Tennessee Tax Revolt


Tennessee Tax Revolt, Inc. is an American political advocacy group that is active in the state of Tennessee. Its primary purpose is to monitor and influence issues of taxation but it also expresses opinions on issues such as government transparency and net neutrality. In 2005 an Associated Press story referred to the organization as a "leading anti-tax group".
The organization describes itself as a grassroots effort and a non-partisan group and as a "support group for the tax groups around the state." It was incorporated as a public benefit corporation of Tennessee on October 22, 2001. Donation pages on its site note that donations to TTR are not tax-deductible.
In nearly all appearances in the media and speaking engagements, TTR is represented by its spokesman Nashville real estate investor Ben Cunningham, who is also listed as a founder of the organization. Cunningham was also the lead founder of the Nashville Tea Party in 2011 saying, "There are also some projects that just don’t naturally fit into the Tennessee Tax Revolt sphere that we’re going to be involved with." Many letters to members of Congress and other national or international bodies are signed by the organization's president Rick Durham.

History

In his book Covenant of Liberty: The Ideological Origins of the Tea Party Movement conservative activist and author Michael Patrick Leahy describes an event that he calls the Tennessee Tax Revolt which he credits as the genesis of the organization of the same name. This was a three-year popular campaign to oppose the institution of a state income tax in Tennessee, a cause championed by Republican Governor Don Sundquist.
Ben Cunningham and state radio personalities Phil Valentine, Steve Gill, Darrell Ankarlo, and Dave Ramsey, aided by Republican lawmakers such as Marsha Blackburn, spearheaded an effort that involved dissemination of information over the air waves, email lists, and a web site, emails and telephone calls to state legislators, postal mailing of tea bags to officials, street protests and driving past the State Capitol building whilst honking their automobile horns, and a tactic that a Los Angeles Times reporter referred to as "steering protesters to lawmakers' homes." According to Mr. Cunningham, in addition to the honking of automobile horns among the activists at the State Capitol there was a competition to produce the loudest noise which was achieved in 2002 with a dismounted train whistle powered by a portable air compressor, requiring other protesters to cover their ears when it was sounded once or twice per day.
Late in 2001 the Tennessee Tax Revolt organization was incorporated as a public benefit corporation and by the end of 2002 the campaign had been successful and the effort to enact an income tax had ceased. The TTR web site hosts photographs from the 2001 and 2002 protests. In 2004 the group claimed that their email list was subscribed to by five thousand recipients.

Activities

In the first decade after its formation, Tennessee state and local media outlets frequently sought comment from TTR on taxation and budgetary issues. For example, in 2009 WTVF / NewsChannel 5 of Nashville interviewed Mr. Cunningham about an increase in the per diem reimbursement rates for the members of the state legislature.
In his capacity as spokesman for Tennessee Tax Revolt Mr. Cunningham has been a speaker and presenter at Tea Party movement events and other fiscal conservative rallies around Tennessee and around the country. TTR has also hosted its own events such as a 2010 celebration commemorating the anniversary of the signing of the United States Constitution at the Constitutional Convention in 1787, in cooperation with other Tennessee groups.

State and local

TTR has engaged in a variety of efforts to educate and inform Tennessee citizens and lawmakers. Its web site hosts a page titled as the "Taxpayer Information Center" which contains an extensive directory of hyperlinks to online resources relating to Tennessee local and state government, Tennsessee politics, blogs, and other information sources, however as of 2012 many of the links are broken. In 2011 Mr. Cunningham was a guest speaker at a paid event held by several other state organizations and described as a conservative "grassroots legislative training" session.
TTR has sponsored an ongoing effort to persuade state legislators, officials, and candidates to sign a "Taxpayer Protection Pledge" promising not to raise taxes. The organization has also sponsored polls of Tennessee voters on various issues.
Various candidates over the years have received support from TTR. A 2002 press release presented a long list of endorsements in state elections. Edward Glenn Bryant, former U.S. Representative from Tennessee, was supported by TTR during his unsuccessful 2006 bid for a Tennessee U.S. Senate seat.
In 2005 TTR gave a "Taxpayer Hero Award" to State Representative Donna Rowland and anointed the City of Memphis the booby prize winner of the "Tennessee Tax Bowl" for having the highest combined county and municipal tax rate in the state.
The Tennessee Alliance for Progress invited Mr. Cunningham as a panelist in a 2005 "Ethics Town Hall Meeting" concerning transparency and accessibility of state government.
In 2006 TTR spearheaded a successful effort and petition drive to amend the Nashville city charter requiring any increase in property taxes to be approved by voters.
Since 2008 a project of TTR has been monitoring the budgeting process for a planned convention center to be constructed in Nashville. In January 2010 the group issued a press release proposing to recall any city council member who supported issuance of bonds to finance the center.
In 2009 TTR spoke at a Nashville Tea Party rally in opposition to the federal bank bailouts in response to the financial crisis and in opposition to the stimulus expenditures.
TTR has spoken out over the property seizures and police raids of Gibson Guitar Corporation in Nashville over alleged violations of the Lacey Act governing the importation of wildlife and plants under conservation protection, specifically hardwoods used in the manufacture of that company's guitars. Speaking at a 2011 rally in support of Gibson Ben Cunningham called the raids an "overreach by the federal government" and an "abuse of power and authority" and said, "No American business should fear the government at their door with guns drawn."
In 2011 along with other state groups TTR asked state legislators to work to oppose federal health care reform measures. In the same year Mr. Cunningham was a speaker at a "Doctors and Patients Town Hall" political event at Lipscomb University sponsored by Ralph Weber's company MediBid and the Association of American Physicians and Surgeons and in an associated radio broadcast said that President Obama's reforms would "ruin our medical system" and result in a "decline into mediocrity and tyranny."
In 2012 Mr. Cunningham spoke out in favor of transparency in governmental economic development negotiations with private companies saying that Governor Bill Haslam and the State Funding Board need to "stop holding these secret negotiations with large corporations over handing out these huge wads of money."
A Tennessee 20th Senatorial District Republican candidate discussion forum in 2012 was moderated by Mr. Cunningham.
2012 legislation put forward in Tennessee to phase out and then completely eliminate inheritance tax was applauded by TTR, with Spokesman Ben Cunningham saying "getting rid of this tax will increase employment more than any other: it's going to bring capital, it's going to bring jobs, it's going to make Tennessee a much more desirable destination for people that are moving their businesses away from high-tax states." The bill passed the legislature and was signed into law by Governor Bill Haslam.
While most frequently protesting increases in personal taxes, TTR has also opposed some tax breaks offered to large companies and special exceptions to sales taxes.

Ideology

In a January 2011 presentation to the Tea Party of Bradley County entitled "How to Fight Local Tax Hikes and Win" Ben Cunningham introduced his topic by pointing out the narrow margin by which a state income tax measure was defeated in the Tennessee legislature in the contention over that issue one decade previous. He emphasized that a Tennessee state income tax is a genuine possibility in the future. After asserting the importance under the framing of the Founding Fathers of the United States for citizens to hold the government accountable and oppose tyranny in pursuit of a fair, just, and moral society, he stated that "there are people in Washington, D.C. that believe you shouldn't be allowed to live your life in freedom." He then showed a photograph of a Cambodian girl who he said was executed by the Khmer Rouge, a man who he said was either executed in Stalinist Russia or worked to death in the Gulags during that period, and then a photo which he said depicted two Chinese Communist Party members who were executed during the Cultural Revolution. Elsewhere he has explained that these images are from a book entitled The Cruel Radiance: Photography and Political Violence by Susie Linfield.
Mr. Cunningham continued, explaining that the key reason these and other tragedies occurred is that people did not fight back and did not take up the responsibility to preserve freedom. He stated that the basis of American exceptionalism on a functional level is that "we simply have a minority of people that demand to live in freedom" and included his Tea Party audience in that minority, which he numbered at approximately 15% of the population. In his view, this veneration of freedom is embodied by resistance to government intrusion into private life, which he illustrated with the examples of regulation of the insurance industry which constrains the consumer's options and selective government bailout of some businesses but not others. He said that this sort of governmental behavior inevitably leads to corruption.
He finalized this articulation of the reasons to fight against tax hikes by gesturing to the third photograph and saying, "Thankfully we haven't had to result in violence and certainly no one is advocating that, but clearly many people have. And clearly many people had the opportunity to fight these forces of tyranny and they didn't do it. Ultimately, the burden is on our shoulders and we've got to accept that burden and we've got to take the time to get involved in government at every level - nationally, state, local."
In a number of public appearances Mr. Cunningham has said that government budgets derive from and therefore should be based upon the family budget, which is the most important budget of all. Therefore, in his framing, to maintain the health of government budgets it is essential to ensure health of the individual taxpayers' family budgets.

Pamphlets