Tea Time

I have already expressed my views of the theft of the ‘Tea Party’ label. The ‘Tee Party’ would be more appropriate for the GOP.

Think Progress carries that thought a step further with: Top 5 Reasons Why The Occupy Wall Street Protests Embody Values Of The Real Boston Tea Party

David Weidner of Market Watch notices that:

Actually, they have more in common with the tea-party movement than the hippie dream, with one key difference: They’re smart enough to recognize the nation’s problems aren’t simply about taxes and the deficit.

They want jobs. They want the generation in power to acknowledge them. They want political change. They want responsibility in a culture that abdicates it. They want a decent future of opportunity.

If that isn’t American, then what is?

Alas, he fails to make a clear distinction between the original and the faux ‘Tea Party’ [or is that Fox …]

For anyone wondering why so many young people are getting involved, Robert Reich tells us that:

Since the start of the Great Recession at the end of 2007, America’s potential labor force – that is, working-age people who want jobs – has grown by over 7 million. But since then, the number of Americans who actually have jobs has shrunk by more than 300,000.

Then you have Sean Paul Kelley noting:

. . . on the Market Place Morning Report I heard them repeat and utterly mind-blowing statistic: student loan debt was now higher than credit cards, weighing in at $830 billion. (The story isn’t on the site, but it can be heard towards the end of the eight minute show.)

The young people have accumulated massive debts to go to college, and now they can’t find a job. When the politicians talk about the ‘lack of training for the current job market’, how do you think that is received by an unemployed recent college graduate? Further, what do you think it sounds like to these young people, when the politicians talk about upping the retirement age, which will reduce the number of jobs available for them?

If I were on Wall Street, I would be on the lookout for the sudden appearance of knitters, because if something isn’t done, that is where we are headed. They need to remember what happened when the lesson of the original Boston Tea Party wasn’t learned.