Aug 29th 2011, 2:22:06
AE: I thought the main tenant of the Tea Party was shrinking government, and weakening the control of the central government, and putting historically government provided services and regulation back in the hands of private industry?
Or is the Tea Party not quite as libertarian as I thought? My main issue with the libertarians is that the while the government is terrible at regulating private industry, private industry is worse at regulating itself. If you want an example of that, look at the Schools Construction Corporation in New Jersey. It was run by construction company executives, who returned to their prior employment after they siphoned the money away. McGreevey gets the blame for it (and he definitely deserves some of it for leaving the foxes in charge of that particular hen house).
That and the social conservatism of the majority of the candidates the tea party backs (as the son-in-law of a lesbian couple, "protection of marriage" is a non-starter for me, and as someone who was raised in Judaism, trying to sell me a christian based government for our christian based society is not the way to win my vote).
To set the stage, I am a moderately successful professional (not an attorney, and not as financially successful as you) who in addition to serving private clients also does quite a bit of public sector contracting (providing professional services), at all levels (municipal, county, state, interstate, and federal). I am also closely involved in reviewing my municipality's budget (a role I volunteer for). On that basis I have a pretty good idea of how government functions, and where it is efficient, and where it isn't. I also see a hell of a lot of waste, an awful lot of which benefits certain lobbies and interest groups which are either publicly backing or bankrolling the tea party movement (again in my state, may be different at the local level).
While it may not be true of the national movement, the local tea party seems to be pretty interested in passing the buck down the line - here it's passing it from the state government to local governments (which in my experience tend to be less well run, and more at risk for corruption, and more profitable for those with the right connections, which here means to right attorney).
As a professional who gets most of my work based on the merits of my ability, rather than political connections, I would rather work with many of the state agencies that the local tea party is trying to shut down, because they are far more competent than the many of the local governmental entities I've worked for.
