The progressive mind explodes ....

NO REPRESENTATION WITHOUT TAXATION? Mark Steyn started it:

The top 5 percent of taxpayers contribute 60 percent of revenue. The top 10 percent provide 75 percent. Another 40-odd percent make up the rest. And half are exempt. This isn’t redistribution ... it isn’t even “spreading the wealth around” ... it’s an assault on the moral legitimacy of the system. If you accept the principle of a tax on income, it might seem reasonable to exclude the very poor from having to contribute to it. But in no meaningful sense of the term can half the country be considered “poor.” United States income tax is becoming the 21st-century equivalent of the “jizya” — the punitive tax levied by Muslim states on their non-Muslim citizens: In return for funding the Islamic imperium, the infidels were permitted to carry on practicing their faith. Likewise, under the American jizya, in return for funding Big Government, the non-believers are permitted to carry on practicing their faith in capitalism, small business, economic activity, and the other primitive belief systems to which they cling so touchingly.

Ed Morrissey, Doctor Zero, and CK MacLeod all jumped into the fray, arguing for, against, and around the idea of having every citizen pay at least some share of federal income taxes.

Their arguments – for, against, and around – are all well written and worthy of a careful read, but ... it seems to be that all are missing the point. It’s not a matter of fairness or unfairness; regressive taxation or progressive taxation, taxes or fees; it’s a matter of responsibility - of citizenship, if you will.

IN A MAJOR VICTORY FOR ENVIRONMENTAL ADVOCATES, New York State has ruled that “outmoded cooling technology at the Indian Point nuclear power plant kills so many Hudson River fish, and consumes and contaminates so much water, that it violates the federal Clean Water Act.”

Its conceivable that the plant could be forced to close. Hey, it’s all right with me if New York wants to turn off its lights, but it’s not OK by me if they’re planning to import electricity from (and export their pollution to) my back yard.

WELL, RACISM DIDN’T WORK; let’s blame Bush again.

Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner, when asked about the Tea Party protests, said in an interview Sunday that the Obama administration is paying more attention to deficit and spending concerns than the Bush administration did.

Only their arrogance exceeds their incompetence.

21ST CENTURY PEASANT: more gloom and doom from the environmental movement.

“Here’s all I’m trying to say: The planet on which our civilization evolved no longer exists,” asserts environmentalist Bill McKibben in his new book, Eaarth: Making a Life on a Tough New Planet. “The earth that we knew—the only earth we ever knew—is gone.”

[McKibben] thinks that the situation is so dire that centralized solutions will fail and that we’ll have to return to living in villages and farms—to become 21st century peasants.

They’d make much more headway if they were less apocalyptic.

Link from Instapundit.

MODERN PSYCHOLOGY: Dr. Helen Smith on narcissism, power, fear of death, and liberalism in therapy.

I quit seeing a therapist when I realized he was crazier than I was (am – Ed. Be quiet, Daisy.).

“AS PART OF THE PROMOTIONAL EFFORT to get Americans to participate in the Census, the Census Bureau has been handing out various tchotchkes -- coffee mugs, notebooks, insulated lunch bags, fans etc. -- with the department logo on them. The Orange County Register asked the Census Bureau how much they were spending on these items and was told to buzz off.”

We may not know how much the census bureau is wasting on “tchotchkes” but we do have some idea of how much waste there is.

NOTABLE QUOTES: A taxpayer is “someone who works for the Federal government but doesn’t have to take the civil service examination.” – Reagan


If only that were still true (Geithner, et.al)

From a Fox Forum opinion piece titled “Guess Who Didn't Pay Taxes On Tax Day.”

THE STIMULUS ARRIVED, HURRAH, HURRAH! ... to the tune of $100M. The company I work for was just recently offered the opportunity to submit an RFQ (Request for Quotation) to support the Ocean Observatories Initiative, funded in part by the American Reinvestment and Recovery Act of 2009 (e.g., TARP follow-on).

For successful proposers, that money could start flowing out of government/NGO coffers as soon as, umm ... fiscal 2011.

A TOUR THROUGH RECESSION AMERICA

As I watch this teeming recession-era energy — thousands leaving squalor in Mexico for the life raft of the U.S., thousands in the middle buying as birthright what a few decades ago would be considered the playthings of the aristocracy, and thousands living in a progressive bubble disconnected from the grime and mess that fuels it — I hope there are still enough around to keep all this going. I say that because a new Microsoft program, a better search engine, another recent arrival from Chiapas, and someone out of work and still at Best Buy simply are not going to get us out of this recession, find the energy to keep the country fueled, and create the money to pay off a soon-to-be $ 20 trillion debt. In short, from this week’s observations, I think our so-called poor need to read a bit more, and our assumed elite to read a bit less.

Read the whole article.