Tea Partiers hold third annual tax day rally at Temecula Duck Pond

The third annual Taxed Enough Already Tea Party Rally was held last Saturday at the Duck Pond in Temecula from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m.

Ed and Dotti Toumanian of Temecula felt the fair turnout was due to a late receipt of invitations from organizers.

The couple stood on the southeast corner of Rancho California and Ynez roads with about 20 other people, who supported the Tea Party rally, around noon. More people came and went throughout the day.

The Toumanians – who have been business owners for over 35 years – once published a monthly magazine, and were involved in creative design and art direction, international computer video game publishing, and other ventures.

They currently enjoy working from home as independent associates of a Washington-based direct-selling nutritional product company called Univera.

The Toumanians are truly diehard Tea Partiers as it was 90 degrees at the tail end of the southwest Riverside County region.

“Most people are asleep,” Ed said. “We’re trying to wake America up.”

His wife agreed as she held a sign with the words “U.S. government: You work for us. We don’t work for you!”

“We’re trying to restore the founding principals of this country,” she said. “This is a republic. It’s not a democracy.”

Despite the meager turnout, participants at last Saturday’s event seemed to receive many greetings from people waving and honking in passing vehicles.

Temecula resident Dusty Lunde of the Temecula-Murrieta Tea Party group helped organize the tax day rally.

“We got a group of volunteers, put our heads together, and saw what we were looking to accomplish at this rally,” he said during an interview at the event. “We are overtaxed and underappreciated.”

Lunde said the group talked amongst themselves, and came up with the decision to do nothing more than stand on the street corners near the Duck Pond.

“We thought about having speakers and booths but we collectively decided to just come out here, and make a stand,” Lunde said. “We are taxed enough already.”

On or about the time of April 15, it has been a popular moment for Americans, who are fed up with being referred to as “taxpayers,” to hold protests or rallies.

Members of the Tea Party Movement demand their local and federal governments demonstrate fiscal responsibility and stop wasting money, increasing spending, and raising taxes.

History has shown a long struggle against the payment of taxes from ancient through present times.

“Tax revolts or protests date at least to the Later Han dynasty (AD 25-AD 220) in Asia, to the era of Hammurabi (1792-1750 BC) in Babylon, and to the Roman Empire (27 BC-AD 337) in Europe,” according to David. F. Burg, author of “A World History of Tax Rebellions: An Encyclopedia of Tax Rebels, Revolts, and Riots from Antiquity to the Present.” “They persist to the present, as evidenced by Proposition 13 in California and similar subsequent tax reversal initiatives. Many major historic events, such as the Magna Carta, the American Revolution, and the French Revolution of 1789 originated largely as tax revolts.”

Tax protests frequently include larger economic, political, social, and even religious issues, he said.

Taxation is often the cause of protests since taxes are everywhere, easy to understand, and widely detested – they make for such a great target of opposition – Burg continued.

The underlying issues motivating the tax protesters can be very diverse, but Burg quoted

Benjamin Franklin as stating, “...in this world nothing is certain but death and taxes.”

Every month the Temecula-Murrieta Tea Party group meets.

Temecula-Murrieta Tea Party meetings are held on the second and fourth Mondays of the month, from 7 to 8 p.m., at 42065 Zevo Drive, Ste. B4 in the business park area west off Winchester Road in Temecula.

Group members encourage participants to bring a chair, knowledge, and the drive to facilitate restoration. Fore more information, email [email protected] or call (858) 395-7852.

“We are composed from several groups that want to take the movement to another level by becoming more organized, and establishing a system that will allow the group to grow,” Lunde said in a recent email. “Our goal is to reduce the size of government and to remind our representatives that they indeed still work for us. This is something that they seem to have forgotten.”

The Temecula-Murrieta group stands on the corner with its signs and flags to remind the government that “we the people” are still in charge of this country, and their ride on the political gravy train has come to an end, he said.

“Like sharks in a feeding frenzy, the political arena has attracted and employed far too many individuals that have become corrupted by greed of money and power,” he added. “The apathy of our citizens has allowed this to continue for far too long and it is only in the face of the possible destruction of our country as we know it that these people have stood up to stop the madness. We want to send a message that the sleeping silent majority is now awake and it is time for them to listen to our voices or start looking for another job come election time.”