Roanoke Tea Party

We met last night. We had a good turnout and a Great Meeting.

A long post to follow with information on the meeting and upcoming trips.

We thanked our members for such TREMENDOUS support on July 4th. Their spirit and effort were AWESOME.

The most important part of the meeting was the public reading of our draft of the Freedom for Virginians Resolution.Our state sovereignty resolution.

While we continue to tweak this document, it got a rousing reception from our membership. This is the core of our plan (and the state tea parties plan) to take back our country. This plan asserts our Commonwealth’s sovereignty and lays out a path where our state can nullify unconstitutional Federal mandates. It also lays out the mechanism where our state can protect our citizens from the Fed’s enforcing unconstitutional laws.

This is the plan for our freedom and the participants left, largely I believe, with a fire in their bellies. That fire is there because they see a plan that will actually return us to the Constitutional Freedoms we all cherish. There is a lot of work to be done in clarifying the language and getting sponsors (many of which have endorsed the concept….a weaker state sovereignty resolution did pass the state House of Delegates in 2010, but died in the Senate)

But this is our plan and we need to have a state officials in place by 2011 (when they are all up for reelection) that will support our rights as a sovereign state. And we need your help in making it happen. So join us today. We will be lobbying and pushing all state officials to back this resolution. And we desperately need as many citizens in this fight as possible.

We will have a final version of the Resolution on our site soon.

We also recapped our participation in questioning the Governor at his town hall meeting Wednesday night. We asked him questions about the budget process and our concerns about the budget surplus, which we feel was done with smoke and mirrors. Here is a link to an earlier post that examines this issue more deeply. He answered some of the questions around fees but the Governor never addressed not funding the pension plan until after the fiscal year, which was the biggest reason we ended up with a surplus.

I gave Governor McDonnell credit for doing a better job on the budget (albeit in a backhanded way) and his main argument to me was… that we need to look at the big picture on how much we cut. While I do appreciate the big picture, it certainly appears as if the Governor manipulated the budget to create a surplus so he could reward state employees with a one time pay increase. Nothing McDonnell said has changed my mind on that issue.

I also took the Governor to task on excepting $1 million in Federal money to “Green” Downtown Richmond. I was going to also bring up the fact that the state has an active plan to put Wind Turbines up in the Blue Ridge Mountains, but the speaker before me did a fantastic job of laying out the facts on that issue.

 Both of these boondoggles are partially (or in the case of the Richmond “greening”, fully) funded with Federal Stimulus money.

Wind Turbines are not efficient, are not ecologically sound and are a waste of OUR TAX MONEY  The Governor spoke about run off into the James as the reason he took OUR TAX MONEY back from DC to fund this “Greening”. If the state buys a bunch of hybrid cars with that  million dollars, that wouldn’t help with that issue would it? We’ll see.

I still believe that the Governor has bought into the Al Gore global warming Ponzi scheme until I see him stop talking about these ridiculous Green jobs initiatives. And he continues to take OUR MONEY, from the Federal government for these boondoggles. STOP IT! That is my biggest issue with the Green jobs nonsense and the Governor should take a principled stand and refuse this money.

We talked a little about the ABC proposal. Our only point is that the state needs to either trust the free market and sell licenses, or keep it under state control. There are compelling short term budget reasons for selling the licenses and serious concerns about the long term social/budget impacts of this proposal. We aren’t certain about the direction here, but if the state chooses some sort of middle road, where we strictly regulate (at the state level) the number of ABC store licenses we sell, we’ll likely have the worst of both worlds. Either tust the free market completely and let the market determine the number of licenses, or keep the current system in place.

Caleb Coulter, from our board, gave a fabulous history lesson on the events leading up to the Council of Governors. Click here for much of that history. Long story short, the Governor (likely with good intentions) is trying to work through the system to assure he maintains control of the militia in Virgina, which is his Constitutional duty. Our argument is simple: he already has this and the unconstitutional mandates of the Council of Governor should have NO IMPACT on our Governor’s Constitutional duty as commander of our state military forces.

 By participating in the Council of Governors, our governor is legitamizing this process. That is unacceptable. Our advise. Pull out of the Council of Governors and politely tell the Federal government to stay out of our Sovereign business.

A few links here and here to Roanoke and Richmond newspaper coverage that speaks to some of this…local TV coverage was absolutely pathetic and was a waste of space on my DVR.

We talked about the DISCLOSE act. This blatantly unconstitutional bill will not stand up in court but it will succeed in clogging things up for the November elections. The bill not only crushes the 1st Amendment, but by picking and choosing what groups can advertise in campaigns (unions, the NRA, etc.) it clearly violates the 14th Amendment as well, which promises equal protection under the law. The Roanoke Tea Party has publically stated that we will not abide by the DISCLOSE Act if it is passed (right now it’s being filibustered in the Senate) and will ignore these provisions. Our rights cannot be infringed on and we will not yield.

Our two lovely Senators, Webb and Warner support this monstrosity. Webb is a co-sponsor. Just add it to the list of reasons they need to retired in 2012 and 2014 respectively.

We will also be having a meeting next week to start vetting candidates for the 2010 Federal Elections. More to come on that soon. We will not endorse candidates, as our focus is on the state level, but we feel our members would like a solid analysis of how the candidates in local Federal races stand on our core principles.

We have 2 big events coming up.

The State Convention on Oct. 8 and Oct 9. We will have buses going up on Friday and Saturday. There be high profile speakers like Ron Paul, Dick Morris, Lou Dobbs and Ken Cuccinelli, a lot of national press and this is where the Freedom for Virginians Resolution will be officially unveiled. This is going to be a historic event and this resolution will be something that will forever change the relationship between the Commonwealth and the Federal Government.  This will change the entire game. This is so important and we need every soul who cares about their nation packing the Greater Richmond Convention Center.  Sign up for the convention here RIGHT NOW.

Last but not least….due to a lot of demand and the generosity of one of our biggest supporters we will be hosting a bus to the Glen Beck “Restoring Honor” event on 8-28 in DC. . I am posting this blog as I build the page for the Beck rally. I appreciate every-one’s patience as I put this together logistically. Sign up here….

Sorry for the LONG post, but I appreciate the support of our fabulous members and look forward to growing our movement as we implement our Big Liberty Agenda. I can’t wait to get the resolution finished and get going on taking back our freedoms. Join the Resistance…Join the Roanoke Tea Party

Chip Tarbutton

President

Roanoke Tea Party