San Angelo Tea Party, Inc.
West Texans for Constitutionally-Limited Government
Please join us. Unless otherwise noted, our meetings are held starting at 6:30 PM
on the 2nd and 4th Tuesday of each month at the West Texas Training Center (Howard College),
3501 N. US Highway 67, San Angelo 76905
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(You may unsubscribe at any time)
Lyleann McClellan-Thee Responds to Call to Action on
IRS Abuse of Conservative Organizations
by Lyleann McClellan-Thee, past president of the San Angelo Tea Party, May 18, 2013
A call to action was issued Tuesday evening, May 14th and I was one of those fortunate enough to be able to respond.
Wednesday afternoon, May 15th, I was DC-bound to participate in activities to put faces on conservative groups recently abused by the IRS. A big Thank You goes out to Tea Party Patriots for putting this together under such last minute circumstances.
The flurry of activity culminated Friday, May 17th with our attending the Ways & Means Committee hearing about the IRS targeting conservative groups for "special treatment."
Lots of TEA parties, when filing for tax-exempt status, have been hassled with intrusive questionnaires, threats of perjury if information was not complete, requests for donor lists, and most of these applications are still not finalized by the IRS! Remember, the TEA movement started in 2009. San Angelo TEA Party received one of those questionnaires in 2010, then withdrew the application because of the information required.
At this hearing, Mr. Miller would not admit to "targeting," but rather "inappropriate questions," lax supervision, work overload, or unclear law. When asked if the question about content of prayers at the meetings was inappropriate (yes, that was actually on an IRS questionnaire) Mr. Miller said he couldn't answer, not knowing the context. Now that's scary! First Amendment ring a bell?
At the very least Mr. Miller and his underlings are grossly incompetent, at the very worst the IRS is now a tool to use against political enemies of whoever is in charge. This is not a Republican vs. Democrat issue, this is a banana republic vs. freedom issue. We should all be concerned!
Meeting June 11th, 6:30 PM
Speaker: Terri Hall, Founder/Director of Texas TURF
(Texans Uniting for Reform & Freedom)
- Come hear how government has hijacked our freeways
in a talk by a grassroots advocate.
- Can you afford to pay 75 cents a mile to use our public
highways?
- Why toll roads? How your freedom to travel is at risk and
how the 83rd legislature is making it worse, not better
The main reasons Texans are stuck in traffic is a massive failure in public road policy. Between inefficiencies at TxDOT, the refusal to end the practice of diverting road funds to other purposes, and overall lack of prioritizing roads in the state budget, lawmakers are relying on tolling -- even imposing tolls on existing or paid-for roads -- to pay for road expansion. It'll cost Texans dearly -- the equivalent of adding $15 to every gallon of gas you buy. Come find out how this policy will effect you & what you can do about it.
Terri Hall is the founder of the San Antonio Toll Party and Texans Uniting for Reform and Freedom. She started a taxpayer revolt upon learning of plans to convert Highway 281 into a toll way and charge taxpayers again for what they've already built and paid for.
She's a home school mom of eight turned citizen activist. The grassroots through TURF halted two freeway to toll way projects, curbed the plans for the Trans Texas Corridor, defeated bad bills with runaway taxation in the Texas Legislature, opposed using federal stimulus money to build toll roads (another DOUBLE TAX), and awakened Texas to the coming infrastructure bubble and bailouts.
Terri's also galvanizing fellow Americans to rise up against another new trend, the sale of our public highways to foreign corporations in sweetheart deals for a half-century at a time. Privatization results in extremely high toll taxes like a deal just inked in Dallas for 75 cents a mile!
Whether speaking before community groups of all types, the Legislature in Austin, at rallies in Washington D.C. or on CNN, Terri is a tireless taxpayer advocate.
She invites you to learn more and to join the fight at www.TexasTURF.org.
The San Angelo Tea Party has been a victim of the “obviously deliberate and targeted abuse, harassment and attempted suppression”1 by the IRS along with other conservative, pro-life, pro-2nd Amendment, pro-Israel and Christian groups that are opposed to the Obama agenda.
The IRS has violated Free Speech Rights (1st Amendment), Equal Protection Rights (14th Amendment) and Privacy Rights (4th Amendment) in response to applications by these groups for classification as non-profit tax exempt organizations under section 501(c)(4) of the IRS code.
Our application was submitted to the IRS in March of 2010 along with the $400 fee. We received a letter in response from the IRS dated January 12, 2012 asking for more information before they could “complete consideration” of our application. Click here to read the burdensome, aggressive and invasive IRS letter. Please note the following:
1. We were only given about two weeks after receipt of the letter to provide a response or the IRS “will close your case.” And if the information is received after the due date, “we may ask you to send us a new application.” This is after the IRS taking about 21 months to respond to our application.
2. Note that all the information provided will be made available for public inspection (including the personal information demanded.)
The San Angelo Tea Party was indirectly denied tax-exempt status, even though qualified, by the IRS requiring information so onerous, laborious and invasive that it was difficult to impossible to provide. The tea party did not continue to pursue the application for these reasons.
1Words of Peggy Noonan, This is No Ordinary Scandal, The Wall Street Journal, May 18-19, 2013
Next Regular Meeting
Speaker: Tom Pauken
Candidate for Governor of Texas
Date/Time: Tuesday, May 28, 2013 - 6:30 PM
Place: West Texas Training Center (Howard College)
3501 N. US Highway 67, San Angelo 76905
A native Texan, Tom Pauken was active in the Goldwater for President Campaign in 1964. A year later, he was elected national chairman of the College Republicans during the rise of the anti-Vietnam protest movement. Enlisting in the U.S. Army in 1967, Tom served as a military intelligence officer in Vietnam.
Tom served on President Ronald Reagan’s White House staff. Named Director of the ACTION agency by President Reagan, he eliminated the use of federal tax dollars to fund Saul Alinsky-style leftist organizers. At ACTION, Tom founded the Vietnam Veterans Leadership Program and implemented Nancy Reagan’s “Just Say No to Drugs” campaign. For his meritorious service as Director of ACTION, Tom Pauken was awarded the Ronald Reagan Medal of Honor by his fellow Reagan administration alumni.
Elected Texas Republican State Chairman in 1994, Tom helped build a Republican majority in Texas from the grassroots.
Tom Pauken served as Chairman of the Texas Workforce Commission from 2008 to 2012 where he championed the cause of increased opportunities for vocational education, rebuilding our U.S. manufacturing base, and helping our returned veterans from Iraq and Afghanistan make a successful transition to civilian life through such initiatives as the Texas Veterans Leadership Program (TVLP).
A former venture-capital executive, Tom is a small business owner and the author of The Thirty Years War: The Politics of the Sixties Generation. His most recent book is BRINGING AMERICA HOME: How America Lost Her Way and How We Can Find Our Way Back.
Tom and his wife, the former Ida Ayala, have seven children and thirteen grandchildren.
Note: During this meeting, we will vote on the changes to the bylaws that were presented at our last meeting on May 14th. For a copy of the proposed changes, click here.
Forwarded Email from
Texans for Fiscal Responsibility
May 10, 2013
You Did it... Again!
Twice in one week, citizens raising their voices forced tax-and-spend legislators to back down.
Last night, the Texas House was slated to vote on a massive hike in vehicle registrations. Lots of new money and higher costs for you, but without reforms to a broken spending system. (Earlier this week, plans to raid the Economic Stabilization Fund were stopped dead in their tracks.)
Let’s be clear: transportation infrastructure, like water, is critical to the lives and prosperity of all Texans. Because they are so critical, we cannot allow legislative spend-meisters to frivolously and inappropriately allocate our dollars inefficiently and ineffectively.
Moderate GOP State Rep. Drew Darby of San Angelo went to the microphone and arrogantly lectured his fellow House members to have “courage” and support his legislation. (I didn’t know it took “courage” to pick Texans pockets rather than prioritize spending.)
After nearly an hour of debate, Mr. Darby withdrew his legislation rather than face a certain defeat. So much for having that “courage”...
In an angry speech, the Straus leadership shill decried the influence of “forces outside the (House) chamber” for derailing his legislation. That would be you! Taxpayers are an “outside force” getting in the way of Drew Darby's efforts at big-spending cronyism.
Or, as Dustin Matocha put it in a post last night, Mr. Darby “hit a roadblock” and the wheels came off his foolhardy plan.
Legitimate plans to properly fund transportation exist, but House Speaker Joe Straus and his leadership cabal refused to let any of them move. In fact, those bills died at midnight last night under the Rules of the Texas House.
While Texans have been successful this Session putting the brakes on the most egregious expansions of government, there have been almost nothing in terms of substantive reforms for legislators to take home proudly.
From guns rights to social issues to fiscal reforms, precious little seems destined for enactment. The Straus team keeps killing clear taxpayer priorities – like enacting strict constitutional spending limits and zero-based budgeting.
Under Joe Straus and his lieutenants, like Calendars Committee Chairman Todd Hunter of Corpus Christi and House Administration Chairman Charlie Geren of Fort Worth, those reforms haven't been allowed to go forward.
Even with $8 billion in new revenue, Ways & Means Committee Chairman Harvey Hilderbran of Kerrville and Appropriations Committee Chairman Jim Pitts of Waxahachie couldn’t (or, more precisely, wouldn't) find room for substantive tax relief.
When the legislative leadership holds top spending priorities unfunded until the end of the session to make it hard to stop budget growth, we should call it what it is: blackmail.
With a near-supermajority in the House, it simply shouldn't be such a struggle to get good reforms forward. Or, for that matter, to stop bad bills and tax hikes.
Legislators are going to have to eventually explain back home why, after campaigning for specific ideas, they keep putting lackluster moderates in charge of their Chamber; moderates who then thwart the very reforms conservative Texans most expect. (Remember, 94 percent of Republican Primary voters cast a ballot for a question calling for a strict limit on government growth.)
Clearly, the Texas House needs some more cleaning in 2014.
But for now, you can take a moment – but only a moment, there is work to be done! – to enjoy pushing back against an irresponsible plan. Great job!
Sincerely,
Michael Quinn Sullivan
& the EmpowerTexans.com Team