I actually found the most interesting activity of the conference to be walking around the small exhibitor area and seeing what some of the other groups sponsoring the conference were up to. One organization I encountered for the first time was the American Legislative Exchange Council, a very interesting group which promotes conservative legislative issues nationwide to state legislatures. They must be doing something right, because they've earned the ire of the rabidly anti-capitalist NRDC which has a little hate site all about ALEC called ALECwatch. I also had a good talk with some of the people from Liberty Features Syndicate, who are working to promote liberty-oriented content in the media and seem to be off to a good start.
The other good thing about the conference was a chance to hear a presentation from John Stossel at the Friday night reception. Stossel is always entertaining and informative, and while I think this presentation was a bit under-prepared and rushed, compared to other times I've seen him, he still got very positive response from the crowd and communicated his pro-liberty, common sense message very effectively.
One of the things which caught my attention at the conference is that a lot of the participating groups seem to get their funding from the same fairly short list of sources. I love the fact that the Koch brothers throw money at pro-liberty groups like candy, but when they're behind almost all of the participants the event becomes a bit like a Koch Foundation staff picnic. When you have paid activists from one group talking to paid activists from another group and they all get their money from the same sources, it's all a little too inbred. It's a closed circle and it's going nowhere because they are all talking to the wrong people and the real grassroots activists just aren't there.
The NTU puts on a nice conference and they certainly raise valid issues and concerns, but something's missing. They act like there's "movement" or a "tax revolt" but nothing is really going to happen except for lots of talking until they find a way to broaden their message and get real citizen activists involved. That clearly was not happening at this conference, so a lot of money and effort was being expended while very little was being accomplished — a frustrating situation to observe when you know how much the nation needs real change and real activism for liberty and fiscal responsibility.
Article comments
— go to most recent comments1 - Clavos
Interesting.
As you said, it's sad, at this time in our history, with the most spendthrift administration ever in Washington, that these folks aren't more effective.
I would really have enjoyed seeing Moore and Stossel talk. I just read the Moore/Laffer book, and always enjoy Stossel's appearances on TV.
2 - RJ
These think-tankers need to reach out to the Glenn Beck 912ers and the Tea Party people. That's your grassroots right there.
3 - roger nowosielski
There may be one explanation, Dave, why the efforts to reach or develop "grass roots" are likely to be ineffective. Perhaps the bulk of the tea-party attendees and so-called "concerned citizens" are more concerned with their own stinking situation than what's "good" for the country at large. Right or wrong, it's the idealistic viewpoint that is most conducive to any kind of mass movement; and these people hardly cut an idealistic mindset as though their concern was with the principle of the thing rather than their own predicament.
I'd say it's something to think about.
4 - Dr Dreadful
"Can you have a "movement" when you're just a bunch of think tank staffers talking to each other and the public didn't show up?"
What kind of movement?
;-P
5 - Dr Dreadful
Now that I've dragged the debate down a notch...
RJ actually makes a good point in #2. I'm sure the NTU was encouraged by the Tea Party kerfuffle but it sounds as if they didn't really take advantage of it.
6 - m ark
More like the grassroots didn't take advantage of the NTU.
And let me take the debate one notch lower: I got yer grassroots right here! (image the appropriate gesture)
7 - Clavos
Ah, the intellectual stimulation! The erudition! The lofty discourse!*
*Or whatever...
YMMV
8 - RJ
Seriously, it shouldn't be just small-government conservatives and libertarians who are concerned about the budget deficit and the national debt. I mean, it took over 200 years for our country to accumulate the debt we currently have, and 0bama is going to double it in less than a decade.
Shouldn't, like, EVERYONE be concerned about that?
9 - m ar k
The 'tea party' that I attended had folks of all persuasions except for the hardened Obama supporters.
10 - Bliffle
The problem is that these folks lost credibility by not opposing the spendthrift Bush adminisration, so they have no standing now as anti-spending champions.
Instead, they went along with Bush and chose partisan politics.
11 - Lumpy
Groups like NTU and CAGW did actually speak out on their spending and tax issues while Bush was in office but then as now no one was listening.
12 - Dave Nalle
Bliffle, the Bush spending is so totally dwarfed by what Obama is doing that if people who supported Bush "lost credibility" then everyone who is supporting Obama ought to be stoned in the streets.
Dave
13 - Clavos
then everyone who is supporting Obama ought to be stoned in the streets.
A lot of 'em probably are, but in their living rooms.
14 - Bliffle
Dave,
Bush increased the national debt by about $5trillion, a sum well beyond anything real or implied in BHOs plans.
FWIW, I think the neo-republicans and Bush made a bad play. IMO they decided that if they spent the nation sufficiently into debt that there would be no money left for a subsequent dem administration to do anything. But they were wrong (once again demonstrating that the neo-reps and Bush were/are poor strategists) because BHO simply ignored the debt and raised the ante.
So now we are unwilling participants in a spending race between the reps and dems.
15 - roger nowosielski
I wonder if they'll let you get by with that statement, bliffle. If you're even halfway right, you could be onto something.
16 - Cindy
The 'tea party' that I attended had folks of all persuasions except for the hardened Obama supporters.
It even had anarchists. :-)
17 - Clavos
So now we are unwilling participants in a spending race between the reps and dems.
18 - Dave Nalle
Bush increased the national debt by about $5trillion, a sum well beyond anything real or implied in BHOs plans.
He did that in 8 years, while fighting two expensive wars. Obama has spent or pledged to spend almost that much in 3 months while accomplishing nothing at all.
Dave
19 - Jordan Richardson
Oh, so the two expensive wars are over? Neat!
20 - Ruvy
Dave,
You have two big problems with the NTU etc. One is that American conservatives - from the NIMBY crowd to the isolationist crowd to the "my fuckin' taxes are too high!" crowd, tend to not help others.
The other is that the Blessed of Hussein went right around the tax issue and just handed out money without bothering to deal with taxes.
Both he and Bush are fiscally irresponsible in the extreme, and it is only a matter of time before those chickens come home to roost - and sink the dollar altogether. Then, in come the Chinese, taking your assets (and your asses) collecting on their teds.
I suspect that this realization slowly sinking in is what kept grassroots participation so low at the seminars you went to.
21 - RJ
Bush increased the national debt by about $5trillion, a sum well beyond anything real or implied in BHOs plans.
Wrong:
"President Bush presided over a $2.5 trillion increase in the public debt through 2008. Setting aside 2009 (for which Presidents Bush and Obama share responsibility for an additional $2.6 trillion in public debt), President Obama’s budget would add $4.9 trillion in public debt from the beginning of 2010 through 2016."
After 2016, of course, massive budget deficits are projected to continue.
The Left has no credibility on this issue. They attacked Bush relentlessly on the deficit when he was in office, but now that 0bama is in office, they don't seem to mind record-shattering budget deficits at all. Conservatives, on the other hand, were appalled by the spending and the deficits under both Presidents.
22 - Bliffle
What happened , IMO, is that the various "taxpayers" outfits let themselves be swept into the neo-republican party years ago, from which partisan position they could not escape. Thus, they had to lay low during the Bush wild spending, but that has just made them laughable now. People can't be blamed for thinking that the "taxpayer" outfits are just neo-republican puppets.
23 - Bliffle
Gee, Roger, I thought it was pretty obvious to anyone who thought about it back in 2001 that the republican strategy was to make sure that they left an empty treasury and big debts so that any subsequent democrat administration would be paralyzed for lack of money. It's a traditional political ploy.
But that was based on their presumption of getting another Clinton-like dem, maybe Hillary herself, who would assiduously strive to prove himself (or herself) president worthy by balancing the budget and overcoming past rep debts (as Clinton dealt with the leftover Reagan-Bush debts).
But they miscalculated by assuming that Bill Clintons rightward shift was a permanent change in the dems: a serious miscalculation, as we see.
24 - roger nowosielski
To tell the truth, I didn't give it much thought then. My interest in politics comes and goes. Plus, it was much more absorbed by my personal life then and my love affairs, no to mention the two novels I was writing. But what you're saying now does appear to make sense. In fact, it struck me as something to really ponder about.
25 - Dave Nalle
So, "Clinton-like Dem" is Bliffle's code word for "fiscally responsible" as opposed to batshit crazy, spend the country into total economic destruction, which is what we got.
Dave