Path in Field
Pioneer Pathways 
Leavenworth County Republican Party Official NewsletterJuly 2011
In This Issue
What's going on around town?
Get Motivated
hat's going on around town?
  
July 4
INDEPENDENCE DAY

July 11
Town Hall Meeting
Lansing Community Center
7-9:00 pm
  
July 16
  Annual Picnic
Tonganoxie VFW Park
11:00 am -2:30 pm
  
July 18
Republican Women's Club Riverfront Community Center
11:30 am - 1:30 pm
  
July 21
Town Hall Meeting
Tampico's - 215 Delaware
Leavenworth
6:30-8:30 pm
  
Aug 1
Town Hall Meeting
Lansing Community Center
7-9:00 pm
  
Aug 9 - 13
Leavenworth County Fair
Tonganoxie 
  
Aug 11
Sunflower Republican Women
Tonganoxie
6:30-8:30 pm
  
Aug 13
State GOP Meeting
Wichita
  
Aug 15
Republican Women's Club Riverfront Community Center
11:30 am - 1:30 pm

 

Aug 18
Town Hall Meeting
Tampico's - 215 Delaware
Leavenworth
6:30-8:30 pm
  
Aug 23
KFL Meeting
Church of the Open Door, Lvn
7-8:30 pm 

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Comments from the Chairman

 As we  celebrate  Independence Day this month with BBQ's, picnics, trips to the homes of friends/relatives, or a day at the lake, let's all take a moment to reflect on just what it is that we should be celebrating.  Let's reflect back on the actual historical fact that 56 brave men from the 13 original colonies penned and signed the Declaration of Independence.  They pledged their lives, their fortunes, and their sacred honor to establish our Republic. Many men and women since have made equally demanding commitments, many with their lives.  Let us not overlook these sacrifices in our celebrations.

May we enjoy the festivities and use the spirit of these celebrations to renew our commitment to taking back control of contested races at all levels of government in the 2012 Elections.  We have 16 months until the 2012 Election is over.

Candidates are now coming forth making their announcements and beginning to organize their campaign teams.  Make a commitment to support a candidate in whatever way you feel comfortable and get involved.  You will find it both rewarding and fun and you will make many new friends in the process.

I hope to see you all at the Leavenworth County Republican Party Picnic on July 16th and at the County Fair the week of August 9-13.

Moran, Huelskamp Take Hardball Vow on Debt Ceiling

Sen. Jerry Moran, R-Kan., who was one of the first (and few) senators to join the Senate Tea Party Caucus in January, has similarly stepped out front to take the "Cut, Cap, Balance Pledge" being pushed by conservative groups including Let Freedom Ring and the Club for Growth. By taking the pledge, Moran has committed not to vote to raise the debt ceiling unless the vote includes substantial spending cuts and caps, and a balanced-budget amendment to the Constitution - no small task politically. As of Friday, 12 Republican senators had taken the pledge. Rep. Tim Huelskamp, R-Fowler, was among 20 House members to take the pledge.

Read more: http://blogs.kansas.com/weblog/2011/06/moran-huelskamp-take-hardball-vow-on-debt-ceiling/#ixzz1QWExzz0

                           Men's Leadership Series

 On June 25th, a group of men met in Topeka for the first of several monthly meetings designed to assist and equip them to become better public servants.  Many of these men already hold key positions in state and local government and others are active in the political arena.

        

The first part of the day's activities was conducted in the House chambers.  There were 60 men participating in this first Men's Leadership Series. 

 

The first speaker to address the Men's Leadership group was Lieutenant Governor Jeff Colyer.  Jeff gave us, what I would call, his state of the state address.  Fiscal issues remain at the forefront of our state's problems. Kansas isn't alone.  Other states across the country are facing similar problems.  Several measures were taken by the Kansas legislature and the governor's office to begin the process of getting our fiscal house in order.  Jeff outlined many of the accomplishments of this past legislative session and the challenges that remain.  

  

The morning session included Jeff Glendening, Vice President of Public Affairs with the Kansas Chamber of Commerce, and House Majority Leader Arlen Siegfreid.  Again, fiscal issues were discussed. Jeff and the chamber have several ideas for improving the Kansas economy.  Finding ways to lower the tax burden on business owners and taxpayers is paramount.  There is a plan to eliminate the earnings tax.  As we begin to recover from this economic downturn revenues will increase.  A percentage of the revenue increases will be used to "pay down" the earnings tax until that tax is eventually eliminated. Many feel that this is the best thing we can do to stimulate the economy and create jobs.  House Majority Leader Siegfreid reminded us that legislators must be people of character.  Above all else they must make sure they are in possession of the facts and always truthful.  If they lack integrity, if they aren't truthful, if they lack moral character much of the good that they could accomplish will never be realized.  Arlen commended the Men's Leadership organizers. Arlen will soon be 65 years old.  He knows that we need people, especially younger people, who are well equipped to be leaders and ready to take the positions in government.  It's refreshing to know that the Men's Leadership Series will be there helping new leaders to be well equipped and ready to serve.   

        

We heard from the Kansas Republican Party Executive Director, Clay Barker.  Clay talked about the upcoming state meeting in Wichita in August. Kansas will host a Presidential Preference Caucus and the State Executive Committee will set all the details at the state's meeting in August.  It's not cast in stone but the caucus may be in March of 2012.

 

We also had the opportunity to hear from Senate Majority Leader Jay Emler.  Jay gave us a glimpse into the different ways business is conducted by the House and Senate chambers. According to Jay, Senate business is conducted in a much more formal way.  The House, he says, appears to be unruly at times.  Like everyone else, Jay addressed the budget.  He said that people are finally beginning to realize that we simply don't have the money to continue funding state programs at their current levels.  He also gave his opinion on legislation that would change the way Kansas judges are selected.  Jay, who is a lawyer by profession, doesn't favor changes. 

 

We heard from Alan Cobb from Americans for Prosperity (AFP). Although AFP usually confines itself to fiscal policy, Alan also commented on Judicial Selection.  He favors the federal model where the governor appoints and the Senate confirms. 

 

Ed O'Brien - 2nd Congressional District Vice Chairman

Freedom Is Our Strategy

  

How is it that millions of people located in disparate places - each individual with unique knowledge of their community and circumstances - can voluntarily cooperate and coordinate plans to create something far greater and more valued than any one individual could have done alone?  The answer is freedom.   I am describing the miracle of the market, what Nobel Laureate economist F.A. Hayek called the spontaneous order.  The basis of Hayek's critique of central government planning and Keynesian attempts to "stimulate" the economy through new spending is this understanding of the market process of discovery.  Even the most benevolent Czar or the smartest bureaucrat sitting on the IPAB rationing board in the bowels of HHS could not possibly know better than free people acting to better themselves and their communities. 

 "Spontaneous order" equally describes the emergence and power of the citizen protest against big government we now commonly refer to as the Tea Party.  Tea Party values are based on a fundamental belief in freedom, but so is our strategy.  There is no leader, no one is in charge.  Our movement is fueled by the decentralization of information on the internet and the ease of connecting with like-minded citizens through social networking.  We have evolved from a protest movement to a GOTV machine to what is now one of the most important nonviolent social movements in American history.  

 Too many worry about the limits of decentralization, but I say that the best way to beat the left is by fully embracing the beautiful chaos of this citizen revolt against big government.  That's how we have accomplished so much in such a short period of time, and it is the only conceivable way that we will ever beat the well-financed special interests that comprise the big government coalition.   If we try to match them toe to toe, dollar for dollar, we will lose.  But the left intrinsically believes in order from the top down.  Someone needs to be in charge: a Czar, a better benevolent bureaucrat that knows better than you do.  They can't help but build hierarchical structures because that's what they believe in.  This is our strategic window.  Embrace the beautiful chaos of citizen action, because freedom works.

 

Matt Kibbe is the President of FreedomWorks and the coauthor of Give Us Liberty: A Tea Party Manifesto

Born on the 4th of July

  

PRESIDENT CALVIN COOLIDGE, the only President born on the 4th of July, said:

 

"About the Declaration there is a finality that is exceedingly restful.  It is often asserted that the world has made a great deal of progress since 1776, that we have had new thoughts and new experiences which have given us a great advance over the people of that day, and that we may therefore very well discard their conclusions for something more modern.  But that reasoning cannot be applied to this great charter. If all men are created equal, that is final.  If they are endowed with inalienable rights, that is final.  If governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed, that is final. ... No advance, no progress can be made beyond these propositions.  If anyone wishes to deny their truth or their soundness, the only direction in which he can proceed historically is not forward, but backward toward the time when there was no equality, no rights of the individual, no rule of the people. Those who wish to proceed in that direction can not lay claim to progress."

 

That quote alludes to a movement that had great gains in the early 1900's known as Progressivism, whose chief advocate of that time was the Harding/Coolidge administration's predecessor Woodrow Wilson (D).  Wilson believed the United States had outgrown the Constitution and he was a founding member of the League of Nations (predecessor to UN) which the Republican dominated Congress refused to allow the US to join.  Exponential government expansion and increased taxation (gave us the first Income Tax) and oversight marked Wilson's presidency, only being overshadowed by WWI, after Wilson was narrowly elected for a second term.  Wilson also brought us the Federal Reserve banking system and advocated nationalized health care.

 

Wilson's successor, Warren Harding was a "moderate" Republican who died after 2 years in office leaving his conservative VP Coolidge in the Oval Office. Coolidge was a true conservative, believing that issues not addressed in the U. S. Constitution were better left up to the states.  This was proved out during his tenure as Governor of Mass. when he signed into law measures that opposed child labor, reduced hours for women (to 48 or less) and raised pay in the factories, stating "we must humanize industry".  He also pushed the legislature to give a $100 bonus to WWI Veterans in that state.

 

Conversely, on the Federal level, as President, he believed that labor unions were a skid to socialism, and opposed them at every turn.  He also fought Congress on government subsidization of agriculture stating that "government control cannot be divorced from political control".  He believed that taxes should be lower and fewer people should have to pay them.

 

Coolidge is not without his warts, and many blame lack of controls on Wall Street for the Crash of '29.  I believe this criticism is warranted.  Hindsight is always better than foresight and commentary easier than commission, but I would contend that policies of his successor Herbert Hoover (moderate Rep) followed by FDR (another Progressive) contributed to the duration of the Great Depression.

 

Hoover was not Coolidge's VP, but Commerce Secretary, and after Coolidge announced he was not going to run in '28 the Republicans nominated Hoover.  Coolidge once said of Hoover, "for six years that man has given me unsolicited advice-all of it bad".  However, he did not want to split the party and quietly went back to private life.  Known as "Silent Cal", someone at a dinner party once challenged him, "I have a bet with someone that I can get you say more than 2 words".  He replied, "You lose."  When this same person was informed of his death years later, she asked, "How could you tell?"

 

Coolidge's presidency is now largely forgotten along with the unprecedented economic growth during that time.  Few people know who he was, let alone his politics.  He was a Republican yes, but more than that he was a conservative who realized the bounds of the US Constitution, and the restraints that must be applied to government.  He was very popular and after the landslide victory won with Harding in '20, Coolidge went on to win his own landslide in '24.

 

I believe that without this conservative tempering between Wilson and FDR, we may very well have had a similar type of revolution as experienced in Germany and Russia as the Socialists and Communists struggled for power.  They were very present here in America. They're back.

 

In my reading of this era of American History, I realized that there is a pendulum swing in American politics from left to right and usually the swing matches the distance marked on the opposite side.  We have recently been witness to a drastic swing to the left.  However, with the 2010 sweeping victory in the House of Representatives, and the "re-awakening" of grassroots America, it seems the momentum has become static.  As we move into the next election cycle, look for continued retaking of Congressional seats and a shift in the Senate, along with Obama returning to Chicago, or Honolulu, or maybe Nairobi to look for new digs.

 

So while you celebrate the "4th" and this great country we have been given, maybe give a passing thought to "Silent Cal" Coolidge on his birthday. Then have another hotdog...God Bless America!

 

Kirk Sours

Putting Things in Perspective 


 What Does it Mean to be an American

Dennis Prager - Q & A at the University of Denver
 


 

 

An Anonymous Observation

"The danger to America is not Barack Obama but a citizenry capable of entrusting a man like him with the Presidency. It will be far easier to limit and undo the follies of an Obama presidency than to restore the necessary common sense and good judgment to a depraved electorate willing to have such a man for their president. The problem is much deeper and far more serious than Mr. Obama, who is a mere symptom of what ails America. Blaming the prince of the fools should not blind anyone to the vast confederacy of fools that made him their prince. The Republic can survive a Barack Obama, who is, after all, merely a fool. It is less likely to survive a multitude of fools such as those who made him their president." 

  
Words of Wisdom
"A nation can survive its fools, even the ambitious.  But it cannot survive treason from within.  An enemy at the gates is less formidable, for he is known and carries his banner openly.  But the traitor moves against those within the gate freely, his sly whispers rustling through all the alleys, heard in the very halls of government itself.  For the traitor appears not as a traitor; he speaks in accents familiar to his victims, and he wears their face and their arguments, he appeals to the baseness that lies deep in the hearts of all men.  He rots the souls of a nation, he works secretly and unknown in the night to undermine the pillars of a city, he infects the body politic so that it can no longer resist.  A murderer is less to fear." - - Roman statesman and political theorist Marcus Tullius Cicero
  
Why the Roman Empire Fell
"The Roman Republic fell, not because of the ambition of Caesar or Augustus, but because it had already long ceased to be in any real sense a republic at all. When the sturdy Roman plebeian, who lived by his own labor, who voted without reward according to his own convictions, and who with his fellows formed in war the terrible Roman legion, had been changed into an idle creature who craved nothing in life save the gratification of a thirst for vapid excitement, who was fed by the state, and who directly or indirectly sold his vote to the highest bidder, then the end of the republic was at hand, and nothing could save it. The laws were the same as they had been, but the people behind the laws had changed, and so the laws counted for nothing." 
 

Who should I contact?

 

Leavenworth County Republican Party Leadership

John Bradford..............................Chair

Connie O'Brien........................Vice Chair 

Barbara Paulus........................Secretary 

Linda Flanagan........................Treasurer  

 

County Commissioners 

First District 

Robert (Bob) Holland..............913-772-2221 

 

Second District

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, 41st District

Jana Goodman..................... 913-785-2577

 

Kansas House of Representatives, 42nd District
Connie O'Brien......................913-369-2933

 

National Representatives
U.S. House of Representatives - 2nd District
Lynn Jenkins........................785-234-5966

 

U.S. Senate
Jerry Moran.........................202-224-6521 
Pat Roberts.........................202-456-1414 

 

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The views stated herein are those of the writers and do not necessarily reflect the position of the Leavenworth County Republican Party.

This newsletter is paid for by the Leavenworth County Republican Party.  It is not authorized by any candidate or candidates committee.  The intent is to provide information relevant to our voters and to current issues of the day.  Linda Flanagan, Treasurer.