A few thoughts on the tea party....

Virginia Tea Party Patriots leader Jamie Radtke went after the Republican establishment Thursday during an address to the Senate Tea Party caucus.

During her address to the caucus, National Journal reports Radtke said, "The Tea Party movement would not exist today if the Republicans had not failed under the Bush years."

Radtke was among a number of speakers at the first caucus meeting. She was joined by Republican Sens. Jim DeMint (S.C.), Rand Paul (Ky.) and Mike Lee (Utah) and Americans for Tax Reform President Grover Norquist, Tea Party Express Chairman Amy Kremer, Americans for Prosperity President Tim Phillips, and FreedomWorks President Matt Kibbe.

Radtke was the first Republican to enter the Virginia Senate race, and will be competing against former senator George Allen (R) for the opportunity to face Sen. Jim Webb (D). Radtke has already established that she will be running to Allen's right, calling Allen a member of the "Washington establishment." Radtke worked for Allen briefly after college.

Radtke has said that, if elected, she would join the Senate tea party caucus formed by Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) and that she would support a bill proposed by Paul to cut $500 billion in federal spending.

So The Tea Party is rejecting Bush's policies? Which Bush? The one of the First Gulf War or the one who started the second two?

This is probably a bad sign for both the GOP and the Tea Party, though. If the Tea Party is going to expect people to read their lips on "no new taxes," at least in some cases, they're going to disappoint. It's happened before. Worse, their also going to face the demand of blue-collar people and small business owners for welfare, unemployment benefits and government loans and entitlements to pay for their children's college or to keep their business' afloat.

The issue may not be about government expenditure though. The issue may be the resentment of people in "the fly-over states" for paying to a government without benefits. In a sense, they may really just resent getting flown over.

To solve the problems of either Bush administration, or any other one, the government would just have to put an ear back to the ground. When it doesn't, side groups of the far right, the far left, or the narrow center, can simply exploit a few large issues to ride into office.

Just a few thoughts....

A few thoughts on Social Security

Economics has rarely been the straightforward exchange of goods for money from the textbooks. A few abstractions, perhaps even white lies, come into play, and strangely,they actually tend to improve the economy and therefore social security.

Now, for the worth of a given company's stock to rise or fall without the introduction of a new service, product or procedure (i.e., without a change in the worth of the company), investors either have to judge those stocks exchange by some standard other than the worth of the issuing company or find some cheaper way to finance or process their purchase; and all of these things do seem to occur. Traders have bought on Credit, pre-sold crashing stocks and cyber-traded entirely worthless ones. Each of these actions has helped to raise the overall price of stocks, and each has drawn criticism for its believed role in a serious downturn. Even in the face of stern efforts to prevent such creative finance however, someone will invent some new system of something and bring the economy to new highs while risking very sudden lows, and, as the economy often follows the market for some reason, Gross American income will rise, taking the tax base and social security with it. Certainly given the twenty-five years till the expected S.S. blowout it will.

Of course, we'll still have the stock market to worry about, but that may be an unavoidable and perhaps ultimately desirable constant.

Just a few thoughts.