Is the Tea Pot Cracking?

An article in NY Times is raising some interesting questions about the Tea Party Movement.  If the election of Scott Brown was such a win for all Tea Partiers, then why all the problems with the upcoming Tea Party convention ?

Lilac

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/26/us/politics/26teaparty.html

Move Your Money – Good Idea or Latest Fad?

This movement seems to be catching on.   There is a link in the article to check the banks in your zip code.  What are your thoughts about this movement’s chance of success?  Will it make a difference or are they just Don Quixote chasing those windmills?

Lilacluvr

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/01/07/move-your-money-movement_n_415326.html

We’re Hunting Moderates…

Tea Party Leader: ‘We Are Turning Our Guns On’ Moderate Republicans

Dale Robertson doesn’t mince words. The tea party spokesperson and head of Teaparty.org in Houston issued a strong statement this week warning state GOP leaders that if they didn’t support strongly conservative candidates, their jobs were at risk.

“We are turning our guns on anyone who doesn’t support constitutional conservative candidates,” Robertson said. “If they don’t get that, and their party chairmen don’t get that, they are going to be ostracized.”

Jim Greer, Florida’s GOP Chairman, was forced to resign earlier this week under similar pressure from far-right activists following his endorsement of Charlie Crist, a “big-tent” Republican who has been criticized by some conservative factions for being too moderate. Tea Party activists have backed Crist’s opponent, Marco Rubio, in the upcoming Republican open primary.

Crist has notably broken from the Republican party on a few key issues. He’s supported green initiatives such as cap-and-trade legislation, and potential offshore drilling. Perhaps most markedly, Crist was a strong proponent of the stimulus bill, going as far as to hug President Obama while introducing him at a rally in Ft. Meyers.

“I think it’s just all-around frustration with some in our party who have a very pure philosophy of how you should govern,” Greer told the New York Times Magazine. “People want a common-sense approach to governing. And approaching it with purity won’t get anything done.”

Jenny Beth Martin, the national coordinator of Tea Party Patriots, explains the Tea Party’s latest offensive. “People in America are very tired of the irresponsible taxing and spending that has happened in Washington. They want a return to fiscal responsibility, constitutionally limited government and free markets.”

Tea Parties Are So Last Year

Tea Party groups plan ‘strike’

Posted: January 5th, 2010 05:28 AM ET

From CNN Deputy Political Director Paul Steinhauser

Tea party protesters gathered on Capitol Hill in September 2009. (Photo Credit: Getty Images/File)

Washington (CNN) – Some Tea Party activists from across the country are planning a ‘national strike’ on January 20, the one-year anniversary of President Barack Obama’s inauguration.

The idea of holding an economic protest sprung up during the holidays as the result of a conference call held by various Tea Party group leaders, according to Allen Hardage, a conservative grassroots organizer from Georgia.

“Tea Party activists are frustrated that despite a huge turnout over the last year Congress is ignoring them,” says Hardage, who is national operations director for the planned strike. “The question is that if the elected officials ignore you, what do you do to exercises your right to self-governance? So we decided to hold a National Day of Strike where we go after the large donors of the people pushing this radical agenda.”

Hardage says the idea of the one-day strike is to focus attention on the businesses that support the most liberal members of Congress as well as groups that advocate “big government” policies.

But Hardage says the move will not be a boycott: “Here we are exposing the agenda of some of the most widely known companies in America and letting the consumer decide. If a corporation decides to jump into politics to the tune of millions of dollars, then they need to expect that they will alienate some of their customers.”

The strike is being promoted online through the organizers’ Web site through Web sites of various Tea Party groups and on social networking sites.

CNN reached out to a number of national Tea Party organizations. While some were aware of the planned strike and some not informed, none said they were going to actively take part in the event.

Lilacluvr

Let’s Make Plans

We won’t be able to firm up everything until tomorrow since Iggy is at work today and 6176 won’t have computer access until tomorrow, but we can make most of the plans!

Let’s make sure we have the necessary supplies.  We can get free paint at the place David told us about, so let’s talk about that and see whether that is the route to go, at least for the primer.  Ladders?  Brushes?  Sprayer?  Drop cloths?  Caulk?  Sanding equipment?  What else?  Who will the crew consist of?

So much to discuss!  I’m getting excited!  Anytime I can get together with the bunch of you and help someone we all love is a good time!  Let’s do it!

Janus Lives!

I’ve been thinking I should write something regarding the insane debate around health care reform. I’ve been reluctant to do so because I guess I’ve lost hope that any meaningful reform will happen. Surely no sane person believes that the health insurance industry will allow their puppets in congress, on both sides of the aisle, to pass anything that would help consumers and simultaneously reduce their profits. Given the powers and pocketbooks of big insurance and big pharma, anything that finally receives the blessing of both congress and the White House will be nothing more than the Health Insurance Relief and Protection Act of 2009.

But one thing I am willing to write about, at great personal peril, is that it is obvious to me Janus is alive and well and living in conservative western Kansas. Janus, you may remember from your last mythology class, is one of the Roman gods. According to Wikipedia “Janus (or Ianus) was the god of gates, doors, doorways, beginnings and endings. He is most often depicted as having two faces or heads, facing in opposite directions.”

I think it is the two-faced nature of Janus that reminds me most of the western Kansas version of the health care debate, which, at its core, is really a debate about government spending and government programs. We are a particularly conflicted people when it comes to deciding if government money is good or bad. We can’t seem to make up our minds if government intervention is something we desire, or something we loathe. It’s confusing to me.

On one hand, western Kansas votes consistently to send conservative Republicans to Washington. The people who win the overwhelming majority of our votes say they are against bigger government, they believe with a religious fervor that government spending is bad and should be reduced, and they almost all scream like wounded banshees whenever the dreaded “R” word (regulation) is mentioned. In our neck of the woods, we like guys who have a particular distaste for anything Fox News might label as “socialism,” or “big government.”

And yet, our Senators and Congressmen support bigger cash payments from the federal treasury for farm subsidies. They support the expansion of Medicare even though it’s the original socialized medicine. And while other conservative True Believers decry Social Security as Roosevelt’s Folly, our guys support the Social Security program at every opportunity. And clearly, voters out here agree with these stands even though they are in direct opposition to the philosophy of limited government and reduced federal spending.

Hello? Janus called, and he wants his two faces back….

Just for the record, I personally think Social Security, Medicare, and some farm subsidies are good things. But I also don’t see the boogey man under my bed every time someone mentions single payer and a public health insurance option during the health care debate.  I think that out here in the hinterlands, we may find out the hard way that it’s not possible to have our government cake and eat it too.

It seems the overriding idea in Kansas is that MY government payments are good things. Expanding MY government programs to make them bigger is a good thing. But still, we vote for people who agree with our opposing thought that bigger government is bad, and real health-care reform will raise Marx from the dead.

The piper will have to be paid in Kansas if federal spending is truly reduced. Kansas receives far more federal dollars than we pay into Washington’s coffers. That’s been true for over 25 years. And in rural states, especially those with aging voters and declining populations, we don’t have the votes to swim upstream against programs that benefit urban communities. If we raise too much of a fuss about spending on their programs, we might feel the backlash against “our” programs.

You see, we are not one America anymore. We’ve allowed ourselves to be polarized into “your” and “mine” camps. We no longer care what is good for the country, but instead, we focus only on what we perceive is good for “us” and we shrug our shoulders and let the devil take the hindmost where the welfare of others is concerned.

The day of reckoning is near. Kansans will have to resolve our collective schizophrenia about whether or not federal spending is good or bad. We will be forced to look at the contradiction in believing Medicare is good but other government health care programs are bad. And we have to know that voters in other states see our farm subsidies as just another welfare program while we believe they are good investments of taxpayer dollars. We can’t sustain this duality any longer and expect to be relevant in the national debate.

Like I said, two-faced Janus lives in western Kansas, but not likely for long. We will soon have to choose which of our faces is real, and which one is fake. I only hope we choose wisely.

PrairiePond

Hardware, peanuts and friends

I’ve got a sad task in this column today. I scrapped what I was writing yesterday when we received word this morning that a much-loved WaKeeney icon has left us. Mike Dreiling, our own “Mr. WaKeeney” passed away Monday night. It was a day we always knew would come, but somehow, I just wasn’t prepared, and I kept hearing the Beatles sing “I heard the news today, oh, boy”. And when I heard the news, a whole bunch of thoughts and memories came flooding back, along with a few tears.

When I was little, on our weekly visits into town, there was no place I was more excited about visiting than the hardware store. One reason was because I never failed to convince my Dad that I NEEDED some peanuts from the red and chrome 5-cent machine located on the counter. They were always the good kind of Spanish peanuts, slightly oily and very salty, with the red skins that slipped off and fell to the bottom of those little, tiny, brown paper sacks Mike would always give me. I’m not sure if it was the nuts or the cute little sacks that made me insist on peanuts at every visit.

When I was really small and scrawny (yes, there was such a time) Mike would have to help me up to reach the machine, where I carefully deposited my nickel and turned the handle. I had to hold that mini-sack exactly under the spout so as not to lose any of the precious peanuts it dispensed, and sometimes, I just wasn’t tall enough, but I could always count on Mike to help me out. Then, and only then, could I walk around the store, peanuts in hand, and look at all the stuff on the shelves.

I was never impatient to leave when we visited Mike’s store. Oh, I liked Mr. Jeffries when he was the proprietor, but it was really Mike I wanted to see. He always talked to me like I was an adult, never, ever like I was a pesky kid, which was most likely the case.

I liked to look at the pocket knives on display, always wishing and hoping that one of them would go home with me, but that never happened. Knives were not for girls, my Dad would scoff, but Mike never treated me like just a girl. He would patiently answer all of my questions about the various tools and gadgets to be found on the shelves. I especially loved the ropes of all sizes and materials that magically sprouted from a hole in the floor. Some of those ropes became leads for my 4-H steers, and some became leads for my horse, and some were just used by Dad for unknown but always interesting farm things. I knew that we could always count on Mike to give us just what we needed. He always knew things that fascinated me and he showed me how to tie knots and which rope was used for every task.

Chris Hughes: Obama’s “Internet Man”

    

Twenty-five year old, Chris Hughes, who helped develop the sensation site, Facebook, was also the person Obarack Obama called his “Internet Man.”

During the campaign he worked on the general website, but his biggest contribution came in his networking site My.BarackObama.com, or MyBO for short.  MyBO allowed supporters to organize meet-ups, form 35,000 groups, post 400,000 blogs, and raise $30 million with personal fund-raising pages.

Obama was not available to comment on this article, but the ever present campaign manager, David Plouffe, noted “We were very lucky that Chris gravitated to the campaign early.”  The importance of social networking took on new meaning after the campaign’s loss to Hillary Clinton in New Hampshire.  Plouffe continues, “We were there to support the people, but that simply would not have been possible if we did not have a set of online tools that enabled us to do that.  It wan’t just a tactic.  Chris made that possible.”

Chris was the developer that made Facebook “work”.  His role there was described as “part anthopologist, part customer service rep, and part media spokesperson.

For more info read the article linked above.

iggy donnelly

 

The not so sunny side of small town life

Our shrinking community

This week was the annual publication of estimated population numbers for communities in northwest Kansas. Of course, the news was mostly bad as more people are generally leaving the small towns in western Kansas. WaKeeney and Collyer were in the middle of the pack, with population declines of .81% and .84% respectively. So actually, with less than one percent decline in 2008, I’d say we are holding our own compared to previous drops in population. But overall, the news for small towns out here is grim in terms of population.

There are a lot of great things about living in a small town, and you’ve read about many of them right here on Page 3. I frequently wax sentimental about how wonderful rural life is, how nice it is to know your neighbors, and how different country towns are from their city cousins.

But as anyone who has lived in small towns will tell you, there is a dark side to small town life as well. I generally don’t dwell on those dark downsides, but something happened in our office this week that caused me to shelve my original column and devote this space to one of the biggest reasons new people decline to move to WaKeeney, and why many young people decline to stay or come back.

It has to do with the closed nature of local government, the lack of transparency in how “things” operate, and how difficult it is to feel welcome in WaKeeney, no matter what the flags say. When citizens are kept in the dark about how their city operates, it creates feelings of mistrust and it causes them to not participate in the political process or community activities.

Since the “new” version of the WaKeeney City Council was seated this spring, there has been a disturbing trend toward secrecy and away from open government. One of the first actions taken by the new city council was to end the public broadcasts of city council meetings, and in fact, to end recording those meetings at all. People who were not able to actually attend the regularly scheduled meetings could previously tune in to local cable tv to see the meetings broadcast live, and hear what their elected officials were doing. Those without cable could pick up a DVD recording of the meeting, and those with failing eyesight could listen to audio tapes of the meeting that were made available at city hall. All that ended when the city decided this spring to stop all recordings of city meetings.

And to make matters worse, several “special meetings” of the council were held without any notice in the local paper or even in the Hays Daily. All that was required under the Kansas Open Meetings Law was that notice be posted at city hall. However, if you are not a daily visitor down there, you, as taxpayers and voters, were effectively excluded from those meetings because you didn’t know about them. It sort of makes one wonder what was and is going on over there that is more important than the public’s right to know.

And now, given the council’s actions to end recordings of the meetings, it’s impossible for citizens to know, first hand, what is said in city council chambers at these “special” meetings, held outside the normal time frame. Yes, minutes of the meetings are available, but as anyone who has read those minutes knows, they are carefully edited and are only brief notes on what actions are taken. Discussions are not quoted and it’s hard to know who said what and which positions belong to which elected official.

So in light of all this new secrecy, and in the interest of keeping local residents informed about what goes on with your city council and your city tax dollars, the editor of the Western Kansas World submitted a request, under the Kansas Open Meetings Law, that the newspaper be informed in advance of all “special” meetings. He further requested that agendas for these meetings be sent to the newspaper in advance of the “special” meeting. It was a routine letter, simple and to the point, and it followed the formal format generally used by news media across the state.

And your Mayor, Lionel Sawyer, responded to that request in a most unusual way. On Tuesday morning, he stomped into the World office and confronted Editor Jerry Millard in a most unprofessional way. He shoved a copy of the Kansas Open Meetings Law in the editor’s face with a belligerent sneer, saying, “here, this is for you and your friends” and proceeded to stomp back out the door in a fit of pique. Customers who were in the office at the time were stunned. One of them commented that if anyone had spoken to him that way, he’d have punched the Mayor in the nose. Fortunately, Jerry has more composure than that, but everyone in the office was just stunned by the Mayor’s tantrum.

The Open Meetings Law that was highlighted by the Mayor was 5.32 H. “Agenda Provisions”. This section notes “The Attorney General has said that an agenda, when prepared, must be made available to a requester.” But it was the next sentence that the Mayor highlighted with a yellow marker. “Copies of an agenda, however, do not have to be mailed if they can be obtained at a public place.” In other words, the city wasn’t going to send any agendas to us. If we wanted them, we could come get them. Of course, we’d have to actually know about these “special” meetings before we could walk over to city hall and pick them up. It was a classic “catch 22”.

Jerry found all of this odd, as we always receive agendas, in advance of meetings both “special” and ordinary, from the Trego County Commissioners and the USD 208 Board of Education. They’ve never complained about sending anyone agendas. But apparently, Mayor Sawyer and the new city council see things differently. So Jerry set out to find what their policy is regarding sending this information to other media.

America’s broken infrastructure

I watched a special last night on the collapse of this countries infrastructure. They talked about the fact there was no collective database on the levees in this country until after Katrina. They talked about the fact states like Texas having only seven people to inspect over 1500 levees; about Mississippi having one inspector for over 1000 levees; about how it would take upwards of $1.6 trillion to bring all the levees up to 100 year flood standards. How California’s waterways are susceptible to flooding by the Pacific ocean if a 6.7 earthquake hits in the wrong area.  And if that happens, Northern California all the way to Los Angeles will have six months fresh water max, with repairs to the fresh water system two years away minimum. It will happen.

We’ve seen what’s happening to our bridges, both in this state and the nation. Look at the energy grid: it’s a mess. One shorted line took out over fifty million homes and businesses. A smart grid is decades off, and it’s needed now. There is no excuse for this not to be happening. There is an atmosphere of neglect in this country, and it boils down to money . . . again. While we’re bailing out banks and financial institutions, our infrastructure is crumbling. Obama has promised to do something about it, but hypocrites like Sanford turn down the money for purely political reasons. There should be NO politics involved in repairing this countries infrastructure: this is our national security at risk. When you’ve got a system in place that requires little thought by an outside enemy of this country to shut down, then the problem becomes major. That system is the one we now have in place. It needs fixing, and it needs it now. Why not build on the nationalistic premise of making this country strong again, and using a volunteer work force to start it going?

jammer5