The mad hatters Tea Party

As I said at the beginning – I think the US needs political reform, but the only problem with the TPM is that they would in my opinion make things worse.

Less Government

Again why not want ‘good’ government? There seems to be this fixation on ‘small’ or ‘large’ It seems to me that ‘big government’ and ‘small government’ are just slogans and that many of the people that talk about them don’t seem able to define what they mean when asked.

To me what’s important is good government size seems irrelevant and to argue that just a certain size of government is definition ‘good’ seems ridicules.

Government spending in a recession is a good thing it stops a recession deepening or even worse turning into a depression.


Less Deficit

But why is the deficit so high and how is it to be brought down?

There seems to be a lot of angry rhetoric but as far as I can tell these aren’t questions that in the main are being asked let alone been answered.
Why is there such a huge deficit, well in my opinion its because the US has been following neo-liberal policies at home while pursuing an aggressive and short sighted foreign policy abroad.

The problem is that the tea party seems to really, really like neo-liberal economic ideas and the right (which this movement certainly is) as a whole seems more hawkish and nationalistic than not (many on the right supported the wars).

As to How, it all goes a bit grey, the idea seem to be about cutting ‘socialist’ welfare and medical care (the code being ‘personal responsibility’), making people work longer, handing more stuff over to corporations by privatisation so they can get richer and of course ‘cleaning up Washington’.

But such things would just seem to punishing those that never benefited from neo-liberal policies while rewarding those that did, in other words helping out the group that just happened to cause the crash that so vastly ballooned the deficit.

Excessive Taxation

The question that should be asked is WHAT and HOW?

What is the definition of ‘excessive’?

Top end personal tax rates in 2005

US – 35%
UK – 40%
Germany – 45%
Sweden – 59%

How would it be cut?


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As I’ve said in the Tea Party Manifesto thread

This movement doesn’t seem about change it seems to be about trying to ‘re-brand’ the same old neo-liberal ideas that to me are the cause of so much of the US’s current problems.

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Many people here have identify the problems with the US political, the two party strangle hold and the influence of money.

Neither one of these problems is being tackled by the TPM, it seems to me that they are just a right wing libertarian faction that is trying to gain influence in the Republican Party just as the neo-con faction’s influence (which was dominant) is waning.

And their blind faith in the ‘free market’ to me would only increase the power and influence of wealth within the system, while weakening still further the democratic elements.