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By Ryan, February 16, 2010 3:45 pm

I took the day off yesterday for President’s Day and it was wonderful.  I took a couple walks, went on a drive with MJ, had a beer and played a game of pool at Aero Club, listened to some music at HQ, and that was it.  Very relaxing.  : ))

Work is coming along with my sign.  So far Bill and I have built the frame for the sign, did a little wiring for the lighting and drilled a hole through the wall where the outside light will be placed.  I need a couple more pieces of hardware from Home Depot and then we should be ready to finally complete this project!  It probably should have been done by now but Bill’s and my schedule don’t mesh perfectly.  I’m hopeful that by the end of this week the sign will be up and HQ will finally look like a legit business from the street.

On Saturday I went over to my Ma’s with MJ after work.  We played pool, drank some champagne, ate tons of food and talked politics.  Great fun!  A big thank you to Ray and my Mom for such a great time.

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By Ryan,

I’m not sure what to make of the Tea Party in the long term.  While I agree mostly with their low-taxes and small-government opinions, it is clear that they are the wacky people of the conservative movement.  When a private market is not yielding desirable outcomes (markets that don’t meet 1 or more of the requirements for a perfectly efficient market) a government (of the people, by the people, and for the people) has a strong case for intervention.  When our country started, no private enterprise could be trusted to deliver mail across our vast borders.   As a result, our government started the United States Postal Service which now – 200+ years later – competes with UPS, FedEx, and DHL.  This is a market where costs are competitive, the service is reliable and there are options to choose from.  Education is the same thing.  The existence of public universities has no negative affect on private universities ability to innovate and teach.  The point I’m trying to make is that right now we need the government to step in and correct the shortfalls of our healthcare industry.  Right now we need the government to step in and correct the shortfalls of our energy industry (by forcing companies to internalize the cost of polluting our atmosphere).  This does not mean a government take-over!  When has the US government EVER gone into a healthy private industry and took control of it?  Even industries that the government has largely controlled in the past (postal service, some municipalities) it opens up to private markets.

These are a few paths ahead I see for the Tea Party:

1) The vocal minority (which the Tea Party is) will steer the Republican party towards ever-more conservative values (both fiscally and socially) at the cost of independent voters and non-partisanship in our government.

2) The Tea Party will split the Republican party in two.  This may not be such a bad thing because there are a lot of independents, myself included, that are fiscally conservative and socially liberal.  (I support government expansion in the short term to stave off a depression.  I support government intervention to remedy vital market failures.  I also support low taxes and generally small governments in the medium and long term.)

3) The Tea Party will rise to some sort of prominence in politics (probably under the Republican umbrella) and will continue on a path of low taxes and large, unfunded government expansion (look at Bush’s tax cuts to the rich, two unfunded wars and his costly, unfunded Medicare expansion).  All this while rolling back socially progressive movements (gays openly serving in the military, gay marriage laws, environmental regulations, education programs, R&D in green-tech & bioscience, etc.)

4) Obama will pursue his agenda (which I agree with) and get a decent health care bill passed, a decent climate change bill passed and some decent education reforms passed and the country is better for it.  All of the wild claims about death panels and the like will be revealed for what they are and the Tea Party movement will be discredited and will shrink or largely fade away.

There are problems that need addressing and it doesn’t do anybody any good to resist compromise…or change.