New Fangs for the Conservative 'Beast'

The Heritage Foundation has been called "the beast" of all think tanks. Last week our beast added new fangs with the creation of a new advocacy organization. This institution—Heritage Action for America—will be able to spend money to push legislation we think the country needs without the obstacles faced by a nonprofit like the Heritage Foundation. Heritage Action, in other words, is poised to influence public policy debates in a way that no other institution in this country can. Heritage Action will not get involved in electoral politics, but it will use all the tools available in the American political system to ensure that congressmen face the same pressure to do the right thing as they face to do the politically expedient thing. Heritage Action will have the ability to create this pressure. There are 110 congressional districts in America with over 1,500 Heritage supporters apiece. Two-thirds of congressional districts in this country have over 1,000 Heritage members each. Now they will have an advocacy organization that can press Congress on their behalf. Heritage Action for America will guarantee that when a wavering congressman thinks of voting for higher taxes, increased regulation, or a weaker national defense, television ads in his home district will remind him that a vote for bigger government is a vote for less freedom...more

Crashing the ‘Crashing the Tea Party’ Meme.

I can’t speak for whether or not the ‘Crash the Tea Party’ thing referenced here is real, or just some dweeb on the West Coast who’s trying to sell t-shirts to liberal racists who don’t want to admit that they’re racists. Honestly, I could see either; one of the gratifying things about the Tea Party movement has been to see demonstrated that the Left’s vaunted prowess at organization and activism largely depends on having no standard for comparison. They’re really pretty lousy at this. That being said, the advice found here is pretty good: Plants have already happened, just not organized ones. Regardless, perhaps organizers (or attendees) need to have a few signs that say “Liberal Plant, not a REAL TeaPartier” and be on the lookout for these double-secret spies. When one is found, then pull out your signs and stand next to the plant. No violence or physical actions, just isolate and embarrass...more

San Juan County 912 Project draws politically-charged crowd

The San Juan County 912 Project gives Farmington resident Ruby Cowgill and other ordinary people a political voice, she said. Cowgill attended many of the 912 meetings since it began almost a year ago. She has learned about the Constitution and local politics. She likes that fellow 912ers respectfully listen to her opinions. Nine stands for nine principles, including belief in God; 12 stands for a dozen values, including honesty, sincerity and hope. The group promotes itself as open to all political viewpoints, but local members acknowledge mostly conservatives occupy its ranks. The group has basic goals: get governments to follow the Constitution and promote fiscal responsibility and free markets, Lee said. Members oppose health care reform, cap-and-trade legislation and stimulus spending. The 912 Project is an educational organization that plans tea party rallies, said Tom Mullins, a San Juan County Republican candidate for the U.S. House who attends the meetings and rallies. "The common bond of all of these organizations is limiting the size of government and protecting the Constitution,'' Mullins said...more

Who's afraid of a little Tea Party? Everyone, fortunately

Democratic officeholders should be afraid. Republican officeholders, too. For many a year now, officeholders of both major parties have worked hard to earn the distrust of ordinary Americans. It appears that they finally have succeeded. If only ordinary Americans hadn't been so inattentive. If only ordinary Americans hadn't been so trusting. If only ordinary Americans hadn't been so damnably nice, the country would be in a better position to manage its finances today. But when have Americans not tried to look for the good in every situation? When have we not been slow to recognize the need to deal with forces, foreign or domestic, aligning against our best interests? Better late than never, a lot of ordinary Americans are waking up to the sobering reality that there really is no one they can trust. Not Democrats. Not Republicans. Not government. Not corporations. And certainly not corporations in league with government. Hallelujah. The people who are angry today are more in tune with this nation's founders than ordinary Americans have been in decades...more

Tea Party Members Raise Flag On Own Pole

Members of the tea party in Connecticut raised the flag they've adopted as part of their movement even after police at the state Capitol said it could not fly over the building. The group wanted to raise the Gadsden flag and its "Don't Tread On Me" slogan atop its own flag pole near the Capitol during its rally Friday. State Capitol police approved Friday's flying of the Gadsden Flag atop the Capitol. Dating back to before the Revolutionary War, the flag is well known for its serpent and its warning of "Don't Tread on Me." However, on Thursday afternoon, the decision was reversed and the flag will not be flown. "The same way I don't think we should have a Democratic flag or a Republican flag on top of the Capitol, I don't think they should have a Green Party flag or a Working Families Party flag," said Rep. Michael Lawlor, D-East Haven. The group raised its adopted flag on a different flagpole on the south side of the building near Capitol Avenue. "This is not just a movement, this is the tea party nation. This is about that flag, which for 300 years has been a representation of the people who rule government, not government ruling the people," said Duffy Acevedo, who is currently running for the governor on the Republican ticket...more

America's Quiet Anger

It is the anger of millions of hard-working citizens who pay their bills, send in their income taxes, maintain their homes and repay their mortgage loans -- and see their government reward those who do not. It is the anger of small town and Middle American folks who have never been to Manhattan, who put their savings in a community bank and borrow from a local credit union, who watch Washington lawmakers and presidents of both parties hand billions in taxpayer bailouts to the reckless Wall Street titans who brought down the economy in 2008. It is the fury of the voiceless, the powerless, the ordinary nobodies of Flyover Country who are ridiculed, preached to, satirized and insulted by the Celebrity Loudmouths of the two Left Coasts, the Jon Stewarts and Keith Olbermanns, the Paul Krugmans and their ilk. It is the salted wound of the millions who see that ruling Democrats in Congress are not listening to them but are willfully ignoring public opinion and the verdict of recent elections in passing a huge new health care entitlement when the existing entitlements of Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid are already going broke. It is the frustrating helplessness of citizens who revere the Founding Fathers and the genius of the Constitution that they wrote, who actually believe the words of the Constitution mean what they say, not more and not less...more

Obama’s National Sales Tax

President Obama is vetting a new national sales tax (commonly referred to as a VAT) to extract more wealth from the private sector to sustain his insatiable hunger for more government spending. Former Fed Chairman Paul Volcker and current Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke have commenced a vetting strategy to convince Americans that they need to give more and more money to an every-expanding and bloated federal government. Congress needs to just say no to a VAT — and increased taxation — as part of any pitch by this Administration to balance the budget. Volker and Bernanke have used a two pronged strategy to vet the VAT. First is fear mongering. Bernanke argues that Americans need to choose between higher taxes or massive cuts in critical government programs. He mentioned Social Security, Medicare, Education and Defense as areas of government spending that would be targeted if we don’t raise taxes. This is a false choice. The federal government needs to reform entitlement programs, needs to root out waste fraud and abuse and should eliminate programs like the National Endowment for the Arts. The reason why elites in Washington would look to a VAT before increasing income taxes (and, believe me, higher income taxes are coming) is because not enough of the population even pays income taxes to make it worthwhile for the government to use the income tax structure to balance the budget...more

Newly Formed ‘Federation’ of Tea Party and Grassroots Groups Announced

In an effort to build its credibility and influence nationwide, the tea party movement on Thursday announced the formation of a "federation" of tea party groups. Mark Skoda, a member of the Memphis Tea Party, told a crowd of roughly 200 conservative activists gathered outside the state capitol that 21 factions of the movement will form the National Federation Tea Party. Skoda said the federation will act as a "rapid response" to "misinformation" allegedly put forth by the "mainstream media." The National Federation Tea Party includes groups like the Tea Party Express, which is currently on a 42-city bus tour across the country, as well as Tea Party Nation, ResistNet, Constitutional TEA Party and American Grassroots Coalition. But the conservative movement, which has prided itself on its refusal to formally merge with the Republican Party, refuted claims Thursday that the tea party seeks to form its own political party. "That would be political suicide," Mark Williams, chairman of Tea Party Express, told FoxNews.com. "America is a two party system and to create a third party is to reinvent the wheel. This federation was formed simply as a rapid response to put out brushfires in the mainstream media." "This is a not a single leadership formation," added Skoda. The federation also includes several conservative "affiliate groups" like Americans for Prosperity, American for Tax Reform, FreedomWorks and Citizens United. FoxNews

Nearly Half of US Households Escape Fed Income Tax

Tax Day is a dreaded deadline for millions, but for nearly half of U.S. households it's simply somebody else's problem. About 47 percent will pay no federal income taxes at all for 2009. Either their incomes were too low, or they qualified for enough credits, deductions and exemptions to eliminate their liability. That's according to projections by the Tax Policy Center, a Washington research organization...more

Obama adviser Volcker says record deficits could lead to new VAT tax

White House adviser Paul Volcker said the United States may need to consider raising taxes to control deficits. He also said a European-style value-added tax could gain support. The former chairman of the Federal Reserve who is an outside adviser to President Barack Obama, said the value-added tax "was not as toxic an idea" as it has been in the past, according to a Reuters report. Volcker made the remarks at a New York Historical Society event Tuesday night. Volcker also suggested that a carbon or energy-related tax may become necessary to bring the budget back into check. Volcker acknowledged that the ideas weren't popular but that the outlook on entitlement spending and budget deficits were grim without some changes...more

Can the Tea Party Movement Take the Next Step?

What's less clear than the group's makeup is the role it will play in November's midterm elections and beyond. "The real test is whether it's an electoral phenomenon or a social-protest phenomenon," says Isaac Wood, an analyst at the University of Virginia's Center for Politics. "They've been very successful at garnering headlines. What they need to do is prove they can garner votes." Yet to do so entails diving into a political process whose perversion has been an organizing principle for the Tea Party. "They are kind of anti-politics, not just anti-government," Wood says. "They don't seem to be enthusiastic about doing politics the same old way." Nevertheless, many Tea Party activists are ready to trade headline-generating protests and bus tours for the unglamorous banalities that make campaigns hum...more

Black conservative tea party backers take heat

They've been called Oreos, traitors and Uncle Toms, and are used to having to defend their values. Now black conservatives are really taking heat for their involvement in the mostly white tea party movement—and for having the audacity to oppose the policies of the nation's first black president. "I've been told I hate myself. I've been called an Uncle Tom. I've been told I'm a spook at the door," said Timothy F. Johnson, chairman of the Frederick Douglass Foundation, a group of black conservatives who support free market principles and limited government. Johnson and other black conservatives say they were drawn to the tea party movement because of what they consider its commonsense fiscal values of controlled spending, less taxes and smaller government. The fact that they're black—or that most tea partyers are white—should have nothing to do with it, they say...more

Palin? Armey? Republican Or Dem? Leader Of Tea Party Is . . . No One!

On Feb. 27 last year, small numbers of middle-class taxpayers gathered in 50 American cities to protest President Obama's $786 billion stimulus bill, signed into law without the bother of reading it. And the Tea Party movement was born. Organized in less than a week by conservatives on Twitter, the Tea Party movement has grown from political novices into a driving force that is rapidly changing the American political landscape. The fact that no one person is guiding that force seems to encourage some people, and especially the media, to appoint one. After her speech at the Tea Party Nation convention in Nashville, there was great speculation from the national media about whether Sarah Palin would be the leader of the Tea Party movement. After all, Palin is a known conservative with grass-roots energy and support who is largely in lockstep with the values of the movement. Others have alluded to former House Majority Leader Dick Armey as the leader of, or spokesperson for, the Tea Party groups around the country. But neither Palin nor Armey, nor anyone else for that matter, will ever lead or control the Tea Party movement. That's because it's not one body, but many locally organized groups, led by local people — like me, along with two others on the Dallas Tea Party steering committee. Each of us holds a full-time job and volunteers our time to the Tea Party movement. And while all the Tea Party groups share a number of common values and goals, no one group speaks for the others...more

Federal Government Jobs Far Outpace Private Sector Counterparts in Pay, Benefits

Recent statistics suggest the federal government is becoming an increasingly more attractive place to work than the private sector. Federal jobs outpay their private sector counterparts 83 percent of the time, according to information from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. According to federal data, a cook on the federal payroll will make roughly $15,000 more than one in the private sector. A public relations manager working for the U.S. government will out-earn his or her private sector counterpart by an average of more than $44,000. The disparities don't only show up in salaries, though. According to the Bureau of Economic Analysis, average health, pension and other benefits tally up to $40,785 per federal worker -- compared with just $9,882 per private worker...more

ATP TAX DAY RALLY

Tina Carson with the ATP says the opposition is once again trying to misdirect folks.

Here is the correct info from their website:


The Tax Day Rally will be between San Pedro Dr. NE and Wyoming Blvd. NE from 4pm – 7pm


































Once again, our friends Don Davis and Phil Marquez from KIVA 1550 AM, will be broadcasting live from the Albuquerque Tea Party Tax Day Rally.

We would like to ask our supporters who attend the rally to bring a portable or headset radio so that you can be informed by KIVA of relevant information, so that you will know what is going on outside your immediate surroundings. Useful information they will broadcast will include traffic and parking instructions, attendance estimates, encouragement of peaceful protest and such. We believe we can bring the crowd together as one through the radio broadcast in a very positive way.

KIVA will again be doing “man-on-the-street ” broadcasts from the street. They will simply approach a random person and ask if they can talk with them on the radio. You could be asked on the air what brought you out to the rally! Last year, every time that supporters were asked to be on the air, KIVA received well-spoken, well-reasoned, passionate statements, no matter the age, sex or race of the person. It was an amazing experience which we, along with KIVA, very much look forward to repeating this year.

Tea Party 48% Obama 44%

On major issues, 48% of voters say that the average Tea Party member is closer to their views than President Barack Obama. The latest Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey found that 44% hold the opposite view and believe the president’s views are closer to their own. Eighty-seven percent (87%) of those in the Political Class say their views are closer to the president. The Obama Administration has created a significantly larger government and political role in the economy. Sixty-three percent (63%) of Mainstream Americans say their views are closer to the Tea Party. Last week, Rasmussen Reports released data showing that 47% of voters felt closer to the views of Tea Party members than to Congress. Only 26% felt closer to Congress...more

Obamacare: The Side Effects

This TV ad, done by the folks at Heritage, uses the format we see so often. It kicks off their new project: Side Effects.

Amid harsh criticisms, 'tea party' slips into the mainstream

But political experts say that many such criticisms are near-sighted, if not outright inappropriate – and ultimately may miss the point. Indeed, polls suggest that tea party activists are not only more mainstream than many critics suggest, but that a majority of them are women (primarily mothers), not angry white men. What's more, the release this week of the top three planks of the "crowd-sourced" Contract From America project, to some activists, shows a maturation from sign-wielding protesters to a political reform movement grounded in ideas. The top three vote-getters among 360,000 respondents on the Contract From America website: Calling for an enumerated powers act to force lawmakers to check the constitionality of new laws; requiring a two-thirds majority in Congress for any tax hike; and a legislative backstop to prevent the EPA from "backdoor regulating." Moreover, polls show that the anger at big government exhibited by tea party protesters is shared by many, if not most, Americans. A Pew poll in early March found 71 percent of Americans "dissatisfied with the way things are going in the country today," while a CNN poll showed that 56 percent of Americans are more than just discontented with Washington. Instead, that majority of respondents agreed that the government is "so large and powerful that it poses an immediate threat to rights and freedoms of ordinary citizens."...more

New poll on tea parties has surprises

Since December, The Winston Group has conducted telephone surveys of thousands of registered voters and just this week released an analysis of its findings: that 17 percent of registered voters consider themselves a part of the Tea Party movement, and that they – like voters overall – are deeply concerned about the economy and jobs as we head toward the 2010 election. The conventional wisdom about the Tea Party has not yet settled on any one definitive portrayal of the movement, but the data tell a fascinating story – over four out of 10 self-identified Tea Party members aren’t Republican, and a third don’t consider themselves conservative. They tend to be older than the voters on the whole, tend to come from middle-income households, and are slightly more likely to be male than the overall electorate. But what truly sets the Tea Party apart from even Republicans or conservatives broadly is its commitment to economic conservatism. Tea Party members, like voters overall, are very focused on the economy and jobs; some 36 percent say it is their top issue. Yet while only 6 percent of voters overall say that the national deficit and spending are their top issues, that number spikes to 21 percent among Tea Party members. The Tea Party is a movement defined by its preference for fiscal restraint and low taxes...more

Unicorns & Rainbows

I'm no particular fan of the NRSC, but did enjoy this video.




HT: John Madeira

Shocking Headline: Letterman Gives Tea Party Best Showcase Ever

Here's a headline I'm sure you never dreamed of seeing: "David Letterman Gives the Tea Party the Best Showcase it's Ever Had." So wrote Entertainment Weekly's Ken Tucker Wednesday about the previous evening's interview of Sandpoint, Idaho, Tea Party President Pam Stout on CBS's "Late Show." Tucker went on to call the segment "quietly remarkable" which seems an understatement not only given Letterman's nonconfrontational approach with Stout, but also because at one point, he even said there were "many things about this [Tea Party] movement that I admire". Tucker finished his piece noting, "[N]obody else is doing interviews with people like this on TV." Of course not, for the goal of the Obama-loving media is to depict Tea Partiers as racist, homophobic, dangers to society, and Stout is clearly none of that. As Ace wrote Wednesday: Not only did this woman clearly come to play-- she makes a great rational case for Tea Party politics -- but on a sub-rational level, well, she's Just Like You, isn't she? She never before was particularly political (Just Like You), she's just a normal, patriotic American woman (Just Like You), and she was embarrassed to have to nominate herself for the Tea Party group's presidency (Just Like You -- hey, we all hate public speaking, don't we?). [...] It's the fact that Tea Partiers, when allowed to present themselves on both a human and political level, will tend to acquit themselves rather well that keeps the media from doing this at all...read more

Tea Party: A Brewing Movement

On a cold night in December 1773, some three years after passage of the Tea Act by the British Parliament, colonists were fed up with the British crown’s haughty disregard of their rights as Englishmen, and they dumped 342 chests of the iconic British beverage into Boston Harbor, becoming icons themselves. The protesters (estimates range from as few as 30 to as many as 130) refused finally to be placated by repeated promises of change and reform and, rather than wait for legislative response, they exercised the Lockean right of “self-defense” and boldly resisted the alienation of their God-given liberty. Modern Americans know something of that level of frustration. It’s been just over a year since Barack Obama was elected President of the United States and the Democratic Party assumed majority control of both houses of Congress. In that short time, there has emerged a vociferous band within the electorate who, like their tea-tossing forebears, feel they have been precluded from participating in the direction the ship of state will sail, and they have decided to protest the insupportable behavior of a government that habitually oversteps its constitutional boundaries. Fed up and fired up, they have chosen to exercise their constitutional prerogative of peaceful assembly, hence the Tea Party Movement. The disparate coterie of groups confederated, loosely, under a giant “Tea Party” umbrella, and they attracted devotees by the thousands. Scores of frustrated conservatives were drawn to the movement’s assimilation of the patois of 18th-century patriotism. They braved rain and rebuke and gathered in parking lots and municipal auditoriums to listen to speakers selected from the deepening pool of Tea Party celebrities zealously frothing the tea-tainted waters of dissent...read more

Lobbyists Enjoy Windfall Despite Pledges to Rein In Special Interest Influence

Health care reform made the public mad, and it made lobbyists rich. Though President Obama promised during the 2008 campaign to curb the influence of special interests, slap a leash on lobbyists and "put the interests of Main Street in front of K Street and Wall Street," the past year hasn't exactly live up to that standard. Special interest spending on Capitol Hill broke records in 2009, topping $3.47 billion. And almost half of the president's recess appointments last weekend were tied to or work for so-called special interests. Finance figures show those interests are giving huge sums to Democrats and Republicans alike -- but while the influence game is hardly the problem of one party, the legislative frenzy on Capitol Hill has only inflated it over the past year. The health care industry led the pack in terms of special interest spending, pumping out $266 million in 2009, according to the Center for Responsive Politics...more

Tea Party Finds Its Motivation In Constitution

Over the past 14 months, our political debate has been transformed into an argument between the heirs of two fundamental schools of political thought, the Founders and the Progressives. The Founders stood for the expansion of liberty and the Progressives for the expansion of government. It's an argument that's been going on for a century but was largely dormant over the quarter-century of low-inflation economic growth after the Ronald Reagan tax cuts. It's been raised again by the expand-government policies of the Obama administration and Democratic congressional leaders. Those policies, thoroughly in line with the Progressive tradition, have been advanced by liberal elites in government, media, think tanks and academia. The opposition, roughly in line with the Founders tradition, has been led by the non-elites who spontaneously flocked to Tea Parties and town halls. Republican politicians have been scrambling to lead these protesters. The conservative rebellions of the late 1970s and middle 1990s were focused on taxes. The Tea Partyers are focusing on the expansion of government — and its threat to the independence of citizens...more

Rasmussen: ‘Most Say Tea Party Has Better Understanding of Issues than Congress’

The latest Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey finds that 52% of U.S. voters believe the average member of the Tea Party movement has a better understanding of the issues facing America today than the average member of Congress. Only 30% believe that those in Congress have a better understanding of the key issues facing the nation. When it comes to those issues, 47% think that their own political views are closer to those of the average Tea Party member than to the views of the average member of Congress. On this point, 26% feel closer to Congress.

Mark Hemingway says: So are Democrats now going to assert that a majority of the country is racist?