Add taxes to the things I hate -- Valentine's Day, toll roads, pasta salad (not a pasta, not a salad). Now there's taxes too.
I'm a yankee-doodle cheapskate, from way back. I'm so tight, you could mint pennies between my fingers. You could press nickels between my toes.
So it is with much emotional heat that I enter this anti-tax tea party, held Friday evening in the foothills above Glendale.
"It's a $10 donation," the nice woman at the entrance says.
There they go, reaching for my moolah.
You might have caught wind of this tea party movement, sometimes dubbed TEA (Taxed Enough Already). It first appeared in late February, with scattered protests around the nation, then grew to a reported 500 events on tax day, April 15. The grass-roots movement has sort of taken off, becoming more than a hiccup and less than a full-fledged revolt.
There were some 1,400 tea party rallies scheduled across the nation this Independence Day weekend, billed as nonpartisan efforts to rein in tax-and-spend politicians.
Significant? You be the judge. Honestly, I could come down two different ways on all of this: In times so tough, isn't it a little cold-hearted to complain about paying your fair share? Or, are people so fed up with dishing out huge chunks of their income -- and receiving so little visible benefit -- that they think their "fair share" isn't so fair anymore?
That's what we're here to find out, at this rally on the grand lawn of a La Canada estate.
"Horrendous income taxes have caused Americans to take notice," says speaker Jeff Davis. "There are hidden fees in everything we buy."
Davis -- dressed very dark, like an undertaker -- is one of a dozen or so speakers on a four-hour program that features under-the-radar actresses and assorted aluminum-tongued political types, including one dude playing Abraham Lincoln (who always dresses like an undertaker).
"If you can name one thing that doesn't have some kind of associated tax, I'd like to know about it," Davis says, goosing the crowd.
If you've never been to an anti-tax tea party, here's the deal. There are a lot of good Americans -- about 500 at this rally -- sitting around a stage in molded plastic chairs trying to stay awake. Tea is in short supply, and oddly, there is no beer (Huey Long would've sent an entire Budweiser truck).
But the burgers are good, and the music -- some live, some recorded -- is stirring. What more does a political rally need?
