Comment

Comment by Danny Griffin on September 21, 2010 at 10:39am

The Tea Party is founded on the principles carefully and deliberately penned by our founders and the realization that we are seriously off course from the path our founders brilliantly laid out for us. I do not appologize or excuse myself for acting for or on behalf of a candidate of any party who I believe best represents the ideals to which the Tea Party and I espouse. The Republicans reflect the ideals of limited government, fiscal responsibility, and strong moral family values in more cases than Demoncrats do. The Libertarians better reflect the idea of limited government than either of the other two parties do but are rarely in a position to be viable. I choose to support Republicans more often because they believe more like I do - I do not back down from my beliefs to mulify any reporter or upcomming Obama - Souros ad campain that says Tea Partiers are an arm of the Republican Party. I guess we are in fact an arm - the arm that is making Republicans act like Republicans again.

The merchant seaman the reporter refers to was also at the last Tea Party we held in St Augustine. He is a Bosun sailing as a member of the Seafarers International Union, which is located just off Belfort Rd. The unions send members to learn what we are doing, and or disrupt what we do. I know him because I spoke to him at the last St Aug, Tea Party - He was wearing an SIU shirt at that time, and I'm a former member of the same union. He was with a few members of other unions and a couple of union Business Agents (Union Bosses) then. I aked him then what he thought about what he was hearing he said to me "well they seem like they've got a good idea about not letting Washington take so much of our money." I agreed told him I was formerly SIU we talked about which ships we have sailed on, then as he and all the other union members were listening to me I told him "not only is Washington screwing us by taking more than they deserve, but the union is ripping us off too. I told him to look at the contract at how much money the union collects for the pension trust fund, the health insurance trust fund, the education trust fund, the vacation trust fund, and think about how much the member who does the actual; work gets compared to how much of it the union keeps for what they call administrative fees. I told him that COBRA laws allow only 1.5% of the money to be used for administrative fees, and the rest has to be applied as benefits, we should see to it the same law applies to unions. The Business Agents began quickly rounding thier members up before I could speak to them any longer, and as they were quickly heading for the exit, I walked with them briefly and said - There was a time in this country when we needed unions to save us from big business run amuck - today we need somone to save us all from big unions who have run amuck. The reporters are always going to seek out anyone who will disagree with us. Do not despair it still shines light on what is going on and thier readers are going to eventually be able to see through thier biases.