Overqualified

Here's proof that you do not need to have a degree in a specific field to climb to the top:

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/01/business/01deese.html?ref=politics

This guy (Brian Deese) is 31 years old and still in Law School. Somehow he was appointed to run the Obama administration's car industry fiasco. It's a lofty position, akin to managing entire companies that the so-called "best of the best" couldn't manage to pull off.

Will Mr. Deese successfully handle this job? It depends on how you define success. Since the definition has not been set, we assume that "yes", he will eventually do something to claim success.

However, he has absolutely no experience running a company - not even a small-to-mid sized company. We have no doubt he's smart and tempered, but we'd also be willing to bet that he is not in his position because he understands business, but rather has a solid streak against market-based economics - and thus can be trusted to shek the right hands which keep the auto makers getting out the vote come elections day. His degree and training mean nothing -- and this should be a lesson that once you leave college, it's basically who you know and what you do with it after that. At least that's the lesson we're picking up.

Why else would you put someone who has worked political campaigns in charge of a massive capital allocation project such as this? It surely isn't to return the money to the taxpayers of the United States as efficiently as possible.

Does This Surprise Anyone?

What surprises me, is that people would fall for someone saying "this is being turned into a political issue" by someone whom has made his entire career of taking issues that can be solved reasonably and turning them into bitterly politicized slugfests.

Of course, the Republicans (big R) don't want to get too close to this because they don't want their past promises being compared too closely with their records.

It's time to clean house and vote all the bums out. If anyone has been proven to lie, or even close to it, let's just vote them out.

What Are Those People Complaining About?

We recently issued the Tea Party re-cap podcast. Please check it out by clicking the subscribe link at the top.

A lot of the traditional media has portrayed the tea party attendees as loons, crazy, belligerent and even racist. However, we were at the NYC Tea Party, and we wanted to wait until the sensationalism died down -- and then present the truth. We hope you'll give it a listen. You can link directly here:

http://tinyurl.com/pursuitcast

So, at the crux of the complaints is that the Tea Party participants don't know why they were there. This is not true. As to why we went, we can sum it up pretty concisely:

Our government has moved from a procedural structure based on a charter of negative liberties to a prescriptive hierarchy based on positive rights.

What this means - the government no longer believes its job is to do what is delegated to it, and to provide a framework for resolution of conflict amongst states ... but rather to issue dictates as to how people should live their lives and which segment of the population is worthy of benefit at the expense of another segment. This is the preliminary version of tyranny.

So, we went to observe and have our voices heard. We didn't buy into the Republican attempts to claim credit for the movement, and we definitely were not "guests" of anyone.

If you have a chance, please listen to our podcast about this, because we sincerely believe you'll see that the people attending (at least THESE people attending) were not angry/violent belligerents, nor racist, nor were we confused as to why we were there.

We met quite a few interesting people, of all ages - and all backgrounds. We'll have pictures forthcoming. We're sincerely glad to have met you.

It was also great to see that people were not fooled into being specifically fixated by the focus on President Barack Obama, but rather the dereliction of duty on behalf of the Congress.

Even though our podcast will explain that the "speakers did not deserve the crowd", we'd go to another one. The crowd was great! We highly recommend it.

Tea Parties, Tea Baggers and Racists

I have a confession - I was at the NYC Tea Party in downtown Manhattan.

I had heard in the days leading up to the event that all the participants in the event were being called "tea baggers". I am not sure what this was supposed to do. Maybe hurt our feelings so much that we wouldn't show up? At any rate, I did wonder out loud that, if I was called a "tea bagger" would that imply that I had tea-bagged the person laying the accusation? I would like to go on record and assure all the readers here that I did NOT tea bag Rachel Maddow, Keith Olberman or any member of the news media - no matter how many times it was requested.

The event itself yielded a great crowd. Anyone that was there for the event knows that even the highest estimates for the turnout (between 13,000 and 15,000) were a growss understatement of the actual size of the crowd. There were quite a few people lining both sides of the street. People of all age ranges, races, backgrounds were in attendance.

The speakers were undeserving of the crowd. You had a bunch of Young Republican types dressed in their best shimmering ties and Brookes Brothers suits, talking "at" the crowd. David Webb made some eerily race-related comments, which came off much differently than he intended them, I'm sure. Andrew Wilkow was decent, but he turned it into a radio commercial at the end. Finally Newt Gingrich got up and strangled any trust the crowd wa willing to afford him when he turned his back on the crowd in order to film some segments for Sean Hannity's show. The crowd, led by Mike and yours truly heckled him loudly and repeatedly, with others joining in as the tension built.

It was a real let down. I also think the "establishment Republican" crowd does not understand what is going on here. Apparently that night, several prominent Republicans used the Tea Party protest as a segue to propose a "flat tax" or "fair tax", which seems to be missing the boat. Also, it was clear from speaking with many people in the crowd that the large crowd was not out to protest in order to put a different bunch of liars in office to substitute for the hucksters that now occupy Capitol Hill.

As you'd expect, the news media - that is anyone with a press pass, interviewed anyone that might seem to have a screw loose and basically ignored anyone that seemed intelligent, even-tempered and eloquent. The following day, everyone attending the tea parties were labaled as racists and rednecks. As someone who was among the people in the crowd that night, I did not hear ANY mention of race in any discussion. I can't speak for anyone there, but I can say for sure that I didn't even consider race as a component of my decision to attend. It was simply to let the elected officials know that spending my money, and my family's future money on non-representative efforts will not be tolerated by sitting there and taking it. People want to know where these protests were during the Bush years - and I do too. That administration expanded powers to where they are today, and spent money that they did not have the authority to spend as well. Maybe the degree of offense was a bit less, but they still violated all the same principles that people are complaining about with regards to the Obama administration. If there had been a Tea Party in 2003 - I'd have been there. In fact, I did protest the unconstitutional war - and that's the point. I guess it has just gotten to a point where government is so over the line that people are shocked and amazed. The startling shift towards an all-powerful government has people worried that maybe the people in office are not acting to represent those they were elected to represent - and the "People" are beginning to expect they've gotten a raw deal. It has nothing to do with race, and very little do with political affiliation.

In my estimation, what you saw on April 15th was the beginning of an outpouring of general dissatisfaction with a non-representative government. I think you'll see more of it, and all the name-calling in the world isn't going to change the way people view a vote to spend their money in a way that does not represent them. The Republican attempt to co-opt the Tea Parties to ride the wave back into power is not going to work if they think someone else pulling the levers, with the same unprincipled bait-and-switch is not going to go well. When the average person in the street once again understands the importance of the founding ideals of this country, the scandalous politician is in serious trouble - and it won't matter on which side of the aisle he stands.

Thank You NYC!

We would just like to thank all the people we met and talked with yesterday.

Frank and I spoke with some amazing people who are clearly not crazy, extremists.

We are currently producing the next episode which will include our highlights and commentary from the crowd.

Please email or post in the comments any suggested items for show that we may have missed.

A special thanks to the Organizers and the NYPD. The event was smooth and peaceful.

Mike

Tea Party Podcast Now Available for Download

"Individual liberty is viable".

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Factions Then and Now

We mention The Federalist Papers #10 quite a bit, but it's worth a close look at Madison's brilliant work. The way things are today, with Machiavellian politics playing groups of people against one another, it gives some context to look back and see how they thought at the founding of America.

The most shocking thing is, this paper could have been written today and be directly applicable.