The Republican Club of Sun City NEWSLETTER

May 2013 Everett Schmidt, Editor Sun City Texas LAND COMMISSIONER TO ADDRESS CLUB

Jerry Patterson, the state’s 27th Land Commissioner, will address the club during its dinner meeting scheduled for Thursday, May 9 in the ballroom of the Social Center in Sun City.

Patterson graduated from Texas A & M University and was commissioned as a Lieutenant in the U. S. Marine Corps. After volunteering for duty in Vietnam, Patterson was later designated as a Naval Flight Officer and served in Marine fighter squadrons until his retirement from the Marine Corps.

From 1993 through 1999, Patterson served as a state senator for District 11. Patterson’s most significant legislative successes include passage of the historic concealed handgun law, a constitutional amendment allowing home equity lending, the Texas coastal management plan and the creation of the Texas Veterans Home Program.

In 2007, Patterson was named “Texan of the Year” for his outstanding work in promoting Texas history education and strengthening Texas Independence Day as a day of celebration for all Texans. He has long been at the forefront of the conservative movement in the Lone Star State.

The Social Period, Dinner and Program. A social period will begin at 6:00 PM. The dinner will begin at 6:30 PM and will be followed by the program. The dinner will consist of chicken breast in mushroom sauce, rice, green beans and baby carrots.

Cost. Cost is $16 per person. Checks made out to The Republican Club of Sun City should be mailed to: The Republican Club of Sun City, 1530 Sun City Blvd., Suite 120, Box 227, Georgetown, TX 78633. The deadline for payment or reservations is Friday May, 3.

Club treasurer John Congdon has set up a special collection box on his front porch at 610 Farm Hill Drive for individuals wishing to hand-deliver payments, provided delivery is made by the Friday deadline. For information about reservations, contact John at 686-1676 or johnsctx@gmail.com

VISITORS ARE WELCOME!
CLUB WILL NOT MEET DURING SUMMER MONTHS

Following a practice of long standing, the club will not meet during the summer months of June, July and August. The next meeting (after the May meeting) is scheduled for Thursday, September 5.

OTHER CLUB NEWS

Vice president (for membership) Bill Chiles reports that copies of the 2013 club Yearbook will be available for distribution to club members (one copy per household) during the club’s May 9 meeting. This publication provides contact information regarding the various elected officials who serve us, club bylaws, club membership and other pertinent information.

Bill also reports that currently the club has 222 members for the year 2013.
Club treasurer John Congdon reports the number of paid attendees at the club’s March meeting was 87.

WHO IS DR. BEN CARSON?

Dr. Ben Carson, whose presence “came out of the blue” for many citizens, made a big hit with conservatives during the National Prayer Breakfast held in February when he threw jabs at ObamaCare and other liberal causes while President Obama, seated just 5 feet away, looked on.

On grounds the reader may wish to learn more about this impressive individual whose credentials are just now becoming known the following excerpts from an article about Dr. Carson and written by author John Fund is presented:

In a country starving for heroes, Dr. Ben Carson, the noted pediatric brain surgeon at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, says he could never have imagined the positive reaction he got to his February remarks at the National Prayer Breakfast.

Video of his speech taking jabs at Obamacare and calling for a flat-rate income tax – all while President Barack Obama looked on just 5 feet away – piled up 2.1 million views on YouTube within days.

What drove the interest in his speech was how Carson connected his spiritual message to the need for bipartisan cooperation and practical solutions to the nation’s problems. He ended by issuing a warning that the United States is in danger of following the path of ancient Rome’s “moral decay and fiscal irresponsibility.”

The 61-year-old doctor and author hopes the notoriety he now has will sustain interest in his message of self-reliance and faith. That message was formed during a childhood of deprivation in Detroit. His mother Sonya was a single mom in Detroit who was one of 24 children in her family and had only a third-grade education. But Carson says she “refused to be a victim” and “never felt sorry for herself.”

Instead, she instilled a strong work ethic and belief in God in her two children.

At 33, he was named director of pediatric neurosurgery at Johns Hopkins, where he led a team that performed the first surgery separating conjoined twins in 1987. In 2009 his life was made into a television movie.

The two public-policy issues that Carson says trouble him most are healthcare and education. Rather than continue to pour money into Obamacare, he says every child born in the United States should get a medical savings account. The account could receive tax-free contributions from family members, charities, employers, and government agencies.

He also fears there has been a “dumbing down of our public schools” that has left many young people without the ability to think critically. “Our schools too often want to shut people up so they can’t talk about real solutions. People who think differently tend to clam up because they think something is wrong with their ideas.”

As Carson leaves a TV studio after yet another interview, a correspondent asks him if he is tempted to run for political office. “It’s not by plan,” Carson says. But he’s quick to add, “I can do a lot of good as a citizen, but I recognize that it’s possible God will drag me by the scruff of my neck into politics.”

For now, he is gratified by the reaction he’s gotten to his message.

“Older Americans have particularly touched me,” he says. “Many have written to me saying they had given up hope for this country until they heard my message. That convinces me we have the capacity for civic renewal and rebirth, and that we still are a great nation.”

GOVERNMENT IS FALLING BEHIND IN COST OF LIVING INCREASES

Social Security recipients, upon noting the recent and only modest cost of living adjustments provided, may conclude that the adjustments do not seem compatible with the rising cost of food, fuel and other items they now purchase. Columnist Kirby Anderson explains that the consumer price index is calculated differently today than in the past. First, the government’s figures understate the inflation rate because they exclude food and fuel costs from its rate of “core inflation.” The argument is that food and fuel are too unstable to be included in the inflation rate. Second, the government also substitutes less expensive products when prices rise. In the past, economists used a “fixed basket of goods” to calculate the consumer price index. In other words, if I buy the very same goods every year, how much does the price rise? Now the government assumes that people will switch brands or foods if the price goes up. For example, if the cost of steak goes up, the consumer price index replaces the cost of steak with hamburger.

More recently, President Obama, in the budget he submitted for the year 2014, proposed a similar plan specifically for Social Security recipients. The effect would be to lower cost-of-living increases.

Texas retired public school teachers have been especially hit hard by an absence of cost-of-living increases. That is because they have not received a permanent cost-of-living increase in their annuities since 2001 (12 years ago). Consequently, the Texas Retired Teachers Association, which represents Texas retired teachers, in connection with its efforts to persuade the Texas Legislature to provide some relief, has prepared a chart revealing the increases of certain costs and services from 2001 to 2013.

Following are some excerpts from that chart which both retired teachers and others may find of interest:

Item

Loaf of bread Ground beef (per lb)

1 dozen eggs
Half gallon of milk Coffee (per lb.)
Chicken (per lb.) Potatoes (per lb.)
Gas (utility)
Electricity (per mo.) Water sewer, trash Motor vehicle insurance A gallon of gas Prescription drugs Physicians services Dental services Consumer purchasing

power of $1

2001 Price $.93

$1.61 $1.15 $1.73 $2.53 $1.09

.35 $78.85

$129.70 $108.10 $260.60 $1.40 $292.50 $250.50 $264.80

.56

2013 Price $1.41

$3.41 $1.93 $3.53 $5.90 $1.50

.63 $99.52

$194.53 $194.57 $414.17 $3.35 $440.88 $351.30 $425.54

.43

Increase% 53%

112% 68% 104% 133% 38% 80% 26% 50% 80% 59% 139% 51% 40% 61%

-.23%

COST OF GOODS AND SERVICES

GOSNELL TRIAL FINALLY TRIGGERS NEWS COVERAGE

For more than 5 weeks the trial of Dr. Kermit Gosnell, a Philadelphia abortion doctor, has been ongoing, yet until recent weeks, with but two exceptions, “most major newspapers and TV networks have produced little or cursory coverage of this trial,” asserts Wall Street Journal writer David Henninger who infers that the behavior of the media is an act of “political correctness.”

Prodded by conservative organizations and some internal “soul searching,” the press “has begun to disclose some of the more gruesome reports which have emanated from that trial. For example, the charges against the physician are shocking: “Prosecutors have alleged Dr. Gosnell – and staff members at his direction – killed babies after they were born, in some cases by plunging scissors into the babies’ spinal cords,” asserts the Wall Street Journal. Also shocking were the reports the doctor’s clinic had been found filthy and strewn with body parts, and hadn’t been inspected by Pennsylvania health authorities during a 17-year stretch ending in 2010.

Perhaps most disturbing were the reports of Dr. Gosnell’s involvement in late-term or partial-birth abortions.

The matter of the Gosnell trial came up at a recent White House news conference when the press secretary, Jay Carney, told reporters, “The President does not and cannot take a position on an ongoing trial, so I won’t as well.” With that rationale the president may be spared having to explain his views on partial-birth abortion which many Americans will find appalling because they appear to justify infanticide.

His views are revealed in the following excerpts from The Obama Nation by Jerome Corsi which report Obama’s position regarding bills presented in Illinois during the 1997-2001 period to protect babies who survive late-term, labor-induced abortions:

Obama has consistently refused to support legislation that would define an infant who survives a late- term induced-labor abortion as a human being with the right to live. He insists that no restrictions must ever be placed on the right of a mother to decide to abort her child…

On March 30, 2001, Obama was the only Illinois senator who rose to speak against a bill that would have protected babies who survive late-term labor-induced abortions . . .Obama rose to object that if the bill passed, and a nine-month fetus survived a late-term labor-induced abortion was deemed to be a person who had a right to live that the law would “forbid abortions to take place.” Obama further explained the equal protection clause of the Fourteenth Amendment does not allow somebody to kill a child, so if the law deemed a child who survived a late-term labor-induced abortion had a right to live, “then this would be an anti-abortion statute.”

Not wanting to be the only Illinois senator to vote against the bill, a move that Obama realized would be politically unpopular with his constituency, he took the easy way out and voted “Present.” In the Illinois Senate, voting “Present” is the equivalent of voting “No” . . .

NOTES ON THE PASSING SCENE
(Some random observations on this crazy world in which we live)

U. S. Passes Saudis in Oil Output. The U. S. passed Saudi Arabia as the world’s largest petroleum producer in November 2012, according to recently released data of the federal Energy Information Administration. In spite of the Obama Administration’s hostility to carbon-rich energy, private actors with private capital deployed on private (and state) land have launched a game changing revolution in domestic oil and natural gas production.

Over the last 5 years, domestic oil output has risen 40% and continually outpaces projections. Last year, domestic output increased by 800,000 barrels per day. This is the largest increase in annual production since the first oil well was drilled in 1859 in Pennsylvania.

FCC Set to Drop Ban on F-Word, Nudity; Public Comment Sought. The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) announced it is considering dropping current broadcast decency standards that ban explicit profanity and “non-sexual” nudity. Specifically, if enacted, the new FCC policy would allow network television and local radio stations to air the f-work, the s-word and to allow programs to show frontal female nudity, even during hours when they know children will be watching and listening.

Current broadcast decency law prohibits expletives and nudity, even if brief or “fleeting.” The Supreme Court has upheld the law as constitutionally enforceable by the FCC, despite lawsuit attempts by networks NBC and FOX to overturn it.

For information: http://www.fcc.gov

A Form of Liberal Insanity? Massachusetts Establishes Transgender High School. According to the Wall Street Journal, on July 1, 2012, a law went into effect in Massachusetts titled, “An Act Relative to Gender Identity.” The law concerns what today is termed “transgender” and is described by the following excerpts from an article appearing in the WSJ:

Transgender students are those whose assigned birth sex doesn’t match their “internalized sense of their gender,” the directive says, and they “range in the ways in which they identify as male, female, some combination of both, or neither.” Therefore, “the responsibility for determining a student’s gender identity rests with the student.”

Under the order of the guidelines, a 16-year old high-school junior who says that he believes he is a girl has the right to use the girls bathroom and locker room. . .If a female student feels uncomfortable and objects to the boy’s presence when she is in the bathroom, the rules say, the complaint “is not a reason to deny access to the transgender student.”

GOP REAFFIRMS GAY-MARRIAGE STANCE. Providing encouragement to conservative Republicans who feared the party “establishment” was beginning to surrender some of the party’s core values is the following report appearing in the WSJ:

The national Republican Party rebuffed its chairman’s rebranding effort Friday with a unanimous vote reaffirming that the party sees marriage as strictly the union of a man and a woman.

The vote by the 168-member Republican National Committee, the party’s steering panel, came less than a month after GOP national chairman Reince Priebus released a searing, 98-page appraisal of the GOP’s political vulnerabilities that called for Republicans to show greater tolerance on social issues such as gay rights.

“Bradley Effect” May Impact Polling Results. According to World, polls show the country shifting rapidly toward greater approval of same-sex marriage, but it’s not a majority view yet. A Pew Research Center poll released before the Supreme Court arguments showed 49 percent of the country approves of legalizing same-sex marriage, compared to 33 percent a decade ago. But the Washington Post recently pointed out a “Bradley effect” in polling on the issue – when voters express support for an African-American candidate in polling because they don’t want to appear intolerant, but they’ll vote differently in the privacy of the ballot box. In the voter initiatives on same-sex marriage that passed last year, polling ahead of Election Day showed much higher margins of victory than the measures actually garnered in the end.

State Board Chairman Asks for CSCOPE Reviewers. Barbara Cargill, Chairman of the State Board of Education, asks that parties interested in serving on a panel to review the CSCOPE social studies curriculum contact her or their state board representative (for District 10, our district, that would be Tom Maynard) by April 29. The purpose of the review is to ensure that the lesson plans are “error-free and of great quality.”

Normally, curriculum matters come under the authority of the State Board; however, the CSCOPE program has, explains a board member, avoided SBOE scrutiny on grounds that is was a lesson plan and not a curriculum. SB1406, now pending, will give the SBOE review authority.

There have been attacks against CSCOPE, including those claiming the program promotes Islam. A news article from the club newsletter of November 2004 – almost a decade ago – reveals there may have been such problems in the past. The article also reveals the nature of the problem and how the SBOE of that time dealt with it. A reproduction of that article follows:

The fact that “political correctness” abounds is illustrated by language found in a proposed textbook considered by the SBOE two years ago. Following is the original language and the modified version required by that Board:

ORIGINAL VERSION

“Al-Qaeda’s leader, Osama bin Laden, told his followers that it was a Muslim’s duty to kill Americans. No idea could be farther from the Muslims teachings. The Quran, Islam’s holiest book, tells soldiers to ‘show (civilians) kindness and deal with them justly.”

MODIFIED VERSION

“The terrorists who hijacked the airplanes belonged to a group called al-Qaeda. The group was founded by Osama bin Laden, a wealthy Saudi Arabian . . .They hated freedom of religion and wanted strict religious leaders to control Muslim countries. Al-Qaeda’s beliefs were not shared by all Muslims. The attacks on the United States horrified people around the world, including millions of Muslims who live in the Middle East, the United States, and elsewhere.”