Hennessy's View

I received a couple of phone calls this morning. Maybe because of the primary election in Missouri. Or is the stifling, stale heat of August that drove the calls?  Either way, I believe the calls represent very good news. 

We survived The Dip (Godin, 2007).

Back in April, I sensed a dip in the burgeoning grassroots movement.  By June 1, my suspicions were confirmed and I blogged about The Dip.

The Dip is resistance, according to writer Steven Pressfield.  If you quit now, no one can criticize you. You won’t be embarrassed.  Hell, after the past fifteen months, walking away from grassroots stuff will give you more time than you’ve ever imagined.  You can fix up your house, take a long vacation, read that stack of books that you’ve assembled but haven’t cracked.  You’ll be able to learn a new language and grow your own organic vegetables.  Maybe you’ll take up knitting or quilting to scrap-booking.

I was hoping that the cooler weather of September and the massive Tea Party in St. Louis on 9-12 would pull us out of The Dip.  I still hope that. But we seem to be pulling out already.

Those calls I received today should give you great hope. They came from folks who were very active in 2009, but who wandered back to their own lives in 2010. As I said in my original blog, no one can blame them.  We barely had time to breathe before this tea party thing started. 

But they’re back.  The patriots who needed a breather are refreshed and are returning to the battle.  They’re tanned, rested, and ready. They’re here to soldier on with us, to their energy when ours fades.  They are indispensible, and we should thank them for recharging.

More importantly, they will provide some of the 1,000+ Block Captains and Liberty Evangelists we are calling on now for the largest conservative voter drive in St. Louis history.  From St. Charles to St. Genevieve, we’ll channel our energy to overwhelming Congress on November 2.

That will be the peak of our post-Dip surge, the election on November 2.

So if you hear new names in the coming months—if you recognize old friends from Tea Parties of 2009—warmly welcome them back. And thank them for bringing us fresh energy.

We’re climbing the hill to the summit, now, and that’s a tough climb.  But it’s a climb.  The graph slopes up to the right.  Our ALICE packs are heavy, but our neighbors will help us.

Nothing can stop us now.

We survived The Dip.

Popularity: 4% [?]

Technorati Tags: 9-12 Tea Party, tea party, tea party patriots, The Dip

You’ll be in Grove Park in Grafton, Illinois, for:

ALTON IL. T.E.A PARTY FIRST ANNIVERSARY

“1776 FREEDOM RALLY”

Saturday, July 24^th 4pm-7pm

Think about it.  You’ve Fast Eddie’s right there. You’ve got two of the most haunted towns in America  with Grafton and Alton.  Great history, including homes that were critical to the Underground Railroad.

[Map of Grafton]

In short, you get to help make history in a place where history was made.

I am so honored to return to speak for the second year in a row.  Even better, Dr. Gina Loudon, hostess of the hottest new show on radio, will be there, too.  Not to mention the great people of the Alton Tea Party and 9-12 Project, Veteran Michelle Sharp, and more.

I have to tell you about the Alton Tea Party and 9-12 Project people.  These are the gold standard of get out the vote heroes. By turning on the afterburners, they made history in Madison County at the Illinois primary this year.  How so?

Madison County is typically a 2:1 Democrat vote in primaries.  Not this year.  Because of the ridiculous efforts of those two groups, Madison votes 3:1 Republican.  Not only that, their voters understood First Principles.  The demonstrated that understanding by voting over 40 percent for Adam Andrzjewski, the solid conservative who earned Lech Walesa’s endorsement.  That’s 40 percent out of field of 6 candidates.

Their efforts will make a difference again in November. Why not make the short drive to Grafton for this event. Then we’ll all stop at Fast Eddie’s for a cold one.  You might even want to book a room at Pere Marquette State Park or one of the awesome, old hotels in Grafton or Alton.

Please plan to join us at Grove Park in Alton next Saturday, July 24, at 4:00 p.m.  It’s been a long 17 months, I know.  But we’ve slackened the pace lately.  Now it’s time to gear up for Election Season.  And there’s no better organizations in the country to kick off elections than the Alton Tea Party and 9-12 Project.

Popularity: 7% [?]

Technorati Tags: Alton Tea Party, Madison County, Riverbend 9-12 Project, tea party

The NAACP has decided that it’s worth time to call 20 million American patriots “racists” for advancing liberty and economic opportunity. 

At midnight, the St. Louis Tea Party Coalition sent a resolution condemning the NAACP’s bigotry and hatred to its Washington bureau.

The Tea Party’s principles are simple and clear:

• Smaller federal government
• Lower taxes
• Fiscal responsibility
• National defense
• Federalism

Those are precisely the tools to lift all Americans out of poverty. They’ve worked every time they’ve been tried.  In America, we just haven’t tried them in awhile, due in large part to the NAACP’s advancement of socialism.

Each of these First Principles protects the rights of every American—the rights inherent in our humanity, not phony “rights” invented by a bureaucrat.  We stand for rights given by God that no man, no government, can justifiably deny or diminish.  Our principles are the very same principles that the NAACP stood for in 1909 but has wandered away from since the 1970s.

When you look at the crime and poverty and family breakdown of the African-American community, where median household income is below that of illegal aliens, you see a half-century of failure by the NAACP. When you consider that the NAACP blocks every effort to educate the poor through school vouchers, you realize that the NAACP is all about power for a few, not opportunity for everyone. When you see that the NAACP refuses to condemn New Black Panther Party calls to murder police officers and babies, you understand how far that organization has fallen.

None of those persistent problems was caused by the tea party movement, yet the principles of the tea party are exactly what’s needed to wind down the multi-generational destruction in the African-American community.  As I have said repeatedly, we measure compassion by the number of people lifted out of poverty, not the number who remain trapped. We promote hope and achievement through liberty, safety, and pursuit of happiness.  That’s all we want.

The NAACP was once a vital weapon in the war against segregation and oppression. All that’s left is abigoted and malicious shell that does far more harm than good for people who need a break. 

The NAACP should give reason and decency a break by withdrawing its false and defamatory attack on the tea party movement.

Popularity: 19% [?]

Technorati Tags: NAACP, racism, resolution, tea party

Sometimes things just happen.

As Jim Durbin points out, last night’s St. Louis Tea Party Night at the Ball Game was a total fluke.  A mix-up left us with 46 tickets to last night’s Cardinal’s game against Arizona. (Long story.) But this tea party thing that started over a year ago seems to generate its own publicity.

But the real story, to me, is what happened last night. Three incidents vindicated the shift toward more community building work, even if that work comes at the expense of big, boisterous rallies.

The Usher

While we were assembling at the Stan Musial statue, a young man in a security guard or usher uniform approached me.  He said, “I just recently figured out what the whole Tea Party movement is about, and I wanted you to know that I support you guys. Thank you for doing this.” 

I told him “thanks,” and introduced myself and handed him a pocket Constitution and Declaration of Independence. He seemed to be in a hurry.  But he’ll be back. 

The Fan

During the top of the ninth, I went over to section 331 to say goodbye to the large crowd there. (The Tea Partyers put me in the overflow seats two sections away from the main group. They know how I get.)  On my way over, another young man stopped and told me he’d been supporting the tea party movement from a distance for a while. He, too , said “thanks” for what we do. I handed him a Constitution and told him to contact us through www.stlouisteaparty.com. 

The Coverage

Today, news of our accidental BUYcott of the game went viral.  This certainly wasn’t planned.  We didn’t issue a press release about the event. We just wanted to watch baseball with some of the friends we’ve made manning the barricades of freedom since 2009.

The Vindication

I realized a year ago that, without a network of people stronger, smarter, braver, and more energetic than me, I wouldn’t have organized that second tea party. (The first one was testimony to my own ignorance and tendency toward compulsion, and it was successful only because of Dana’s work.)

Well, if I need a strong fabric of people and groups to sustain me, then lots of other people do, too. 

“How many people,” I wondered, “would join us in small groups, at house parties or block parties, even if they’re not comfortable coming out to a protest or rally?”

Through the retail work of meeting one person at a time, we unfurl the blanket of community that Jim Durbin talks about when he writes:

We like hanging out together.  And while there will always be a little political theater when this group gets together, last night was really about getting out to the ballpark with friends, family, and the kids.

We do like hanging out together. We know we’re safe and covered by our friends. We know our friends will keep us in line and steady us when we stumble. Even if they do make us sit two sections away.

So if you haven’t joined our ranks, please do. We hold a little party every Thursday evening at Sky Music Lounge in Ballwin.  We’re working on adding additional locations for weekly get-togethers in South St. Louis City or County, North County, and Mid-County.  We look for new Block Captains who will invest a few dollars and a couple hours in training and Constitutions.  Please contact john.burns@stlouisteaparty.com to become part of the solution to the problem government has left us.

Finally, about our little movement, let me say this.  We never intended to create a new party or some massive blob of angry snarkiness. We just wanted our kids to find an America that’s a little freer, a little stronger, and little more fun than the one we inherited.  That may sound like a grandiose plan, but it’s really the dream of every American man and woman since the Pilgrims formed their little colony in Massachusetts.  If we accomplish that, we’ll have achieved no more than our parents and grandparents did.

Come to think of it, that’s one hell of an ambitious plan.

Popularity: 7% [?]

Technorati Tags: ball game, block captains, liberty evangelism, tea party

Thanks, again, to Larry Kudlow for asking me to talk about tea party things on Friday, June 25.

The Kudlow Rehttp://www.cnbc.com/id/15838446/port airs weeknights at 6:00 p.m. CT on CNBC.

Popularity: 4% [?]

Technorati Tags: CNBC, Larry Kudlow, tea party

A Washington Post/ABC News poll shows a major shift in sentiment toward (against?) the tea party movement.

I would not challenge the accuracy of the results which show the tea party’s popularity waning among Southerners and people 18 to 29. In fact, the poll shows that a full 50 percent of Americans now have a negative view of the tea party.

Sure, there may have been some chicanery with the questions to skew the results. But only a true shift in sentiment would result in change this big. After a year of wall-to-wall coverage of “tea party,” I’d expect a downshift.

I think there are several issues here:

1.  Rand Paul’s performance since the primary has been a net negative.  I pointed out on Kudlow the day after Kentucky primary that his candidacy is not a referendum on the tea party movement. Nothing is. But he and some tea partyers insisted on linking the two, and his handling of controversy has been less than spectacular.

2.  In Nevada, Michigan, and elsewhere, leftists have created fake “tea party” parties that have damaged the brand by running Democrats pretending to be tea partyers. The idea is to split the center-right vote to allow the like of Harry Reid back into Congress.

3.  In-fighting among tea partyers has left a foul taste in the mouths of many. This development shouldn’t be a surprise. The tea party movement has no structure or hierarchy to keep order, and it’s filled with people who are new to this arena. We make mistakes, people.  Get over it.

4.  Some disenchanted Republicans who were early tea partyers have returned to the GOP. That doesn’t mean they won’t continue to fight the good fight. It means they’ll do so under a banner they’re more familiar with.

5.  Zealots and purists have splintered off and driven away more pragmatic reformers. We’ve seen this in numerous places across the country.  When the zealots lose, they tend to take their balls and go home. They also tend to turn off the people who just want their country back.

6.  After a year of hearing “tea party, tea party, tea party,” many people are probably just tired of hearing about it.  I am tired of hearing about it. I want to rack up some damn wins and get about fixing the country, and really don’t care what was call the thing that does it.

7.  We’re in The Dip

What makes Ensuring Liberty (and similar orgs) so interesting to me is that they allow the tea party passion to yield actual results. The tea party movement is indispensable for its passion and energy and new blood, but 10,000 angry people don’t win elections:  10,000 voters do.

So what do you do?  How do you take this passion, this glorious coming together that we’ve experienced since February 27, 2009, and turn it into a wild victory celebration on November 2?  Let’s start with this list:

1. Invest in an organization that is engineered to win important races AND to hold the new Congress accountable.  I helped launch Ensuring Liberty to do just that, and we need your support to get there.  Please join today.
2. Take personal responsibility to register everyone in your house to vote. In Missouri, it’s easy.  Just fill out this form and send it to your election board—directions on the back.
3. Join the St. Louis Tea Party’s Block Captain/Liberty Evangelism project. Give people the power of personal freedom by handing them a Constitution with your email address on it, saying, “Please take this as  gift. Please read it and decide for yourself whether Washington is living up to the promises in those documents.”
4. Use the buddy system to make sure everyone you recruit votes in the primary (on August 3 in Missouri) and on November 2.  That means you will commit to ensuring one other person gets to the polls, and someone commits to ensuring you get to the polls.  Take ownership of this job.  Let nothing stop you.
5. Put in for vacation on November 1, 2, and 3.  Do it right now. You will be needed to get out the vote.  Let nothing stop you. (You will still be partying on Wednesday at 10:00 a.m., so you might as well not even think about working that day.)
6. Vote early and get your friends and neighbors who agree with you to vote early.
7. Every night before you go to bed, write a positive journal entry describing the feeling, the sounds, the news on November 2 and 3.  Describe Ed Martin’s victory speech or Robin Carnahan’s concession.  What will Frank Rich Say?  Paul Krugman?  Maureen Dowd?  Keith Olbermann? Chris Matthews?  Would could be more fun that Matthews describing the “Tea bagger temper tantrum” that overturned Congress?   Write Rush Limbaugh’s opening monologue for November 3.  Who will get Dana Loesch’s cool points?

The name of the movement doesn’t matter. It never did.  Names are symbols.  The name came from the name of an event—a “tea party” held to demonstrate that we’d had enough. That phase is over.  Everyone knows we’ve had enough.  Now it’s time to act.

Popularity: 21% [?]

Technorati Tags: election, register to vote, tea party, tea party popularity, voters, washington post poll

A few weeks back, the Christian Science Monitor asked me to write an op-ed. The subject was, “If the Tea Party ran America, how would things change; and why do you think you’ll win?”

The call was my opportunity to break from the easy, unassailable position that things are bad and getting worse. It meant coming up with a solution or two.  And solutions already find disagreement somewhere.

For over a year I’ve said that the Tea Party movement, begun out of anger, must shift its energy over time from anger to solutions.  Now, I have no idea the exact shape of these slopes, but I’ve always pictured a graph something like this:

By November 2010, when our candidates accept the honor of serving in Congress or state capitols, we better have armed them with solutions to the problems developed over the past decades.

On May 23, the Washington Post carried an op-ed by Senator Bob Bennett. Bennett recently lost his bid to stand for re-election when Utah Tea Partyers targeted him for retirement.  In his op-ed, Senator Bennett correctly challenges Tea Partyers to move beyond negative slogans and to adopt positive reforms.

Their two strongest slogans are “Send a message to Washington” and “Take back America.” I know both very well because they were the main tools used to defeat me in Utah’s Republican convention two weeks ago. They also worked in Kentucky on Tuesday. They are more powerful than most pundits inside the Beltway realize.

More importantly, he points out that, by November or next year, Americans will be ready for sunny optimism again.

We can advance positive ideas, recognize today’s problems, and point to that brighter future all at the same time.  Honestly, that’s what leaders do every day.

No fool would believe that the incoming batch of legislators can solve all the problems generated over fifty years. But we must tackle a few.  I outlined some of the areas for consideration in the CS Monitor piece, but I’d propose just three reforms for the first term: Repeal the healthcare takeover, overhaul the tax code, and set an expiration date on one entitlement program.

Repeal Healthcare Takeover

The first step toward getting out of debt is to stop borrowing money. The easiest way for Washington to stop borrowing money is to stop creating new entitlement programs.

Now, Barack Obama will veto the repeal.  Do it anyway.  The left will claim we have no solution. Let them.  The American people have already decided this, and they came down on our side. The debate is over: ObamaCare lost everywhere except Washington, DC.

The replacement will be to unshackles states from crafting experiments to determine the best solution.  Other states will follow the successful models and shun the failures.  When done at the state level, experimentation works. When Washington experiments, the whole nation is in danger.

Overhaul the Tax Code

The income tax system in the United States is a sham designed to perpetuate itself by breeding succeeding generations of accountants, lawyers, and tax experts who will lobby to sustain an industry.

No more.

We need to begin this overhaul by implementing the system Ronald Reagan and Jack Kemp wanted in the 1970s: A flat tax on earnings above a certain threshold.

I don’t know the exact numbers, but I see the new tax form looking like this:

As I said, the exempt amount and the percentage are probably not perfect, but the formula works. The exempted amount would be indexed to inflation to that the government has no incentive to allow inflation to raise your taxes.

This is a formula everyone can understand, with the exception of Washington bureaucrats and politicians.

I know many in the Tea Party movement are fans of the Fair Tax, but I am not, and I’ll explain why: the Fair Tax is impossible to explain and easy to attack.

In Pennsylvania’s 12th Congressional District race to fill Jack Murtha’s term, the Tea Party candidate, Tim Burns, was portrayed as supporting the Fair Tax.

Most voters didn’t  “get” the Fair Tax idea until Tim’s opponent, Mark Critz, and the DCCC explained it this way: “Tim Burns wants to impose a 25 percent national sales tax on everything you buy.”

Burns lost, and it wasn’t close.

The Fair Tax might represent a much better solution, both economically and Constitutionally, than the Flat Tax.  But if the Fair Tax gets our best candidates defeated and cannot get through Congress, what good is it?  At present, the Fair Tax is simply too complicated to win broad national support.  It involves too many formulas and rebates and repealing the 16th Amendment.

When we get the votes in Congress to repeal the 16th Amendment, I’ll jump onboard the Fair Tax. But let’s do this one step at a time, okay?  Let’s make things better now, then make them best later.  Let’s not make things worse by demanding perfection on day one.

Under the Flat Tax, taxes will go up for some, down for others.  No one will be punished for achieving more.  The deduction of your first $30,000 is more generous than most combined deductions today.

Additionally, there is not marriage penalty because there are no filing statuses other than “Me.”  You worked or didn’t.  You earned or you didn’t.  I don’t care how many kids you have or whether your home is also your office.

Expire One Entitlement

I don’t care which one, but set a formula for eliminating one of the three big entitlements.  I would start with Social Security, which has not only jeopardized our economic future, it encourages otherwise good people to whine and beg for government handouts.

Social Security is a Ponzi scheme that works only if the next generation is much larger than the current one.  When Americans stopped having 4.5 kids per couple, the cookie began to crumble.

There’s a formula for ending Social Security, but it requires we all pay taxes to fund it until its dead. That’s because Congresses have spent all of the Social Security trust fund—and then some.  The SSA hold numerous notes that must be paid out of general revenue.

That’s okay.  If you borrow money, you have to pay it back sometime. And we’re the ones who borrowed this money by refusing to face this monster earlier.  Fine. Let’s get on with it.

First, anyone drawing Social Security or who’s within 15 years of eligibility will receive payments according to the rules in place today.  So I don’t want to hear from Big Old People that I’m stealing their entitlement.  I am not.

Second, those who have already begun paying into Social Security will have a choice: they can receive a tax-free,  lump sum payment equal to their lifetime contribution without interest, or they can leave the money in the SSA until age 65, then receive a lump sum payment including interest equal to the rate of inflation.  Either way, the FICA withholding—the individual’s and the employer’s—stops.

Third, those fortunate souls who are too young to have opened an SSA account never will.  They simply pocket the 16 percent that currently goes to fund a failing system.

States may want to create their own voluntary or even mandatory retirement scheme.  Fine.  That’s how the federalist system works.  I wouldn’t support a mandated state system, but there’s nothing in the Constitution that would prevent a state from adopting such.  The people of the state could always vote out the legislators who created it.

Solutions

My solutions may not solve all of our problems.  But they will advance four goals of the Tea Party movement:  smaller government, lower taxes, fiscal responsibility, and federalism.

By adopting this list of goals, candidates will move to the right of my chart above, providing solutions instead of just pointing out problems.  Yes, our enemies will throw mud at these ideas: there’s no idea that won’t find critics.

In the end, our mission from day one has been to make America’s future brighter than its brilliant past. We can do that only by moving toward the future we want, not away from the unknowns we’re afraid of.

Please take this poll:

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Popularity: 6% [?]

Technorati Tags: bob bennett, entitlements, fair tax, flat tax, goals, healthcare, obamacare, social security, tea party

John is a Vietnam veteran and retired business executive.  He loves America and hates to see what’s happened in Washington the past few years.  He believes in liberty and Constitutional limitations on government growth. 

He called the Tea Party just to vent and to see if it’s just him.

Recently, John had called Senator Kit Bond’s (R-MO) office in Washington.  He wanted to know whether stories that Bond had signed off a $659 million earmark for soy bean farmers were true. 

According to John, the Bond staffer who answered the phone was terse, rude, and argumentative.  She balked at being called a “lady,” though she couldn’t think of an acceptable alternative. She hung up on the constituent and veteran twice.  She threatened to call the police if he called back.

John’s offense?  He had the audacity to ask about the earmark and state his view that Bond and his staff are our employees. 

I was not able to speak to anyone at Bond’s office to confirm, but John’s story wasn’t the first like it.  Senator Bond, one of the biggest porkers in Congress, has a reputation for being rude to constituents . . . unless, of course, they come bearing campaign contributions.  Now that he’s retiring from the Senate, even donors are in trouble.

Bond’s local office was more polite to John, but they still argued with him, claiming John’s assessment of Bond’s political career was unfair. 

John contrasted for me his treatment with Senator Claire McCaskill’s (D-MO) office staff.  McCaskill’s people were not only polite, they were polite while arguing policy with John.  While John admits he can be short and direct, he felt that never went there with McCaskill’s polite, professional, and enthusiastic staff.

Now, I agree with Sen. Bond on most issues and I disagree with McCaskill on just about everything.  (Same for Tea Partier John.)  Where John and I have more in common with Claire than with Bond is on the point of customer service.  Claire understands how to treat constituents on the phone; Bond simply does not.

Want to know why the Tea Party is viewed more favorably than the Republican Party?  This story tells it all. 

Wake up, GOP.  You’re on the road to losing seats in 2010 rather than gaining them.

And don’t forget to check out my new ebook, Zen Conservatism!  The price goes up $3 on Monday, December 14.

Popularity: 9% [?]

Technorati Tags: Claire McCaskill, constituent services, Kit Bond, Republican Party, tea party

John is a Vietnam veteran and retired business executive.  He loves America and hates to see what’s happened in Washington the past few years.  He believes in liberty and Constitutional limitations on government growth. 

He called the Tea Party just to vent and to see if it’s just him.

Recently, John had called Senator Kit Bond’s (R-MO) office in Washington.  He wanted to know whether stories that Bond had signed off a $659 million earmark for soy bean farmers were true. 

According to John, the Bond staffer who answered the phone was terse, rude, and argumentative.  She balked at being called a “lady,” though she couldn’t think of an acceptable alternative. She hung up on the constituent and veteran twice.  She threatened to call the police if he called back.

John’s offense?  He had the audacity to ask about the earmark and state his view that Bond and his staff are our employees. 

I was not able to speak to anyone at Bond’s office to confirm, but John’s story wasn’t the first like it.  Senator Bond, one of the biggest porkers in Congress, has a reputation for being rude to constituents . . . unless, of course, they come bearing campaign contributions.  Now that he’s retiring from the Senate, even donors are in trouble.

Bond’s local office was more polite to John, but they still argued with him, claiming John’s assessment of Bond’s political career was unfair. 

John contrasted for me his treatment with Senator Claire McCaskill’s (D-MO) office staff.  McCaskill’s people were not only polite, they were polite while arguing policy with John.  While John admits he can be short and direct, he felt that never went there with McCaskill’s polite, professional, and enthusiastic staff.

Now, I agree with Sen. Bond on most issues and I disagree with McCaskill on just about everything.  (Same for Tea Partier John.)  Where John and I have more in common with Claire than with Bond is on the point of customer service.  Claire understands how to treat constituents on the phone; Bond simply does not.

Want to know why the Tea Party is viewed more favorably than the Republican Party?  This story tells it all. 

Wake up, GOP.  You’re on the road to losing seats in 2010 rather than gaining them.

Popularity: 8% [?]

Technorati Tags: Claire McCaskill, constituent services, Kit Bond, Republican Party, tea party