Even though I’m not a member of the Ohio Tea Party (nor would I ever want to be), I felt compelled to fill out their survey.
1. The Right to Life is a Constitutional right, therefore innocent human beings should have legal protection from conception until natural death. If you hold any exceptions please state them.
The Constitution grants us a great many freedoms to enjoy while inside these borders but it does not explicitly give anyone or anything the right to life.
Since the Constitution does not define the right to life, it also does not define at which moment of development life itself begins. The question is still up in the air and should be left to biologists, since they have a far better understanding of this than any non-biologist ever could.
To be completely honest, I completely agree with the unintentional benefit of abolishing the death penalty.
2. The regulation of Carbon Dioxide in our atmosphere should be left to God and not government and I oppose all measures of Cap and Trade as well as the teaching of global warming theory in our schools.
I firmly believe that the regulation of health in the Tea Party should be left to their gods and not their governments nor their hospitals. You don’t want to interfere with your god’s plan for you, right?
I also oppose the system of regulating CO2 in the atmosphere that was created and pushed in the 1990s by Republicans called, “Cap and Trade.” Here’s a pretty neat look at it: http://www.storyofstuff.com/capandtrade/
The teaching of global warming should absolutely be taught in schools as it is a current science. Much the same way that, in our science classes, we teach other theories. Like the Theory of Gravity.
3. Marriage is defined as being between a man and a woman, any other type of Union is not marriage.
Yes, the definition of marriage, at this specific moment in history, is between a man and a woman. It has not always been, nor will it always be.
Society changes almost as quickly as the definitions of common words. It’s better to keep up than to get left behind.
4. Children should not be placed into foster homes where the parents are homosexual, bisexual, or transgender.
Why not? We currently have millions of children in orphanages and foster care, with no permanent home. A loving couple, heterosexual, asexual, homosexual, bisexual, or transgendered is going to be far better equipped to provide the love, care, and attention to a child than an orphanage ever could.
I’d also be interested in seeing the peer-reviewed research that states that non-straight couples would do a poorer job of raising a child, as this implies.
5. Parental consent should be required for sex education that teaches more than direct abstinence.
I believe that parental consent should be required for sexual education classes and that any sexual education program that teaches abstinence must also do so along side STDs and birth control options.
Arming children with information regarding their health is a good thing. Keeping them in the dark from options is the reason why teen pregnancy and STD rates are at all-time highs.
6. The second Amendment to the Constitution [the right to keep and bear arms] should not be weakened in any way.
I’ve always found it funny how Conservatives cling to their guns when it comes to the Constitution but not the other amendments, like, say, the First. Hint: the order of them is very symbolic and important.
Times have changed since the days when you needed a gun to defend your land from the natives, bandits, or the Red Coats. We now have civil laws, criminal laws, and an entire judicial system set up for the prosecution of such things.
I would personally love to see your gun taken away as well as the guns, knives, and bombs of every person and nation in the world. Unfortunately, that’s never going to happen.
7. Only US citizens should be allowed to vote and a photo ID should always be required to vote. (The Mexican government requires a photo ID and fingerprint).
Mexico, as everyone knows, is the bastion of a legitimate and fair political system.
Rather than restricting people’s access to their rights, why not do things like enable them to vote more easily and readily? We have sickeningly low turnouts each year.
Requiring a photo ID is nothing more than a thinly veiled way to control the voting of minorities and the poor and the topic of a future discussion.
8. I oppose Ohio’s State Income Tax.
I don’t know much about the Ohio State Income Tax but I do know that it has been decreasing for the past few years. Being the Tea Party, it’s likely a flat rejection of all taxes, which is silly.
9. I oppose the Obama Health Care Reform and would like to see more affordable healthcare through a competitive, open, and transparent system.
I support the improperly named “Obama Health Care Reform.” It’s more of an “Health Insurance Industry Reform” but I digress. I’m in support of it.
It’s going to give access for millions of people to health care. I cannot possibly fathom how someone is opposed to that concept.
The Republicans had exactly the same amount of time to try to get their version of a bill out there but, instead of writing a competing bill or trying to help out in any way, they played the roles of children and tried to stop the process entirely.
The Health Insurance industry is an innately immoral one. If your business model is designed around the profits from denying health coverage to someone, it’s broken.
I’d love to see an actual plan from the right, as opposed to “DEATH PANELS” and “POLITICIANS DECIDING YOUR CARE.” Show us what you’ve got.
10. I oppose the ‘don’t ask, don’t tell’ policy of the military and believe that all same sex partners should be banned from combat duty in the military because of the propensity to transmit blood-borne diseases in the theatre of battle.
I also oppose DADT! It’s a terrible system of discrimination based on fear and bigotry. We don’t need that in our country.
Different sex partners can also transmit blood-borne diseases in battle… should we also ban them?
11. I support a law that will allow the people to place on a ballot all collective bargaining agreements of all government associations, unions, and guilds, for their expressed approval. Defeat of such an agreement would mean government workers would not be immune from the free market system.
This certainly uses a lot of buzzwords but it basically sounds like government employees won’t be allowed to unionize unless the people vote on and agree to it? Isn’t that sort of like a corporation telling its employees, “you can’t unionize because we don’t want you to.” Which, to my understanding, is illegal?
12. I oppose card check for voting to implement a Union as this could give unions an unfair intimidation tactic to implement unionisation.
Oh, right. You are just anti-union.
13. I am not an economic pacifist. I believe that we need to protect our economic borders in order to ensure free and fair trade. Tariffs should be used to stop the wealth and jobs of Americans from leaving her borders.
This is saying, “In order to protect our free and fair trade, we need to enact systems to prevent free and fair trade.” If we really wanted a free and fair trade system, we’d eliminate import and export tarrifs entirely.
14. The Federal Reserve as it is currently conceived needs to be abolished or at the very least audited.
I absolutely agree that it needs to be audited. The vote to audit the fed passed the Senate 96-0. It’s happening.
15. I advocated moving our currency to a debt-free supply-side labour-based currency.
Corporations and individuals will surely be able to compete on the world market like this. I can imagine the conversation with a foreign supplier.
“Yeah, we’re going to need 10,000 of those widgets. In return, we’ve got 800 man hours of ditch digging to trade you. But, in order to get them there, we’re going to need to trade some labor to for the cabs, and then some work with the airlines to pay for the flights out there. Once they’re there, we’re going to need a local currency loan from you to pay for hotels, transportation, etc. Oh, we’re debt-free so we’re not going to pay that last bit back with labor.”
