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Leavenworth County Republican Party Official Newsletter Sept 2009
In This Issue
What's going on around town?
Connie's Corner
Obama and "Redistributive Change"
It's not about healthcare
American Capitalism: Gone with A Whimper
Who should I contact?
What's going on around town?
KS GOP logo
 
Sept 14
Town Hall Meeting at Lansing Community Center from 7-9pm. Guest Speaker will be (Ret.) Sheriff Currie Myer talking about the rise of domestic terrorism in this area.
 
Sept 15
Hope for America Coalition meeting from 7-9pm at the Antioch Branch of the Johnson County Library.
 
Sept 21
Republican Women's Club Luncheon from 11:30am-1pm at the Riverfront Community Center in Leavenworth, KS
 
Sept 29 
Kansans for Life Monthly Meeting from 7-9pm at the Church of Christ on 10th Avenue in Leavenworth, Kansas.
 
Oct 2-4
American Dream Summit in Washington, DC. Sponsored by Americans for Prosperity
 
Oct 5
Town Hall Meeting at Lansing Community Center from 7-9pm.
 
Oct 6 
 Johnson County Young Republicans monthly meeting at Barley's Brewhaus in Shawnee from 7-8:30pm. For information, call Cara Freie at 816-233-6684. 
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Candidate TrainingWhat an exciting time it is to be involved in the political process! For anyone with an itching to get involved, opportunities abound. The summer of 2009, and especially August, will be remembered as the time when Americans started to wake up to the reality of what was really happening right in front of their eyes.

Government was trying very hard to ram health care down the throats of the American people. Over the course of the summer, as we learned more about the health care proposal, polls showed that people were becoming more and more opposed to a British and/or Canadian styled government-run health care system. Former Speaker of the House (Dennis Hastert- R) recently stated that the current Speaker (Nancy Pelosi) made a strategic blunder by not taking a vote on Health Care prior to adjourning Congress for the fall recess. She probably could have passed health care at that point in time. 
 
Once the politicians returned home, voters wanted answers to their concerns. Town Hall meetings were held across America and politicians were not well received in many of these meetings. Americans were demanding that our voices be heard in Washington, D.C., and we expected our elected politicians to actually represent us (we the people), not their own selfish interests.

In addition to town hall meetings, rallies and protests have been held to educate and inform voters, and to get the citizenry active in putting the brakes on our ever increasing rush toward Socialism. Americans do not need, nor want, government involved in every facet of our day to day lives.
 
These events, contrary to what some may believe, are not partisan events. Folks who are turning out are concerned voters of all parties, concerned for their future and for the future of their children. For those who have attended many of these events, you will always note that the reported attendance is always minimized by the media in an effort to downplay the significance of the events. In fact, the turnout in many cases far exceed expectations, considering the day of the week and the time of the day events are held.

For anyone looking to get engaged, the 2010 election cycle is starting to heat up. Candidates have begun to announce their intentions to run and are looking for anyone willing to volunteer in an assortment of ways. The year ahead promises to be historic as "We the People" stand up and demand that bills be read prior to voting, that our Constitution be adhered to, and that our rights guaranteed to us not be trampled upon. 
I encourage everyone to take an active part in the process. Pick an area of interest and a level of participation that works best for you and get engaged. We are entering into a historic era in American history, wherein we, by our actions/or inactions, are going to determine the direction America takes for the foreseeable future. Your children and grandchildren are going to live with the results of your actions. What will you tell them about your participation?
John Bradford
Connie's Corner              by: Rep. Connie O'Brien
Candidate Training
Big Change Needed in State Government Spending 
Anyone who has been keeping track knows that Kansas has a severe revenue shortage that isn't going to go away anytime soon. Our projected revenue shortfall for 2010 is in the hundreds of millions. Across the country many other states are experiencing similar declines in revenue. Some analyst say that the drop in tax receipts are the worst in a half century. There are less than ten states that ended the last fiscal year with significant reserves. Kansas isn't among them. Only the emergency infusion of printed federal money is keeping most states afloat right now. Unlike the federal government, states cannot deny reality by borrowing without limit. After the stimulus money runs out, many states will find themselves back on square one. 

Kansas Governor Mark Parkinson has been so busy trying to keep our state afloat I doubt he has had time to consider a long range solution. If the projections hold true the governor hasn't seen anything yet. Some have referred to this economic decline as the perfect storm and, in Kansas, we are not prepared for that kind of enduring storm. Our predicament was exasperated a few years ago when our Kansas Supreme Court ruled on a law suit claiming that Kansas schools were not being adequately funded. The court ruled (dictated) that legislators had to significantly increase funding for schools. Now, with this economic downturn, the schools have been put in a very difficult position. Governor Parkinson was forced to withhold additional funds from the schools. Money that schools thought they were entitled to have has not materialized. Interestingly, Missouri's Supreme Court recently handed down a ruling on a law suit that was virtually identical to ours stating that the legislators, the elected representatives of the people, had the authority to set funding. Now isn't that a novel idea.
 
The court action was only part of the problem. After several years of increased spending under Governor Sebelius it will be hard for some legislators to change their spending habits. We saw that during this last legislative session. House Democrats were joined by 16 republicans who refused to make the necessary cuts. They rejected the House Appropriations Bill and supported an inadequate senate version. They were hoping that the economy would rebound and they refused to acknowledge the fact that revenue shortfalls would not be sufficient to balance our budget. This false sense of hope was undoubtedly fueled by the boom years that proceeded our economic downturn. During the last decade, from 2005 to 2009, general revenue spending in Kansas had increased by 48%. Most of the jobs created during that time were government jobs not private sector jobs. Efforts to curtail spending were not successful. Kansas legislators will now be forced to cope with the government growth and spending excesses of those years.

It is possible to learn from the successes and failures of other states. Indiana is among the states that are weathering the storm. At present they are meeting their obligations, without raising taxes, and they still have over $1 billion in reserve. Indiana was near bankruptcy five years ago but is relatively solvent today because they have spent the intervening years making hard choices. They have reformed state procurement, contracted out some jobs, cut costs, and relentlessly scrutinized expenditures in pushing for annual improvement in departments large and small. In contrast to the national pattern, their per capita state spending has cut, on average, 1.4% each of the past five years. Indiana is now the sixth thriftiest state by this measure. And if the Hoosiers have realized that they need to re-examine what they can afford what must we, in Kansas, do if we hope to have similar results? 

The Obama administration and some in Kansas have suggested raising taxes on the wealthy as a solution to our economic problems. We can learn a few lessons from California. California extracts more than half of its income taxes from a fraction of 1% of its citizens. Other states that have followed this policy have seen individuals and businesses flee their states. Sadly, the political impulse to protect government programs and spending leads many states to aggravate their dilemma by raising taxes, often on businesses, serving only to chase them, the jobs, and their tax payments away and into the open arms of states like Indiana. Some officials in other, "let's soak the rich", states are probably not thinking about this at all. But they will! If they fail to act responsibly now they will be forced to choose between downsizing or fall victim to permanent decline. Unlike the past recessions, odds are that revenues will take a long time to catch up to their previous trends. Tax payments have fallen so far that it would require a rousing economic rally to restore them. This at a time when the Obama administration's policies on taxes, spending and more government seem designed to produce the opposite result. One-third of our state's revenue comes from sales taxes, but it's hard to imagine us snapping all the way back to where we were just a few years ago. Kansans have now become cautious. They are now saving more and spending less.  When good economic times return it will take some time before consumer confidence rebounds and sales taxes revenues increase to their previous levels. The time to plan and debate is now. Kansas Secretary of Labor, Jim Garner (D), who was appointed by Sebelius recently stated that the jobs created by the passage of the energy expansion bill and the expansion of the bio-science industry in Kansas will help counter some of the effects of the recession. This goes to show you that even some hard core tax and spenders are beginning to understand that "Job Creation, Not Taxation", is the way to recovery.
Obama and "Redistributive Change"
by: Victor Davis Hanson
Forget the recession and the "uninsured." Obama has bigger fish to fry.
 
The first seven months of the Obama administration seemingly make no sense. Why squander public approval by running up astronomical deficits in a time of pre-existing staggering national debt?

Why polarize opponents after promising bipartisan transcendence?

Why create vast new programs when the efficacy of big government is already seen as dubious?

But that is exactly the wrong way to look at these first seven months of Obamist policy-making.Take increased federal spending and the growing government absorption of GDP. Given theresiliency of the U.S. economy, it would have been easy to ride out the recession. In that case we would still have had to deal with a burgeoning and unsustainable annual federal deficit that would have approached $1 trillion.

Instead, Obama may nearly double that amount of annual indebtedness with more federal stimuli and bailouts, newly envisioned cap-and-trade legislation, and a variety of fresh entitlements. Was that fiscally irresponsible? Yes, of course.

But I think the key was not so much the spending excess or new entitlements. The point instead was the consequence of the resulting deficits, which will require radically new taxation for generations. If on April 15 the federal and state governments, local entities, the Social Security system, and the new health-care programs can claim 70 percent of the income of the top 5 percent of taxpayers, then that is considered a public good - every bit as valuable as funding new programs, and one worth risking insolvency.

Individual compensation is now seen as arbitrary and, by extension, inherently unfair. A high income is now rationalized as having less to unfair - even immoral, in that some are rewarded arbitrarily on the basis of race, class, and gender advantages, others for their overweening greed and ambition, and still more for their quasi-criminality.

"Patriotic" federal healers must then step in to "spread the wealth." Through redistributive tax rates, they can "treat" the illness that the private sector has caused. After all, there is no intrinsic reason why an auto fabricator makes $60 in hourly wages and benefits, while a young investment banker finagles $500.

Or, in the president's own language, the government must equalize the circumstances of the "waitress" with those of the "lucky." It is thus a fitting and proper role of the new federal government to rectify imbalances of compensation - at least for those outside the anointed Guardian class. In a 2001 interview Obama in fact outlined the desirable political circumstances that would lead government to enforce equality of results when he elaborated on what he called an "actual coalition of powers through which you bring about redistributive change."

Still, why would intelligent politicians try to ram through, in mere weeks, a thousand pages of health-care gibberish - its details outsourced to far-left elements in the Congress (and their staffers) - that few in the cabinet had ever read or even knew much about?

Once again, I don't think health care per se was ever really the issue. When pressed, no one in the administration seemed to know whether illegal aliens were covered. Few cared why young people do not divert some of their entertainment expenditures to a modest investment in private catastrophic coverage.

Warnings that Canadians already have their health care rationed, wait in long lines, and are denied timely and critical procedures also did not seem to matter. And no attention was paid to statistics suggesting that, if we exclude homicides and auto accidents, Americans live as long on average as anyone in the industrial world, and have better chances of surviving longer with heart disease and cancer. That the average American did not wish to radically alter his existing plan, and that he understood that the uninsured really did have access to health care, albeit in a wasteful manner at the emergency room, was likewise of no concern.

The issue again was larger, and involved a vast reinterpretation of how America receives health care. Whether more or fewer Americans would get better or worse access and cheaper or more expensive care, or whether the government can or cannot afford such new entitlements, oddly seemed largely secondary to the crux of the debate.

Instead, the notion that the state will assume control, in Canada-like fashion, and level the health-care playing field was the real concern. "They" (the few) will now have the same care as "we" (the many). Whether the result is worse or better for everyone involved is extraneous, since sameness is the overarching principle.

We can discern this same mandated egalitarianism beneath many of the administration's recent policy initiatives. Obama is not a pragmatist, as he insisted, nor even a liberal, as charged.

Rather, he is a statist. The president believes that a select group of affluent, highly educated technocrats - cosmopolitan, noble-minded, and properly progressive - supported by a phalanx of whiz-kids fresh out of blue-chip universities with little or no experience in the marketplace, can direct our lives far better than we can ourselves. By "better" I do not mean in a fashion that, measured by disinterested freer.

Instead, "better" means "fairer," or more "equal." We may "make" different amounts of money, but we will end up with more or less similar net incomes. We may know friendly doctors, be aware of the latest procedures, and have the capital to buy blue-chip health insurance, but no matter. Now we will all alike queue up with our government-issued insurance cards to wait our turn at the ubiquitous corner clinic.

None of this equality-of-results thinking is new.

When radical leaders over the last 2,500 years have sought to enforce equality of results, their prescriptions were usually predictable: redistribution of property; cancellation of debts; incentives to bring out the vote and increase political participation among the poor; stigmatizing of the wealthy, whether through the extreme measure of ostracism or the more mundane forced liturgies; use of the court system to even the playing field by targeting the more prominent citizens; radical growth in government and government employment; the use of state employees as defenders of the egalitarian faith; bread-and-circus entitlements; inflation of the currency and greater national debt to lessen the power of accumulated capital; and radical sloganeering about reactionary enemies of the new state.

The modern versions of much of the above already seem to be guiding the Obama administration - evident each time we hear of another proposal to make it easier to renounce personal debt; federal action to curtail property or water rights; efforts to make voter registration and vote casting easier; radically higher taxes on the top 5 percent; takeover of private business; expansion of the federal government and an increase in government employees; or massive inflationary borrowing. The current class-warfare "them/us" rhetoric was predictable.

Usually such ideologies do not take hold in America, given its tradition of liberty, frontier self-reliance, and emphasis on personal freedom rather than mandated fraternity and egalitarianism. At times, however, the stars line up, when a national catastrophe, like war or depression, coincides with the appearance of an unusually gifted, highly polished, and eloquent populist. But the anointed one must be savvy enough to run first as a centrist in order later to govern as a statist.

Given the September 2008 financial meltdown, the unhappiness over the war, the ongoing recession, and Barack Obama's post racial claims and singular hope-and-change rhetoric, we found ourselves in just such a situation. For one of the rare times in American history, statism could take hold, and the country could be pushed far to the left.

That goal is the touchstone that explains the seemingly inexplicable - and explains also why, when Obama is losing independents, conservative Democrats, and moderate Republicans, his anxious base nevertheless keeps pushing him to become even more partisan, more left-wing, angrier, and more in a hurry to rush things through. They understand the unpopularity of the agenda and the brief shelf life of the president's charm. One term may be enough to establish lasting institutional change.

Obama and his supporters at times are quite candid about such a radical spread-the-wealth agenda, voiced best by Rahm Emanuel - "You don't ever want a crisis to go to waste; it's an opportunity to do important things that you would otherwise avoid" - or more casually by Obama himself - "My attitude is that if the economy's good for folks from the bottom up, it's gonna be good for everybody. I think when you spread the wealth around, it's good for everybody."

So we move at breakneck speed in order not to miss this rare opportunity when the radical leadership of the Congress and the White House for a brief moment clinch the reins of power. By the time a shell-shocked public wakes up and realizes that the prescribed chemotherapy is far worse than the existing illness, it should be too late to revive the old-style American patient.

- NRO contributor Victor Davis Hanson is a senior fellow at the Hoover
It's not about healthcare      by: Jeff & Mauri Kelly 
Friends,

I hear family and friends routinely ask why Obama and Pelosi are pushing socialized medicine when all of the polls show that over 80% of the people are satisfied with their healthcare and over 60% rate their healthcare good to excellent. We know that allowing us to buy our healthcare across state lines and tort reform would go a long way to cut costs and they could write those bills on the back of a napkin, but they don't. With 70% of members of Congress lawyers, I'm not holding my breath.

So why do we have a 1,100 page bill with "end of life" meetings, bureaucrats making decisions about our treatment, and spends us into bankruptcy, because it is not about healthcare. Obama and Pelosi could not care less about your healthcare and they and their families are never going to be on anything but the best healthcare in the world. Although I've always known that it is about power and control, I couldn't put my finger on the enormity of the power grab until I heard a Mr. Daniel Hannan on Fox News. Mr. Hannan is a member of the British Parliament and pointed out that a knee surgery in England is a 12 month wait, cataract surgery is an 8 month wait, and the 5 year survival rate for a diagnosis of prostate cancer is 71% in England and 100% in the United States. So the interviewer asked the obvious question, "If it's so bad why don't you get rid of it." That is when all of the light bulbs came on for me.

Mr. Hannan explained that the British healthcare system is the third largest employer in the world, employing over 1.4 million people. He explained that it was impossible to change the system because they are the biggest voting block in England and they will not allow it to be changed. I went on line and found that England has a population of 51 million citizens and as you know the United States has a population of over 300 million citizens. We are six times larger in population, so if you extrapolate that out for the number of employees we would need for our single payer healthcare plan, that is 8.4 million citizens that will vote Democrat for the rest of their lives. Now let's add their spouses and some family members and you have a solid Democrat voting block of over 16 million votes forever.

Now let's add to that the over 12 million illegals that the Democrats want to make legal so they will vote for them and you have our country being run exclusively by Democrats at least for the rest of our lifetimes. If you think that Obama does not want to serve as the President for more than two terms then you need to get in the game. We know that they don't particularly like the Constitution, because every time they appoint a judge their record shows that they are activists that don't even consider the Constitution in their decisions.

Folks, I believe that the evidence is overwhelming that this socialized medicine healthcare plan will dramatically change our country for the worse until the Revelation. The same SEIU, ACORN, liberal judgesand corrupt State Attorney Generals that gave Al Frankin a win in an election that he actually lost to Norm Coleman will be making decisions about your life. Yes, George Soros has put together and financed an organization to elect liberal Attorney Generals and the one in Minnesota was one of his original candidates.

This is the defining moment for the United States. If we do not stop this our children and grandchildren will never be able to experience the American dream. This country will never again have a regular person with an idea that he or she works on in their garage or basement for years that turns into a product that dramatically changes the world for the better and creates jobs for thousands. Frankly that breaks my heart.

Please get involved! Townhall meetings, letters, e-mails, phone calls, talk to your neighbors, anything -just help us stop this evil.  2010 is going to be perhaps the single most important election year ever.  Time to get rid of the arrogant "career politicians" who really do not care about the people who sent them to Washington. We need new blood in Congress-people who believe in the Constitution and our Republic as we know it. God Bless America!
Thanks.
American Capitalism Gone With A Whimper 
By: Stanislaw Mishin
The following article is taken from "PRAVDA" the Russian newspaper. 
Checked it out on www.snopes.com which said, "The item referenced is, indeed, taken from the text of an editorial (entitled, "American Capitalism Gone with a Whimper") by Stanislaw Mishin which was published by the Russian language Pravda news site on 27 April 2009".  http://www.snopes.com/politics/soapbox/pravda.asp .
The irony of this article appearing in the English edition of Pravda (Russian on-line newspaper) defies description.  Why can a Russian newspaper print the following yet the American media can't/won't see it? 
 
American Capitalism Gone With A Whimper 
     
It must be said, that like the breaking of a great dam, the American descent into Marxism is happening with breath taking speed, against the back drop of a passive, hapless sheeple, excuse me dear reader, I meant people. 
  
True, the situation has been well prepared on and off for the past century, especially the past twenty years. The initial testing ground was conducted upon our Holy Russia and a bloody test it was. But we Russians would not just roll over and give up our freedoms and our souls, no matter how much money Wall Street poured into the fists of the Marxists. 
  
Those lessons were taken and used to properly prepare the American populace for the surrender of their freedoms and souls, to the whims of their elites and betters. 
  
First, the population was dumbed down through a politicized and substandard education system based on pop culture, rather than the classics. Americans know more about their favorite TV dramas than the drama in DC that directly affects their lives. They care more for their "right" to choke down a McDonald's burger or a Burger King burger than for their constitutional rights. Then they turn around and lecture us about our rights and about our "democracy".  Pride blinds the foolish. 
  
Then their faith in God was destroyed, until their churches, all tens of thousands of different "branches and denominations" were for the most part little more than Sunday circuses and their televangelists and top protestant mega preachers were more than happy to sell out their souls and flocks to be on the "winning" side of one pseudo Marxist politician or another. Their flocks may complain, but when explained that they would be on the "winning" side, their flocks were ever so quick to reject Christ in hopes for earthly power.  Even our Holy Orthodox churches are scandalously liberalized in America. 
  
The final collapse has come with the election of Barack Obama.  His speed in the past three months has been truly impressive.  His spending and money printing has been a record setting, not just in America's short history but in the world.  If this keeps up for more than another year, and there is no sign that it will not, America at best will resemble the Weimar Republic and at worst Zimbabwe. 
  
These past two weeks have been the most breath taking of all.  First came the announcement of a planned redesign of the American Byzantine tax system, by the very thieves who used it to bankroll their thefts, losses, and swindles of hundreds of billions of dollars.  These make our Russian oligarchs look little more than ordinary street thugs, in comparison.  Yes, the Americans have beaten our own thieves in the shear volumes.  Should we congratulate them? 
  
These men, of course, are not an elected panel but made up of appointees picked from the very financial oligarchs and their henchmen who are now gorging themselves on trillions of American dollars, in one bailout after another.  They are also usurping the rights, duties, and powers of the American congress (parliament).  Again, congress has put up little more than a whimper to their masters. 
  
Then came Barack Obama's command that GM's (General Motors) president step down from leadership of his company.  That is correct, dear reader, in the land of "pure" free markets, the American president now has the power, the self-given power, to fire CEOs and we can assume other employees of private companies, at will.  Come hither, go dither, the centurion commands his minions. 
  
So it should be no surprise that the American president has followed this up with a "bold" move of declaring that he and another group of unelected, chosen stooges will now redesign the entire automotive industry and will even be the guarantee of automobile policies.  I am sure that if given the chance, they would happily try and redesign it for the whole of the world, too. Prime Minister Putin, less than two months ago, warned Obama and UK's Blair, not to follow the path to Marxism, it only leads to disaster.  Apparently, even though we suffered 70 years of this Western sponsored horror show, we know nothing, as foolish, drunken Russians, so let our "wise" Anglo-Saxon fools find out the folly of their own pride. 
  
Again, the American public has taken this with barely a whimper...but a "free man" whimper. 
  
So, should it be any surprise to discover that the Democratically controlled Congress of America is working on passing a new regulation that would give the American Treasury department the power to set "fair" maximum salaries, evaluate performance, and control how private companies give out pay raises and bonuses?  Senator Barney Frank, a social pervert basking in his homosexuality (of course, amongst the modern, enlightened American societal norm, as well as that of the general West, homosexuality is not only not a looked down upon life choice, but is often praised as a virtue) and his Marxist enlightenment, has led this effort.  He stresses that this only affects companies that receive government monies, but it isretroactive and taken to a logical extreme, this would include any company or industry that has ever received a tax break or incentive. 
  
The Russian owners of American companies and industries should look thoughtfully at this and the option of closing their facilities down and fleeing the land of the Red as fast as possible. In other words, divest while there is still value left. 
The proud American will go down into his slavery without a fight, beating his chest, and proclaiming to the world, how free he really is.  The world will only snicker. 
  
Stanislav Mishin� 1999-2009.. �PRAVDA.Ru�. When reproducing our materials in whole or in part, hyperlink to PRAVDA.Ru should be made. The opinions and views of the authors do not always coincide with the point of view of PRAVDA.Ru's editors. 
 
27.04.2009
Source:Pravda.Ru
Who should I contact?
Leavenworth County Republican Party Leadership
John Bradford...............................Chair
Connie O'Brien........................Vice Chair
Theresa Mast...........................Secretary
David Chartier.........................Treasurer
 
First District
James C. Tellefson.................913-651-3853
 
Second District & Board Chair
Clyde Graeber......................913-682-4514
 
Third District
John C. Flower.....................913-634-0061
 
State Representatives
Kansas House of Representatives, 39th District
Owen Donohoe.....................913-484-1152
 
Kansas House of Representatives, 42nd District
Connie O'Brien......................913-369-2933
 
National Representatives
US House of Representatives
Lynn Jenkins.........................785-234-5966
 
US Senate
Pat Roberts..........................202-456-1414
Sam Brownback ....................202-224-6521
 
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