Pledge unites Grand Bay financial roundtable

The financial roundtable at Grand Bay leans to the right but has at least two or three “flaming liberals,” according to organizer Stuart Scheyer.

The group consists of approximately 12 to 15 of the condominium’s owners who gather monthly during season to discuss topics such as politics, the economy, investment and finance.

Recently, Scheyer noticed a mood that united participants both liberal and conservative alike: frustration.
He talked it over at a roundtable, and members decided to take action.

They drafted a “Pledge to Return the Word ‘United’ to Our United States” that they will ask politicians to sign.
“We spent most of the time wailing about the fact that our government isn’t getting anything done,” Scheyer said. “We came up with the pledge, and we’re getting together a website that will list every congressman, senator and maybe even governors. Who knows?”

Scheyer hopes the website will eventually list whether each politician has received the pledge and whether each has signed it.

“Stuart’s idea grew out of a degree of two levels of frustration,” said Grand Bay resident and roundtable participant Gary Massel.

The first level was “inability of Congress to come together.”

“The other level of frustration was personal — not being able to, beyond the role that we all have as voters, raise our voices a little bit louder,” Massel said.

The pledge consists of seven points, the first of which is:

“I will commit to supporting efforts of fair-minded people without regard to personal gain or party dogma.”

The others include simplifying the tax code; encouraging elimination of unnecessary spending; eliminating wasteful earmarks; addressing entitlement spending that burdens future generations; finding solutions to immigration; and cooperating with others who have different points of view.

“It’s apolitical,” Scheyer said. “They would have a difficult time saying, ‘I don’t agree with it,’ no matter what party.”

Scheyer presented the pledge to Vern Buchanan, R-Longboat Key, during a March 16 listening session at Longboat Key Town Hall.

Buchanan listened and said he agreed with many of the points.

He reiterated that message in a March 19 letter to Scheyer.

What Buchanan didn’t write in his letter was whether he would sign the pledge Scheyer hopes other voters will send the pledge to their politicians asking them to sign it.

“Maybe it will gain traction if they received 50 or 100 of them,” he said.

Pledge to read this
To read the “Pledge to Return the Word ‘United’ to Our United States” and the March 19 letter from Vern Buchanan, R-Longboat Key, to Stuart Scheyer, visit YourObserver.com