Tea Party Tallahassee Summit on Tuesday November 16th

[Patricia M. McBride]

Courtesy of the Peoples Tea Party. Thanks

What a Difference an Election--and a Network--Makes

41 Tea Parties from all across the state of FL were represented in Tallahassee on Tuesday, Nov
16. What started out as 6 delegates swelled to 100 delegates as word
spread throughout a network of tea parties during the last week leading
up to the summit.

As our Tallahassee Summit meeting kicked off in a private room in the Senate Building,
Henry Kelley from Ft Walton Beach Tea Party introduced about 1/4 of the
FL senators including incoming senate president Mike Heranopolis,
outgoing president Senator Gaetz, John Thrasher and others-some of the
most powerful in the senate. Before starting the busy day, the senators
not only extended warm welcomes, but acknowledged that the election
victories were due to tea party efforts. The senators requested that we
stay engaged as action from "we the people" would be needed to help get
enough votes to pass key legislation. They even asked us to keep them
accountable. Say what????

As we conducted mini seminars and shared ideas among tea party delegates, additional senators
and representatives stopped by throughout the day. Some legislative
issues of interest included:

The House has a new committee, "Federal Affairs" to look at unconstitutional federal actions.

SB 550 did get the approval Tuesday to halt implementation on Jan 1, 2011. There is support
for full repeal in the next session, but we the people need to keep
post cards, phone calls, and emails coming. GET BUSY and do this gang!

"Real ID" law requires "personal papers" such as birth certificate, passport, etc must be
provided to DMV when changes to driver's license are needed. All these
personal papers are scanned and kept in an online database that is
shared with other places. Can you say identity theft? How about
violation of 4th & 10th amendments? The government can't take your
papers without a warrant and the feds can't tell states how to issue
their licenses.

There is traction for an over ride of Gov Crist's veto of SB 1565

HJR-1 will be a rewrite of the FL Healthcare Freedom Act which had passed the legislature last
session, but was struck off our voting ballot by liberal FL supreme
court justices Perry and LaBarga. "We the people" will be needed again
to contact representatives and senators to get this back through the
legislature.

transparencyfl.com is a website where anyone can look at the FL budget.

Medicaid would soar from 3 to 5 billion cost to the state if Obamacare is not stopped.

TABOR will come up again. This is a "taxpayer bill of rights". We will need to research this.

Ft Walton Beach and Santa Rosa Tea Parties did an awesome job of organizing the event.
Senator Evers arranged the private room for us.

The Summit was a big success and the general consensus was that the tea party delegates would
be back to Tallahassee at regular intervals, tea parties will stay
engaged, and we will certainly hold our elected officials feet to the
fire.

Thanks goes out to Janet Smith for the summary.