I must say, when I arrived I was somewhat bummed out about the small crowd that had started to gather but as time went on and I ran upstairs to the Mayor's Budget Meeting, I stopped in briefly to pick up the media kit and then headed back downstairs and was shocked at what I saw.As time went on the crowd just kept getting bigger and bigger and the next thing we knew there were some 550 people there. They had probably 75 speakers who took a few brief minutes to express their thoughts.
I'm extremely pleased so many people showed up for this event. HOWEVER, I have a few thoughts I'd like to share with ALL of you.
Where have you been?????
We have County Council Meetings and City Council Meetings where I watch some Council Members get beat up and NONE of you are there to support them. While I believe in your cause, do you believe in MINE?
I watch people like Debbie Campbell and Terry Cohen get dumped on in ways you just wouldn't believe and I have been attending meetings for at least 4 years now and again, while I appreciate ALL of you for showing up, the grass roots starts right here at home Folks!
YOU need to be heard and one way to start is by attending Council Meetings by both the City & County and you need to be heard. I listened to speech after speech and while we're ALL frustrated, I must know why you refuse to participate in your own local government?
Anyhow, I've said my peace and I hope you'll all respond to my question. ONE MAN CAN'T DO IT ALL! I can provide a place like Salisbury News for all of you to gather and even use as a tool to get 550 people to an event like this but it has been what, 200+ years since we've seen/learned of a gathering like this!
Get it together Folks. Salisbury News is a great venue/tool to use for such things but without turn outs like yesterday, do you really wonder why others call you radicals?
Why doesn't this horde show up at City and County budget and regular meetings when the pork is being passed out to put a stop to such things as paying $10,000 per acre for farmland that is not worth half that much?
ReplyDeleteSour Grapes.
ReplyDeleteThe histrionic nonsense that abounds at these events is astounding.
ReplyDeleteClearly, if taxes were the main cause of the American Revolution, the war would have started sooner than it did, and the Founding Fathers would've thought to list it higher up in the list of grievances in the Declaration of Independence.
So, if not taxes, what then was the cause?
With the conclusion of the French and Indian War and the ascension of King George III to the throne, the British government shifted its economic policy toward her North American colonies. Prior to the Seven Years War (or French and Indian War as it was called in North America), the British were content to allow the colonies to more or less govern themselves. After the French and Indian War, things changed.
The British extended their mercantilistic policies of trade restrictions and economic control, and began to directly tax the American colonists for the first time. In response to domestic tensions, they stationed more troops, undermined the authority of colonial assemblies, and ultimately imposed martial law in New England (and threatened to do so elsewhere). By the 1770s, it was clear that the British no longer respected the tradition of American self-governance.
The cause of the American Revolution was best summed up by militia volunteer Levi Preston. Interviewed over 50 years after the events of the Revolution, Preston gave the following explanation for the American Revolution: "What we meant in going for those redcoats was this: we always had governed ourselves, and we always meant to. They didn't mean we should."
Read more: "Causes of the American Revolution: Misconceptions Regarding the Role of Taxes in War of Independence" - http://colonial-america.suite101.com/article.cfm/causes_of_the_american_revolution#ixzz0Cqlw4rRW&A
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ReplyDeletethanks for bloviating. Google really makes you appear smarter than you are.
The Main cause, or meesage, was LIBERTY! Taxes have a lot to do with taking away people's liberty!
ReplyDeleteHere's the skinny -- the colonials didn't object to taxes in general, but to the fact that they were not imposing those that were passed by Parliament to prevent bankruptcy of the British Empire that was threatened in part because of the cost of defending the Colonies from the French and Indians to the north and west of the Atlantic seaboard. And then other events occurred:
ReplyDeleteThe "destruction of the tea" (not called the Boston Tea Party until decades later) changed the British position. The issue no longer was taxes; it was punishing Boston and Massachusetts. Early in 1774 Parliament passed four "Coercive" or "Intolerable" Acts, which closed the port of Boston, altered the Massachusetts government, allowed troops to be billeted on civilians, and permitted trials of British officials to be heard in Nova Scotia or Britain, because they supposedly could not get a fair trial in the original colony. This was despite the acquittal by a Massachusetts court of the soldiers involved in the Boston Massacre. General Thomas Gage, commander in chief in America, became governor of Massachusetts, and British headquarters moved from New York to Boston. Meanwhile the Quebec Act recognized Catholicism and French customs there and gave jurisdiction over the Ohio and Great Lakes country to the government in Montreal.
Resistance received a strong lead from notable provincials -- now known as the "Founding Fathers." They had become used to making laws, raising taxes, setting public officials' salaries, and debating high policy. They regarded their assemblies as local equivalents of Parliament. Now Parliament itself threatened their power and pride. Provincial assemblies passed resolutions, established Committees of Correspondence, and called for days of fasting. The sort of white men who sat in them started to work out the position that we know as "taxation without representation is tyranny." The phrase was coined by the Boston lawyer James Otis, but it was not widely used. The elite's lead was important, but resolutions and pamphlets would not alone have altered even one British policy, let alone start to change the fundamental terms of American life. From the Stamp Act in 1765 to the dumping of the tea, the resistance movement's "punch" came from the port cities, thanks to both ordinary people's grievances and well-organized popular leadership.
Wow--another history nerd out there! The other fun history fact that everyone is getting wrong is that the Tea Act did not actually raise the taxes on tea--it lowered them. The fear was that it would create a monopoly for a single company, which would eventually raise the price of tea with its unfair trade advantage.
ReplyDelete550? More like 25.
ReplyDeleteit was almost 600 people...........
ReplyDelete12;20:
is the 25 your iq??
Misery Loves Company:
ReplyDeleteIf the government (Wicomico County, this time) is going to take our development rights without paying the landowners for them then why shouldn't it tax everyone else too.
Don't they have jobs they should be working?
ReplyDelete"do you believe in MINE?" - NO.
ReplyDeleteWOW.Isn't that more people than voted?
ReplyDeletelol