How Strong Are the Tea Party Principles

Lets look at them to see if they will bring real change. Hint: don't expect too much.

Individual Liberty - They say this: Our moral, political, and economic liberties are inherent, not granted by our government. It is essential to the practice of these liberties that we be free from restriction over our peaceful political expression and free from excessive control over our economic choices. All very good. No details to tie hands of courts forcing them to follow the constitution. Need private citizen access to grand juries to remove promptly and swiftly jurists and legislators violating the constitution.

Limited Government - They say this: The purpose of our government is to exercise only those limited powers that have been relinquished to it by the people, chief among these being the protection of our liberties by administering justice and ensuring our safety from threats arising inside or outside our country's sovereign borders. When our government ventures beyond these functions and attempts to increase its power over the marketplace and the economic decisions of individuals, our liberties are diminished and the probability of corruption, internal strife, economic depression, and poverty increases. Nice but no provision for enforcement, see above.

Economic Freedom - The most powerful, proven instrument of material and social progress is the free market. The market economy, driven by the accumulated expressions of individual economic choices, is the only economic system that preserves and enhances individual liberty. Any other economic system, regardless of its intended pragmatic benefits, undermines our fundamental rights as free people.

Nice comment but so what.

Protect the Constitution - Require each bill to identify the specific provision of the Constitution that gives Congress the power to do what the bill does. This is meaningless. Congress says they have the power to do what they want. Need civilian access to grand juries. Now the prosecutor (one of them as in conflict of interest) is only one with access to grand jury.

Reject Cap & Trade - Stop costly new regulations that would increase unemployment, raise consumer prices, and weaken the nation's global competitiveness with virtually no impact on global temperatures. Nice thought, no enforcement teeth.

Demand a Balanced Budget - Begin the Constitutional amendment process to require a balanced budget with a two-thirds majority needed for any tax hike. So they'll get a majority because spend we must. The more we spend the more our taskmasters in the Federal reserve make.

Enact Fundamental Tax Reform - Adopt a simple and fair single-rate tax system by scrapping the internal revenue code and replacing it with one that is no longer than 4,543 words—the length of the original. This is impossible for government to do. What if they go for a 30% vat tax? Get rid of the federal reserve is not one of their principles. They can't fire the bosses.

Restore Fiscal responsibility and a Constitutionally Limited Government - Create a Blue Ribbon taskforce that engages in a complete audit of federal agencies and programs, assessing their Constitutionality, and identifying duplication, waste, ineffectiveness, and agencies and programs better left for the states or local authorities, or ripe for wholesale reform or elimination due to our efforts to restore limited government consistent with the US Constitution's meaning. Not bad but congress lies and conceals black op budgets.

End Runaway Government Spending - Impose a statutory cap limiting the annual growth in total federal spending to the sum of the inflation rate plus the percentage of population growth. It is already twenty times too high. The idea is to reduce government by 80%.

Repeal Government Run Health Care - Defund, repeal and replace the recently passed government-run health care with a system that actually makes health care and insurance more affordable by enabling a competitive, open, and transparent free-market health care and health insurance system that isn't restricted by state boundaries. Not bad.

Pass an All of the Above Energy Policy - Authorize the exploration of proven energy reserves to reduce our dependence on foreign energy sources from unstable countries and reduce regulatory barriers to all other forms of energy creation, lowering prices and creating competition and jobs. A good theory but many inventions are suppressed.

Stop the Pork - Place a moratorium on all earmarks until the budget is balanced, and then require a 2/3 majority to pass any earmark. Spending already way too high.

Stop the Tax Hikes - Permanently repeal all tax hikes, including those to the income, capital gains, and death taxes, currently scheduled to begin in 2011. Once agains spending way too high.

What They Miss - Stop all crimes with the governments as victims. A speed limit sign is not a damaged party. Kill the federal reserve and the IRS. Limit fed to constitutional powers which means 80% of it will not be needed. Do you need a department of education that teaches nothing, a department of agriculture that grows nothing, etc. Open the grand juries to the people to throw the bums out when they deviate from the constitution. Declare the IRS and fed illegal, remove all liens and set their captives free. All crimes without a natural person victim are no longer crimes. Restore the rights to the states. We could keep going. The tea party addresses maybe 5% of the problems. Don't be deceived.