So over a hundred thousand protesters turned out, many more spectators and passersby learned that there is a resistance movement, few provocateurs were spotted, and a good time was had by most.
Now what?
Historically, the Tea Party movement is a misnomer. The 1773 Boston Tea Party was an act of civil insurrection, of violence against property following the then British Empire's attempt to force the colonists to drink imported and taxed tea. Yesterday, there was no violence and no insurrection, instead a civilized protest, the fevered imaginings of the left notwithstanding.
The other element missing, however, gives a clue as to where to go next. The original Tea Party followed a widespread colonial boycott of taxed tea, and resistance to other coercive acts imposed by a distant and unrepresentative Parliament. Since the revenue of the royally chartered East India Company was on the line, these were actions that had more impact in London than street protests.
Boycott is the logical next step for today's Tea Partiers. While bureaucrats and elite of both parties do the "na-na-na-we-can't-hear-you" routine, something that takes money out of their pockets, or from companies that have become codependent on an overweening government, isn't going to be missed. If half the population are sufficiently fed up with nannyism, income redistribution, and financial fecklessness to change their buying habits, it will rock their world. The citizenry, at least for now, controls most discretionary funds in the economy, and should act accordingly.
The nice things about boycotts is that they can be much more discriminating than the blunt instrument of voting every two years, and they impose little if any costs on the protester. A free market provides plenty of alternatives, or if not, keeping the money in pocket is seldom harmful. Unlike 'Going John Galt', a producer's strike that may be impractical to those raising a family or with other cash needs, a boycott is a consumer's strike, available to everyone making purchases.
Who to boycott? That's a matter for public debate and individual decision. Here's my list of targets, starting now:
The Main Stream Media. While many of them are already on the way down, they are still doing plenty of damage. Their activity yesterday ranged from a smear from the LA Times, to open mockery by CNN. They ignore the actions of nearly 200,000 Tax Day protesters, while featuring the antics of mere dozens of 'antiwar' activists. History is already doing these guys in, but we can help. Drop subscriptions, cancel paid video channels, and move advertising to media that aren't shilling for big government.
Government Motors. Since when should we be buying products that we were forced to subsidize through our taxes? Since when should the government be bailing out failing companies when there are plentiful alternatives? We all know why it's happening, and it deserves rebuke. General Motors and Chrysler don't deserve your business. They deserve to go bankrupt and be restructured under law, not by Obama. Time to tell them they can't simultaneous steal your money and posture as 'All American'. You can buy plenty of vehicles made by American workers in American factories, they just have nameplates like Honda, Toyota, and Nissan. And Ford deserves a fair chance at your business, for having the gumption to turn down the Federal bailout and control.
TARP Banks and Insurers. It should be obvious by now that the TARP program is as much an instrument of government coercion as it is of financial rescue. While the Fed originally claimed they wanted a lot of banks in the program to avoid an attached stigma, the open government interference (both executive and legislative) and the spectacle of the government refusing the return of TARP funds gives away the game. TARP bank aren't run for the benefit of their depositors and shareholders - they are run for the political benefit of the government. The Treasury regularly issues a list of banks having taken TARP funds. If you find your bank on the TARP list, move your money and your business. The Bailout Sleuth blog maintains a list of banks that have turned down or returned TARP money. And with the TARP program being extended to insurers, you'll soon find out which of them no longer deserve your confidence. Though it seems that some of the insurers realize that TARP is now the mark of Cain.
Pork and 'stimulus' looters. Not all companies are equal. Some actually compete in a free market. Some pay off the political class and collect the spoils. Many try to do both. It's time to force them to choose a side: freedom or statism. Figuring out who's taking the government cheese may take a bit of work. Fortunately, porkulus projects are going to be specially labelled. Find out who's working on them, and you've got a starter list of your local looters. Spread it around, and take your business elsewhere. Since the government is paying off the unions by forcing high wages on these projects, by choosing other vendors you will likely get a better deal and not have to compete with politically favored projects to get your work done.
I can't claim any of this is original. In fact I suspect there's a lot of this going on without public discussion. But the corporations are noticing: Last night I saw a Farmer's Insurance ad pointedly observing that they haven't dabbled in derivatives and junk bonds, and don't need a bailout.
What we need is a little of what the left has called "consciousness raising". Those sick of government overreach of all kinds have economic power, particularly in the current situation. It's time to use it, and talk about it openly.
The list of banks that haven't taken TARP is a dead link...
And yeah, I'd be interested in it. I think Wells Fargo is on it, but would like to check. As far as using TARP for control, the Wall St. Journal had more details that Reuters didn't include:
Fixed, thank you, the TARP list was moved to a different site but is now updated daily. Yes, Wells is there for a small matter of $25b. They protest they never wanted it, but they are now just as subject to government whim as Citibank.
Mmmm.... you know i'd love to see the WF chairman call a press conference and just turn it into a huge check signing ceremony. Thank the government (thanks for nothin) and announce it a big victory on the road to economic recovery. Then make a little aside saying the cynics believe the government might not want the money back and might use audits as a punishment, but he doesn't believe it and will happily keep the public informed of how business is going.
As far as boycotts, i'm not sure. Traditionally I don't think they work, but these may be strange days. I'm not sure how boycotting the MSM will look much different than it does today. NYT is already bankrupt, the tv networks operate their news divisions at a loss and have for years. Not much to hang your hat on really.
I'll guarantee you this much- everyone left of center from that screeching reporter on CNN to the Obama administration will paint any boycotts as an attempt to intentionally wreck the economy. I'm not saying that's a reason not to do it. Just better to walk in eyes wide open and knowing where the punches are coming from.
Hmm. There's a well-capitalized and successful local bank that might be about to benefit. Time to chat with them, and make plans before my certificate comes due.
I'll add that this local bank told me that FDIC levies on the banks are going up. Confirmation here. As that bubble continues to inflate, things could be very interesting.
mark, if Wells had the cojones to do that, they'd turn me into a customer for life, rather than one that's about to leave.
Re the other point, boycotting doesn't mean taking the money out of the economy, just being selective about where it goes. In tough times, every dollar speaks more loudly.
Your point is well taken that the MSM and politicians will do their utmost to distort both the intent and effect of such activities. What can I say - it's a fight and the only other choice is surrender.
I hear about anonymous banks that want to give the TARP money back.
Banks that actually do it, not so much.
Why, exactly, do bankers have a lot of credibility here?
Incidentally, the tea parties, besides being comically overcounted, drew fewer people nationwide than the anti-Iraq-War rally in San Francisco alone. I realize that the former got maybe 100 times as much Fox airtime as the latter, but I'm still not impressed.
Thanks as always for the leftist talking points, AJL.
PJM is right now estimating the total crowd count at 480,000. Even if you discount that by 2/3, it's within the range of my post's estimates. I can't speak for others, but the crowd estimate I turned in was an actual nose count, not an area estimate. Put it's good to know that you all are worried about it.
As far as bankers, no they shouldn't have credibility as a class. But those who managed to resist the urge to boost their yields by dabbling (or betting the farm) on CDS, high yield tranches of mortgage backed securities, or writing and selling through known bogus loans, should get some respect, and some business. Those who f***ed up deserve no respect, and should lose their gigs and companies. But by the rule of law, not political thuggery.
As long as we're talking about classes of people, how about politicians? How about those who turned a blind eye or actively encouraged Freddie and Fannie to buy up bum loans and launder them into 'AAA' securities? How about those who are piling debt on top of unfunded entitlements? Got any respect for the Friends of Angelo? And how did a deficit that was so reprehensible under Bush (it was) become just peachy when three times greater under Obama? Got any talking points for those?
Well, Tim, PJM's numbers probably are inflated by a factor of three. Which, as I say, puts them behind one good local protest, and it probably would have been a tenth of that without the free publicity from Fox that left-wing groups don't get.
I could try explaining why a deficit at the bottom of the economic cycle differs from the deficits Bush ran (incidentally, probably larger than the numbers you are using because of W's accounting gimmicks) at the nominal top of the cycle (crappy as Bush's top was). But you'd probably just respond with the latest in Conservative New Deal Revisionist history, which is to real history that my parents were old enough to live through pretty much like all the other forms of bogus historical revisionism.
Do you refer to the February 2003 rally? Estimates of it run wildly from 60,000 - 200,000, and I would much bet on the lower estimate, which is based on photographic analysis. I recall The Nation reporting that A.N.S.W.E.R. organizers pressured reporters to give higher estimates as a condition of granting interviews.
They got plenty of press coverage - more than they wanted in some cases, given that A.N.S.W.E.R.'s only recognizable human traits are Stalinism and anti-Semitism.
The New York rally on the same day was probably larger, estimated at 100,000. The other large rallies were in Los Angeles (50,000+) and Seattle. Overall, if it towered over the Tax Day protests I'd like to see somebody prove it on paper.
Do you want to compare the number of arrests and assaults on police officers? Because you'd totally rule in that category.
The tea party attendees were not the rent-a-mob crowd like Acorn, government union members and students. More citizens were there in spirit than physically. Most of us had to work.
Unfortunately, Gbear, I have to work too. Which is (one of the many reasons) that I'm not a big protester. It also makes counting the 'spirit protester' a difficult thing to gauge.
I think it's time to call in SciFi's ghost hunters.
Seriously though, I think it's really difficult to gauge
1) How large this crowd was
2) What this crowd really wants
If this truly was a 'grass roots', non-partisan event (and I have my doubts), you are likely to find hundreds of specific grievances that people have. The big one, of course, is the Stimulus and TARP package.
So let's say we can somehow spin the Earth backwards and repeal this whole thing. What now? (It's a question that I wish more reporters had asked) I would guess this group would be unable to coalesce around a single solution. Some want the taxes to drop. Others want these failing business to fail. Some want stimulus money spent but smaller (and with sounder judgment). Some would want us to halt imports and create buy-American clauses. Some just want to prevent Obama from ever being elected in the first place. (It's worth noting that partisan views of the economy change dramatically depending on the party in power)
And where does this put us? Back three months, with no plan, and the economy rapidly tanking. Oh Goody. And this is why I have lost faith in 'protests'... they're great for venting, but otherwise it's little gained, little changed. I want solutions, not cleverly-punned banners. Until anyone can demonstrate otherwise, I'd rather talk about something else.(Have a good weekend)
Alchemist, I don't think that's particularly fair. Apply that to the actual Boston Tea Party- did everyone there agree on, well, anything? Samuel Adams and his crew were considered something like domestic terrorists at the time, there was very little appetite for actual rebellion in the colonies. People wanted their grievances addressed, and those grievances varied. Does the fact that their solutions surely varied as well invalidate the movement? Just looking at what ultimately became the federalist/anti-federalist showdown demonstrates how vastly the differences were in philosophy.
Moreover, you are kind of playing the same game Obama has been playing. IE- 'so what is your plan for government bailouts and huge spending increases? See, they have no plan'. Kinda like 'when did you stop beating your wife'. The whole point of the tea-parties is that there is a sizeable contingent of Americans that reject the big-government/Washington solutions completely, and from both parties.
Right or wrong, a lot of these people are saying that NO bailout, and NO huge spending increases WAS the solution. You may not agree, but there is an honest argument to be made that the economy needed a correction and a lot of stupid, reckless businesses needed to fail, and they should have been allowed to. That IS a plan.
Most of these people aren't red-meat republicans, or at least not the lever pullers. These are people just as pissed off at the Republican Party for its betrayals of principle over the last decade as anything else. Where were they when Bush was in office? Ask Mike Huckabee, or Ron Paul. Better yet, ask John McCain where they were on November 4th, 2008.
Well said. And there might be just be a political party in there. Which is part of what has the Dems in denial, and the Repubs trying to get in front of the parade, but unfortunately without losing their own tax/spend and nanny habits. It's gonna be an interesting four years.
Maybe I am being unfair. Maybe this will evolve into something larger. Maybe the crowd was made up of politically unsavvy-individuals who have finally found a voice. Maybe.
I'm willing to bet that (like the thousands of protests that have occurred over the last 20 years) it will fizzle or become incorporated into a larger political strategy that keeps the "powers-at-be" insulated from the unrest.
Or maybe not. At this point, there's no way to tell. I'll go take a nap. if history changes, let me know.
"I'm willing to bet that (like the thousands of protests that have occurred over the last 20 years) it will fizzle or become incorporated into a larger political strategy that keeps the "powers-at-be" insulated from the unrest."
Actually, I'm sure you are correct. What's very likely to happen is all this angst will lead to a turnover in Congress to the Republicans again in 2010, at which time the Republican big government program will go back into effect. Meet the new boss...
Our problem is the power brokers in this country have literally conspired to keep themselves in power, ideology be damned. They fan the flames of partisanship knowing full well that is the best way to keep themselves in power- nobody wants to challenge their own incumbents and risk losing ground to the opposition party.
If Americans ever want to get serious, some coalition needs to be formed to remove the ruling political class from power. That requires term limits, and in order to get those term limits they first have to be willing to cross party lines in order to throw out as many incumbents as possible.
They certainly are right to be angry with the Republican Party, which has utterly failed. But when are some of these libertarians and fringe Republicans going to take a look in the mirror?
An unseemly number of them spent the last couple of years chasing after clowns like Ron Paul, while screaming for a pox on everybody's house and doing as much to ensure Obama's victory as any Democrat did. Yesterday did this day's madness prepare.
It would be great if this led to a push for serious reform candidates in either or both parties, and a disempowerment of the political class in general. Let's hope the better angels of this movement lead it in that direction.
But another party full of posers isn't going to do anything except advance the glacial grip of "progressive" statism, ensuring its victory. Some people have been doing a fine job of that already.
Nate Silver missed dozens of sites in his "count". For a man who made a reputation as a stats wizard, it's a . . . strange failure.
(It's worth noting that partisan views of the economy change dramatically depending on the party in power)
Can't they change dramatically based on other events? I admit I disagreed with the talk about the horrors of the Bush economy from 2001-06, as unemployment in California skyrocketed from 5.4% to 6.8% and then fell to 4.9%. It's more than doubled since then. When facts change, I change my mind, even if the Executive branch changes hands at the same time.
One of my fellow liberals (it's too late to Google) had an excerpt from an almost unbelievable interview with a teabag protestor. She herself lived on Social Security disability, had expensive health treatment from Medicare, and had declared bankruptcy. She was afraid Obama was going to bring socialism. I was sorry we don't have a nice debtor's prison for her.
Incidentally, Geraldo Rivera complained that Fox News' teabag parties had a smaller total turnout than the 2006 Chicago immigration rally.
It's "tea party" protests or rallies, not "teabag".
"This plan has been tried. It describes the period between the Crash and the inauguration of FDR. I find it hard to blame Obama for believing that his alternative was less bad (I do not say "good")."
That sounded suspiciously like a counter-argument. Does that imply that there indeed was an argument to rebut? And not a bunch of incoherent lunacy?
_
"Incidentally, Geraldo Rivera complained that Fox News' teabag parties had a smaller total turnout than the 2006 Chicago immigration rally."_
Astonishing. Am I to beleive there have been bigger protests in the history of the world? My god, why even bother talking about them then.
And btw, i'll take this 'fox-protest' any day after 8 years of George Soros bought and paid for protests covered by his friends in the rest of the media ad nauseum.
The tea party philosophy taken as a whole may be incoherent or, like left-wing protests where Iraq, Mumia, and PETA get all jumbled, simply too diverse in attendance to be focused. But the economic approach of no bailouts and massive business failures is coherent. Just, that I would say it compares to Obama's policy about the way leeches compare to antibiotics. And, yes, I know that in a few cases leeches are medically useful. But most of the time, they just weaken the patient.
Can you explain how we compare George Soros's propaganda expenditures with an entire television network?
"Can you explain how we compare George Soros's propaganda expenditures with an entire television network?"
I wasn't aware Fox had dedicated its entire network to organizing tea-parties. MoveOn and Media Matters on the other hand...
Should we commission a study to see if Fox spent more time promoting tea parties than Oberman has spent licking Obama?
Glen writes:
Maybe. I don't have a lot of time for the Ron Paul types, or the fringe left who are in a much stronger but analogous position re: the Democratic Party. At the same time, it's not reasonable to expect people to subsume their principles indefinitely, in the interests of a larger party coalition.
For libertarians, any Democrat is hostile by definition. Obama may be more hostile than most, but when would a Democrat be "less hostile" enough that it wouldn't matter? Never, really. But that's not an acceptable answer to someone with strong beliefs.
To me, the answer to the question: "do groups like this need to focus on the movement or the party?" the answer strikes me as "both." But it's going to be a Venn diagram, not a complete overlap.
The question is the mix, and here libertarians do an innately poor job. The far left has its natural inclinations checked by its enthusiasm for collective action, and natural pressures toward submergence of individual will. Libertarians are the opposite extreme in both cases, which will always magnify their movement's impulse toward non-involvement and non-commitment. It generally takes prolonged pain to radicalize them into political cooperation. Obama seems likely to provide that, but it won't happen immediately.
The Tea Parties are just a first step along that continuum, and items like Obama's latest crony capitalism deal for the banks re: toxic debt will both deepen (within libertarian groups) and broaden (beyond libertarian groups) that opposition over time.
Boycotts provide that important next step, and Tim seems to have instinctively reached for an approach that works with, rather than against, libertarian tendencies. While retaining broader appeal.
I just think that you'll never get enough people on the bandwagon to make a difference. In general, banks have more to lose from corporations removing their deposits than from individuals.