At Tea Party, 'Cheers' Alum Ratzenberger Frets U.S. Honors Failure, Not Success

"At some point, I'm still trying to figure this out, we became a nation that honors failure and rewards it, instead of honoring success and rewarding it," actor John Ratzenberger told Fox News Channel's Neil Cavuto on Wednesday's "Your World" program. The "Cheers" alum appeared at the Sacramento Tea Party to register his concerns about government tax and spend policies. [full video by Fox News here. Audio excerpt here.]

"I've always celebrated common sense, it's not a Democrat or a Republican issue," Ratzenberger insisted, to be concerned about the high taxes which are driving small business and the jobs they provide, to leave California.

Ratzenberger's remarks echo conservative sentiments expressed recently by his fellow "Cheers" alumnus Kelsey Grammer, who told CNSNews.com that President Obama's policies punished success while bailing out irresponsible people who took on second mortgages they could not afford:

GRAMMER: I think government is responsible to make sure we go after people that are evildoers. There's plenty of those to go around, from the bottom up and from the top down. The only problem I see with the stimulus package is that as a rule, it awards all the people that are evildoers, all of them. And that's a problem, for me, personally.

[...]

BALLASY: Any example of the evildoers that you were just mentioning in the actual bill? Who you're saying it benefits?

GRAMMER: Unfortunately, if we're going to be buying up bad mortgages, all the people that were paying their mortgages are the good guys. It's a little confusing,  a little difficult....

[...]

GRAMMER: It may not be a popular position to take but I honestly believe that the bill is fraught with the idea that those who did the most damage to our country -- from the bottom up and the top down -- are the ones that are actually going to get the most reward.