George Rebane
Today the much ballyhooed cross-country Tea Party Express started off on the west steps of the State Capitol in Sacramento. Jo Ann and I were up early to get our puppy settled for the day, pick up our neighbor, and drive down to Bethel Church where three busses were lined up and waiting to take the Nevada County contingent of the Tea Party Patriots to join the doings in Sacramento.
Our first hint that this was not a well-oiled operation came when our ‘bus captain’ finished his rousing remarks about how important the Tea Parties were as we barreled down Hwy 49. Then people started asking the normal questions about the event and the transportation logistics, to which his uniform reply was ‘I don’t know, they didn’t tell me.’ OK, we’re all grown up and we’ll wing it.
The bus got off the I-5 freeway and soon we were winding our way through Sacramento’s streets, some of these were already blocked off which forced to go around the barn a couple of times before winding up conveniently in front of the Capitol’s west end. At 1030 lots of people were already there, and lively music was playing even though the program was not to start until noon.
In the days leading up to this event we were told that the participants would number in the thirty to fifty thousand range, and include people arriving to protest the government imposed drought in the Central Valley that has cost over 40,000 jobs to date, and even more to protest the AB32 legislation that is giving the California Air Resources Board (CARB) the power to economically devastate an already devastated state. All right! Bring them on, lots of issues for everyone to hoot and holler about.
We set up our camping chairs in the same spot we had picked last April for the first big Tea Party. The music was good with some really great lyrics that highlighted and underlined the insanities coming from Washington and Sacramento that all of us there sensed were now the regular bill of fare for Obamanation.
It got hotter as noon approached and more people arrived with their signs, chairs, and backpacks. The atmosphere was very festive as several warm-up speakers gave their sense of outrage on the happenings during the last year or so. Then came the announcement that the farm tractors and 18-wheelers were arriving. The police were deflecting them from coming up to the Capitol on 10th Street for some reason, so people rushed out to welcome them a block to the west where they were being turned off.
Finally some tractors and a truck were allowed park on 10th Street across from the where the rally was being held. Meanwhile the big rigs took up an orbit around the Capitol and Park. Every once in a while we would hear one of them blare their horn as they drove by. (I was particularly pleased to see that our own Lowell Robinson had sent some of his very visible turquoise big rigs to join the merry-go-round.) Rumor had it that the city threatened an $800 fine on each count for blowing your horn for political purposes. Some of us thought that a similar fine on politicians would serve well to reduce deficit spending.
The afternoon got into high gear with barn burning speeches from northern California politicians (good speeches by Tom McClintock and Dan Logue – thanks to Fred Buhler for the McClintock pic), dignitaries, farmers, truckers, and local media celebrities of the conservative stripe. As the afternoon’s temperature and humidity rose, so did the volume and outrage of the speakers against all kinds of silly and hurtful things California farmers and small businesses now had to endure from the government. Unfortunately, the thing that didn’t go up was the number of people in the enthusiastic crowd that surrounded the steps of the Capitol.
It became clear even before noon that this happening was not going to attract tens of thousands. My estimate, corroborated by several astute Nevada County crowd counters, was that at any one time the maximum attendance was around 2,500. Now more people than that attended because there was a constant stream of folks arriving and departing, after they sampled the heat and discovered that all the good shady spaces were pretty much occupied. But the overall size of the crowd was disappointing, and there’s more to be said about that.
No doubt the predicted 100 degree heat and attendance in the ‘tens of thousands’ kept many people away. Also, the scheduled length of the program was five hours – noon to 5pm, not the best time for Sacramento in August. There was no published schedule of events from the podium/stage, so you couldn’t even effectively cherry pick a preferred speaker. In short, there were a few significant dents in the overall event planning that I hope will serve as a ‘learning moment’ to improve the follow-on events on the route of the Tea Party Express.
All day long I kept sampling the liberal media (e.g. local NPR and KCRA) to see how they would report the event. Nothing. Total news black out. To them, what was going on today at the Capitol merited equal coverage of the casual crap a single robin might have taken on that same grass yesterday. And when I reflect on their tactic, they are doing the right thing, and properly serving their socialist cause. For it is not the piercing truth and strong prose of our arguments, it is not the compelling logic and reason behind the revelations of government mismanagement that matter, it is not the witty little ditties that we so carefully composed for the signs we made on our kitchen tables, it is simply the numbers. Count the sweaty bodies on the lawn.
Those journalists pushing ‘balanced coverage’ of the news can make a thirty minute gathering of thirty scuzzy leftwingers look like a social temblor hitting a city. And they can also totally block from public attention the enthusiastic gathering of 2,500 people in a major organized happening with bands, stage, well-known speakers, big screen repeaters, oodles of all kinds of cops, lines of tractors, and big rigs circling the Capitol. Take that Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck.
Speaking of Beck; did you catch his Obama administration expose series this week? He asked some pretty tough questions and put out some astounding information about the people that Obama has hand picked to advise him and execute his ‘transformation programs’. But even Beck faded in the stretch – he spent the week pretending and posturing that Obama might not know the self-declared communists, socialists, and anti-American radicals that now form his administration’s extra-constitutional inner circle. In his exhortation to “question boldly”, Beck never asked ‘Mr. President, why have you hand-picked these self-declared and documented ideological extremes and misfits to design and implement the programs that will radically change our way of life while bankrupting our country in the process?’ (synopsis of entire series here and here)
Our bus arrived at its appointed station at the appointed time. We piled our gear into its cavernous baggage compartments and collapsed in our seats for the more subdued ride home. There was less talking as we pulled out – the heat and humidity had taken its toll on this busload of tired and somewhat aged rightwing extremists and radicals. People who are now squarely in the sights of the Homeland Security Administration, no doubt later to be handed off to the tender mercies of the Civilian National Security Force when Obama gets that little piece of Hope and Change going. Glenn Beck never did get the White House to tell him who the CNSF is supposed to secure us from. Of course President Hindenburg also never got an answer from Chancellor Hitler when asked from whom were the Brown Shirts supposed to defend the German people.
Bottom line takeaway – today’s gathering demonstrated that fiscally conservative, smaller government, Constitution supporting Americans are not yet turning the fast-rising socialist tide. Not enough people are doing not enough.
Some websites of interest mentioned by the various speakers today.
http://masonweaver.com/ – Black motivational conservative.
http://casmartenergy.com/ – To counter California Energy Commission
http://www.campaignforliberty.com/index.php – Support HR1207 to audit the Fed
http://www.flashreport.org/#SlideFrame_1 – California politics
http://community.pacificlegal.org/Page.aspx?pid=183 – Pacific Legal Foundation
http://killcarb.org/ – expose of CARB as a rogue California agency
ps. Apologies for the obvious absence of the high caliber of polished prose, witty repartees, and crisp logic usually found on these pages. Tonight I’m tired, protesting is hard work. 😉
[update] I also sent an email to the Nevada County Tea Party Patriots leadership which, in part, reads
“… The turnout was an embarrassment when compared to the advertized/expected numbers. Its media coverage (i.e. blackout) in the liberal press was expected, but that it was ignored on Fox News and the WSJ should be followed up. Around here (SacBee and The Union) it was covered, but treated as local news, not the launch of a major national effort to marshall fiscal conservatives across the land.
The fact that such a demonstration on the steps of a major state capitol was purposely not covered should itself be a news topic and grist for Sunday talk shows. If not, then the socialists have cracked the code on tea parties and will just keep their programs rolling on. I hope that some astute heads are puzzling on this before the Tea Party Express gets too far along on its cross-country trek. Maintaining relevance should be the topic of discussion.”
I copied this email to Jeff Ackerman, the Publisher/Editor of The Union, and, with his permission, his reply is included here.
“George: for the record… We called the Associated Press office in Sac and were told they weren’t covering that event. The liberals believe they own the market on protest marches. We had several calls for not pasting Teddy’s death all over page one and they said the fact that we covered McClintock’s visit instead proved we were a “right wing” rag, as Mr. Pelline suggests. Never mind we were among the first to post his death online. We were told to expect 50,000 protestors in Sac. So I was surprised by the low numbers. I wonder what the Tea Party plans are beyond the protests? The movement is still viewed by many as a GOP movement and certainly not across all party lines. Jeff”
And here is a great video of yesterday’s event that was recently posted on YouTube.
rebanesruminations.com 
Leave a comment