Dear Tea Party Patriots,

Welcome to the third installment of our monthly newsletter in which we update you on the upcoming events and initiatives of the South Bay Tea Party. You are receiving this newsletter because you signed up with us or an affiliated Tea Party. If you wish to be removed from this list, please click the unsubscribe button below.

ATTN: Late breaking action item. Call U.S. Senator Olympia J. Snowe · United States Senate · Washington, DC 20510, Phone: (202) 224-5344. Tell her to vote against the Democrat written Baucus Bill. Tell her as a Tea Party Member you plan to give a contribution to whomever, opposes her next election if she votes as a Democrat.

Contents

Upcoming Events

September Highlights

Legislation

Initiatives

Patriot Voices

Letter from the President

Upcoming Events

October General Meeting

The second general meeting of the South Bay Tea Party will take place later this month! Stay tuned for more information on the date, time, and speakers.

Date and Time: Watch your email for the date.

Location: El Segundo Library, Friends of the Library Room

One Year’s Notice Protest

CAN YOU HEAR US YET!!! The countdown begins to the 2010 elections! We want our politicians to remain aware that we are still here, are more vigilant than ever, and are watching their every move.

Date: October 30, 2009

Time: 4:30 – 5:30

Location: In front of Jane Harman’s office.

2321 E. Rosecrans Avenue, El Segundo, CA 90245

September Highlights

September 4^th Jane Harman Protest

Thank you to all who participated in this successful event! We had around 100 people show up and line the streets of Rosecrans in protest to Jane Harman’s stance on H.R. 3200 and her refusal to hold a townhall meeting during the August recess. Needless to say we definitely brought the townhall right to her own front door! For some photos of the event, click here.

September 12^th – 9/12 Washington D.C.

With estimates ranging from 60,000 to 1 million people who attended the 9/12 March on Washington, it cannot be denied that our voices were heard. Pictures of the event taken by Gary Aven can be seen here.

September 12^th – 9/12 West

For those fellow Patriots who were unable to attend the D.C. event, the west coast decided to throw their own 9/12 event at the Federal Building in Westwood, CA. There was an excellent turnout of over 2,000 people. A photo montage of the event by Christine Vinquist can be seen here.

September 30^th – South Bay Tea Party First General Meeting

The South Bay Tea Party would like to express our tremendous gratitude to everyone who came to our very first South Bay Tea Party general meeting at the El Segundo library. We would also like to extend a warm thank you to Dr. Tom Lagrelius for speaking to the group on health care reform. If you want to get more involved remember to sign-up for a committee! These include the Membership, Outreach, Communications, Planning, and Speaker’s Bureau. If you are interested please send an email with your name, contact information, and committe(s) you are interested in the subject line to [email protected]. Also, don’t forget to read a book or two from our recommended reading list!

Legislation

LOCAL

Measure UU - Redondo Beach Utility Users' Tax Measure

Text of the measure: To maintain essential City services including police, fire, improving stormwater quality and other general governmental services, shall an ordinance be adopted amending the City's utility users' tax to remove an exclusion that currently allows an electrical plant owned by a subsidiary of a large corporation to pay no utility users' tax on natural gas, with annual audits, public review of all expenditures and without raising individual taxpayers' taxes.

Arguments in favor of Measure UU can be found here, and arguments against Measure UU can be found here. Measure UU will be on the November 3, 2009 ballot.

Our position: Against. Measure UU is a hidden double tax that punishes the residents of Redondo Beach and rewards the inability of the Redondo Beach City Council to provide an effective and efficient city budget.

STATE

The California Legislature has adjourned as of September 12^th,but what they left behind was a pile of 700 bills for Governor Schwarzenegger to either sign or veto. So far he has done nothing. The reason for such a delay is that the Governor supposedly wants a water deal reached before deciding on the bills. But time is running short. If by October 12^th the Governor has not signed or vetoed the legislation before him it automatically becomes law.

FEDERAL

HR 554 – The “Read the Bills” Bill

Originally introduced by Reps. John Culberson (R-Texas) and Brian Baird (D-Wash.) back in June, the “Read the Bills” bill would require all non-emergency legislation to be posted online for 72 hours before it is voted on. The legislation has since been stuck in committee but a discharge petition has been filed by the sponsors. If signed by at least 218 members of the House this would force Speaker Pelosi to bring the bill to the floor for a vote.

Our position: In favor. The American People should be allowed to read any and all legislation that is put to a vote in Congress. We have the right to know what our elected officials are doing since we are a government of the People, by the People, and for the People.

Initiatives

Membership

We rely on dedicated members like you to help us get the word out to others who are dissatisfied with our public officials and the governments in Sacramento and Washington, D.C. Please forward this email on to people you think would be interested in what we are trying to do.

Policy White Papers

We’re working on several white papers dealing with healthcare, energy, and education policy. We’d like to present these ideas to you and to policy experts. We want to be proactive and provide solutions to the problems that face all Americans. You can read our Health Care white paper here.

Patriot Voices

Why We Should Sunset the First Time Homebuyer's Tax Credit

By Nathan Mintz, Chairman South Bay Tea Party

The First Time Home Buyer's Tax Credit is one of the numerous half baked provisions written into the Stimulus that was Rahm-rodded through Congress earlier in the year. It's basic premise is to provide an 8000 dollar tax credit for first time home buyer's (defined as anyone who hasn't owned a house in 3 years or more) in order to stimulate demand for housing.

Sounds good on paper right? Unfortunately, it follows the same twisted logic as "Cash for Clunkers" - using modest government tax incentives to try to "front-load" future consumption into the present. As we recently saw with "cash for clunkers",this increase in immediate demand generally results in a terrible hangover after the incentive is removed.

Further, since the incentive is to buy big ticket items like cars which are purchased on credit, this only further serves to lever up American families that should be paying off debt rather than going further into it.

Fortunately, this awful provision was expected to be sunsetted at the end of the year...or so we thought. Now, there are signs that Senator John Cornyn (R-Texas) may be willing to join with Democrats to extend this awful (and at $45 billion/year, very expensive) tax credit. He declared his support for extending it on ABC's This Week, this morning (October 4th).

Obviously, extending this disastrous incentive will only prolong the inevitable correction of housing prices that has to occur. Further, it will distort supply/demand unnecessarily in areas that experienced minimal impact from the housing bubble (like Michigan, Vermont or Texas)- creating mini-bubbles everywhere where the bubble didn't burst.

In the spirit of holding both sides of the aisle accountable to principles of fiscal responsibility, Senator Cornyn's office received the following message this evening. We urge you to contact his office here and do the same:

"Dear Senator Cornyn,

Let me start out by saying that I am a tea party patriot (and leader of a club with over 1000+ members in South Bay) and I am generally very supportive of your policy stances on numerous issues.

But I was extremely disturbed to see you on ABC's This Week this morning supporting extending the "frontloading" 8k tax credit for first time homebuyers with Charles Schumer. This costly program, is an analog in housing to the same bad policies that "cash for clunkers" is based on. Namely, you are trying to artificially stimulate demand by moving future consumption forward. The mechanism for making this possible will be through further leveraging of Americans into mortgages they cannot afford that are being enabled through artificially low interest rates. Have we learned nothing from the last two years?

I urge you to reconsider your position on this critical issue. If we are to see an end to this recession, we must enable market forces to naturally correct distortions in supply and demand without government interference. Since Texas was one of the less effected states by the housing crisis, you have the political safety to urge for doing the right thing on this critical issue.

As cash for clunkers showed in textbook fashion this past month, the temporary boost in sales volumen you get from an incentive like this is more than offset by the "hangover" you get later. Please take heed to the words of Ronald Reagan in this regard and delegate housing prices to the free market "Government's solution to a problem: if it moves, tax it. If it still moves, regulate it. If it stops moving, subsidize it." Don't fall into this big government trap. We expect better of our conservative Senators than that.

Sincerely,

Nathan Mintz

Letter from the President

Dear Faithful Americans,

We are 13 months away from letting this Congress know that we are fed up with Washington. It is time for us to tell them that they must stop the run away spending, stop passing bills that they have not read, stop hiding legislation from the public and each other by not even posting the bills on the web for public review 72 hours before a vote, and still trying to pass a Healthcare bill that is bad for America. Oh, and get rid of all the Czars (some of these people make Russia’s Putin look conservative), and appoint the rest of the vetted positions that are still unfilled.

This is a time for us to hunker down for the long haul. It is time we commit to finding ways to influence our children and grandchildren. We need to commit to preparing by first reading the book list on the South Bay Tea Party web site, then we need to commit to buying DVDs like “Media Malpractice” and “Not Evil, Just Wrong” and sitting down with our children/grandchildren and neighbors and discussing the content. You need to prepare yourself for answering your neighbor’s questions next summer and fall as you go door to door to campaign for candidates that we support. Also join one of our action committees above.

We had 503 people at Don’t Tell Me It Can’t Be Done. If 500 people walk neighborhoods and reach out to 50 people each weekend for 10 weekends that is 250,000 people that can be reached for our slate of candidates. The last race that had any real challenger for our district was in 2000 where we would have won if the Libertarian’s had voted for the Republican. We only needed 6,000 votes to win. This is winnable.

United States House of Representatives elections, 2000 ^[30]
Party		Candidate	Votes	Percentage
	Democratic	Jane Harman	115,651	48.4%
	Republican	Steven T. Kuykendall (inc.)	111,199	46.6%
	Libertarian	Daniel R. Sherman	6,073	2.6%
	Reform	John R. Konopka	3,549	1.4%
	Natural Law	Matt Ornati	2,264	0.9%
	Republican	William D. Davies (write-in)	395	0.1%
Totals			239,131	100.0%
Voter turnout			%
	Democratic gain from Republican