My Proposal to the Teaparty Movement: A “Salt March”

The original Salt March was the nonviolent movement of Gandhi and his followers across India to protest a salt tax. It drew attention to the Indian Independence movement from media across the globe.

Currently, the teaparty movement has been relatively small and overly ignored. It is primarily a conservative protest against the government economic expansion earlier this year. The July 4th teaparties were primarily uniting opposition against potential tyranny that has been proposed by Congress.

If significant political unrest occurs, it will become possible for this Teaparty movement to organize a nonviolent “Salt March”. Such a march would begin at multiple urban areas across the nation and then proceed as these groups march to the capital. Of course, as these groups get closer to the capital, they’d merge. Such a march would attract significant media attention that the Teaparty movement badly needs and will climax in a Washington with a crowd possibly larger than that of the Civil Rights March on Washington in the 1960s.

However, nothing has really happened to create significant unrest in a while. Cap and Trade hasn’t passed yet, and Universal Healthcare hasn’t passed either. Still, several events may cause such unrest:

• The banning of handguns

While the Obama Administration has shown no sign of actually banning firearms, such an act, or even such a proposal will allow for the organization of a Salt March.

• Cap and Trade

If Cap and Trade increases prices enough, then as with the original Boston Teaparty and the orginal Salt March, individuals would be more willing to protest. Seeing as how nuclear energy is currently the only major alternative to fossil fuels, Cap and Trade will certainly have a massive effect on energy prices and will possibly cause prices to increase to a level that people are willing to protest against.

• Universal Healthcare

While this may just get passed and be ignoredby the apathetic majority, it may cause significant backlash. Many Americans are rather afraid of National Healthcare, and it could be that such a thing could unite the conservative-libertarian movement enough for a Salt March to be possible.

There are probably other events that could make a Salt March an event with an impressive attendence, but this is clear: people will not get off of their butts unless they realize that they are sitting on a thorn.

Cap and Trade Bill Passes the House

Though it was only by 7 votes, the cap and trade scheme has finally been approved.

Let’s look at the facts. Cap and Trade has not significantly reduced Carbon emissions in any country that it has been enacted in. It has never created more jobs than it has lost, and it has never amounted to more than a tax on a harmless gas. All the taxes assessed by Cap and Trade will inevitably be passes onto the consumer. Gas prices will skyrocket again, and the cost of virtually everything will increase.

Despite this fact, Barack Obama believes that this bill will actually create jobs. Says Obama, “This is a jobs bill”. According to CNN, Obama believes that this bill will actually create “millions of new jobs” [1]. Perhaps Obama needs a quick economics lesson: When the cost of everything increases and wages remain the same, aggregate demand is less, because consumers cannot afford to buy as much as before.

What Obama thinks though is that this bill will cause some sort of quick change to a cleaner United States, because as the costs of “dirty” products increase, the public is more likely to buy less “dirty” products. However, it is not that simple.

Those “dirty” products include gasoline, oil, natural gas, and coal. These products are currently the main contributors to the power grid in the United States. There is no true “green” alternative source of energy. Biofuels and biodiesels are not profitable without massive amounts of subsidies. Solar energyand Wind energy combined constitute less than half of 1 percent of energy production and are impractical to expand to even 5 percent. Hydroelectricity can not expand much more either, as there can only be so many dams on a river while maintaining high energy efficiency.

So, ultimately, this Cap and Trade Program is a massive energy tax. As energy costs increase for all americans in the face of a recession, how is the little guy that Obama was going to protect going to make his next house payment?

This bill has not yet passed the Senate, so there is still hope for the American economy.

[1]  http://www.cnn.com/2009/POLITICS/06/26/house.energy/index.html