Tag: Tea Party

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Accountability general freedom ideological culture media and media people national politics & policies political challengers porkbarrel politics Regulating Protest responsibility tax policy too much government

“Our Agenda Was Common Sense”

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The Republican Party doesn’t need to bury the corpse. Its victim has been assimilated, like the Borg did with alien peoples in the Star Trek universe, or maybe it was just soaked up as if the GOP were a giant fungus amongus.

So, what’s dead? The Tea Party, which was killed by partisanship, says Matt Kibbe, President and Chief Community Organizer at Free the People. He admits that the movement’s obituary has been written many times, but, he argues, “this time is different. Republicans, now controlling both the legislative and executive branches, jammed through a ‘CRomnibus’ spending bill that strips any last vestiges of spending restraint from the budget process.”

Kibbe identifies the Tea Party’s central theme simply: “Our agenda was common sense: We demanded that Washington politicians stop spending our money like it was theirs, and keep out of our health care. But in Washington, common sense is often seen as radical.”

This, he insists, was not a partisan movement. 

But only Republicans played to it. Kibbe calls Sarah Palin a “political huckster” who “helped hijack our purpose,” and fingers Mitt Romney as the man who scuttled Tea Party “political momentum” in 2012. “And then Donald Trump split the Tea Party right down the middle, and that was the end.”

Nail in the coffin? The recent budget deal.

Kibbe signs the autopsy, but assures us: “American principles of individual freedom, fiscal responsibility, and constitutionally limited government, are all still very much alive.”

I sure hope so. But it takes more than a handful of Freedom Caucus members on Capitol Hill to realize it in practice.

Like a new citizen movement. 

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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folly general freedom ideological culture meme nannyism national politics & policies too much government

Ignore Those Pesky Extremists!

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We have nothing to fear from BIG GOVERNMENT!

Click below for high resolution image:

Elizabeth Warren, Extremists, extremism, Tea Party, Big Government, Statism, collage, photomontage, illustration, Jim Gill, Paul Jacob, Common Sense, meme, memes

 

 

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judiciary national politics & policies tax policy

IRS Re-​Unleashed

Outrageous. That’s the best word for the recent court decision letting the Internal Revenue Service off the hook for ideologically targeting organizations that apply for tax-​exempt status.

True the Vote, which combats voter fraud, sued the Internal Revenue Service because of the tax agency’s deliberate obstruction of applications from Tea Party and conservative organizations like True the Vote. The long delay in approval was costly in part because many prospective contributors to TTV had been awaiting the granting of 501(c)(3) status before going ahead with their donations. True the Vote’s president, Catherine Engelbrecht, was also harassed by other government agencies after submitting the application to IRS.

Nevertheless, Judge Reggie Walton has cavalierly dismissed the suit, asserting that the eventual granting of the tax-​exempt status means that the IRS had taken adequate “remedial steps to address the alleged behavior.”

Following the same exalted principle of jurisprudence, Walton would presumably dismiss charges against a mugger so long as at some point the arrested criminal had tossed the wallet back to his victim.

The dismissal, no matter how outrageous, is not in the tiniest bit surprising.

IRS personnel often behave as if they may assault our rights (e.g., to our bank accounts) with impunity, so long as they occasionally defer to our protests by announcing temporary or cosmetic reforms. Others in government cooperate in letting the agency run riot. Perhaps because they agree that the IRS (maybe themselves, too) should enjoy virtually unlimited power over us.

Or perhaps simply because they, like the rest of us, are scared of the IRS.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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general freedom ideological culture

How to Occupy Hong Kong

The fight for freedom doesn’t stop at the border.

Hong Kongers, we are with you.

Your protest against continued tyranny by mainland China is a just cause. The Communist Party of China may no longer be in Marx’s pocket, but its members remain greedy and dictatorial and oppressive.

Leung, the governor of Hong Kong, refuses to step down. Tyrants do cling to power. (No term limits for them!) But the people have every right to demand his ouster under a principle established in our own revolution: Government must rest upon the consent of the governed.

I have no idea how this will all turn out. Ever since the Tiananmen protests, a generation ago, I’ve harbored hope: a freer future for the Chinese. But I know they are up against a juggernaut, an extremely entrenched exploiter class. The Tiananmen protests were violently put down, suppressed. Will Hong Kong’s be?

I think the people of Hong Kong know what they’re up against. All Chinese people know how corrupt and dangerous their government is. But the details, the exact history of the crimes? Not so much. Kept under wraps. Still, the people of Hong Kong developed a taste for freedom under the Brits. If not a taste for democratic elections. Now they are demanding both electoral democracy and democratic freedoms.

The protesters “occupying” Hong Kong have American analogues. But are they “Occupier” or “Tea Party”?

They aren’t demanding socialistic levels of more government. And they aren’t trespassing, or committing crimes. And they pick up after themselves.

That’s the way to “occupy” a city: For freedom, responsibly.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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free trade & free markets ideological culture

Big Business vs. Big Liberty

“Incumbents Fear Cantor’s Loss Will Fill Tea Party’s Sails” is the headline.

Before a few days ago, GOP establishmentarians felt that they had finally quelled the Tea Party notion that Republicans should be more than 2 to 4 percent different from Democrats on whether the country should suffer a socialist health care industry, endless tsunamis of red ink, etc.

Coca-ColaCertain big businesses also hate Tea-​Party-​style boat-​rocking. In his article “Big Business Vs. Libertarians in the GOP,” David Boaz observes that candidates who plausibly oppose crony capitalism are drawing opposition from firms like Coca Cola, Delta, Georgia Power, and AT&T. These and the Georgia Chamber of Commerce created a “Georgia Coalition for Job Growth” to defeat Republican Charles Gregory and other candidates who are “just too libertarian” for them.

What do these anti-​liberty businesses — in Georgia, Kentucky, California and elsewhere — fear? The lower taxes that real-​deal Tea Party candidates support?

No.

And it isn’t “gay marriage or foreign policy that seems to annoy big and politically connected businesses,” writes Boaz. Who they oppose are representatives who refuse to “bring home the bacon,” who “actually take seriously the limited government ideas that most Republicans only pay lip service to.”

Don’t be shocked to witness big businesses working against limited government, welcoming regulation and subsidy as a way of life.

Why? Because the “mixed economy” approach (whether mercantilist, “progressive,” fascist, what-​have-​you) allows them to rig the system in their favor, usually by discouraging competition.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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political challengers

Brat Beats Cantor

Yesterday, House Majority Eric Cantor (R‑Va.) received a solid thumping by Tea Party-​supported Dave Brat in Virginia’s Republican Party primary.

That bounce in my step today? Not schadenfreude.

Americans have always loved the underdog, and certainly Brat qualified as one: Cantor was expected to crush his underfunded challenger. Slate’s Dave Weigel reported that the Cantor campaign “spent nearly $1 million in the final weeks, while Brat struggled to spend six figures.”Dave Brat and Eric Cantor

Brat, a Randolph Macon College economics professor, says he’s “a free-​market guy,” and proudly admits, “I do want to scale down Washington, DC.” He also signed the U.S. Term Limits pledge and dubbed himself “Cantor’s term-limit.”

By a dozen percentage points, no less.

Brat hammered Cantor on the immigration issue — on which I side with neither Brat nor Cantor — but the defeat of this major congressional leader was about far more than that single issue. It was about leadership and trust … or the lack thereof.

Our so-​called leaders aren’t leading.

And the Republican grassroots refuse to blindly follow.

Well-​known conservative activist Brent Bozell, head of ForAmerica, a group that attacked Cantor, called the upset “an apocalyptic moment for the GOP establishment,” adding, “The grassroots is in revolt and marching.”

Several TV talking heads spoke about the fear the Republican congressional leadership has of its own party’s rank-​and-​file. Great! I hope Republicans will keep GOP politicians scared. And Democrats will do the same with theirs. And Libertarians and Greens will help stir the caldron.

This is the biggest upset since those crazy term limits folks took out House Speaker Tom Foley back in 1994.

And I feel fine.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.