On May 19, Californians sent a message that the people mean business when it comes to high taxes and big spending. Four ballot initiatives in a special election intended to allow the state government to raise taxes to cover a 21 billion dollar budget shortfall, were soundly defeated sending an unwelcome message to Sacramento that the people picking up the tab for California’s liberal policies have had enough. But it didn’t start, nor did it end, on May 19 in California. Organic tax protests that started as “tea parties” have grown and are now taking shape in different forms even though they have been mocked in the media and attacked by Obama and other Democrats. The overwhelming defeat of the California propositions allowing the state to again raise taxes is just the latest expression of the people’s frustration. The problem for Washington is that it is not just Californians who have great contempt for tax and spend liberal policies that Obama has made his signature style of governing.
California’s’ predicament is that it has been using the Obama model of government for quite a while. The sunshine state was “spreading the wealth around” long before Obama retrieved it from the Marxist ashbin and attempted to make it “cool” again. But what happens when cool costs too much for the people paying for it? You get a California-style rebellion that so stunned the mainstream media that they decided not to cover it except to mock and ridicule—not the lawmakers who caused the problem, the people who are fed up with paying for the California legislature’s out of control spending. It was remarkably similar to the way the media attacked the California rebellion’s older cousins known as the April 15 tea parties. The media just don’t seem to get it and official Washington seems to be oblivious to the rising resentment the governed have toward the political class which arrogantly contemplates how to “reposition” themselves to appear to understand the anger and frustration. They think they are clever speaking one way to their constituents and differently to one another as though they are performers on stage with the issues of the day as their script. Their weakness is that they don’t know how transparent they are to their audience. Their failure to find workable solutions for any problem - that doesn’t involve massive federal bureaucracy - has inspired many people, who have felt disenfranchised for a long time, to take matters into their own hands.
Only a few in Washington recognize they are facing a taxpayer revolt that is taking the form of an idea developed by a radio talk show host and a US congressman. The energy of the tea parties and the advocates for the so-called “Fair Tax” are beginning to join forces and if they are able to get traction, the politicrats are going to lose the mighty power they wield with the federal income tax code. The Fair Tax is a national sales tax that would replace the federal income tax.
One organizer in Missouri started out to have a statewide Fair Tax rally — that grew into a major event forcing them to have to move from a small park to the Boone county fairgrounds in Columbia, Missouri when their expected crowd swelled to over 30,000 supporters from around the nation. The rally organizer, Colin Malaker, says that the creators of the Fair Tax, Georgia Congressman John Linder and radio talk show host Neal Boortz, announced they would address the crowd that will assemble June 13 that started as a Missouri gathering and became a Midwest event that is attracting people from all over the nation. The interesting thing about this event is that among the speakers are several Missouri state legislators -- both Democrat and Republican.
For years, policy makers and elected officials have been taking for granted those who pay the bills but now these peaceful, hardworking people have come to realize that collectively they have power, especially considering it is their money that fuels the behemoth government that oppresses them.