Rally at estate decries spending

LA CAÑADA — Seizing momentum of anti-tax Tea Parties where Americans vent their frustrations over government spending, Republicans from throughout the Southland descended on Jeffers’ estate Saturday for an All American Rally.

Dozens of fiscal conservatives gathered to oppose what they characterized as the Obama administration’s imprudent bailout of corporate America and the inclination of lawmakers to balance yawning budget gaps on the backs of taxpayers.

“Even Franklin Roosevelt never came close to deficit spending of the type that has been done already within a year after the pull of the trap door on this economy,” said Wayne Jett, managing principal of Classical Capital LLC. “The kind of debt that is being gathered for our children and our grandchildren can never be paid off and can only be used as an excuse for raising taxes forever so that we will never come back to a full, open and growing economy.”

Billed as the answer to why “America the Beautiful” is becoming “America the broke,” the afternoon of music and speeches came shortly before the Glendale Area Independence Tea Party scheduled for Friday at the Jeffers’ estate. While Democratic lawmakers and some in the media dismissed the hundreds of rallies nationwide as “AstroTurf activism,” Assemblyman Chuck DeVore said the events were entirely grass roots and have the ability by November 2010 “to snatch victory from the jaws of this fiscal malaise that we’re in in California.”

“I believe that those April 15 rallies pre-stage what may become a massive revolt against the enormous amount of overtaxation going on in California today,” said DeVore, who plans to challenge Sen. Barbara Boxer.

He sharply criticized the administration’s health-care plan as “another trillion-dollar scheme that President Obama has cooked up.”

“I believe that you are going to see California suffering mightily in this current recession,” DeVore said. “Probably second only to the state of Michigan.”

But the sputtering economy could serve as an opportunity for Republicans to get engaged in the rough and tumble of state and national politics while party leaders articulate principles moving forward, he said. Another boost could come from ballot initiatives that reduce taxes and spending.