The current fracas between the U.S. Bureau of Land Management and
posse comitatus extremists in Nevada doesn't merely go back 20 years as suggested by the litigation record. In a very real way, the problems confronted by President Obama's Administration today in Nevada are much the same as even more widespread problems faced by the Father of the Country, George Washington.
The Whiskey Rebellion that erupted in four Western Pennsylvania counties in 1794 bears interesting similarities to and notable distinctions from what is happening today in the growing conflict between the insurrectionist wing of the Tea Party and the now fully mature federal government.
Follow me out into the tall grass for some history of the Tea Party of George Washington's time and a few observations on the distinctions and similarities between those events and the challenges to federal power happening now in Nevada.
America, under the new Constitution during George Washington's first term was an economically precarious and uncertain experiment. George Washington's Timothy Geitner was Alexander Hamilton and Alexander Hamilton's top priority was payment of the nations debts.
All in, the US owed about $11.7 million to foreigners, mostly to Dutch bankers and the French government, and about $42 million to domestic creditors. The states also had a ton of debt (about $25 million, Hamilton reckoned), which the Federal Government assumed--take a hint, euro zone!--in 1790.
As Secretary of the Treasury, Hamilton was laser-focused on the debt, not so much to pay it off, but rather just to ensure that the fledging government could make all its payments to creditors. How? Well, tariffs and taxes. Americans were cool with that? No, 0f course not. People hated it. After all, the country had just fought a war inspired in part by a revolt against the taxation imposed by the British.
Just about the least unpopular tax that could be agreed upon by the Federalists swept into office with President Washington was an excise tax on whiskey distilled within the States. In the more populous East, whiskey was distilled by large scale enterprises operating and marketing high volumes of product. In the less populous and less politically powerful Western frontiers of the original United States, distilling was carried out on an intermittent, small scale basis by freeholders or plantations as a way to add value to and market surplus grain crops. The structure of the tax, enacted in 1791, strongly favored the Eastern commercial interests over the people out on the Western and Southern frontier. For example, though the tax was levied on a per gallon basis, a cap which, in effect, allowed large producers a flat tax on their entire production, no matter how many gallons. A small producer paid the full tax on every gallon, a disadvantage in the market.
It didn't take long for some folks to convince themselves that this newfangled federal government thing had no business messing with their whiskey. There were protests and petitions and a convention in Pittsburgh, then population 376. The opposition in some parts of the West went viral in the internet of the day, called newspapers. Even though the Whiskey tax was the very first tax enacted by the very first Congress, our brave First Lawmakers responded to the push-back by immediately lowering the tax.
After the tax was first enacted, George Washington himself appointed appointed all the collectors and inspectors. On September 11, 1791, a recently appointed tax collector named Robert Johnson was tarred and feathered by a disguised gang in Washington County, Pennsylvania by a gang of masked men. Throughout counties in SW Pennsylvania and similar parts of the frontier areas of the original States, in 1791 and 1792, the excise tax went uncollected due to violence and threats of violence against George Washington's tax collectors and local authorities did nothing.
Never one to shy away from a challenge, and mindful of the precedents he was setting, George Washington called for States to send him militia for temporary federal service to suppress the rebellion. This raised 13,000 troops and Washington led them into the field, the first and last time that ever was done by a U.S. President. America's 18th Century Tea Party patriots scattered like leaves before President Washington's milita, This established both the validity of the federal taxing power and the federal government's right to raise troops in some states to suppress insurrection and protect its revenues in other States.
President Obama's and the government's opponents in this ridiculous cattle stand-off in Nevada are very lucky that the President is not the bloodthirsty tyrant that they like to pretend he is. I'm confident that President Obama knows the events of the Whiskey rebellion and their place in the history of his government abd his office. The President understands that a government cannot endure that cannot enforce its own laws on its own lands. Though the road may be long and twisted and full of switch-backs, the end isn't much in doubt. Don't bet on the cattle and ranchers and rebellious sheriff's.