It’s easy to just assume that all we have to do to make things better is to get the government to come up with some good sounding program and it will provide a great panacea for the future. Have a look at this video that illustrates just such a great sounding program. Widely touted by the main stream media,politicians,and pundits the “Cash for Clunkers”program was born. If you bought a new lower polluting,more efficient vehicle the government would give you $4000 for your old “clunker”to apply to the purchase! It would stimulate the auto industry,lower oil imports,remove old gas guzzlers and polluters from the road. Great idea? You be the judge.
| |||||
What a Christmas present we got when we woke this morning Dec 17th to hear that the Omnibus bill is dead!! With Democrats calling the Republicans “hypocrites”over their earmarks inserted into the bill,Senator Reid (D-NV) withdrew the measure as support for it evaporated. Instead a temporary measure will be produced to fund the government for a couple months while the spending for the remainder of the fiscal year 2011 is settled by the new Congress taking office after Jan 5th. One of the most amazing things to come out of this is the statement from Reid yesterday,“We have a constitutional duty to do congressionally directed spending and I don’t want to give up that responsibility. . . ” Where in that document is any such provision except perhaps in Senator Reid’s imagination? How can someone elected to the US Senate actually hold such a distorted view as to conclude that it is his responsibility to tax the people to provide benefits for a select few? No wonder congressional approval is down to 13%. Dead along with the Omnibus bill is some 6000 plus earmarks of pork barrel spending for both Democrat and Republican districts to the tune of some eight billion dollars. Dead also is a billion in Obamacare funding for the current year. Dead,at least for now,is the federal land grabs that would have closed more public land to public access. Likewise dead for now is Reid’s legalization of online poker where it appears that the chips are now down and Reid is holding a losing hand. Unlike the Obmacare bill where Peloci stated that they had to pass it to find out what was in it,with the Omnibus bill’s demise we will likely never know how many “gotchas”were actually stuffed into this huge package. According to Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell,“it was not so much the substance of the bill but the process”that caused the opposition. One of the big winners here was the congressional clerks. They are now spared the mind boggling task of having to read aloud all 1923 pages of garbage in this thing. Also to be celebrated today is the tax bill has passed and will be signed by President Obama right away assuring that no one’s income taxes will go up January 1st. Small businesses will have a couple years freedom from the threat of increased taxes which will likely result in new real jobs finally beginning to free up. This is probably the first truly bipartisan measure passed under Obama and a real Christmas present to the American Taxpayer and the American worker. Still up on the agenda is the “Dream Act”,the “START Treaty”,and the repeal of the “Don’t ask don’t tell”provision to allow gays to serve openly in the military. Hopefully they will all go the way of the Omnibus bill. These controversial issues should not be decided by a lame duck congress where many of the members were removed by their constituents only last month and are no longer responsible to the people. We can only be reminded of Benjamin Franklin’s words: “No man’s life,liberty or fortune is safe while our legislature is in session.” This is even more true of a lame duck session. In the past,Garland County Arkansas has not had a truly effective Republican Party. The county offices and the vast majority of the JP districts as well have been traditionally tightly held by Democrats. To suggest that someone run for office here as a Republican would be met with the comment that “You can’t win a county-wide office in Garland County as a Republican.”That myth was busted yesterday!!! As a result of hard recruiting effort for good qualified candidates on the part of the local Republican party and the Garland County Tea Party,a slate of eighteen candidates for almost every Garland County office emerged. This was the first time ever in the history of this county that many of those offices had even received serious opposition. Of those candidates ALL but one won. The offices of county judge,county clerk,circuit clerk,tax assessor,treasurer,all fell to Republican challenges. The Quorum Court changed from nine Democrats and four Republicans to nine Republicans and four Democrats. Only one Democrat that ran against the new Republican challengers won a seat as a JP! Most of these positions have been held for forty years or more by Democrats. Some for 130 years and had never been held by a Republican!  Keith Crass tragically died Oct 27th The sitting county judge,running for the state legislature,lost to the Republican Kieth Crass that tragically died of a heart attack last week. Keith had worked hard for the last 18 months to achieve a lifelong dream to go to the state legislature. I can think of no tribute to him that would be better than the one given by the voters of Garland County yesterday in his win in that election. Our heart felt condolences as well as our prayers go out to Keith’s family. According to state law,there will now be a new election to fill that office and the likelihood is that it too will be filled by a well-qualified Republican. In this elections we saw lots of “dirty tricks”tried by a bunch of entrenched incumbents in an attempt to hang on to power. I had more than a dozen yard signs stolen from my property,a pattern that was repeated against Republican campaign signs all over the county. Some of them were stolen several times. Other signs were driven over by 4wd vehicles,or were covered by graffiti. Some were even shredded with the pieces left on the lawns. The local paper printed pro-incumbent articles,some on the front page, while refusing to publish opposing views in the closing days of the campaign except in very unusual occasions,but then what is unusual about that in Hot Springs,Arkansas? Now the job for us the voters of Garland County will be to hold those new officers to their pledges to convert the county government from the tired old good-old-boy,tax-and-spend policies of the past to a sound and responsible business model for the future. They have a hard job to accomplish and if they are not responsive to those who elected them, in two years we will repeat the process with another slate of well-qualified candidates to replace them with others who will. The myth is busted and the voters along with our kids and grandkids are the big winners in Garland County Arkansas on November 3rd,2010! Here in Garland County Arkansas we have had a bit of a circus in recent months. It seems that back in ’08 we had three ladies who served in elected offices down at the court house saw that the Arkansas Public Retirement System (APERS) had a provision that said that if an elected official retires and is off the job for 90 days they can be elected or appointed to return to the same job and draw both their retirement pay as well as their regular pay. This would make their jobs pay not the normal $60 to $80 K per year,but almost double that!! Since they were Democrats in a state where Democrats are mostly unopposed for reelection they decided to “retire”at least on paper so they could double their pay for their next term for which they were unopposed. I have seen a lot of information and mis-information here about our Garland County “double dippers”. I personally have no ill will about these ladies claiming what the legislators in the state of Arkansas allowed under the APERS rules. They had ever right to actually retire,spend 90 days off the job and then return and draw dual pay. That is the fault of the legislators that ever allowed such “double dipping”from people that received two years retirement credit for one year service in elected offices. It has been done elsewhere through the state in a quite legal,even if not a fully moral manner. What concerns me is that this was done under “cover of darkness”. In early Oct 2008 these people went to the county clerk in Garland County and had her certify that they were “retired”as of that date. With the explicit knowledge of that county clerk and the county judge they then showed up in their previous offices and posed for three months impersonating elected officials. They hid the fact that they had retired from the Quorum Court for three months with the complicit assistance of the county clerk and the county judge. Now I am no lawyer,but I do believe that to falsely impersonate a police officer,a federal official,or any other public official is highly discouraged by the laws in all fifty states. No amount of explanations as to how they were “misled by APERS”can make me believe that any APERS employee would actually recommend that they falsely pose as office holders for three months when they,as recent retirees had no official business in those offices. That just sounds like plain old garden variety fraud to me. Had I done that after retiring from the Air Force in ’83 I could have earned three years free room and board at the Fort Levenworth detention facility. Even the most casual observer of politics nationally,in Arkansas,or Garland County can not help but to recognize that this is an unusual election season. Incumbents are facing the biggest challenges in memory,but why? I have concluded it is a huge “Breach of Trust”that extends all the way from the court house to the White House. In 2006 voters,upset with the Bush administration and the Iraq war,voted in large numbers against the Republicans in charge,giving controlling majorities to the Democrats in both the US House of Representatives and the US Senate. After big election wins,the new speaker of the house Nancy Peloci promised that theirs would be the most open and honest administration in history. She said that they would “drain the swamp” of congressional corruption. Then in November of ’08 the voters rewarded the Democrats with not only the presidency,but also a filibuster proof margin of 60 seats in the US Senate and additional increases in the House. In Arkansas the Democratic party enjoyed its customary dominance across the state with most candidates being unopposed in the November ’08 elections. Today the American people are examining the swamp and finding that instead of being drained,it has become a toxic cesspool. Bills are crafted in secrecy and passed without the members even reading them. Election promises are ignored. Scandals involving high ranking members of the House leadership prevail while the house ethics committee has been dragging its feet for over three years doing little or nothing and allowing them to continue in control of their committees or other high positions. A breach of trust. When Obama took office he promised that all bills would be published for several days on the internet before he signed them –his promise was ignored in the very first bill he signed! He promised “what I’ve done throughout this campaign is to propose a net spending cut” yet in his first year in office spending increased by two trillion dollars,the largest spending increase in US history. On Jan 6,’09 Obama said,“We are going to ban all earmarks,” then the very first spending bill he signed only a few weeks later included over 9,000 earmarks many making direct or indirect payments to groups that supported Democrat election bids. A breach of trust. Our senator from Arkansas who voted like a liberal from Massachusetts for four years revised her voting pattern in the last two years so as to attempt to convince the people of Arkansas that she shared their conservative values. A breach of trust. “Obamacare”was extremely unpopular in Arkansas from day one. Our 4th district congressman repeatedly sent out letters to his constituents saying how he voted “against”it when in fact he,and he alone as leader of the “Blue Dog Democrats”back in the summer of 2009 had the ability to kill it in committee. Instead,he magically changed his vote on July 31st,2009 and voted for it paving way for its passage. Ross voted “Obamacare”out of committee when his vote was critical to Peloci then made empty gestures of voting against it when there were plenty of votes to assure its passage. A breach of trust. There is a “ticking time bomb”that is looming on Jan 1st. It is the expiration of the Bush era tax cuts which if not addressed will result in the largest single tax increase in history. Just last week Ross cast the deciding vote to adjourn without addressing the issue. With today’s unemployment at almost 10% and businesses afraid to hire because of not being able to predict costs,Ross’s vote sent house members home to campaign instead of addressing the issue! Every single one of the other members of the “Blue Dog Democrats”in the house as well as every house Republican voted against adjournment in order to address the issue even though the Senate would not act right away. It would have done a lot to ease small business’fears of looming tax increases and to jump-start job creation before Christmas. Instead Ross chose to support speaker Nancy Peloci while effectively “flipping the bird”to the out of work people in Arkansas with his tie breaking vote. A breach of trust. Lest we think it is a Washington phenomenon let us look at three Democrat office holders right here in Garland county. They figured out a way to feather their nests using provisions of the Arkansas Public Employees Retirement System (APERS) to nearly double their salaries for the next two years. Being unopposed for reelection in 2008 they decided to “retire”for the last three months of 2008 so they could draw both their retirement and their regular pay beginning Jan 2009. They apparently had the county clerk certify in early Oct ’08 they had retired. They then continued to go to work so the people of Garland County would not know they were “off the job”while they fulfilled the APERS 90 day requirements for receiving double pay. They concealed this from the voters and the Quorum Court with the complicit assistance of at least the county judge and the county clerk so that the court would not know that vacancies existed and would not appoint persons to fill those vacancies. That left Garland county with three impostors appearing to hold office at the court house and no one legally in charge for the last three months of 2008. A breach of trust. We have state legislators and senators that have ignored the people over issues like casting Arkansas’electoral votes in presidential elections,not on the desires of Arkansas voters,but according to the votes in the big population centers of the country! Fortunately that one failed,but it was supported by a number of AR Democrat legislators while being opposed by the vast majority of Arkansans. Why would anyone who is supposed to represent voters of Arkansas even think of voting to disenfranchise those same voters in presidential elections? A breach of trust. There are far too many other examples to include here,but it appears that there has been a vast effort throughout the county,the state and the nation to enhance the power of the Democratic party or their elected officials at the direct expense of the people and the constitution. It leaves voters with the conclusion that a vote for Democrats is a vote against America. National polls are now showing voters overwhelmingly favoring Republicans and Independents over Democrats. On Nov 2nd we will see how the people react to:A breach of trust. When You’re Holding a Hammer (Everything Looks Like a Nail). Popular new hit political song. Coming This Fall in a Polling Place Near You. Like many Americans,I find Ray Stevens to be one of my favorite songsters…he’s as American as John Wayne and Mom’s apple pie. This new video,complete with music and orchestration,has just come out,and Ray takes the fed gov’t to task for failing to act on the illegal immigration issue. Many thanks to Ray for having the courage to point out in a way that people can understand the tragedy that is being laid on Arizona by our own federal government. Visit Ray’s website for his music,performance schedules,or even subscribe for a special “backstage visit”. http://www.raystevens.com/main/index.htm Andrew Klavan explores Obama’s Happy,Snappy &Incredibly Crappy recovery summer. Check it out! | |||||
| Copyright ©2012 The Coffee Shop - All Rights Reserved | |||||
Put me in charge . . .
Put me in charge …
Put me in charge of food stamps. I’d get rid of Lone Star cards;no cash for Ding Dongs or Ho Ho’s,just money for 50-pound bags of rice and beans,blocks of cheese,and all the powdered milk you can haul away. If you want steak and frozen pizza ….. get a job.
Put me in charge of Medicaid. The first thing I’d do is to get women Norplant birth control implants or tubal ligations. Then we’ll test recipients for drugs,alcohol,and nicotine and document all tattoos and piercings. If you want to reproduce or use drugs,alcohol,smoke or get tats and piercings …get a job.
Put me in charge of government housing. Ever live in a military barracks? You will maintain our property in a clean and good state of repair. Your “home” will be subject to inspections anytime,and possessions will be inventoried. If you want a plasma TV or Xbox 360 ….. get a job and your own place.
In addition,you will either present a check stub from a job each week or you will report to a “government” job. It may be cleaning the roadways of trash,painting and repairing public housing,whatever we find for you. We will sell your 22 inch rims and low profile tires and your blasting stereo and speakers and put that money toward the “common good.”
Before you write that I’ve violated someone’s rights,realize that all of the above is voluntary. If you want our money,accept our rules.. Before you say this would be “demeaning” and ruin their “self esteem,” consider that it wasn’t that long ago when taking someone else’s money for doing absolutely nothing was demeaning and lowered self esteem.
If we are expected to pay for other people’s mistakes we should at least attempt to make them learn from their bad choices. The current system rewards them for continuing to make bad choices.
This was in the Waco Tribune Herald,Waco,TX Nov 18 2010 –