More Love for Local Tea Party Activism

Tea Partyers, there is a must read in today's WSJ about Tea Party activists setting their sights on local issues. We already had some local success in San Diego with the defeat of Propositions A and J, the half-cent sales tax increase and parcel tax increase, respectively. The article makes an important point about the need to grow bench strength of local school board members and other locally elected officials to give the Tea Party future leaders. It also points out that our influence can often be even greater at the local level. A few key quotes:

Tea-party groups in Pennsylvania, Delaware and Michigan have recently voiced plans to have members run for local town boards in 2011—a bid to start a farm team of politicians who can move up to higher offices. . . . Now, the Philadelphia Tea Party Patriots plan to launch the "Watchman Project," in which members will be assigned to attend local government meetings, monitor meeting minutes and then report back to the group, Mr. Reimer said. "If there is a particular vote coming up that we support or oppose, we would all show up to influence what is going on," he said.

Locally in San Diego, Dawn, Leslie and Sarah have been very active in keeping us appraised of political developments, but it will take more of us monitoring city council meetings, school board meetings to keep the politicians honest.

Photo courtesy of LeftCoastRebel.

Your (Local) Tax Dollars at Work

So here's a nice little gig, if you can swing it. Charlene Tressler, was until recently, the Commissioner of San Diego County's First 5 Commission. These commissions were set up to distribute Prop 10 largess to favored constituencies around the state,... sorry, I meant to say to save the children with tobacco tax money. On top of her busy schedule running the commission, she also ran a charity and a preschool, making her the perfect kind of person to be looking out for the welfare of San Diego's wee ones. In fact, she was so awesome that the First 5 Commission paid out $8.3 million in grants to her organizations. Hooray, the children are SAVED!

For once, our local paper is breaking a story of interest. Charlene wasn't the only one on the commission doing well by doing good. Turns out that being on the advisory committe was better than a paying gig and that $67 million (or 44% of all grants) over three years was paid out to members of the commission's advisory committee. I'd like to be giving that kind of advice myself.

Just like the gun turn-in program detailed below, local government shows itself to be just as brilliant at conflicts of interest and lunacy as the feds. And who pays for this madness? The typically low income folks who still purchase cigarettes legally.