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Senator Konni Burton (R-Colleyville) watches nominees get approval despite her vote of no on the UT Board of Regents before the Senate for confirmation on March 11, 2015.

Senator Konni Burton (R-Colleyville) watches nominees get approval...

AUSTIN - Nine years ago, fresh off a term as a Smith County commissioner in northeast Texas, JoAnn Fleming drove to Dallas for a "boot camp" with other like-minded conservatives.

It wasn't on the radar of the public or most of the Texas political establishment. But many now consider it a key event in the birth of the tea party movement.

The goal was to examine how government works - and how they could force changes to make officials more accountable.

Also on the agenda: how to get their point across, voter to voter.

"Konni Burton was there, as were a lot of other people whose names would become familiar to a lot of Texans in the years to come," Fleming said, referring to the Republican who went on to become a state senator from Colleyville. "I had thought that once I was through with elected office, I'd take two years off to become a normal person again. Obviously, I didn't."

Within weeks, she said, the tea party movement in Texas was born.

It was a seed that quickly blossomed on the national stage with calls from grass-roots activists to cut federal spending, taxes and the size of government, and reduce the federal deficit. The movement burgeoned just as Democrat Barack Obama was moving into the White House.

Back in Texas, the tea party emerged as a decentralized movement that slowly expanded its focus to state government in Austin, even as a few Texas elected officials including then-Gov. Rick Perry joined their ranks to help bash federal overreach and the wasteful bureaucracy in D.C.

Now, with Republicans firmly in charge in both capitals, Texas' tea party activists are shifting their focus to the next phase in their evolution: as a political movement that is now an established insider power player at the Capitol, despite its historic outsider bravado.

Tea party caucuses have grown ranks in both the state House and Senate - the Freedom and Liberty caucuses, they are called - and Burton is now a senator in the chamber where staunch GOP conservatives are in charge, starting with the presiding officer, Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick.

'Coalition approach'

The next step for the tea party will be played out front and center in the special legislative session that begins Tuesday. Gov. Greg Abbott, who formally announced his re-election bid Friday, has set a 20-issue agenda - much of it tailor-made for tea party regulars - that will pit the strongly conservative Senate against the more moderate House over controversial issues such as the bathroom bill, property-tax reforms, school-choice for special-needs children and how to better finance public schools.

"We are moving from solely a tea party effort to a coalition approach because we have common ground with a lot of other organizations on other issues," said Fleming, who is executive director of Grassroots America - We The People, a tea party group. "People in the tea party movement have been asking for some time how we can get help to effect change, and the answer is that it takes time to build trust and build coalitions. That's where we are now."

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In recent months, even during the regular legislative session that ended in May, tea party groups from around Texas partnered with local pro-business groups, toll-road opponents, medical organizations, mainstream Republican groups and immigration-reform organizations, to push for the passage or defeat of legislation, both in Austin and in Washington. With the special session just days away from its start, the coalition supporting passage of many - if not all - of Abbott's agenda has grown to more than 60 groups.

'Natural progression'

At a June 26 summit meeting in Dallas, 121 leaders representing 59 organizations met to discuss the special session - including members of the State Republican Executive Committee, GOP county chairs and conservative organizations - and plan their lobbying strategy.

That promises to put additional pressure on the Texas House, where Speaker Joe Straus has publicly compared some of the items to horse manure and suggested that a number may not get approval in the House. Ten of the 20 bills were approved by the Senate during the regular legislative session, and Patrick predicted on Thursday that the rest will easily pass his chamber - likely very soon after the 30-day special session begins.

"This is no longer solely a tea party effort," said Del Carothers, a Georgetown rancher who has been active with several Texas tea party groups since 2011.

"We have grown way past where we started out. Once you get a civics lesson on how our government actually operates, you know it has to change to be responsive to the people. And you know that if you really care about citizen-driven government and freedom, which is what the Founding Fathers intended, you have to be involved and make that happen," he said.

"If you sit around on your ass, government will run your life and they'll waste your money."

Mark Jones, a Rice University political scientist who has studied the rise of the tea party as a political force, said the increasing clout of the activists should come as no surprise in Red State Texas.

"The tea party movement had been building for some time, and it took off in Texas when Gov. Perry gave his Tax Day speech in 2009 and went from being a pragmatic centrist to straddling the tea party line," he said. "The next natural progression is for these groups to start exerting their influence in who is elected and to expand their clout by building coalitions with other groups. That's what's happening now."

In Texas, where many legislative seats are filled by the candidate who wins the Republican primary, tea party candidates often win. Perhaps their biggest surprise was the 2013 election of Ted Cruz over Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst for a U.S. Senate seat.

"In the special session, where all the items are of a conservative nature, the hiding places will be gone for Republicans who want to say they're conservative but not vote that way," said Dale Huls, with the Clear Lake Tea Party near Houston. "The best vote some of them can make may be the one not taken, especially in the House, because if they vote against our issues we're going to be watching everything they're doing.

"This is put up or shut up time."

For Republicans who refuse to support the tea party agenda, Huls and other activists said the coalition of groups wants them censured by the Republican Party of Texas. Even before the special session begins, a deeply divided Republican Party of Bexar County passed a resolution on Monday calling for "a change in leadership in the Texas House" - a surprising move considering that Speaker Straus, a target of tea party anger on many issues, is from San Antonio.

'Everybody can win'

Despite the predictions that the tea party influence could push much of Abbott's more controversial agenda items, including the bathroom and property-tax reform bills, to pass during the special session, when they failed during the regular session, House leaders privately say they think that is unlikely. That's because most of the controversial bills will simply not have enough support from Republicans and Democrats to pass in as strident a form as the Senate wants, said one House committee chairman.

"The agenda for the special session is part of an election campaign," said longtime Austin political consultant Bill Miller. "It's set up perfectly so that if not everything the tea party wants is passed, the governor can say well I tried. Re-elect me, and we'll get it done next year. Dan Patrick can say the Senate passed everything, and Joe Straus can say it was the will of the House, and the Senate and the House are much different chambers.

"Everybody can win."

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Texas tea party: the birth and evolution of a movement - Houston Chronicle

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What I understand is the IRS was targeting any organization that had the name Tea Party in it or the word conservative. We werent the only ones, said Graham Bartlett, the president of the local Tea Party.

He said hed been informed about a month ago by the groups legal counsel, the Washington D.C.-based American Center for Law and Justice, that the requested 501c (4) status was coming through.

I didnt want to say anything and make it public until I had the actual documentation in my hands, Bartlett said Monday.

The Albuquerque Tea Party requested tax-exempt status because it relies on donations, and people tend to donate more when they know they can write it off on their taxes, he said.

Further, tax-exempt status allows one party to transfer money to and receive money from other tax-exempt entities without paying taxes on those funds.

Were basically an education organization. We dont have dues and we rely on donations, Bartlett said Some of our activities cost money, such as costs for renting space for candidate forums and printing literature.

Daniel Moore, the Tea Party chairman of communications and a board member, said that the process of applying for tax exempt status is normally concluded within six months, at which point you know if you have it or not, and if you dont you can appeal.

The local organization filed its request in December 2009. Several months later the IRS demanded more documentation concerning the organizations activities. The group complied, Bartlett said.

The IRS then requested even more documentation, including board minutes, brochures, newsletters and correspondences. In all, the Tea Party provided more than 1,000 pages, but as the months and years passed there was still no decision on the application for tax exempt status.

The long wait was absolutely unusual and unconscionable and speaks directly to the issue of free speech, said Moore.

In 2012, the American Center for Law and Justice filed a lawsuit against the IRS on behalf of the Albuquerque Tea Party as well as other conservative groups whose requests for tax-exempt status seemed to be put on hold during the Obama administration.

The ACLJ is a conservative, Christian-based organization associated with Regent University School of Law in Virginia Beach, Va. The organizations chief counsel is Jay Sekulow, a member of President Donald Trumps private legal team.

The FBI in 2014 announced its investigation into IRS tactics found examples of mismanagement and poor judgment, but no evidence to support criminal prosecution.

Likewise the Department of Justice announced in 2015 that its review had found no evidence that any IRS official acted on political, discriminatory, corrupt or inappropriate motives in the handling of tax-exempt applications.

However, both Bartlett and Moore noted that since President Trump and the Republicans assumed power in Washington, D.C., in January, there seems to have been a change in policy and tone at the IRS.

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Albuquerque Tea Party finally granted tax-exempt status by IRS - Albuquerque Journal

By Robert Newby

Make America Great Again! What a con? Instead, what the nation has witnessed over the first six months of the Trump presidency has been close to a total disaster! Americas place in the world will never be the same again. Instead of world leader, the United States President Trump is an embarrassment.

At the recent G-20, Americas president was the odd man out. In terms he would certainly understand, President Trump was a loser. Remember, former Gov. Mitt Romney said that Donald Trump is a fraud. For about a century, until now, the American presidency has been the most highly regarded position on the planet.

Based on a survey of 37 nations, the Pew Research Center has found that the Donald Trump presidency has caused alarm among the nations closest allies. He has humiliated our NATO allies. He has spit in the face of the world by turning the Nations back on the Paris Accord. Essentially, every nation in the world voted for the accord except Donald Trump on behalf of the United States!

The decline in Americas prestige since President Barack Obama left office has been precipitous. According to the Pew Survey, America had a 64% favorable rating among the people in those 37 countries with Obama as President. By this spring, under a Trump presidency that favorability rating had dropped to 49%. In that same survey, a median of 22% were confident that Trump would do the right thing in a global crisis, down from 64% in the Obama presidency. For what he symbolized, Barack Obama was held in such high regard, globally, he received the Nobel Peace Prize.

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Donald Trump on the other hand has become the target of considerable derision, internationally. He cannot travel to England for a State dinner because the Brit populace has made it clear he is not welcome. How did we get to this place where the President of America is no longer respected?

We got here because of Tea Party Republican White Nationalism. While people might quibble with President Barack Obamas policies, the fact is he brought intelligence, integrity, class, and dignity to the White House. Both progressives and conservatives found reasons to be dissatisfied with the Obama. Nevertheless, most would agree he was presidential.

Having a black president of the United States of America does mean that America has changed. That is not to say that America is post-racial, hardly, not even close, as the Black Lives Matter movement reminds us. That said, having a black president of the United States of America has provided a certain legitimacy to what it means to be black in America. Barack Obama changed the face of America.

Unfortunately, while America and the world saw the Obama presidency as a positive step in the course of American history, world history, Americas white supremacist past rose up in opposition to this progress. President Donald Trump and the Tea Party Republican white nationalism are the driving forces of white resentment to progress by Blacks, other people of color, and groups suffering from some invidious discrimination.

So when Donald Trump says he wants to Make America Great Again!, understand, for him, America was great when he and his father practiced housing discrimination. For him, America was great before there were environmental regulations. For him, America was great when whites could stereotype people of color and call them names. For him, America was great before women had rights and demanded respect. For him, America was great when Blacks were denied the right to vote. For the most part, Trump got his votes not inspite of his racism but because of it.

Trumps victory is not todays America. A majority of the electorate voted for Hillary Clinton, the liberal, the progressive, the feminist, the statesperson, the advocate for poor children. Trump, with the support of his Tea Party white nationalist Republicans, was elected by an institution to protect the power of the slave holding states, the electoral college. This is the politics of white space, not the American majority. Look at the electoral map, where is the red?

Unfortunately, that white space harbors a politics of resentment. As Professor Theda Skopol of Harvard and her colleague, Vanessa Williamson, show in their book, The Tea Party and the Remaking of Republican Conservatism, (Oxford University Press, 2012) the Tea Party has taken over the Republican Party. Donald Trump is the leader of the new Tea Party white nationalist Republicans. These are the politics that have alienated the world from our leader.

Robert Newby is a professor emeritus in the department of sociology, anthropology and social work at Central Michigan University. He writes a bi-weekly column for the Morning Sun. The column has been missing for some weeks because of a family illness that is now much improved.

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NEWBY: Trump, Tea Party white nationalism and the Republican Party - The Morning Sun

Published on July 16th, 2017 | by Guest Contributor

July 16th, 2017 by Guest Contributor

Originally published on Nexus Media. By Molly Taft

Imagine youre packing for a Florida vacation. A swimsuit, shades and a few gallons of sunscreen are probably the first things to go in your bag. If youre driving south from Georgia to Disney World, youll see a big, blue sign when you hit the state line: Welcome to Florida, the Sunshine State.

Apparently, not everyone in Florida has gotten the memo.

The states chief power regulator, Art Graham, told an audience at a 2014hearingon solar power, I think the whole Sunshine State is just a license plate slogan. Grahams not alone. For years, state lawmakers havesaid intermittent cloud cover would make solar unworkable in Florida.

And yet, Florida generatesless solar energythan several far cloudier states, including Massachusetts, New York and New Jersey. When it comes to solar, policy is key. And there, Florida is sorely lacking.

Solar resources available across the United States. Florida ranks among the sunniest states. Source: NREL

Floridas big electric utilities are the major sunblock. The four largest investor-owned utilitiesFlorida Power and Light, Gulf Power Electric, Tampa Electric Company and Duke Energysupply power to around75 percentof Florida ratepayers.

On your drive to Disney World, you might peer out your car window at the Mickey Mouse-shaped solar farm near Epcot. You would guess the array belongs to Disney, but you would be wrong. Disney merely owns the land under the installation. Duke Energy owns and operates the array, and sells the power it generates to the resort.

Effectively, four companies control Floridas power market, dictating how and at what price residents get their energy. Floridians generally dont get to choose which power provider they use to run their homes.

Its like saying only one person gets to sell you coffee for the rest of your life all across the state of Florida, said Tory Perfetti, chairman of the advocacy groupFloridians for Solar Choice. I dont drink coffee, but I think that would be kind of crummy.

Utilities in Florida also earn an unusually high return on power. They want to supply as much electricity as possible to consumers. Rooftop solar threatens their bottom line. [Utilities] dont want to sell less energy any more than McDonalds wants to sell fewer hamburgers, said Susan Glickman, Director of theSouthern Alliance for Clean Energy. Thats just their business model.

Clean energy advocates say Florida utilities wield outsized influence on state politics. Utilities rank among the largest campaign donors in Florida politics. A 2014reportfrom watchdog groupIntegrity Floridafound that the states four utilities spent more than $12 million on lobbying between 2007 and 2013, registering at least one lobbyist for every two legislators each year during that period.

Notably, its Florida ratepayers who are footing the bill for utility lobbying efforts. Everybody lobbies from every side of the aisle, said Perfetti. But utilities are using the money they earn from a noncompetitive market to lobby to keep that market noncompetitive.

This table shows how much money Floridas largest utilities spent lobbying the state legislature between 2007 and 2013. Source: Integrity Florida

This table shows how much money Floridas largest utilities spent lobbying the state legislature between 2007 and 2013. Source: Integrity Florida

Utilities also enjoy an unusually close relationship with the government. The Integrity Florida report details a revolving door between power companies and regulators. And it finds that the Public Service Commission, including regulators like Graham, routinely side with utilities over consumers.

For this reason, solar was practically untouchable in Florida politics until recently. If you were a politician trying to open up solar through the free market you were going to have every door shut in your face legislatively, said Perfetti. If you were going to take a stand at all, you were going to have a pretty tough time.

But the tide is beginning to shift. Utilities now face opposition from an unlikely source. In the spring of 2014, Perfetti and Debbie Dooley recruited Tea Party activists and influential Florida conservatives to join a new pro-solar advocacy group,Floridians for Solar Choice.

Dooley and Perfetti united libertarians and pro-business trade groups with environmental organizations. Last year, they pushed toamend the state constitutionto allow Floridians to sell solar power to their neighbors.

Utilities put forward a competingamendment, known as Amendment 1, that could be used to raise fees on rooftop solar owners and block small solar farms from selling their power to consumers. The companies created an advocacy group, Consumers for Smart Solar, withfundingfrom organizations connected to the Koch Brothers.

Consumers for Smart Solar vastlyoutspentFloridians for Solar Choice, and succeeded in making Amendment 1 the only solar-related option on the November ballot. Its official title, Rights of Electricity Consumers Regarding Solar Energy Choice, led many to believe it would expand access to solar energy. In reality, it would strengthen utilities ironclad grip on the power grid. Those who signed the petition to put Amendment 1 on the ballot later told theMiami Heraldthey felt scammed.

This chart shows which utility and fossil fuel groups funded Consumers for Smart Solar. Source: Energy and Policy Institute

While Floridians for Solar Choice failed to gathered enough signature to get their measure on the ballot, they nonetheless managed to demonstrate the broad support for solar. The success of that effort, which created such noise and attention, put pressure and pushed the legislators towards pro-solar policies, Glickman said.

In response to these efforts, lawmakers created a ballot initiative that wouldamend the state constitutionto waive property taxes on solar panels installed on homes and businesses. Amendment 4, as it was known, passed with73 percentof the vote in August 2016.

Amendment 1 would meet a different fate come November. The measure earned national coverage,most of it critical, and a series of gaffes plagued the campaign in its final weeks. A utility-friendly policy director was caught on tape praising the amendments deceptive language as political jiu-jitsu, while the Florida firefighter union publiclywithdrew its supportfor the amendment days before the vote.

We are engaged in a David vs. Goliath battle, a retired fire captain wrote in a letter to the union chief, and having a phony firefighter on TV ads hoodwinking the public that they should support this fraud is so repulsive to me, words do not suffice.

Florida ultimately rejected the measure at the ballot box. Talk about sending a message, laughed Glickman.

Perfetti said the deceptive tactics of the anti-solar coalition were a wake-up call for voters. I would have people call me up who dont pay attention to normal politics, and they knew what was going on. They knew the utility industry was trying to fix and rig the game for their own profit, said Perfetti. Youre talking about an enshrined industry that had total dominance in a state, that was trying to pass an amendment to give them more dominance.

Despite their resounding defeat at the ballot box, utilities have continued to undermine solar. The legislature recently authored a bill implementing Amendment 4. In the first draft, Rep. Ray Rodrigues (R) snuck in language written by Florida Power and Light. The added text would have saddled solar companies with new financial disclosure requirements, but theMiami Heraldexposedthe move, and legislators cut the offending language from the final version of the bill.

Whats next for solar in Florida? Advocates dont know, but one thing is certain. Utilities wont back down when it comes to blocking the sun. Im sure there will be battles coming up in the future that we cant even predict yet, said Perfetti. We are not going anywhere.

Reprinted with permission.

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Tags: Florida, Florida solar, tea party

Guest Contributor is many, many people. We publish a number of guest posts from experts in a large variety of fields. This is our contributor account for those special people. 😀

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Florida Utilities Try To Stymie Rooftop Solar, While Tea Party Conservatives Try To Save It - CleanTechnica

I wore my best summer dress bright yellow to the tea party the 7-year-old girl in our family gave for my birthday. Peonies and snapdragons in profusion. What more could I ask on a Tuesday afternoon in July?

Well, the company.

There were six of us at the lavish table: my mother and father, a sister, and her son and daughter. We were home away from home: in the Midwest house my grandfather built when he was a tall young man in Madison, on his first job in the Wisconsin Highway Department.

My mother grew up in this house, this village. Her summer job was teaching kids to swim in Lake Mendota. Every night, her father played ragtime on the piano, until he was very old. He died at 99.

Lush green grass was still rolling outside the window, where my grandfather bird-watched with binoculars. The raspberry patch has seen better days.

What an uncanny child to know Im an Anglophile at heart. I never told her about the storm-tossed London chapter of my life in my 20s. The British man I married told me, in all seriousness, that there was no calamity on land or sea that could not be calmed by a cup of tea. I grew fond of Earl Grey.

The birthday tea party was all the girls idea as we admired my grandmothers teacup collection, each adorned in a different flower design. Ive loved those teacups for a long time, but they stayed on a living room shelf for decades, even after my sweet Wisconsin grandmother died in the 1990s at 93. She grew up in a small town in Kansas.

Sterling, Kan., have you heard of it? Her large Kilbourn family lived in town but had a ranch, too, where she spent summers. The men worked from early in the morning and needed hearty meals.

So I got to choose the first teacup. Primroses please, to remind me of storybook Primrose Hill in Northwest London (of 101 Dalmatians fame). We were going to put these cups to work, by Jove.

This turned out a matrilineal thing, based on the female line. The girl had connected to my grandmother Eleanors spirit her great-grandmother. She was born 20 years after my grandmother died.

For the party, I made cucumber sandwiches, thinly sliced cukes on trimmed white bread with a bit of butter, cream cheese and, yes, salt and herbs if you wish. The English knew how to cope with the midday sun in India and Africa, a cricket match picnic at home.

The Championships at Wimbledon also create an English garden character. Elderflower cordials, a well-kept secret, are perfect on a summer day.

The boy requested Bengal Spice tea and coffee cake. He and my father were sports for this light-hearted affair. It gave me a magical contrast to the heat where I live.

Now Im back in the boiling cauldron and smoking guns of President Donald Trumps Washington. Im wearing my press pass to go to the Capitol. Must I go? Washington is one harshly masculine world after my Wisconsin tonic.

The scene here feels like The Mad Tea Party given by the Hatter in Alices Adventures in Wonderland. Its far less amusing, of course, and more sinister.

Fresh from dairylands sanity, the latest father and son Trump ties to Russia, apparently disclosed through emails, does not surprise. Like father, like son. What surprises me is all the powerful people on our shores who tolerate his utter nonsense. The British word is appalling.

Meanwhile, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., uses the Russian story to deflect the news media and people from the health-care repeal he means to ram through the Senate this scorching summer.

Trump talks, but McConnell moves, all day long.

Watching all these spinning Washington teacups has me yearning for my stable Wisconsin table.

The centerpiece was the lemon citrus cake. As you see, a tea party can be just the thing. A present from a prescient girl.

Jamie Stiehm writes about politics, culture and history as a weekly Creators Syndicate columnist and regular contributor to U.S. News & World Report. Follow her on Twitter: @jamiestiehm. Click here to read previous columns. The opinions expressed are her own.

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Jamie Stiehm: The Tea Party Takes the Cake - Noozhawk