On Tea Parties, and DC

Apparently there’s some sort of coordinated effort to protest government spending or taxation or some such matter going on in DC and elsewhere tomorrow, using the meme of the Boston Tea Party. To mark the event, DCist posted up a short and sweet article keeping this protest in perspective:

The whole idea of using the Boston Tea Party as a rallying cry for people who aren’t happy with how the government is spending their money is a little strange, especially for those of us who qualify as both taxed and unrepresented. Back in late 2007 D.C. voting rights activists had their own tea party, symbolically dumping leaves into the Potomac to make a point that has stood for far too long — District residents pay federal taxes yet have no federal representation. If anyone can yell “No taxation without representation!”, it’s us.

As noted in the DCist article, Matt Yglesias found some humor in hearing a tea-party rally in Nebraska yell the old “taxation without representation” line:

Here in Washington DC, your humble blogger and about 600,000 other people are living and paying taxes to a United States government that does not allow us to elect representatives to congress. Whether you think that’s fair or not, what we’re doing is paying taxes without representation. The 1.8 million Nebraskans are very much represented in congress. There’s Rep. Jeff Fortenberry, Rep. Lee Terry, and Rep. Adrian M. Smith in the House of Represenatives along with Senators Ben Nelson and Mike Johanns. Indeed, with a mere 0.6 percent of the nation’s population, Nebraska gets to elect fully 2 percent of the Senators. If anything, Nebraskans have taxation with overrepresentation.

And so, protestors coming to DC tomorrow, consider the fact that your “taxation without representation” is neither (a) a net increase in taxes, nor (b) done without representation. And don’t forget those in DC that get all the tax, and none of the representation.