There’s nothing new about political hypocrisy, so we shouldn’t be surprised to find it in abundance in the rowdy new party that prides itself on railing against political hypocrisy.

I speak of course of the Party of the Tea.

Most Tea Party websites — including that of Nevada County — carry these proud and easy-to-say words in their banners:

“Limited government, fiscal responsibility, free markets … “

But in complete conflict with these lofty sentiments, some prominent Tea Party “patriots” are pigging out on big government, fiscally irresponsible rigged-market farm subsidies.

Here are some choice examples, from an article by Yasha Levine in Truthdig:

If tea party candidates were serious about stopping runaway spending and bringing fiscal responsibility to Washington, they would have to address one of the most egregious wastes of taxpayer dollars: federal farm subsidies. These handouts have become little more than taxpayer robbery, sending billions of dollars every year to wealthy “farmers,” even some who do not farm at all. It is not an opportunity the tea party is willing to take …

Take Rep. Michele Bachmann, the self-appointed leader of the tea party movement and recent founder of the Tea Party Caucus, whose stated mission is to promote “fiscal responsibility, adherence to the Constitution and limited government” in the House of Representatives … Bachmann’s free-market beliefs do not seem to apply to her own pocketbook. According to federal records compiled by the Environmental Working Group, since 1995 the congresswoman profited from $251,973 in dairy and corn subsidies via a stake in her family’s farm. Bachmann’s financial disclosure forms indicate that her piece of the business earned her a (federally subsidized) income of up to $50,000 in 2008, a nice addition to the $174,000 taxpayer-funded salary she gets as a House member …

Take Stephen Fincher of Tennessee, the tea party candidate for the U.S. Senate, who has received a stamp of approval from the national tea party network. He paints himself as a simple cotton farmer who wants to “stop runaway spending in Washington that is bankrupting America’s children and grandchildren” and to return the country to its free-market principles.

But Fincher fails to mention that he has been on the receiving end of the exact policies he is supposedly campaigning against. According to federal records, the Fincher family has collected more than $6 million in federal farm subsidies since 1995, while Fincher and his wife alone took in $3.2 million. The reason? Because without the cash, his farm would fail, he told The Washington Post.

The subsidies are not just keeping Fincher’s farm afloat, they are also helping fund his political campaign. A tea party activist in Tennessee crunched the numbers and found out that 90 percent of contributions to Fincher’s campaign have come from wealthy farming families that have been the beneficiaries of roughly $80 million in farm subsidies.

South Dakota’s Republican candidate for the House of Representatives, Kristi Noem, a tea party favorite, is cut from the same tainted cloth. She has benefited from $3.1 million in corn, soybean and wheat subsidies since 1995, but doesn’t display an ounce of shame when she proclaims that government spending poses a “direct threat to our liberty.” Who knows, maybe her lack of a guilty conscience has something to do with the fact that her congressional district is the fourth most subsidized in the U.S., having received $4.26 billion over the past 15 years.

Tea party celebrity Rand Paul, Kentucky’s Republican Senate candidate, learned to tone down his libertarian rhetoric when it comes to farm subsidies—not just because his father-in-law had collected more than $10,000 in subsidies, but, more important, because his constituency includes some of the state’s largest corn and wheat farmers, who have received roughly $2 billion in farm subsidies since 1995. Paul discovered that just because western Kentucky Republicans were voting tea party did not mean they were willing to participate in the free-market experiment.

Read the full article, “Tea Party Socialism.”