Smelling Rats in the Tumey Dismissal

Something is wrong about the recently concluded Robin Tumey case. Tumey ran the Democratic Party of Benton county recently, and has served the party in several capacities over the years.

A company which she and her relatives owned was accused of making unlawful deductions from the paychecks of workers she was using to service a government contract (imagine that, someone well connected to a political party makes money servicing a government contract). Worker's Compensation Insurance is required by law when using workers for a federal job. The accusation was that Tumey's company deducted 10% from the worker's checks, but never used the money to purchase the insurance. Presumably, they pocketed it. I also seem to recall that some if not all of the victimized workers were illegal aliens, but if so that aspect didn't make it to Doug Thompson's article.

At any rate, Thompson spends a great amount of print citing facts which hint that the case was only filed for political reasons. The original U.S. attorney was appointed by the Bush administration under a loophole in the mis-named Patriot Act which allowed the President to make such appointments without Senate approval. There is growing evidence that such federal prosecutors were used for political purposes. If so, I say impeach, and imprison. The only reason I am not all over that side of the story is that it is the side covered in Thompson's article and elsewhere. I am more interested in the other side, how Tumey "beat the rap".

Although the original U.S. Attorney (Bradley Schlozman) was indeed appointed by Bush in a controversial way he could only file the case, he did not prosecute it, and at any rate he has resigned. The man who was in charge of prosecuting it was an assistant U.S. attorney named Richard Monroe- and that man is a Democrat who is running for Congress on the Democratic ticket. It seems like a partisan prosecutor would not hand the case over to the operational control of a fellow who was in the best case unbiased or in the worst case a partisan for the other side. That argues against an unwarranted prosecution and indicates that Schlozman thought he had a solid case against Tumey's company, MSI.

If so, he may have underestimated the degree of "stickin" (ala James Carville's book) that the Democrats do for each other. The lawyer for MSI made a request for discovery for some documents in the Atlanta U.S. Attorney's office. Either the U.S. Attorney in Atlanta dropped the ball and did not provide the records despite the best efforts of Missouri Assistant U.S. Attorney (and now Democratic Congressional Candidate) Richard Monroe to get them, or Monroe himself did not make a serious effort to get the records. That was the biggest favor he could do for Robin Tumey and MSI. Records that should have been provided in 20 days were still not provided in two years. This allowed the lawyers for Tumey's company to move for dismissal because they did not get a "speedy trial".

To me, it seems clear that Monroe dropped the ball, and it is hard to see how it could be an "accident" since it stretched over two years. I am baffled as to why an experienced reporter like Thompson did not pursue this angle in his coverage. Instead, the lawyer for the defense compliments the honesty of the prosecutor whose refusal to turn over evidence allowed her to win a dismissal for her client. It seems Thompson only asked Monroe if his boss (Schlozman) was playing politics when he filed the charges against Tumey's company. Sure, that is one question to ask, but an even more obvious question is was there any political motivation in Monroe's refusal to provide discovery? Was this a case of a Democratic party candidate giving an influential party operative an escape hatch by deliberately muffing the case? Bear in mind this "oversight" allowed the accused to escape trial.

Sorting Out High Gas Prices

Whom do we blame for soaring gasoline prices? Central governments including our federal government, direct the finger of blame at oil companies. They use the fact that these companies are making record profits as proof they are doing something unethical, as if making a profit selling people something at a price they freely (if not happily) agree to pay in a free market was somehow immoral.

(I'm going to need room for this one. For the rest of it click TUESDAY below and scroll down).

Green Party: Competition Provides Public Service

Like most of you, I have never voted for a Green Party candidate, and as of now I have no plans to. Still, I believe they are providing a public service by offering a respectably sized slate of candidates for state and national legislative office.

Nowhere is this more obvious than in the case of house district 39. The office was once held by Representative Dwayne Dobbins. Democrat Dobbins was forced to resign after his conviction for fondling a 17 year old. His wife ran for the seat and won it. That alone tells you that more competition for public office is needed. So staid is the Democratic party that no one was willing to "rock the boat" and run against her in the Democratic primary for re-election. Nor was any Republican willing to run against her in the heavily Democratic district. The last day of the filing period, her husband, the convicted sex offender, filed for the office. She neglected to mention that she was not going to run for the seat again. For a while, it appeared that he would win unopposed. It now appears that the Green Party has found an opponent for Dobbins. More on that on the jump.

In addition, it appears that neither the Democrat or the Republican party has recruited anyone to run for the other party's congressional seats. The Green party has found candidates in three of four districts. The Democrats are also putting forward three candidates, and the Republicans one- all incumbents.

71% of state legislative "races" had candidates who were unopposed in the general election in 2006. People are frustrated, but the system is not providing them an electoral means of expressing it. The Green party is sending six candidates to challenge for seats in the state house of Representatives. The GOP is running candidates in 39 seats, but about 25 of those are in districts they already control. The bottom line is that the GOP is challenging in about 12-15 new seats and the fledging Green party is challenging in about half that many. Not bad for an outfit just getting up and running.

Competition produces excellence, and right now the political system we have does not offer real choice. Whether or not I support their positions, I salute the Green Party for their public service of offering competition in public office.

Why Reforming the GOP is Not the Answer

"We are gonna work to reform this organization from the inside"
************************************************************

This shocking report of how the folks who run the Texas GOP literally cheated Congressman Ron Paul out of delegates to the Republican National Convention should convince any fair observer of the futility of trying to "reform" or "take back" the Republican party. The problem is in no way limited to Texas. The Nevada GOP Chairman simply took essential documents, walked out of the convention hall, and turned out the lights without a call to adjourn once he realized that Ron Paul had enough support to win most of that state's delegates. His claim that the hotel would give them no more time has been discredited. As of this writing the situation with Nevada's delegates has not been resolved.

Similar but less blatant examples of cheating could be cited in many states across the nation. Arkansas is an exception in that the state GOP followed its own rules. The dominance of favorite son Mike Huckabee took much of the drama out of the process.

The pattern is clear, try to use the rules to keep the corporate insiders and their tools in control. Should the peasants successfully navigate the rules and get in position to win the contest, break the rules.

The Republican Assembly has been trying to "retake" the GOP for years, and has been losing ground every election cycle. The Republican Liberty Caucus has tried the same thing since 1990. Ron Paul was on the board of that organization. Now Paul has launched his "Campaign for Liberty". Will it succeed? If the goal is the same as the Republican Assemblies and the Republican Liberty Caucus then I would say "no". The good folks in both of those organizations have attempted to work within the Republican Party to effect change in America. They have been continually frustrated and are further from their goals now than when they began. The reason is simple. They were wrong to channel all of their energies and place all of their eggs in the same flawed basket- the Republican Party.

The Republican party is firmly controlled by well-funded interests who are cunning and ruthless. You cannot win playing a game which they control. You can work your heart out like Paul's supporters did to beat them fairly, and they will still win unfairly. The only way to win is to start your own game, and quit playing their rigged one.

Paul's campaign for liberty shows promise: If and only if they avoid the fatal mistake of trying to funnel their energies through a single party do they have a chance for success.

Petrino Sounds Like Hatfield

Now the papers are talking about how new Razorback coach Rick Petrino is an old option man. He was reading defensive ends in preschool and ran the option in college- for his father no less. While he does say that you can also use option principles in a passing context, most of the print space is devoted to the option that we all know and some love from the Ken Hatfield era. The story even speaks of the success Navy has had competing with more talented schools using that offense. The article mentions the immediate past coach of Navy, but the same facts also fit Air Force when Hatfield led that school to a pretty good string of wins using the option.

The Star Trek Conspiracy

As I watch television "push the envelope" of public morals into the gutter, I sometimes wonder if it is not merely a quest for profits, but an agenda. Television appeals to the publics' lowest common denominator, and as such reduces that quantity each year. Sure, some of it is simply a way to get ratings by being more shocking and outrageous (far easier than having talent) than the next person, but plenty of evidence exists that all things being equal, the networks are more comfortable with shows that make middle Americans who still retain a sense of decorum and morality less comfortable.

Nationally known movie critic Micheal Medved once penned a book called "Hollywood vs. America" in which he delivered convincing proof that the studios were not delivering R rated movies because the market demanded it, but because the Hollywood subculture's idea of "art" was stuff that shocked and upset middle America. He showed that the lower rated a movie, the more money it made on average. Yet for years after his book, Hollywood continued to churn out more R movies than G movies. Some have since then caught on.

What has this to do with Star Trek? Actors in this cult classic series have long complained that NBC never gave the show a fair shot. It only got a second season because of an unprecedented letter-writing campaign from the shows' fans. Nichelle Nichols (Uhura) said this in her memoirs, "While NBC paid lip service to expanding Star Trek's audience, it [now] slashed our production budget until it was actually ten percent lower than it had been in our first season....This is why in the third season you saw fewer outdoor location shots, for example. Top writers, top guest stars, top anything you needed was harder to come by. Thus, Star Trek's demise became a self-fulfilling prophecy. And I can assure you, that is exactly as it was meant to be."

In addition, NBC moved the show to the "Friday Night Death Slot", the graveyard of television shows. That probably finished it after a mere three seasons. Despite its short run as a TV show, it inspired six major films. It also inspired a number of spin-off shows, all of which were pale shadows of the original series and all of which did not share the same view of the universe as Star Trek.

While many have tried to spin Star Trek, the Original Series, as anti-Judeo-Christian, the evidence is otherwise. In the 2nd Pilot, "Where No Man Has Gone Before" a crewman begins to develop God-like powers. Some characters argued that it was a good thing, that they were on the verge of a new and better homo sapiens, but the clear lesson of the show was that humans are failed moral creatures who cannot be trusted with such power. Such a message is definitely at odds with the "find the god within you" advice of our dumbed-down moral climate. And that climate was amongst the upper crust in the arts crowd long before it trickled down to Oprah.

That theme was not restricted to that single episode, but the series contained material even more unacceptable to the secular left.... In "Bread and Circuses" the crew of the Enterprise found a planet which was like Earth except that the Roman Empire survived into the 20th century. The show ended with Uhura telling Kirk that the "good guys" being persecuted were not Sun Worshippers, as they supposed, but SON worshippers, as in the Son of God. That was not the way radical secularists wanted Sci-Fi to go. Especially objectionable- people loved the show and it also had many values that the left approved of, such as racial equality. Some folks liked that message, they just did not like that message in a package that contained a lot of other rules about their personal behavior.

So like many of the original cast, I hold to the theory that NBC execs wanted the show gone, even if it was replaced with souless-spin offs later. They never expound on WHY the execs would want a hit show to go under, but I have a conspiracy theory which I hope to enjoy floating. I suspect the reason for this was, in part, that the show supported many traditional Jewish and Christian values, and that was not acceptable to entertainment people in the late 1960s.

Pine Bluff Paper: We are Sure He Did Not Mean It

Lt. Governor Bill Halter: When this man's office is caught using government resources for political campaigning purposes, the Pine Bluff paper just knows he is innocent of wrong doing. Why, they don't even have to ask him!

***********************************

If you have accidentally swallowed poison recently and need to induce vomiting quickly, you might want to take a look at the coverage that the Pine Bluff Commercial newspaper gave the story about Bill Halter's office using government computers to write up and distribute Halter's endorsement of Barak Obama for President. His aide, Mr. Hoffman, quickly took the spear for his boss- which is the sign of a good aide. Of course, using the government resources to write and send emails is a "mistake" others have made before and is a basic "don't do".

The Pine Bluff paper did not question Halter about it, but took at face value Mr. Hoffman's claim that it was "his mistake". They also wrote, "He said Halter authorized him to go to the office but must have assumed that Hoffmann was going to get the media addresses, then go home and send the endorsement from there." Yeah, he "must have assumed that". Of course. Now that doesn't merit any follow up questions to the boss, does it?

Evolutionary Fish Story

Evolutionists have the same facts as Creationists. What they choose to lack is an open mind that is willing to follow the evidence wherever it leads- including to the hypothesis that life on Earth is the result of the efforts of a super-intelligent Designer.

Time after time I see articles on the science sites which highlight discoveries that are claimed to be evidence for "how evolution shaped life". When viewed with an open mind, the discoveries usually either lend no support at all to the macro-evolutionary hypothesis or actually support Creationism. The latest example of this is an article on Science Daily which describes an amazing fossil. The fossil is of an ancient fish of a now-extinct type called placoderms. The recently discovered a placoderm fossil caught in the act of giving live birth. Since these creatures are dated around 380 million years old, it showed that the concept of live birth was, at the least, not a recent evolutionary development. They topped that though. The new fossil showed a mother and baby attached by an umbilical cord!

That is right, what scientists considered to be an evolutionarily advanced concept found in the most complex animal types alive today (placental mammals), was actually already tried in a very different kind of creature 380 million years ago. The article quotes Dr. John Long as saying the fossil confirms that "some placoderms had remarkably advanced reproductive biology. This discovery changes our understanding of the evolution of vertebrates".

Blindness! Christ said that he came that the blind might see, and so that those who think they see might become blind. The reproduction system is only "remarkably advanced" if you are an evolutionist. Creationist theories would predict that structures seemingly too advanced for evolution to explain would be found early in the fossil record. A Creator is not constrained to go from simple structures to complex ones. He can start with simple, complex, or a combination of both.

Creationist theory would also expect that the same complicated concept could be used in two very different types of creatures, even if one was not an evolutionary descendant of the other. The Creator is not limited to using the genes found in one type of creature to make its descendants. He can take genes used in twenty different types of creatures and combine them with custom genes to give familiar structures in a wholly new type of animal. Indeed this is often what we find. Humans have genes that they share with sponges and bacteria but are not shared with insects or other animals allegedly between humans and sponges on the macroevolutionary charts.

The problem with macroevolution is the evidence. Not only is the evidence for it lacking, much of the evidence plainly contradicts what we would expect to find if it were true and instead conforms to what we would expect to find if certain forms of Creationism were true.

But back to our fossilized umbilical cord in a primitive fish: Here we see a concept, an idea- the umbilical cord for a live birth- being used long before it supposedly "evolved" in the higher animals. The same idea is being used in two very different groups of animals- placoderms and placental mammals. Clearly, the placental mammals did not evolve their umbilical cords from a type of fish that was extinct long before the first mammals came along. Instead, the same idea is used in a very different context (type of creature). That screams out "Intelligent Design" of the creationist kind. The Designer took a concept, live birth with an umbilical cord, and plugged it in to placoderms. This complicated way of reproduction should not have shown up so early in the story if evolution alone were responsible. As advanced and complicated as it is, it was not the best reproductive solution for fish. The type of fish who used it went extinct. Later, the same idea is used in a context where it works better than the other methods.

Super-Light Turnout in Run-Off Election, Every Vote Means More

Benton County is one of the largest counties in Arkansas, and a Republican dominated one. There is a run-off election for County Judge and Coroner on the GOP side. Only 200 ballots had been cast in this election as of this afternoon. When turnout is this light, every vote counts more.

I urge you to vote in your local run-off election, regardless of which party you choose.

PS- in the Benton County Judge race, we endorse Bill Adams as our best chance to stave off a tax increase and add more roads through smarter materials handling rather than a budget increase.

Rush is Wrong (and so is Ron Paul)

Those who wish to "take back the Republican Party" must understand that the forces which run it are well ensconced.
*************************************************

Rush Limbaugh went to great lengths to avoid mentioning the name "Ron Paul" back when it mattered during the race for the GOP nomination. But despite his participation in the media near-blackout of pre-Super Tuesday coverage of Paul, Rush and Ron Paul actually agree on one very important point. They may not agree on what needs to be done to restore the Republic, but they both agree that the Republican Party is the vehicle we should use to do it. They are both wrong.

The mega-corporate interests which run the Republican party are not going to easily give up half-interest in the duopoly. It is far too useful a tool to present the illusion of choice to the American people. Even if their operatives could be rooted out, it would only be after a long, bitter, destructive struggle which would leave the party infrastructure in ruins. The "victors" would rule only the rubble that is left.

On the way out the door, the deposed party operatives would call the people who beat them (you) every name in the book, and the corporate media would telecast it all on infinite loop. The Republican "brand" would be throughly ruined. In fact, the Republican brand is already ruined in the eyes of the people. This is not only because of all the mud that the Democrats and the media have hurled at them. They earned it by their years of corruption, misrule, and lack of fidelity to both Christian-moral and Constitutional-legal principle. There is nothing you can do to reform the GOP, and the people running it don't want to reform it. Instead, like the Democrats, they want to use it to direct government largesse to their associates.

According to Rasmussen polls, only 17% of the American people feel that the federal government represents them instead of special interests. It seems high to me! That number crossed all lines, left-right, young-old, black-white, male-female. The American people know that our process, on the Federal level, is an elaborate sham. The two major parties are obviously responsible for that condition. There has never been a better time for a third party. The identity of the party? I have no idea. Perhaps it has not yet been born. But it is time we started working on it.

My fear button is broken. No longer will I vote for a fatally flawed candidate because the other is a slightly bigger traitor. I am a citizen of the United States. I will not legitimize any globalist with my vote.

"Perot gave us Clinton" they tell me. That was awful, but in retrospect would four more Bush years have been much better? The Bush administration has also been a disaster for this nation, and things are about to get a lot worse. Obama may be handed the wheel 1 second before we are due to hit an economic wall going 100mph. There will be nothing either side can do to change this, because neither side will make the fundamental changes needed to restore the Constitution and preserve the Republic. Both men are propped up by those who have too much invested in the government-as-spoils-allocator way of looking at things. Because of this, it does not matter who wins, and in fact may be best for side "A" if side "B" "wins" the next election, because they will be stuck with the blame for the coming catastrophe.

The plain truth is both parties are responsible, because both have the same warped, unscriptural view of government, and differ only in whose friends get how much of the loot.

We can't "retake" a party machine that we never really had. They were using us while they enacted their own agenda and never quite got around to ours. I tell you that though building a new party is hard, "taking" the infrastructure of the old one over the objections of its cunning, ruthless, and determined current operatives; then rebuilding on its stinking ruins after they use a "scorched earth" policy on the way out; then overcoming the poison of negative images attached to it's soiled name, will be a thousand times more difficult.

Look, don't shoot the messenger here. I know some of you are emotionally involved because you have a certain amount of history with a given political entity. It is the same reason your conservative friends who "voted Democrat all their life" just could not bring themselves to vote for Republican candidates. Do you remember how you felt about them then? Mercifully I hope, because some of you have now become them- maintaining loyalty not to a real political party, but the the memory of one. It is OK to be loyal to memories, but it is dangerous to succumb to the illusion that those wistful memories are realistic options for today's situation.

Department of Higher Ed Says He Will Obey 1 Law But Disobey Another

Note the inconsistency in obeying the law in the statement made by the Director of Arkansas Department of Higher Education Jim Purcell, as reported by the Arkansas Democrat Gazette.

"Purcell said it’s not his intent for colleges and universities to verify students’ legal status and to remove them from campus if they’re not in the country legally. It’s just to ensure they’re not afforded the privilege of paying the state-subsidized tuition rates, he said."

Note how Purcell is finally obeying one law (no more in-state tuition for undocumented students) because of pressure from the governor and disobeying another one (the one that bars undocumented students from college.) He says he is not going to remove students from campus if they're not in the country legally - not even in the country legally means they are here illegally and violating federal law.

If that is not enough, federal law, 8-USC-Section 1621, says you can't provide postsecondary education to illegal aliens unless the state passes a law to do so (see excerpts from law below with link). Arkansas has not passed such a law, so it is just as illegal to allow undocumented students to go to college at all as it would be illegal to allow them to pay only in-state tuition. And it is just as illegal as it would be to deny education for children of illegal aliens K-12.

Act 1621 is a federal law passed by Congress. Provision for education for K-12 education for undocumented students was just a court decision. Can you imagine how quickly a school would be prosecuted if they denied education to K-12 students?

Children of illegal aliens become illegal themselves and subject to deportation at 18 1/2 (unless they were born on US soil). Therefore, college undocumented students are unlawfully present here and cannot lawfully operate and hold jobs, so it makes no sense to use taxpayers' money to subsidize their education or to tempt them to steal a citizen's identity in order to get a job.

At legislative hearings on HB1525, in 2005, a bill to give scholarships and in-state tuition by Joyce Elliott, several presidents of colleges spoke in favor of the bill. However when asked one by one by a legislator if they would hire these students when they graduated, these university presidents all admitted they would not. They knew they had to answer this way; otherwise they would be confessing they would be willing to be involved in criminal activity by hiring them. They knew the law on hiring illegal aliens, but they either did not know the law on postsecondary education or chose to ignore it just as Arkansas Department of Higher Education Jim Purcell is doing now.

Even U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agency Pat Reilly said, "The only way foreign nationals can attend college in the United States legally is through the agency's International Student Exchange and Visitors Program. Illegal immigrants in the U.S. cannot qualify for that program, Reilly said."

Spokeswoman Riley went on to say: "ICE is more worried about enforcing immigration law in the workplace, because it's the prospect of jobs that lures immigrants to the country illegally in the first place." In other words it is like the drug problem. The police can't go after the small fish; they have to concentrate on the big drug dealers. But that doesn't mean that other institutions should not do everything possible to follow laws on drug use; and so should state departments be following & implementing the laws on illegal aliens whenever possible.

I agree with Reilly that the college attendance is not the major issue in the battle; but it is major when laws are deliberately disobeyed and when there is ambiguity as to whether departments are obeying laws or not. And it is an important issue when the college educated undocumented students are tempted to steal an identity in order to "provide themselves and their families a better life" – at the expense of a citizen in Arkansas.

I wholeheartedly agree with and appreciate Governor Beebe's statement: "The law is the law. If you don't like the law, you try to change it in the way this country was set up and designed to change the law." (Quote from AP story by DeMillo) So when is Governor Beebe going to enforce the sections of the law that forbid postsecondary education for students since there is no Arkansas law that allows it?

Governor Beebe also said, "All of the major provisions it [the initiative] proposes are already covered by federal or state laws," We believe the problem with the in-state college tuition demand the very clarification the Secure Arkansas initiative will provide on this law and other laws and issues that will arise in the future.

I must say also that I think Beebe has done far more to obey the law on this issue than Governor Huckabee ever did. He has begun with a major step with the in-state tuition issue. We just wish he would get on board with Secure Arkansas so there would be clarification for everyone on these various issues and laws.

Also note the injustice in the situation described in the following quote of the same newspaper article in the Democrat Gazette referred to above. The exchange students that came here legally are the only ones scrutinized; the undocumented students who are here illegally are home free. “The Department of Homeland Security does not require any school to determine a student’s status.... DHS also does not require any school to request immigration status information prior to enrolling students or to report to the government if they know a student is out of status, the Homeland Security department stated, adding that the exception applies if the students came into the country on visas [legally] for exchange purposes."

This is the kind of problems our leaders and society encounter when they start picking and choosing which laws to obey – situations where a Director of a state Department emphatically states he will obey one law (deny in-state tuition) and disobey the other one (illegal aliens attending college). This reminds me of the situation where mass numbers of illegal aliens can protest in our street; yet one lady has three police cars dispatched on her when she is standing on a sidewalk by a post office collecting signatures.

There is no equality or justice when one person can disobey the law without intervention, and another one pays the consequences. Everything in our Constitution, and numerous courts decisions, is set up to provide equality and prevent discrimination. Enforcement of law for one person and non-enforcement for another is the worst type of discrimination.

The law:
8-USC-Section 1621. Aliens who are not qualified aliens or nonimmigrants ineligible for State and local public benefits
(a) In general
Notwithstanding any other provision of law and except as provided in subsections (b) and (d) of this section, an alien…..is not eligible for any State or local public benefit (as defined in subsection (c) of this section).

(c) “State or local public benefit” defined: [Law lists several but the following is one section of them.]
(B) any retirement, welfare, health, disability, public or assisted housing, postsecondary education, food assistance, unemployment benefit, or any other similar benefit for which payments or assistance are provided to an individual, household, or family eligibility unit by an agency of a State or local government or by appropriated funds of a State or local government. See this link for the full law. http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/html/uscode08/usc_sec_08_00001621----000-.html
8-USC-Section 1621 (d) "A State may provide that an alien who is not lawfully present in the United States is eligible for any State or local public benefit for which such alien would otherwise be ineligible under subsection (a) of this section only through the enactment of a State law after August 22, 1996, which affirmatively provides for such eligibility.” [State & Local benefit is described in section B above which includes postsecondary education – but Arkansas has not passed such a law.]

Se this link for the law quoted above:: http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/html/uscode08/usc_sec_08_00001621----000-.html

Plyler vs. Doe - In 1982, this Supreme Court ruling determined that a K-12 education is a fundamental and protected right and will be provided to all children in the United States, regardless of citizenship or residency status

Read this story online at this link: http://www.wpaag.org/Immigration%20-%20Beebe%20obeys%201%20law%20-%20disobeys%20another.htm

Pelley & Liles Receive Apology From US Post Office/Allowing Them to Collect Signatures

Posting by permission an email by Arkansas Family Coalition, Bob Hester Director

Common citizen prevails over government bureaucracy/apology made
Ladies back on the post office sidewalk collecting signatures this morning

Jonesboro Sun had a story on their front page today with colored picture with this headline: "Woman receives apology after postal officials made her leave sidewalk." The caption under the picture reads, "Cora Jean Liles, a volunteer for Secure Arkansas, displays an apology letter she received Wednesday from the U. S. Postal Services. Liles was removed last week from Jonesboro's downtown post office as she attempted to collect signatures for a petition." Lnk ot story: http://www.jonesborosun.com/story.php?ID=33357

The letter referred to above was actually an email to Debbie Pelley, which as the story points out, "came after Pelley researched the law and discovered that it was amended to allow signature gathering on sidewalks outside the federal buildings." Pelley then contacted an attorney in Fort Smith that has helped her with some issues before to confirm the law was the latest one on the books. The lawyer told her Liles had a good civil rights case if she wanted to take it to court. [This particular law actually is in reference to post offices, not federal buildings in particular.]

If you recall, our organization sent out an email last week about this story in the Jonesboro Sun. Liles is a supporter of our organization, and Debbie Pelley is Area Coordinator for Secure Arkansas, the organization sponsoring the ballot initiative to "Prevent Persons Unlawfully Present in the US From Receiving Certain Public Benefits."

When the postmaster refused to give Pelley and Liles ten minutes to show him the law, Pelley then used Google and the phone to find the authority who would be in charge of this matter and finally talked to Rick Carter, Manager, Consumer Affairs & Claims, USPS AR District in Little Rock who asked Pelley to email him the law. One postal attorney with whom Pelley talked said it would probably take several days to resolve the issue, but Rick Carter took care of it in less than 24 hours. (The research had been done for him by Pelley who had hoped it could be resolved with the local postmaster.)

The email to Pelley reads:

From: Carter, Rick A - Little Rock, AR
To: Debbie Pelley
Sent: Wednesday, June 04, 2008 9:43 AM
Subject: RE: Law on collecting signatures on post office sidewalks

Debbie,

Thank you for sending me the amended 39 CFR on soliciting on Postal property.

I submitted this to our SW Area Law Dept. and they agree soliciting on sidewalks around Post Offices is allowed by this amendment.

Please accept our apology for the misunderstanding and any inconvenience you experienced because of the situation in Jonesboro.

I have advised the Jonesboro Postmaster to allow soliciting adjacent to the Jonesboro Post Office as long as it does not interfere with access or egress from the entrance ways and if there is no disturbance because of the soliciting.

For your future ease in carrying out your petition initiative, let me suggest you speak with the Postmaster or Station Manager in the location where you intend to solicit before hand. Let them know this activity is allowed by 39 CFR and reach an agreement as to where the activity can be pursued without interfering with Postal operations or access and egress from the facility.

This should prevent any misunderstandings or problems with your soliciting activity.

I will send an alert out to all Postmasters and Station Managers in Arkansas advising them of the amended soliciting regulations.

Again, please accept our apology for this misunderstanding.

Rick Rick Carter Manager, Consumer Affairs & Claims USPS AR District

Common citizen prevails over government bureaucracy/apology made

For once a common citizen prevails over government bureaucracy. The postmaster in Jonesboro said Liles was wrong and used a 911 call to have her removed from the post office. The police asked her to move saying the property was federal property. The media spokeswoman in Little Rock for the postal office said she was wrong. Even our US Senator Pryor's office, whom Liles contacted, sent her a letter saying she was WRONG. But the law says she was RIGHT. Thank God for the law. And the law is what Secure Arkansas initiative is all about. It just can't be right or just for foreign born persons to march and protest in our streets without intervention and one single lady collecting signatures have three police cars dispatched on her.

Pelley and Liles submitted the following written statement to the reporter asking him to include it in the story, which he did.

"We would really like for these statements to be part of the story: We don't want this story to cast any reflection on the post office or employees or on the policemen. Except for this one incident with the postmaster the post office has been very cordial and has given permission for us to collect signatures on the sidewalks and has now taken steps to prevent it from happening again. When we visited with the police chief, we could not have asked him to be any nicer. We understand it is their duty to dispatch policeman to any business that makes a call, and this was made as an emergency call. I understand the police chief even took steps after this to prevent it from happening again.

An attorney informed us that we had a very good civil rights case. We do not intend to file a lawsuit in this matter, although it could be tempting. That is not our goal. Our goal is to exercise our civil rights and protect the rights of the American citizens and get the signatures we need for the initiative. It does strike me as unbelievable that illegal aliens can march and protest in our streets freely, yet one single person exercising her legal, civil rights collecting signatures has the police called on her with a 911 call. We feel that situation in this particular instance has now been rectified."

These ladies have fought for our rights to gather petitions at the post office. I hope you will go to the post office and exercise that right. Secure Arkansas website gives information about how you can do this. That website is http://www.securearkansas.com/

Bob Hester, State Director
Arkansas Family Coalition

This email can be read online at http://www.wpaag.org/immigration%20-%20Pelley%20-%20Liles%20receive%20postal%20apology.htm

One Alien Cost Hospital Almost $2 Million/Family Still Suing

Testimony of illegal alien care from 1 hospital –
Almost $2 million spent on one patient. Hospital still being sued by alien's family

You can listen to this testimony on You Tube at this link: http://www.youtube.com:80/watch?v=bLJxmJZXgNI Transcript of this testimony below.

(See last paragraph in red fonts as to how this is related to the initiative to deny benefits to illegal aliens and also paragraph on 84 hospitals in California being closed)

Thank you Mr. Chairman, for this opportunity and for hearing me today. I am Carol Plato. I am from Martin County, and I am Director of corporate business services from Mark Memorial Medical Center. I just have a brief couple of stories to tell you about.

In 2001 we had a Guatemalan, an illegal patient, in our hospital. He was there from 2001 until 2003. He had over 1.5 million in health care services. We forcibly returned him to his home country of Guatemala at our own cost of $30,000. You ask why I am telling you about a case that happened in 2003. Because today that case is not over. We have spent and are spending up to a quarter of a million dollars in legal fees because his family here in the United States is suing us because they think it was inappropriate for us to return this illegal patient to his home country.

As of today I have a patient from Mexico who has been in my hospital for 760 days. He has severe brain damage. He has no family, no friends. His charges to date for almost two years is $1.5 million dollars, and we have contacted the Mexican Consulate four times. We have contacted immigration, and nobody will help us return this patient to Mexico. We are even willing to spend our own $30,000 to return this patient. We can't get anyone to help us with that.

In 2007 the Florida Hospital Association estimates that there was 100 million dollars in cost for illegal patient care. That affects all of us.

One of the major problems that health care institutions have today that you need to be aware of is ongoing care. If somebody comes into our emergency rooms, we don't turn them away, but if somebody comes into our emergency room and they have renal failure and they require dialysis - right now I have six patients, illegal undocumented patients that we are seeing every three days for renal dialysis.

For all of this that I have talked about, we have received no reimbursement. This obviously affects all of us in this room. Our healthcare costs are severely affected by this.

I would also like to end with pointing out that a large percentage of the babies born at our facility are from illegal parents.

Representative: I do have one quick question for Representative Shane.

Chair: Sorry, I know there are a lot of speakers.

Representative: Maam, when you know that they are illegal and come to your hospital do you report them to the federal authorities to come and get them.

Carol: We have tried, and we have been told on numerous occasions that they are interested only if a crime has been committed and from what I understand it seems like they are not even interested then.

Rep. So the fact that they are illegal is not enough crime. End of Video

The Journal of American Physicians and Surgeons reports that "free medical care has degraded and closed some of America's finest emergency medical facilities, and caused hospital bankruptcies: 84 California hospitals are closing their doors. Anchor babies, born to illegal aliens instantly qualify as citizens for welfare benefits and have caused enormous rise in Medicaid costs and stipends." http://www.jpands.org/vol10no1/cosman.pdf

We know this particular law that concerns emergency care is a federal law; but every illegal alien we can deter from coming to Arkansas by cutting benefits will help keep our expenses down on these benefits required by the federal government. Every illegal alien lured to Arkansas by allowing them benefits will increase the expenses of Arkansans. That is one more reason to pass the initiative. I hope this motivates some of you to get petitions signed. You can pull off petition and instructions for collecting signatures at this link. http://www.securearkansas.com/

Walking Away from Omelas ...(State Lottery)

The great Preacher Charles G. Finney was once practically abducted by a man who took him into the back of a building and locked the door behind him. The fellow then produced a revolver and leveled it at Finney. He told Finney that he had killed two men with the gun. Then he asked the preacher if there was hope for a man so wicked as he. Finney assured him that there was hope for him in one place- in the forgiveness purchased by the shed blood of Jesus Christ.

The man with the gun then told Finney that he owned the saloon that they were standing in. He said that men would spend their last dollar on booze, and he would sell it. Wives would come in and place their babies on the counter and beg him not to sell their husbands any more liquor. He would run them off. "Is there any hope for a sinner like me?" he asked. Finney assured him that there still was hope.

Then the man confessed, among other crimes and outrages, that he ran a crooked gambling hall in that saloon. He said, "A man leaves the saloon with some money left in his pocket, and we take his money away from him in our gambling hall. Men have gone out of that gambling den to commit suicide when their money, and perhaps entrusted funds, were all gone. Is there any hope for a man like me?'

Finney again told the man that their was hope for the repentant sinner in Christ. The man did repent. He spent the night smashing up his saloon and gambling club. In the morning he went home and for the first time became kind to his much-abused wife and daughter. The whole family joined the local church, and the man spent the rest of his life warning others of the evils of alcohol and gambling addiction.

That man was driven to repentance in part because he had to look into the faces of the men he cheated, and see the destructive effects of what he was selling. It is my view that politicians and university officials who are pushing for the lottery proposal are in worse spiritual condition than this man. They mean to do the same things this fellow did to enrich themselves, but unlike him they will be insulated from the destruction they bring to families in the process.

The guilt this man felt for his wicked deeds brought him to repentance. Today outwardly respectable men push for gain by the same methods and feel no guilt at all. Instead, they commend themselves, and pass off what they are doing as some sort of good work! Truly, that former saloon and gambling hall owner, who killed two people and beat his wife and daughter, will gain entrance to the kingdom of Heaven before these men. Wicked though he was, he saw the harm he was doing and was moved to repent of his work. These men, who should know full well that the "good" they mean to do will be purchased with the misery of others, not only fail to feel guilty for their sins, but are actually proud of what they are doing!

The Arktimes website mentions that the Arkansas lottery amendment would not ban "video lotteries", which are the functional equivalent of a slot machine. That carries a far higher risk of addiction than a once-a-week "winning number" traditional lottery. Additionally, no money from the lottery could be used to deal with the increased child abuse and family issues caused by an increase in gambling addiction. "Higher Education" will get 100% of the profits from this enterprise. The increased social services to clean up the mess of gambling addiction will have to be paid for with additional taxes out of our pockets.

Lt. Governor Bill Halter claims that an increase of college graduates will produce economic growth in Arkansas that will far outstrip any costs. That is foolishness. College graduates are not fixed assets. They can go to where the jobs are. A state that unwisely churns out more college graduates than its businesses can absorb is simply subsidizing the economies of other states where such graduates are needed.

Before Wal-Mart, J.B. Hunt and other companies in NWA took off, the U of A sent many graduates to cities like Dallas. The U of A graduates went to where the jobs were. Mr. Halter's premises are simply incorrect. In addition, his proposal is written with such inflexibility as to who gets the loot that any social clean-up costs will have to be born by the taxpayers, not the institutions that benefit from the lottery.

Science fiction writer Ursula K. Le Guin once penned a classic short story called "The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas". As Wikkipedia describes the story, Omelas is a utopian city of happiness and delight, whose inhabitants are smart and cultured. Everything about Omelas is pleasing, except for the secret of the city: the good fortune of Omelas requires that an unfortunate child be kept in filth, darkness and misery, and that all her citizens know of this on coming of age.

Some of them walk away; the story ends "The place they go towards is a place even less imaginable to us than the city of happiness. I cannot describe it at all. It is possible it does not exist. But they seem to know where they are going, the ones who walk away from Omelas."

This lottery proposal cannot deliver on its promises of wealth, intelligence, and happiness for the people of this state. But even if it could, it would be purchased with the misery of others; with the pain of children who have to live in homes destroyed by gambling addictions; the agony of addicted fathers and mothers who lose the rent money to our "scholarship program".

That is not a trade I wish to make. I would hope that you would not either. Together, let's you and I walk away from Omelas.