Portage County TEA Party

4682 State Route 43 • Kent, Ohio • 44240 • 330-474-3878 • 330-673-4672 (Fax)

November 7, 2013

Ravenna Record Courier

126 North Chestnut Street

Ravenna, OH  44266

Dear Editor,

I would like to make your readers aware of a change in our national media narrative. The lies, and the liars, are now being exposed, and the public is learning that the TEA Party speaks the truth.

With this letter, I am submitting to this newspaper a letter from State Auditor Dave Yost to the Field School Board. It shows dozens of cases of accounting mistakes and policy violations. While they kept insisting for years that we must pass a new levy, our members asked Treasurer Vokac and the Board honest, pointed, financial questions. We were called liars and worse and our personal integrity was attacked – many times in letters to this newspaper. Now we know the truth, the TEA Party was right to question their financial projections, and Mr. Vokac and the Board members who hired him are gone.

Two years ago, as President of the the Ohio Liberty Coalition, I publicly told the IRS that we would not comply with their outrageous demands and their attempts to restrict our first amendment rights.  We were dismissed as conspiracy theorists. The media narrative was that the TEA Party was just a bunch of bigots, racists, homophobes, islamophobes, and Nazi’s, who could not be believed.  That was the lie that was intended to discredit their critics and hide the truth. But we did prove that the Obama administration, by its own admission, used the IRS and other government agencies for political targeting.  Our efforts helped disclose to Americans that their government was reading our emails, tracking our webpage visits, listening to our phone calls and sharing our private information with political groups. The TEA Party took incredible abuse for years, simply because we told the truth, that you did not want to hear. 

Finally, over the past six weeks, the President, Senator Reid, and Speaker Pelosi defined the media narrative that the “TEA Party Republicans” and the TEA Party were a bunch of “terrorists”, holding the government “hostage”, “holding a gun to the head of the President”, and we were “extortionist.” They said that we were crazy to shut the government down in an effort to stop Obamcare, when in truth the President and his staff had orchestrated the shutdown months ahead of time for purely political purposes. We were trying to stop this disaster. They repeated the President’s lies about Obamacare, that you could keep your doctor, and your plan, and that your costs would go down. We said that Obamacare would raise the cost and reduce the quality of healthcare, that it was not ready, that it should be defunded or at least delayed. Now we all know that Obamacare is a disaster, and all of our concerns are true.

It is clear that the media, and many of your readers, have been wrong about the TEA Party from the start. They demonize us because many do not want to face the truth about themselves or our nation.  The truth is that government is not the answer, it is the problem. The truth is that capitalism works and socialism doesn’t. The truth is that good paying jobs are what people want, not handouts. The truth is that individual freedom and liberty, and the opportunity to work hard and get ahead, is what made America great. America is finally beginning to see the Truth and it’s name is the TEA Party – join us.

Tom Zawistowski

Executive Director

Portage County TEA Party