Jupiter Chapter Addresses IRS Issues

Last evening at Abacoa, the June meeting of the Jupiter Chapter addressed the national scandal surrounding the IRS and how it relates to the local tea party.

Kicked off by chapter leader Laura Hanley, the microphone was passed to President Mike Riordan who started with an overview of the IRS harassment and intimidation suffered by conservative groups since 2010. As members of the Tea Party Patriots, we are supporting their legal activity and the board is meeting with leader Jenny Beth Martin later this week.

Mostly targeted have been 501(c)(4) “social welfare” applications, a category that allows some political activity, as long as it is not the primary purpose of the group (as opposed to 501(c)(3) that does not). At the present time, PBCTP does not hold either exemption, but a decision has been made to apply for both (3) and (4) designations. As Mike pointed out, with all the Congressional and public scrutiny of the IRS, now is probably the best opportunity for a speedy decision.

A primer on how best to communicate with public officials then followed, along with some talking points on the issue, including:

• Targeting of ANY group based on political beliefs is unacceptable
• What can happen to one American can happen to ANY American
• The revenue collecting arm of the government cannot be used to target, intimidate or destroy
• We demand a full investigation into the IRS at all levels

Following some Q&A, we then heard from Ed Wolff on Oversight updates,  Fred Scheibl of the Taxpayer Action Board (TAB) about the upcoming county budget hearing next Tuesday where county staff plans to propose a tax increase, Lynne Sherrer about current activities surrounding the Common Core fight, and Jack McLain of the Constitution Party of Florida with his book “Which Way America?”

Finally, Congressional candidates in CD18 Ellen Andel and Alan Schlesinger introduced themselves to the group.

June Jupiter Meeting

The last few weeks have certainly been very interesting. What many of us have long suspected as reality is starting to be proven true. Each day more details emerge regarding the IRS blatant misuse of their powers in targeting Tea Parties and other conservative groups.

Originally we had planned to do training on media relations; however, in light of these developments, we believe that it is necessary to address the IRS issue at our June meetings.

Our meetings will follow our new format of having a presentation, followed by our messaging and a training on what we all need to do with the information.

We will be discussing the most up-to-date information on the IRS abuses, our current filing status and the actions we will all need to take.

Let me make this very clear: This is a very, very serious situation that impacts all Americans of all faiths and political persuasions. We are talking about the most powerful arm of the United States government targeting specific Americans and organizations for increased scrutiny and intimidation.

This must not stand and we must be the ones to stop it.

 

Monday, June 3, 2013 5:30pm

Soup, Sandwiches and Pastries ($13)

6:30 Program Abacoa Golf Club 105 Barbados Drive, Jupiter, Florida 33458

Please join us!  Doors open at 5:00pm, with a cash bar.  Dinner begins promptly at 5:30pm, and our meeting begins at 6:30pm.   You can attend our meeting at 6:30pm at no cost, but we encourage you to come for the dinner.  This will be a great evening of like-minded fellowship, and a true sense of deep patriotism permeates the experience– please RSVP on the button below!

April 14th United Stand for America Event!

 

On April 14, 2013 the Palm Beach County Tea Party, in conjunction with The Martin County 912-Tea Party, Florida Americans for Prosperity and South Florida 912, presents The United Stand for America Event!

This year, on the day before taxes are due, Americans from all over South Florida will join us in celebrating and honoring the United States and all of the values and beliefs that have made it the greatest nation on Earth for over two centuries.

Speakers will include Doctor Larry Kawa, Attorney Jeff Shapiro, Radio Personality Joyce Kaufman and our keynote speaker Kevin Jackson (author of The Black Sphere).

The event will take place from 1:00pm – 5:00pm at the Wellington Amphitheater on April 14^th, 2013. The day’s program will start promptly at 1:30pm. This is an open and free event. Bring your family and friends. Onsite festival foods will be available for purchase.

Wellington Amphitheater
12100 Forest Hill Blvd.
Wellington, Fl

We can’t wait to see you there!

Jupiter Meeting April 1, 2013

Join us on Monday, April 1st for our Jupiter Chapter Meeting.  Instead of having outside speakers, the board and leadership of the PBCTP will be updating the membership on current activities, recap of the leadership meeting and we will be providing all of you the opportunity for an open forum where we will answer all your questions about the current state, and future of, the PBCTP.

Monday, April 1, 2013
5:30pm Soup, Sandwiches and Pastries ($13), 6:30 Program
Abacoa Golf Club
105 Barbados Drive, Jupiter, Florida 33458

Please join us!  Doors open at 5:00pm, with a cash bar.  Dinner begins promptly at 5:30pm, and our meeting begins at 6:30pm.   You can attend our meeting at 6:30pm at no cost, but we encourage you to come for the dinner.  This will be a great evening of like-minded fellowship, and a true sense of deep patriotism permeates the experience– please RSVP on the button below!

Jupiter Chapter March Meeting Featuring Slade O’Brien

Join us on Monday, March 4th for another banner Chapter Meeting, featuring Slade O’Brien, the Florida State Director for Americans For Prosperity.  Slade has spoken to our group before, and is always a great hit with our crowd, and his message is destined to become MORE popular, as he is a rising star both as an activist, and as an expert in how to WIN elections.  If more people listened to Slade last year, many of the election results could have come out quite differently.

 Monday, March 4, 2013
5:30pm buffet ($20), 6:30 Program
Abacoa Golf Club
105 Barbados Drive, Jupiter, Florida 33458

Please join us!  Doors open at 5:30pm, with a cash bar.  Dinner begins promptly at 6:00pm, and our meeting begins at 7:00pm.  Slade is always great with our crowd, and will be happy to answer questions after his presentation.  You can attend our meeting at 7:00pm at no cost, but we encourage you to come for the dinner.  For $20, you will enjoy salad, main course, dessert, coffee, and tea, with tax and tip included!  This will be a great evening of like-minded fellowship, and a true sense of deep patriotism permeates the experience– please RSVP on the button below!

Upbeat Thoughts from Mark Meckler

To a packed crowd at Abacoa, Tea Party Patriots founder Mark Meckler provided optimism and insights for the future, along with some anecdotes from his current work as founder of Citizens for Self Governance. Those who are still depressed about what the 2012 election says about our country should take heart by his analysis of where we stand.

In cowboy hat and boots, California native Meckler was upbeat and hopeful.

The American Revolution was not about the Stamp Act or any specific taxes, he said. Rather, it was the reaction of a free people who had governed themselves in the 180 years from Jamestown to Lexington and Concord, throwing off the moves of a foreign sovereign to place shackles on their liberty. Liberty is also at stake today, in an existential way – our freedoms are unique in history and if liberty is extinguished here it will be extinguished throughout the world.

The 2010 blowout that stopped the Obama train would not have happened without the tea party and its success with local and congressional elections. That said, it is hard to see that we could have had as much influence on the dynamics of the presidential election (does the President call me for advice? he asked). We didn’t pick the candidate, and the local knowledge and organizing skills of the grassroots were ignored in favor of a top-down “we know best” campaign managed from Boston. That helps explain why the great success of the Scott Walker campaigns in Wisconsin were not repeated on the Presidential ticket in that state.

Change can happen from below – at the local and state level, he said. Mark has observed a new dynamic of business people becoming more than just “checkbooks” to the party apparatus and taking control of the process themselves. This has happened in Wisconsin (preparing the field for Walker and the win against the unions), Texas (where incumbent crony Republicans were thrown out in primaries), and Tennessee.

There is common ground to be found with the left, he said, as he imparted his meetings with left leaning academics and the leader of Moveon.org. We are not alone in opposing trillion dollar deficits or failing schools.

We should not buy the media drumbeat that the tea party is dead. How can it be, he asked, that the media portray us as omnipotent in preventing John Boehner from dealing with the President, yet impotent to affect events.

In closing, he asked us to get involved at our local level. Become members of appointed boards and commissions, run for town council or school board, go to your city council meetings. We can change the country from below, much as they did in the first revolution.

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PBCTP Co-Sponsors Candidate Forum for PBG City Council Election

February Jupiter Chapter Features Mark Meckler

Please join us Monday, February 4, at Abacoa, for an evening with Tea Party Patriot’s founder Mark Meckler. Mark will discuss the future of grassroots movements given the results of the November elections

We have also invited municipal candidates running for election March 12th.

Please click the button below to RSVP for the meeting.

Meckler Bio

Mark Meckler is a genuine grassroots citizen-activist. Like most folks in the self-governance movement, he is relatively new to politics.

Mark hails from the rural foothills of northern California. He has a BA in English from San Diego State University and graduated with honors from University of the Pacific, McGeorge School of Law in 1988. He built a career in real estate and business law for almost a decade. Prior to his accidental entry onto the political scene, he specialized in Internet advertising law.

Mark knows what it is like to be a small business owner in America. He has owned a variety of businesses from manufacturing to food service, and has seen the legal challenges facing a wide variety of businesses across many industries.

For most of his life, Mark was not politically active. He never campaigned for, nor donated to, any candidate. Due to his distrust of both political parties, Mark has been registered as an independent for more than a decade.

Then, on February 19, 2009, Rick Santelli, a financial reporter on CNBC, issued his now famous “rant” against a government run amok, and called for a new tea party in America. Like millions of others, Mark saw that rant on the web, saw on Facebook that people actually were organizing tea parties, and decided to get involved.

On Feb. 27, 2009, Mark held the first tea party in Sacramento, California, at the state capitol. Not knowing what to expect, he arrived with his wife, his two kids, his retired parents and some handmade signs. Much to his surprise, 150 people showed up from across the societal and political spectrum. He considered it an amazing success, and he was inspired by those he met to keep organizing.

Returning home, he began networking with others around the state, and across the nation. Eventually, he was among a small core group who helped to organize the April 15, 2009 Tax Day Tea Parties, which consisted of 850 events, and roughly 1.2 million participants spanning the country. Out of this initial surge of activity, Mark and a core group had the foresight to form Tea Party Patriots to be the go-forward entity for the tea party movement.

In 2009, Mark Meckler was one of many citizen “sparks” that helped to ignite a movement. He was the Co-Founder and a former National Coordinator for Tea Party Patriots, a group which at its peak boasted 3,200 chapters nationwide and millions of members.

Mark resigned from Tea Party Patriots in February 2009 to focus on broadening the philosophical reach of the idea of “self-governance” outside of the Tea Party movement, by founding Citizens for Self Governance.

Mark now appears regularly on television outlets as diverse as MSNBC, ABC, NBC, Fox News, CNN, Bloomberg, Fox Business, and the BBC. You may have seen him sparring with Chris Matthews on Hardball, or pushing back against Geraldo Rivera on Fox Business. He is highly sought after for the self-governance perspective from print and online news outlets, including theWall Street Journal, The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times, The Washington Examiner,Politico and The Hill. His opinion pieces regularly run in many of the leading political outlets both on and offline.

Mark says, “I try to say what millions of American’s would say if they had the chance I’ve been given. It’s not really about my opinions, as much as it is my honest attempt to reflect what I hear from people involved in the self-governance movement all over the country.” Mark has a unique political voice, which many have said most clearly represents the citizens of this country fighting back against the incumbent machine of both political parties at all levels.

When not fighting to put the future of our nation back in the hands of self-governing citizens, Mark is an avid horseman, and lives in rural northern California with his wife Patty and two children.

PBCTP Kicks of the New Year with New Leadership

In its 2013 kickoff meeting, the Palm Beach County Tea Party introduced its new leadership to a good sized crowd at the Abacoa Golf Club last evening.

The meeting was called to order by new Jupiter chapter leader Laura Hanley, a local business owner and long time tea party member who was also a candidate for County Commission last year. Laura then passed the microphone to co-founder Mel Grossman who introduced the new county coordinator Michael Riordan.

Mike comes to us with an interesting background. A public relations practioner and local business owner, he started his career teaching special needs children in Massachusetts and did a three year stint as head of their Teacher’s Union. Organizing for political action is nothing new for Mike. In his remarks, he laid out the challenges and opportunities facing us after the not so successful election of 2012. Honing the message of the three principles – consitutionally limited government, fiscal responsibility, and free markets, will be his primary focus. Getting all tea party members to internalize these principles and be able to explain them succinctly to friends and neighbors as well as the public at large is our task. (For the text of Mike’s remarks see: Introducing Mike Riordan)

Mike then introduced the new Communications Director Dominique Feldman. Like Laura and Mike, Dominique is also a local business owner. Active in political campaigns in 2012, she is a familiar face having led seminars on social media for the South Florida 912 and other groups. In her PBCTP role, Dominque will use her MBA and technology skills in efficiently honing and disseminating our messsage.

Also at the meeting was the new chapter leader for Wellington, Marion Frank. Marion has been active in the PBCTP for quite a while and brings her insight as a healthcare professional to the fight against the government takeover of medicine.

As the group moves into 2013, the initial focus will be in three areas – communicating the conservative message led by Dominque, fundraising led by Terry Brady, and government oversight led by Ed Wolff. Volunteers for these committees are sought – contact info@palmbeachcountyteaparty.org for more information.

The February meeting will feature a forum for canididates in local municipal elections. Stay tuned for details.

Some pictures from the event:
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First PBCTP Meeting of the Year

Please join us Monday, January 7, at Abacoa, for the first meeting of the New Year.

The Palm Beach County Tea Party is alive, strong and ready for the new year and the challenges that lay before us. New leadership has been chosen and we are preparing an agenda that will give guidance for the days, months and years ahead.

There will be no Boca or Wellington meetings in January. The January 7th meeting at the Abacoa Golf Club is our only meeting this month. Please come and meet the new PBCTP Coordinator, The new Communications Director and new Chapter Leaders. We won’t be announcing who they are until this meeting. We encourage all to attend!

We are excited to lay out the plans and vision that will ensure that the Palm Beach County Tea Party continues to be an organization that champions fiscal responsibility, free markets and Constitutionally limited government.

Please use the button below to RSVP:

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