On Dec. 16, 1773, freedom fighters led by Sam Adams dumped tea into Boston Harbor. The Americans were tired of taxation without representation. The Boston Tea Party mobilized Colonial resistance in other seaports up and down the Eastern Seaboard.

Almost 232 years later, the citizens of Maine are waging their own “tea parties.” Rather than slipping aboard clipper ships and dumping tea from the British East India Tea Co., we are busy circulating and eagerly signing petitions to get the Taxpayer Bill of Rights on the ballot in November 2006.

The good Maine citizens circulating and signing can rightly be called tax freedom fighters. They, along with the other half of Mainers who are paying taxes and “pulling the wagon” for those who are enjoying “riding the wagon,” have been set upon by legislators, city councilors and school board members who simply cannot stop spending other people’s money.

Government in Maine is growing at an unsustainable rate. Led by our local Democratic senator and representatives, our new state budget is so massive that almost a half a billion has to be borrowed, without voter approval, to make the books balance. Imagine if your family had to refinance the house for 14 years to pay for next week’s groceries.

King George III is alive and well in Augusta.

TABOR, if approved by Maine voters in 2006, will keep the spenders in check by limiting spending increases to the rate of inflation plus the rate of population growth.

Bob Stone, Lewiston

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