Bay County Republican Roundtable 12 May 2009

Next BAY COUNTY
Republican Roundtable
will be 12 May 2009
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Please make May 12 meeting dinner reservations
The next meeting of the Roundtable will take place on Tuesday, May 12, at the St. Andrew Bay Yacht Club in Panama City. A buffet dinner begins at 6:00 p.m., and dinner reservations are necessary so that the Yacht Club can plan for adequate food and staff. Please make your dinner reservations with 1st Vice President Vicki Doolittle at

319-0105 or gerald.vicki@gmail.com

The program for the May meeting is a free-for-all discussion, beginning with a look at the recent advisory released by the Department of Homeland Security regarding right-wing extremism. (As if we needed a conversation starter.)

April meeting examines nationalized health care
Roundtable members and guests were the lucky beneficiaries at the April 14 meeting of Dr. Michael Reed’s lifetime of experience, research and analysis in the field of medicine. Dr. Reed focused his presentation on the looming prospect of socialized medicine in the U.S., and his comments drew numerous questions from the audience.
We thank Dr. Reed for his efforts and hope he will join us again.

DVDs, CDs needed for soldiers
2nd Vice President Richard Plantec, who chairs the Roundtable’s Projects Committee, reports that more than enough books for our overseas soldiers have been collected, but DVDs and CDs are still needed. For more information, contact Richard at 890-1766 or rgplant1@aol.com.

Planning for next Tea Party underway
Tired Old Man Glen Leirer is working hard on the next Tea Party, which will take place in Tallahassee on Saturday, May 16. A caravan of Tea Partiers from Bay County will attend. Also, Glen is making arrangements for Bay County’s Tea Partiers to take part in the national Tea Party effort on July 4. For more information, contact Glen at 230-9118 or 276-2168 or geleirer32@comcast.net.

Relay for Life plans change a bit
Sue Bynum, organizer of the Republican entry in Panama City Beach’s Relay for Life on May 1 and 2, has asked that walkers report to the Property Appraiser’s station at the Relay. You may wear your Republican shirts in the walk. For more information, contact Sue at 271-4092 or mikespeaks@knology.net.

Roundtable t-shirts available soon!
Thanks to the tenacious efforts of Treasurer Melissa Thompson and Glen Leirer, the Roundtable soon will have t-shirts available to members at the cost of $10 per shirt. The shirts will feature a large version of the club’s logo on the back and a smaller version on the front.

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Familiarize yourselves with the chains of bondage and you are preparing your own limbs to wear them. Accustomed to trample on the rights of those around you, you have lost the genius of your own independence and become the fit subjects of the first cunning tyrant who rises.
~A. Lincoln, Edwardsville, Illinois, Sept. 11. 1858

Tea Party letter to the editor

By Teresa Eaton

Kelly Miller, in an April 15 letter to the editor (“Tax protests were fake outrage being aimed at invisible issues”), characterized the Tax Day Tea Parties’ organizers as believers in an “extremist ideology.” I was an organizer of the local Tax Day Tea Party, and the beliefs that drove me to help organize this event are freedom, less government and lower taxes. If that’s an extremist ideology, then I proudly embrace it, since this also was the extremist ideology of America’s founders.

Miller mistakenly asserts that the organizers of the local Tax Day Tea Party followed the lead of Fox News. In fact, we, like thousands of our fellow citizens across America, followed the lead of our consciences. Fox News simply jumped on the idea months after it had taken root. Miller further asserts that the purpose of the Tax Day Tea Parties was “to stir up populist rage with no direction” and to “direct that anger at Obama.” Untrue.

The local Tea Party organizers met in late February to discuss what was happening in Washington, D.C. Anger was not the overriding emotion of the organizers. Rather, we were deeply worried, and still are, that our children’s future has been mortgaged in the trillions of dollars spent on pork disguised as crisis relief. Miller may believe that the coming decades of onerous taxation are “a lie,” but the local Tea Party organizers knew the lessons of history.

Miller opines about supposed conservative “heroes” like Bush and Cheney, asserting that Tea Parties are “really a move to fire up conservatives AGAINST the current administration.” First of all, conservatives don’t worship politicians; we cherish freedom. Second, if conservatives take to the streets, it’s because their freedoms have been threatened. And third, if President Obama is the leader of a government bent on burdensome regulation and taxation, conservatives will not shy away from holding him accountable for the subsequent erosion of freedom.

Miller objects to “a news network like Fox leading a protest and lying to its constituency.” Elected officials, not news networks, have constituencies, and those elected officials have been lying to people a whole lot longer than news networks have. Conservatives cast a wary eye at all “news” media and simply turn off their TVs if they think someone is lying to them. Unfortunately, lying elected officials who tax and spend their constituents into bankruptcy are not so simply turned off.

However, it is touching that Miller is worried about Fox News lying to unwitting conservatives. Maybe she should write to President Obama about that, and maybe he’ll yank Fox News off the air. Then we could all go back to the good old days of national unity when CBS’ Walter Cronkite assured us every evening, “And that’s the way it is.”

Tax Day Tea Party in Panama City April 15th

Tax Day Tea Party organizers Glen and Alice Leirer were the first on the scene to set up Command Central out of the back of their truck directly across the street from the Sherman Avenue post office. They had a sign-in table, iced tea and a truck bed full of signs and American flags, and by the start of the Tea Party at 3:00 p.m., about 200 people had already signed in and assembled along Sherman Avenue.
The media arrived at the beginning of the Tea Party, and by the time they left, around 4:00, a hundred more people had already poured out of their cars to join the Tea Party. This is why the media under-reported the Tea Party attendance. From the very beginning, something dynamic clearly was happening, but the media chose not to stay for the entire event, or even a third of it, and they chose not to return to the scene later in the afternoon to see if and how things had changed.
In fact, things HAD changed, and dramatically so. By 4:00, organizer Glen realized that the rapid growth of the crowd was soon going to overwhelm the post office block of Sherman Avenue. Thus he took to a megaphone to ask the Tea Partiers to spread themselves out over three blocks on Sherman Avenue and to start another line of sign-waving on 15^th Street. And spread out they did! At the height of the Tea Party, people were on both sides of 15^th Street for several blocks.
Around 5:00 p.m., the Sheriff’s Deputy assigned to keep order at the Tea Party reported to Glen that attendance had reached, by his experienced count, some 1,400 people. By that time all the sign-in forms were full, and Glen and Alice were having people sign in on the backs of the forms. Plus, the iced tea had run out, and they had had to call Melissa Hagan to bring in a fresh batch, which she gladly did. Long story short: No one had to tell Glen that the Tea Party crowd had mushroomed!
For almost four hours, the Tea Partiers politely but emphatically made their case for freedom, less government and lower taxes. Some arrived in American Revolutionary garb. Others handed out tea bags, and a few even WORE tea bags. Hundreds held American flags and homemade signs, waved and smiled to motorists, chatted enthusiastically among themselves and made connections that no doubt will produce far-reaching waves beyond Tax Day.
A few of us joined Glen and Alice for dinner afterwards at Sonny’s (whose owner, Wayne Lindsay, has been a stalwart supporter of and good friend to Bay County’s conservatives). After all of us had ordered and finally caught our breath, we just looked at each other and said, practically in unison, “I can’t believe what just happened. Was that awesome or what?!!!” What a gratifying experience it is to see the love of freedom so enthusiastically demonstrated by so many.
Tea Party volunteer Melissa Thompson is doggedly working her way through the sign-in sheets to create an email blast list for announcements about future Tea Parties in Bay County, Tallahassee and Washington, D.C. It’ll take a little time for her to do that, and for the new names to be incorporated into our email blaster’s system, so I hope our Tea Partiers can keep their fires burning in the meantime.
This was truly a grassroots phenomenon. Fourteen hundred citizens, who have been sitting in front of their TVs fuming for the last three months, made a decision on April 15 to exercise their rights to assemble and to speak freely of their disappointment, dissatisfaction, and disgust with their government. This is still a free land where its citizens can peaceably assemble to criticize their government without fear of government retaliation.
Tea Partiers, thank you for your courage, your help, your encouragement, your support. Keep spreading the Tea Party message, and Glen and his team will keep working on the next Tea Party. Hope to see all of you, and many, many more, at the next one!