Anti-Bank, Anti-Capitalism “New Way Forward” Rally Fizzles

by T.L. James | 9:42 pm, April 11, 2009 | 2 Comments

In answer to (or as an attempt to steal the thunder of) this Wednesday’s nationwide Tea Party rallies, the left threw together their own rallies against banks, which were held today across the country.  PPC attended the rally in Denver on the west steps of the capitol building – and was pretty unimpressed.  (There was also a tepid “New Way Forward” rally in Boulder earlier in the day.)

Just months ago, the left was able to throw together rallies like nobody’s business, on short notice, with a professional quality that comes from, well, actually doing it professionally for many years.  We here at PPC have remarked for the past year that the center-right needs to learn a thing or two from the left about running high-quality, well-organized rallies.

What the hell happened???

 

The rally was planned to start at 12:00noon, but I arrived at around 11:40 to find a half-dozen people milling about.  There were no tables of kooky literature, no giant puppets, no lurid banners, not even a podium or PA system for the speakers.  I had to call PPC Central Command to make sure that I had the time and place correct…sure enough, I was where I was supposed to be, but the rally wasn’t yet.

Around 12:30 or so, a man with a plastic ass (I kid you not) asserted himself and began organizing the loitering lefties, shepherding them down the steps to the sidewalk on Lincoln where ‘it would make the crowd look bigger’.  The assembled handful needed all the help it could get in that department.

The Man With the Plastic Ass then acted as emcee for what was clearly an improvised event, first calling up to speak Bob Kinsey, the perpetually-constipated-looking Green Party Senate candidate from 2008.  Bob (his head thankfully reattached after that unfortunate campaign poster accident last year) yammered for a bit about the need to vote for the Green Party, break up the banks, vote for the Green Party, rework the economy for sustainability, vote for the Green Party, eschew the evil Republicans and backstabbing hopenchangey Obamian Democrats, and vote for the Green Party.  He also suggested voting for the Green Party.

The gathered masses (all two dozen of them, if that) clapped and cooed approvingly.  And then The Man With the Plastic Ass introduced this guy, who made a fool of Kinsey by arguing that no party can be trusted, even the Green Party.  What we need, he opined, was more local democracy, at the neighborhood association level, and the taking of power away from centralized government.  Which amusingly made him sound like a devolutionary libertarian gone wild, until you realized he just wanted retail versus wholesale statism…the kind of statism that peeks into your garbage tip instead of your wallet.

Colorado has over 3,000 overlapping special districts of the neighborhood association type, their growth rate is exploding, and they already have enough clout to thwart legislative efforts to provide any measure of public transparency and accountability.  Together, their already-authorized debt authority dwarfs the state budget, should they elect to use it, and that debt can ultimately become a lein against your private property for a public expense you didn’t have any say in because the special district concealed its shady activities from you and your neighbors. 

Colorado needs less government, not more.

The only other star at the event was Mark Cohen of Recreate ’68, who was last seen in a wizard costume attempting to levitate the Denver Mint.  He did not speak (or wave his magic wand) at the rally.

This is about the extent of the signage.  I wholeheartedly agree with the one on the left — nothing would please me more to see the government stop meddling in the economy, and certain corporations stop colluding government.  Free-market capitalism doesn’t work when the government coerces business into making bad business decisions or complying with costly feel-good regulations that add no value, nor does it work when unscrupulous corporations enlist the coercive power of government to secure subsidies or special advantages over their competitors.

I gotta wonder if the guy with the dollar sign recognizes the unintended meaning of his placard to the legions of Americans who have or are now reading Atlas Shrugged…

Meanwhile, in the crowd, this guy was wearing a shirt promoting Evo “Chavez Lite” Morales: 

And this guy was wearing a kaffiyeh, promoting…well…you know what…

And just like no mustering of moonbats is complete without a kaffiyeh or three in the crowd, it wouldn’t be the same without eye-chart placards:

…or placards which put on display the self-acknowledged intellectual titanity of the left, in this case that astounding facility with a poetic, evocative turn of phrase that makes the rest of us squirm in heavy-browed shame at our gibbering pea-brainedness:

Such wit!

After a half-dozen random people stepped out of the herd to blather to the other dozen-and-a-half about ”green sustainability” and “peak oil” and “transition economics” and anything but the true nature of the economic problems at hand and their true root causes, I got bored and left (reducing the size of the rally by about 4% in the process).  

In winding up this photoessay, however, I will leave you with one last photo which sums up the seriousness of the event – behold, its emcee, The Man With the Plastic Ass: 

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