General Meetings - 1st Friday of every month Charles Chrin Community Center (Directions/Map-Link) 4100 Green Pond Road  Palmer,PA  18045 7pm to 9pm-(doors open at 6:30PM)-Open to the Public

As heard on the RADIO (WAEB-AM 790)

Nickle & Dimed - we're talking about it!

This January 20 the Obama Administration issued a regulation requiring all employers to provide health care coverage for their employees for sterilization, contraception and abortive drugs or be penalized $2000 per employee.  The only exception given was to Churches, the actual houses of worship, but not to any other affiliated religious-based institutions, such as, hospitals, schools, hospice centers, charities or other religious service organizations.  This ruling is in direct violation of the basic religious principles of Catholics, Lutherans, Orthodox Jews, Seventh Day Adventists, and many other religious institutions.  It is also in direct violation of our First Amendment clause stating “Congress shall make no law…prohibiting the free exercise (of religion)”. Notice, not even Congress can pass a law to this effect, never mind issuing a simple regulation from the Executive branch.

The outraged response by the Catholic bishops was immediate; they had their pastors all across the nation read a letter to all their parishioners this past Sunday stating they cannot “comply with this unjust law without compromising our convictions”.  The Catholic Archbishop for Military Services, Timothy Broglio, went even further; He called on all Catholics “to resist the policy initiative…because it represents a violation of the freedom of religion recognized by the US Constitution”.  Unfortunately, Secretary of the Army, John McHugh, had the Office of the Chief of Chaplains direct senior chaplains not to read the Archbishop’s letter but to make an edited version available at the back of the chapel.

Nor does the recent “compromise” of having the insurance companies of religious institutions pay for such coverage resolve the problem. First, a number of religious institutions are self-insured and their insurance company simply provides administrative services, meaning the religious institution would be directly funding the very practices they find abhorrent to their values and beliefs. Even where these institutions are not self-insured, the insurance companies would simply incorporate the cost of providing these contraceptive and abortifacient drugs into the total cost of providing the employees with such health care coverage. Insurance companies are not in the business of providing free services that would be a breech of trust of their fiduciary responsibility to their stockholders.

The Obama Administration has now compounded their felonious violation of Individual Rights with their demand that insurance companies provide free medical services. Why not ask those government controlled auto manufacturers to provide free cars or those banks beholden to so many governmental regulations to provide free cash? Is there any limit to which the Obama Administration thinks it can manipulate its citizens and the law of the land?

Such a contentious and insensitive ruling by this Administration reflects a grievous disregard for our individual rights so clearly defined in our Constitution and a display of arrogance that should sound an alarm to all Americans, regardless of party, to denounce such action and demand its repudiation.  To paraphrase an old adage, “First they came for the Catholics, I did not speak out because I was not Catholic, then they came for other Christians, and I did not speak out because I was not Christian, then they came for Conservatives, and I did not speak out because I was not a Conservative, then they came for me, but there was no one left to speak for me.  It’s time to speak out.

Tom McFadden

Executive Board, Lehigh Valley Tea Party

Feb.14, 2012

Adobe Flash Player not installed or older than 9.0.115!

For more LVTP videos visit our YouTube page

January 2012

Adobe Flash Player not installed or older than 9.0.115!

More LVTP guest speaker videos are available HERE

The LVTP has joined the Tea Party Budget Coalition.

You can read the budget here, at FreedomWorks.org

The mainstream media claims the Tea Party movement wants "draconian" cuts yet lacks a reasonable plan.  The new "Tea Party Budget" plan offers a full-fledged rebuke to that assertion. As you’ll see when you read it, it’s detailed, serious, optimistic, practical, and bold. The plan:

• Cuts, caps, and balances spending
• Balances the federal budget without tax hikes
• Reduces federal spending by $9.7 trillion over the coming decade
• Eliminates 4 Departments (Energy, Education, Commerce, and HUD)
• Privatizes and downsizes dozens of departments, agencies, and programs
• Reduces federal outlays from their current level of 24 percent of gross domestic product (GDP), the highest since World War II, to a more realistic 16 percent
• Gives individuals more ownership, choice, and control of their retirement through optional Social Security accounts
• Lets seniors enroll in the Congressional health care plan.
• Moves us boldly back toward the Founders' vision of limited, constitutional government

More at FreedomWorks.org -  Announcing the Tea Party Budget Coalition.

Ayn Rand and the Tea Party: A Recipe for Cultural Change (video)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EHvafBfV7lE

Video -- 1 hour 10 minutes

Dr. Yaron Brook, president and executive director of the Ayn Rand Institute, illustrates how Ayn Rand's novel "Atlas Shrugged" sheds light on the unseen forces that drive cultural and political trends and how the ideas in the novel are vital to any effort to limit government.

THE GREAT THANKSGIVING HOAX

By Richard Maybury

From: 

Mises Daily: Saturday, November 20, 1999 by Richard J. Maybury

http://mises.org/daily/336

This article originally appeared in The Free Market, November 1985.

http://mises.org/journals/fm/fm1185.pdf

The official and false story

Each year at this time school children all over America are taught the official Thanksgiving story, and newspapers, radio, TV, and magazines devote vast amounts of time and space to it. It is all very colorful and fascinating.

It is also very deceiving. This official story is nothing like what really happened. It is a fairy tale, a whitewashed and sanitized collection of half-truths which divert attention away from Thanksgiving's real meaning.

The official [and false] story has the pilgrims boarding the Mayflower, coming to America and establishing the Plymouth colony in the winter of 1620-21. This first winter is hard, and half the colonists die. But the survivors are hard working and tenacious, and they learn new farming techniques from the Indians. The harvest of 1621 is bountiful. The Pilgrims hold a celebration, and give thanks to God. They are grateful for the wonderful new abundant land He has given them.

The official [and false] story then has the Pilgrims living more or less happily ever after, each year repeating the first Thanksgiving. Other early colonies also have hard times at first, but they soon prosper and adopt the annual tradition of giving thanks for this prosperous new land called America.

The Real Story of Thanksgiving in Plymouth, MA

The problem with this official story is that the harvest of 1621 was not bountiful, nor were the colonists hardworking or tenacious. 1621 was a famine year and many of the colonists were lazy thieves.

In his 'History of Plymouth Plantation,' the governor of the colony, William Bradford, reported that the colonists went hungry for years, because they refused to work in the fields. They preferred instead to steal food. He says the colony was riddled with "corruption," and with "confusion and discontent." The crops were small because "much was stolen both by night and day, before it became scarce eatable."

In the harvest feasts of 1621 and 1622, "all had their hungry bellies filled," but only briefly. The prevailing condition during those years was not the abundance the official story claims, it was famine and death. The first "Thanksgiving" was not so much a celebration as it was the last meal of condemned men.

But in subsequent years something changes. The harvest of 1623 was different. Suddenly, "instead of famine now God gave them plenty," Bradford wrote, "and the face of things was changed, to the rejoicing of the hearts of many, for which they blessed God." Thereafter, he wrote, "any general want or famine hath not been amongst them since to this day." In fact, in 1624, so much food was produced that the colonists were able to begin exporting corn.

What happened?

After the poor harvest of 1622, writes Bradford, "they began to think how they might raise as much corn as they could, and obtain a better crop." They began to question their form of economic organization.

This had required that "all profits & benefits that are got by trade, working, fishing, or any other means" were to be placed in the common stock of the colony, and that, "all such persons as are of this colony, are to have their meat, drink, apparel, and all provisions out of the common stock." A person was to put into the common stock all he could, and take out only what he needed.

This "from each according to his ability, to each according to his need" was an early form of socialism, and it is why the Pilgrims were starving. Bradford writes that "young men that are most able and fit for labor and service" complained about being forced to "spend their time and strength to work for other men's wives and children." Also, "the strong, or man of parts, had no more in division of victuals and clothes, than he that was weak." So the young and strong refused to work and the total amount of food produced was never adequate.

To rectify this situation, in 1623 Bradford abolished socialism. He gave each household a parcel of land and told them they could keep what they produced, or trade it away as they saw fit. In other words, he replaced socialism with a free market, and that was the end of famines.

The Real Story of Thanksgiving in Jamestown, VA

Many early groups of colonists set up socialist states, all with the same terrible results. At Jamestown, established in 1607, out of every shipload of settlers that arrived, less than half would survive their first twelve months in America. Most of the work was being done by only one-fifth of the men, the other four-fifths choosing to be parasites. In the winter of 1609-10, called "The Starving Time," the population fell from five-hundred to sixty.

Then the Jamestown colony was converted to a free market, and the results were every bit as dramatic as those at Plymouth. In 1614, Colony Secretary Ralph Hamor wrote that after the switch there was "plenty of food, which every man by his own industry may easily and doth procure." He said that when the socialist system had prevailed, "we reaped not so much corn from the labors of thirty men as three men have done for themselves now."

The Real Story of Thanksgiving in America

Before these free markets were established, the colonists had nothing for which to be thankful. They were in the same situation as Ethiopians are today, and for the same reasons. But after free markets were established, the resulting abundance was so dramatic that the annual Thanksgiving celebrations became common throughout the colonies, and in 1863, Thanksgiving became a national holiday.

Thus the real reason for Thanksgiving, deleted from the official story, is: Socialism does not work; the one and only source of abundance is free markets, and we thank God we live in a country where we can have them.