Willravel

You're not addressing the point. While Democrats do represent corporate interests often, they do not do so anywhere near as often or as consistently as the GOP. That's my assertion and I can gladly back it up.
This economic theory has been tested and found incorrect in practice. The central problem is that the argument made for the correlation between lower taxes and economic growth is based on flawed methodology. Medium taxes are actually correlated with long term, stable economic growth in practice. You can certainly try to argue that lowering taxes is pro-growth, but you'll have to do more than put it in a sentence as a given. I'm not an economist, but based on the last 30 years of economic numbers, there's a clear correlation between responsible tax levels and economic growth. Whether that's causal is another matter.
The group of politicians and businessmen went to Texas for different reasons. The Republican California representatives, headed by Dan Logue, bought into the spin that all of California's jobs are moving to Texas, despite any evidence to suggest this. Along for the ride was Lt. Governor Newsom, who went purely to see how the myth of the healthy Texas business climate was being propagated. If you're concerned about facts, according to the non-partisan Public Policy Institute of California, California has lost very few jobs to any other states over the past few years, particularly Texas. The bulk of California's job losses have more to do with jobs being shipped overseas by California companies looking for cheaper labor. That has nothing to do with tax rates and everything to do with the fact that work overseas is dirt cheap.

For those unfamiliar with state-specific budgets, California has been having serious trouble fixing our $26b state debt. Texas is in its own (two-year cycle) debt of anywhere from $14b to $27b, depending on who you ask. California Governor Jerry Brown is attempting to deal with our budget problems by slashing services, eliminating waste and loopholes, and we're probably going to see a tax increase in one form or another before too long. Texas, on the other hand, is cutting taxes in some mad attempt to bring in a ton of new business, which they're hoping will bring with it tax revenue. It isn't.
I've never heard anything specific, either, and that's what concerns me. The Tea Party in theory isn't really a bad thing. In theory, it's about people concerned about fiscal responsibility, balanced budgets and government trimmed down to only what services are necessary. In practice, unfortunately, it's really more of a movement centered around hating President Obama, ignoring 2000-2008, and frankly facetious arguments about budgets that really only amount to parroted talking points.

Palin's fight in Alaska with the oil companies is a funny thing. What she did, turning down BP and taxing oil companies like crazy to make Alaska money, makes her out to be a cool customer, someone who won't bat an eye at corporate power and who isn't afraid to do what's necessary to add to a budget surplus. Unfortunately, it seems Sarah Palin doesn't even understand in the most basic terms how the oil industry in Alaska works. Also, her plan to increase taxes on big business only to redistribute it to the people of Alaska makes President Obama look far-right. What I suspect happened, and this is only a theory, is Palin farmed this out to someone who was more knowledgeable than she was, someone who happened to be far left of her, and she went with the plan she was given. What she did is something I would do. What does that tell you?
The people giving speeches are less regular than the people listening to the speeches? I'm asking this in all honesty: by what metric do you establish how regular someone is? You use the term regular to apply to people often enough that I feel I have to ask how you qualify that. Am I regular? Are you?

And for the record, I've been to relatively big Tea Party protests, with hundreds and hundreds of people, and very small ones, with as little as a dozen. I can't imagine that somehow my experiences are so very much different than yours.
Taxes aren't charity, they're responsibility. Asking people to pay taxes only makes sense in a society populated entirely by egalitarians. Clearly that doesn't describe the Untied States in 2011. The problem is the rich aren't paying their fair share. If I'm ever in a position to call myself rich again, I'll be happy to pay 35%+ taxes. For now, I'm middle-class.
That's not precisely what I asked. What specifically do you think would have happened if we allowed Wells Fargo, Bank of America, JP Morgan, Citigroup, State Street, Morgan Stanley, Goldman Sachs, Bancorp, Capital One, and American Express to all fail at once? My guess is total financial collapse, of the kind that would make the Great Crash look like a financial hiccup. I honestly do understand your position of wanting the market to work naturally, but while that's wonderful in theory, in practice, in this case, I think the disaster warranted at least some cushioning.
I wasn't aware you supported single-payer. Kudos on crossing partisan lines and choosing what you believe to be correct. It's nice to agree now and again.