The Rochester NY Independence Day Tea Party was held on Friday, July 3, 2009 at Ontario Beach Park in the Rochester waterfront of Lake Ontario, a place that is known as the Charlotte neighborhood. Most people were given this day off as a Holiday and the organizers, We Surround Rochester, the Campaign for Freedom, the Campaign for America and RochesterConservative.com, thought that having it in the evening, from 6pm-9pm, would be a great way of starting out the Independence Day weekend. We were blessed by rain-free weather and although it got a bit windy at times and it has been cooler than normal lately, we had great weather. We reserved the big pavilions at Ontario Beach Park and even if it did rain, we would have stayed dry. It’s such a beautiful spot up at the Park. We could hear the music from the historic Dentzel Menagerie Carousel off in the distance.
The Rochester Veterans and Patriots Color Guard kicked things off with a march and Presentation of the Colors:
They were joined by a group of patriotic teenagers from Chicago that are visiting a local Rochester Church:
Here’s a member of the local Vietnam Veterans of America, Chapter 20, who served on the Veterans and Patriots Color Guard.
We all said the Pledge and then Elaine led us in the singing of the National Anthem.
A Rochester Reverend led us in the Invocation.
This Veteran of the Afghanistan War read the Declaration of Independence.
Ken spoke next about political corruption.
Sonja spoke about how our elected officials are acting more like aristocracy and are ignoring the will of the People.
Rev. Dr. Tommy Davis spoke about the government living within the same means its citizens have to and also how unions are out of touch with reality and needing to back away from demands for more.
Charlie spoke about how the Democrat and Republican Parties have abandoned their base, becoming corrupt, self-serving demigods.
Valerie spoke on the history of the Bill of Rights and read each Amendment in between the regular speakers.
This brave little girl led us in the singing of “Proud to be an American”. She did such a good job!
Ken H. spoke about how technology can be used to spread the word of freedom and also on the Nine Principles.
Here’s Chris Edes speaking.
We had more speakers and if anybody can provide me photos of them, I’ll include them in this AAR.
Vivian was there with a very pertinent and original costume.
This WWII Veteran showed up in uniform and a sign with an age-old bit of freedom-loving American advice.
These ladies are trying to send a message to the American people. hint hint
We had a good crowd and filled the pavilion and had over-flow crowds.
Here’s a lady, honoring her Veteran Father (notice the framed photo she’s holding) who was also at the Rochester Tax Day Tea Party. I love the message she has on her sandwich board signs!
We even had clowns to entertain the many kids who attended the Rochester Tax Day Tea Party.
The creative signs that participants carried had messages that citizens and politicians need to heed! They again told the story of peoples concerns.
And my favorite sign…
Here’s a video presentation that Ken H. put together that summarizes our successful Rochester NY independence Day Tea Party.
This AAR is a work in progress and if you have anything to contribute, either post it in the “Comments” section of this post or email me at rochester_veteran@yahoo.com.
I’ve spoken to you at our previous two tea parties on how our country was founded and how we’ve gone from “We the people” to a people controlled by the government. Today, I’m here to talk about the people that run our lives, whether they’re elected, appointed or selected.
There have been a lot of stories lately about political corruption. You have people like Representatives Duke Cunningham and William Jefferson, as well as Senators Daschle and Dodd leading the pack. On the state level, we have people like Alan Hevesi and allegedly Joe Bruno. These people were put into positions of power and have betrayed the public trust.
Some of them, like Tim Geithner, Secretary of the Treasury, cheat on their taxes. It’s not just Geithner, Duke Cunningham, James Ortenzio, Tom Daschle, Charlie Rangel and a litany of others are in that crowd. Why do they cheat on their taxes? It comes down to two things, they inherently know that excessive taxation hurts people, they can feel it in their own wallets even if they won’t admit it publicly, and they’ve become drunk with the power granted to them by their offices and with their illicit ability to overstep that power. Do I need to remind anyone where the term “czar” originates? For proof of the harm of taxes, look at New York State, where businesses have been driven out of state and with them, jobs and young able bodied workers, leaving us with not only an aging population, but a citizenry growing evermore dependent upon government checks.
Speaking of Geithner and Rangel, both have admitted to evading taxes, citing that the tax code is too complicated. That’s a bit ironic, given that Geithner’s department runs the IRS and Rangel is the Chairman of the House Ways and Means committee, the group charged with writing the tax code. Surely if anyone is able to understand the tax code, it would be them. But they deliberately make taxation complicated to allow for more loopholes for them and their friends, while ensuring the government can harass anyone that doesn’t follow the party line. The IRS is known for auditing people critical of sitting administrations, yet it seems to turn a blind eye to the politicians themselves.
But that’s not the only way our politicians cheat the people. Legislators at the federal, state and county levels love to exempt themselves from the laws they force upon us. They give themselves health care and pension plans that can’t be found anywhere in the private sector. They exempt themselves from the Social Security Ponzi scheme. Not satisfied with there meager 6 figure salaries, they also apportion themselves money for office expenses, even after they leave office in some cases, travel expenses, living expenses and other stipends. Robert Wexler, a Congressman from Florida, owns no property in Florida and lives in Maryland, but he claims his official residence at his mother in law’s house in Delray Beach. As an added bonus, he takes a stipend from Congress for maintaining two residencies even though he only owns one. Now, you tell me, how can you live in Maryland, represent Florida and take federal reimbursement for owning multiple homes when you only own one? Could you or I get away with that?
Others steal from taxpayers in completely legal ways. John Murtha has a $250 million airport named after him. It only offers flights to and from DC, twice a day, and serves just a handful of people. That hasn’t stopped him from throwing millions of dollars in new earmarks at it. Louise Slaughter has a building named after her at RIT. If that isn’t the height of hubris…
Maybe people like Alan Hevesi, Joe Bruno and once again, Mr. Murtha are. All of them have allegedly used their positions to feed money and services to themselves or their family members to the tune of millions of dollars. It’s not enough that they’ll spend millions in taxpayers money to build monuments to themselves, no, they need to outright steal from us.
There are other ways they fleece us. Those earmarks they spend are meant to buy your votes. After all, you need to re-elect the person that brings home the bacon, right? Another cancer is the autocracy. Joe Biden left his Senate seat to become Vice President and his former chief of staff is keeping it warm until Biden’s son, Beau, comes back from his military service, to claim it. Andrew Cuomo’s claim to fame is his father’s name. The same could be said for Al Gore, Hillary Clinton, George Bush, and countless others. Last time I checked, 233 years ago, we threw off a monarchy, so why is a new one being imposed upon us?
I’ll tell you why. Government exists to serve itself. They’ll tell you it exists to provide us with the services we need, but thats a lie. The only service we need from government is for them to protect our rights. To provide those services, government is stealing your rights, your freedom. They want to take away your economic freedom through taxation. They want to take away your medical freedom by imposing socialized medicine. They want to take away your right to privacy by owning your medical records. They want to take away your freedom of speech through legislation like McCain-Feingold.
Politicians do their best to divide us, to keep us distracted so we don’t look behind the curtain to find out how the political ruling class is fleecing us. While we’re busy fighting each other, government is busy doing whatever they want with impunity.
That is why statists mock these tea parties… they know we’re onto them. They know that we’re pulling back the covers and shining light on their corruption. They know they can’t win the argument, so they result to ad hominem attacks. Rather than answer for their actions, they try to attack the messengers directly, smearing us like they tried to smear Joe the Plumber for asking the right questions. Fully knowing that, I speak today, just as I spoke on March 11th and April 15th, because I’m not here to garner support from the ruling class. I’m here stoking their ire, because I know, at the end of the day, the people, all of you out there, have my back and you are who matters.
Sam Adams said “If ye love wealth greater than liberty, the tranquility of servitude greater than the animating contest for freedom, go home from us in peace. We seek not your counsel, nor your arms. Crouch down and lick the hand that feeds you; May your chains set lightly upon you, and may posterity forget that ye were our countrymen.”
Just as we’re witnessing in Iran, the people WILL be heard. We the people… WILL be heard. The politicians can’t hide forever. Tomorrow is not a celebration of the government, it is the celebration of the people.
For this July 3, RC Friday Night Blues, I thought it would be fitting to honor our men and women who are serving in the US Armed Forces, sacrificing for us in keeping us free.
The tea party movement has become more than a one-time tax protest. The grass-roots political crusade is growing and expanding. As “tea party” organizer Candace E. Salima notes on our facing page, more than 1,300 parties are scheduled nationwide to mark the Fourth of July. This popular uprising against oppressive big government is in the best tradition of the American independence movement that we are celebrating this weekend.
The tea parties are a genuine expression of the American democratic spirit. The April round of tea parties – held to protest tax day – was studiously ignored by President Obama and ridiculed by liberal critics, no doubt in hopes the movement would go away. But the party keeps on rolling.
Like the contemporary movement, the 1773 Boston Tea Party was not just about taxes. The original party started when the bankrupt British East India Co. was given a 1.4 million pound bailout by the British Parliament and granted a tea monopoly over the Americas to help them shed their “troubled assets.” Politically well-connected consignees were given exclusive rights to sell the tea and were set to drive local merchants out of business. When the first tea ship sailed into Boston Harbor, a flyer was posted declaring “the hour of destruction, or manly opposition to the machinations of Tyranny, stares you in the face.”
Today’s tea party movement sees the same dynamics writ large. The federal government has become a vast enterprise of influence peddling, backroom dealing and special-interest politics on a scale unprecedented in our nation’s history. The tea partiers are upset about a $3 trillion Troubled Asset Relief Program, the largest government program in history, that cannot trace where all the money has gone. They are concerned about the $787 billion off-budget stimulus bill, which amounts to a wish list of set-asides for special interests and political insiders. They are astonished by this year’s $1.8 trillion budget deficit that will saddle taxpayers with unsustainable debt maintenance.
They view with concern the government hand over of automotive companies to unions and special interests at the expense of bond holders and auto dealers. They object to the “cap-and-trade” bill that will raise energy costs for every American, stifle economic growth and job growth, and create a new class of wealthy insiders trading “carbon points” and “offsets” and other products of the bureaucratic imagination. Tea partiers are suspicious of the looming health care reform effort that will raise costs and empower special interests and the government.
But the tea party movement is also intent on proposing positive solutions. Lisa Miller of the March for Liberty Coalition told us that the government needs to pursue policies that result in “more choices for consumers at lower costs, and with more convenience.” Market-based reforms, respect for Federalism, government openness and transparency, lower taxes and an end to special interest dominance in Washington are nationwide tea party themes. But this change can only happen with persistent, broad-based grass-roots activism. Americans need to “get involved, get educated, pitch in to the extent you can, and definitely vote,” Ms. Miller said.
The D.C. Tea Party will be held at Upper Senate Park on Constitution Avenue on Saturday starting at 10 a.m. Details are at Teapartywdc.ning.com and Marchforliberty.org. July 4 is a perfect day for a tea party, a true expression and celebration of American liberty. We urge our readers to get out, get involved and celebrate our spirit of independence.
Here’s a video from the Glenn Beck Show from July 5, 2009 featuring Peter Schiff who discusses Cap and Trade and how it will further damage the economy. RV
It has been interesting watching the response to the Honduran military’s recent ousting its nation’s president, Manuel Zelaya. Barack Obama called the action "not legal" and Hillary Clinton said that the arrest of Zelaya should be condemned. Most interesting, perhaps, is that taking this position places them shoulder to shoulder with Fidel Castro, Daniel Ortega and Venezuelan’s roaring mouse, Hugo Chavez, who is threatening military action against Honduras. Now, some would say this is an eclectic group – others would say, not so much – regardless, what has gotten them so upset?
Let’s start with what they say. They are calling the ouster a "coup" and claim that Zelaya is still Honduras’ rightful president. Some of them say we must support democracy. But they have said little, if anything, about the rule of law. And most of what they have said is wrong.
First, it doesn’t appear that Sunday’s ouster was a military coup but a law enforcement action. It is not a military strongman who sought extra-legal control, but Zelaya himself. Here is the story.
Zelaya is a leftist, a less precocious version of Chavez, sort of like the Venezuelan’s Mini-me. And, like Chavez, it’s seems that Zelaya was bent on perpetuating his rule and increasing his power in defiance of the rule of law. That is to say, the Honduran Constitution limits presidents to one four-year term, and this wasn’t quite enough to satisfy Zelaya’s ambitions. So he sought to amend the constitution, which may sound okay, except for one minor detail. Mary Anastasia O’Grady in the Wall Street Journalexplains:
While Honduran law allows for a constitutional rewrite, the power to open that door does not lie with the president. A constituent assembly can only be called through a national referendum approved by its Congress.
But Mr. Zelaya declared the vote on his own and had Mr. Chávez ship him the necessary ballots from Venezuela. The Supreme Court ruled his referendum unconstitutional, and it instructed the military not to carry out the logistics of the vote as it normally would do.
The top military commander, Gen. Romeo Vásquez Velásquez, told the president that he would have to comply. Mr. Zelaya promptly fired him. The Supreme Court ordered him reinstated. Mr. Zelaya refused.
. . . the president decided he would run the referendum himself. So on Thursday he led a mob that broke into the military installation where the ballots from Venezuela were being stored and then had his supporters distribute them in defiance of the Supreme Court’s order.
However, like so many apparent megalomaniacs, Zelaya greatly overestimated his popularity. The groundswell of citizen support he had counted on didn’t materialize; thus, his law breaking could not be sanitized by consensus making. The military then arrested him, acting under orders from legitimate civilian authorities and in defense of the rule of law. The good guys won . . . at least for now.
Also note that the military confined itself to its prescribed police action and is not running the country. The new president is 63-year-old Roberto Micheletti, a member of Zelaya’s own Liberal Party. Moreover, elections are still planned for this November.
Micheletti also enjoys wide support, from the rank-and-file to the those breathing rarified air in elite institutions. As for Zelaya, while you may not be able to please all of the people all of the time, he certainly seems to have been able to displease them. He not only alienated the Congress, Supreme Court, the people and the attorney general — who also declared the referendum illegal and vowed to prosecute anyone facilitating it — he is also opposed by the Catholic Church and many evangelicals. Really, no one seems to like him.
No one, that is, but Hugo Chavez, Fidel Castro and Daniel Ortega.
Oh, and let’s not forget Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama.
Tell me who your friends are and I’ll tell you who you are, anyone?
In fact, Obama’s position is striking. More than almost anything else — almost anything — this dance with the Devil reveals his true colors. Sure, he was criticized over his handling of Iran, but even I will say there are two sides. After all, you could make the case that overt support for the protesters would provide the clerics and President Ahmadinejad with invaluable propaganda material. And Obama looked foolish when he paraded about the world issuing mea culpas on behalf of big bad America, but, hey, that’s a reflection of the standard liberal America-as-villain narrative. I don’t think it surprised too many people. But, as bad as Obama has been, this occupies a different realm all together. And I think most fail to appreciate the gravity of what I will not even call a policy, but an offense.
Obama has sided with a thug, a man who — for completely self-serving reasons — sought to subvert his nation’s constitution. Obama has sided with a man who — like Pancho Villa on a cross-border raid — lead a mob in an effort to execute this illegal scheme. And Obama does this while paying lip service to democracy, even as he imperils it; he claims to stand for freedom, even while supporting those who would extinguish it. It is un-American. It is ugly. It is, in a word, evil.
Yet it doesn’t surprise me. Some may think the issue is simply that, although Obama despises Zelaya’s tactics, he is driven to support a fellow traveler. Others may think that Obama wants to support a fellow traveler and is indifferent about the tactics. Neither is entirely correct. In point of fact, Zelaya has certain tactics. Obama has certain tactics.
And they are largely the same.
In fact, they are shared by virtually all leftists.
Ignoring the rule of law, manipulating the Constitution, acting as if the end justifies the means . . . . Sound familiar? This is standard left doctrine.
Examining this further, let’s look at two comments Obama and H. Clinton made about Honduras. Obama said that the U.S. would "stand on the side of democracy" and Clinton said, "we have a lot of work to do to try to help the Hondurans get back on the democratic path . . . ." These comments reflect a common theme. There is gratuitous emphasis on democracy, but what of the rule of law? What of recognition that, technically, Honduras and the U.S. are not democracies but constitutional republics? We don’t hear much talk about these things from liberals, and I have a theory as to why.
Of course, such comments are often simply rhetoric, but there can be a deeper reason as well. Democracy, in the strict sense of the word, refers to direct rule by the people. Another way to put it is that it’s rule based on the people’s whims. Now, liberals are relativists, which means they don’t believe in Truth, in natural law, in anything beyond man that determines morality. Instead, relativism involves the idea that what people once called morals are merely values, which, in turn, are just a function of a people’s consensus opinion. It then follows that the impositions of values known as civil laws cannot be based on anything outside of man, either; they also are simply a function of opinion, be it the consensus variety or that of those with clout. In other words, liberals believe as the ancient Greek philosopher Protagoras did, that "Man is the measure of all things."
Now let’s say you accept this. When constitutional mandates, or laws, then contradict that "measure of all things," that democratic body, with which will you likely side? This explains why liberals find it unfathomable that anyone would let "a piece of paper" stand in the way of a popular — or politically correct — social change. "Why, you have to be a simpleton to let a law forestall progress!" is the idea. And from their simplistic, shallow perspective it makes sense. If laws originate with opinion, anyway, why would you let them stand in the way of the dominant opinion when the latter changes?
Yet, at the end of the day, liberals aren’t any more beholden to popular will than to laws, as they scoff at it when it contradicts politically-correct will. And there is a good reason for this. Liberals don’t view democracy as an absolute because there is no such thing in a relativistic world, but they at least view it. That is to say, they know popular will is real but believe God’s will (Truth) is imaginary. And what exists takes precedence over what doesn’t.
But in a world without absolutes, what takes precedence over all? Well, without any unchanging yardstick for making moral decisions — without Truth to provide answers — liberals have only one thing to refer to: Their mercurial master, feelings. But whose feelings shall hold sway? They may sometimes be those of the majority of people (expressed as "values"), especially insofar as their feelings influence liberals’ feelings. But, then again, the feelings might also be those of most liberals’ favorite people — and the ones they fancy the smartest — themselves. This is what engenders the elitism that justifies trumping popular will; after all, liberals’ own feelings always feel more "right" to them than other people’s.
Put simply, it’s a question of whose will shall prevail, the popular, politically correct or personal? When man is the measure of all things, the man in the mirror usually trumps your fellow man.
Speaking of feelings, one that could be instrumental here is fear. What I mean is, we all understand the power of precedent. And along with Chavez, Obama seems to dislike the idea of a military upholding its nation’s constitution and ousting a would-be tyrant. I wonder why?
The Supreme Court closed an otherwise unremarkable term on a high note yesterday, rejecting the notion that one kind of racial bias can be remedied by another. On the last day of opinions before the Court is potentially joined by Judge Sonia Sotomayor, the Justices overturned one of her most closely scrutinized cases on workplace discrimination. The effect was to take an important step away from the practice of divvying up jobs by race.
Writing for a 5-4 majority in Ricci v. deStefano, Justice Anthony Kennedy said that the city of New Haven violated civil-rights law when it threw out firefighter promotional exams because more whites than blacks or Hispanics had passed the tests. New Haven claimed it had to junk the tests because certifying the results would lead to an avalanche of lawsuits by black candidates who hadn’t passed. In other words, the city claimed it had to intentionally discriminate against white candidates out of fear that the tests unintentionally had a “disparate impact” against minorities.
Frank Ricci (AP Photo)
But the Court found no evidence that the tests were flawed or that better alternatives for promotion existed. On the contrary, employment tests are an important tool against the very kind of racial discrimination that civil-rights laws were designed to prevent. “Fear of litigation alone cannot justify an employer’s reliance on race to the detriment of individuals who passed the examinations and qualified for promotions,” Justice Kennedy wrote. The Supremes created this “disparate impact” reverse discrimination incentive with its 1971 Griggs decision, since codified into law, but at least five Justices are still able to object to this kind of blatant racial injustice.
In the opening of her dissent, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg writes that “the white firefighters who scored high on New Haven’s promotional exams understandably attract this Court’s sympathy.” To which Justice Samuel Alito replied in a majority concurring opinion that “‘Sympathy’ is not what petitioners have a right to demand. What they have a right to demand is evenhanded enforcement of the law — of Title VII’s [of the 1964 Civil Rights Act] prohibition against discrimination based on race. And that is what, until today’s decision, has been denied them.”
Justice Alito underscores how little attention the firefighters’ claim was given by lower courts. In 2006 a federal district court dismissed the case before it went to trial. A three judge panel of the Second Circuit Court of Appeals that included Judge Sotomayor then upheld the lower court’s judgment in a one-paragraph statement, and later a terse opinion parroting the district court.
The dismissive treatment of the firefighters’ claim drew the censure of fellow Second Circuit Judge Jose Cabranes. A former mentor of Ms. Sotomayor, Mr. Cabranes said the court had “failed to grapple with issues of exceptional importance.”
On this question of the Second Circuit’s mishandling, the Justices agreed unanimously yesterday. In footnote 10 of her dissent, Justice Ginsburg wrote that while she disagreed with the decision to reverse the lower court ruling, there were questions about how it was decided. Based on the lower court’s mistaken focus on intent, she wrote, “ordinarily a remand for fresh consideration would be in order.”
Judge Sotomayor’s handling of the case deserves to be thoroughly aired during her confirmation hearings, insofar as it reinforces concerns that she is prone to race-conscious jurisprudence. The issue originally came to the fore over the judge’s remarks that a “wise Latina” would come to a better conclusion than a white male judge who would lack the proper empathy for certain kinds of defendants.
Ms. Sotomayor’s supporters have been at pains to argue that she has ended up on both sides of racial discrimination complaints while on the Second Circuit. But those examining her record can reasonably ask if the disregard she exhibited for a Title VII claim by white firefighters falls into the category of neutrality or its own kind of bias.
Because the Court’s ruling was narrowly made on statutory grounds, it dodged the larger claim brought by the firefighters that New Haven violated their constitutional right to equal protection. Yet as Justice Antonin Scalia notes in his concurrence, the disparate impact standards “place a racial thumb on the scales, often requiring employers to evaluate the racial outcomes of their policies, and to make decisions based on (because of) those racial outcomes.” Someone should ask Judge Sotomayor if that’s her idea of equal protection under the law.
There is much outrage in the 10th District where I live.
My 10th District congressman, Mark Kirk, has the dubious distinction of being the only Republican member of the Illinois congressional delegation, and one of only eight Republicans nationwide, who voted on Friday, June 26, for the Waxman-Markey energy bill (HR 2454), commonly referred to as “Cap and Trade” or “Global Warming” bill. The bill narrowly passed the House with a vote of 219 to 212.
I would imagine that the same outrage exists in the congressional districts represented by all eight of the renegade Republicans. It is frowned upon to criticize fellow Republicans, but this defection cannot be brushed aside.
Radical and unjustified: Votes of eight renegade Republicans
Forty four wise Democrats crossed party lines to vote against the bill, while Kirk and seven other Republicans chose to ignore the 300-page amendment that was dropped into the mostly unread 1,000 page bill early in the morning on June 16, leaving no time to read the additional 300 pages and which turned the bill into an even more regulative and economic monstrosity.
Although Mark Kirk is proud to define himself as a moderate Republican with strong environmental leanings, he has put himself on record as supporting radical legislation that would result in economic pain for his constituents with little or no environmental gain.
It might be that Kirk has sealed his political future — Kirk has expressed interest in running statewide here in Illinois for U.S. Senate or governor — with his “yes” vote on the Democrat’s Global Warming bill, after voters learn what is in the 1,300 page bill? Unfortunately Kirk has become more liberal in many ways than many moderate Democrats in Congress.
The Waxman-Markey bill is instead a job killer. Especially hard hit would be energy-intensive sectors such as manufacturers, farmers, construction, machinery, transportation, and plastics.
Consumers will also pay more for all goods and services since just about everything we do and produce uses energy. Hardest hit by the draconian energy tax would be working families, but the tax would affect everyone whether rich, poor or in between.
What was Congressman Mark Kirk thinking? Did he make a devilish deal to become one of eight Republican turncoats? And what about the other seven Republican traitors in the U.S. Congress? It is unconscionable that they voted for the most massive tax increase and interference with private property ever! As such they should and are likely to face stiff opposition in 2010.
Hopefully the U.S. Senate will have more sense and will not ascribe to the ill-advised House version of the energy bill. If similar legislation is passed in the senate, it would be a bad deal for America and a devastating man-made disaster. Every effort must be made to defeat what would amount to a misguided approach to this nation’s energy needs.
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