JISHOU, HUNAN — The national TEA Party protests flopped.
The anti-tax/anti-Obama rallies — Taxed Enough Already Parties — were supposed to represent a coming “revolution” against the sitting president’s policies and the “overtaxation” of the American populace, like the Boston Tea Party of 1773. In that famous incident, the protest was against the Tea Act, which imposed tariffs on tea bound for Britain.
The Boston Tea Party was a spontaneous protest against taxation without representation, one of the main complaints of the colonists. By comparison, the modern day TEA Parties were hardly impressive.
Fox Noise’s Sean Hannity hyped the parties on the air, and other right-wingers predicted a groundswell of grassroots activism against the Obama administration’s attempts to stimulate the economy by spending government money.
Instead, local rallies had puny attendance. Here are some estimates I pulled off news sites.
New York Times 16/4/09
Philadelphia, Penn. 200
Pensacola, Fla. 500
Austin., Texas 1,000
Houston, Texas 2,000
Boston, Mass. 500+
Newsday 15/4/09
Massapequa, NY 300
CBS News 15/4/09 Declan McCullagh blog
San Francisco “a crowd of hundreds”
USA Today 15/4/09
Des Moines, Iowa 1,000
Cincinnati, Ohio 4,000
Lansing, Mich. 4,000
Hartford, Conn. 3,000
New Haven, Conn. 1,000
Montgomery Ala. 1,000+
Frankfort, Ky. 250 (new taxes on cigarettes and alcohol there)
Yeah. A coming revolution. Not.
Just for laughs, I visited the Faux News website to see what it had to say about Tax Day rallies. I came across a blog by Doug TenNapel, the creator of Earthworm Jim. To my dismay, TenNapel, a really creative guy, sounds like a wingnut.
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