The wife and kids are out of town visiting family this week, so I decided it was time to let loose and get a little crazy. Yes, I and thousands of other rightwing extremists attended the Houston Tea Party protest yesterday!

Unless you are watching Fox News or reading some blogs, you may not have even heard about these, so let me give you a quick introduction. Taking cue from CNBC commentator Rick Santelli’s famous “rant heard ‘round the world”, groups of concerned citizens around the country used social networking and the internet to organize modern-day tea parties to protest the current direction our government and our country.

I had never attended a political protest before in my life. For people I talked to in the crowd, most of them never had either. Some were there for a specific reason like the size of government, deficit spending, high taxes, states’ rights infringement, or lack of government accountability. Some were there out of a general discomfort of the actions of our government and elected officials. All of us are sicked and tired of a government and politicians that seem to have no regard for our wishes and whose actions we seemingly have no control or influence over.

Contrary to some media reports, we are not all a bunch of Republican Party operatives. I am just your average 30-year old accountant, working for a living and would almost certainly be classified as middle-class. I have never run for elective office or worked on the campaign of anyone who has. I have never volunteered for any political party or donated money to any party or candidate. Although I am registered to vote as a Republican, I am generally disgusted with both parties and would by no means be considered a party loyalist. In other words, the idea that I am just a tool of the Republican Party is utter crap.

Most of the people there were just average working class folks. I got there about 2 hours into the protest and the plaza was absolutely filled with people. The organizers said on their blog that a total of 8,532 people signed in at their registration table, and there were likely many that didn’t sign in (myself included) that puts their estimate at 10,000. As the rally went on from 4pm under after 8pm, there were likely significantly fewer than that number there at any given time as some early birds left as others just getting off of work arrived. I’d say while I was there there were probably about 5000 people there at any given time. Considering so many people have to work to pay their taxes making it difficult to attend, I think this is a great turnout.

So what did I find interesting about the protest? A few things…

·         When you hear the word protest, you often think of an almost violent affair of unreasonably angry people. That certainly wasn’t the case in Houston. Everyone was incredibly polite, and when the protest was done the discarded signs were all placed in the trash bins so we probably left the plaza cleaner than we found it. This certainly wasn’t an angry, destructive, unruly mob that you would normally associate with a protest.

·         Thankfully there wasn’t a whole lot of representation from the Tin Foil Hat Brigade (conspiracy theorists). Other than one woman who was ranting something about Obama controlling the internet, the closest thing to a fringe position was one guy holding up a sign promoting Texas secession, which in Texas isn’t really a fringe position (heck, even our governor has alluded to the idea in the last week). Not that it is wrong to be suspicious of your government, but spouting off unsubstantiated allegations of the government conspiring against us detracts from the real message and undermines its credibility.

·         I was kind of annoyed by the Fair Tax proponents latching onto the protest. Fair Tax is the concept of replacing the income tax with a national consumption tax. As much as I dislike the current income tax structure, I generally think a consumption tax is a very bad idea, which may be why those people annoyed me.

It was really a great experience, and I would certainly do it again. I will post a few pictures after while.

Before I end this post, let me say a few words about the political nature of many of my recent posts. I realize many of you visit this blog looking for personal finance advice and couldn’t care less about politics. However, what many people don’t realize is that for many middle-class families taxes are your biggest expense. Remember that this includes income taxes, property taxes, social security and medicare taxes, sales taxes, fuel taxes, and many other levies we are forced to pay to support our government. The more our government spends, the more it will likely have to raise taxes to pay for that spending, either now or by issuing debt and shifting the burden to some point in the future. The other alternative is that the government could devalue the currency by putting more dollars into the money supply, leading to high rates of inflation. Either of these scenarios would have deep impacts on the finances of the average family, which is what makes it in my mind a personal finance issue. As I mentioned a few weeks back, there is so much uncertainty in the current environment I have trouble giving traditional personal finance advice just because it seems the rules of the game could change at any moment, making what could seem like a good decision now an absolutely horrible one in the future.  I will work to give personal finance advice that I think could be beneficial no matter what may come, however I will avoid posting advice based on the notion that we live in a static environment and that the rules will be the same in the future as they are today. If you wish to stick your head in the sand and seek out such advice, there are many sources for it online. If you want to hedge your bets a little in case tomorrow isn’t quite what everyone expected, you are in the right spot.