Derek Hankerson to Speak at June 12th Meeting

Derek Hankerson, Documentary Film Producer with Freedom Road Productions will be speaking in Lake City at the North Central Florida Tea Party meeting on June 12, 2014.  Mr. Hankerson co-produced a film in 2012 entitled “The Underground Railroad, Florida’s Southern Route to Freedom”.  This film won the National Association of Black Journalist’s Best Documentary and the Canadian Rising Star Award. 
Mr. Hankerson will be speaking on “How the Tea Party is similar to the radical Republicans of the 1800’s”; He will focus on the 13th, 14th, 15th and 19th amendments as well as discussing the Civil Rights legislation of 1866, 1870, 1871, and 1875. 
This is a crucial time in our country when all people should be coming together to work toward restoring our country back to the Constitutional Republic it was founded on.  Please invite your friends and family to come hear Mr. Hankerson speak to us on this important subject!  The North Central Florida Tea Party is a group of citizens who are concerned about where our nation is heading.  We are a grassroots, nonpartisan group opposed to wasteful deficit spending and infringement of our natural rights.  We meet at 7:00 p.m. on the second Thursday of each month at the Jackie Taylor Building located at 128 SW Birley Ave.  This is on the corner of U.S. 90 and Birley Ave. approx. 3 miles west of the I-75 interchange.  For more information on our group, go to www.ncftparty.org or call 386-935-0821.

Back to top

Concerned Veterans For America

Our group has been holding phone banking sessions in conjunction with Concerned Veterans For America.  This is an effort to reach out to veterans in our area and get them more involved in what is going on in our country.  This is especially important with all the recent information about the Veterans Administration.  We will be phone banking on the 3rd Tuesday of each month from 6:00 to 8:00 p..m. at the main branch of the Columbia County Library.  Our next session will be on Tuesday June 17th.  If you would like to help with this endeavor, please call John at 386-935-1705. 

Back to top

Future Meetings

We will begin meeting twice a month during the election season.  This will give us time to invite the candidates to come in and speak to us before the primary election on August 26th.  Please mark your calendars for the second and fourth Thursdays of each month through August 14th.  Please try to attend and listen to what the candidates have to say.  It was decided that we will put together a question and answer sheet for the candidates and make a decision on which candidate in each race we think is the best candidate.  We will publish these results prior to the primary election.  The candidates need to know that we are an important force to be reckoned with and that we will hold them accountable after they are elected!

Back to top

Why You Should Oppose the New EPA Rule

Thanks to Jim B. for sending this.  Written by John Hoblick, Florida Farm Bureau Federation President.

In a 1912 public address President Woodrow Wilson declared that “The history of liberty is a history of limitations of governmental power, not the increase of it.” Some of our current federal officials would be wise to heed Wilson’s counsel.

The reform-minded president recognized that even when used in the name of the common good, unrestrained governmental power is an evil in itself*.

One of the duties of citizenship involves keeping a watchful eye on the authority wielded by public agencies – especially when bureaucrats grasp for discretionary decision making over matters that affect the economy and the daily livelihoods of families across the country.

An example of the problem has emerged with a new federal rule issued by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. In April officials at these two agencies proposed what amounts to be a reinterpretation of the Clean Water Act of 1972.

Known as the “Waters of the United States” rule, the proposal would give the agencies the same regulatory control over low spots on dry land and ephemeral water bodies as they have for the Mississippi River.

EPA officials would gain the independent right to determine which areas of dry land are subject to the Clean Water Act. But the authors of the act never intended to give any federal bureaucrat direct control over dry land. This law only applies to navigable waters.

Prairie potholes, ditches and temporary pools of water created by heavy rainfall are not navigable waters by any reasonable understanding.

But the new rule would expand that meaning of the act so that the EPA and the Corps of Engineers could claim they are. If so, land owners would immediately face permitting and mitigation expenses.

Farm families are not the only private land owners at risk. As the article on Pages 10 and 11 of the June issue of FloridAgriculture magazine indicates, the owners and managers of golf courses, recreational lands, utilities, cemeteries and theme parks would face the same financial burdens. Fines for misinterpreting the rule could be as high as $37,500 each day. The agencies’ claims that traditional agricultural practices are exempt do not ring true. The text of the rule presents a very different meaning.

I am greatly distressed at the prospect that many of Florida’s farm families could be forced out of business because of the permitting costs alone. We must protect them against an unprecedented power grab.

Editor's note: *President Wilson was one of our worst presidents when it comes to not limiting governmental power; but I guess all of them said something good at one time or another.  Whether they believed it or not is another matter!

http://yoho.house.gov/contact

Back to top