Yesterday Barack Obama addressed graduates of the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor.  The following three paragraphs are from an Associated Press story about the event.  The AP content is in italics below:

“What troubles me is when I hear people say that all of government is inherently bad,” Obama said after receiving an honorary doctor of laws degree. “When our government is spoken of as some menacing, threatening foreign entity, it ignores the fact that in our democracy, government is us.”

The financial meltdown dramatically showed the dangers of too little government, he said, “when a lack of accountability on Wall Street nearly led to the collapse of our entire economy.”

Over and over again I’ve seen similar sentiments echoed by the liberal media.  The tea party folks are supposedly against all law and order and believe that government in all forms is bad for society.  The tea party folks supposedly want no public schools, no military, no mine inspectors, no roads, and no universities.  Baloney, Mr. Obama, Rachel Maddow, Keith Olbermann, and whoever else is spouting this nonsense.

The so called Tea Party Patriots don’t at all mind a government that provides mailmen, a court system, cops and firemen.  What they do mind is the hiring of government workers in the inner city to serve as “smoking cessation counselors”, employing attendants to push buttons on fully automatic elevators for lawmakers in our nation’s capital, and spending federal grant money to see if a South American rodent can enlighten us in understanding jet lag.

Waste aside, lets’ talk about the ineffectiveness of our wonderful government watchdogs.  Let’s see, Mr. Obama, do the mine inspectors you referred to work for the same federal agency that allowed numerous safety violations before the Massey Mine recently blew up in West Virginia killing 29 miners?  Are the employees of Securities and Exchange Commission, who were spending much of their working time looking at internet porn, the same federal employees who couldn’t figure out that a “no-doc” real estate mortgage, with rent documentation from the applicant’s mother, was destined to be a future foreclosure?  Are the employees of the US Department of Education the same people who chant the well-worn mantra that more taxpayer money can cure our failing inner-city public schools while teachers in those public schools put their own children in private schools?

Our challenge as concerned Americans is not rooted in philosophical differences between Republicans or Democrats.  While it is intriguing to talk about flat taxes, fair taxes, and lower taxes, taxation isn’t the issue.  To resurrect and revise a popular Clinton phrase, “IT’S THE SPENDING, STUPID!”  The size of the national debt, along with the crushing burden of unfunded entitlement liabilities, has now grown to an unsustainable level that can’t be cured even with a fully recovered economy.  You don’t need to be a Harvard economist to run the math.  You just need to be a well-read citizen.

So keep it up, you clever incumbent politicians.  Keep telling the American public that the Tea Party Movement is just a flimsy cult originating from some Republican Party plot.  Keep telling that story right up until the polls open on the morning of November 2, 2010.  Tell the voters that despite your support for bailouts, cap and trade, and Obamacare, you actually are in favor of smaller government.

You’re going to get your butts kicked in six months; not by radical angry white men, but by millions of intelligent, independent voters who know that government spending has gone well beyond what any sensible republic can tolerate.