Artful Dodger:

> Well clearly the current powers aren't going to do that. So what's your solution?

The USA has put itself in an untenable position by putting all of its power in the hands of two political powers. There is no alternative. The Tea Party is not really an alternative, but a repackaging of similar right wing views of the past. We have seen it before. There are certain ideological elements in the Tea Party that remind me of the Reform Party when Pat Buchanan and Donald Trump were trying to run for president (Pat Buchanan ultimately won the nomination). It is symptomatic that Ron Paul (called the "Godfather" of Tea Party philosophy) was once courted by the Reform Party.

The right has tried its hand at finding an alternative, but it does not seem to crystallize. Likewise the left opted for the Green Party. However, neither the Reform nor the Green Party seemed to capture the imagination of the American public.

Is there a solution? Not while the legal framework and the power structure remain unchanged. Even if a third party were to win the election, the basic structure of the Executive branch (White House, Congress, Senate) remains the same. The lobby system remains the same too, as do political contributions by wealthy donors.

This simply means that the most the USA can hope for at this time is to pass laws that force the government to balance the budget (that ammendment to the constitution is part of the latest debt ceiling deal). However, there is no law that tells the government to put the average citizen ahead of special interests and welathy donors.. The government might balance the budget, but at the expense of the poor. Then the military remain unchanged and they will continue to syphon the largest chunk of the budget.

I see no party changing things, because it would take an uphill legal battle to redo the way the budget is designed and managed. There is no legal guanrantee that the government will not shape the budget for the benefit of a rich few rather than the majority of the population. The Tea Party might choose a fiscally responsible approach, but will that include eliminating tax cuts for the rich? I doubt it since tax cuts are central to their philosophy, as is big military spending. The Green Party might sound nice (to the left at least) on environmental issues, but theri website makes no mention of the debt problems or how they would change things or manage the problem.