Kowabunga

Tax Cut Rally 2009

May 5th, 2009 | by Sqotty |

It was 9:30 in the morning when I arrived at the State Capitol for the tax-cut rally. I came up early as I wanted to make sure I got a good parking space, as parking near the site of the event would be at a premium as it caught closer to “show time”. The volunteers for the event had already been busy setting up tents to house the exhibitors; food vendors were set up and busily cooking food for the expected masses. They would not be disappointed. Even this far in advance of the scheduled start time of 11AM, I was not the only activist there. A few early risers were also there with their signs ready to go. It was a good indication of what to expect for the day.

The tents would play host to a variety of sponsors as well as various political special interest groups. The groups were quite diverse, including an Ayn Rand group passing out pamphlets, the NRA, various Republican groups, Constitution Party, Libertarians, and others.

I chatted with one couple briefly who were running one of the exhibit tables. I can’t remember which one, but when I told them I drove in from a very left-leaning community, they said, Oh, Northfield, eh.” Perceptive! Turned out their son and his family recently relocated to Northfield, and I tried to assure them that there are some sane people there. Okay, we’re heavily outnumbered by the loonies, but there are some.

People continued to arrive.

Still plenty of time to kill, I wandered through the various War Memorial displays that were on one part of the grounds. There I learned a story of a WW2 incident that I had heard of before. It was about the sinking of the USAT Dorchester and “the Four Chaplains.” Wikipedia has a good article about it; in brief, it was torpedoed and when the order to abandon ship came, four soldiers did not have life jackets. Four chaplains, seeing this, handed the soldiers their own life jackets, then, holding hands and praying together, the four chaplains went down with the ship. It literally brought a tear to my eyes.

Meanwhile, more people showed up, and wandering through the tents again, as more exhibitors had completed their set up, I ran into Brad and Laurie, some friends of mine from MarsCon a couple years back. Shortly thereafter, I ran into Robert, retired Army and from my local district; Robert and I have a number of mutual friends, including our State Rep., Pat Garofalo.

People continued to stream in; Chris Baker of KTLK made some announcements; things were getting ready to start.

Signs, everywhere. T-shirts with all kinds of sayings about taxes were in abundance; Congressman Michelle Bachman was here. Coolness. Things were kicking into gear.

I’d have to review the video of her speech to give you the points, but the gist was: taxes bad, cut-spending good. Kind of what you would expect from her, and some of the other speakers. Governor Pawlenty, and, unlike the Tea Parties with some of the less popular elected, he didn’t get “booed”. Okay, he has actually been doing the best he can holding down the DFL driven tax increases with the veto pen (although it was overturned last year with the help of some RINOs). Hey, and no teleprompters.

Another speaker whose last name eludes me, but is known as Lucky, spoke to ther throngs of taxpayers. He issued a challenge for everyone there to start looking at their payroll receipts, specifically at the part that details out how much government is bilking you for, and then to send a letter to your rep (Okay, that should be letters to all your critters) and ask them “for what?” What are they spending all of that money on? Damn good question, if you ask me! I have video of that and will post it once I have a chance to download and edit it. He was a rouser! I wish he would run for office.

Jason Lewis, the point man for pushing this event, made his appearance, last on the list, and went on about some of the tax issues going on, as well as telling a few stories and jokes. Although I have been going to this particular rally for several years now (I missed it last year), I was surprised to learn that it had been going on for 10 years. It has been getting bigger every year, and this year was no different.

At a guess, I would say some 5,000 people were there in total, with the number stabilizing at about 3,000 at any given time as people came and went throughout the day (and no police anywhere that I saw, unlike at your typical Moveon.org or Code Pinko sponsored rallies). Albeit, there was probably some security there when the governor showed up, but that is to be expected.

Borders Books was doing a brisk business on conservative books, and the Liberty Shrine was wall-to-wall people checking out the exhibits. And the line for cheese curds? Never fewer than 30-40 people from what I saw.

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