In Massachusetts, there's a special election on Tuesday for the late Ted Kennedy's seat. In the race, there are three candidates: Democrat Martha Coakley, the state’s attorney general, Republican Scott Brown, a state senator, and Independent Joe Kennedy, a private citizen.
The Libertarian Party of Massachusetts has backed Kennedy. He is/was an active member of the local TEA Party movement in Mass. He's a follower of Ron Paul.
The big government Republican hasn't renounced his tax-and-spend ways. He hasn't renounced anything but ObamaCare. Scott Brown is a tax-and-spend, big government Republican, who voted for RomneyCare in Massachusetts. Scott Brown is exactly the same type of candidate that we were protesting just a few months ago!
But now, the TEA Party establishment has convinced the TEA Party members across the United States that they just need to back Brown, now that he's simply only promised to vote against ObamaCare.
FreedomWorks - the group that in-part subverted a large portion of the TEA Party movement - will be making phone calls to help the big government Republican.
It's sad to see the TEA Party movement abandon all other principles, and resort back to the "lesser of two evils", whipped back into the Republican camp with calls of "this is the most important election in history".
Can't these people see? The reason that politics is so very, very broken in this state, and around the country, is because competition is seriously lacking. We all know that competition is a good thing.
But for some reason, while we condemn monopolies and oligopolies which are formed behind closed doors to unfairly keep competition out and hurt the end consumer, many people refuse to see that the exact same thing has happened to politics. Between the "Lesser of Two Evils", the "This is the Most Important Election Ever", and "They're Just Splitting the Vote and Will Let the Worst Person Win" arguments, you keep ending up with garbage, and you always will. We have an Oligarchy, and these excuses support it.
Those of you, in the TEA Movement, and in the broader Liberty Movement - PLEASE - We need to push for real voting reform.
To start, please research Instant Runoff Voting.
Sometimes known as Preferential Choice Voting, the system is simple and straight-forward: Rank the candidates, and no one wins with less than 50% of the vote. This system is not "odd" or "abnormal". It's used in many countries. It's available to any organization under Robert's Rules of Order (which is used by almost every organization in the country). It's even used in local communities around the US, and has led to "Third" Party candidates being elected to office.
We need REAL competition to fix the political situation in America. That's why I believe in the "Third" Party movement. That's why, in addition to the Libertarian Party (which I chair and promote), I want to help the Constitution Party, Green Party, and any other political party come to or grow in Kentucky and expand the marketplace of ideas.
You can learn more about Instant Runoff Voting on Wikipedia.
Political situation
That is true; we need political fixation in this country. And we can do that if we will only be cooperative and sensitive to the issues that we should be talking about. With all this Tea Party business going on (even though the original concerned import duties, not an actual income tax) and given that tax day is passing by, I wondered just how unfair US taxes are. While it does send some sprinting for payday advances, for OECD countries, we really pay really reasonable taxes. The UK pays 50% of income, in the US the tax scale tops at 35%. Many European countries don't protest about their taxes as loudly – and I discovered that they drink a lot beer than we do per individual per year. So it logically follows that if the Tea Party protesters drank one more beer per day, they wouldn't be as agitated.