9. Stop the Pork: I think limiting the use of earmarks is a good thing. If government organizations don't have their funds micro-managed by Congress then they have the flexibility they need to be efficient and effective, and perhaps this will reduce the special favors granted to lobbyists.
10. Stop the Tax Hikes: I dislike paying taxes as much as the next guy, but I honestly believe that since we aren't going to reduce the over-abundant coffers of the military and that BP will not bear the cost of cleaning up the Gulf of Mexico effectively, adding in the fact that we've had an ongoing deficit that the current economic slump has deepened, the money has to come from somewhere. It's sad but we need to do what we can to improve our future.
Yes, I'd rather have the extra cash in my pocket, but I'm also thankful for the unemployment extensions and tax cuts that have helped so many through this recession. It sucks, but if the government honestly reduces the deficit, it's worth it to me. Sure, we could pull out of Iraq and Afghanistan and use those funds to pay down the debt while saving the lives of our service members, but we all know that won't happen. We could repeal all the extravagant tax cuts for the oil companies. We could legalize marijuana and tax it. We could legalize prostitution and tax it. We're not going to do those things, though. It will come out of our pockets and it's the price we pay to keep from sinking into an economic Depression as bad as or worse than that our grandparents and great-grandparents lived through.
We've had national debt for decades, long before it started to climb out of control in the ‘80s. What people tend to forget is that our national debt went way out of control during the ‘40s, when our national debt equated to 120 percent of our GDP. It took us until the ‘70s to bring that back down to a reasonable level. Right now, our national debt equates to approximately 80-90 percent of our GDP. Is it scary? Of course it is, but we have been here before. We handled it then and we can handle it now.
Maybe there is some small truth in Tim's assertion that liberals don't like white, male, 45- year-old Republicans. I think it's the median age we don't like: 45. While their parents survived the Great Depression and a World War, the folks currently in their mid-to-late 40s and early 50s had to survive Abba, the Berlin Wall collapsing, the flourishing economy of the late ‘80s and the ‘90s, a President's getting nookie on the side, and the amazing advances of the tech industry. They had the limited Gulf War but haven't had their generation swept up in the aimless morass of Vietnam, Afghanistan, or the current Iraqi war. It has nothing to do with their being white, male, or Republican; it has to do with their sense of entitlement and jaded pessimism.
As a liberal Pagan, I think I have enough in common with the Tea Party Movement to engage in respectful, serious, and practical dialogue about how to solve the problems facing our nation. Our civic pride and values are very similar. We love liberty, America, and a strong economy. We simply don't always agree with how to preserve those things.
What do I really think about the Tea Party Movement? I think they have interesting ideas, ones that need to be discussed, debated, and taken seriously nationwide. The Tea Party is a corrective action taken against the lack of public discourse about the direction of our country. Politics was once the dinner table conversation of America. Now, we so readily accept all "news" as entertainment that we bypass those posing as objective reporters and go straight to the clown-pundits: Coulter, Colbert, Beck, and Stewart.
I sympathize with the problems the Tea Party has had with the media, with fringe elements, and with being taken seriously. Pagans have been dealing with those issues since the ‘60s and could offer a few pointers, if they'd care to listen. The Modern Pagan Movement is grappling with how to form loose unions in which to promote the interests of our very different autonomous Pagan groups without infringing on their liberties or imposing values on them from the outside. We as a religious movement are deeply engaged in the same issues as the Republic in which we stand. We like tea, we like parties, and we could learn from each other. We should talk.
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