December 31, 2007

Remembering Devereaux Cannon Jr.

Devereaux Cannon Jr., whose hand-cobbled blog Tax Free Tennessee was one of my inspirations in my early days of blogging, died suddenly and unexpectedly Dec. 29. I never got to meet Mr. Cannon, though I spoke with him on the phone many times and exchanged emails with him countless hundreds of times during the great Tennessee Income Tax War of the late 1990s and early 2000s. Truth be told, Cannon and his website were invaluable resources to those of us who were writing and speaking out in opposition to the proposed state income tax.

When that battle began, the pro-income tax side had the Tennessee Democratic Party and its majorities in the state House and Senate, it had the governor, it had an organized lobbying and activist organization, and it had the state's major newspapers all aligned in support of the income tax. The opposition had little except the grassroots - and from it emerged folks like Ben Cunningham and Devereaux Cannon Jr., sifting through the rhetoric and the data to find the facts and marshal the arguments against the tax.

Their victory was when I realized how the Internet was enabling the grassroots with new tools and new power to affect change and influence the media, elected officials and the direction of public policy.

Devereaux Cannon Jr. was more than just a warrior against the income tax - much more. I'll let Ben Cunningham and A.C. Kleinheider fill you in.