TEA TIME IN DC: TALLY UP NEXT

I was invited to speak at the Tea Party Caucus in the House of Representatives Monday night.  It was a memory I will forever cherish and am thankful for the opportunity.

 

Michelle Bachmann reached out and asked three tea party leaders to speak on behalf of the Tea Party Movement.  Her goal was to get our input on the Debt Ceiling.  (Answer:  Do not raise the Debt Ceiling.)  The room was filled with new and more seasoned representatives who felt they identified as a tea party member. 

 

I’m sorry to say but my Representative, Ander Crenshaw, did not show up nor did anyone from the Northeast Florida area, including Rep.  John Mica who I had breakfast with the next morning for a discussion on High Speed Rail.

 

Our new and outspoken Rep. Allen West was there and we had a meeting with him earlier in the day in his office.  Let me say this about Rep. West – “Thank God he is there!  What a man of character and courage and he is certainly a leader!”  (We’re talking to him about showing up for a gig in North Florida in the near future so stay tuned on that one!)

 

The two days in DC were exhausting and enlightening.  My encounters went like this:

  • Rep. Allen West – A gift from God sent to the front line in DC!  He said:  “Keep the Tea Party awake.  This place is crazy.  We must control the House in 2012 and take back the Senate too.  If we don’t have a good candidate to run against Obama, then we can control thorough the power of Congress.”
  • Senator Marco Rubio – Met with him for a few minutes as he was rushing out the door.  He was smiling and confident.  He said:  “This place is more screwed up than I could have imagined.  Keep up the good work with the Tea Party, we need you guys.”
  • Rep. Michelle Bachmann – As she led her peers in the House Tea Party Caucus event, all she could focus on was this question:  “What do the Tea Party members think about the debt ceiling?”  That was the question of the night and although those in the room wanted to speak, she kept drawing the conversation back to us – the tea party members – for our input.  She told the audience:  “We are here to listen to them.  That’s why they are here.” 
  • Rep. John Mica – Enjoy meeting Rep. Mica for breakfast and discussion that followed.  He is very smart about transportation issues in America and how money is generated for that purpose.  He said:  “18.4 cents per gallon of gas sold generates about $30 billion per year in the Highway and Transportation Trust Fund.  80% is used for highways and 20% for transit.  If Florida doesn’t take the money for High Speed Rail (which he said is not really high speed and the messaging is wrong(?) – Obama’s administration will take that money and use it somewhere else in a liberal state to help his campaign.”  About this time, my head spins backwards and I lose my breakfast!  “Playing with our money for political gain” ran through my head.  First things first – we could use that money to pay down the debt but no way will that happen.  Rep. Mica had more to say and has his own perspective after many years in the House.  We will work with his new Chief of Staff, Wiley Deck, to get him here for a face to face discussion on transportation dollars and the “not really high speed rail issue.”  We have a lot of questions and the communication coming from Rep. Mica’s office needs to be improved and he agreed it did.  Let’s make sure we keep on him about that communication flow and his attendance at a meeting with us in North Florida and all tea party leaders across the state.  (More to come on this one – soon!)

My overall observation was this: 

  • We have some good leaders and we need A LOT MORE of them in Congress.  2012 is our time to focus on this critical issue.  The left is already funding campaigns for progressives and they once again are ahead of us in that deal.  They are also training Summer Interns on College campuses to work towards the 2012 election!  What are we doing?  Where is our funding coming from?  How will we keep our members engaged without deep pocket funding that the left has?  How can we educate those who are paid to canvas neighborhoods and sign up people for the progressive movement?
  • The Tea Party leaders in this country must start to talk to each other in a more robust fashion while focusing on 2012 results.  We have leaders of individual groups doing a great job across this country and they are doing fantastic work to keep the movement alive and awake.  Our focus should now be on leading our local members to find qualified conservative candidates in our own districts.  Encourage them to run for the House or the Senate and back them with your time, talents and resources.   Start a team in your local tea party group that will focus on this one thing and one thing only.  We need leadership at the local level and leaders working together in every state to keep their state awake to conservative values.  Florida is a targeted state by the left so we have work to do.  We presently have a great group of people leading tea parties in Florida and we talk every day about issues.  This group needs to grow and each tea party group needs to grow.  Let’s get it done and start our focus on 2012 now! Remember, “Without a leader, the people perish.”  Let’s go find our leaders – forge ahead!
  • Communication is lacking between those in DC and We the People.  I had the pleasure of sitting with all these people in DC and listened to their concerns.  Not all of us can do that.  I encouraged them to find better ways to get their message out and to open communicate with their local constituents.  Communication is key to good leadership and they need to focus on that – BIG TIME.  Here was one of my coaching moments with a few of our leaders in DC:  “Without communication, people make up stuff and fill the void.  If you do not get your message out to us, we will make it for you and that’s not pretty.  Keep us informed.  Get back into your districts.  Tell us all the news – the good, the bad and the ugly.  We can take it.  We are smart people and we know more than you on some of these issues because we have more time to research than you do.”  Let’s hope they listened and if they didn’t – let’s find some who will!

The two days were worth the time and the efforts walking those long hallways in high heels for the sake of Liberty!  Now we must get to work and it must start today.  November 2012 is only 19 months away and it is time to find our new leaders to run against the RINOs and root out the Progressives.  Anyone up for the job?

 

BY THE WAY – We are now heading to Tally next week to meet with our leaders.  March 8 is our day in Tally and we hope you will make plans to attend.  If you are coming from Jacksonville, we have a free bus awaiting you for the trip up and back on the same day – March 8.  On the schedule will be meetings with our legislators, a rally at noon on the steps of the Capitol with some great speakers, and a press conference at 4:00 announcing the new Tea Party Caucus in Tallahassee led by Rep. Mike Weinstein from Jacksonville.  We will be a part of setting up this Tea Party Caucus and developing the agendas as they move forward with this new initiative.  Contact our office at (904) 683-3945 to reserve a seat on the bus.

 

And another note:  Today, March 2, at 4:30 we will announce the First Coast Tea Party endorsements of local candidates for city council and the mayor’s race.  We ask for your prayers and support as we make these announcements. 

 

Continue to stay focused, stay awake and stay the course.  Tell your friends to join our movement and get involved in securing freedom and liberty for all.  Our country needs you. 

 

P.S.  – Find attached a poster we handed out at the Caucus.  Print one for yourself and post it on your wall.  These people showed up way before any others across this globe showed up in their city squares.  The media never spoke about that day and the numbers that came to DC.  And guess what happened on that day – no one got hurt, the place was clean as a whistle when we left and no media personnel were attacked.  America was the first to stand for freedom and why didn’t the media report about that?  Look for the First Coast Tea Party in the crowd.  We were there and we plan to be a part of the next March on DC in November 2012 when we take back Congress and hopefully the White House!

Poster%202%20Million.pdf

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Comment by JL Gawlik on March 7, 2011 at 1:51pm

The actually video footage of Senator Harry Reid thanking the Apollo Alliance Foundation for crafting the 2009 Stimulus bill has been pulled off the web it was at C-SPAN, but you can go to this site and read about their role in the Stimulus bill that they wrote:

 

http://apolloalliance.org/feature-articles/at-last-federal-governme...

http://apolloalliance.org/apollo-productions/weekly-updates/apollo-...

Here is a video showing Reid's logic, keep in mind, he has been the leader of the Senate since 2007:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R7mRSI8yWwg

 

You can web search him and find a video of him stating that the auto bailout probably saved Ford. Listening to him speak is providing evidence why there should be term limits in serving in Congress. It is very clear that their views and opinions are out of touch with reality when they have been in Congress for too, many years.

 

Correction on below post: 

 

"Let's see with the 500 billion already taken OUT OF Medicare, you want to eliminate 60 billion along with the rise in taxes looming on the horizon on prescription medication..."

 

There is also a great article in the Florida Times Union, this morning about voting in our upcoming local elections written by Phil Fretz: Tea Party vs. police union, the dueling endorsements 

Comment by JL Gawlik on March 7, 2011 at 1:05pm

Amazing, so that would add to the 500 billion taken away from Medicare last year by the Health Care Reform bill of 2010 to start up. Pelosi and Reid actually had that figure used twice to get a positive CBO rating, which is lying and is very unethical. Have you heard about the hidden 105 billion dollars in the Health Care bill for appropriations to make sure the bill is started up because they knew it is unpopular, that President Obama, Reid and Pelosi put in that bill? They did not even tell Congressional members, who did not even read the bill before they voted on it, just as they did not read the 2009 Stimulus/American Reinvestment Recovery Act bill, which was crafted by an outsider, the Apollo Alliance Foundation not Congress.

 

http://www.newsmax.com/Headline/michele-bachmann-obama-health/2011/...

 

http://newsbusters.org/blogs/pj-gladnick/2011/03/06/meet-press-davi...

 

Go to: http://www.project2112.org/obamacare/facts/

 

There you can read what actually is going to happen to Medicare Advantage. This is despicable what has been put into place. 

 

Let's see with the 500 billion already taken into Medicare, you want to eliminate 60 billion along with the rise in taxes looming on the horizon on prescription medication. Obamacare is also eliminating Specialty hospitals as well as having raised taxes on prescription medication, eliminating tax right offs for prescriptions covered by separate insurance policies, there is going to be a raised tax on medical devices and Insurers. There is so much deception in this bill it is sicking.

 

Here is part of a post over at Neal Boortz's site at: http://boortz.com/nealz_nuze/index.html

 

The top 1% of taxpayers earn about 20% of the income in the United States, and yet they pay 40% of all income taxes collected. And when it comes to these evil oil companies, the average net profit margin for the S&P Energy sector, according to figures from Thomson Baseline, is 9.7%. That doesn't matter to Bernie Sanders. Remember ... he's a confirmed Socialist. He steadfastly believes in the "from each according to their ability, to each according to their need" mantra we find in the Communist Manifesto. He's talking about raising taxes on corporations. Hell, he doesn't even believe there should be private sector corporations. The government should own all industry, all business ... and we should all be working for the government; a government that would then decide how wealth is to be distributed. Bernie Sanders is, I believe, the face of the Democrat Party. So here's an idea ... let's put even more of them into office! Let's see how that works for us!

 

Bernie Sanders is the Senator who started the Congressional Progressive Caucus. What is even more interesting is that many Progressives do not belong to it because they prefer not to be labeled as what they truly stand for, they prefer to continue to lie to and deceive the American people. The progressives have completely destroyed the Democratic party.

 

Again Actions speak a lot louder than words.

 

We could save BILLIONS, probably TRILLIONS each year by just voting out Progressive Liberals and putting into place honest, truthful constitutional conservatives who will actually listen to their constituents.

Comment by JL Gawlik on March 7, 2011 at 11:14am

Sounds like a great plan William. We need to have that happen in ALL sectors of our government at all levels, city, county, state and federal.

 

Even George Meany when he was President of the AFL-CIO made this statement:

“It is impossible to bargain collectively with the government.”

 

The copyrights of Sesame Street alone could probably pay for the operation of PBS with millions left over. Just as in private sector each business should be able to sustain itself, if not then it can shut down or evolve into a profitable business. That is what created the middle class is our capitalism.

Comment by J.R. on March 7, 2011 at 10:54am
Great post, William Korach!  Ronald Reagan's opinion of public unions was the same as yours, even though he was President of the Screen Actors' Guild union prior to forming his ultimate opinion as to the financial damage unions can do to both a state's economy and every taxpayers' finances.  And, like you and me, he believed strongly in supply-side economics.  As a former teacher, I can identify and agree with your opinion about doing away with the U.S. Dept. of Education.  The sovereign states could do a much better job on their own.  That way, we wouldn't have a progressive bureaucracy in Washington, DC using Americans' children as guinea pigs in a federal social experiment of political indoctrination and deviant sexual-socialization, rather than concentrating on providing them a quality education and accurate instruction about the founding of this country and all our history that has followed... which are the only things the education system should do.  The current dumbing-down of the educational process serves only the interests of those who want a maleable and socialized populace that they can manipulate and control---both politically and socially.  If our children are educated and socialized to believe that anything goes, then what is it that they won't  find acceptable and they won't voluntarily go along with or do? I also agree with you about collective bargaining and want the Amendment in Florida's Constitution that guarantees collective bargaining rights to labor unions repealed, by way of a petition initiative to add a new Amendment to be voted on by Florida citizens in the 2012 election.  I believe the existing Amendment protecting unions' rights is unconstitutional, provides an indirect tax on all FL taxpayers, and greases the wheels for both unions and Democrat elected officials to benefit financially lat the expense of FL taxpayers.
Comment by William Korach on March 7, 2011 at 9:19am

After all of the  back and forth, our elected officials at the federal and state level need to do 2 things: 1. Provide real economic growth, and 2. Reduce spending. The former can be accomplished by cutting taxes and red tape for businesses-permanently-so they can ramp up hiring and production. By this method, sales and profits rise, and government revenues actually rise. This is supply side thinking and it really works. Taxes and red tape drive businesses out of business or offshore. The latter-REAL spending cuts-are a fiscal and moral mandate. We must cut discretionary spending, and entitlement spending. As we say in the Navy, this is a target rich environment. One example: the Department of Education must go. Founded in the 1970's, they do nothing but add bureaucracy, flack for the unions and expense. Our kids performance in the meantime has fallen as  DOE expenses rise. Public unions, a gift from JFK, must go. Their lifetime pensions and medical benefits into which union members paid nothing, have created enormous unfunded liabilities at the state level. For example, CA is looking at $500 BN in unfunded pension & medical liabilities. CA hopes that the Feds will pay because CA can't afford it. The term "collective bargaining" does not really apply to public unions because the elected politicians are PAID by the unions in the form of campaign contributions. So public unions get pretty much what they want-no bargaining required. I am certainly all for the "working man" but I am not for regressive public unions. Another candidate for cuts-how about National Public Radio? If their chief makes north of $600,000/year, should taxpayers be on the hook? And is the public starved for liberal media? 

So, lets start cutting taxes, red tape, and bloated government. Let's stop the immoral practice of buying votes.

Comment by Tom Wright on March 7, 2011 at 8:52am

To all involved in this back and forth blogs, keep it up, it's more fun than Monday Night Raw Wrestling.

Fun to watch, but I suspect a couple of liberal wringers have gotten thrown into the mix.

Tom Wright

Comment by John Harvel on March 7, 2011 at 6:39am
Tamara... Indeed CAFR is a rabbit hole. Annual Financial Reports are merely tools to see the profitable ventures government don't include in the usual debate over tax shortfalls and deficits. Government uses funny math to keep you on the hook arguing over the symptoms instead of the cause. Unions are not the cause, they are an excuse for government to create large managed funds controlled by private interests at the taxpayers expense on a collective basis totaling assets greater than our national debt. CAFR's merely allow you to see what these assets have compounded over past decades and track how large amounts of money has been siphoned off during what I would call manipulated economic down turns while we are only fed information on budget deficits. The private interests that manage these funds are not elected by us but they do make large campaign contributions and grease the skids to keep your taxes and regulations feeding the system they so dearly love. At some point we have to decide that we need to get beyond the choices offered us and fighting the battles they want us to indulge in. Look, our elected officials don't write these laws they pass, they usually don't even read them before they vote on them. There are very few statesmen and I'm glad your out there looking for the truth in this world of sin and sorrow. Here's a thought, we should fire all those people responsible for preparing CAFR's that most people never give a second thought even if they are aware that they exist. Just think of all the tax dollars we could save. The rabbit hole is deeper than it appears.
Comment by John Harvel on March 7, 2011 at 5:03am
Billie... God help us indeed... It's good that you acknowledge the strategy of the issues being used to overwhelm us. Hope never won a battle, strategy, power, and concentration of forces on the right goals win battles. I watch these interludes on the different blogs and marvel at some of the wit and charm being wasted on not being able to accept society for what it is. Have you ever seen this 4 part video?
Comment by J.R. on March 7, 2011 at 12:33am

Well, JL Gawlik, it's either the Twilight Zone..., the theater of the absurd..., or we've just dropped down the rabbit hole and the Mad Hatter is accusing us of stealing his watch and refusing to tell him what time it is. And, now he won't let us come to the Tea Party.

Oh, and what kind of thin air do you suppose the St. Pete newspaper gurus pulled that wide-ranging guesstimate as to how much revenue Florida has lost to internet sales...???  $2B to $4B "estimated loss"???  Now, there's a big, HUGE 2 billion dollar difference between between the high and low ends of that "estimate."  Wonder how they narrowed it down to that broad spectrum and what the probabilities are that anyone would lend any credence to a guesstimate they can't possibly have had any valid and accurate means for measuring in any scientific study or mathmatical analysis.  And, we weren't even told if it was just Florida's "lost revenue" or lost revenue that should belong to the entire country.  Ya' think those gargantuan numbers could have been pulled out of the Mad Hatters hat???  

 

Yikes!!!  I'm beginning to feel like Sisyfus repeatedly pushing a stone uphill, only to have it repeatedly roll back down again. 

Comment by JL Gawlik on March 6, 2011 at 10:33pm

With all the comments from Tamara and Stephenson, did i just drop iNTO the ~*TWiLiGHT ZONe*~ ?

 

Goodness, iF this is what the average Jacksonville, First Coast citizen beLieVes... then we are in deep troubLe! 

 

People please LoOK at the facts and truth. Your children and grandchildren depend on iT.

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