The last tea party I went to the dormouse got jam in the watch and then fell asleep in the teapot.

>>>>http://roomfordebate.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/04/15/what-tea-party-backers-want/?hp
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>>> The picture that emerges is exactly what I have been saying: well off white people who are mad as hell that they don't have everything to themselves any more.
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>>These "well off white people" are mad for more than just the threat to their prosperity.
>>Most of them will be ok, even if taxes go up.
>>They are mad that the government is actively destroying the wealth of this great country.
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>>The Golden Goose of capitalism is still laying eggs, even though she is weakened by giving blood as well as eggs.
>>If we take a bit more blood and a lot of feathers, how will she do then?
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>>The only argument for increasing tax rates is to punish the well off as a class warfare thing.
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>>If they want to increase tax REVENUE, they need to lower rates NOW.
>>If they want to increase well being of all citizens in this country, they need to get rates lower yet.
>>This is not ideology - tax revenue went up for the JFK tax cut and for every tax cut since.
>>http://www.freedomworks.org/publications/tax-cut-revenue-rewards
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>>If however, your goal is to punish the well off for the sin of having plenty while others go without, perhaps it does not matter.
>>Perhaps it is ok to increase child hunger while punishing millionaires.
>>Perhaps it is ok to push more families into poverty because small businesses lay people off to survive tax increases.
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>>The "invisible hand" of capitalism has nothing to do with fairness, yet it has lifted whole nations out of misery into prosperity.
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>>I get the sense that you believe a lot more in Robin Hood than in Adam Smith.
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>Nope. Although I believe Adam Smith's theory of a free market as some miracle caterer has been pretty well discredited. Two years ago the relatively untrammeled free market demonstrated just how much damage it can do to all of us.
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>I am not a complete debunker or anti-capitalist. Economically, greed is good -- up to a point. There needs to be a countervailing force. There are bills in play now to bring the financial industry back under oversight. Predictably, Republicans are against them. Mitch McConnell is reportedly strategizing jointly with bankers on how to torpedo these bills.
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>I mention only in passing that we had no significant financial catastrophes between the Great Depression, when the SEC, FDIC, and other safeguards were put in place, and two years ago. History will properly judge the deregulation Ronald Reagan brought about to be an invitation for the snakes to slither back into the garden. Simply put, these guys cannot be trusted to care about anyone's interests but their own. Not necessarily so good for the rest of us.
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>No one -- not Bush, not Obama, not Bernanke, NO ONE -- would have chosen to take on this much debt. Drastic times call for drastic measures. This was the most serious financial crisis of my lifetime, which I hope it remains. It astounds me that some have already forgotten, or missed completely, how close we came to the precipice, and choose to view it through the same old tax-and-spend prism.