It appears that Rick Santelli’s nasty little exercise in misdirected begrudgery is inspiring like minded folks here in St. Louis. Some St. Louisians, who are worried that the undeserving may get to fritter away their hard-earned tax dollars, are organizing a tea party (as in Boston Tea Party) at the arch on Friday. They expect all of a hundred people to turn out.
The organizer, “popular blogger” Dana Loesch, seems unable to get her mind around the fact that what is funded by the stimulus is not the main goal of the funding — which is to create jobs. And if something useful is built, of course that is even better. Among her targets:
Things such as $250,000 to put blue shutters on historic buildings, $650,000 for a camping site and $5 million for a dog park.
Not bad projects in themselves, but, I can see why Loesch chooses to emphasize these specific expenditues. Apart from their intrinsic virtues, however, they are the type of project that can be ready to go right away, which is the main criteria for the first wave of stimulus spending as I understand it.
Somebody explain to Loesch, please, that real people, probably drawn from the currently large number of area unemployed, have to do the work to put up those blue shutters, and build the camping site and dog park. And these people get paid. Then they go out and spend the money. Spending cranks up demand and creates jobs. Heck, the factory orders for the shutters and other building materials mean jobs. We all benefit. Or, at least that’s the theory — and, all things considered, it seems to be the only viable theory in town right now.
It will indeed be interesting to see how many people in St. Louis and environs get caught up in the Boston Tea Party furor and turn out to demand that we cut off our noses to spite our faces.
UPDATE. Okay, maybe the inspiration for this little gathering is not exactly a spontaneous epiphany on the part of Ms. Loesch; take a look at this diary for more information.
I would love to go down there and see the insanity.
when I saw this on the news how many people would actually show up. My experience is that people who dislike things like govt spending also tend to dislike things like public protests. Unless they are organized by someone with perceived authority – like a church.
how it’s a good idea for the Government to wait out a recession?
Heck, didn’t the Government wait out a recession without taking action during the Hoover administration? How did that go again?
Also, Jobs programs typically involve jobs.
So, how many of those protesting the providing of jobs for others will have jobs in the first place?
The Arch is the kind of location where a rally will look really bad unless you really have a lot of people there. It would be awesome to take a bunch of pictures, then compare them side-by-side to the pictures of the Obama rally, to see which one is really expressive of “the people.”