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Arlington Republican Club Newsletter
Since 1975
March 2009
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Next Meeting---
Topic: Local Candidate Forum. All candidates for Arlington Mayor and City Council as well as for open Arlington ISD Trustee positions have been invited to address the Club and answer questions.
Location: Cacharel (9th Floor of Brookhollow II, also called the KSCS/WBAP Building), 2221 E. Lamar, Arlington 76006. For directions, please refer to http://www.cacharel.net/info.htm. Also, please note that our meeting location has changed; WE WILL MEET ON THE 9th, NOT THE 7th FLOOR.
Time, Date and Details: Thursday, March 26, 2009
6:00 Dinner
7:00 General Meeting begins
Dinner will
be provided starting at 6:00 PM at a cost of $15 per person. You need
reservations to enjoy dinner---please rsvp by noon Monday, March 23, 2009, by calling the Arlington Republican Club Voice Mail Center at (817) 740-5700 or by e-mailing arc@ArlingtonRepublicanClub.com with the number of people eating. You do not need reservations to enjoy just the program. Our friends at Cacharel need to know how much food to prepare. We urge you to have dinner at Cacharel; enjoy Arlington's best view and support the Arlington Republican Club!
Children and visitors are welcome at Arlington Republican Club events. Bring your friends!
A Friendly Reminder on Dues---
Don't forget to turn in dues to our friendly helpers at the front table. Belonging to the Arlington Republican Club is a bargain at $25 per person... you don't even have to have Barack Obama or Chris Dodd write a bill to give you a bonus to be able to afford that!
Quote of the Month---
"Somebody said that we [Duke basketball] are not in President Obama's Final Four, and as much as I respect what he's doing, really, the economy is something he should focus on, probably more than the brackets." ---Duke basketball coach Mike Krzyewski
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1. President's ReMARKs
On Rush Limbaugh's show a
few weeks ago, Rush played a short audio portion of a hearing of the
House Finance Committee Chaired by Barney Frank. Frank and the
committee were questioning Chairman of the Federal Reserve, Ben Bernacke.
It was Congressman Ron Paul's turn to ask questions, and Frank cut
Ron Paul off without letting him get a question off. This was
a shocking lack of respect from a Chairman to a senior Congressman.
There was no way Barney would let Paul ask or comment on the truth.
Clearly Ron Paul is a dangerous man!
Paul has been out front in
being against the federal bailouts and wasteful spending. "We
can't reinflate the bubble." Like many other issues, Representative
Paul is right on this one. "It is time to sober up and return to free
market sanity. . ." He questions not only the bailout, but
criticizes the Federal Reserve and calls for an audit of it. He
advocates returning to the gold standard and Constitutional government.
Ron is considered a libertarian Republican, but is really a true Constitutionalist.
He advocates getting us out of the UN, is strongly anti abortion and
pro-gun. It amazes me that all the elected officials take an oath
to protect the Constitution and few have read it, much less understand
it or follow it. Ron Paul does, which makes him dangerous.
I receive a monthly subscription
of Ron Paul's Freedom Report, where he has 3 or 4 articles
and excerpts from his speeches on the House floor. In the current issue
we have Rep Paul calling for abolishing the Federal Reserve, and articles
called "Cures for our Economic Disease", "Stimulating our Way
to Rock Bottom." The subscription is free but you can contribute
if you'd like. I'd urge you to subscribe. Please write to:
The Foundation for Rational Economics and Education, Inc. PO Box
1776, Lake Jackson, TX 77566 or call 979-265-3034.
I have a few problems with
Ron Paul on some issues. I think the war on drugs has been a failure
but I don't want even marijuana legalized. I'm for reexamining
and cutting our foreign aid and global military outreach but I don't
want to abandon Israel. Ron Paul does bring up all these issues
in a thoughtful way, and I respect his opinions and happy he expresses
them. When is the last time the country had a real debate on the
war on drugs, foreign aid, the Federal Reserve, fiat currency and the
gold standard?
Congressman Paul brought new
people excited by his views to the Republican Party. After the 2008
election we need all the help we can get! These people, most of them
young, will contribute to a new Republican majority that values freedom
and the constitution.
Mark R. Hanson, 52, is President
of the Arlington Republican Club.
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2. Legislative Alert: Cap and Trade is Nothing More Than Another Way to 'Spread the Wealth Around'
In
a recent article in the Wall Street Journal,
Kimberly Strassel wrote that businesses and members of the U.S. Climate
Action Partnership are beginning to realize that the cap and trade carbon
taxes were never about global warming:
"People
are learning," says William Kovacsk, Vice President of environment, Technology and regulatory affairs at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce (which) has been more cautious about embracing a climate plan). "The
Obama budget did more to help us consolidate and coalesce the business community
than anything we could have done. It's opened eyes to the fact that
this is about a social welfare transfer system, not about climate."
Mr.
Kovacs is basing his assumption on the numbers in Obama's budget.
In the budget Obama promises to raise $650 billion in revenues by selling
carbon permits (which it is the same thing as an energy tax).
Only $150 billion of that large sum of money will go to the development
of alternative energy. The remainder will go to pay for income
redistribution in the form of tax "cuts" for people that don't
pay income taxes.
If
Obama auctions off the amount of carbon credits he actually wants, the
amount that would be raised will far exceed the $650 billion number.
In other words the amount of the carbon credits would eventually raise
over 1.6 trillion for the years 2012 to 2019. according to The Center
for Data Analysis at The Heritage Foundation. Of course the cost
of these carbon credits will be passed on to energy consumers resulting
in an enormous tax increase on gasoline and electricity (rates could
increase as much as 25%).
Therefore,
if 100% of the carbon permits were auctioned off, there would be another
trillion dollars to redistribute in the form of social programs.
Obama states in his budget the money will be used "to further compensate
the public." America should have listened more intently to the
exchange between Obama and Joe the Plumber. When Obama said, "We
want to spread the wealth around," he was clearly laying out the true
agenda for his presidency. It looks like he means it.
Anne Coker
is 4th Vice President of the Arlington Republican
Club and owns a small business that markets pre-employment tests.
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3. Guest Column: SHOCK Theatre by Mark Alexander (The Patriot Post (PatriotPost.US))
By Mark Alexander
One
of the great lines from Casablanca occurs when Rick Blaine (Humphrey
Bogart) is confronted by a regular patron of his gambling bar, the
corrupt Prefecture of Police, Captain Louis Renault (Claude Rains), who
is threatening to extort Rick by shuttering his establishment.
Rick asks, "How can you close me up? On what grounds?" Renault responds, "I'm shocked, shocked
to find that gambling is going on in here!" (As Renault makes that faux
pronouncement, a croupier hands him a wad of cash saying, "Your
winnings, sir," and Renault quietly says, "Oh, thank you very much.")
Sound familiar?
If
not, listen to all the Democrat remonstrations this week about the $165
million of taxpayer bail bonuses scheduled to be paid by AIG. They were
so shocked by the discovery of this largess that they even passed
legislation to slap a 90 percent tax on any TARP-supported bonuses,
despite the fact that such a move would never pass the constitutional
sniff test. Of course, mere matters of constitutionality have rarely
stopped congressional Democrats.
To his
credit, White House economist Larry Summers said, "We are a country of
law. There are contracts. The government cannot just abrogate
contracts." (Apparently he didn't get the memo from his boss.)
Also
worthy of honorable mention, Demo Rep. Charles Rangel, the House's
primary tax writer -- the one who's currently under investigation for
"tax irregularities" -- insisted that the tax code should not be used
as a "political weapon." Unfortunately, he's about 90 years too late
with that proscription.
Leading the
chorus of the "shocked and outraged" is Rep. Barney Frank (a.k.a.
"Bonnie Fwank"), who, without so much as the aid of an Obamaprompter,
protested (phonetically transliterated), "These bonuses are going to
people who scwewed this thing up enawmouswy, who made tewwibew
decisions." Fwank added, "In high school, they wouldn't have gotten
wetention, they would have gotten detention." (When it comes to
rhetorical poetics, Jesse Jackson has nothing on Bonnie.)
Let's review, class.
First,
it was the Democrats, in particular the chairman of the House Financial
Services Committee, Barney Frank, who "who screwed this thing up
enormously, who made terrible decisions." (For supporting evidence that
would convict Frank, even in San Fran's Six Circuit Court of Appeals,
read Frank's own words in "Economics 101" under the section "Housing crisis history," in which he defends his big campaign patrons Fannie and Freddie.)
Second,
on 16 September 2008, one Timothy Franz Geithner (a.k.a. "The Candy
Man"), then president of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, now
secretary of the Treasury for one Barack Hussein Obama (a.k.a. "Barry Soetoro"), authorized $85 billion to bail out AIG.
The
terms of that bailout specifically authorized the bonuses that are
currently being protested, but let's cut Geithner some slack. The poor
guy can't even figure out his own taxes ($49,000 in arrears at last
count), so we shouldn't hold him to a higher standard in regard to
complex concepts such as executive bonuses.
Third,
the shock being feigned by Obama and Senate Banking Committee Chairman
Chris Dodd (a.k.a. "Sugar Daddy") is, to borrow an idiom from Alice,
"curiouser and curiouser."
Peculiar, say I, because Obama's people met with Dodd's people last month to hammer out the details of Obama's so-called "stimulus bill", which, combined with his Obamanibus Spending Bill, is nothing more than a four trillion dollar ruse to hasten "the fundamental transformation
of the United States of America" into a socialist state. (Here we might
recall the telling words of Obama's chief hatchet man, Rahm Emanuel:
"Rule 1: Never allow a crisis to go to waste. They are opportunities to
do big things.")
But I digress.
As
a result of the February confab with Obama and company, Dodd stripped a
measure from the "stimulus bill" which would have restricted the AIG
bonuses in question and replaced it with the Dodd Amendment, which
explicitly exempted "contractually obligated bonuses agreed on before
February 11, 2009" from executive compensation restrictions. (Surely
this was unrelated to the fact that Dodd and Obama were the big winners
of AIG campaign sweepstake graft last year -- receiving $103,100 and
$101,332, respectively.)
Dodd now
asserts, "One way or another, we're going to try to figure out how to
get these resources back." And not a minute too soon.
Got it?
Now,
Obama is calling on Geithner to "pursue every single legal avenue to
block these bonuses and make the American taxpayers whole," insisting
"that everyone, from Main Street to Wall Street to Washington, play by
the same rules. That is an ethic that we have to demand." Obama adds,
"How do they justify this outrage to the taxpayers who are keeping the
company afloat?"
If ever did the proverbial pot call the kettle black!
This
phenomenon of feigning shock, and then shifting blame, when caught
red-handed in folly that would otherwise result in a populist mutiny,
is a favorite tactic from the Demo playbook. It was authored by the
Great Prevaricator, Bill Clinton, and has been further refined by
Barack Obama, et al. Near as we can tell, the objective of this
obfuscation is to make claims that are so blatantly hypocritical as to
call into question whether there is any hypocrisy at all.
Earlier
this week, I asked our editors to submit descriptive terms to apply to
this faux "shocked -- SHOCKED" Demo-diversion. Here are a few of their
responses: Demaneuver, Liberuse, Demododgery, Fauxdacity, Demofuge,
Obamawink, Lefthoax, and my personal favorite, Uberdonkeydung!
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4. Coming Events
March 26, Speaker Straus speaking to area Republican Clubs, home of Steve Laird
April 23, ARC Meeting, speaker Peggy Venable with Americans for Prosperity
May 9, Local Elections
May 28, ARC Meeting, program to be announced
June 5, ARC Golf Tournament, Tierra Verde Golf Course
June 25, ARC Meeting, speaker State Representative Diane Patrick
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5. April Birthdays
1. Brent Morrow
2. Kai-Fleming Wood
3. Joy Sellers
4. Jane Burch
5. Jeremy Blosser
Deborah Gagliardi
8. Ron Wright
Eferen Molina
11 Crystal Costable
14 George Brandsma
18 Connie Hanson
Dean Recine
20 Phil Johnson
26 Steve Irwin
Jamal Quaddara
Bill Benninghoff
30. Chip Pierce
Stephen Willey
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Contact Information
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phone: 817-740-5700
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Pol. adv. paid for by the Arlington Republican Club.
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