Libertarian Leanings

Reflections on our Weekend in DC

About 1:30 Friday afternoon on September 11th we set out from Nashua in Susan's Prius for Washington, DC and the taxpayer tea party.  It was a longer ride than we anticipated.  Traffic reports of an accident on I-91 South of Hartford persuaded us to take the I-84 West route.  This had the Garmin annoyed beyond all reason, complaining about "recalculating" every time we refused to take an exit that would get us back to I-91.  She was still whining about it as far west as Waterbury when we finally shut her off. The Garmin reminds me a lot of our Democrats in congress.  She gave me no credit for knowing how to get where I wanted to go, and she was positively determined that I would go the way she wanted.  On the other hand, if I followed her, she was ultimately going to get me where I wanted to go.  The Democrats have their own destination in mind. We made pretty good time until we got close to the Tappan Zee Bridge, and there the traffic slowed to a bumper-to-bumper crawl.  On the other side of the Hudson it improved some, but a short way down the Garden State Parkway we were into rush hour.  That, the rain, and an accident stretched what was expected to be an eight hour drive into a tiresome but uneventful ten hours. It was nearly midnight when we got to our hotel in Arlington.  We were both tired and testy. Next morning the hotel lobby was crowded with tea partiers.  We had no problem finding out where we needed to go and how we would get there.  Several people were handing out directions to the various gathering points.  A hotel van dropped us at Reagan where we caught a Washington Metro train to the Smithsonian by the Mall.  We shared the van with a couple of kids from New York, a guy, also from New York, who came to promote the Fair Tax, and a group that drove down from Ohio.  The group from Ohio included an aspiring congressman.

That's Dan Moadus on the far right.  OK, so we're all on the right, and no doubt lefties would say we are all on the far right.  But I digress.  Dan is running for the Ohio 17th District congressional seat.  That picture was taken while we were on our way up 13th Street toward Pennsylvania Avenue.  We figured we'd find signs of a crowd there, and we did.  There were signs of a crowd in both directions as far as we could see.  In fact we could hardly see anything else.

We could hardly believe all the people.  We are rookie protesters after all, I suppose.  This was the crowd who stayed home during all those anti-war protests, from  Vietnam to Iraq.  So there we were, at our first protest ever.  It was more of a celebration than a protest, though.  The day was warm and pleasant.  Everybody was smiling. So Susan and I got out into the street and walked with the crowd down toward the Capitol where the speakers would speak and the bands would play.

When we got there we walked around trying to gauge the size of our crowd and entertainment value of the signs on display.  By 11:30 we were ready to stop being protesters and start being tourists. That's when our real march began.  We set off toward the Washington Monument.  The section of the Mall between the Capitol and the Monument was reserved for the 24th Annual Black Family Reunion.  As we walked by, the wind pushed over one of the banner posts that lined the event.  I was right next to it.  I picked it up and set the sand bag back on the base to hold it upright.  A loud "Thank you" came from across the walkway, so I turn and smiled and waved "You're welcome." We must have walked a dozen miles altogether, down Pennsylvania Avenue, from the Capitol to the Lincoln Memorial, to the Vietnam and World War II memorials, then back and forth across the Mall.  We went into the Smithsonian, the National Art Gallery, the Museum of Natural History.  About 4:00 we decided to walk back to the Capitol and see if anybody was still there.  Much to our surprise the crowd was bigger than it was when we got there in the morning.  By that time, though, we were done for the day.  My feet were telling me it was time to sit down. The Metro train back to Reagan was packed.  Susan got a seat, and I stood next to her.  We chatted with a couple from Raleigh, North Carolina, speculating on the size of the crowd.  A policeman working the rally told them the estimate was 1.5 million.  On the van ride from Reagan back to the hotel two ladies from Alabama said they heard the number was 2.1 million.  If 1.5 seemed too high, 2.1 seemed ridiculous.  I wondered if the officials working the event were having a little fun with us rubes from the country. We turned on the news when we got back to the hotel to find very little reporting of it.  We caught a replay of Glen Beck who said there were 60,000 to 75,000.  That seemed low to me, and to Susan too.  Susan tends to be apolitical, but there was a very interesting shift in her perceptions over the course of the weekend.  Before, when I would make a remark about media bias, Susan would be quick to ask, "How can you say that?  How do you know?"  During the weekend in Washington, she had been flabbergasted at the how most of the media coverage tried to downplay such a huge event. Failing that, it comes as no surprise that lefties would then universally condemn it as racist.  That our peanut farmer former president would embarrass himself by saying it was rooted in racism was sadly predictable.  According to Jimmy Carter’s libel against opponents of Barack Obama, “an overwhelming portion of the intensely demonstrated animosity toward President Barack Obama is based on the fact that he is black man.” But if there was racism involved, it was hard to find it.  That didn't stop one Washington Post reporter from looking very hard for it.  Yamiche Alcindor's headlines read: "Seeking Healing, Seeing Hostility, Some at Black Family Reunion Criticize Protests Against Obama."  On Saturday, tens of thousands of protesters thronged to the U.S. Capitol to angrily accuse President Obama of taking the country in the wrong direction. That's my emphasis above, but if I had to guess, I'd say our intrepid Post reporter got nowhere near the rally.  Her article itself does nothing more than recite the perceptions of a few Family Reunion participants.  Noticeably missing from her article were descriptions of any incidents, of any kind.  There was nothing to report, not even a verbal disagreement. Dorothy Height, president of National Council of Negro Women, which holds the reunion, said that although she was pleased that the protesters and the reunion participants coexisted peacefully, she was disappointed that some marchers were so crass. "They are a bad sign for democracy," said Height, 97, who supports health-care reform. "I've never heard anyone say that they wished the other presidents would fail," she said. "President Obama has shown courage and leadership in trying to tackle various problems." One must wonder where Ms. Height has been for the eight years leading up to Obama's historic election.  If anything, there was a missed opportunity for the racists. A huge conservative protest march went side by side with the Black Family Reunion on the Washington, DC Mall and there was not one incident.  In fact, tea partiers walking by would stop to watch the dance competitions and cheer along with the reunioners at the precision of the dancers.  If there was any racism that would have been the place to see it, but there was nothing. I was actually fearful that lefty agitators would see it as a wonderful time and place to start something that could smear tea partiers as racist, but they apparently didn't think of it.  Either that, or they expected any conservative rally would just naturally be a failure all on its own. I suppose it's sad commentary when opposition to health care reform has to be framed as racist.  It's a false charge and everybody knows it.  Opposition to HillaryCare was just as strong in 1993, and unlike today, we hadn't just tripled the deficit with bailouts and stimulus packages.  I have to say, I came away from the weekend with a fairly high degree of optimism.  There were tens of thousands, probably close to a half a million people there who, like Susan and me, invested a little money and a lot of time to make it to this Washington event.  We spent eighteen hours in the car to get there and back.  Not everybody traveled that far, but there were some who came farther.

This is not the crowd that plans to stay home on election day.  A great collection of pictures of the rally can be found here. Update:  David Brooks bears me out on the absence of any racial tension between the two crowds, the Black Family Reunion and the Tea Partiers. You wouldn’t know it to look at me, but I go running several times a week. My favorite route, because it’s so flat, is from the Lincoln Memorial to the U.S. Capitol and back. I was there last Saturday and found myself plodding through tens of thousands of anti-government “tea party” protesters. They were carrying “Don’t Tread on Me” flags, “End the Fed” placards and signs condemning big government, Barack Obama, socialist health care and various elite institutions. Then, as I got to where the Smithsonian museums start, I came across another rally, the Black Family Reunion Celebration. Several thousand people had gathered to celebrate African-American culture. I noticed that the mostly white tea party protesters were mingling in with the mostly black family reunion celebrants. The tea party people were buying lunch from the family reunion food stands. They had joined the audience of a rap concert. Because sociology is more important than fitness, I stopped to watch the interaction. These two groups were from opposite ends of the political and cultural spectrum. They’d both been energized by eloquent speakers. Yet I couldn’t discern any tension between them. It was just different groups of people milling about like at any park or sports arena.

Our progressive friends call us racists because their policies and the arguments they make for them have no merit.

Tea Partying in Manchester, New Hampshire

Conservatives really are... well I guess you could say we're a conservative bunch. The Tax Day Tea Party at Victory Park in Manchester, New Hampshire yesterday drew about a thousand, give or take.

As you can see it was a pretty tame affair. No broken store front windows, no burning cars, no police in riot gear.  Get a look at this angry seething mob in the picture below. The Department of Homeland Security will probably want to keep a close watch on that guy with the "Collect more taxes, why?" sign.

The guys from WMUR Channel 9 were probably thinking the same thing as they looked for a story in the crowd. Give 'em credit, though. They showed up with a camera

Of course, while the celebration in Manchester was not exactly a seismic event, combine it with the rest of the Tea Parties that were going on at the same time nationwide and you've got a real story. That is, if you want to report it. WMUR and the Manchester Union Leader chose to report it. 'MANCHESTER – The spirit of tax fighter Mel Thomson inspired tea party protesters assembled at Victory Park to chant "Ax the tax! Ax the tax!" At the Tax Day rally, one of a half dozen held yesterday around the state, residents expressed their disgust for federal spending and corporate bailouts. Protesters waved signs that criticized President Barack Obama's first days in office, warned about socialism and questioned the whereabouts of "personal responsibility." U.S. flags. Black balloons. Rousing soap box speeches. It was the very picture of grass-roots activism, with a heavy Republican tilt. Organizers said they hope it is more than a grand photo opportunity, that the people who turned out in large numbers continue to mobilize and to hold their elected local, state and federal officials accountable. They had the right audience. "Everybody's ticked off," said Karen Poza of Manchester. She said she objected to the federal economic stimulus spending and the social agenda of the majority party on Capitol Hill. Holding a sign, "Stimulate business, not government," Lisa Freudenberg of Wolfeboro said the protest cuts across party lines. Though a Republican, she said unchecked government spending must be "a people issue." "Enough is enough already," she said. "No more taxes."' The mainstream press has spun the Tea Parties as nothing more than right wing anger over the prospect of higher taxes.  But taxes are the issue only to the extent that they provide the average citizen with at least some leverage for forcing politicians to hold down government spending.  It's the spending that's the real problem.  And spending in itself is not necessarily all that bad.  The big danger we face, now more than ever, is that our tax dollars are about to be spent lavishly for the benefit of a particular political party.  Like all "stimulus" bills, this one is designed to keep incumbents in office, and as it happens the incumbents who are pushing the stimulus are Democrats.  We are losing control of our elected representatives, if we haven't lost it already. The tea parties offer some hope that we may get it back, but the average citizen has to stay engaged.  Otherwise America as we know it could very well disappear, and the America that comes after is not likely to be a better place than the one one we have now. Update:  Karl Rove makes some good observations in his Wall Street Journal column. Mr. Obama plans to boost federal spending 25% while nearly tripling the national debt over 10 years. Americans know that this kind of spending will have economic consequences, including new taxes being imposed by the new progressives. It hasn't gotten a ton of attention, but people are fed up with the complexity of their tax code and ready to do something about it. The Tax Foundation's 2009 Annual Tax Attitudes (which was conducted Feb. 18-27, by Harris) shows us that many Americans are willing to trade popular deductions for lower rates and a simpler code. There's also been a flurry of interest among Americans in replacing the current system with a national sales tax or a flat tax. The open question is whether Republicans will be boosted by the nascent tea-party movement. House Republicans smartly offered a proposed spending plan this year that would freeze nondefense discretionary spending, suspend earmarks for five years, and reform entitlements. But cutting spending won't be enough. Taxes matter -- and will matter more in the coming years. The 2009 Tax Foundation survey found that Americans believe that taxes should, on average, take just 15.6% of a person's wages. And 88% of Americans in the same poll believe that there should be a cap on all federal, state, and local taxes of 29% or less -- there is still a constituency out there that will favor tax cutting politicians. But to tap into that constituency Republicans will have to link lower taxes to money in voters' pockets, and economic growth and jobs. They must explain why the GOP approach will lead to greater prosperity. Such arguments are not self-executing. They require leaders to make them, time and again, as Reagan once did. Some liberals believe that the recession has made tax-and-spend issues passé. But political movements are often a reaction against aggressive overreach by those in power. Mr. Obama's response to the financial crisis -- a government power grab and budget explosion -- has put spending and taxes back on the front burner. The tea parties are an early manifestation of that. More is sure to follow. We're witnessing a blatant power grab, the most aggressive overreach in the history of our nation.  If we don't succeed in blocking it now, we never will.

Party Day

On a day in which Taxpayer Tea Parties will be celebrated in cities across the nation, the Wall Street Journal features a column by Glenn Reynolds, the founder of Instapundit.  Instapundit,one of the highest traffic weblogs on the net, has been monitoring the growth of the tea-party movement.  In today's Journal Column Mr. Reynolds discusses the origins of the Taxpayer Tea Parties and what we can expect from them down the road.

'The movement grew so fast that some bloggers at the Playboy Web site -- apparently unaware that we've entered the 21st century -- suggested that some secret organization must be behind all of this. But, in fact, today's technology means you don't need an organization, secret or otherwise, to get organized. After considerable ridicule, the claim was withdrawn, but that hasn't stopped other media outlets from echoing it.

There's good news and bad news in this phenomenon for establishment politicians. The good news for Republicans is that, while the Republican Party flounders in its response to the Obama presidency and its programs, millions of Americans are getting organized on their own. The bad news is that those Americans, despite their opposition to President Obama's policies, aren't especially friendly to the GOP. When Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Steele asked to speak at the Chicago tea party, his request was politely refused by the organizers: "With regards to stage time, we respectfully must inform Chairman Steele that RNC officials are welcome to participate in the rally itself, but we prefer to limit stage time to those who are not elected officials, both in Government as well as political parties. This is an opportunity for Americans to speak, and elected officials to listen, not the other way around."

Likewise, I spoke to an organizer for the Knoxville tea party who said that no "professional politicians" were going to be allowed to speak, and he made a big point of saying that the protest wasn't an anti-Obama protest, it was an anti-establishment protest. I've heard similar things from tea-party organizers in other cities, too. Though critics will probably try to write the tea parties off as partisan publicity stunts, they're really a post-partisan expression of outrage.

Of course, it won't be the same everywhere. There are no national rules, and organizers of each protest are doing things the way they want.'

Mr. Reynolds believes these are not flash in the pan demonstrations, and that the tea-party movement will impact the 2010 and 2012 elections.

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.

Cincinnati organizer Mike Wilson, a novice organizer who drew 5,000 people to a rally on March 15, is now planning to create a political action committee and a permanent political organization to press for lower taxes and reduced spending. Tucson tea party organizer Robert Mayer told me that his organization will focus on city council elections in the fall as its next priority. And there's lots of Internet chatter about ways of taking things further after today's protests.

This would not appear to bode well for the Democrats.  It may not help the Republican party either, but according to Reynolds, it could signal the rise of a third party.  The Libertarians?  Perhaps.  But if capital-L Libertarians hope to take advantage of the opportunity this may present, they will need to relax their commitment to ideological purity and move a little bit toward the center.  And that would be a good thing.

New Hampshire Tax Day Tea Parties

Taxpayer Tea Parties have been springing up across the nation and more are set to go off tomorrow to coincide with the April 15th IRS income tax filing deadline.  Here in New Hampshire WGIR AM News Radio notes that there will be small gatherings in Portsmouth, Dover, and Plymouth in addition to what we anticipate will be the two main events.  The first of the two main attractions will be at noon tomorrow in Concord at the steps of the state capitol.  Then at 5:30 in the afternoon a second Tea Party will begin in Manchester at Victory Park. 

'Coalition of New Hampshire Taxpayers Director Ed Naile added, “This event is a chance for New Hampshire citizens’ to express the need to control taxes by controlling government spending, end the continued expansion of government into the free market, and reduce the tax burden on citizens’”. Granite State Taxpayers Chairman Stephen Stepanek agreed, “The taxpayers tea party is an event occurring throughout the country that is a grassroots, citizens’ revolt against the out of control spending occurring in Washington and Concord. It is an opportunity for citizens to tell their elected officials that is our money you are spending not yours, that this is our children’s and grandchildren’s future you are mortgaging”. Kevin Smith of Cornerstone Policy Research stated “The tea party is for citizens who concur that our nation and state has placed too heavy a burden on New Hampshire families and that a dramatic change of course is needed in Washington and New Hampshire

Victory Park in Manchester is located at the corner of Chestnut and Amherst streets. Attendees are asked to bring tea bags to be sent to their representatives. For more information or directions to Victory Park email [email protected] or call 603-475-8435.'

Meanwhile left-wing anti-tea party protest are falling flat, and the lefties themselves are in panic mode.

'So true to form, Media Matters sounded the horn that this was not a real protest, it's a Fox News segment. Kind of a made for T.V. reality show, with a cast of tens of thousands. Think Progress joined in

And the netroot blogosphere heard the call. FireDogLake proprietor Jane Hamsher posted "What Part of 'FNC TAX DAY TEA PARTIES' Don’t You Understand?" Hamsher also promoted "citizen-organized protests" which were unlike the "Fox-organized" Tea Parties; I guess she didn't catch the irony of promoting counter-protests to protest other people promoting protests. Anyway, almost no one showed up for the counter-protests.

Well-known blogger Oliver Willis protested that the Tea Parties are not really "Grassroots." Willis works with "Spontaneous Uprising? Corporate Lobbyists Helping To Orchestrate Radical Anti-Obama Tea Party Protests." for Media Matters, but blogs under his own name. Yet another irony lost, a blogger who works for a media organization promoting opposition to a protest movement because the protest movement is promoted by a media organization.'

Libertarian Leanings will be represented at the Manchester Tea Party.  If I remember to bring my camera I'll have pictures for you, well, reasonably soon.