Thread: Modern Day Tea Parties

Originally Posted by barbaro

This response by Sen. Mike Lee is just more abstract "nothing" talk.

But with infinitely more substance and objectivity.

americans hate the tea party.






only 29% of self-described 'independents' have a favorable opinion of the tea party.....and fewer than half of 'conservatives' have a favorable opinion.....








the tea party is great tool for advancing the progressive agenda....

i'm still thinking about sending a donation to a couple of teabagger candidates in the republican senate primaries in SC and KY.

The Tea Party is a very European fascist organization financially supported by European Royalty inspired billionaires,

Originally Posted by Butterfly

The Tea Party is a very European fascist organization financially supported by European Royalty inspired billionaires,

actually it's a collection of half-wits being manipulated by the incredibly wealthy to vote against their own economic self interest.

Time to refresh folks memories of just what the Tea Party stands for and who they are:

Core Beliefs of the Modern-Day Tea Party Movement

1. Eliminate Excessive Taxes - Excessively high taxes are a burden for those exercising their personal liberty to work hard and prosper as afforded by the Constitution. A fiscally responsible government protects the freedom of its citizens to enjoy the fruits of their own labor without interference from a government that has exceeded its necessary size, scope and reach into the lives of its citizens.

2. Eliminate the National Debt - By implementing fiscally conservative policies at all levels of government, progress can be made toward eliminating the U.S. National Debt. Massive increases in the National Debt have created and continue to create a huge burden for the next generation of Americans, thus imperiling the country’s short-term and long-term economic health and prosperity.

3. Eliminate Deficit Spending - All deficit spending must be eliminated immediately. We insist that government representatives at all levels maintain a fiscally responsible budget and balance the books as would be expected of any American business.

4. Protect Free Markets - America’s free enterprise system allows businesses to thrive as they compete in the open marketplace and strive toward ever better services and products. Allowing free markets to prosper unfettered by government interference is what propelled this country to greatness with an enduring belief in the industriousness and innovations of the populace.

5. Abide by the Constitution of the United States - The U.S. Constitution is the supreme law of the land and must be adhered to without exception at all levels of government. This includes the Bill of Rights and other Amendments to the U.S. Constitution and their provisions designed to protect states’ rights and individual liberties.

6. Promote Civic Responsibility - Citizen involvement at the grassroots level allows the voice of the American people to be heard and directs the political behaviors of our representatives at both the local and national level so they, in turn, may be most effective in working to preserve the life, liberty and pursuit of happiness of this country’s citizens.

7. Reduce the Overall Size of Government - A bloated bureaucracy creates wasteful spending that plagues our government. Reducing the overall size, scope and reach of government at both local and national levels will help to eliminate inefficiencies that result in deficit spending which adds to our country’s debt.

For further edjumaction, go here

Originally Posted by Boon Mee

Rainy Day Patriots Tea Party of Birmingham, Alabama

Originally Posted by Boon Mee

I applaud Coke's recognition that multiculturalism is not the American tradition

What a ridiculous comment- it is. From it's founding. Your population, like that of many other countries, is multicultural. With the exception of the small American Indian population, you are a nation of immigrants- from many countries and cultures. Same same Australia.

Originally Posted by sabang

Originally Posted by Boon Mee

Rainy Day Patriots Tea Party of Birmingham, Alabama

Originally Posted by Boon Mee

I applaud Coke's recognition that multiculturalism is not the American tradition

What a ridiculous comment- it is. From it's founding. Your population, like that of many other countries, is multicultural. With the exception of the small American Indian population, you are a nation of immigrants- from many countries and cultures. Same same Australia.

What the guy was actually trying to get across is English is the 'national' language of America. Not a polyglot of babel where you press 1 for English, 2 for Spanish, 3 for God knows what's next.

ya jeezus boon...

I mean how many cultures came to America? or do you only recognize our fine English speaking only culture as "American"

not surprising teatards are the modern equivalent of the KKK and most people know it except them...

"we need to take our country back"

from who? the darkie in chief?

how tetards view themselves



how the rest of the world views you

In January of 2001, a blue-ribbon Senate committee headed by Sens. Gary Hart (D-CO) and Warren Rudman (R-NH) released a report that would become famous for its prescient warning that “the persistence of international terrorism will end the relative invulnerability of the US homeland to catastrophic attack.”

But what most people don’t remember is that the Hart-Rudman report also cautioned that “the United States finds itself on the brink of an unprecedented crisis of competence in government” that made such an attack more likely to succeed. Blaming a variety of factors for a “decay” in “the human resources of government,” the committee concluded that Americans’ “declining orientation toward government service” is “deeply troubling.”

In the new issue of The Washington Monthly, Paul Glastris and Haley Sweetland Edwards look at how Republicans have deepened that crisis by gutting congressional staff — the faceless research, oversight and policymaking apparatus that makes the government function. Conservatives, they write, have engineered a “debilitating brain drain” that has “been under way in Congress for the past 25 years.”

Glastris and Sweetland Edwards write:

In 1995, after winning a majority in the House for the first time in forty years, one of the first things the new Republican House leadership did was gut Congress’s workforce. They cut the “professional staff” (the lawyers, economists, and investigators who work for committees rather than individual members) by a third. They reduced the “legislative support staff” (the auditors, analysts, and subject-matter experts at the Government Accountability Office [GAO], the Congressional Research Service [CRS], and so on) by a third, too, and killed off the Office of Technology Assessment (OTA) entirely….

Today, the GAO and the CRS, which serve both House and Senate, are each operating at about 80 percent of their 1979 capacity. While Senate committee staffs have rebounded somewhat under Democratic control, every single House standing committee had fewer staffers in 2009 than in 1994. Since 2011, with a Tea Party-radicalized GOP back in control of the House, Congress has cut its budget by a whopping 20 percent, a far higher ratio than any other federal agency, leading, predictably, to staff layoffs, hiring and salary freezes, and drooping morale.

Why would conservative lawmakers decimate the staff and organizational capacity of an institution they themselves control? Part of it is political optics: What better way to show the conservative voters back home that you’re serious about shrinking government than by cutting your own staff? But a bigger reason is strategic. The Gingrich Revolutionaries of 1995 and the Tea Partiers of 2011 share the same basic dream: to defund and dismantle the vast complex of agencies and programs that have been created by bipartisan majorities since the New Deal. The people in Congress who knew those agencies and programs best and were most invested in making them work—the professional staffers, the CRS analysts, the veteran committee chairs—were not going to consent to seeing them swept away. So they had to be swept away.

[...]

At the same time, as political scientist Lee Drutman of the Sunlight Foundation has noted, both the government and the issues it has to deal with have grown more complex. There are more contractors to manage, more stakeholders to liaison with, more technologies to adapt to, more industry-funded research studies to take account of. That, in turn, has made the jobs of congressional staffers, of keeping an eye on government and sorting through the ever-growing amount of information coming at them from lobbyists and constituents, far more difficult, even as their numbers have not remotely kept pace with the growth of government and K Street. In 2010, the House spent $1.37 billion and employed between 7,000 and 8,000 staffers. That same year, corporations and special interests spent twice as much—$2.6 billion—on lobbying (which excludes billions spent on other forms of influence) and employed 12,000 federally registered lobbyists, according to Sunlight Foundation.

Instead of helping to shrink the government, the gutting of congressional expertise and institutional capacity—what New America Foundation scholar and former congressional staffer Lorelei Kelly refers to as a “self-lobotomy”—has had two other effects, both of which have advanced conservative power, if not necessarily conservative ideals.

The first effect is an outsourcing of policy development. Much of the research, number crunching, and legislative wordsmithing that used to be done by Capitol Hill staffers working for the government is now being done by outside experts, many of them former Hill staffers, working for lobbying firms, think tanks, consultancies, trade associations, and PR outfits. This has strengthened the already-powerful hand of corporate interests in shaping legislation, and given conservative groups an added measure of influence over Congress, as the shutdown itself illustrates.

[...]

The second effect of the brain drain is a significant decline in Congress’s institutional ability to monitor and investigate a growing and ever-more-complex federal government. This decline has been going on quietly, behind the scenes, for so many years that hardly anyone even notices anymore. But like termites eating away at the joists, there’s a danger of catastrophic collapse unless regular inspections are done.

There’s much more to the story. Read the entire piece at The Washington Monthly.

Appears a new tea party guy on the way.

"House Majority Leader Eric Cantor was defeated Tuesday by a little-known economics professor in Virginia's Republican primary, a stunning upset and major victory for the tea party."

Virginia Primary Results: Eric Cantor Stunned By Tea Party Challenger Dave Brat In Massive Upset

Originally Posted by Norton

Appears a new tea party guy on the way.

"House Majority Leader Eric Cantor was defeated Tuesday by a little-known economics professor in Virginia's Republican primary, a stunning upset and major victory for the tea party."

Virginia Primary Results: Eric Cantor Stunned By Tea Party Challenger Dave Brat In Massive Upset

WOW!! Just caught that. The majority leader hasn't lost since 1899!! Looks like this seat will be blue this fall. Way to go teatards!! I hope Mitch McConnell is next!!

it's going to be an interesting few months with the far-right whack jobs vying for leadership positions in the GOP...and if boehner steps down as was previously predicted, it's going to be a free-for-all.

^ The Republicans are cannibalizing themselves.

Anyway, I do hope the combined efforts of the tea parties various have finally demonstrated to the American citizenry how to savour and enjoy decent tea.

^ Fat chance Americans still prefer coffee. The second tea party was created by the Koch brothers and they just like to get teabagged. The don't care to drink it.

Originally Posted by bsnub

The second tea party was created by the Koch brothers and they just like to get teabagged.

I was referring to people with taste and refinement.

^Right. The brits can have their tea and mine.

Originally Posted by sabang

Originally Posted by bsnub

The second tea party was created by the Koch brothers and they just like to get teabagged.

I was referring to people with taste and refinement.

Surely not republicans then..

Cantor's loss was a case of over confidence and failure by him and his high paid consultants to take the opponent seriously.
Brat (great name) got out the tea party vote by playing the "displeasure with congress" angle. Cantor failed to counter via a campaign aimed at grass roots townhall meetings and the like. Guess he figured out spending Brat 20 to 1 would assure a win.
Live and learn Eric.

Doubt Boehner will step down now. GOP can't afford anymore "interesting few months".

Incumbant Dems should take notice. They too may well get tossed out on their ears by voters who's opinion of the current congress is lower than whale feces.

Originally Posted by Norton

Cantor's loss was a case of over confidence and failure by him and his high paid consultants to take the opponent seriously.

Actually I think it was his failure to act like a racist douchebag and promise to kick out all the spics that cost him.

Live voter feed below.

racism played a significant role in cantor's loss.

Originally Posted by bsnub

^ The Republicans are cannibalizing themselves.

couldn't happen to a better bunch,