(Video) Newt at Team 10 Townhall in Pasadena Tuesday

Part 1.

Part 2.

Pictures and Tweets from Newt's Tea Party Townhall in California

Tonight, Newt hosted his first Team 10 townhall meeting in Pasadena, California.

Here are some tweets that were re-Tweeted by the campaign's account:

A few from @christopherguz:

Newt introduced by Tea Party leader as "the only man who has balanced a federal budget in our life time."

"Immediately repeal the Dodd-Frank bill"- @newtgingrich

Crowd erupts in applause to @NewtGingrich's call to repeal #ObamaCare.

"I'm not asking you to be for me. I'm asking you to be with me." @newtgingrich

@newtgingrich tells crowd "I'm going to need you for the next 8 years"

A couple from Newt's Coalitions Director:

Overflow crowd at our first Team 10 Town Hall in Pasadena, CA.

He included a picture of the crowd:

Newt: Everyone who was responsible for the decision to raid Gibson Guitars should be fired

Another picture of the crowd was attached:

Newt: the center of sovereignty is the citizen, not the government

And two more Tweets, these from a CBS/National Journal reporter:

Gingrich's campaign seems alive and well in Pasadena, CA, where a standing-room-only crowd of Tea Party members are applauding proposals.

A black woman at Gingrich's Tea Party town hall gets big round of cheers for opening with,”good evening Mr. Speaker and my fellow racists.”

(Just love that one!)

And one more picture:

Have you joined Team 10 yet?

Newt, as I have wrote before, recently launched Team 10, which is committed to enforcing the 10th Amendment.

On Newt.org/Team10, you can submit your own ideas on how to get the federal government back to its' constitutional limits or vote on others' ideas. Please go to the link and join the effort.

Recap of the Newt 2012 conference call tonight on Lean Six Sigma

Tonight, Newt held a conference call with those in the Lean Six Sigma (LSS) field and those interested in it. The last number I heard was about 800 people had RSVP'd, but that may have grown in the last day or two. (And others may have called in without signing up.)

(Also: there were a number of people who wanted to be on the call but who could not, so the campaign recorded the call and will have it up online at some point.)

The call opened with Newt's Coalitions Director, Adam Waldeck, saying that since Newt's mention of LSS during the Ames Debate and other public appearances, there has been an "outpouring" of people wanting to get involved.

Newt got on the call then and said this has a chance to be one of those moments that leads to very big change. (And the right change.)

He gave some background of his experience in "lean" thinking. To anyone who has read Newt for years or listened to the audio tapes Renewing American Civilization, you have heard him mention the name W. Edwards Deming. And even though he was not a "lean" thinker per se, the ideas he taught are reflected in those advocating Lean Six Sigma today. Newt said he took a sixty hour tutorial of Deming's and invited him to the Capitol to introduce him to some of the Congressional members.

All of which shows that Newt did not just discover this issue conveniently at election time. (If you did not see this the other day, here is Newt talking about how to use "lean" ideas back in 2009.)

There's more to than this, but some of the important pricniples of Lean is to be looking continuously improve and to be flexible (including being able to pay according to achievement.) All of which, Newt said, are either not allowed or discouraged under the current bureaucratic system.

Newt seemed to be setting up a huge debate over "big, big changes" in the coming months over how to "modernize government now." The fight will have to upend the civil service system, the bureaucracies, and the regulatory apparatus. Every committee and subcommittee in Congress should be looking at Lean Six Sigma, Newt repeated.

Next week, helping to launch that big fight, Newt will hold a strategy session with Lean Six Sigma experts and practitioners on Wednesday, followed by a townhall on the subject in Hew Hampshire the next day. Townhalls, Newt said, are helpful because, besides the obvious benefit of talking to citizens, the media will typically cover them and maybe will actually talk about an issue.

Declaring that LSS is "not a theory, not an abstract" but something that works incredibly well, Newt suggested that everyone help in spreading the message. One of his ideas to do that was to show elected officials and the media around to factories and other sites at which the process is being used.

Echoing Margaret Thatcher's line that "first you win the argument, then you win the vote" -- which Newt loves to quote -- he said that in order to implement LSS, we will have to first educate people why we need to do it, then win the fight, then finally have an action plan to get it set up. "Lots and lots of help" will be needed, Newt added, with many volunteers helping all throughout the process.

A "[f]undamental cultural revolution that will shake Washington to its' core" is the way Newt described it. The bureaucracies and the old order "will bitterly resent and fight this fundamental change." That is why Newt repeated his wish that people not be for him but with him. People cannot just elect me and then do nothing, saying "I hope he changes it," Newt said. Every day, Congress will need reminding what they need to do to turn this country around. "Eight hard years" is how Newt described what his Presidency will be. (What a great thought, though, huh?)

Along those same lines, Newt said that when the 10th Amendment is re-asserted that citizens will need to make sure their states and cities do not just end up being mini versions of the current mess in Washington, D.C. "Smaller Government, Big Citizens" is the name of Newt's Team 10 Facebook Page. Please click on the link and add your name to the group.

To sum it up:

A woman from Charleston, South Carolina, was very enthusiastic about not just the LSS issue but Newt's campaign in general. Toward the end of her call she said there was a "lot of positive energy" in Charleston about Newt, to which Newt replied, "We'll be back."

"You're on the right track," she replied.

Indeed he is.

#withNewt

Letter from Team 10 to the House and Senate seeking to end the "Super Committee"

Here is the full letter:

Dear Members of the House and Senate:

We are writing you as activists in the tea party and 912 movements, and as believers in the 10th Amendment to the Constitution, which states:

"The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people."

The recent debt ceiling agreement established an inadequate, centralized system of trying to find $1.5 trillion in savings over the next 10 years by empowering just 12 out of 535 members.

Therefore we ask that in early September, every committee and subcommittee should hold hearings on enforcing the 10th Amendment.

We are convinced that if you will take seriously the complaints from state and local officials about unnecessary red tape, unnecessary federally imposed expenses and federally mandated waste, you will find a lot of the savings you need.

After all, if the federal government did not require so much reporting by businesses, doctors, hospitals and state and local government, billions could be saved in unnecessary compliance costs.

If the federal government allowed businesses, hospitals, doctors and state and local governments to exercise common sense, a lot of federal aid could be eliminated and the money saved.

If you begin the fall session in September with a series of hearings in which the appropriate subcommittees and committees hear from the American people on these topics, you will have a huge menu of savings on your plate by mid October.

Ultimately, we don't just want marginally less expensive government. We want government that is effective, limited and Constitutional. The best way to accomplish this is for you, our elected officials, to enforce the 10th Amendment and return power back to the states respectively, to the people.

Respectfully,

Jim Conklin, Team 10 Iowa
Michelle McManus, Team 10 New Hampshire
Elisabet Wilson, Team 10 South Carolina
Wendy Bloedt, Team 10 Georgia
Guyann Bracken-Fay, Team 10 Florida
Debbie Wilson, Team 10 Florida
Tamara Colbert, Team 10 California
Mike Alexander, Team 10 California

About Team 10

Tea party and 912 Project leaders from around the country are leading Team 10. Through Facebook, the Team is soliciting ideas on how to enforce the 10th Amendment and limit government in Washington. Through voting, online and in-person events, and talking with each other, the best of these ideas will eventually become a “10th Amendment Enforcement Act.” As the Republican nominee, Gingrich would include the “10th Amendment Enforcement Act” as part of a new Contract with America. Team 10 is online at www.Newt.org/Team10

A few minutes of audio from Newt's conference call

Via CNSNews:

Recap of Newt's conference call on Team 10

Today, Newt held a conference call with tea party and 912 leaders, as well as some journalists, on the launch of his new project: Team 10. It is, to quote Newt's Facebook post today, "focused on gathering ideas from the American people for how to enforce the 10th Amendment and return power back home to the states and the people. The best ideas will eventually be included in a new Contract with America." It will result in actual legislation, added Gingrich, "The 10th Amendment Enforcement Act."

You can submit your own ideas or just vote and comment on ideas already submitted here.

On the call, Newt said he will be listening to people's ideas in person, on Facebook, on Google+ hangouts, conference calls like the one he was on, and other platforms.

This is key to his campaign model of "solutions, not rhetoric," said Newt, adding that he ultimately hopes to get this to the level of the Contract with America, which created a mandate for the newly-elected House Republican majority once they were sworn in in January 1995. By running on such a bold set of proposals -- the 10th Amendment, repealing Dodd-Frank, an American energy policy, etc. -- the liberals who oppose him will not be to argue that the American people do not support those actions once Newt is inaugurated in 2013.

Furthermore, Newt hopes that Team 10 catches on so much that in the coming months House and Senate candidates sign on, creating a unified Republican platform for next year's election. Related to that, he was adamant this was not "a Gingrich movement" but one that will require the grassroots be very involved in drafting it, building support, and seeing through its ultimate passage.

After asking "why would you want a federal bureaucracy writing federal rules for all fifty states?" Newt specifically brought up the Department of Education. "What if you dropped a lot of the paperwork and a lot of the bureaucracy" of No Child Left Behind, Newt asked, and bring that power back to local school boards.

Newt also noted the federal overreach in health care, relating the story of a doctor in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, last week who brought to one event a letter from the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Service that detailed how she should run her office, as if she had never attended medical school or already been practicing medicine, Newt noted.

Relaying the history of the 10th Amendment, Gingrich made a point of saying that up until the 1930s, the federal government had just a few responsibilities, such as the post office, border control, and national defense. Since then, the 10th Amendment has been "ignored" by most Presidents and Congresses. Paying attention to it would go a long way to re-centering our government, the former Speaker says.

Because it would reduce spending -- on both the federal and local levels (local because federal regulations would be eliminated -- and thus the deficit, Gingrich argued enforcing the 10th Amendment should be a focus of the Gang of 12 (the "Super Congress") later this year.

Another idea to bring down the deficit would be to follow Strong America Now's lead and implement Lean Six Sigma, another topic, along with the repeal of Dodd-Frank, that Newt has been in the lead on. It would save federal taxpayers about $500 billion annually, as well as making agencies such as the FDA much more effective. A "big, big idea," Gingrich says.

Not specifically related to Team 10, but when someone on the line asked if he thinks Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner should resign because of the S&P downgrade, Newt replied Geithner should not be in that position, not specifically for the downgrade but just his general economic performance. As well as that of Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke -- Gingrich called both of their performances "disastrous," and called again for an audit of the Federal Reserve.