National Politics

We are looking to make converts not punish heretics 

Matt O'Brien

It would be hard to miss the growing list of things that need to be controlled by the government so we simple folk don’t hurt ourselves or destroy the planet.  In fact, there is a long list of demands to improve America.   What all these schemes have in common is they are about using our government to make all Americans live the way some Americans, and an annoying Swedish girl, think they should.  

The Wokescolds have been very vocal and very busy, but one can detect that they are turning people off with their overheated theatrics.  Often, they wreck the lives of people on the edges of scandal.  We hear stories of the powerful and the famous who cannot live up to the standards they would mercilessly inflict on the rest of us.

This is proof that the truth will come out.  

I propose that what we must do is to offer a home to people in transition from loony leftist to honest citizen and even to respected patriot.  Just as in the antebellum south the Under Ground Railroad helped former slaves on the road to freedom, we must help our friends and neighbors. 

In some cases, it may happen one issue at a time.  Listen for a person questioning the wisdom of a sacred cow policy like the $15 Minimum wage.  That is the sign that  they are struggling to match up the promised happy outcome with the sad reality the have come to know.  That is the moment when an informed and compassionate patriot can guide that person to freedom and away from group think that has enslaved them.  It will take patience and understanding to help people that have been shackled. We cannot expect that this will be easy from us or for them, but it will be worth it.    

It is claimed that Harriet Tubman said: “I freed a thousand slaves I could have freed a thousand more if only they knew they were slaves.” While historians can argue if she said those exact words let us draw inspiration from her example and make ourselves conductors on this new under ground railroad which takes people away from tyranny. 

Matthew O’Brien
President Worcester Tea Party 

Ben is still right: “Join or Die!”

Ben is still right: “Join or Die!”

Matt O'Brien

Dear Respected Patriot,

Let me start by saying to all the racist scum at the New York Times,

F#(% You!

To mark the of emergence of the Tea Party Movement, the New York Times published an article attempting to blame the acrimony which is all too common in civic life today as having started with the Tea Party Movement.  As if that was not enough of a stab in the back of the true patriots in America, the New York Times goes on to denigrate and condemn our movement and finally pronounce it dead and buried. 

But even that was not enough for the “Old Gray Lady.”  On Twitter many Antifa Activists squealed that the article forgot to call the Tea Party Movement “Racist.” Those intrepid Democrat Stenographers of the New York Times dutifully (…slavishly…) responded with a “correction:” 

Our intent with the story was to look at the spending and deficit policy failures of the Tea Party 10 years after its rise, especially those failures under a Republican president and Republican Senate. The federal budget deficit is growing faster than expected because of President Trump’s spending and tax cut policies; this month the CBO projected that the deficit will widen to $1 trillion for the 2020 fiscal year.

After publishing, we heard from readers who made the point that in a story about the Tea Party and history, race and racism within the Tea Party movement needed to be addressed. While our story was chiefly about deficits and spending, we decided to add context about the Tea Party attacks on President Obama and the racist displays at some Tea Party rallies. We updated the story and sent out a tweet about that update.

For ten years the Tea Party has been struggling to clean up the mess made by the socialist and racist policies that the keyboard commissars of the New York Times have advocated.  For all that time editors throughout the main stream media, including the New York Times, contrived stories to smear the Tea Party, because we were doing the right thing by standing up against the policies that brought poverty and death across the world and throughout history. 

Nevertheless we have allowed the Tea Party brand to be spoiled by unfounded ad hominem attacks.  Some of us have moved on to other good government organizations. Some of us have given up. All of us, even myself at times, have had our own crisis of faith.  

But then I see video from Hong Kong, & Venezuela, and I see how bad it can get if we do nothing.   

The grim lessons of where Utopian promises lead to are left unlearned.  In fact newspapers, television, schools, and colleges, are working to hide those lessons.  We have many in our country that actively advocate for socialism. Too many of our fellow citizens don’t understand how close we are to the precipice, and how far we have to fall.  

We will continue, not without hope, but knowing the unacceptability of the alternative.  Not because we have any superior skills or genius plans but because we can’t just wait for Superman to show up and save us.  We will continue because we owe it to our parents and our children, and ourselves.

After years of fighting, we scored a major victory over the Establishment with the election of Donald Trump and it has driven them insane.  Those who wish to rule over you from birth to death are on the ropes.  The knockout cannot happen without sustained resistance. 

I ask for all of you to rededicate yourself to this movement, prove the anti-American tools of the New York Times wrong, and to do what you can to save our Republic.  Now is the time for All good citizens to join the Worcester Tea Party. 

Join or Die! 

Matthew O’Brien
President Worcester Tea Party 

An indebted nation is a defeated nation.

John

At some point over the last generation, the enemies of America realized they cannot defeat a capitalist country like the United States on the battlefield.  So clearly, they went back to the drawing board to start over, and at some point drew the scheme to destroy America by using our naivete and government systems could rot us from within.

On the federal level, this rot is evident.  22 trillion dollars of debt and climbing.  Deficits are surging despite record economic growth in the US.  We are moving rapidly towards paying nothing of our debt down and only paying on the interest, which is the last gasp of fresh air before we become Venezuela; some are calling it a death spiral.

Take it from the leadership of the Worcester Tea Party, changing the country on a Federal level is like pushing on a mountain.  We’ve tried it, countless hours of working late into the night for years.  These efforts, albeit not wholly effective, helped move the needle.  But the reality is that nothing is going to change until we change locally.  Great societies can rot from within, but their healing can begin from within as well.  When the cancer has spread as it has today, the most effective approach is to heal the smallest infection first and move out from there.

Consider this at the barbecues and holiday event you attend.  If you can change one mind that cared enough to speak to you about the real issues affecting Massachusetts, you can create another advocate for a capitalist morality and instantly double your efforts.  He or she will then move forward and double their efforts, quickly and exponentially increasing your influence.

Consider this at the next town meeting or school committee meeting.  Speak up about the debt locally, and the tax burden put upon the shoulders of the productive in society.

Consider this when you hear more about “equitable” housing, seeing “inclusion” used to push more subsidized housing in your neighborhood to bring more burden onto the backs of the Atlases of society.

All of these issues may appear to be trivial in light of the work and effort we must put in just to make ends meet today.  But rest assured, they are all carefully crafted to rot America from within.  The battle lines are drawn and you would be surprise how close they come to your front door. 

John Niewicki
Dean of Information Technology
Worcester Tea Party

Magnificent promises, Lackluster results.

Matt O'Brien

April 15 marks the 9th anniversary of the first Tax Day Tea Party rallies.  It was a time of incredible passion for the Constitution, limited government, and fiscal responsibility.  Thousands, perhaps millions, of people who had never done anything more political than vote or write a letter-to-the-editor, joined in rallies, marches, and campaigns.  They called talk shows, collected signatures, gave money, and even ran for office.  What happened to that passion?  Where are the thousands who fought so hard against bloated government?

Did the Tea Party live up to its promise or
did it wither in the hypocrisy of political partisanship?

Last week, a Republican House, a Republican Senate, and a Republican President passed and signed a $1.3 trillion omnibus spending bill that funds the government through September.  It includes a treasure trove of liberal spending, along with dramatically increased defense spending.

The Atlantic Magazine said of the bill:

“President Obama finally got a Republican-controlled Congress to fund his domestic budget.  All it took was Donald Trump in the White House to get it done.”

According to The Atlantic, “Congress eliminated none of the 18 independent agencies Trump wanted to scrap, including the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the National Endowment for the Humanities. And several of the programs he wanted to zero out won huge increases instead. Take the TIGER grants, an infrastructure program created by Obama’s 2009 economic stimulus package. Congress had allocated $500 million to it each of the last several years, despite annual Obama requests to boost it to $1.25 billion. Trump’s budget called for axing it entirely, but lawmakers went even higher than Obama, giving $1.5 billion to TIGER. Or the Community Development Block Grant, a federal housing program that had been receiving $3 billion from Congress annually. Obama actually proposed cutting its funding by $200 million in 2016, while Trump called for chopping it altogether. In the end, it received $3.3 billion—a 10 percent boost.”

This legislation is an insult to the thousands of Americans who have fought for fiscal responsibility over the past nine years.  But, where are the protests?  I see vigorous discussions on Facebook.  Has this replaced the real activism of the patriots who rallied and marched in 2009 and 2010?  The lack of real response leaves the Tea Party movement subject to accurate labels of hypocrisy.

The Republican majority in Congress, President Trump, and all who support them should be ashamed of this spending bill.  “Senator Ben Sasse of Nebraska accused his party of hypocrisy. “Every Republican would vote against this disgusting pork bill if a Democrat were president,” he said in a statement.” said The Atlantic.  President Trump and the Republicans promised balanced budgets.  Instead they’ve continued to saddle our children and grand children with never ending debt.

Liberals and Progressives make themselves easy targets because of their expected and blatant hypocrisy.  Millions of people marched around the country, in Washington, DC, and in Lincoln Square to protest bank bailouts and President Obama’s stimulus bill (which was a puny $831 billion over 10 years compared to this $1.4 trillion over 6 months).  When so-called fiscal conservatives fail to live up to their promises, we must hold them responsible.  An (R) after their names should provide no protection from their lies.

In Liberty,
Ken Mandile
Senior Fellow
Worcester Tea Party

Taxes rob people of so much more than money.

Matt O'Brien

Tax is Theft!!

. . . Is a common refrain that we could hear at any Tea Party meeting.  There is the obvious way in which taking taxes from someone is similar to theft such as the Sheriff of Nottingham taking the crops from the people of Sherwood Forest.  But there is a deeper and more insidious way that taxation is theft.  It is not as direct as the sheriff with the club demanding your produce, but it is just as damaging to our society.

People often will accept paying high taxes because they believe the taxes go to do “good.”  Those same people believe they have done enough “good” because they have paid those high taxes.

When Scrooge was asked to donate to the poor he said he had already done enough because his taxes paid for orphanages and poor houses.  The ghost of Scrooge’s partner howls a warning: “Mankind was my business.  The common welfare was my business; charity, mercy, forbearance, and benevolence were, all, my business.”

Since Dickens’ time there are more government programs to help people, but we can see they have only a few successes and many failures.  Executives of the VA are given hundreds of thousands of dollars of taxpayer money in bonuses for good performance, while our brave veterans wait, and wither, and die for lack of care.  In our Commonwealth, Auditor Bump has published lists of how poorly the DCF has served the families of at risk children.  But when confronted by the hard facts, politicians and bureaucrats insist that the problem is that you don’t pay enough in taxes.

“The definition of insanity is doing the same thing,

over and over again, and expecting a different result.”

Citizens of the Eurozone handed over more of their income to their governments and they have given up their responsibility for taking care of their neighbors.  They have also suspended their belief in their own judgment and ability to do so.  Conversely, the citizens of the United States not only give more to charity than those European governments, we do so voluntarily; unlike Europe that takes so much more of their citizen’s wealth and give so little in return.

Wealth and prosperity begets charity,

not coercion and politicization . . . i.e. taxes.

One of the reasons why Americans give more money to charities than people in Europe is because in the United States we feel a personal responsibility to help our neighbors and we also have a healthy skepticism of the positive effects of big government.

Our world is rich with people who are pursuing their passion to serve their fellow man, but time after time governments get in the way.  Good men and women are crafting new ways to help us all advance into a prosperous and peaceful future.  Mindless bureaucrats will arrest good Samaritans for giving sandwiches to the homeless without a license.  Big Government requires individuals to make themselves smaller.  When we shrink governments, we return power to individuals.  Only with truly limited government can we have truly unlimited individuals empowered to do good.

​In Liberty,
Matt O’Brien
President
Worcester Tea Party

Liberty endangered by the abuse of power

Matt O'Brien
“Liberty may be endangered by the abuse of liberty,
but also by the abuse of power.”

— James Madison 

As I write a few days before you are reading this, I’m having trouble keeping up with the number of politicians, Hollywood celebrities, and reputable journalists that are being brought down for their repulsive behavior.  The sexual harassment claims against men who hold power, whether in politics or in the workplace or in the newsroom, seems to have exploded since  Harvey Weinstein was exposed as the monster that he is.  While none of this is really shocking, what is surprising is the speed at which they are falling.  It is a stunning toppling of powerful men who have abused their positions for many years.

There are a few lessons that we can learn from this wide-encompassing scandal.

1)  There is no limit to the number of hypocrites in the halls of Congress and in Hollywood and in the newsroom.

2)  There are many women who have suffered from abuse, harassment, or even rape, who were frightened into silence by a society that too often made excuses for the powerful. Too many excused this behavior by thinking that “boys will be boys”.  This is a different time though and we are better for it.  Never again should the Bill Clintons and Ted Kennedys of this world be given a pass.

3)  American love sex scandals, even when they involve victims who have been severely harmed.

4)  We love to defend those on our side when the scandals involve “their guy”.  Whether to believe the accuser or the accused too often depends on their politics.

5)  The court of public opinion can often deliver justice that is swift and effective and just when the courts of justice fail us.

These men who are being brought down have been proven to be weak, immoral characters.  So why did so many idolize them before these scandals?   Why are people so willing to allow these kinds of people to lead them or have influence over them?   If anything, we should learn that just because someone is powerful or wealthy or famous, they are no better than the average citizen.  In fact, I would posit that they likely gained their positions because of the faults, not despite them.    They are addicted to power and they used this power for sexual conquests and violence.  When these men have been flushed out, America will be a better country, intolerant of those who abuse the vulnerable.

We should always question the ethics of those who seek power.  A more effective way to protect the vulnerable than this is to seek ways to limit the power and authority of those who lust for it.  A flawed person with no power is of no consequence to us.

I know that many people are reveling in the schadenfreude that comes from seeing the powerful fall.  In the midst of this glee, let’s not forget their victims, women who have suffered alone, often for many years.  They are victims of evil men who abused power.   Let us all be ever vigilant and ready to knock those who abuse power and position from their pedestals.

​In Liberty,
Ken Mandile
Senior Fellow
Worcester Tea Party

“Facts are stubborn things”

Matt O'Brien

“Facts are stubborn things;
and whatever may be our wishes,
our inclinations, or
the dictates of our passions,
they cannot alter the
state of facts and evidence”

— John Adams 1770 Trial for the British soldiers
involved in the Boston Massacre.

The election of Donald Trump as president has had a terrifying effect on many of our fellow Americans.  One has to look no further than the plans that are being made to have a Protest Scream on Boston Common on the anniversary of Trump’s election and this summer 40,000 of our fellow citizens marched in a “Stand Up to Nazis” event, of course no Nazis were there.

This is the state of politics in our Republic in 2017.  The politics of self-destruction and negative campaigns that have gone on for decades, seeming only to get more vicious and more personal as well as less issue-oriented and less principled every day.  This has turned off a solid majority of Americans from being involved in politics and their government.  Those that are involved are blinded by partisan zeal.  They seem more interested in scoring political points than in effectively crafting policy that serves our Republic.

Such facts could make one cynical about the future of our Republic.  Happily there are other facts that can’t be ignored, hidden or forgotten.

America is built on big dreams, small dreams, and impossible dreams.  Those dreams became facts.  America is the place that people from all over the world come to dream big.  Without dreams not only America, but most of modern society would be impossible.  Without dreams there’d be no airplanes, no satellites, no cell phones, no computers, no movies, no music; what a blighted world this would be if we allowed our dreams to be overcome by our cynicism.

The WTP is made of equal parts dream and cynicism.  We believe that our current political leaders have lost faith with the Dream that America is founded on.  And we still believe in that Dream.  All that we do together is to turn that Dream in to a fact.  The work of the WTP is by necessity profoundly hopeful.

That is not to say that our work is easy.

I am confident that working together we will face all the challenges and overcome every obstacle.  But this cannot happen without you.  The WTP needs you to volunteer your time.  The WTP depends on your donations to support our effort.  Follow the PayPal link and give what you can.

Thank you for all you do in the cause of Liberty.

​In Liberty,
Matt O’Brien
President
Worcester Tea Party

No right to absolute arbitrary power!

Matt O'Brien

In the fall of 1772, Massachusetts House of Representatives member Samuel Adams began to stir up some trouble in Boston.  The legislature had traditionally paid the salaries of the Governor and of judges, but the British decided that they would pay these officials directly.  This removed an important check on power, diminishing the power of the colony’s elected representatives.  Adams had had enough of dirty British political tricks.  It was time for action.

In November, he formed the Committees of Correspondence, effectively forming a shadow government that was not accountable to the crown.  Adams’ document forming the Committees of Correspondence consisted of three parts:

“First, a State of the Rights of the Colonists and of this Province in particular–

Secondly, A List of the Infringements, and Violations of those Rights.–

Thirdly, A Letter of Correspondence with the other Towns.-“

In many ways, it was a precursor to the Declaration of Independence that would follow less than four years later.   Samuel Adams’ declaration of rights goes further than our other founding documents.  He felt that no citizen could voluntarily cede their rights.  These were gifts from God.:

“If men through fear, fraud or mistake, should in terms renounce and give up any essential natural right, the eternal law of reason and the great end of society, would absolutely vacate such renunciation; the right to freedom being the gift of God Almighty, it is not in the power of Man to alienate this gift, and voluntarily become a slave.”

Can we look at today’s federal government and believe anything less than that we have alienated this gift?  While we fight over football players and statues and fake news, others fight to cede their gifts (and ours) to a bloated power in Washington.

Eight years ago this month, tens of thousands of Tea Partiers marched on Washington in the 912 March, demanding an end to the bloat.  Looking back, it seems that much of our effort was futile.  We can look at Washington today and we see little effective effort in Congress to deflate the bubble of bureaucracy.  Yet, many of us still fight on.  The fight is a lot more lonely today, but no less important.  Are we going to cede the gift of liberty through inaction and apathy?   We may not gather again in enormous crowds, but we can fight on alone, in our neighborhoods, and in our towns.  This was where Sam Adams brought the battle.  And, it is there that he helped spark the brush fires of liberty that we celebrate today.

 

​In Liberty,
Ken Mandile
Senior Fellow
Worcester Tea Party

Be Civilized Grudges are for Neanderthals

Matt O'Brien

It is with great hesitancy that I wade into the quagmire of this month’s events in Charlottesville and Boston.  Uncontrolled and irrational emotions on both sides seem to have wiped out any chance of civilized conversation about Charlottesville, President Trump, Antifa, White Supremacy, Confederate statues, and other issues that have gripped the news and social media.

 

Read more →

Land of Freedom of Speech?

Lee

You’ve probably heard this quote or have seen it floating around the internet:

“America will never be destroyed from the outside. If we falter and lose our freedoms, it will be because we destroyed ourselves.”

Supposedly Lincoln said it, then it was Reagan who said it. Consensus says it is a gross distortion of one of Lincoln’s speeches, but it makes no difference. The words ring true no matter who said them.

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