Tea Parties and an Aging Revolutionary
Day 86
April 15, 2009
"There's absolutely no reason to dissolve it. But if Washington continues to thumb their nose at the American people, you know, who knows what might come out of that."
—Rick Perry, Texas Governor, to reporters in Austin, saying Texans might get so frustrated with the government they could want to secede from the Union
"The only thing I find amusing is that, as I said and the President said, the tax cut that covers the most people in the history of this country was proposed and signed by this President."
—White House press secretary Robert Gibbs, on the Republican "tea parties" taking place across the country on Tax Day
"Of the blockade, which is the cruelest of the measures, not a word was said."
—Former Cuban leader Fidel Castro, responding to President Barack Obama's policy shifts on Cuba
On Tax Day, thousands gather nationwide, wielding makeshift pitchforks and carrying signs like "My Piggy Bank Is Not Your ATM" — some even throw tea bags over the White House fence — to protest government spending under Obama. Perry, who is in a fierce gubernatorial battle with fellow Republican Kay Bailey Hutchison and doing his best to portray the Senator as insufficiently conservative, is widely criticized for his remarks at a local tea party suggesting Texans may turn to secession. House Democrats from the state label his statements as "reckless" and "anti-American," while the relatively small turnouts at the tea parties themselves are largely mocked on cable TV, with the exception of Fox News, which plays them up as a major news event.
Meanwhile, Obama tries to calm the storm, saying he wants to take the dread out of April 15 and is ordering advisers to review simplifying the tax code by the end of the year. By day's end, both the Obamas and the Bidens release their 2008 tax info, with the First Family declaring income of $2.6 million (mostly coming from the sale of Barack Obama's books) and the Bidens earning almost $270,000.
And Fidel Castro weighs in on Obama's decision to remove limits on travel and remittances by Cuban Americans to their homeland, saying the changes don't go far enough because they fall short of removing a "cruel" U.S. embargo.