Saturday, June 25, 2011

Trump Picks Up Tea Party Tab

John Hayward at Human Events reports:

Back in April, the South Florida Tea Party (SFTP) held a Tax Day rally in Boca Raton. The turnout was unexpectedly large, prompting the city of Boca Raton to bill the grassroots organization for over $6,000 in barricades and police services.

The SFTP disputed the charges, asking for an itemized bill, since their own calculations showed the hourly wages for the eight police officers at the event should have come to about a third of the fee they were charged. They also pointed out that leftist group MoveOn.org held a rally three days later, which used the same barricades provided for the Tea Party event, but only the SFTP was billed...
Fortunately, a guardian angel appeared, in the form of one Donald J. Trump.

Trump, who spoke at the Tea Party rally, stepped in to settle up with the City of Boca Raton, paying all of the outstanding bills.

"Mr. Trump was honored that the Tea Party event orchestrated by Everett Wilkinson generated more than 5,000 people to come hear him speak," said Trump’s executive vice president and special counsel Michael Cohen. Furthermore, Trump “does not want any citizen's group to be disparaged or burdened for exercising their First Amendment rights, and he has agreed to personally cover the cost to the city of Boca Raton."

11 comments:

  1. I just found that Ron Paul is the only "fully pro-life" candidate (from Lew's Political Theater).

    That actually makes me rethink Paul quite a bit.
    I don't believe that fully pro-life is fully libertarian.

    If you voluntarily want to kill yourself or if you want to choose to end life in your body or if you justly lose your life because of your crimes, then that isn't unlibertarian.

    It's notable that Gandhi was not a pacifist and praised the use of force in self-defense.

    Pacifism of the extreme sort isn't Christian or libertarian but a kind of heresy, from what I understand, so I wonder how that squares with Dr. Paul's religious beliefs?

    Same for capital punishment, which is certainly justified in the Judeo-Christian tradition.

    There might be pragmatic reasons for curtailing its use, but that doesn't go to its validity in the tradition.

    So too, murder cannot be compared to the lawful taking of life in self-defense or punishment.

    Tolstoi thought otherwise, but he got to be quite a bit of a crank in his old age, probably as a reaction to having killed someone in a duel in his youth.

    Like Augustine, he was always going from one logical extreme to another.

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  2. It would've been better if Donald pressed the city to re-do their accounting for the miscalculated bill- THEN paid for it, rather than just waving a magic wand over it and making the unresolved problem disappear. Don't you agree?

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  3. Why am I reminded of the commies co-opting the struggle in Spain against Franco????

    Discuss.......

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  4. @Lila,


    Choice, my dear, choice.

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  5. If I understand him correctly, Dr. Paul is personally against abortions, but is against imposing his personal view onto others (at least at the federal level).

    I wouldn't expect a somebody so liking children that he choose a profession which is quintessentially pro-life (he *is* an Ob/Gyn) to be in favor of abortions on a personal level. That would be a glaring lack of personal integrity. But the fact that he doesn't think he (or the govt) has any right to impose his view on everybody is what makes him quite acceptable to those of us who have a more cynical view on this life... abortions are for evolutionary dead-ends.

    I never thought that Dr. Paul is fully libertarian, in the modern, Rothbardian, sense. He obviously is not against the institution of government - only against the wrong kind of government. He probably understands the evil nature of any government, but is willing to compromise to advance liberty. While this is not something I'd do myself (I'd rather get rid of the gang, once and forever), I can support him now.

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  6. @Capn Mike -

    Yes, that's how I see it too.

    @Averros -

    Oh, yes, I don't think an ob-gyn could be for FULL choice over the lives of babies/fetuses in the third trimester, although I don't know why you can't still be pro-choice and deliver babies and like 'em as much as you want.

    I think a position that treats new life as a person from the moment of conception is fair and consistent and traditionally Christian.

    Personally, I err on the opposite side....

    Dying in its proper time is not repugnant to me, at least, theoretically.

    It remains to be seen how stoic I would be if I actually had to run a sword through my guts....

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  7. Lila, Dr Paul's new book deals with the nuances and reasoning behind his pro-life stance. As stated, he is against a federal ban. His views on the death penalty, which he admits have evolved over the decades, are even more interesting. He now opposes letting the state kill anyone. Wonder how he feels about assisted suicide?

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  8. I would rather have seen the city address the questions raised by the Tea Party group, than to just have Trump pay to make it all go away.

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  9. Lila said "I don't believe that fully pro-life is fully libertarian."

    It is internally consistent because your rationale neglects to incorporate the rights and desires of the unborn which are assumed to be just as strong and unalienable as your own.

    The true libertarian should be pro-life because that child has every right to develop and flourish as the mother does. To flippantly decide that one person's rights supersede another is not liberty, but tyranny.

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  10. To put it another way: If you choose to drink excessively, that in itself is usually not a life altering decision- however you marry that with driving at the same time and suddenly the dynamics of your decision have changed. Just because you exercised your right to make a decision does not exempt you from the consequences of your choice regardless of how you may view the outcome.

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  11. Averros said "abortions are for evolutionary dead-ends".

    And just who decides who becomes a "dead-end" and who doesn't? You speak of despotism, murder and tyranny as though they are logical paths for mankind to pursue. To entertain such a thought is revolting to any free individual.

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