Tax protester invites all to Monroe tea party

Published 10:56 pm Thursday, March 12, 2009

MONROE — Julie Martinoli has a tea party planned today at 4:30 p.m. in downtown Monroe.

Like the original in Boston, this party isn’t really about tea — it’s about sending a message.

The message she wants to send is politicians need to stop out-of-control spending, too-high taxes and bailouts.

“I felt so strongly that things were going in the wrong direction,” she said. “I felt I had to make a statement.”

The two-hour tea party is planned for the corner of U.S. 2 and Lewis Street.

Dozens of people plan to bring signs with messages such as “Don’t Mortgage the Future” and “Cut Taxes, Not Deals.”

Martinoli said she’s not a particularly political person. She owns a small business and homeschools her two children. During the presidential election, she began to feel her core values were under attack.

She was moved to action after hearing about a wave of tea parties protesting Obama-era spending across the U.S.

Those tea parties got their start after CNBC analyst Rick Santelli called for a new Boston tea party from the floor of the Chicago Mercantile Exchange on Feb. 19. He was responding to President Barack Obama’s proposed $275 billion deficit-­financed homeowner bailout plan and other spending measures.

For Martinoli, this isn’t about partisan politics. People of all political stripes want to see more responsibility from elected officials, she said.

The majority of people she knows — Democrats and Republicans alike — hold conservative values. She describes conservative values as honesty, thrift, charity, personal responsibility and hard work.

“They are fed up with earmarks, scandalous behavior of elected officials and how government has rewarded the banks with bailouts,” she said.

Debra Smith: 425-339-3197, dsmith@heraldnet.com.