Tea parties
To the Editor:
In his Review article of Dec. 3, Matt Pommer is right by implying that if you expect more services from the government, then you should expect to pay for them. Then he proceeds to attack the tea party movement comparing them to Willie Sutton when in fact they are a movement for smaller government, more local control, and fiscal responsibility. Pommer compares you to a bank robber if you want to reorganize the poorly managed social programs that we call our school system. It looks like his solution would be for us to just shut up and pay our taxes.
Well, that is what we have done in the past. While we were busy making a living by providing goods and services to the community, raising our families, and paying our taxes, there was an insidious change that crept into the very structure of our institutions, especially the schools. Somebody put the state and federal government in control.
Now there are dictates about how government money is spent; there are dictates about dealing with problem children; there are dictates about meals at school; there are mandates and dictates for every move that is made. We now have micro-management at its worst and it is seemingly unchangeable.
In the tea parties are folks who have relied on the politicians and administrators at the local, state, and federal level to do the right thing for our children and our country. Instead, the cost of education has gone through the roof; the quality of our children’s education is in serious decline; our culture has been adversely tampered with; and common-sense solutions by concerned citizens have been blocked.
We have a deteriorating system that is ignored by journalists, like Matt Pommer, who would rather arrest the tea party movement than those that would rob from our children’s future.
Dennis Gasper,
Plymouth
