bovil | Why the tea parties don't matter

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Why the tea parties don't matter

The "Tea Party" movement is a symbolic failure.

The original tea partiers engaged in criminal acts and risked arrest and imprisonment to destroy product from a company being propped up by unfair reduced taxes by the government, at the expense of what, at the time, amounted to "small business:" the domestic importers of tea who competed with the East India Company.

The current teabaggers are buying tea and throwing it around. That's it. When the DC teabag crew showed up with a truckload of tea bags (yes, I'm serious) to dump in Lafayette Square (because dumping in the Potomac is illegal, can't do that, after all) they were informed that they didn't have the correct permits to dump their load.

So they took it away. They're a bunch of pussies. "Civil disobedience" and "protest" are just words to them. They'll always cave in to authority rather than take a risk for their alleged principles. Samuel Adams would have dumped the tea right then and there.

If they wanted a real symbolic connection with the original Boston Tea Party they would be stealing Chrysler and GM cars and trucks from distribution centers and dumping them in the drink.

But they're not.

Pussies.

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Yeah, they're upset NOW, but where were these huge protests when Bush was racking up the huge debt in the first place

You _do_ realize that Obama has added as much to the national debt in _90 days_ as Bush did in _8 years_?

And frankly, there were a lot of people there with a much more concrete grasp of real-world economics than you might want to realize or admit to.

Yeah, 3000, give or take (more take - thinking about it, 2500 sounds more real).

And do you really think a rally involving "Obama = Hitler" and "Hang Obama" signs is about taxes and debt?

Didn't see any of those, to be honest. Found one Bircher, but that's about the extent of it.

No, it was not "next to" where the local IRS building is.

That's Market and San Fernando, looking up from the plaza. IRS is one block BEYOND where that cop has the street blocked.

Here's google's map to where that office is.

View Larger Map (http://maps.google.com/maps?hl=en&ie=UTF8&q=san+jose+IRS&fb=1&split=1&gl=us&ei=-pbnSfSSO4mYtAPG17z0AQ&ll=37.320244,-121.906333&spn=0.058138,0.068874&source=embed)
One block PAST San Fernando.

If you're going to lie, at least do so convincingly.

I guess that makes this comedy, then?
http://media.www.thespartandaily.com/media/storage/paper852/news/2008/11/10/News/Protest.Goes.Through.San.Jose-3534220.shtml

The conservative movement enshrined consistency in modern politics, so you're a dirty stinkin' flip-flopper.

The "Oh, but those deficits aren't as big" argument doesn't hold water. Common sense shows that you can't turn around a series of record deficits in just a few months. History shows it's much easier and faster to turn a series of small but comfortable surpluses into record deficits.

It's right up there with the "Oh, but this is evil socialist spending, not good defensy spending" argument.

If you're a deficit hawk, you're a deficit hawk. If all deficits are bad, all deficits are bad.

When I went past (a bit before 3-ish), the cops had Market street blocked at Market and Post, and that's where the protesters were. Now if you want to tell me I didn't see protesters at Market and Post in the afternoon yesterday, you can, but you would be wrong.

Oh, but wait, that wasn't your "official" tea party.

Comedy is one lone guy at City Hall at lunchtime.

Ah, Fox numbers, inflated by 300% like they were caught on live mic in Sacramento doing.

Okay, so what's *your* solution for trying to bolster the US economy if Obama is doing such a terrible job?

My point is that Bush ran up that huge deficit when the economy was stable. Do you think Obama WANTS to put the US into even more debt? People seem to think he's sitting around going "ooh what ways of ruining the country can I think of today?". He inherited a shitty situation and in all likelihood ANYBODY would have had to do a lot of the same things.

Andy,

Again with the "conservative" stuff! George W Bush Jr. was _not_ a "conservative!"

Not in the traditional Republican sense you cite. A self-described "compassionate conservative" he practiced none of that "enshrined" fiscal restraint which the GOP used to be known for. One result of that was that the GOP lost its majority in Congress.

And come on Andy, despite the Dubya's never seeing a budget bill he didn't like and somehow couldn't stop himself from signing, there's a world of difference between his fiscal lack of discipline and Obama's spending it like there's no tomorrow.

Madoc

SH,

One thing Obama could do is stop trying to spend our way out of the recession.

You'd think that for a guy as bright as Barrack Obama likes to portray himself as being he'd know this. Spending yourself out of an economic downturn is but failure writ large.

The US tried it back in the Great Depression and FDR's policies had all about crapped out by the late 30's. Things were looking pretty bleak for the US economy about then and it was only the advent of WWII that stopped us from entering another multi-year recession / depression.

The Japanese tried spending themselves out of their economic downturn in the early 90's. Even to this day they're still trying to dig themselves out of the ensuing mess and economic disaster.

According to the non-partisan OMB last Fall, the US economy was largely on track to recover in late '09 and early 10. This was before Obama, Pelosi and Reid decided to break the bank and lay their hands on it all. Now? Numbers released today show the recession as _deepening_ and getting _worse_ over the next _several_ years.

That, folks, is change we can believe in!

Yes, we can!

Thank you Barry Obama!

And that's the central motivation for the Tea Party protests.

Madoc

What was WWII if not massive government spending?

You forgot appropriating funds without including them in the budget to make the budgets and deficits look smaller. Funny, when we look at other governments doing that, we call it "corruption."

Obama is being honest about what's in his budget. Part of the reason the numbers are so shocking.

Andy,

WWII for the US was spending to win the war. The economic effects of that were nice but entirely secondary to the necessity of winning that war.

The things which made a difference for the US and made for lasting economic growth from that period were the hundreds of billions of dollars' worth of _foreign_ governments spending in the US. This, back when a billion dollars was worth something.

That was money _added_ to our economy and not simply dropped into the loop by the Treasury Department.

Further, the US economy could only _but_ grow after the war if for no other reason than the economies of all our former competitors were utterly shattered by that war. And I'm talking about England, primarily, here and not the economies of the countries we physically shattered.

If government spending to win a war as a bona fide means of making a nation's economy better than it wouldn't have taken Britain and the rest of the world a quarter century to catch back, economy-wise, up to the US after WWII. And that massive government spending on defense wouldn't have seen the collapse of the Soviet Union either.

With the current fiscal "policy" coming from the White House and Congress we're not even getting anything as priceless as national security. Instead, it's a multi-TRILLION dollar exercise in partisan spending, pork spending, and government growth.

And that's just in the past three months. Looking ahead, Obama is promising even _larger_ deficits.

That's something worth protesting alright.

Madoc

Obama? Honest? Oh puh-leaze!

Is this "honest" like his promises to make his administration "transparent" and then shutting it down tighter than Bush even dreamed of?

Is this "honest" like his promises to keep all those e-vile lobbyists out of his administration and then going on to hire as many of them as he could get his hands on?

Is this "honest" like his promise to shut down GTMO? Oops, I see that's still open.

Is this "honest" like his promise to forsake "Extraordinary Renditions?" Oops, I see he's just signed off on keeping those available.

Is this "honest" like his promise to not allow the use of torture in his administration? Oops, he's signed off on that too.

And let's not even get into his warrantless wiretap stuff and his embracing of other Bush policies that he "honestly" promised never to do.

So, with such "honesty" abounding in the Oval Office you should be able to understand why so many other folk don't exactly trust the guy as he racks up the deficit at a faster rate than any other President in US history.

Madoc

"Pork" is just the opposite of "nimby."

Andy,

Noope, pork spending is pork spending. Period.

If you were against the Bush administration's pork spending, if you were against the Bush administration's fiscal restraint failures, then you should be outraged at the Obama administrations pork spending extravaganza.

Hell Andy, if you were consistent about such things, you'd have been down there amidst the Tea Party folk shouting your support for their cause.

Instead, you've gone out of your way to attack and dismiss the civic protests.

What ever happened to that "dissent is patriotic" bit?

Or is that only true when the dissent is coming from the left?

Madoc

Nice misdirection there. None of your complaints (which, for the most part, I happen to agree with) contradict the fact that this is the first budget in 6 years that includes all the spending Bush had been hiding off-budget.

It's the hypocrisy of the right that's getting me here. These people didn't say boo when it was Republicans doing the irresponsible spending and removal of civil liberties, but now they're screaming "government oppression" just because it's the other party in power. Anybody that criticized Bush's policies was tarred as "unpatriotic", "un-American" or even "traitors", but now that the shoe is on the other foot they can't handle it?

SH,

Actually, quite a few Republicans took Bush and his administration to task for their civil liberties antics. Quite a few others looked at the actual effect of those policies and measured them against the threat we then faced and found those policies acceptible - with proper checks and balances.

You'll note how it's Republican appointed judges who were formerly taking the Dubya to task for his violations are now taking Obama to task for the same antics.

As to the spending, there were no few "traditional" conservatives who were outraged at the "blank cheque" approach the GOP had come to take during the Bush years. They quite accurately forecast the defeat at the polls such negligence would entail.

It's been interesting to listen to some folks criticizing the Tea Party protests who have gone on record as stating them to be "racist." The hypocrisy runs deep indeed.

Madoc

Clearly there is no middle ground here. I'm not saying that Obama is perfect, but the huge outcry that is coming from the right (and the completely outrageous claims of 'tyranny' and 'oppression', which are utterly hilarious in light of Bush's regime) is a major overreaction and blaming Obama for a lot of things that are not his fault. You'd think Obama is the friggin' Antichrist or had taken over the country in a military coup, the way people are screaming.

But if you want to believe that a few moderate and non-corrupt Republicans balance out the sheer insanity of the past 8 years, while anybody who wants to wait a bit longer and put a little trust in the very new President - instead of fearmongering and spreading misinformation (like the all-catastrophe-all-the-time Fox News) - is a hypocritical loon, there's obviously nothing I can say to change that.

SH,

No, I'm not buying into the "tyranny or oppresion" stuff. I've not heard such claims being made from rational folk on the right. Claims coming from the irrational folk - be they on the right or the left - are generally pretty easy to both spot and to discount immediately.

I'm gauging Obama by his actions and the scale for that gauge is where his predecessors were at roughly the same time they'd been in office. By that guage and scale, Obama is charging hell for leather off the edge and he's driving the nation there ahead of him.

Obama is this century's first Carter and if you'll remember what Carter led to you to would share the outrage about him now.

Madoc

I don't have to be consistent. I'm not a consistency fetishist. Never have been. I like thinking things over and changing my mind if compelling new evidence comes to light.

You miss the point, though. I'm talking about definitions. Pork is very malleable. "Pork" is only pork when it's being spent somewhere else.

Take a look at Senator Inhofe, screaming about how the entire defense budget is being gutted and how America is being put at risk when, in fact, the overall defense budget is being increased. Look a little further, and you'll see one of the cuts in the new defense budget is an expensive "weapons of the future" program that's being developed in his state. Some people might call that spending pork. I might look at the budget and project realignment that Secy. Gates is proposing and think as a whole it's actually increasing Defense's readiness.

Say we've got a sewer project that we haven't got the money to fix locally, and our rep is looking for a few million out of the federal budget to make up the difference. Is that pork? The folks who have screwed up sewers and who are paying local, state and federal taxes probably don't think so. The folks in Oklahoma who want that big weapons program might have a different opinion.

I feel comfortable being conflicted about the bail-outs. Really, I do. Part of me would love to see GM and Chrysler and AIG go under, and see their management suffer for their screw-ups. Part of me looks back at the Chrysler and S&L bail-outs which were expensive but produced a net profit for the government in the end, and thinks it's not all that bad. Part of me looks at what would happen if Chrysler and GM do fail, and thinks not just of all the skilled union jobs in the Midwest that will be lost, but also all the skilled at-will jobs that would be lost around the country when the dealership networks fall down with it (in interest of full disclosure, none of my mechanic or car-sales friends work for Chrysler or GM dealerships).

I also feel comfortable criticizing the tea party movement. There may be some real grassroots upwelling there, but it's been heavily astroturfed by Dick Armey's lobbying/consulting business and Fox News and exploited by GOP speakers (who, I hear, were booed at some events by the tea partiers for their hijack attempts) to get a boost for the party. I hear a lot about how this was the conservative movement's (or the Republican's, depending on reportage) great embracing of the internet to catch up to the Obama campaign's online prowess, but I don't see that in the results. They aimed high, going for a strong symbol of American history, but they didn't figure out how to translate it effectively to their issue. Hell, they embraced "teabagging" and then wondered why people laughed.

During the primaries I mused that Obama might be another Carter; a charming young liberal Christian who goes down in flames for his ideals.

I doubted it then, and I doubt it now. He's a canny Chicago politician with skills Carter wouldn't develop until long after his presidency. I expect that he's going to be the Democrats' Ronald Reagan instead, a charming teflon-coated pragmatist who will compromise when he must but hold to his ideals every time he can.

Ummm, no. I did a body count whilst circumnavigating the crowd.

And you're getting your numbers _where_?

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