George Rebane
A vision cannot be imposed on a people, it can only be inspired.
After a good dinner at the GV Cirino’s, the Steeles and Rebanes hightailed it to the fairgrounds for the monthly evening gathering of the Nevada County Tea Party Patriots. Our featured speaker was Mark Meckler, national co-counder of the TPP. We thought we arrived early, but that was not to be. The assigned parking for Ponderosa Hall was chuck full, and I wound up going in Gate #4 and weaving through a dark forest that was also packed with vehicles, before finding a slot for my truck. The hall itself was overflowing with folks of all political colorations (even an occupier or two).
As a TPP member I am overjoyed that each meeting we hold has more people than the last. It is now definitely a place to meet and greet all kinds of friends who feel that the country is off on the wrong track, liberty and the Constitution are sacred, and that neither party has a clue on how to get out of big government business as usual.
Mark is a good, no, a great public speaker, and his talk last night on Constitutional history and the current mood in Washington was extra special. About the doings in Washington, Mark was equally frank (aka ruthless) in characterizing both major parties.
He spent some time on republicanism which the current trend in the country is trying to do away with. In that vein he brought up the 17th Amendment that made US Senators to be elected by popular vote in their states. This was a major step in weakening states’ rights as students of history know. The amendment was passed in 1913 which saw a couple of other shots to the country’s shorts. One was the passage of the federal income tax as we know it today, and the other was the founding of the Federal Reserve which put our money supply into the unaudited hands of plutocrat bankers. There was a fourth tragedy of governance in 1913, but overcome again with grief at this recounting, my memory fails. (Jo Ann later reminded me that the fourth was ‘reapportionment’ of the House to a fixed number of 435 seats. Today this has each Representative representing over 700,000 constituents, and growing. Not the intimate type of republicanism that the Founders intended.)
All of these foibles have been covered and re-covered in these pages. As I have said before, were I king, then individuals would pay no federal income taxes, only state taxes. States would pay federal taxes. A better turn on that would be for citizens to pay only local (county) taxes, with the counties paying state taxes.
And were I king, the 17th Amendment would be repealed and US Senators would again be elected by state legislatures. To that I would add that California’s Assembly would be popularly elected, but its Senate would be elected by the counties’ boards of supervisors. In short, ratchet republicanism down several notches so that the influence of moneyed interests would be tempered and sound bite bait would not rule the ignorant and disinterested as much as it does today.
Mark also recounted some conversations that advised our Congress meeting less often and meeting through the use of modern communications technology – literally assembling as a “virtual Congress” of members who spend most of their time with their constituents and not inside the Beltway insulated from the real world. More to be said about that.
One of the people who introduced himself to me was Michael Rogers of Truckee. Michael has been a frequent contributor to RR and is now running for county supervisor from Truckee (5th District) and competing against Mayor Richard Anderson also wanting to move his office to the Rood Center. Michael told me that I was to announce his firm decision to run and gave me his card (nearby) that made it all official. Others have told me that Mr Rogers is not a serious candidate and doesn’t have a snowball’s chance in hell. Well, stranger things have happened, but I am a bit leery about his attempting to “build a fair, abundant, and sustainable economy” for us that comes complete with “middle class jobs with benefits”. Some of those progressive goals do not often fly in tight formation.
Finally, I was pleased to again see and sit with my friend Bob Crabb who was there getting more material for his sharp wit and pen. I couldn’t really dig out of Bob anything that he might ascribe as radical that was being said during the evening. But he did keep a stiff upper lip, and was not given to contributing any superfluous applause to Mark’s obvious tea party pleasing points. Neither of us stayed for the post-meeting at which we usually open all the big checks from the oil companies, and circle dance around burning effigies of Nancy Pelosi and John Boehner while shrieking epithets and tearing off bits of clothing. Perhaps next month.
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