Why the tea parties don't matter
Apr. 15th, 2009 05:13 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
bovilThe "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.
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.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
Re: Off Budget?
Date: 2009-04-23 04:37 am (UTC)Let's look at Korea. The shift to funding in the budget, vs. supplemental, tracks closely with the shift from fighting North Korean forces, to fighting Chinese main force units. Basically, it had shifted into a heavy, "conventional" war, which is more amenable to that kind of funding, because it's more predictable.
Or we can look at Vietnam, where the shift from supplemental to on-budget funding heavily tracks with the shift in combat from facing VC irregular troops, to facing NVA units after the VC was largely destroyed during Tet 68 and Tet 69.
The Clinton-era efforts shifted from supplementals to on-budget funding mostly once it became clear that they were extended, multi-year commitments of a definable size and operational scope.
The problem is, in Iraq and Afghanistan, we've been facing an evolving, insurgent war with a constantly changing size and scope. Seriously - there has been no way to reliably predict, 18 months out, what the size and scope of operations would be, in either country.
And yeah, you're right - supplemental funding is runs counter to fiscally conservative approaches.