Washington DC March on 9.12 / A Utahn\'s Account

The 9.12 march on Washington was a wonderful, peaceful event. I had many emotions while I was there.

We drove into Maryland on Friday night before the March. There were activities planned as early as Thursday, but our family opted to spend the time seeing other places, like the Freedom Trail in Boston, that I wrote about earlier. We stayed at a KOA on Friday night and ran into a few people in the KOA store, all who were planning on attending the march. There were three ladies from Florida, who drove up. There was an elderly gentlemen, 83 years old, who was a Veteran of our military, and his wife, who said, "This is the last thing I can do for my grandchildren, so I'm going to do it."

We got up early on Saturday and went to the train station. ALL of the people that I could see had signs in their hands. The train filled with people going to the march. As we exited the train, the underbelly of DC filled with shouts of U S A, U S A. People began cheering. The excitement was palpable. My children joined in. People were giving away American flags and Constitutions. People in wheelchairs participated. Some walked with canes. Children in tow with parents. I met people from Indiana, Connecticut, Maryland, Florida, Alabama, Washington, Tennessee, Texas, New York, just to name a few. In addition, of course, we were there from Utah.

I experienced all kinds of individuals, with a wide range of ages. Many elderly people participated. This was no ordinary march. We have been called angry, but I would use the word empowered. We gained strength from each other. We saw all the people around us who had united under 9 Principles and 12 Values.

The issues ranged the gamut from ending corruption, to eliminating czars, to ending the Federal Reserve, to The Statue of Liberty in tears. However, the main theme seemed to be restoring the Constitution to its rightful place inside our government. Also taking a good long look at the unconstitutional things that are currently running rampant within the government bureaucracy. Yes, there were a few who carried the birth certificate signs, but most are just frustrated with Congress even more than they are frustrated with the President.

I asked a few people if they affiliated themselves with a specific party. I received answers of Republican, Independent, and Democrat. While most seemed to come from the Republican party, they were frustrated within their own party as well. This was by no means any type of scientific poll, just a chance meeting with the marchers as we walked. One feeling I received was that these people are becoming informed. They will not sit idly by while the so-called elite run their government any more. They dont trust them to do whats in their best interest. Party-lines mean very little to this group of people. They are going to listen to the candidates, look at their record, look at their lives, and then pull the lever. If a candidate arises that holds dear the Constitution, small government, tax-cuts, end of corruption, and will live with the same laws they enact they will be popular among this crowd, no matter the party on their sign. These people are going to understand the issues and weigh in through the internet, twitter, facebook and other social media. They are once again looking for statesmen. Mr. Smith is wanted in Washington.

The mainstream media can ignore us, and it wont matter. The media can pretend we dont exit, and it wont matter. For every single person at the march, there were likely hundreds of people back home that wanted to be there, or knew someone who went. They know us. They know we are real, and they trust us. So, if the media downplays the march, they are biting the hands that feed them, because the people who werent totally sold on the media bias, now have proof in their friends and neighbors that they were there and were ignored. Their friends, who are not racists, tell them how peaceful it was, and the media said they were an angry, racist mob. Their friends tell them about the wonderful democrats and independents they met, and the media says it was a GOP stunt. Their friends tell them about the people from all races who attended and are standing for the Constitution and running for office, and the media says it was a white-male crowd. The media can ignore us, and they will soon find they are the ones ignored. Their only hope will be to ask for a government bailout that Congress had better think twice about giving. As a friend of mine tweeted, after lamenting at the lack of coverage, her son told her, Dont worry, mom, ABC didnt report on the Revolution either.

We gathered in the Federal Triangle on Pennsylvania Avenue at about 9:00. We walked around for an hour. There were people with speakers and microphones giving pep-talks. There was only one camera that I saw, and Im not sure if it was even anyone from a media station. As people continued to get off the trains, the area became so overcrowded you could barely move. One girl saw us with our little children and tears streamed down her face. She reached down and said to my daughter, Im so glad you are here. Dont ever forget this.

We walked quite a distance both directions and never found the ends of the crowd. At 10:00 the march began. One person with a bullhorn strapped to him, was asking the crowd, Why are you all so happy? You are supposed to be an angry mob, remember? And it was true. Everyone was happy. People were signing God Bless America, chanting U S A, U S A, U S A.

The police at the Capitol building when we got there about 20 minutes after we began, were not allowing anyone else on the lawn of the Capitol even though there was plenty of green to be seen. We sat around the Capital Reflecting Pool, while the street continued to flow for another hour and a half to the capital. There were individuals, who chanted things over the loud speaker, and many joined in, but the conservative group was difficult to lead. We just arent the cheerleading type. We dont chant, because it feels strange. Crowd mentality is not really our thing. We are individuals that believe in individual liberty, so behaving in a crowd is not the norm for this group.

We expected more vendors available on the streets to help feed the crowds, but when that did not happen the crowd began to separate around 12:30 p.m. just to find food. The rally took place at 1:00; many had already dispersed into other parts of DC. This was unfortunate because the crowds were much heavier before the media (only Fox) began their coverage.

In the end, we may have gone home ignored, but the empowerment has taken root, and it will continue to grow. We know who we are. We will continue to educate ourselves, and we will not back down from our conservative stand. At the 9.12 march Senator Jim DeMint said that the Republicans had lost their way. Maybe now they have found it again. The GOP has the right platform, but as said by Rand Paul the GOP is an empty shell. It all depends on the people we fill it with. If the GOP embraces this movement properly, and returns to their roots, finding statesmen instead of politicians to represent their people rather than their party, they, and all Americans will be the better for it.

FREEDOM CAN WIN!

To see all the photos taken from the March please click here

Posted in National | Tagged 9.12, March on DC, tea party, Jim DeMint, Rand Paul, Washington DC | Obama creating straw men

September 22, 2009

Guest blog by Henry C. Glasheen, Summit County Republican Party chair

President Obama recently gave a speech on the need for vast changes in the regulation of financial institutions. In his speech, he made the claim that he knew that there were millions of Americans who signed contracts that they didnt always understand offered by lenders who didnt always tell the truth.

I visited the Mortgage Bankers Association of America at www.mortgagebankers.com to put that claim into perspective. According to their survey, we have averaged roughly 2.6 million mortgages per year in 2004-2007. Is President Obama trying to say that most mortgage contracts involved a dishonest mortgage broker and a financially illiterate consumer? Populism seems to have given rise to hyperbole within the Obama administration. More importantly, he seems to be adding another straw man to the long list of villains that he blames for our current economic woes.

Mr. Obama has a bad habit of creating villains to justify policies that centralize his power base in Washington. He is using this latest villain to justify one of the largest political power grabs in history. In that same speech, he proposed granting resolution authority to the Federal Reserve to regulate and oversee all banks. Under his scenario, if he turns over regulation of all banks to the Federal Reserve in Washington, this sort of inequality between banks and consumers would disappear. The Federal Reserve already has the power to regulate federally chartered banks that pose a systemic risk to the economy. During the savings & loan crisis of the 1980s, the Federal Reserve used the Too Big to Fail doctrine to usurp power from the FDIC to resolve banks that created a systemic risk.

I bring all of this up because Utah and California have the largest number of FDIC-regulated industrial banks in the United States. In 1987, Congress passed the Competitive Equality Banking Act that allowed creation of industrial banks that are subject to all of the same safety and soundness guidelines as federally chartered banks, except they are regulated by the FDIC. They are also exempt from Federal Reserve Board supervision as a bank holding company because they meet certain requirements. They must not have assets in excess of $100,000,000, they do not accept demand deposits, and they cannot incur overdrafts at the Federal Reserve Bank. This may seem subtle, but Utahs financial institutions employ about 79,000 people, and provide loans to residents and businesses in the state of Utah that may not otherwise be granted under a federally chartered bank. This subtle change in regulations has a profound effect on Utah, and their financial industry. If the Federal Reserve assumes control of all banks, the local nature of banking will disappear forever. Your banker will have to conform to a federal set of requirements that will certainly not benefit customers in small, financially sound states like Utah.

If the pundits are correct, President Obama is looking to make this power transfer very shortly before he appoints his friend Larry Summers as the new head of the Federal Reserve. This would put the Treasury, The Federal Reserve Bank, the Senate, and the House of Representatives in friendly hands.

I dont want to fall into Mr. Obamas habit of creating a villains list, but it is important to consider the following:

In 1997, Bank of America merged with NationsBank in what was then the largest bank merger in history.
Citigroup merged with Travelers in 1998 to create a $140 billion company with $700 billion in assets.
In 1998 Wachovia Corporation purchased CoreStates Financial and then two months later purchased the MoneyStore. They later merged with First Union Corporation to form Wachovia Bank. As a consequence of these mergers, these banks became three of the five largest banks in the United States.

There are three things that all of those mega-mergers have in common:
(1) They were consummated while the lesson of the savings & loan crisis was fresh in our minds. That lesson was that mega-financial institutions could not be easily resolved and would require taxpayer bailouts if they failed. That meant that the banks and its shareholders got to keep the profits if the risks paid off, and the taxpayers got stuck with the bill if the risks failed.
(2) They were three of the largest recipients of TARP funds.
(3) They all took place during the Clinton administration under the oversight of Treasury Secretaries Robert Rubin and Larry Summers. In 1999 Robert Rubin became a board member of Citigroup and later chairman of the board until the company announced his resignation in January of 2009. That was shortly after having to provide them with $45B in taxpayer funds under TARP.

I live in Summit County where a large number of people (including myself) support President Obama and want him to succeed. I am, however, getting a bit tired of Mr. Obama repeating over and over that he inherited the economic problems caused by the banks (and Wall Street) from George W. Bush.

It is important to point out that inheritances can often span generations, and some of those problems were obviously passed down to President Bush from President Clinton and his advisors. By deflecting blame to his elaborate list of villains, Mr. Obama is trying to reappoint members of the very staff that were partly responsible for this mess. It is time for new ideas and new people, and he should concentrate on meaningful legislation to fix the problem rather than endless power grabs by Democratic retreads.

Not a tax increase, just forcing you to take responsibility

Gotta listen to the latest version of debating what the meaning of is is.Obama says it's not a tax increase and the dictionary is wrong.

Chairman Michael Steele\'s Visit To Utah

Michael Steele, Chairman of the Republican National Committee, visited Utah on Friday, October 16, attending two events sponsored by the Utah Republican Party. Steele spoke first to a fundraising luncheon at the Salt Lake City Marriott, then participated in a "Conversation with the Chairman" town hall format event at the Utah Cultural Celebration Center in West Valley City, featuring Utah's Governor Gary Herbert. Steele and Herbert fielded questions from an audience of over 200 on a number of topics.

Special guests at the luncheon and the town hall event were the Utah College Republicans and Republican county officers from as far away as Kane, Uintah, Washington, and Emery counties who made the trip to hear Chairman Steele and Governor Herbert.

The message Chairman Steele brought with him was one of opportunity and challenge -the opportunity we have for our Republican message and values to be heard in our country if we meet the challenge to get out there and work for our principles and our Republican candidates in this election cycle.

Steele praised Utah and Governor Herbert for "having the most efficient, cost effective, responsive state government in the country. See what having a Republican administration and a Republican legislature with Republican values can do?"

It was an encouraging day with a message from both the Chairman and the Governor focused on what we, as Republicans, need to do to be successful. Our task now is to put that message into action to get the job done in 2010 and beyond.

In the News | Utah Republican Party

Washington DC March on 9.12 / A Utahn\'s Account

Not a tax increase, just forcing you to take responsibility

Chairman Michael Steele\'s Visit To Utah