The headline of this blog entry is a test run
of a potential 2012 ad, and is based on one that was used to help sweep
England’s conservative party (the Tories) to power in the recent
parliamentary elections. It also makes a nice segue into my topic — the
meeting that the Southern California Tax Revolt Coalition’ [1]s
team of co-founders had with a group of young European
diplomatic/bureaucratic types. It was a rather eye-opening experience,
which lead to several interesting exchanges.
Dawn Wildman, Sarah
Bond and I co-founded our citizen activist group in February 2009.
Recently, Mark Sullivan and Erika Ginsberg of the State
Department-sponsored Citizen Diplomacy Council of San Diego set up a
meeting of “Young European Leaders” with us (representing the area’s
very active Tea Party group). It seems these 20-something future
politicos (from Poland, Portugal, Ireland, Denmark, Germany, Lithuania,
Italy, Austria, Hungary and Turkey) wanted to know all about this new
American movement.
Wildman and Bond explained the history of Tea Parties, from their
current inception as an expression of public discontent at the manner in
which the House of Representatives and U.S. Senate ignored protests to
rush through the Toxic Assent Relief Program (TARP) and “Stimulus
Package.” Wildman referred to the movement as an “awakening,” and
highlighted the fact that citizens across the country are becoming more
active in contacting their representatives and learning the facts about
legislation for themselves. Bond described the Tea Party’s leaderless
structure and our group’s California activities. I described the use of
the Internet, Facebook, Twitter and forums for citizen networking,
which is a key element of all the successes that Tea Party groups have
had nationwide in the past year.
One of the best questions came from Anka Grzywacz of Poland’s
Democratic Left Alliance. Before the meeting, I was able to express
sympathy for the loss of Polish President Lech Kaczynski and 96 other
important officials in last month’s plane crash near Katyn. She was
touched, as her boss was among those killed in this tragedy. She asked
who was behind the Arizona
BUY-cott [4] that our group is promoting; many in the
audience seemed intrigued that citizens would use money as a means of
supporting leaders and legislation we like.
More challenging was the insinuation of Pedro Nuno Santa, a
Portuguese economist, that high taxes were absolutely no problem. He
used as an example his country of Portugal, indicating he would rather
be born a poor European than rich anywhere else. What recommended
Portugal most is the fact that there are “fine schools” and that
there are “no homeless.”
Santa seemed stunned when I shot back that “a government big enough
to give you what you want is one big enough to take all you have,” as
has been demonstrated many times in countries with highly centralized,
socialist governments. Such a template does not recommend itself well
to liberty-minded Americans. And while a highly-educated bureaucrat
such as Santa might find Portuguese life lush, I am thinking that a
business owner in that country, or a young person with fewer privileges,
might have real struggles. A New York Times [5] piece on
Portugal’s troubled economy
shows that Portuguese businessmen are deeply concerned; Portugal’s debt
is expected to rise to 85 percent of gross domestic product because of
rising unemployment and government spending on infrastructure projects.
Frankly, after talking with these young European leaders, I am
genuinely concerned about the extreme level of indoctrination and
theory, and the limited exposure to real-life business experience they
have received. Many seemed surprise when I detailed how I was trimming
my business expenditures and expansion plans to minimize my tax exposure
— some obviously had failed to see that tax increases do not
automatically translate to government revenue gains.
One of the more amusing moments came when Shane Kelly, of an Irish
public affairs firm, waxed poetic about Ireland’s free college tuition.
I informed Kelly that the college isn’t free; rather, it is being borne
by the blood, sweat and tears of Ireland’s producers. And, quite
frankly, I am finding that the highly bureaucratized and non-diverse
environment of today’s university means that a college degree is worth
much less today (despites its escalating cost) than in my parent’s
generation and is no longer a guarantee of individual economic
prosperity.
The Eastern European block and the charming Turkish representatives
were nodding at our group’s capitalism and individual-oriented
outlooks. They asked many solid questions about the Tea Party movement,
and were interested to note that we are not a Third Party, that we are
not really interested in targeting President Obama, and that we number
Democrats (such as myself) as well as Republicans in our number. The
most significant question we fielded was if we were “the average Tea
Partier?” Yes, it seems many Tea Party groups are lead by working
mothers such our group of co-founders.
Mothers’ concerns for their children’s futures lead to a conservative
win in England. Equally worried American mothers and others will have a
chance to change our country’s direction this November. With unrest in
Greece and debt-expanding spending tainting the sovereign currencies
throughout Europe, it seems these young European leaders may eventually
face Tea Parties in their countries as well.
Leslie Eastman runs an environmental health and safety consulting
firm, Eastman Enterprises, and is a founding member of the grassroots
organization, Southern California Tax Revolt Coalition.She can be
reached at mutnodjmetlpe(a)gmail.com