Happy Tax Day
Celebrate at a Tea Party near you! Reynolds on what it’s about. Wall Street Journal:
Today American taxpayers in more than 300 locations in all 50 states will hold rallies — dubbed “tea parties” — to protest higher taxes and out-of-control government spending. There is no political party behind these rallies, no grand right-wing conspiracy, not even a 501(c) group like MoveOn.org.
So who’s behind the Tax Day tea parties? Ordinary folks who are using the power of the Internet to organize.
…
What’s most striking about the tea-party movement is that most of the organizers haven’t ever organized, or even participated, in a protest rally before. General disgust has drawn a lot of people off the sidelines and into the political arena, and they are already planning for political action after today.
Sounds like a pack of radicalized rightwing extremists! Someone call Homeland Security!
Speaking of conspiracies, my dentist, an active Mason who belongs to the original Boston lodge, reports that the list of prominent attendees at the last Boston Tea Party, Dec. 16, 1773, matches exactly the list of Masons who had signed in at the lodge a few hours earlier. And that all worked out OK.
I expect to be stopping by the State House noonish. I’ll be the guy with wraparound shades and a big cigar. Because it feels like that kind of day.
UPDATE: back from the noon Tea Party on Boston Common, upwards of 1000 in deepest bluest Massachusetts, up the hill from the Old South Meeting House where Boston’s last Tea Party kicked off back in the day. Radicalized right-wing extremism is alive and well in Boston.
Michael Graham’s 4 p.m. TP event at Columbus Park on Boston Harbor sounds like a winner, by Long Wharf, where the Brits departed Boston March 17, 1776, dumping cannon and baggage into the harbor on their way out … and just up from Fort Point Channel where the first Tea Party was staged in 1773 … it took a while but Tea Parties get results! Sorry, its deadline for me, no can do, but Michael knows how to rouse a rabble. I ran into a couple of people looking for directions from the Common. It’s easy. Walk down the hill, past the Old Satte House (scene of the Boston Massacre, 1775), left then a right at Fanueil Hall (another historic rabble rousing locale) and Quincy Market, cross the Rose Kennedy Dynastic Greenway paid for with massive amounts of your Big Dig dollars, and there you are at the politically incorrectly monikered Columbus Park. It’s like a walking tour of America’s tax revolt history.
Government agents and other interested parties are encouraged to monitor these and other events nationwide via running updates at Instapundit, Malkin, who’s also got Tea Party Twitter livefeeds, Hot Air, Gateway, Powerline and many many others. (At the latter link, Memorandum, you can also check in on what the pro-tax left has to say.)
Your Massachusetts listings here with links to other states.
Boston Herald preview coverage here.
Posted by Jules Crittenden at 9:10 am on Wednesday, April 15, 2009
10 Responses to “Happy Tax Day”
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April 15th, 2009 at 9:14 am
Jules,
I am going to the one in Augusta, and bringing my 10-year old daughter along. She’s excited about being able to protest in front of the State Capitol. Two close friends are also coming. From what I hear so far, ought to be a good turnout all over Maine.
April 15th, 2009 at 10:12 am
Planning to attend in Denver, CO! Beautiful Day!
The release of the “right-wing’ threat paper by the Obama regime yesterday was a deliberate attempt to intimidate people into staying home.
If taxpayers don’t resist now, it will be much more difficult later - before Obama confiscates most of your earned wealth!
April 15th, 2009 at 10:27 am
[...] Jules Crittenden » Happy Tax Day [...]
April 15th, 2009 at 10:29 am
[...] Jules Crittenden » Happy Tax Day [...]
April 15th, 2009 at 3:55 pm
1630 @ Spokane, WA Convention Center.
April 15th, 2009 at 4:11 pm
I left the rally at the Boston Common around 1pm, and I asked a police officer there to estimate the crowd. He pegged it at around 3,000.
I would have stayed longer, but I could not hear the speakers. The PA system appeared to be a small microphone connected to a bullhorn. What Glenn said–the organizers are still learning.
Lots of great signs, lots of articulate people.
I was struck by the following contrast.
While I was eating my lunch on a park bench, a man in a business suit asked me what all the people were about. I told him. He said he didn’t agree with the protest. I asked him to give me his perspective. Well, he said, he thinks Obama is just so intelligent. I asked why he thinks that. Well, he said, everyone seems to say so, and besides, Obama went to Harvard. And he was on the Law Review. I asked if he agreed with the actions Obama has been taking. His answer was that this is the biggest financial crisis ever, so of course we have to do something. He didn’t seem to think the specifics mattered much. But he was pretty sure that the “keep your money” point we were making at the rally was not going to be helpful.
Bob from Weymouth, on the other hand, took the day off from his job working on the city sewer system to attend the rally. He had a sign that said “Don’t spread my wealth, spread my work ethic.” And on the other side it said “Stimulate business, not government.” I asked him why he was at the rally. He said “we’re a capitalistic society and a lot of people in government are trying to move us toward a socialistic type of society. And if you read history, that type of society doesn’t work. It fails.” I asked Bob how he defines capitalism. He said: “Capitalism is pretty much the free enterprise system. You have the freedom to go out and start a company. You take risks. You succeed or you fail, and if you fail you start over, or you try something else. The government shouldn’t reward failure.” Bob mentioned he recently read The Forgotten Man (by Amity Shlaes, a new history of the Great Depression–terrific book). “It was eye-opening,” said Bob. “I grew up thinking that FDR ended the Depression, but he prolonged it. His policies were similar to what’s going on today. He took money that should have been in the private sector and put it in the public sector.”
Yeah, they say Obama is really smart.
I’m putting my money on Bob from Weymouth.
April 15th, 2009 at 5:44 pm
Anderson Cooper says, “It’s hard to talk when you’re teabagging.”
Well, yeah.
Doc
April 15th, 2009 at 7:42 pm
1730 hours,
I just got back from the Tea Party rally in Augusta, Maine. The rally was planned for 5-7pm, but there were a couple hundred there by 3pm, and when we left, at 6:30, the crowd had swelled to several hundred, with a steady stream of more arriving even as we were departing. There were many, many wonderful signs, with probably 90% of them handmade. Also quite a few “Don’t Tread On Me” flags, many Betsy Ross flags, and other American flags.
What was interesting was how many fokks brought their children along, and the cross-section of the state. Rich, poor, old, young, they were all there, and all were mad as hell. If an actual politician had shown up, he/she would’ve been given one serious earful of talking.
The other interesting thing was that the organizers had a small PA system, and anyone, and I mean anyone who wanted to speak for a few minutes was given the opportunity. It was eye-opening, because everyone there was on the same page. They are all fed up with what has happened, and they mean to see that it gets corrected in 2010.
Time and time again, speakers reaffirmed that “elections have consequences” and that our only chance to correct this was to elect responsible folks to office who would follow the Constitution, and put and end to this foolish taxation.
If, as it is estimated, only 1 in 100 of those who feel the same way actually turn up for a rally, then the leftists and the rightists who are so strongly in favour of POTUS’ tax plans, TARP, etc, are in for a very rude shock in the next round of elections.
All in all, there was a whiff of rebellion in the air, and town meetings are apt to get right interesting for politicians when they come home to visit.
respects,
April 15th, 2009 at 8:26 pm
[...] Update: Jules Crittenden was there too. [...]
April 15th, 2009 at 11:38 pm
Just back from the rally in Richland, WA, maybe 400-500 people there, lots of waving and honking from passing cars. Good speakers, the only elected official allowed to speak was a county commissioner, with the comment, “We have to spend responsibly!”
Well said, sir!