» Richmond City Audits Local Tea Party After Standoff with Mayor - Big Government

Two weeks after the Richmond Tea Party delivered an invoice to Richmond Mayor Dwight Jones for costs incurred for previous rallies, we received a letter from the City of Richmond formally stating that the city is auditing our Tea Party. Coincidence? This audit is an obvious attempt to intimidate and harass us for standing up against the unfair treatment and discrimination against our Tea Party.

First some back story: as reported on the front page of the Richmond Times Dispatch, the Richmond Tea Party delivered an invoice for charges incurred in our previous three Tax Day rallies at Kanawha Plaza because Mayor Jones chose to allow Occupy Richmond protesters to convene in the same park for two weeks.

The Mayor not only allowed the Occupiers to break the law, but he visited them in the city-owned park. “Jones said that as a ‘child of civil rights’ and protests, he had allowed the group to remain in the park but understands his mayoral responsibility to uphold laws of the city,” reported the Richmond Times Dispatch.

Apparently his mayoral duties included preferential treatment for a group he sympathizes with ideologically at the expense of the taxpayers.

The blog Virginia Right reported that the city provided services such as portable toilets, trash pickup, etc. The incomplete invoices obtained from the city totaled $7,000. This was only a portion of the actual costs to taxpayers because the costs of police, helicopter and incarcerations were not included. Also not accounted for was the 24-hour police protection of the Mayor’s home after the Occupiers moved their camp next door to the Mayor’s house. The Richmond Tea Party, conversely, paid for all services for our rallies, including the police, portable toilets, park fees and permits, amounting to approximately $8,500.

Our actions apparently struck a nerve. Our invoice to the Mayor was covered by hundreds of news outlets, including the AP, Richmond Times Dispatch, Baltimore Sun, and the Washington Post. On October 31, I appeared on Fox Business, Neil Cavuto’s show, and was interviewed about our actions. Reportedly, at least two Richmond City Council members agreed with our plight. “I guess we’ll be writing a check to the Tea Party people,” said Councilman Bruce W. Tyler, as quoted in the Richmond Times Dispatch. “You can’t treat one group different from the other. It’s unfair.”

» Richmond City Audits Local Tea Party After Standoff with Mayor - Big Government

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WSJ- Peter Berkowitz - Why Liberals Don't Get the Tea Party Movement

Great piece on why so many progressives continue to believe that their solutions for what ails America, more spending by the Federal Government, is the right course of action and we would understand this if we weren't so stupid and uneducated. The reality is that the people of this great nation fully understand that spending money we don't have, and burdening our children with unpayable debts is what got us in this mess in the first place and that more of the same will lead to this country's demise.

The Democrats and many of the Republicans in Washington have tried to dismiss the Tea Party movement as nothing more than a bunch of kooks, when in reality the majority of Americans continue to show that they support the movement's ideas of limited government and less spending by electing candidates that profess to believe in these ideas over Washington insiders.

The President and his friends truly believe we are just a bunch of Homer Simpsons who should just be happy to have a job and a mug full of Duff at Moe's but should leave the heavy thinking to them as they plan our lives. The President recently stated that "part of the reason that our politics seems so tough right now," are that "facts and science and argument [do] not seem to be winning the day all the time is because we're hard-wired not to always think clearly when we're scared. And the country is scared." Yes, Mr President Americans are scared, but they are scared of what you and you friends have planned next and what that means for our children's futures. However, just because we are scared doesn't mean we are too stupid to understand your policies. In reality we fully comprehend your policies and that makes us highly motivated this November to vote out members in Congress that believe, as you do, that your plan for America is the right one.

Why Liberals Don't Get the Tea Party Movement

Our universities haven't taught much political history for decades. No wonder so many progressives have disdain for the principles that animated the Federalist debates

By PETER BERKOWITZ

Highly educated people say the darndest things, these days particularly about the tea party movement. Vast numbers of other highly educated people read and hear these dubious pronouncements, smile knowingly, and nod their heads in agreement. University educations and advanced degrees notwithstanding, they lack a basic understanding of the contours of American constitutional government.

New York Times columnist Paul Krugman got the ball rolling in April 2009, just ahead of the first major tea party rallies on April 15, by falsely asserting that "the tea parties don't represent a spontaneous outpouring of public sentiment. They're AstroTurf (fake grass-roots) events."

Having learned next to nothing in the intervening 16 months about one of the most spectacular grass-roots political movements in American history, fellow Times columnist Frank Rich denied in August of this year that the tea party movement is "spontaneous and leaderless," insisting instead that it is the instrument of billionaire brothers David and Charles Koch.

Washington Post columnist E. J. Dionne criticized the tea party as unrepresentative in two ways. It "constitutes a sliver of opinion on the extreme end of politics receiving attention out of all proportion with its numbers," he asserted last month. This was a step back from his rash prediction five months before that since it "represents a relatively small minority of Americans on the right end of politics," the tea party movement "will not determine the outcome of the 2010 elections."

You can find the rest of the editorial here.

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Drooping polls undercut scripted protest claims

Obama and the Democrats want you to believe that everyone wants government run healthcare but the polls have shown since the beginning that this isn't true. When conservatives organize to protest government spending we are denigrated by the main stream media and described as crazies. But when the liberals organized to get Obama elected, it was the democratic process at its best. We live in a time when a black conservative is beaten up by black union organizers (the same ones who got Obama elected) because he was giving away buttons and flags stating "Don't Tread On Me". http://www.kansascity.com/news/politics/story/1373035.html


Drooping polls undercut scripted protest claims

Tea Parties Grow in Numbers But Can They Change Anything

Yes. America is still the land of the free and the home of the brave but we need action now! Our politicians, whether they are Republicans or Democrats do not represent us. Rather they represent the interests of their party and more imprtantly to them their own pockets.

"[Some] seem to think that [civilization's] advance has brought on too complicated a state of society, and that we should gain in happiness by treading back our steps a little way. I think, myself, that we have more machinery of government than is necessary, too many parasites living on the labor of the industrious. I believe it might be much simplified to the relief of those who maintain it." --Thomas Jefferson to William Ludlow, 1824. ME 16:75

The role of the government is to protect the property of its people. This is a role that our government forgot long ago. With the enactment of the federal personal income tax the government was granted the right to take the fruits of our labor, which is our property, and redistribute it as it sees fit. Since the 1930's we have enacted more entitlement programs than we can afford, which has had disastrous results for our country. Our politicians will never admit this fact because they want to be reelected. They have forgotten that they are supposed to be in politics to serve the people not to gain more power for themselves. The fact of the matter is that in order to pay for all of these entitlement programs we borrow money and much like the homeowner who borrowed against the equity in their house to pay the mortgage there simply isn't anymore money left to borrow. Our politicians are as Jefferson so aptly put it "parasites" living on the fruits of our labor and it needs to stop now. One day our children will look at us with disdain because we have sold away their futures and were not willing to sacrifice today for their tomorrow.

"The price of apathy towards public affairs is to be ruled by evil men" -Plato

On the 4th of July, our Independence day, thousands of tea party rallies were held around the country to say enough is enough. In Morristown, New Jersey several thousand gathered, on the same ground that the Washington once did, to say as one "we will not take it anymore". http://blog.nj.com/njv_mark_diionno/2009/07/growing_numbers_at_antitax_tea.html