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Below is information on MI4CS, the tea party effort to unite behind a conservative candidate and retire liberal U.S. Senator Debbie Stabenow.
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Patriots,
MI4CS is moving forward! We have made some great progress and I am excited to share it with you. A debate has been scheduled for the afternoon of January 14th to take place in the library at Central Michigan University from 1-3pm. The debate will be broadcast live on Patriot Voice Radio Network heard on WMKT, 1270 a.m., and 92.1 F.M and streaming live on the internet via Skype.The following candidates have accepted the invitation: Randy Hekman, Scotty Boman, Clark Durant, Gary Glenn and Chuck Marino. Peter Konetchy declined, Peter Hoekstra and Rick Wilson did not respond.
There are a number of different teams working to make MI4CS a reality. The groups are the Debate team, Research team, Vetting team, Writing team, Prayer team and the District Communication Reps. If you or someone in your group would like to get involved with MI4CS, it is NOT too late. Let me know of any interest and we will get you hooked up with the right people.
If you have any questions about MI4CS please do not hesitate to call or email me. If I cannot answer your question or concern straight away I will take it to the larger group of District Communications Reps and we will discuss it and get you an answer. I would be happy to stop by your group meeting and answer any questions your group may have or assist you in clarifying the purpose, structure, goal, etc. of MI4CS.
Below is a letter written by Eileen IIler, District 1 communications rep. If you have encountered any questions in your groups about the structure of MI4CS this letter may help.
All your efforts toward making MI4CS work are greatly appreciated! I am anxious to hear about what is happening in your groups as far as straw poll votes and vetting processes, etc. Any feedback would be great.
Wishing you all a very happy New Year!
Heather McLeod
District 5 Communication Rep
MI4CS
989 274-5279
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Tea Party MI4CS representatives,
We would like to address some questions about the MI4CS framework especially for those who missed the Dewitt meeting.
Just like the grassroots movement, this is bottom-up politics. Your tea party members communicate with you. Tea Party Representatives (TPR) give input to your District Communication Representative (DCR). Your DCR communicates your ideas, questions, and concerns with Cindy and each other. Cindy communicates with representatives from the vetting, research and writing committees who also communicate with DCR's. Your DCR communicates with you for input on issues to be discussed at the next conference call. During the conference call, each DCR reports the input from the TPR's in their district. If there is not consensus, there is lengthly discussion to find solutions. All DCR's have input.
Communication is key to achieve our goal to help retire Senator Stabenow and send a senator to Washington who will represent the people of Michigan . We would like to thank the representatives from the TEA Parties who have done a great job at getting consensus and feedback from their groups. This is important in keeping this grassroots. Please make sure that your membership is up to date and getting their input in the process.
Just like each state has 2 senators, each tea party has 2 representatives in the MI4CS straw poll. MI4CS does not have the means to measure the number of active tea partiers in each group. Therefore MI4CS has been set up like a senate in a representative republic, not a democracy.
We are all volunteers. We are working hard to put together the details for MI4CS. In order to succeed, we need for you to please communicate with your DCR. We don't want to get lost in the details and lose sight of the bigger picture: true grassroots volunteers from all over this great state cooperating to enhance the chance to regain our representation in this senate seat.
We hope this clears up any questions.
Sincerely,
District 2 - Bob Carr - Oceana TEA Party
District 12 - Joe Baulbis
District 13 - Still needs rep
District 14 - still needs rep
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The Vetting team is on fire! They have prepared a questionaire for the candidates and are currently working on debate questions. Take a look at the attachment below from Don Jakel, captain of the vetting team. Please distribute this to all your members to keep them up to date on the various vetting tools being made available to them.
To MI4CS Members,
The vetting team has been accumulating videos of forums and debates and soliciting and editing questions to present to candidates. The videos and links are on the vetting team forum on the MI4CS website and will be posted in the public forum on the site within the next few days. A final draft of the 20 questions will be ready to send to candidates for their response by Friday, Dec. 30. They will have two weeks to reply. We will post their answers in the public forum on the MI4CS website.
The iCaucus interviews are completed and available to listen to by registering on their website at http://icaucus.org There is no membership fee or contribution required to join at the present time. The 1st two phases of iCaucus vetting of 7 of the 8 U.S. Senate candidates has been completed. Rick Wilson was unable to respond within the ample time allotted. The 7 have answered our newly revised 50 questions and all 7 have been interviewed. They were asked the same 24 questions in the 45 minute interviews. Their bios, website links, Candidate Qualifying Questionnaire (CQQ) scores and interviews are posted on their page on the site. Once you are registered and logged in, point to RESOURCES at the top right on any page; then on the drop down menu, click on State Races 2012, then click on Michigan Races. Click on a candidate to bring up their page. In order to listen to the interview, download the video player, save it and run it. Then click on the arrow and enjoy each interview. Use the backspace arrow to get back to the race page. Please listen to all 7 so you will be well informed and can compare and contrast each candidate.
On 12/28/2011, we began the conference period during which you may comment on the strengths and weaknesses of each candidate in the comment section on their page. Please be civil. Name calling and unsubstantiated allegations are unacceptable and may be removed. Following the conference period, there will be a 1 week voting period for iCaucus members registered before 12/28/11. We cannot allow new members after that date to vote in this race due to campaigns already attempting to flood the zone with their volunteers. Candidates and their staff members will not be allowed to vote. If one candidate receives 60% or more of the members' votes, they will become our endorsed candidate. If no one gets 60%, we will have a run off of the top two. If neither achieves 60%, we will not endorse in this race. The most important thing for MI4CS members is not this endorsement vote but that you use the interviews as a tool to evaluate the candidates.
ICaucus is an all volunteer organization. Please consider helping in some capacity so we can continue to grow beyond our 1,000 mI members to vet and elect as many state and federal Constitutional candidates as possible. Future member newsletters will explain our departments and volunteer opportunities and how to navigate other parts of the website. For now, please join and listen to the interviews and comment.
The goal of all 19 of us on the vetting team is to provide as much information as possible so each member of each tea party can make an informed vote, whether it is on iCaucus, the MI4CS convention, the primary or the general. Please forward this vetting team update to all the members of your group.
Don Jakel
Vetting Team Captain
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Dear People Who Think Obama Should Not Go On Vacation:
Are you out of your ever living mind?!?!?!
Have you not seen what destruction on our economy and morale this man has wrought for three years?!?!
And you want him to go back to Washington, D.C.? Congress too? You are out of your mind.
The correct answer is STAY ON VACATION ALL OF YOU. The stock market tends to do better when Congress is gone. The world tends to run fine when this President is on vacation. Our freedoms cannot be further encroached while Obama is in Martha’s Vineyard.
Please, stop asking this man to come back to Washington where everything he touches tends to break down.
When he comes back in September he says he will have a plan to create jobs. The last several plans he had to create jobs killed or destroyed more private sector jobs than even the most radical leftist could have hoped for. Please, please, please stop saying he needs to come back to Washington.
Mr. President, you take as much vacation as you want. In fact, if you want to leave the country and go visit your relatives in Kenya or just go for a safari or go see your old stomping grounds in Indonesia or, heck, take the family to see penguins in Antarctica or even go to Bora Bora, I’d be glad to have you take say . . . the next twelve months off.
And even better, I’m sure we can find some people to fund your vacation other than the American taxpayers who you’ve been using to fund your political campaign bus tour.
From our friends at www.RedState.com
FromouFrom our
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"Rooster” Cogburn for President
My wife does not often make suggestions for what I should write about, but today was an exception. As we watched a Fox News update on the field of Republican hopefuls for the 2012 presidential nomination, she said, “You know what we need to defeat Obama in 2012? We need someone with “true grit,” and we still don’t have a frontrunner who fits that description.” I could not agree more.
According to the official storyline in the movie True Grit, 14-year-old farm girl Mattie Ross arrived in Fort Smith, Arkansas, determined to track down and capture a former hired hand, Tom Chaney, who had murdered her father. To aid in her quest, she hired the roughest, toughest man she could find, a one-eyed U.S. marshal with "true grit" named Reuben J. “Rooster” Cogburn, to track Chaney into Indian Territory and bring him to justice.
Almost every moviegoer over age sixty will remember and appreciate the original version of the movie, starring John Wayne, which opened in movie theaters across the country in June 1969. Wayne won both a Golden Globe and an Academy Award as Best Actor for his portrayal of the one-eyed “Rooster” Cogburn.
But Wayne’s portrayal of the curmudgeonly lawman was typical John Wayne. He swaggered, he cursed, and he swilled a little whiskey, but he came off looking more like a kindly father-figure catering to a strong-willed daughter or granddaughter. It was not until 2011, forty-one and a half years later, when the remake opened in theaters across the country, that moviegoers finally got to see what “true grit” really looks like. That was when actor Jeff Bridges reprised the role of “Rooster” Cogburn.
Thinking back on the Bridges performance, I can fully appreciate that “true grit” is the single most important quality the 2012 Republican candidate must have. “Nice,” “accommodating,” and “bipartisan” simply won’t cut it against a man who compares well to Lucifer himself, so no George H.W. Bush, Bob Dole, George W. Bush, or John McCain lookalikes need apply. And just in case some might be tempted to think that former Florida governor Jeb Bush might be a welcome change of pace, let’s just assume that the further we wade out into the Bush gene pool the shallower it gets. Some may be willing to gamble on a third Bush in the White House, but I’m not.
So if our 2012 job description excludes “nice guys” and candidates who are anxious to “reach across the aisle” to accommodate Democrats, who do we eliminate?
For starters, we can eliminate former Minnesota governor Tim Pawlenty, former Utah governor Jon Huntsman, and former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney. Each time I see Pawlenty he seems to automatically morph into the children’s TV icon, Mr. Rogers, dressed in his cardigan sweater and singing “Won’t You be My Neighbor.” Barack Obama, the Democrat leadership, and the “Weiner media” would eat him alive.
As for Mitt Romney, he too is a bit too nice, a bit too polished to get “down-and-dirty” with Obama, as conservative voters are going to demand. Besides, after the lame answer he gave in defense of his failed “RomneyCare” plan in Massachusetts, I’m not sure we could ever trust him to adequately espouse conservative values.
After a scathing Wall Street Journal attack on RomneyCare, Romney responded with, “I stand by my successful healthcare plan in Massachusetts, but ObamaCare is a disaster because it does all of the things that RomneyCare does, just on a national level. So, if I am elected president I will give waivers to states so they can repeat my mistakes if they want to, or, if they are smart, they will reject both my approach and Obama’s.”
One wonders who advises Romney on his public statements. As a former speech writer for a presidential candidate, I can’t imagine who might be putting words into his mouth. Could it be Joe Biden? Newt Gingrich? His response was all wrong.
He should have said, “Yes, the Massachusetts healthcare reform plan has not been the panacea that we hoped it would be. But the states are the laboratories of social and economic policy in our federal system and it is the states that must take the lead in trying to solve problems such as the healthcare crisis. Barack Obama and the Democrats in Congress don’t seem to understand that, when it comes to problems as great and as intractable as healthcare, the one-size-fits-all formula that they’re so fond of just won’t work. At least we tried. Now the Congress, the next president, and the other forty-nine states can learn from our experience in Massachusetts.”
But it was in New Hampshire, in announcing his candidacy for the 2012 GOP nomination, that Romney frittered away any chance he had of winning the 2012 nomination. Appearing before a crowd of New Hampshire supporters, he said, “I don’t speak for the scientific community, of course, but I believe the world is getting warmer. I can’t prove that, but I believe, based on what I read, that the world is getting warmer. And number two, I believe that humans contribute to that. I don’t know how much our contribution is to that, because I know that there have been periods of greater heat and warmth in the past but I believe we contribute to that. And so I think it’s important for us to reduce our emissions of pollutants and greenhouse gases that may well be significant contributors to the climate change and the global warming that you’re seeing.”
Goodbye, Mitt Romney! No Republican candidate who would publicly put those thoughts into words can ever win the party’s nomination for President of the United States.
To name those in the party who do possess “true grit,” we can start with Texas governor Rick Perry; New Jersey governor Chris Christie; Wisconsin governor Scott Walker; Maine governor Paul LePage; Ohio governor John Kasich, South Carolina governor Nikki Haley, Arizona governor Jan Brewer, former Speaker Newt Gingrich; former corporate CEO Herman Cain; former Alaska governor Sarah Palin; Congressman Ron Paul, of Texas, Congresswoman Michelle Bachmann, of Minnesota; and Congressman Allen West, of Florida. It is out of that group of thirteen patriots that Republicans will likely select their 2012 ticket, with the ideal ticket being Governor Rick Perry for president and either Herman Cain or Michele Bachmann for vice president.
Once in office, President Perry will need a “kick-ass” cabinet. He will need Sarah Palin as Secretary of the Interior, Chris Christie as Attorney General, Mitt Romney as Secretary of Commerce, Newt Gingrich as Secretary of Education, Allen West as Secretary of Homeland Security; and Ron Paul as Chairman of the Federal Reserve Board. If she is not the first female vice president, Michele Bachmann would make a fine Treasury Secretary. And if Governor Perry fails to select him as his running mate, Herman Cain would provide an invaluable contribution as Chairman of the Republican National Committee where he would serve as a much-needed conservative role model for all black Americans.
As Interior Secretary, Palin would have oil producers drilling wells in the offshore… east coast, west coast, the Gulf of Mexico, and Alaska… in the Baaken range in Montana and the Dakotas, and in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR). With the sound of all those drilling rigs operating around the clock Americans might find it hard to sleep at night, but within four years the Perry administration would have the U.S. well on its way toward energy independence.
And that natural gas pipeline that Palin got approved as Governor of Alaska? She and President Perry would have that pipeline rerouted, and instead of bringing low-cost, clean-burning natural gas to the non-energy-friendly states of Washington, Oregon, and California, that gas would be going directly to the Dakotas and to the Plains states… along with the heavy crude produced from the Athabasca tar sands in Alberta Province… where business development and job creation are deserved and much appreciated.
Perry would also have our southern border closed to illegal immigration, the economy would be growing at a fast pace, Boeing would be producing airplanes in its new South Carolina assembly plant, the jobless rate would be shrinking toward the 4-5% “full employment” level, and gasoline prices would once again be less than $2 per gallon.
All of these things can be accomplished. All we need is a man or woman with “true grit” in the White House, a filibuster-proof Republican super-majority in the U.S. Senate, and a prohibitive Republican majority in the House of Representatives. And whenever our candidates debate Obama and Biden, let’s send them away feeling as if we’ve dumped a healthy portion of “true grit” into their undershorts.
Obama must not only be defeated in 2012, he and his policies must be totally repudiated in a landslide defeat. We need a “Rooster” Cogburn-style Republican in the White House to undo all the damage Obama and his administration have done to America and get America back on the road to fiscal and social sanity again! So let’s stop thinking about it and talking about it… let’s get it done!
Amen, brothers & sisters! |
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Paul R. Hollrah is a freelance writer. He is a member of the Civil Engineering Academy of Distinguished Alumni at the University of Missouri - Columbia and a Senior Fellow at the Lincoln Heritage Institute. He currently resides in Tulsa, Oklahoma.
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Letter to the Editor, Saginaw News
After waiting patiently for almost one year, I have finally had the opportunity to watch “Waiting for Superman”, a documentary directed by Davis Guggenheim. He also directed the much-publicized documentary, “An Inconvenient Truth”, so I do not think he can be characterized as a crazy conservative. If you know of this Documentary, you must be paying attention below the radar, because it has not received the publicity it deserves. This Documentary has just been released for home movie rental. I encourage all who are interested in the teacher union protests in Wisconsin, Ohio and, today, in Lansing to order this film and to encourage your state lawmakers to watch it as well.
I was a teacher when teacher unions were in their infancy. I appreciate what they have done to improve teacher salaries. It was needed. What I did not appreciate, even then, however, was the demoralizing system of teacher tenure. It was frustrating and disheartening to work all year to ignite a spark of interest and motivation in at risk, low income students only to see them passed on to tenured teachers who had given up teaching years earlier but who, because of tenure, could not be removed from the classroom. These “burned-out” teachers do as much harm to dedicated teachers as they do to students and to our nation. It is my opinion that teacher union’s persistence in treating tenure as their “holy grail” and their refusal to consider a merit/performance based pay scale is the reason our public schools have deteriorated steadily since the 1960’s.
As you will learn from the documentary, teacher unions are the single highest source of political contributions (both Democrat and Republican) of any political lobby group. Witnessed by recent news events, any elected official brave enough to challenge them does so at his/her peril. This bravery deserves our support.
We all have fond memories of dedicated teachers who awakened our curiosity, enriched our understanding of the world and who perhaps even gave meaningful direction to our life. We all, also, have experienced the deadening effect of wasting a year with a teacher who was merely “putting in time”.
I do not now know the result, if any, of the vote on SB153-158 that was being protested today in Lansing. I have, however, read the bill. It provides for temporary State appointed management of financially distressed municipalities and school districts. It allows for nullification of previously negotiated (and unaffordable) union contracts. I understand why unions would resent this loss of power by fiat, but it is not as draconian as the unions have portrayed it to their members. If unions can be forced to acknowledge the financial realities of their municipality or school distract, maybe they will also start to look at what their “all teachers are equal” stance has done to our education system.
I can only hope. On Wisconsin!
Sandra K, Saginaw
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