Monday, July 28, 2008

Arkansas' Insane Adoption Rules: Homosexuals OK, Over 40 Not OK?

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UPDATE- DHS ALTERS RULES
Under pressure from a lawsuit, DHS has changed its age policy for adoptions. The previous policy was basically people over 40 could not adopt. The new policy is that there must be an age difference of no more than 45 years between parents and child.
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A co-worker of mine has a friend whose sister is a lesbian, she and her "partner" have adopted a young boy who is no relation to them thanks to the Arkansas Department of Human Services. Another co-worker of mine and his wife attempted to adopt his own grand-daughter. He was advised that the State Department of Human services had a "policy" against adopting children into families where the parents were over 40, even if the child was a blood relative.

I have no reason to doubt the word of my co-workers, but accepting it leads me to the uncomfortable possibility that our state government has descended into madness. Turning a young boy over to unrelated lesbians to raise is preferable in their sight to turning a young boy over to his own relatives over 40?

We have a shortage in this nation, not of parents willing to adopt children, but of children that need to be adopted. This applies to mostly to white children without significant special needs. This is why we increasingly see families going to Asia to bring back children. There is no need to turn young boys over to lesbians to raise, but it seems that our state government has shifted the rules so that it is happening. Think of this happening, here in this state, where most people claim to honor God!

May God protect the children, and bring swift justice. Amen.

Friday, July 25, 2008

More Than One Way for a Church to Go Wrong

The Arkansas Times website has an article up called "Arkansas' First Church". It compares and contrasts the first church to be founded in Little Rock, First Presbyterian, with the one that is first in number of congregants- Fellowship Bible Church of Little Rock.

We all have our biases, some admit to them and some don't. The style of the piece makes pretensions to convey a bias-free comparison of the styles of the two churches but comes off as a ham-handed attempt to make First Presbyterian look good and Fellowship Bible Church look bad. Because the truth is the "straight and narrow" and truth by nature is exclusive of other paths, there are a lot more ways to go wrong than there are to stay true to one's Godly calling. It is almost as if the Almighty designed the world so that one must be careful to stay in relation to Him in order to choose the right paths. Going astray is easy. Doing the right thing is hard, and you usually only wind up dong it for love's sake.

At any rate, the article made much of Fellowship's $54 million new facility with its theme-park style center for children. To be fair it also talked about the lavish organ First Presbyterian church provided for itself.

Now I can't find anywhere in the Bible where it was God's idea to build a building for the purpose of worshiping Him. There are lots of things that we are commanded to do with our tithes and offerings, buildings just weren't one of those things He commanded us to do.

I've seen religious ambition ruin more than one ministry. They really want to help people, but not as bad as they want an imposing church building or a majestic organ. I have found that nothing is harder than loving people, if your desire to do that is conflicted by desires for other things then the weeds of life choke out the fruit of the word. Still, having those things are not wrong in themselves. If you have to have a big fancy church facility, putting a lot of resources into children sounds like something Jesus would want us to do.

The problem is not the facilities, but the way they are used and what effect they can have on our ability to proclaim God's truth unhindered. Especially when there is a lot of debt, preachers are pressured to compromise their message so that they don't offend anyone. Those seats need to be full with people who will help pay the bills! What starts off as a resource to help minister God's truth becomes an albatross around ministerial necks that hinders people from preaching the truth when the truth becomes unpopular.

Right now my concern is that the "Emergent Church" heresy is infecting wanna-be-hip mega churches like FBC. This particular heresy teaches that "the journey" is more important than the destination, that the role of the church is tilted more towards meeting felt needs and therefore less toward proclaiming Divine truth. Such thinking is very appealing to pastors, since as "Shepard" they are the leaders in the journey and they can't be questioned on the direction to take the flock. After all, its all about "loving one another on the journey", where they are heading to is incidental in this view. It also lets them off the hook of doing what men of God have been called to do throughout the pages of the Bible- proclaim divine Truth even when it is unpopular.

First Presbyterian comes off no better. The article talks about how pastor "Flash" Gordon spends a lot of sermon time critical of the city for using taxpayer money to help finance high-profile business projects- so far so good- instead of the government using taxpayer money to address the problems of the poor and homeless.

Now I am all for preachers condemning theft, even when done by guys in nice suits and ties. The city has no business using taxpayer money to prop up some business ventures at the expense of others (and the taxpayers). Where I part company with Flash is that the city should not be spending it on the things he wants- they should be returning it to the people who originally earned the money. Flash should encourage First Presbyterian families to help these people directly because that is what a New Testament church is supposed to do.

Just like I can't find a scripture where it was ever God's idea to build a worship building, I can't find one where He ever advocated building a government program to help poor people. He commanded us to do it as individuals, families, and churches. That is a lot harder than nagging the government to spend OPM on the problem. You have to get your hands dirty with loving hurting people that way, but once again He seems to make the right way in this life the difficult way. I believe He knows what He is doing.

We should pray for pastors and church leaders, and support those who stay faithful and rebuke those who do not. They have a great many temptations in these troubled times where people want their ears tickled. There are so many ways to depart the path of life.

Wednesday, July 23, 2008

Poorly Thought-Out Lottery Proposal Will Be On Ballot


Well, its official. Lt. Governor Bill Halter's proposal for a lottery will be on the ballot in November. He got the required petition signatures the same way he got elected- he bought them both.
On the ballot or not, this particular lottery proposal is still awful public policy. An informed populace would vote this down with extreme prejudice, unfortunately non-internet users have very few ways to really get informed in this state- the only state-wide newspaper would not recognize good public policy if it bit them in the press.

The measure constitutionally specifies that all profits must go to higher education, that is to say, things like higher secret bonuses for guys like UCA President Lu Hardin. Hey Brummett, I'm glad you caught on but remember, I was down on Lu Hardin (see these five posts) before being down on Lu Hardin was cool.

Since it all has to go to higher education, no money from the lottery could be used to cope with increased costs due to crime, incarceration, and social services that are known to be associated with an increase in gambling. Instead, money for those things would come from the wallets of the taxpayers. Whether you support the idea of a lottery or not, the wording on this one is too inflexible and thus poor public policy.

While the wording on how profits are to be spent is completely inflexible, when it comes to defining what types of gambling are to be included the proposal it is overly nebulous. There is no guarantee that this will be restricted to a once-a-week scratch the numbers type traditional lottery. It could easily include gambling forms that are continuous, instant, and more addicting.

Even if you are libertarian-leaning and see nothing wrong with consenting adults gambling, that is a separate issue from the idea of expanding the state by giving it a monopoly in the gambling business. That would make the state their own regulators. How often has that NOT gone bad? The government is already big enough, and there are already too few checks against its abuses. This state lottery proposal is the wrong way to legalize lotteries, even if you think that is a good idea.

The lamest argument I have heard yet is that we are "losing revenue" by not having a lottery. The same argument could be applied to dealing meth and prostitution. The government is "losing revenue" by not operating bordellos and crack houses! In the name of getting more money the government would thus run straight for the gutter.

Investing more in higher education is not going to do the great things for our economy that Halter says it will. The "more educated workforce" that we will be creating will be extremely mobile, and if the jobs are elsewhere they will leave the state to go get them. Thus, the state government investing more in higher education than there are jobs for graduates is simply a way of subsidizing other states at the expense of Arkansans. We must build the business climate first, then the jobs and education will follow. The only reason a graduate with a better job offer elsewhere would stay here is that it is a better environment to do things like raise children- and an influx of gambling will reduce that advantage.

I am begging my fellow citizens to at least be smarter than the editorial writers at the Democrat-Gazette and vote "no" on this flawed lottery proposal.

Monday, July 21, 2008

Constitution Party VP Candidate Visits Arkansas

Darryl Castle of Tennessee is the Constitution Party candidate for President (Chuck Baldwin is the candidate for President). He visited the state last week and actually got a little face time on KARK, in the last half of this TV news report. In my dealings with Mr. Castle, he seemed very competent. I did notice that the meeting drew a very sparse crowd, I guess he is not a "rock star".

Obama's Purported Birth Certificate "Crude Forgery"


I am not sure where Barack Obama was born, but it increasingly appears that it was not Hawaii. The technical details on the forged birth certificate are here.

If Obama was not born in the United States, then he would not be a natural born citizen of this country and thus would be constitutionally ineligible to serve as President. Don't expect the McCain camp to make an issue of it, since their candidate also appears to beconstitutionally ineligible to serve as President.

It seems the two party duopoly, increasingly at the service of large multi-national corporations, has given us two flawed candidates. A student of Machiavelli would not be surprised. You might think that the power-brokers would select candidates who did not have such liabilities, but in fact the reverse is true. Power brokers PREFER front men who have damning liabilities and dark secrets. That way their puppets don't get out of control. Using political front men that you "have the goods on" and can destroy at any time is much safer for them than selecting men of character and virtue for office.

If you have ever wondered at how this nation ever got such a boatload of morally flawed and degenerate men into high elected office you might consider the obvious answer: because those who are in position to advance political careers prefer such men.

ICE Arrests 48 Illegal Aliens

(You know those guys that are just coming over here to make a better living for their families according to the Arkansas Democrat Gazette)

www.chicagotribune.com/news/local/chi-ap-il-immigrantarrests-,0,3625598.story

Facts in the story found at above link.

Of those arrested, 48 were illegal immigrants and one was a U.S. permanent resident. Most of the men were from Mexico and one was from Guatemala.

Of the arrests announced Friday, nine men had been previously deported and 42 had criminal histories.
The men, who all face deportation, were accused of crimes including arson, battery, burglary and drug possession.

ICE started its "Operation Community Shield" in 2005 to work with local law enforcement agencies and fight transnational gangs. Since then, almost 9,000 people have been arrested nationwide from more than 700 gangs, ICE said.

"The large-scale operations -- including daytime raids that are carried out at factories, farms, restaurants and plants nationwide -- help get criminals off the streets and carry out Immigration law.

"There's no question that a lot of these laws had not been vigorously enforced a few years ago," Myers, assistant secretary of homeland security for ICE, said in a recent interview with The Associated Press. "I think there are some folks who are surprised that our efforts are so active."

Sunday, July 20, 2008

State Democrats Do the Right Thing

It appears that Dwayne Dobbins, who resigned his seat in the state legislature as a "get out of jail free" card, won't be back in his seat after all. You might remember that Dobbins and his wife used secretive tactics to attempt to get him on the ballot unopposed. The Democratic Party of Arkansas made a rules change that has the effect of denying Dobbins' ballot certification. That means the Pulaski County house seat he was running for will either be filled by Green Party candidate Richard Carroll or write-in Clint Hampton.

Even though this action opens the door a crack for another political party, the Democrats in the state just wouldn't go low enough to support Dobbin's shennanigans. Congratulations to them for refusing to circle the wagons around Dobbins, even though it will cost them a seat in the house.

Police Action a Good Excuse to Introduce You to Grigg

I suppose you have heard about the local recent case in which nine law enforcement officials arrested a woman at work and took her away in handcuffs in the mistaken belief that she had not taken a defensive driving class. If not, here is the story by Robin Mero.

The police have a difficult job. We live in times where a significant segment of the population is rebellious, uncooperative, and rude. A population often winds up with the police force that they deserve. That being said, the "laws" that these folks are being called on to enforce are increasingly unjust and the police-state presence is too often disproportionate to the real need. So we have two problems here that feed on one another: We have an increasingly corrupt population living under an increasingly corrupt government. Such situations historically metamorph into a police state and we are no exception.

I'd like to take this opportunity to introduce you to the best writer I can find on the growing-police state side of the equation. He's William Grigg of Pro Libertate. If you want some solid and well-documented accounts of government abuse of power written in a style second to none, you should check it out.

Thursday, July 17, 2008

McDonalds Pays $1 million for falsifying ID's for Illegal Aliens

In a coup for the U.S. government's crackdown on employers of illegal immigrants, a large McDonald's franchisee pleaded guilty in federal court Wednesday to supplying illegal workers with false identification and agreed to pay a $1 million fine.

A plea agreement entered in a U.S. District Court in Las Vegas details how management for Reno-based Mack Associates knowingly employed illegal immigrants by furnishing them with names and Social Security numbers that belonged to U.S. citizens or legal residents. See this link for further details.http://www.chicagotribune.com/business/chi-thu-brf2-mcdonalds-franchisejul17,0,4635070.story

Wednesday, July 16, 2008

Effort Underway to Increase the Pay of Our Politicians

Representative Micheal Lamoureux has filed a request to consider allowing the legislature to set Executive Branch salaries, rather than using amendment 70 which allows only CPI adjustments to the constitutionally authorized levels.

Here is a great link from "Under the Dome" comparing Governor's salaries with links to the official residences for each state that provides one. The Dome also provided a look at Attorney General salaries among the states.

Now even though Arkansas ranks 48th in pay for both offices, you might think that a crumudgeon like me would reflexively oppose a suggestion that executive pay be increased. Especially since the highest paid Governor in the nation on that link (because Arn-old does not take his full salary) is now disgraced former NY Governor Eliot Spitzer. I think client number nine was very much overpaid, but that's NY's problem.

As far as our Attorney General Dustin McDaniel being near the bottom goes: $70,000 is more than an AG who waits until the last day (twice) to tell petition sponsors they have to re-word their petition is worth. Still, maybe higher salaries will attract a high caliber of candidate for public office. Maybe if we gave them a higher official salary they would work for us, instead of working for the business interests who can offer more money later on to politicians who look out for them while in office.

It is true amendment 70 needs to be fixed, because it ties all Executive Branch raises to the Feds CPI numbers. The federal government's inflation numbers are lies, and everyone with any sense knows it. Adjusting to what the feds claim inflation is will reduce the real buying power of salaries over time. An adjustment is needed that does not rely on the Federal Government being honest.

There is a way to raise officeholder pay without increasing the already high resentment against the political class. The total income of all state income tax filers should be easy to find, and state spending and borrowing are known. Compare them and you have a ration of our earnings to government consumption.

I propose that every bi-annual budget where the ratio of total earnings to state spending and borrowing gets bigger that elected officials get a 10% raise over and above the cost of living adjustment. This would continue until the wages of Arkansas officials were equal to 90% of the average of those of comparable officials in the states surrounding us.

Should the earnings to government spending and borrowing ratio decrease, then you don't even get the cost of living adjustment, much less the 10%.

Right now, special interests are rewarding them when they get more money out of your pocket and give it to them. Let's turn that around and reward them if they take less money out of our pocket for a change.

Numbers USA Rates Candidates on Immigration

Americans for Better Immigration is perhaps the premier organization in this country in the fight against to protect the United States from Illegal aliens. They also favor a reduction in legal immigration until we can get the total immigration situation under control. They asked Numbers USA's Roy Beck, also a leader in the movement, to rate the Presidential candidates on immigration criteria.

There are five candidates who are likely to be on the Arkansas ballot for President in November, Republican John McCain, Democrat Barak Obama, Green Ralph Nader, Constitutionalist Chuck Baldwin, and Libertarian Bob Barr. A chart rating the five candidates can be found here.

The two major candidates scored "abysmal" on a number of categories. Green Party candidate Ralph Nader, who would be labeled a "kook" by many conservative Arkansans, actually has positions on immigration issues that would line up closer to most of their positions than Republican John McCain! Nader scores low though, compared to both Libertarian Bob Barr and Constitution Party Candidate Chuck Baldwin.

Baldwin is such a border and immigration hawk that he is even to the right of me. Some of the measures he supports seem like an expansion of federal power, and I am more afraid of a bigger more powerful federal government than I am of illegal aliens. For whatever it is worth, I line up with Bob Barr on most of the immigration issues more than Baldwin, but Barr's position on amnesty is a huge red flag. I'd like to know more about it because based on the rest of the results it seems incongruous.

Obama and McCain? Traitors. Their views on illegal immigration alone disqualify them for anyone who cares about protecting the country from the illegal invasion.

Tuesday, July 15, 2008

UPDATE: NOT SHOOTER: Was Local Shooter a Policeman?

UPDATE: RETRACT QUESTION. There may have been confusion on the part of the source about which friend of Mrs. Kantaphone was involved in the shooting. It appears Hawthorne, the actual shooter, was not a policeman.

We haven't seen it in the corporate news reporting, but AW has heard from a usually reliable source that the shooter (Johnny Hawthorne) in the Mekin Kantaphone killing is a police officer.

Reporter Melissa Sherman did note "If a person receives harassing or threatening communication, Sydoriak said the person should contact the authorities as soon as possible. Sydoriak said there were no complaints from Hawthorne about harassment by Kantaphone." It seems like a police officer would have known to do this.

Prior to the shooting, Hawthorne had been getting threatening text messages from Kantaphone. Kantaphone's wife was in the residence with Hawthorne at the time Kantaphone started breaking down the door and was shot dead by Hawthorne.

Sunday, July 13, 2008

Ribozyme Shows Impossibility of Macro Evolution

Science Daily reports on a finding by University of California Researchers at Santa Cruz which is very difficult to reconcile with the macroevolutionary hypothesis. They have discovered a mode of gene regulation in mammals which was thought to only occur in an obscure group of plant viruses. Even more inexplicable from an evolutionary viewpoint, the structure occurs in one area in a widely diverse group of mammals, but in different areas in five other mammal types, and is absent in humans.

Though the researches do not address the issue (preferring to focus on the fact that this is the first time such structures have been found in mammals), such a pattern flies in the face of the idea of accumulation of genetic structures from a common ancestor.

(continued on the jump)

I Don't Trust the Corporate Media Part 2,543

The Senate has passed a wiretap bill allowing the government blanket access to your private phone and internet records without a warrant, in violation of the Constitution. Each Senator and Congressman who voted for this bill has broken their oath of office.

They know they can get away with it because the major media is controlled by the same big corporations that want the bill passed. The bill contained retroactive, blanket immunity for all crimes committed by telecom and internet service providers when they rolled over for the government and let them vacuum up your records. GE owns NBC, and Microsoft partners with NBC to form MSNBC. Both Microsoft and GE are tied in with telecom and internet firms. They are all interconnected and the well-being of one helps them all. It is not surprising then that Microsoft and GE would favor the passage of the bill that let's their customers, and perhaps even them, off the hook. MSNBC reports the bill as one that "grants immunity to telecommunications companies that helped the U.S. spy on Americans in suspected terrorism cases."

That may lead you to believe that they only collected the records of Americans who were communicating with terrorist suspects. Not true. They were WIRETAPPING those people, but they were collecting records on just about all of us. And even with the wiretapping, I remind you that all it takes to be a "suspected terrorist" under the grossly mis-named "Patriot Act" is for the unchecked Executive branch of the government to declare that they suspect you of being a terrorist.

The Muslim crazies killed each other for 1,000 years before we got in the middle of them. Were we not in the middle of them, likely they would go back to doing what they were doing for the last 1,000 years. What the government is doing with using terrorism as an excuse to void civil rights (which are really protections FROM government) is akin to a controlling father meddling in a hornets nest until the children get stung, and then using that as an excuse to restrict the children's activities.

Friday, July 11, 2008

McCain, and Perhaps Obama, Not Eligible for President

On top of the ongoing doubts about the authenticity of Barak Obama's Hawaiian birth certificate (http://www.worldnetdaily.com/index.php?fa=PAGE.view&pageId=69126), now a thorough look at John McCain's eligibility status indicates that that he is not Constitutionally qualified to serve as President.

Adam Liptak, reporter for the International Tribune, cites Arizona State professor Gabriel Chin, (http://www.iht.com/articles/2008/07/11/america/11mccain.php) who has done the most comprehensive study known to date on the matter.

"The analysis, by Prof. Gabriel J. Chin, focused on a 1937 law that has been largely overlooked in the debate over McCain's eligibility to be president. The law conferred citizenship on children of American parents born in the Canal Zone after 1904, and it made John McCain a citizen just before his first birthday. But the law came too late, Professor Chin argued, to make McCain a natural-born citizen.

"It's preposterous that a technicality like this can make a difference in an advanced democracy," Professor Chin said. "But this is the constitutional text that we have.""

It appears that a straightforward reading of the law is that John McCain is not eligible to serve as President of the United States. Our Founders never intended for us to have an overseas empire, therefore they made no provision for children born to our occupation forces in those protectorates to be "natural born" citizens.

Congress did not "fix" the law allowing for the children of empire to be eligible for President until 1937, McCain was born a year later (and it was not even clear that Congress could really do this until a court ruling in 1971). A voter has launched a suit claiming that McCain is not eligible to serve. Notice from the link (page 2) that not even John McCain's people are telling the judge he is eligible under the points of the law, only that the person suing does not have sufficient standing to do so.

McCain's lawyer claims that this 1937 "fix" was what Congress meant all along, but it's not the same thing. Saying that citizens who work in your embassy (or are on vacation or business to another county) can bear children there who are citizens is different from saying foreign born children from colonies you control are citizens. One is a rule for Republics, the other for Empire.

But of course if we are now an Empire, the rule of law no longer matters. If that is the case, the power brokers will foist McCain on us regardless of the niceties of the law, which seem to matter only as they constrain the common citizens, but are brushed aside when they run afoul of the plans of the powerful. A case in point is chilling quote from Liptak's article...."Several legal experts said that Professor Chin's analysis was careful and plausible. But they added that nothing was very likely to follow from it.

"No court will get close to it, and everyone else is on board, so there's a constitutional consensus, the merits of arguments such as this one aside," said Peter Spiro, an authority on the law of citizenship at Temple University."

There you have it, even "experts" in the law acknowledge that the law does not matter if "everyone else is on board". By "everyone else" of course, he does not mean you and me, but rather our ruling class- the people who matter because they control the armed men who will be sicced on you should you dissent with their lawlessness. Further, he may claim there is a "constitutional consensus" in the same breath in which he declares that "no court will touch it", but in truth there can be no "constitutional consensus" UNTIL the courts "touch it", at the least.

Some may argue that even if the letter of the law is against McCain, it would be wrong to bar him on "a technicality". To that I would reply that all laws are technicalities, and except for arguments from original intent, anyone who respects the rule of law should insist that the strong be submitted to its provisions, and not just the weak or unpopular.

I also remind the reader that it is quite right that the Founders never anticipated an American Global Empire. By their own writings they would be opposed to it. One can easily see them supporting use of the "Natural Born" provision of the Constitution against the offspring of our military garrison's in other nations, not only as a part of discouraging empire-seeking, but also because they were students of history. There is little historical support for the idea that children of military officers born and raised on foreign soil have the same connection with the homeland as those born and raised in the homeland.

If you look at John McCain's policy you will see an example of that. The Founders banned making non-natural born citizens into Presidents because they feared such men would have divided loyalties. John McCain seems to be exactly that kind of man which the Founders enacted this provision to stop. McCain, who spent the fourth of July in Mexico, shows every indication of being an open-borders globalist whose ties to Central America, the land of his birth, are so strong that he advocates polices that are favorable to them at the expense of the citizens of the United States.

If anyone took the original intent of the Constitution seriously anymore then John McCain would have an eligibility problem becoming President of the United States.

There is also doubt as to whether Obama was really born in Hawaii, and if not this would make him ineligible as well. As astounding as it seems, the two major parties may both have candidates who are constitutionally ineligible to serve.

Wednesday, July 09, 2008

KAIT TV Poll - 96% Would Vote To DENY Illegal Immigrants Gov't Benefits

Region 8 Responds

Per the Arkansas ballot initiative, would you vote to deny illegal immigrants government benefits?
Yes
No

Thank you for participating in our poll. Here are the results so far.
Yes
96%
No
4%

Go to this link and arrow about halfway down to the words Region 8 Responds for a graph for this information.
http://debbiejpelley.c.topica.com/maal2PkabIJrvaFXU9lcaeQCRr/

Things I Learned While Canvassing for Illegal Alien Initiative - Defeat or Victory?

At a press conference in the beginning of this endeavor a reporter asked me if I thought our Director could get the support to get the job done. I told him that there would be no problem except for the time element. That proved to be truer than even I realized.

Collecting signatures for this petition was a breeze after we learned where to find large groups of people. (Getting people to collect the signatures in the heat of summer and vacation time was a different story). There is no issue with which I have been involved in the last 20 years where so many people were in agreement about a problem.

I think 90% of the registered voters opted to sign it. Most of the people wanted to sign it before we finished our first sentence. Many of them would get that gleam of satisfaction in their eyes and ask how many times they could sign. Many went back and brought spouses or families to come and sign the petition. Others asked for petitions to take to work to get signed. (If anyone doubts this 90% figure, KAIT TV did a poll and found that 96 percent of the people would vote to deny government benefits to illegal immigrants). See this link for that information: http://www.kait8.com/Global/category.asp?C=4389#poll72649

At the state revenue office in Jonesboro, which represents people from every social and financial stratum, we found that one person can get 30 signatures an hour any working day of the week. Two workers can get as many as 50 to 60 an hour or 400 to 500 on busy days. But we did not think about collecting signatures there until about two weeks ago. We collected three times the number of signatures needed in Craighead County to pass the initiative, and three of our Democratic legislators in Craighead signed the petition.

Some of our politicians claim illegal aliens are not receiving benefits. However, in gathering signatures for this petition, workers at grocery stores told us they get food stamps and qualify for the WIC program (WIC is a program by the Department of Public Health that provides food checks to pregnant women, nursing mothers and children under age five).

Workers at a Medicaid office said a huge number of them get Medicaid. A pharmacist told us that he knows without a doubt that many of them get free prescriptions. The people who gave us this information said all these illegal aliens had nothing but a Mexican I.D. to get these benefits. In fact, the people who worked in these state offices that oversee state benefits were the angriest about the situation because they see every day the injustice of it all. Many of them have offered their anonymous help to prove that these illegal immigrants are getting benefits. That will be of great value to us.

One lady said at a large hospital in Little Rock where her son was undergoing several surgeries (for which they paid out of their pockets) that there would always be a number of foreign-born people waiting there. She said a woman would come out and talk to them in Spanish, and they received health benefits.

All these people would certainly disagree with our Governor Mike Beebe who said we did not need any more laws in Arkansas. (Beebe said he opposes the initiative; saying it would only duplicate state and federal laws; but he didn't tell the people that almost any benefit (welfare, health unemployment benefits, food and housing assistance, loans, licenses etc.) forbidden to aliens by the federal government can be given to them by the state - if the state just passes a law to do so. And there are many so called "compassionate" liberals in Arkansas just waiting to do that. (8-USC-Section 1621)

If anyone doubts that last assertion, consider the resolution that not 1% of the citizens in Arkansas know was passed by the Senate in 2005, SCR 9, that was delivered to Congress and the president of the United States to encourage them "To Create An Expedited Naturalization Process for Undocumented Minors.

Following are a couple of quotes from this Resolution: "Whereas, immigrants can stabilize shrinking populations, facilitate economic growth, revitalize neighborhoods, replenish work forces, and increase property values; and …immigration can be the key to a state's city's, or town's growth and prosperity." That philosophy would undoubtedly lead to attempts to pass laws that would be diametrically opposed to the opinion of the vast majority of people whom I encountered in collecting signatures. ftp://www.arkleg.state.ar.us/bills/2005/public/SCR9.pdf

We canvassers got an education and found that we weren't aware of even half of the problems with this issue.

*Veterans who have fought in Iraq said they were turned down for aid at the same time they saw foreigners here illegally receiving benefits.

*Applicants for aid and workers in the offices complained that one standard was used when citizens applied for benefits, and another standard was used for illegal aliens.

*A Spanish interpreter for a court in Arkansas told us there are far more crimes that go through the courts than anyone is aware of. Not only do the illegal aliens cost the taxpayers for prosecution, but taxpayers also pay for interpreters for the illegal alien criminals; for the translation of all documents related to the case into Spanish for them; and for ALL of them to receive a court appointed attorney at taxpayers' expense. [Don't we citizens have to hire our own attorneys?] A $50,000 budget is allowed for the interpreters for illegal alien criminals alone which does not include any of the other expenses.

*The owner of a brick company and an owner of a construction company in Jonesboro said they had to close up shop because they had to follow regulations, provide workmen's compensation and other things that illegal aliens did not do, allowing Hispanics to work for so much less.

*Construction workers told us how many jobs they were taking from them; people who are earning meager living mowing lawns said they were having a hard time getting jobs now.

*One construction worker said he hadn't had a roofing job in over a year because illegal aliens had taken over those jobs.

*One person in a factory said they were told that supervisors in the near future would have to speak Spanish, which would eliminate many citizens from those supervisory jobs, allowing Hispanics to be promoted to those jobs instead.

*A person in the fire department said some of the firemen were going to have to learn Spanish because they could not communicate with the Hispanics in a crisis because they spoke no English.

*Some people complained that many Hispanics had moved into their neighborhood with 20 people or more living in one house, and they were buying up the whole neighborhood, causing devaluation of neighboring homes.

*Workers in the revenue office said Hispanics often come in and register two and three vehicles, much nicer than they, the citizens themselves, own. These workers think the Hispanics take the cars back to Mexico and sell them before the year is up. That way the illegal aliens don't have to pay any property tax on them.

Defeat or Victory?

I do not think our efforts were in vain. We learned a great deal that we can use in the battle over this issue, we stirred up a great deal of discussion, learned how to prove illegal aliens ARE getting benefits, learned where to get the signatures for the next time, learned that far more people were with us than we thought; and we formed coalitions and unified our efforts. I would do it all over again next year - unless our legislature follows the pattern of those states around us and passes legislation so we don't have to.

AG Dustin McDaniel Cost Us 31,658 Signatures

Attorney General Dustin McDaniel Cost Us 31,658 Signatures

We were told by a national immigration office that most states do not get an immigration initiative passed unless they raise enough money to hire canvassers to get the signatures. Yet in only 39 working days our organization, Secure Arkansas, collected 56,122 signatures to deny certain benefits to illegal aliens with no paid staff, with no paid canvassers, and with practically no budget. That is 1439 petitions per work day. That should tell our politicians how the people feel about this issue. This has truly been a grassroots movement. (We were short of the minimum of 61, 974 by 5,852 signatures.)

Our Attorney General cost us 22 working days by delaying the approval of the ballot title twice. His first refusal to approve the ballot title was April 9, 08 (14 days after it was submitted), and his final approval came May 9, 08. Multiply 22 days times 1439 (the average collection of signatures per working day) and you have another 31,658 signatures or more. Signatures came in faster every week than the week before. It took us a month to reach our full speed.

Isn't it reasonable then to believe that Attorney General Dustin McDaniel's delays in approving the ballot cost Arkansans their first big chance to solve the illegal alien problem in Arkansas? The Attorney General has 10 business days to approve or deny an initiative, and Attorney General Dustin McDaniel waited every time until the last hours of the last day to respond. Does anyone think that was not on purpose?

As Dr. Bill Smith said on his blog: "It is unfortunate, that the AG responsible for upholding the rule of law, should have been the person most responsible for the failure to secure enough signatures on a ballot initiative to help protect Arkansas citizens. Elections matter!" See this link for his article: http://arkansasgopwing.blogspot.com/2008/07/arkansas-immigration-ballot-issue.html

Monday, July 07, 2008

FISA Bill Up Tomorrow

"Ordinary citizens who want to live in a democracy — including those with nothing to hide — should be concerned about the ability of the government to use private, sensitive personal information to blackmail, manipulate, and intimidate their representatives, journalists and their sources, potential whistleblowers, and activists or dissenters of any sort."

Tomorrow the Senate votes on the FISA bill. This bill would allow the executive branch to gather records on American citizens without court oversight in violation of the Constitution. It would also change the rules to put the pressure on your phone company and internet service provider to spy on you on behalf of the government by granting them immunity, even retroactive immunity, for all violations of your privacy rights committed under the auspecies of this act.

Please call your senators and ask them to vote AGAINST this bill and AGAINST cloture. Some senators concerned about privacy rights may attempt a filibuster.

An interesting side note to this sad chapter is the performance of Senator Barak Obama. All during the campaign he claimed he was AGAINST FISA and for protecting us from unwarranted government surveillance. Now that it is showtime he says that he will now vote for cloture, sabotaging the people trying to stop the bill's passage. Hey, he says he is for "CHANGE", so surprise Obama supporters, he just CHANGED his position! Talk about the audacity of hope, or maybe just plain audacity. The man is a creation of the corporate media, and as such there is zero probability, ZERO, that he is not in the tank for statist/globalist interests, same as Bush.

Budget Numbers Cooperative for Beebe


It once again appears as if the state has an embarrassingly large accumulation of excess tax collections on hand- $260 million. At least it would be embarrassing if the special interests in Little Rock could feel any shame. They are now circling like buzzards in hopes of getting the money. Meanwhile, the families who originally earned the money are hurting, but only a few legislators like (R)Bryan King of Berryville are talking about tax cuts. For the rest of them, you can never give your government enough of your earnings! No matter how much they over-collect, they want more.

And while we are on the subject of budgets, you may recall from April (scroll to 7-10th)postings on this site that the budget numbers have done some pretty weird things under the Beebe administration. Even budget director Richard Weiss thought so!

When the special session was going on, Beebe wanted a huge increase in the Natural Gas Severance tax. He also wanted 95% of the money from that tax diverted from general revenue to his special super-secret road program. When the legislature was in session, he gave no hint that the general revenues were in trouble. His legislation was rammed through, but outside the session he drew strong criticism for his failure to share any of the severance money with hurting Arkansas families at a time when the state treasury was overflowing. A week after the session it was leaked that the state's General Revenues were predicted to be way down! Beebe did not feel the need to tell the legislature about those projections when they met a few days before to divert money from the General Revenue to his special program. Apparently, all the Governor thinks they need to know is how to use a rubber stamp.

At any rate, the "emergency" cuts in the budget and dire predictions of losses in revenue struck me as a little odd considering the shale play and other factors. It seemed more like a convenient cover for Beebe's greed in keeping all of the severance tax money for government rather than sharing it with the People in the form of tax cuts. Lo and behold, the new figures contain no hint of the massive revenue loss. Instead, they show that the state continues to over-collect taxes!

The last time this happened, the legislature completely caved to the Governor and the special interests. Let's see if we can get them to be on our side for a change.

Saturday, July 05, 2008

Independence Day


Here are some words from Rev. Rusty Lee Thomas on Independence Day...
THE DECLARATlON OF INDEPENDENCE


When it comes to celebrating this most American of holidays, it is interesting to note that our Founding Fathers didn't consider the 4th of July a holiday at all. No, to them this day represented far more than just another festival to acknowledge in the myriad of special days Americans honor. According to John Adams, the second President of the USA, the 4th of July, "Ought to be commemorated, as the Day of Deliverance, by solemn acts of devotion to God Almighty. " Surprisingly, John Adams believed Independence Day was to be a Holy Day to be spent in Thanksgiving to the Almighty for His mighty deliverance that He wrought on the behalf of our fledgling
nation.

His son, John Quincy Adams, our 6th President, declared, "Why is that, next to the birthday of the Savior of the world, your most joyous and most venerated festival returns on this day (July 4th). Is it not that, in the chain of human events, the birthday of the nation is indissolubly linked with the birthday of the Savior? That it forms a leading event in the Progress of the Gospel dispensation? Is it not that the Declaration of Independence first organized the social compact on the foundation of the Redeemer's mission upon Earth ? That it laid the cornerstone of human government upon the first precepts of Christianity..."

According to Mr. Adams, it took the spread of Christianity 1,800 years to finally culminate in the establishing of America. He believed the highest glory of the Revolution permanently linked the principles of Christianity with the principles of civil government.

He viewed the Declaration as the first social compact and governing document in the history of man to establish its foundation on the mission of Jesus Christ in the earth. Obviously America is dreadfully void of that perspective today.....

(The Declaration of Independence says )"We hold these truths to be self-evident." Can you believe in this moral relativistic age in which we live, that our Founding Fathers actually had the audacity to believe in a concept called truth? Now truth by its very nature lends itself completely to the notion that there are moral absolutes. Obviously, our Founding Fathers would be laughed to scorn today, if they brought that archaic view to our 'enlightened" humanistic temples we call public schools.

We don't teach children that there is such a thing as self-evident truth, moral absolutes, and a definite right and a definite wrong. No! we teach the kids to decide for themselves what is right or wrong with no standard except what their own greedy, selfish, and unregenerated hearts crave. As a result, millions of American children are left to construct their own "truth" and values apart from the God of the Bible that our Forefathers trusted in. Can there be any doubt that this mentality has opened the proverbial Pandora's Box that is savaging our young today? The school shootings are a direct result of rejecting the time honored wisdom of our Founding Fathers and embracing a pagan, moral relativistic philosophy instead.

Thursday, July 03, 2008

"Loot" Hardin and the Big Bonus

Arkansans have been very generous with the states higher eduction system. We approved, after getting a chance to choose again after we "choose wrong" the first time, to put ourselves 100 million dollars in debt to infuse the system with cash. This is on top of other increases in the regular amount of money we give the state schools.

Still, it seems the generosity of the state's struggling tax-payers cannot keep pace with the grandiose plans of UCA President Lu Hardin. He announced that tuition would increase another 5% and that there would be no raises for any UCA staff. That did not include him, as it turns out but discovering that was a very interesting story in itself. As much as it pains me to tip my hat to Brummett, he tells an intriguing story and the bile comes from the facts he reveals, not from his own keyboard.

Tuesday, July 01, 2008

Obama, McCain, and Patriotism

"Love or devotion to one's country" is the definition of patriotism.

Patriotism has become an issue in this campaign. "I will never question the patriotism of others in this campaign. And I will not stand idly by when I hear others question mine." said Senator Obama. McCain too, seemed to distance himself from efforts to question Obama's patriotism.

While they are not questioning each others patriotism, we better question it. It is the responsibility of each and every voter to ask if the people who seek to lead the United States of America really love the United States of America. To say that the question is automatically off the table is inauthentic, intellectually lazy, and very unwise in a time when global interests are increasingly bending our government to their will regardless of the will of the people.

Now as a young man, John McCain was shot down in combat and spent two years as a prisoner of our nation's enemies. Obama says that this alone makes McCain's patriotism beyond question. But does it really mean that? Benedict Arnold had far more impressive experience than John McCain had. Arnold had the military experience, what he did not have, was patriotism.

Young McCain was from a military family. There are many reasons to join the military besides patriotism. Like most of us, McCain has progressed into a different version of himself than he was in his twenties. Many of us know people who had great ardor for their country, their spouse, their religion, when young, but whose have lost their affection for those things over the course of a lifetime. In short, McCain's experiences then, while commendable, cannot insure us that he is a patriot now.

Since patriotism is love of country, the best measure of a patriot is a measure of their love to the things that define their own nation and its interests. In the United States that means adherence to a constitutional republican form of government with a series of checks and balances. It balances freedom with law. It is a product of western civilization.

With their commitment to opening the floodgates of immigration (with grossly inadequate checks to make sure the aliens know and trust the things which define the United States); with NAFTA and other trans-national treaties; with support for a federal welfare state; restrictions on free political speech in the name of "campaign finance reform"; and disdain for the Constitution's limits on the Federal government, neither McCain nor Obama could be considered to be patriots. They don't seem to love the things that make the USA distinct, nor do they concern themselves with preserving her as a sovereign nation.

One of the biggest issues in the upcoming election is one that will seldom be spoken of, because both major party candidates and the corporations which own the media all agree on it. The issue is whether the United States will continue to be a free and sovereign nation in which our own constitution is the supreme law of the land or whether we will continue with "trade agreements" and "economic integration"; with "public-private partnerships" between global corporations whose interests are not strictly tied to the well-being of the USA; or "immigration reform" which will take a population which is already far less literate on the intricacies of self-government than prior ones and dilute its capacity even more.

If we take the later course, we will lose this country and drift towards an EU style union with other countries. Our constitution will be subordinated to some international court or board's decisions.

I question the patriotism of both candidates because both espouse policies which will benefit global corporations but endanger the very existence of this country as a sovereign constitutional Republic. Until their policies change, I cannot in good conscience legitimize either of them with my vote.