Marc Valdez Weblog: Annual Tax Day Rally At The State Capitol

Introductory remarks from this guy.

It's April 15th, so time to see what the Norcal Tea Party folks put together at their annual rally on the West Steps of the California State Capitol!

Sometimes these rallies are pretty interesting. The tax day rally in 2009 was off the hook! Obama had just gotten elected, so the crowd was spitting mad. In addition, the crowd was enormously obese: amazing beached suburban land whales gasping for air! Fatty, fatty, fat, fat, fat! They looked very unhealthy, and indeed, the crowd in 2010 looked much slimmer. The spitting-mad whales of 2009 simply passed away. Too fat to survive the reign of the skinny Magic Negro from Illinois, or Hawaii, or Kenya, or wherever.

This year, the crowd was sparse. The crowd of mostly-elderly suburbanites seemed unusually polite, and reasonably-tepid in their anti-Obama hatred. The atmosphere was light-years from the crazed madness of 2009.

Which is too bad, really. Crazed lunatics work best when they really are crazed. They are still crazy, but in a polite way.

Long-time activist Jon Coupal, looking sleek from many years in the spotlight.

As far as I can tell, what energy there is this year in the Tea Party movement regards Fair Tax proposals. Last night, George Noory had Fair Tax proponent Bill Spillane on his radio show:

"The Fair Tax is the most simple possible tax on the American people," while the current income tax system is incredibly complicated, he stated. The retail tax would be for final consumption, so there would be no business-to-business taxes, which would bring prices down on American produced goods, he continued.

So, I asked a representative about this Fair Tax. I liked the idea of the "prebates" given to individuals - a sort of liberal idea embedded in the mish mosh - but wondered what the tax would ultimately be at the cash register. Seems to be a different idea than the "Flat Tax", which was butchered a few years ago by the Mormon Church when they realized what that would do to tithing. I'm sure "Fair Tax" would be unworkable too, but I didn't drill far enough down to discredit it.

Someone brought a drone! Cool camera on it too.

Carefully monitoring the audience and speakers as they complain about unwarranted government surveillance.

Reverend ?

Cool flag.

Warm pavement frightens off most folks, who retreated to the shade.

Um, this guy.

Congressional candidate Igor Birman calls for impeaching Attorney General Eric Holder, and compares the current US situation to the land of his childhood, the USSR.