Average American Speaks at Tea Party

This is the speech I gave for the Berlin, New Hampshire Tax Day Tea Party on April 15th, 2009. For a small town, we didn't do to badly, we had 75 to 80 people in attendence and a lot of honking horns from passing vehicles. We got a picture, but no write-up in the local paper. This was sort of a last minute affair and I was just hoping for at least 2 to 3 dozen people, so I was happy. My neighbor was supposed to have pictures for me, but I couldn't wait any longer to post this. Maybe I'll add them later if I ever get them. Below, at the very bottom, is the front page picture from the local paper. I know the paper doesn't show 75 people, but there were a lot out of the camera's view. I personally handcounted 75 and a few had to leave early. Click on it for a full page view with the caption underneath.

Good afternoon and welcome to the Berlin New Hampshire tea party. Many of you are probably wondering, "what am I doing here?" "Can we actually make a difference by doing this?""Why a Tea Party?" Let me try to answer these questions, starting with the last one first.

Why a tea party?

Remember back in school learning about the Boston Tea Party? Our founding fathers had major problems with England back in the 1760’s and 1770’s. Our mother country was insisting on taxing us, but did not give us any representation back in England. To make a long story short, in 1773, there were 7 British ships loaded with tea waiting to be unloaded. Charlestown, Philadelphia, and New York each refused to accept the shipments and turned their ships around to head back to England, unloaded. Four ships scheduled to leave their cargo in Boston were detained for over 2 weeks. On Dec 16th, 1773, approximately 7,000 patriots held a meeting to air their grievences. Things got heated and 130 to 180 men left that meeting and proceeded to the harbor where they ceremoniously dumped 342 chests of tea into the harbor. It took a while longer for the actual armed revolution to arrive, but this one incident was the Birth, or maybe conception would be more accurate, of the United States of America as we know it.

Is there a correlation between then and now? Yes, I believe there is. In 1773, there was definitely taxation without representation, but so is there today. The mountains of debt being created today will be left for many generations to pay. Many, if not most, of the people who will be stuck paying this debt ARE NOT EVEN BORN YET!! I stand here representing my great grandchildren and proclaim on their behalf, "NO TAXATION WITHOUT REPRESENTATION!!"

Can we actually make a difference?

Well, I think we can or I would not be wasting my time here. We will see shortly how much news attention we get from this. Bear in mind that there are well over 1000 of these parties going on tonight plus many have already been held. I feel absolutely positive that if we have decent turnouts, especially in the bigger cities, some politicians will listen. They don't ALL have to listen, only enough to make a difference. As the temporary resident of the White House has said many times, "yes we can!" I very much appreciate all of you for being here and I would like to ask you to do a couple of more very important things. Mail a tea bag, or an empty one, or a picture of one to the President and our representatives and our senators. Don’t be afraid to add a short note and if you have youngsters, maybe you could have THEM draw the picture of a tea bag. Let the unrepresented have their say. The other thing I ask of you is to start making pests of yourselves. Call, write, or e-mail these people on every single issue that comes up. Get 10, or even more, of your friends to do the same! Make them aware of how many of us are finally watching them. Let them know we are awake, we will be staying awake, and we are REALLY PISSED-OFF!

What am I doing here?

I expect that many are here for the same reason I am. I am sick and tired of our representatives sticking their hands deep down in my pockets and then spending my hard-earned money like drunken sailors. I think it was atrocious for them to spend $700 BILLION to bailout the banks and auto manufacturers. I deplore them passing a $787 BILLION stimulus package full of bullshit give-a-ways and pork-barrel projects, without even taking the time to read the package they were signing their names to! I can’t believe how badly they screwed up those bailouts and then pointing fingers at everyone and everything but themselves for it. Several banks are actually trying to give back their bailout money and our treasury is refusing to accept it or dragging their feet on accepting it. What is up with that? Since when did the POTUS get the right to manage private companies? When did he get the right to hire or fire employees for these companies? And now they are about to pass a $3.7 TRILLION, yes you heard that right, TRILLION dollar budget. That is almost 50% higher than any budget in history. That will not be our money, not our kids money, not even our grandkids money. That money will have to be paid back by great-great grandkids. Do we want to put that debt on our UNBORN offspring? I do NOT!

Now here's a suggestion on where they might want to start saving some cash. I’m sick and tired of those same politicians ignoring the 67% of Americans who are DEMANDING that they do something about our porous borders. They refer to “12 million” illegals being here. It used to be “12 to 20 million” and that was years ago. My bet is that the number is now closer to 30 million, or about 10% of the country. That is 10% mostly not paying taxes, BUT using at least 10% of our services. Send every illegal alien back home where they belong and automatically cut at least 10% right off the top of government expenses, and therefore taxes needed, and cut our unemployment in half at the same time. Want to stimulate the economy, get the people out of here that don’t belong here.