Most of you probably saw the half-hearted attempt at a tax protest on tax day by people covering themselves with tea bags. I guess this was an attempt to relate to the Boston Tea Party where the Colonies protested a huge import tax on tea enacted without their consent or representation by Great Britain. But the attempted analogy doesn’t hold water.

Currently, we have the lowest tax rates in decades. Under President Jimmy Carter, the rich folk paid a tax of 70 percent. That has now been cut by more than half. You didn’t see the likes of Bill Gates, Dick Cheney or the CEOs of Exxon or Haliburton wearing tea bags last Wednesday. The wealthy elite aren’t complaining about taxes.

Former President George W. Bush’s tax cuts to the wealthy are costing the rest of us a fortune in lost services. Now we can’t afford to do all the federal projects without charging the working class more money. Decreasing the tax on the wealthy simply took money out of our federal coffers. No new money was brought in to replace it and the middle class didn’t get any benefit from it.

Since President Ronald Reagan, we have all seen that “trickle down” economics is a fallacy. It doesn’t work and it never can work. But that is what Bush pursued for eight years. He gave the rich more money so they could hire more peasants to clean their yachts and second homes. That did nothing to help the local merchants or small businesses. All it did was establish a new nobility and making more of us peasants.

So why are people still falling for the slogan of “no new taxes”? It really should be “tax the rich not the poor.” The tax revolt in California was a result of increases in property taxes. Unfortunately they applied the tax limits to commercial property as well as private residences. The result was that California has been short of funds ever since. Now the tax protesters want the same situation to occur here in Nevada.

Lowering taxes only leads to substandard public services. Proportionate taxes are fair to everyone. Taxes have not put us in this recession but Bush’s trillion-dollar debt on an unnecessary war did. Where were these tea baggers when we started spending $10 billion a month on the war? We didn’t have the money so we borrowed it from Communist China. Now the tea baggers are saying that we are turning socialist if our government provides services to the people. Well isn’t that better than being in debt to communists? Do we want China calling the shots on our economy?

I think protests are great. They are part of what makes America the land of the free. It is just too bad that the tea baggers have missed the mark on what is ailing our economy. It is not taxes per se but the tax relief that has been given to the wealthy at the expense of the working class and the gross overspending by the Bush administration.

Jeff Blanck is an attorney in private practice in Reno. He can be reached at jblanck@jeffreyblancklaw.com.