Tomorrow is Tax Day.
Sorry for the buzzkill, but it’s as inevitable as death: On April 15, our taxes are due.
The Tea Party movement is not real big on taxes, of course (unless they’re used to pay members’ Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, disability, unemployment claims, or any other program that benefits them but not anyone they don’t like).
Tea Partiers are using Tax Day to highlight their claim that today’s taxes are too high. They’re holding a Massachusetts event that harkens back to the good old days — 1773 — when their forefathers tossed tea into Boston Harbor.
That protest won’t hold water, says former Westporter Joe Thorndike.
The 1984 Staples graduate — now director of the Tax History Project at the nonprofit group Tax Analysts — set the record straight earlier today, on NPR’s “Morning Edition.”
“It’s so ridiculous,” he said. “People dressing up and throwing crates of tea over the side of the ship — it’s like a nice little picture we can put in our head.”
The protest was really over “taxation without representation,” Thorndike said.
The original Tea Party argued that the British did not have a right to impose a tax on the Colonies, because the Colonies did not have representation in Parliament.
“That’s a very different sort of message than saying, ‘This tax is just too damn high for us,'” Thorndike added.
Last time I checked, every Tea Party member had the right to vote for his or her president, senator, congressman, governor and state representative. People vote; the majority rules.
That’s why it’s called a “democracy.”
Throwing a Tea Party, Boston-style.