Mia Love Candidate for Utah's 4th Congressional Candidate

During a time when politicians are seen as greedy, power-seeking and corrupt, one craves the dedication and honor of a George Washington type politician. A leader who doesn’t serve the country because of what they will receive from the office (glory, power, salary, first rate health care benefits, fancy party invites, etc.), but a leader who serves because they feel it’s their duty to leave the country in a better place for posterity. A leader who doesn’t see a win in an election as an opportunity for herself, but sees it as a means to create better opportunities for others. I believe I found this type of leader in Mia Love.

My first contact with Mia was during city council elections for Saratoga Springs, Utah in 2003. She was going door to door in my neighborhood introducing herself and asking if anyone had questions for her. When she reached my house I did ask her some questions, which she answered impressively. I liked her solution-focused approach. I spoke with other neighbors and found they were equally impressed with her.

A few weeks later, Mia followed up of her door-to-door introductions with a hot chocolate and donut question-answer session at our neighborhood park. I discovered she did this not only in my neighborhood, but in most of the neighborhoods throughout the city. Once again I was impressed, this time by the countless hours that she dedicated to her campaign. I knew she was involved for reasons beyond personal ambitions. I asked her, “What do you get from serving on the city council?” She answered, “I get to represent my neighborhood and give them a voice. I also get to teach my children by example.”

After serving for 6 years as a city council member, Mia decided to run for mayor. She was anxious to keep property taxes low. At the same time she would be engaged in helping her fellow citizens’ keep more of what they earned, she wanted to help create a more walkable, sociable and safe community. She ran a successful campaign in November 2009, making history as the first African-American woman to be elected as a mayor in the state of Utah.

In contrast to the excessive salaries and pensions of mayors of other cities, Mia’s pay out is $875 each month. No pension. On a less than part-time salary, she faithfully gives 40 to 60 hours of service to the city each week.

Mia’s attitude of hard work and service can be credited to father, Jean Maxine Bourdeau. Her parents immigrated from Haiti to Brooklyn, New York in 1973 with only $10 to their name. Mia was born in December 1974. Her parents were hard working and never received a hand out. Bourdeau even worked additional jobs to pay for his children’s college. On Mia’s first day of college, Bourdeau told his daughter, “You will not be a burden to society. You will certainly give back.”

Mia has a history of giving back, from serving her community through the PTA, as city council member, fitness instructor, Boy Scout merit badge counselor, Sunday school teacher, and mayor. She also shared her vocal talents as a singer in the community’s 2011“Celebration of the Arts” program.

On January 5^th, Mia formerly announced her candidacy for the US Congress to represent the people in Utah’s 4^th Congressional District. Her plans, if elected, are to cut government spending and reign in federal regulations. Mia believes these first steps are essential to create better opportunities for her constituents in Utah. Our district needs a leader like Mia. A leader that is motivated to serve because of a sense of duty to give back. Mia resonates with this selfless dedication. We need her effective leadership to represent us at a time when our state and country needs it most.

By Jessica Stanford

Sarah Palin on $4-Per-Gallon

WASHINGTON — A feisty President Barack Obama defended his administration's energy policies Friday after weeks of attacks from Republicans and energy-state lawmakers of both parties who say the president has blocked new domestic oil and gas production.
“Any notion that my administration has shut down oil production might make for a good political sound bite, but it doesn't match up with reality,” he said at a midday news conference. Read more: http://www.mysanantonio.com/business/article/Obama-says-he-s-no-foe-of-domestic-energy-1081620.php#ixzz1GiwfHDEr

There is no nice way to say this. President Obama's statement simply is not true. Sarah Palin sets the record straight.


The $4-Per-Gallon President

by Sarah Palin on Tuesday, March 15, 2011 at 5:27pm

Is it really any surprise that oil and gas prices are surging toward the record highs we saw in 2008 just prior to the economic collapse? Despite the President’s strange assertions in his press conference last week, his Administration is not a passive observer to the trends that have inflated oil prices to dangerous levels. His war on domestic oil and gas exploration and production has caused us pain at the pump, endangered our already sluggish economic recovery, and threatened our national security.

The evidence of the President’s anti-drilling mentality and his culpability in the high gas prices hurting Americans is there for all to see. The following is not even an exhaustive list:

Exhibit A: His drilling moratorium. Guided by politics and pure emotion following the Gulf spill instead of peer-reviewed science or defensible law, the President used the power of his executive order to impose a deepwater drilling moratorium. The Administration even ignored a court order halting his moratorium. And what is the net result of the President’s (in)actions? A large drilling company was forced to declare bankruptcy, the economy of the region has been hobbled, and at least 7 rigs moved out of the Gulf area to other parts of the world while many others remain idle. Is it any surprise that oil production in the Gulf of Mexico is expected to fall by 240,000 bbl/d in 2011 alone?

But that’s just the Gulf. There’s also the question of a moratorium on the development of Alaska’s Outer Continental Shelf. It seems the Obama Administration can’t agree with itself on whether it imposed a moratorium there or not. The White House claims that they didn’t, but their own Department of the Interior let slip that they did. To clear up this mess, Gov. Parnell decided to sue the DOI to get a solid answer because such a federal OCS drilling moratorium would violate federal law.

Exhibit B: His 2012 budget. The President used his 2012 budget to propose the elimination of several vital oil and natural gas production tax incentives. Eliminating these incentives will discourage energy companies from completing exploratory projects, resulting in higher energy costs for all Americans – and not just at the pump. According to one study mentioned in a recent Wall Street Journal op-ed, eliminating the deduction for drilling costs “could increase natural gas prices by 50 cents per thousand cubic feet,” which would translate to “an increased cost to consumers of $11.5 billion per year in the form of higher natural gas prices.”

Exhibit C: His anti-drilling regulatory policies. The U.S. Geological Survey found that the area north of the Arctic Circle has an estimated 90 billion barrels of technically recoverable oil and 1,670 trillion cubic feet of technically recoverable natural gas, one third of which is in Alaskan territory. That’s our next Prudhoe Bay right there. According to one industry study, allowing Royal Dutch Shell to tap these reserves in Alaska’s Chukchi and Beaufort seas would create an annual average of 54,700 jobs nationwide with a $145 billion total payroll and generate an additional $193 billion a year in total revenues to local, state, and federal governments for 50 years. This would be great news if only the federal government would allow Shell to drill there. But it won’t. It’s been five years since Shell purchased the lease to develop these fields, but it’s been mired in a regulatory funk courtesy of the Obama Administration. After investing $3.5 billion in exploration programs (a significant portion of which went to ensuring responsible spill response and prevention), Shell announced last month that it has given up hope of obtaining the required permits to conduct exploratory drilling this year. That means no jobs and no billions in oil revenue from the Arctic anytime soon thanks to this Administration. Let’s stop and think about this for a moment. Right now Beltway politicos are quibbling over cutting $61 billion from our dangerously bloated $3.7 trillion budget. Allowing drilling in the Chukchi and Beaufort seas will enrich federal coffers by $167 billion a year without raising our taxes. If we let Harry Reid keep his “cowboy poetry,” would the White House consider letting us drill?

Taken altogether, it’s hard to deny that the Obama Administration is anti-drilling. The President may try to suggest that the rise in oil prices has nothing to do with him, but the American people won’t be fooled. Before we saw any protests in the Middle East, increased global demand led to a significant rise in oil prices; but the White House stood idly by watching the prices go up and allowing America to remain increasingly dependent on imports from foreign regimes in dangerously unstable parts of the world.

This was no accident. Through a process of what candidate Obama once called “gradual adjustment,” American consumers have seen prices at the pump rise 67 percent since he took office. Let’s not forget that in September 2008, candidate Obama’s Energy Secretary in-waiting said: “Somehow we have to figure out how to boost the price of gasoline to the levels in Europe.” That’s one campaign promise they’re working hard to fulfill! Last week, the British Telegraph reported that the price of petrol in the UK hit £6 a gallon – which comes to about $9.70. If you think $4 a gallon is bad now, just wait till the next crisis causes oil prices to “necessarily” skyrocket. Meanwhile, the vast undeveloped reserves that could help to keep prices at the pump affordable remain locked up because of President Obama’s deliberate unwillingness to drill here and drill now.

Hitting the American people with higher gas prices like this is essentially a hidden tax and a transfer of wealth to foreign regimes who are providing us the energy we refuse to provide for ourselves. Like inflation, higher energy prices are a hidden tax on Americans who are struggling to make ends meet. And these high gas prices will be felt in the form of higher food prices due to higher transportation costs. Energy is connected to everything in our economy. Access to affordable and secure energy is key to economic growth, which in turn is key to job growth. Energy is the building block of our economy. The President is purposely weakening that building block and weakening our country.

2012 can’t come soon enough.

- Sarah Palin

Bennett's Voting Record...

*Links to Articles and Information about Senator Bennett: http://www.utahrising.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=60%3Abennett&catid=902&Itemid=65* "Bend it Like Bennett" - a short video exposing the money trails between Senator Bennett and the "Big Money" special interest groups who keep funding his perpetual re-election campaigns.: http://www.ourcaucus.com/utah.html*
Ten Reasons to be Concerned about Senator Bennett's Voting Record:
1. Hailed as a “key Republican negotiator,” Senator Bob Bennett supported and voted for the massive $700 billion Wall Street bailout. (Roll Call Vote #213, 10/01/08)
2. “Few politicians have more ties to Freddie and Fannie than Utah Senator Bob Bennett, who topped all Republicans in campaign contributions from the mortgage duo since 1989.” (Salt Lake Tribune, 09/12/08)
3. Senator Bob Bennett sponsored and supported the so-called “Healthy Americans Act,” a trillion-dollar government takeover of healthcare that rivals ObamaCare for being a massive big government proposal. It would increase job-killing taxes, impose an individual mandate, increase health care costs, and would give Washington the authority to regulate every health care plan in the country.
4. Senator Bob Bennett broke his term limits pledge when he ran for re-election in 2004. Bennett has now been in the Senate for 18 years. (Deseret News, 10/07/98)
5. Bennett voted against an amendment that recommended eliminating free parking privileges at Washington airports for members of Congress. (Roll Call Vote #94, 04/20/94)
6. Bennett voted against an amendment that would defund the “Bridge to Nowhere” pork project. Over the course of his career, he has supported countless earmarks like $200,000 for a museum in Omaha, Nebraska, and $3.7 million for the AFL-CIO. He also voted against a one-year earmark moratorium. (Roll Call Vote #262, 10/20/05; #215, 07/06/09; #385, 10/23/07; #75, 03/13/08)
7. “Utah Republican Sen. Bob Bennett said he erred in voting three times in the 1990s for a constitutional amendment requiring a balanced budget, and today the public need not be overly concerned with the $7 trillion federal deficit.” (Salt Lake Tribune, 02/20/04)
8. Bennett voted against an amendment that recommended that the Senate had a “moral obligation” to offset the cost of new government programs and authorizations, in order to reduce deficit spending and the national debt. (Roll Call Vote #140, 04/24/07)
9. Senator Bob Bennett was named “Porker of the Month” in February, 2002, by the anti-earmark group Citizens Against Government Waste (www.cagw.org).
10. Senator Bob Bennett voted against an amendment that would prohibit Social Security surplus funds from being spent on other government programs. (Roll Call Vote #65, 03/13/08)*

Other Key Points of Senator Bennett's Voting Record:
Voted to approve Cass Sunstein to the Regulation Commission (You can read more about Cass Sunstein here: http://www.wnd.com/index.php?fa=PAGE.view&pageId=96301 ).o H.R. 1105
– Fairness Doctrine - Voted to allow funding to reinstate the Fairness Doctrine (This required radio and television broadcasters to air opposing viewpoints on controversial issues. The rule encouraged broadcasters to minimize controversial programming so as to avoid providing free air time for opposing viewpoints.)o H.R. 2997 \
– Voted for Agriculture Appropriations (Federal food subsidies are not within the proper role of government.)...o H.R. 5140
– Economic Stimulus (Voted for rebate checks that basically "created money out of thin air")o H.R. 3221
– Mortgage Relief –Voted for the bail out of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac (It is not within the proper role of government to be an insurer and wealth redistributor.)o H.R. 5501 – Voted for the Global HIV/AIDS Program. (Private charities, not tax dollars, should be used to provide foreign aid.)o H.R. 1424
– Voted for the Bailout Bill (This bill greatly increased the national debt and forced taxpayers to pay the price for the failures of private financial institutions.)o S.1927
– Voted for foreign-aid contributions – (Private charities, not tax dollars, should be used to provide foreign aid.)o House Joint Resolution 43
– Voted for a Debt Limit Increase (Raising the public debt limit by $850 billion facilitates continued, gross fiscal irresponsibility.)o H.R. 3043
– Voted for Labor-HHS Education Appropriations (Social-welfare programs and education are not part of the proper role of the Federal government.)o H.R. 2205
– Voted for Amtrak Reauthorization (Subsidizing a railroad)