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Tea Parties

3K views 13 replies 6 participants last post by  zxrider 
#1 ·
Anyone going to one today? There is one here and a big one in Atlanta, but I have to much to do to get away. Thoughts anyone?
 
#2 ·
I almost took the day off work to go to one, but I had to sue someone at work today, so I got hosed!

The Boston Tea Party started over a 3% (that's right, I said THREE PERCENT) tax increase on tea!!! Less than a month ago taxes on tobacco (which disproportionately is consumed by people BELOW the poverty line) went up 2,653% for certain types. The MINIMUM it went up was 158%!!!! (http://ryorevolution.com/ryo-schip-table.html)

I don't know about you, but I'm moving to Texas! Gov Perry has the right idea, or reinstituting and revitilizing the 10th Ammendment to the Constitution of THESE United States (that would be the one that says that any power not assigned by the Constitution to the Federal Government remains that of the STATES). Can you tell I'm pissed?

There's a revolution stirring here. Are you ready for it?
 
#3 ·
One going on in my town, but like mkeeney, I'm a bit too busy to go to it unfortunately.

Personally, I think they're a great idea. I hope the government starts to get the hint pretty quickly. Something needs to be done.
 
#4 ·
I posted elsewhere that I don't understand this. My taxes went down about a month ago by several hundred dollars. Is this a protest about what taxes might be like in 2-5 years? And I presume this is about taxes since that's what the Boston Tea Party was about. It actually was a surprise to me to learn of it only a couple of days ago, but I'm not a registered Repub and don't watch their media outlet, Fox News.
 
#5 ·
I'm not a Republican either. You know, there was a time in our nation's history when one of the WORST insults you could say to a man was to call him a "Party Man." I tend to follow that philosophy.

As for the tax issue, yes, the Boston Tea Party was about a direct tax increase w/o representation, so to that affect, this is not a repeat of the "Tea Party." The term simply became a battle cry for people who felt that no matter what they told their "representatives" it fell on deaf ears. The fact of the matter is that is that government spending MUST be looked at over a long term basis, because there are only three ways for it to come up w/ money; TAX which in most cases is a permanent, long-term solution; BORROW which puts future generations on the hook for the tab PLUS interest; or INFLATE which is just a way of digging yourself deeper into a hole. Currently, the US Federal Government is doing ALL THREE!!!

The Bush Tax Cuts are set to expire in 2010 with no proposal to keep them around. THAT'S AN INCREASE. As I already stated, tobacco tax has gone through the roof. There's a lot of talk in congress about taxing gas to the point of keeping it at $4/gal to discourage driving big cars (that ppl tend to WANT).

We have borrowed so much money from foreign countries (especially China) that most of them don't want to give us any more. Our deficit for THIS YEAR ALONE is $1.8 Trillion. For those of you who don't know what a Trillion looks like, it looks like this: "1,000,000,000,000." That's $300 for every person ON THE PLANET!!! Over the course of the next 10 years we're looking at a deficit of over $19 Trillion. The debt to other countries carries an interest of $800 Billion/year!

With all that, the Federal Reserve has been printing money like there's no tomorrow. In fact, they've OFFICIALLY monetized the debt now (http://www.geldpress.com/2009/03/fed-monetizes-debt/). Name one country for me which has EVER, in the history of all known civilization, monetized it's debt and survived as anything more than a Banana Republic.

I am know a "right wing activist," I'm just someone who pays great attention to what is going on, as well as what HAS gone on in the past all over the world. However, according to the Dept of Homeland Security, I am now an "extremest white-power militia member" because I believe in States' Rights (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/04/14/homeland-security-report_n_186834.html hardly a right-wing news outlet! The report is displayed in it's entirety about 1/4 of the way down).

I am proud to call myself a "disgruntled war vet" because I took an oath "...to support and defend the Constitution of these United States against ALL enemy, foreign and DOMESTIC..." I will NOT sit idly by while everything I fought for; everything my brothers and sisters DIED for is just thrown out like last week's garbage! Call me what you will, but I love my freedom, and I'll be damned if anyone, right, left or otherwise is gonna take it away from me!
 
#6 ·
Uh, ok.

So if I sum it up I think you're saying it was an event to increase political activism. Ok.
 
#8 ·
I'm not affiliated with any political party. I tend to be fiscally conservative, and socially moderate. I don't pay much attention to Fox, CNN, or any other news giant.

My concern is the spending. It is not sustainable, even if the government does all 3 things that armymedic was talking about. We're already in debt. It took a long time to build up the $10T mark that we hit when W was in office. The way things are looking, Obama will have it doubled in a single term. That's downright scary.

I like the fact that people are getting out and letting the government know that they're fed up.
 
#9 ·
I don't think the overall movement is orginized enough to have much of a point, aside from "we do not like this". A wakeup moment for me was when I realized that spending on this problem to date actually exceeds the inflation adjusted cost of ww2. That means a great deal more to me, than how many cargo planes it takes to carry that much money or something like that.

The official line in the beginning (even at the end of the bush years) was that bank failures must be prevented lest the financial infrastructure collapses. I still have no idea if this is true or not. The second point was the Keynesian theory that gov't should spend borrowed money to push the country to a higher state of output. The theory there is that markets are sticky, so it takes time for the dollar to d evaluate itself, and before it does so, you got some extra energy to work with. This point strikes me as less true now than its was in the previous century, due to all the improvements in our information networks. The stickiness that used to give gov'ts months of artificial energy, may not only work for a few hours.

But even if both points are true, I'm still not satisfied that the current course is necessarily a very good one. It is not enough for money to be spent, it must be spent relativly well, on things that will improve productivity. I see absolutely no sign of that happening. The stimulus bill was an 800 page monster that got approved 48 hours after it was written, which means that no one read it in its entirety, so its hard to argue that this was money well spent. If the administration wanted to shock the economy into a higher productive state by increasing the money supply, it would have been better off to send every person a check. It would have worked much faster that the current spending plans. However, the current spending plans drastically increasing the public sector, at the expense of the private one. Public sector employees tend to vote a certain way, while private sector is divided. Also, private sector tends to be more productive, but whose counting...
What makes me wonder is the latest "tax decrease". I'm all for lower taxes (a tax, by definition, is a wedge between supply and demand, making the market less efficient), but what we see now is not a tax decrease, its an adjustment to the withholding tables, so the $10 a week we see on our checks just means more to pay at the end of the year. That strikes me as political suicide.
 
#12 ·
Vash's informative post
I had no idea the spending was that high relative to WW2.

The U.S. government couldn't ask for a better opportunity than it has right now to significantly advance socialism in our country, and they're taking advantage of it. GM is being led down a primrose path by the treasury department. If it does not file bankruptcy, it will never be a viable company again because of the strings that will be attached by the government with its "assistance." It will always be a ward of the state, and Congress will have to continually legislate GM into profitability at the expense of other auto makers.

Rather than spending money to try to fix a financial problem, our country would be better off if Congress were to remove some of the road blocks to profitability. Sarbanes-Oxley would be a good place to start.

Off-topic: How was the wedding?
 
#11 ·
Roflmao! What has the world came to when I'm identified as a texan?
 
#13 ·
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yREOUxo6Qdc

Here is helpful video courtesy of reason magazine.

Here is a new development that strikes me as concerning. Background: The idea behind the TARP program was to prop up banks to they would not fail. In the age of fractional reserve banking, a perception of a failing bank can result in a failing bank, even if there are no other problems. If people do not invest their money in a bank for fear of its failure, then a bank cannot meet its obligation and will fail. For this reason, the fed kept the recipient of its loans secret, lest investors avoid the banks taking bailout money for fear of the bank failure. Or the banks not take the money for fear of spooking investors.
Another strategy taken by the fed was to persuade banks in good health to take some tarp money, to remove the failure stigma from the program. It doesn't really matter if this was a good idea or not, since it already happened.
Now banks found out that this money comes with certain conditions, like, Don't pay people too much, Lend money to whom we want to regardless of how you feel about it, and most importantly, do whatever else we decide we want you to do. See the gov't can just keep tacking on conditions whenever if feels like. I have to say, the bankers should have seen this coming... but at least they are aware of it now. So the banks that can would like to repay back that money to free themselves of the leash...

Only our gov't wont let them!
Strong banks will be allowed to repay bail-out funds they received from the US government but only if such a move passes a test to determine whether it is in the national economic interest, a senior administration official has told the Financial Times.

“Our general objective is going to be what is good for the system,” the senior official said. “We want the system to have enough capital.”
In other words, the banks have to do the gov'ts bidding because it loaned them money, but they cannot pay this money back, even if they can...

Wait, it gets worse. There were repayment provisions in these loans. If the bank is unable to repay the loan, it is obligated to print preferred stock to cover the loan value which it will then hand to the gov't. Which is fine as a last resort, if the bank cannot pay the money back, then the gov't can take over a huge chunk of the bank. But what happens if the banks are prevented from paying the loan back?

The Obama administration has a plan to continue bailing out America’s banks without asking Congress for more money — by converting its loans to common stock, and in turn taking a large ownership stake in the companies.

Though such a move could stir fears of de facto nationalization, The New York Times reported Monday that President Obama’s advisers are floating the idea as way to extend the remainder of the $700 billion bank bailout fund.
The socialist criticism of FDR was that while he nationalized a great deal of the country, he left the banking system in private hands, even while having the opportunity to crush them. Obama does not seem to want to repeat that "mistake".


Off topic: The wedding was a great time to be had by all. For some reason, my friends showed up half dressed up in kilts, and half in pirate costumes. They planned the costumes as a joke, but failed to agree on which costumes they were going with... The end result was that the wedding cake got cut with a $3,000 claymore sword...
 
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