A MINORITY VIEW

BY WALTER E. WILLIAMS

RELEASE: WEDNESDAY, APRIL 15, 2009 AND THEREAFTER

Democracy and Majority Rule

            Democracy and majority rule give an aura of legitimacy to acts that would  otherwise be deemed tyranny. Think about it. How many decisions in our day-to-day lives would we like to be made through majority rule or the democratic process? How about the decision whether you should watch a football game on television or “Law and Order”? What about whether you drive a Chevrolet or a Ford, or whether your Easter dinner is turkey or ham? Were such decisions made in the political arena, most of us would deem it tyranny. Why isn’t it also tyranny for the democratic process to mandate what type of light bulbs we use, how many gallons of water to flush toilets or whether money should be taken out of our paycheck for retirement?

            The founders of our nation held a deep abhorrence for democracy and majority rule. In Federalist Paper No. 10, James Madison wrote, “Measures are too often decided, not according to the rules of justice and the rights of the minor party, but by the superior force of an interested and overbearing majority.” John Adams predicted, “Remember, democracy never lasts long. It soon wastes, exhausts, and murders itself. There was never a democracy yet that did not commit suicide.” Our founders intended for us to have a republican form of limited government where the protection of individual God-given rights was the primary job of government.

            Alert to the dangers of majoritarian tyranny, the Constitution’s framers inserted several anti-majority rules. One such rule is that election of the president is not decided by a majority vote but instead by the Electoral College. Nine states have over 50 percent of the U.S. population. If a simple majority were the rule, conceivably these nine states could determine the presidency. Fortunately, they can’t because they have only 225 Electoral College votes when 270 of the 538 total are needed. Were it not for the Electoral College, that some politicians say is antiquated and would like to do away with, presidential candidates could safely ignore the less populous states.

            Part of the reason our founders created two houses of Congress was to have another obstacle to majority rule. Fifty-one senators can block the designs of 435 representatives and 49 senators. The Constitution gives the president a veto to weaken the power of 535 members of both houses of Congress. It takes two-thirds of both houses of Congress to override a presidential veto.

            To change the constitution requires not a majority but a two-thirds vote of both Houses to propose an amendment, and to be enacted requires ratification by three-fourths of state legislatures. The Constitution’s Article V empowers two-thirds of state legislatures to call for a constitutional convention to propose amendments that become law when ratified by three-fourths of state legislatures. I used to be for this option as a means of enacting a spending limitation amendment to the Constitution but have since reconsidered. Unlike the 1787 convention attended by men of high stature such as James Madison, Thomas Jefferson, George Washington and John Adams, today’s attendees would be moral midgets: the likes of Barney Frank, Chris Dodd, Olympia Snowe and Nancy Pelosi.

            In addition to an abhorrence of democracy, and the recognition that government posed the gravest threat to liberty, our founders harbored a deep distrust and suspicion of Congress. This suspicion and distrust is exemplified by the phraseology used throughout the Constitution, particularly our Bill of Rights, containing phrases such as Congress shall not: abridge, infringe, deny, disparage or violate. Today’s Americans think Congress has the constitutional authority to do anything upon which they can get a majority vote. We think whether a particular measure is a good idea or bad idea should determine passage as opposed to whether that measure lies within the enumerated powers granted Congress by the Constitution. Unfortunately, for the future of our nation, Congress has successfully exploited American constitutional ignorance or contempt.

            Walter E. Williams is a professor of economics at George Mason University. To find out more about Walter E. Williams and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate Web page at www.creators.com.

COPYRIGHT 2009 CREATORS SYNDICATE, INC.

Walter Williams column at Town Hall

http://pewinternet.org/Reports/2009/6–The-Internets-Role-in-Campaign-2008.aspx

The Internet’s Role in Campaign 2008

Some 74% of internet users–representing 55% of the entire adult population–went online in 2008 to get involved in the political process or to get news and information about the election. This marks the first time that a Pew Internet & American Life Project survey has found that more than half of the voting-age population used the internet to get involved in the political process during an election year.

Several online activities rose to prominence in 2008. In particular, Americans were eager to share their views on the race with others and to take part in the online debate on social media sites such as blogs and social networking sites. Among the key findings of our survey:

• Nearly one in five (18%) internet users posted their thoughts, comments or questions about the campaign on an online forum such as a blog or social networking site.
• Fully 45% of internet users went online to watch a video related to the campaign.
• One in three internet users forwarded political content to others. Indeed, the sharing of political content (whether writing and commentary or audio and video clips) increased notably over the course of the 2008 election cycle. While young adults led the way in many political activities, seniors were highly engaged in forwarding political content to their friends and family members.
• Young voters continued to engage heavily in the political debate on social networking sites. Fully 83% of those age 18-24 have a social networking profile, and two-thirds of young profile owners took part in some form of political activity on these sites in 2008.

To read the complete report go to the Pew website.

http://spectator.org/archives/2009/01/09/the-importance-of-jack-kemp

“When you tax something you get less of it, and when you reward something you get more of it.”

With that simple exhortation — and this is a man born to exhort — Jack Kemp changed his party, changed his country and, ultimately, changed the world.

Here is a good article about the importance of Jack Kemp written in the American Spectator.

The Wall Street Journal original article.

Tax Day Becomes Protest Day

How the tea parties could change American politics.

By GLENN HARLAN REYNOLDS

Today American taxpayers in more than 300 locations in all 50 states will hold rallies — dubbed “tea parties” — to protest higher taxes and out-of-control government spending. There is no political party behind these rallies, no grand right-wing conspiracy, not even a 501(c) group like MoveOn.org.

Reuters 

A rally and march in protest of higher taxes in Santa Barbara, Calif., April 4.

So who’s behind the Tax Day tea parties? Ordinary folks who are using the power of the Internet to organize. For a number of years, techno-geeks have been organizing “flash crowds” — groups of people, coordinated by text or cellphone, who converge on a particular location and then do something silly, like the pillow fights that popped up in 50 cities earlier this month. This is part of a general phenomenon dubbed “Smart Mobs” by Howard Rheingold, author of a book by the same title, in which modern communications and social-networking technologies allow quick coordination among large numbers of people who don’t know each other.

In the old days, organizing large groups of people required, well, an organization: a political party, a labor union, a church or some other sort of structure. Now people can coordinate themselves.

We saw a bit of this in the 2004 and 2008 presidential campaigns, with things like Howard Dean’s use of Meetup, and Barack Obama’s use of Facebook. But this was still social-networking in support of an existing organization or campaign. The tea-party protest movement is organizing itself, on its own behalf. Some existing organizations, like Newt Gingrich’s American Solutions and FreedomWorks, have gotten involved. But they’re involved as followers and facilitators, not leaders. The leaders are appearing on their own, and reaching out to others through blogs, Facebook, chat boards and alternative media.

The protests began with bloggers in Seattle, Wash., who organized a demonstration on Feb. 16. As word of this spread, rallies in Denver and Mesa, Ariz., were quickly organized for the next day. Then came CNBC talker Rick Santelli’s Feb. 19 “rant heard round the world” in which he called for a “Chicago tea party” on July Fourth. The tea-party moniker stuck, but angry taxpayers weren’t willing to wait until July. Soon, tea-party protests were appearing in one city after another, drawing at first hundreds, and then thousands, to marches in cities from Orlando to Kansas City to Cincinnati.

As word spread, people got interested in picking a common date for nationwide protests, and decided on today, Tax Day, as the date. As I write this, various Web sites tracking tea parties are predicting anywhere between 300 and 500 protests at cities around the world. A Google Map tracking planned events, maintained at the FreedomWorks.org Web site, shows the United States covered by red circles, with new events being added every day.

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. And that’s the good news and the bad news for Democrats. It’s not a big Republican effort. It’s a big popular effort. But a mass movement of ordinary people who don’t feel that their voices are being heard doesn’t bode well for the party that positioned itself as the organ of hope and change.

Will these flash crowds be a flash in the pan? It’s possible that people who demonstrate today will find that experience cathartic enough — or exhausting enough — that that will be it. But it’s more likely that the tea-party movement will have an impact on the 2010 and 2012 elections, and perhaps beyond.

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 influx of new energy and new talent is likely to inject new life into small-government politics around the nation. The mainstream Republican Party still seems limp and disorganized. This grassroots effort may revitalize it. Or the tea-party movement may lead to a new third party that may replace the GOP, just as the GOP replaced the fractured and hapless Whigs.

Mr. Reynolds is the author of “An Army of Davids: How Markets and Technology Empower Ordinary People to Beat Big Media, Big Government, and Other Goliaths” (Thomas Nelson, 2006). He will be covering the tea party protests today at PJTV.com.

The Wall Street Journal original article.

The Lansing State Journal original article.

April 16, 2009

5,000 gather at ‘Tea Party’ to protest federal government’s spending policies

Scott Davis
sedavis@lsj.com

Throughout the morning, they filed slowly toward the steps of the state Capitol, picket signs slung over shoulders, to wage war on a government they say has run amok.

Shortly after noon Wednesday, the outdoor rally of tax protesters was nearly 5,000 strong according to police, and their battle cry could be heard for blocks.

“Let this be just the beginning of the movement,” Leon Drolet, founder and chairman of the Michigan Taxpayers Alliance, said to the cheering crowd. “Today, (politicians) heard us. Let them feel us.”

That was the sentiment among many in the “Tea Party,” a grass-roots rally that assembled on the day that Americans were required to submit their federal and state tax forms. It was one of hundreds of “tea party” rallies nationwide Wednesday.

The crowd, which included both Republicans and Democrats, converged to voice their frustration over what they see as wasteful government spending, particularly the $787 billion stimulus bill passed in February.

“Look around. These are hardworking people who have been good citizens all their lives,” said Charlene Smith, 61, of Fowlerville, who formerly owned a printing business. “What’s happening to our country today makes them sick to their stomachs.”

The signs in the crowd told the story. Many were nonpartisan, with slogans such as “Don’t Tread on Me,” but others vented outrage toward President Barack Obama and congressional Democrats. One read: “Trillion dollar pirates: Pelosi, Reid, Obama.”

Kevin Phillips, a financial adviser who took a vacation day to drive to the event from Chelsea with his wife, Patty, and three young sons, proudly waved his sign, “We’ll keep our money. You keep your change,” a reference to Obama’s campaign call for change.

“There’s an enormous amount of frustration,” Kevin Phillips said. “They voted on the stimulus bill before reading it.”

The event featured several speakers, including Samuel Joseph Wurzelbacher, also known as “Joe the Plumber.” Among the organizers of the event were Howell resident Wendy Day, Holt resident Joan Fabiano, the Michigan Taxpayers Alliance and Americans for Prosperity-Michigan.

“I’m here to talk about common sense. Common sense does not die. It does not get old,” said Wurzelbacher, who became a national celebrity last fall after he questioned then-candidate Obama about his proposed tax increase. “Bring common sense back to America.”

James Siller, 50, of Keego Harbor, agreed with Wurzelbacher that both Democratic and Republican leaders have failed to run the country sensibly.

“(Spending) is totally out of control,” said Siller, a project manager for a robotics firm who took time off work to be at Wednesday’s event. “I can’t watch TV and not be upset. If you want to stimulate the economy, you cut taxes.”

Dan Harrell, 59, a retired autoworker from Whitmore Lake who was carrying a sign that read, “Just say no to the Obama nation,” said national leaders should realize they can’t allow the country to borrow its way out of debt. He also criticized the Obama administration for micromanaging General Motors Corp., which has sought loans from the government.

“We’ve been closer to socialism in the past 100 days than we’ve ever been,” he said.

Additional Facts

The Lansing State Journal original article.

The Detroit News original article

Charlie Cain / Detroit News Lansing Bureau

Lansing – Under sunny skies, they gathered in Lansing today to protest a government they say has grown too fat, overtaxes its citizens and intrudes into their daily lives in matters far beyond its intended reach.

The Michigan Taxpayer Tea Party drew at least 5,000 people to the grounds of the Capitol. The well-behaved crowd filled the area out front. Many brought their children, and hundreds were carrying signs with slogans such as “If everyone paid taxes we would all be equal,” and “Cut taxes not deals. You have run out of our money.” Another one said, “Obama Yo Mama. No Socialism.”

Most of those at the rally arrived in their own vehicles with very few being bused in, as is common with protests in Lansing

The rally was one of hundreds being staged on Tax Day around the state and across the country by citizens angry at higher taxes and frustrated with growing government spending.

Keynote speaker “Joe the Plumber,” who made a name for himself when he questioned presidential candidate Barack Obama over taxes, was greeted as a rock star. After being given a rousing introduction, Joe — whose name is Samuel Joseph Wurzelbacher — walked down the Capitol steps to the podium, soaking in the cheers.

“I’m here because I love America,” he said in his roughly eight-minute speech. “The mainstream media wants to paint us as a bunch of extremists, and we’re just practicing our First Amendment rights.”

Wurzelbacher described himself as a guy who likes to stand on a soap box and express his ideas. “Six months ago, people didn’t listen to me. Today, I guess I’m sort of famous.”

In his comments, he quoted Ben Franklin and Teddy Roosevelt, and closed by saying, “Bring common sense back to America. That’s it. Thank you.”

As he ended his speech the crowd chanted: “You go, Joe. You go, Joe.”

No politicians addressed the crowd, and few were in the audience. At one point the crowd was implored to show their displeasure at lawmakers in Lansing, but their protestations went unheard. The Legislature is nearing the end of its two-week spring vacation.

“We’ve had enough of oppressive taxation that is shrinking our paychecks and killing our jobs, and saddling our children and grandchildren,” said Joan Fatiano, a suburban Lansing woman who was the co-organizer of the rally, to cheers from the crowd.

Wendy Day, a school board member from Howell, mother of four and wife of a decorated Iraq veteran, said this was the start of the second American Revolution. “It will be waged not with bullets and bloodshed,” she said. “It needs to be about ideas and action.”

Nathan Hull, a 36-year-old self-employed design engineer from Ionia, brought his wife and three sons to the rally. His son, Caleb, carried a sign reading, “8 Years Old and Already In Debt.”

“We believe in the Constitution and what it stands for. We’re drifting away from that,” Hull said. “Being a business owner, I know these are challenging times in Michigan right now.”

The event was sponsored by the Americans for Prosperity, a national free market advocacy group, and the Michigan Taxpayers Alliance, an anti-tax group headed by former state representative and current Macomb County commissioner Leon Drolet.

Drolet, who attended the rally, said Michigan was alone in 2007 when business and individual taxes were dramatically increased.

“But now there is a growing national momentum in tax and spending outrage. We’ve seen these bailouts and quadrupling of the national debt,” he said. In Michigan, “we’re in a defensive position with all the talk about a graduated income tax and changes in the gas tax, which would cost motorists more.”

Drolet brought his 8-foot, pink, hard-foam pig to the Capitol. It was displayed outside the Capitol in the fall of 2007 when lawmakers were ushering in major increases in individual and business taxes.

“It takes 100 days for the average Michigan taxpayer to pay their taxes and an additional 50 days to pay their share of this year’s federal debt,” Drolet said. “We spend more on taxation than we do on housing, food and clothing combined. That’s absolutely wrong.”

He then asked the crowd to pull out their cell phones, gave them the phone number to the Congressional switchboard and told them all to dial it.

Once they all hit the send button, he led them in a chant: “Are you crazy? Wasting money. People are suffering. Cut your spending.”

His hope was that the flood of calls to the switchboard would temporarily shut it down.

Before the rally, Wurzelbacher was mobbed by the anti-tax demonstrators, some yelling, “Thanks, Joe,” and, “Great job, Joe.”

Beaming at the attention, he thanked the mobs that surrounded him and signed copies of his book, “Joe the Plumber — Fighting for the American Dream,” with the message: “Action, Not Words.” They sold at a brisk pace, at $15 each.

Wurzelbacher spent the morning answering questions from the media and doing radio interviews.

Dressed in blue jeans, a blue polo shirt and wearing a Bass Pro Shops ball cap, he told The Detroit News: “Some people buy into the mainstream media, but when people meet me, they see I’m not some dumb redneck plumber. We all want less taxes and less government control. That’s not a Republican or Democratic theme. That’s an American theme.”

Carol Malewska, a grandmother from nearby Ovid, said of Wurzelbacher, “I think he’s great. I wish he’d run for governor. I’m tired of paying taxes, and I sure don’t want to pay more for programs that don’t work.”

The Detroit News original article.