Tea Party Boise – April 15th…And A Couple Of Comments

* Back from the Boise Tea Party, I was stunned by how many people were there.  I will post some more images on another page on the site.

-OMB

Just  a PSA for our local Tea Party folks who have worked hard to put this together, please visit the Tea Party Boise site for details.

I left some comments on tax policy over on their blog so I thought I might as well post them here as well.   I kind of went on another 17th amendment diatribe…

You know, I’ve heard a lot of debate over what the appropriate method of taxation, as a replacement to our current system, would be. Whether it be the ‘fair’ or ‘flat’ variety really doesn’t matter. The problem with these approaches is that they both legitimize current level of taxation! There is no justification for the Federal government to taking in excess of 20% of GDP in federal taxes and any replacement system that continues this level of taxation, i.e. is ‘revenue neutral’ as the proponents claim, will be just as egregious and will have the same negative consequences that the current system has for the economy. More importantly, the discussion of how the government takes our money distracts from the real problem we face and really doesn’t do anything to address it – out of control federal spending.  Why does the federal government pursue these spending policies? The answer is simple – because they can, and it is in their interests to do so. So, was the system the Framers set up flawed? No, it wasn’t. Unfortunately, we haven’t lived under that system since final ratification of the 17th Amendment, which put the composition of the Senate into the hands of the general population instead of in the hands of the State houses.

The Framers realized that each house of Congress needed to serve a separate agenda. The House of Representatives would be selected by the people and represent the populist agenda, the Senate would be elected by each State’s legislature which bind the State houses directly into the Federal system and ensured that the practicalities of running the States was represented within the national legislative process. Ever heard of the ‘unfunded mandates’ resulting from our federal budget process? These would never occur with the Senators responsible to the State legislatures for reelection.
As it stands, we basically have two bodies in congress with the same agenda – getting re-elected. We may as well close the Senate and have one big house of representatives. This is what has made the lobbyists so powerful in Washington D.C.. It would be very difficult for lobbyists to influence members of all state houses to elect a particular Senator to serve their agenda.
So, when John McCain was running around prior to McCain-Feingold saying ‘the system is broken’ he was right – but he didn’t have a clue as to why. The system was broken during the particularly shortsighted administration of Woodrow Wilson, who also saddled us with the 16th Amendment, authorizing the federal income tax system, and the Federal Reserve Act. You may disagree, but Federal spending as a percentage of GDP was a constant 3-4% as far back as 1875, after reconstruction up to 1917. The government lived within its means because it had to do so. You can look at the charts, the 17th amendment was finally ratified in ~1916 and federal spending has been heading up in a linear fashion ever since. And yes, the income tax was passed at this time, but spending and tax policy have been disconnected since the inception of these two Amendments. One has little to do with the other. The spending side can’t be fixed until the 17th amendment is repealed and the system is restored to it’s original structure.
I have some links and a couple of articles on the impact of the 17th amendment on my website, libertybunker.com.
Having said all of that, I do plan on attending the Tea Party in Boise, but people need to do the root cause analysis here and work to fix the system, not just replace it with another that is destined to fail because it doesn’t address the underlying structural issues that have caused the great majority of our deficit spending problems.

A couple of comments on the Tea Parties in general.  I see this as a movement grown out of a growing sense of frustration and disenfranchisement on the part of many taxpaying Americans who’ve just had enough and can’t make sense of the path of reckless spending and bailouts.  I share that sentiment.  I’m just a little alarmed when I see Glenn Beck and Newt Gingrich, in my opinion, co-opting the movement to their own ends.  My take on Newt was he had his chance, he did some good – but not enough!  And I honestly believe the last thing that this truly populist movement needs is an national media spokesman/cheerleader like Glenn Beck.  (I can take him in small doses, but on the whole, I don’t have a favorable opinion of him, believe it or not).

Newt has habit of riding whichever horse is winning to push his big tent, centrist Republicanism.  It’s not that I don’t agree with him on some things, but he always seems to be offering his own type of big government as an alternative to the Communists – er, I mean Democrats.  Beck is a shameless, constantly self-promoting, pseudo-conservative that, in my opinion is somehow trying to make himself out as the defacto tea party movement leader, issuing statements like ‘Please, don’t make this about Obama or I can’t  support it’, or ‘its not a Democrat( Communist) or Republican thing’.  Whatever Glenn – just so long as you don’t get a picture snapped of you attending the tea party in San Antonio with anti-Obama sign in the background.  Worried about those ratings, huh?

I say who gives a rat’s ass if he ‘can support the tea party movement’?  He didn’t create it, and in many ways, Obama did create this movement!  Why shouldn’t people express discontent over the path Obama has taken?  Obama is an extremely polarizing individual.  He should know that people are upset with his actions if that’s their motivation to attend the tea parties.

Anyway, I’m going to go check it out and maybe snap a few pictures.

-OMB