Weekend Research Report

I don't think it's a law that the states have to balance their budgets. If it were, our former Democratic governor and eight years' worth of Michigan state legislators would be in jail now. The states and local governments can certainly borrow money, otherwise Detroit would not be going through bankruptcy proceedings as we speak. I have never heard of a state going bankrupt, but I'm sure that other municipalities have, because I read in the newspaper that Detroit is the largest city to have done so. The only thing is that the states cannot print their own money like the federal government can.

The government is already taking money from the rich and giving it to the poor, the only controversy is over whether they should do more of it or less.

According to Wiki, there are all kinds of populists all over the world. There are old fashioned populists, modern populists, neo-populists, left wing populists, right wing populists, and even ancient Roman populists (both Julius and Augustus Caesar, believe it or not). Populism is currently big in the U.S., Canada, Australia, and Latin America. Authorities are not in total agreement about the definition of a populist but, in general, it means anybody who claims to represent the interests of the general population over the interests of some kind of elite class. This elite class may consist of big government, big business, hereditary aristocracy, ecclesiastical authority, or all of the above. The American Populist Party that flourished briefly in the late 19th Century, which was officially named "The People's Party", was derived from several pre-existing groups that merged together. They were mostly agrarian types but, in those days, the majority of Americans were farmers anyway. The People's Party kind of fell apart after the Democrats co-opted most of their agenda and assimilated their favorite presidential candidate, William Jennings Bryan. That was neither the beginning nor the end of populism, it was just the part that they taught us about in school.

Wiki describes the Tea Party as a right wing populist grass roots movement. It consists of multiple local organizations (about 600 at last count) with no central leadership or authority. Although classified as "right wing", some of them advocate certain liberal agenda items like raising the minimum wage. Philosophically, there are two main branches to Tea Party ideology, primarily differing on foreign policy. One branch, called the "Paulites", follows the teachings of Ron Paul, and the other branch, called the "Pallinites" follows the teachings on Sarah Pallin. This is only a philosophical thing because neither Paul nor Pallin hold positions of authority in any kind of national Tea Party organization because there is none. I happened to catch "Washington Week" on TV the other day, and they were talking about a big split between the "Tea Party Republicans" and the "Establishment Republicans", which seems to confirm that the Tea Party is indeed a populist movement.

You and your Hippie friends certainly would have qualified as populists in your day, but what do you call a populist when he becomes the establishment?