BS: Can someone please explain..

Subject: BS: Can someone please explain..
From: scouse
Date: 10 Nov 12 - 06:19 AM

OK,I live over here in "Cloggieland." an well versed in the news and current affairs but alas something somehow passed me by... What precisely is or whom are the "Tea Party.", were did they come from within the Republican Party and how powerful are they or it? a dispassionate reply would be appreciated.

As Aye,

Phil.

Subject: RE: BS: Can someone please explain..
From: sciencegeek
Date: 10 Nov 12 - 07:04 AM

if you are familiar with American history, you will know that the English rulers taxed tea and other commodities to "pay back" the cost of the French & Indian War that was fought in the colonies... giving rise to the cry "no taxation without representation" and eventually the American Revolution.

200 hundred years later that message has become distorted into the belief that the original tea party (destroying a cargo of tea) was a revote against taxes.. period!

the Tea Party arose from the Conservative Right and pledged "no new taxes" to their voters and they have been obstructing cooperation between and amoung the two houses of congress. A big thorn in their side is what is known as the Bush tax cuts. The federal surplus of $ left by the Clinton administration let the Bush administration feel it was OK to put in tax cuts which benefited both rich & poor - in the name of fairness.

The Tea Party regards removing the tax cuts as NEW taxes, when that would actually be restoration of the same tax structure that existed in the Clinton years. And completely disregards any need for fiscally responsible measures. The "I want to have my cake and eat it too" mentality.

But my analysis of the attitude of the voters who put these assholes in office is that they think that god is on their side and will make things right if they just stay the course. Obviously they never consider that god helps those who help themselves. And the ones "helping themselves" are the 1 percenters and it's our money they are helping themselves to. But then it has always been the gullible who make the best "marks" for con men.

Subject: RE: BS: Can someone please explain..
From: GUEST,leeneia
Date: 10 Nov 12 - 08:30 PM

Where is Cloggieland?

Subject: RE: BS: Can someone please explain..
From: Little Hawk
Date: 10 Nov 12 - 09:14 PM

Would that be the Netherlands?

Subject: RE: BS: Can someone please explain..
From: Bobert
Date: 10 Nov 12 - 09:19 PM

The current Tea Party = government hating Ayn Randers...

B~

Subject: RE: BS: Can someone please explain..
From: GUEST,Lighter
Date: 10 Nov 12 - 09:20 PM

The "Tea Party" isn't a "party," it's just a semi-organized - but quite influential - faction within the Republican Party.

Sometimes they rationalize their self-chosen silly name as "Taxed Enough Already." As sciencegeek says, it was inspired by the "Boston Tea Party," which wasn't a political party at all: just guys dressed as Indians (for effect) dumping many, many chests of tea into Boston harbor in 1773 - in a very risky protest.

Most Republican Congressmen have signed an "official" Tea Party-inspired pledge that they will never, under any circumstances, increase taxes on any American citizen. That's "under any circumstances."

A Tea Party bigshot on CNN yesterday was asked whether in light of Obama's re-election and the looming "fiscal cliff" (created mainly by Tea Party intransigence), the Party would be ready to "meet the Democrats half-way" on taxes.

TP logic: "No. Because if you go half-way over a cliff, you've still gone over the cliff. So we will not compromise."

Get the idea? Instead of protesting "taxation without representation," they're against federal taxation for any purpose except defense, federal law enforcement, Social Security, Medicare, and a few other basics.

Subject: RE: BS: Can someone please explain..
From: scouse
Date: 11 Nov 12 - 06:37 AM

I'm from Liverpool but lived over this neck end of the wood for 30 odd years. Yes indeed "Cloggieland." is my word the Netherlands and not as many call Holland, in fact I live in the province called Zuid Holland and Amsterdam is in Noord Holland.Quite confusing for someone living outside Europe, excluding England.


....Most Republican Congressmen have signed an "official" Tea Party-inspired pledge that they will never, under any circumstances, increase taxes on any American citizen. That's "under any circumstances."...

I find the above absolutely stupid! To have signed anything so idiotic and to sit in Congress belies belief.Taxes must rise and fall and everyone, depending on their income and economics should pay their due lot, in other words the more one earns the more one contributes it's self evident to my mind of thinking. Nothing is static!! The quicker these people are deselected from their place of power in Congress the better it will surely be for America.

Thanks for everything everyone and I'm sure this subject will ramble on and on.

I apolgise for my sometimes bad English grammar I have a habit of thinking in Dutch them directly translating it!!

As Aye,

Phil.

Subject: RE: BS: Can someone please explain..
From: GUEST,leeneia
Date: 11 Nov 12 - 11:04 PM

I have no respect for the so-called Tea Party myself. Some people would say that are ultra-right. I think they are so extreme that they slid right off the left-right scale.

Recently I learned that Americans (and maybe others) habitually call the Netherlands 'Holland' because in the 17th century traders from Holland carried goods and their name all over the world. When it comes to language, we don't bother about something trivial like the passing of 300 or 400 years.

I have been to Amsterdam twice and would like to visit the Netherlands again, seeing more of the country.

Subject: RE: BS: Can someone please explain..
From: Rob Naylor
Date: 12 Nov 12 - 02:24 AM

Sciencegeek: if you are familiar with American history, you will know that the English rulers taxed tea and other commodities to "pay back" the cost of the French & Indian War that was fought in the colonies... giving rise to the cry "no taxation without representation" and eventually the American Revolution.

To get things a bit more in perspective:

Local land and poll taxes in America were set, collected and used by the American colonial authorities. Besides that, hardly anyone actually paid them, so in that respect the local land and poll taxation was used locally, by the local "representation"

There *were* taxes on tea, but these were mainly global taxes. Other commodities had also been taxed, but only for a short time from 1767 to 1770, when all but the tea tax were repealed because they were so unpopular.

There were 2 taxes on tea: tax on importing it to Britain; and tax on importing it to America (at a very modest 3 pence in the pound, or 1.25%).

The "Tea Party" came about NOT because of Americans' dissatisfaction with local or tea taxes, but because the British government REPEALED the taxes on landing tea in Britian to help out the East India Company and to try and shift its huge stockpile. They also took away the requirement that tea destined for America be first landed and auctioned in Britain before onward trans-shipment.

So tea taxes were lowered and this cut the bottom out from under the large coterie of Boston Smugglers who'd been doing very nicely by bringing untaxed tea into America from Holland, and marking it up in America by about half the British duty. The loss of this duty meant that the smugglers now only had the 1.25% differential of the American import duty between legitimate prices and their smuggled goods prices....not enough to make significant money on.

So they got pissed off and organised the Boston Tea Party as a protest against the British having *lowered* tea taxes. The BTP was therefore led by a bunch of criminals and greedy fast-buck artists, not by the idealistic freedom-lovers usually presented!!!

Subject: RE: BS: Can someone please explain..
From: Henry Krinkle
Date: 12 Nov 12 - 02:48 AM

You can never believe school history books. Lies and propaganda. Very little truth.
=(:-( ))

Subject: RE: BS: Can someone please explain..
From: scouse
Date: 12 Nov 12 - 03:53 AM

You can never believe school history books. Lies and propaganda. Very little truth........So Henry enlighted us!!

As Aye,

Phil.

Subject: RE: BS: Can someone please explain..
From: Bert
Date: 12 Nov 12 - 04:25 AM

Oh scouse, I'm disappointed, I thought cloggieland had something to do with Bill Tidy.

Subject: RE: BS: Can someone please explain..
From: Henry Krinkle
Date: 12 Nov 12 - 04:32 AM

Enlightened Phil. You must spell words properly or we won't think that you ever attended school. And you don't want us to think that, do you?
=(:-( 0)

Subject: RE: BS: Can someone please explain..
From: Nigel Parsons
Date: 12 Nov 12 - 08:12 AM

Scouse:
I apolgise for my sometimes bad English grammar I have a habit of thinking in Dutch them directly translating it!!


Geen problem! :)

Subject: RE: BS: Can someone please explain..
From: GUEST,leeneia
Date: 12 Nov 12 - 08:34 AM

Correct, Nigel. True Mudcatters are not nitpickers.

Subject: RE: BS: Can someone please explain..
From: GUEST,999
Date: 12 Nov 12 - 09:01 AM

"You must spell words properly or we won't think that you ever attended school."

'I never had any large respect for good spelling. That is my feeling yet. Before the spelling-book came with its arbitrary forms, men unconsciously revealed shades of their characters and also added enlightening shades of expression to what they wrote by their spelling, and so it is possible that the spelling-book has been a doubtful benevolence to us.'

Mark Twain

Subject: RE: BS: Can someone please explain..
From: Henry Krinkle
Date: 12 Nov 12 - 09:59 AM

What did he know? They've had to edit and censor the trash he wrote in the name of political correctness.
=(:-( D)