The Tea Party doesn't have much presence in NYC and its leaders weren't involved in this particular protest, and "Occupying" is a sixties lefty word that's not going to turn out the Tea Party rank and file.
The Tea Party doesn't have much presence in NYC and its leaders weren't involved in this particular protest, and "Occupying" is a sixties lefty word that's not going to turn out the Tea Party rank and file.
What's the result? Tea partiers aren't going to get what they want (since it's never been on the table to offer them), and they're being used as a weapon to prevent thing that citizens in general agree with (the wealthy should pay more in taxes, the FAA should keep operating, that sort of thing).
This really is political coopting at it's finest.
If the default threat were really no big deal, why did the stock market plunge 15% during the Republican-engineered budget crisis? Clearly somebody thought it was a big deal, because it requires a hell of a lot of selling to make the market move like that.
The Republican congressional leadership stated outright that default was preferable to raising one penny of taxes to balance the budget. That's not "business as usual". It's arguably not even constitutional. But it's certainly never happened before in the history of the United States.
A default would be a huge deal, but not passing the debt ceiling increase doesn't automatically equal a default. The leadership wanted to pass an increase (that is pretty clear from their rejection of some of the more honest spending cut packages), they also are being pressured to not raise taxes but cut spending. The final deal was not what any tea party house member or senator wanted.
"It's arguably not even constitutional" - The Congress is in charge of the budget per the US Constitution, not the President. The US Constitution evens goes as far as saying where such bills must start (Article I, Section 7, clause 1).
Sorry, that's what everybody in government was saying during the manufactured crisis. If you have some kind of insider information that contradicts what everyone in government was saying, then produce it. Otherwise, it sounds like you're making up facts to fit an agenda (quoting the constitution is a common symptom of this).
"quoting the constitution is a common symptom of this"
Forgive me for quoting the actual section of the document when you raised the "unconstitutional" claim. I would expect a programmer to quote the actual language standard when claiming a compiler didn't implement a feature correctly. You sound like a priest from the middle ages who is mad that someone has actually read the bible.
My only agenda is that I think the American people are getting well and truly screwed by pundits on TV and in office. Everything is a drama and not one statement is checked or even questioned. Heck, no national news network actually talked about the actual text of the health care bill when it was available. The reporting on the new jobs bill might as well be propoganda compared to what the thing actualy says (not much fun to read, but the gaps show). I am well and truly sick of Fox, CNN, and MSNBC. Scream and demonize are everything, ignore history, ignore the actual documents (yes, the constitution too), and see which pundit looks best while we ask none of the hard questions.
We're not loony. We're not the creation of any group. Anyone claiming to be a Tea Party "leader" or "creator" isn't. We're your neighbors and friends who are "mad as hell and not going to take it anymore". We're dismayed that our kids are obligated to pay six digits in government debt before they can talk. We know what happens when anyone spends $2 of every $1 that comes in. We're outraged that the Republicans agreed to allow this administration another $2.4T in spending of money we don't have and our kids won't have. We're tired of having our money taken from us to spend on wasteful cronyism, meddling, and funding idleness, while told we can't be trusted to wisely spend our own money we earned. We're tired of being dismissed as looney by people who vote for confiscating our hard earned income under threat of fines, imprisonment or death.
The Tea Party is middle Americans who, on the whole, just want to be left alone. Yes we'll fund "safety nets", build infrastructure, etc. No, we don't want people to starve and die...we also want the able to take care of themselves, and for people to cope with the obvious consequences of their own actions.
Our protests are, on the whole, spontaneous. On boards like this we express concerns, discuss under-reported news, and decide "hey, let's call Senator X and let him know we exist" or "hey, let's rally at location Y at time T" and spontaneous groups gather and act. Oh, BTW, we clean up our own trash too.
We see $1.5T in deficit spending, and know that despite our objections we're the ones saddled with paying it off. We object to getting shafted, and you dismiss us as "looney".
You may wish it were that way. It may have even actually been that way for two weeks back in 2009. But it's not that way today.
If you rent a large house, the way to cut spending is not to stop paying your rent or threatening your wife so she doesn't pay the rent or stop feeding your kids.
Being "mad as hell" is no replacement for thinking.
[EDIT per responses: sometimes you have to threaten to stop paying the bills in order to persuade others to, in fact, move into the smaller apartment and stop swiping the credit card as if it costs nothing. It's called "brinksmanship", based on the premise "either we stop spending so d@mned much now by choice or we're going to have, in fact, nothing to spend later"; a rhetorical device both sides use.]
BTW: I run http://abuckaplate.blogspot.com precisely to help people see how they can afford decent meals for just a buck a plate. Nobody needs to starve when you can eat for a day for just $3.
I'd imagine based on the behavior of the representatives they sent to congress. In particular, regarding the debt ceiling fiasco in which the position of legislators the Tea Parties endorsed, supported and voted for was quite clearly: "the government may have agreed to buy certain things on the nation's credit card, but we're able to block payment of the bill, so we're willing to force the country to default unless you come up with more spending cuts".
I think you should have stopped using the first party plural there. Some of them are loony; and they are in part the creation of some older, tireder, Republic faction.
But I guess they do all share vaguely Republican values, and the belief that both major parties (not just the Democrats) have been taxing too much.
My issue is that they are attacking taxing, not spending. It's spending that's the problem, as total revenue (tax) will eventually have to match total spending. And the Republicans can be cynical bastards who spend like crazy, then force the Democrats to raise taxes (later down the track) for fear of the debt becoming unsustainable.
But I guess "Spent Enough Already" doesn't have the same ring, or historical kitsch.
Maybe I am alone on this, but I've never had to send a check to the US government to pay for my share of the government debt. Have you?
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/17/opinion/crashing-the-tea-p...
http://www.fivethirtyeight.com/2010/04/new-data-on-tea-party...
I would really like to know what you would cite from TARP as a solid investment.
TARP's purpose was to buy off various groups, which it did.
What? You thought that it was supposed to help the economy? What evidence is there for that proposition?
Let me guess - you also think that the title also has something to do with the purpose.
I think that both are marketing fluff. I think that because neither one has any substantive effect. Given that, it's unclear why you'd think that they have meaning.
Instead, I think that the purpose is what the substantive provisions would be reasonably expected to accomplish.
The alternative is that comgress-critters are incompetent, and I'm pretty sure that they're not. They're just trying to do something other than what you and I might like, hence the preambles and the titles.
Note that "they're incompetent" isn't doesn't excuse what they do.
No, I don't believe that, and am kind of insulted you would suggest it. I do believe that some proposed purpose can be gotten from the introductory text in a bill. In some legislation they are incompetent, particularly when finance is concerned. Marketing it is, but even marketing gives an intent.
The actual provisions in a bill are just that, provisions. They don't tell actual intent or purpose for the most part unless they include funding for a study to prove results.
How about some evidence supporting that belief?
Note that said evidence must somehow distinguish the preamble, which you think goes to purpose, from the title, which you think doesn't.
How about public statements by the authors?
> In some legislation they are incompetent, particularly when finance is concerned.
How do you know? More to the point, why does it matter? What will you do differently if they're incompetent vs they're trying to do something other than what the fluff says?
Surely you're not going with "if they knew better, they'd behave differently"? After all, they keep doing the same things, so they've had ample opportunity to learn (and you wouldn't be the first to point out their "mistakes").
> Marketing it is, but even marketing gives an intent.
Marketing is nothing more than an attempt to send a message. Attempting to send the message "I want to cure cancer" does not imply that I actually want to cure cancer.
I believe the incompetence comes from not actually having run a small business and pulling the levers of the economy in an attempt to fix things. Chaos will damage an economy in pretty short order.
That's nice, but irrelevant because I'm not claiming that anyone is trying to "deceive with every word". I'm claiming that they're trying to accomplish what the substantive provisions would reasonably be expected to do and the other stuff is just marketing to get it passed.
> I believe the incompetence comes from not actually having run a small business and pulling the levers of the economy in an attempt to fix things.
I'm not convinced that "having run a small business" is relevant because they're not just hosing small biz. However, it is sort of absurd to expect them to be experts in any of the fields in which they make decisions, let alone all of them.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/30/business/30bailout.html?pa...
Although the official "Tea Party" didn't have their first protest until Jan 2009, it was the same people pushing their congresscritters to oppose the bailout.
TARP will still end up losing tens of billions, but TARP was superseded by far larger (and less transparent) bailouts run through the Federal Reserve. The banks that have repaid TARP only did so because they had other forms of government support, from over a trillion in Fed lending guarantees, to bailouts of their counterparties at AIG, to the bailout of worthless bondholdings at Fannie and Freddie.
And, we aren't out of the woods. Today the banking system is more concentrated and perhaps just as fragile as it was in 2008.