Click
here to return to the Texas County Republican Home PageSOME NEWS AND COMMENTS FOR CONSERVATIVE MISSOURIANS TO THINK ABOUT
January
2008
Vol 1 Number 11
| NEWSLETTER ARCHIVE |
HERE’S WISHING A
HAPPY NEW YEAR TO ALL The Next Meeting of
The Next Meeting
of the Texas County Federation of Republican Women will start at
“Enforcing
Immigration Laws should be
primarily federal responsibility, but Washington has failed to
act which means Missouri must make up for that failure and protect
Missouri
against illegal immigration,” Governor Blunt said when he announced
additional
steps in his plan to stop illegal
immigration. He said: “With the support of
Additionally, Governor Blunt has called for
legislation
to prevent illegals from obtaining driver’s licenses.
50 First Responder
Agencies in
The Missouri State
Tax Commission was
thanked by Governor Blunt for heeding his call to stop a large tax
increase
based on their scheduled review of agricultural land values. The
Commission
voted 2-1 against the proposal. The State Tax Commission makes
recommendations
to the General Assembly regarding agricultural land production values
which
determined values for property tax assessment purposes. By statute land
used
for farming is taxed by its production value and not its market value. (Gov. News Release)
A Comprehensive
Higher Education
funding plan has been announced by Governor Blunt. He is recommending a
total
of $100 million in needs-based scholarships for
Governor Blunt
calls for the Death Penalty
to be included in state law as punishment for the worst sexual
predators. Earlier this year the governor announced his support for a
new
initiative to strengthen
Washington’s
Inaction Could Delay Tax Refunds to middle income Missourians who file their
tax return
electronically. The IRS has indicated that without action from Congress
it will
not be able to process electronic tax returns until eat least February
18 and
will have no choice but to insist on paper returns. And the change to
paper
returns will double the time to process the paperwork. The governor has
urged
Rasmussen Reports December polling in
Experience is something you don’t
get until just after you need it
About Huckabee, George Will Says: “Huckabee broadly repudiates core
Republican policies
such as free trade, low taxes, the legitimacy of
According to Bill Sammon on Fox News, an organization called “Redeem
the Vote”
with the mission and goal to engage America’s young people in the
political
process offered their list of Christian Evangelicals to the
presidential
candidates but Mike Huckabee was the only one to take advantage of the
offer.
Mike Huckabee’s Evangelical Base has pushed him near the front because
there are so
many candidates and so little enthusiasm for them. But the Huckabee
boom is
likely to fade as those charmed by his personality learn more about his
policy
views. So, if the Huckabee boom fades, who benefits? Most Republicans
think Mr.
Huckabee would be as bad a president as Jimmy Carter, for essentially
the same
reasons. So if Huckabee wins
Huckabee
wins narrowly in
DON’T RAISE TAXES ON THE RICH. Why not? They
can afford it. Yes, they can, but it will hurt the non-rich when you
take away
incentives for the rich to invest. The non-rich are not the
ones who
invest in capital goods and business expansion. The non-rich need the
jobs
created by investments of the rich. So, let the rich remain rich so
more of the
non-rich will be better off. It’s just that simple. (The
editor)
He’s Done It Again. Representative
John Shadegg (R-AZ) continues
to have the
courage to introduce a bill called the Enumerated Powers Act (EPA). HR
1359 is
a bill that requires that each Act of the Congress shall contain a
concise and
definite statement of the Constitutional authority relied upon for the
enactment of each portion of that act. His bill is generally ignored as
his
colleagues pursue legislation creating an ever-growing federal
government with
powers that abrogate the Constitution they have sworn to uphold. 30
members of
the House co-sponsor the bill. Rep. Todd Akin is the only co-sponsor
from
“Wisdom and Cleverness are very different things. My nomination for the three wisest presidents would be Washington, Lincoln and Reagan. For the three cleverest…FDR, Nixon and Clinton. (Thomas Sowell)
There are two rules to success: 1) Don’t
tell all you know.
The condensation of an article by Michael
Medved,
published by TownHall.com
The
painful inability to form a new government through much of 2007
highlights the
desire many, if not most Belgians to divide the country between hostile
Flemish
and Walloon components. The French speaking Walloons identify most with
The
multi-culturalists love to talk about the
1.
At the time of the nation’s founding it was unabashedly uni-cultural. In their book
about the Constitutional Convention, “Decision in
As
Michel de Crevecoeur asked, and answered in his 1782 pamphlet “Letters from an American Farmer;” “What then
is the American, this new man? He is neither European nor the
descendant
of a European…He is an American, who
leaving behind him all his ancient prejudices and manners, received new
ones
from the new mode of life he has embraced, the new government he obeys
and the
new rank he holds. He becomes American by being received in the broad
lap of
our Alma Mater. Here individuals of all nations are melted into a new
race of
men, whose labors and posterity will one day cause great changes in the
world.”
2.
The Powerful anti-immigration movement of the 1840s and 50s
unequivocally
demonstrated the nation’s rejection of multi-culturalism. Far from
welcoming the first major wave of dramatically distinctive immigrants
and
embracing the joys of diversity, the distinctly uni-cultural American
people
reacted with suspicion and often hostility. In the 1840s, millions of
Irish and
Germans arrived in the
3.
The nation’s most prominent leaders always rejected the notion of
separate
ethnic identities or cultures and the designation of “Hyphenated
Americans.”
In a 1915
address to an Irish Catholic audience, former President Theodore
Roosevelt made
a passionate plea for the ideal of one nation, indivisible: “There is
no room
in this country for hyphenated Americanism. When I refer to hyphenated
Americans, I do not refer to naturalized Americans. Some of the best
Americans
I have ever known were naturalized Americans. Americans born abroad.
The one
absolute way of bringing this nation to ruin, of preventing all
possibility of
its continuing to be a nation, would be to permit it to become a tangle
of
squabbling nationalities, an intricate knot of German-Americans,
Irish-Americans, Italian-Americans, each preserving his separate
nationality,
each at heart feeling more sympathy with people of that nationality,
than with
other citizens of the American Republic. The only good American is the
man who
is American and nothing else.”
4.
Despite the ethnic pride movements of the 60s, the “Melting Pot” has
always worked.
In 1908, a
melo-dramatic, updated version of the Romeo and Juliet story became a
major
stage hit and introduced a new term into the national vocabulary. The
play “The
Melting Pot” by immigrant poet and Zionist activist Israel Zangwill
told the
story of two lovers from bitterly divergent backgrounds who manage to
make a
new life together in
5. Even though
all immigrant groups contribute
to American identity, they haven’t done so in line with their
percentage of
population.
As previously noted, more Americans today
boast Germanic heritage than British heritage, and yet no one could
argue that
the culture of the
Despite
the insistence of multi-culturalists that no one nationality deserves
primacy
in terms of contemporary American identity, it is obvious that the
earliest
settlers from the
6.
The current “Diversity” of American Life is regularly distorted and
overstated. For years,
we’ve been subjected to outrageously
misleading stories about how “minorities” now constitute an American
“majority”
and about the implacable decline of the nation’s traditional white,
Protestant
identity. Obviously, those who pontificate in this tone rarely check
the census
data. The Census Bureau’s 2005 American Community Survey show that 74.7
percent
of us (215.3 million) identify as “white alone,” 12.1 Percent (34.9
milllion)
say we are “black American,” 4.3 percent are Asian American and 7.9
percent say
“some other race” or “two or more races.” Hispanics are (rightly) not
identified as a “race.” The 14.5 percent (41.9 million) who register as
Hispanic can count themselves as any race; as it happens 48 percent of
them say
they are white. At the time of the Constitution 80 percent of the
population
was white. Today, 75 percent self-identify as white.
If you think you can, you can. If you think
you can’t, you’re right. (Mary Kay Ash)
7.
The African American Exception The
black community remains the only important sub-group with a
long-standing claim
to a meaningful separate cultural identity. They are the only segment
of the
population that didn’t choose to come here, was stigmatized as property
and
sub-human, and survived centuries of mistreatment through vile and
violent
bigotry. Blacks developed a distinctive and separate culture because of
their
enforced separation for hundreds of years. Nevertheless, African
Americans made
prodigious contributions to the “melting pot” process. What we consider
distinctly “American” music evolved largely out of ragtime, blues and
jazz which
in turn derived from ancient African traditions. Their role in the
development
of our dominant culture is often unacknowledged. In any event, there
has never
been any mass support for the idea of carving out an ethnic homeland or
repatriation to Mother Africa.
With
relief and confidence we can follow the various separatist movements in
Europe,
where true multi-culturalism continues to bear its bitter fruit as we
watch the
unfolding fate in
______________________________________________________________________________________
Indoctrination in the Ivory
Tower
The condensation of an article by George
Will as
published in TownHall.com
In
1943, the U.S. Supreme Court, affirming the right of Jehovah’s
Witnesses
children to refuse to pledge allegiance to the
They
are teachers at public universities, in schools of social work. A study
prepared by the National Association of Scholars, a group that combats
political correctness on campuses, reviews social work education
programs at 10
major public universities and comes to this conclusion: Such programs
mandate
an ideological orthodoxy to which students must subscribe concerning
“social
justice” and “oppression.”
In
1997, the National Association of Social Workers (NASW) adopted a
surreptitious
political agenda in the form of a new code of ethics, enjoining social
workers
to be advocates for social justice from “local to global levels.” A
widely used
textbook…“Direct Social Work Practice: Theory and Skill”…declares that
promoting “social and economic justice” is especially imperative as a
response
to “the conservative trends of the past three decades.” Clearly, in the
social
work profession’s catechism, whatever social and economic are, they are
in the
opposite of conservatism.
The
Council on Social Work Education (CSWE), the national accreditor of
social work
educational programs, encourages….not that encouragement is
required….the
ideological permeation of the curricula, including mandatory student
advocacy.
The CSWE says students must demonstrate an ability to “understand the
forms and
mechanism of oppression and discrimination.”
At
In 2005, Emily
Brooker, a
social work student at
A government big enough to give you everything
you want is strong enough to take everything you have. (T. Jefferson)
Indoctrination in the Ivory Tower
When
Brooks objected on religious grounds, the project was made optional.
But before
the final exam she was charged with a “Level 3” violation of
professional
standards. In a hearing she was forbidden from recording, she was
ordered to
write an explanation how she could lessen the gap between her ethics
and those
of the social work profession. When she sued the university, charges
were
dropped and financial restitution was made.
Since
the NAS study was released, none of the schools covered has contested
the
findings.
______________________________________________________________________________________
A Commentary
By George Carlin following the death of his
wife.
The
paradox of our time in history is that we have taller buildings but
shorter
tempers, wider freeways, but narrower viewpoints. We spend more, but
have less.
We buy more, but enjoy less. We have bigger houses yet smaller
families. We
have more conveniences but less time. We have more degrees but less
sense, more
knowledge, but less judgment, more experts, yet more problems, more
medicine,
but less wellness.
We
drink too much, spend too recklessly, laugh too little, drive too fast,
get too
angry, stay up too late, get up too tired, read too little, watch TV
too much.
And we pray too seldom.
We’ve
learned how to make a living, but not a life. We’ve added years to life
but not
life to years. We’ve been all the way to the moon and back, but have
trouble
crossing the street to meet a new neighbor. We’ve conquered outer space
but not
inner space. We have done larger things, but not better things.
We’ve
cleaned up the air, but polluted the soul. We’ve conquered the atom,
but not
our prejudice. We write more, but learn less. We plan more, but
accomplish
less. We’ve learned to rush, but not to wait. We build
computers that hold more information and to
produce more copies than ever. But, we communicate less and less.
These
are the times of fast foods and slow digestion, big men and small
character,
steep profits and shallow relationships. These are the days of two
incomes but
more divorce. We have fancier houses, but broken homes. These are days
of quick
trips, disposable diapers, throwaway morality, one night stands,
overweight
bodies and pills that do everything from cheer to quiet, to kill. It is
a time
when there is much in the showroom window and nothing in the stockroom.
It is a
time when technology can bring this letter to you, and you can choose
to either
share this insight, or just hit delete.
Remember
to spend some time with your loved ones, because they are not going to
be
around forever.
Remember
to say a kind word to someone who looks up to you in awe, because that
little
person will grow up and leave your side.
Remember
to give a warm hug to the one next to you. That is the only treasure
you can
give with your heart that doesn’t cost a cent.
Remember
to say, I love you to your partner and your loved ones, but most of
all, mean
it. A kiss and embrace will mend hurt when it comes from deep inside of
you.
Remember
to hold hands and cherish the moment for someday that person will not
always be
there.
Give
time for love. Give time to speak! Give time to the precious thoughts
in your
mind.
And
always remember, life is not measured by the number of breaths we take,
but by
the moments that take our breath away.
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Lee Hutcheson Editor.
The Texas County
Commentary is a publication of the
Texas County Republican Committee, Kevin McGowen, Chairman