I take issue with the idea that the Tea-Party has any concrete belief system. It is an amorphous reaction by sections of the public in response various circumstances. A lot of those people come from NASA territory and I believe if you were to call them, "anti-science," they would fire back with something like, "you're anti-freedom," or "Obama is anti-space exploration." Many so-called liberals are just as bigoted and irrational as any self-identified conservative. Conservatives tend to consider them rationalists, whereas liberals consider themselves humanitarians. Of course in contemporary discourse these lines are blurred to the point of indiscernibility where arguments like, "it is rational to save every single baby regardless to the cost to the mother," or "it is humanitarian to kill large swaths of the population of the world to preserve resources," persist. I suggest that everyone refrain from using characterizations from corporate media outlets to frame arguments regarding mass political movements or the economic state of countries around the world.
Now that Unilever, Sean Penn, President Obama, George Soros and the like have come out in support of the OWS protests, as the Koch Brothers, Sean Hannity and similar entities seemed to co-opt the Tea-Party before it, one must ask oneself, what is the true story here?
As for my personal opinion. I believe in:
- a 1% wallstreet tobin tax
- the abolishment of the federal income tax.
- an across the board sales tax of 7%
- a tariff on imports above the sales tax
- a moratorium on on student loan and mortgage dept from the largest institutions pending bankruptcy proceedings and possible reorganization
- the enforcement of of bankruptcy convention on all financially suspect entities including all of the TBTF banks
- an immediate end to all foreign occupations and illegal unprovoked wars
- the immediate nationalization of the Federal Reserve and an increase in interest rates
- wide spread funding for science and engineering projects and agencies including NASA
- wide spread funding for public infrastructure projects including transportation, energy, healthcare, ocean and space
- the reinstating of the Glass-Steagal reforms
- An international treaty of science, engineering and infrastructure cooperation with China and Russia.
- the end to costly government policies such as the drug war
- the end through gradual attrition of many seemingly pointless, redundant and antagonizing government agencies such as the ATF, DEA, IRS, FEMA, DHS, FDA and so on.
You may not agree with all of it, but I would be hard-pressed to believe that every person on this forum does not agree with at least one item on this list.