Guns vs. Butter in earnest

Our federal legislators are currently considering a budget for next year that imposes a spending freeze for most domestic programs yet somehow there's money to spare when it comes to nuclear weapons pork. The budget requests $7 billion for nuclear bomb making capacities, a $1 billion increase over last year's budget for the same programs and an astounding 40% jump over average annual spending, after adjusting for inflation, on nuclear weapons during the Cold War era.

The budget has hundreds of millions for new bomb plants that would enable the U.S. to increase its capacity to create new nuclear weapons in the future. A new plutonium facility in New Mexico to enable a huge increase in the production of radioactive cores for nuclear weapons is just one example of several proposals in the budget. This piece of pork will cost taxpayers $225 million in the coming year and about $4 billion by the time construction is complete.

While the president is working with the Senate to ratify the New Start Treaty which would reduce the threat of nuclear war, we don’t need to be building capacity to make more nuclear bombs. Just as importantly, we shouldn’t be spending money on unneeded weapons when we can’t balance our budget without cutting domestic spending in areas such as education and alternative energy that would create jobs now and be investments in our future.

Congressmen Lamar Smith and Henry Cuellar need to know that we want to invest in our future not our past.

Lamar Smith's hypocrisy continues - $485 million for a jet engine the Pentagon doesn't want

Congressman Lamar Smith makes much of the deficit on his campaign website referring to it as “a mountain of debt for our children to pay” then going on to say “which why is Congressman Smith voted against the stimulus”. Unfortunately his hypocrisy is showing because he voted to keep $485 million in the Defense Appropriations bill that pays to continue to develop a jet engine that Secretary of Defense Robert Gates says the military doesn’t want. This is an alternate engine for the Lockheed built F-135 Joint Strike Fighter which already has an operational engine from Pratt & Whitney. According to Rear Admiral Mike Manazir, the Navy doesn’t want an alternate engine as it “would deploy only one type of engine in its JSFs that go to sea to optimize logistics and supply chains.”

I don’t know about you but if the Pentagon doesn’t want a piece of military hardware I think that’s a pretty good indication that we don’t need it. Smith’s vote amounts to corporate welfare for the GE/Rolls Royce consortium that is developing the engine. I might be able to understand his vote if the engine were being built in his district but it isn’t so he can’t claim local jobs are at stake.

If the deficit is so important to Mr. Smith why is he voting to spend nearly half a billion dollars unnecessarily? According to the logic he espouses on his website that money should go to reducing the deficit.

Ken Mercer continues to mislead when questioned about evolution

In a recent interview of candidates for the State Board of Education in District 5, Ken Mercer responds to the question: What is your position on the teaching of evolution? “My biggest quote was, ‘If our kids do not have the freedom to raise their hands in science class and ask honest questions, then we are no longer living in the United States of America.’ You can call it strengths and weaknesses, but we won the right for kids to ask questions in class, and that was the battle. It wasn’t religion. It was just a right to ask questions.”

I don’t know about you but I’ve never been in a classroom whether as a student or as a parent observing where children didn’t have the right ask questions. Our teachers encourage questions as a way to participate in class and clarify understanding. Mr. Mercer’s answer is an evasion because he never states his position on the scientific validity of evolution. What he and the other conservatives on the SBOE did was encourage our children to not just ask questions but to argue with their teachers about whether or not scientific principles are appropriate to the study of biology.

Texas has some of the lowest performing schools in the nation and Mr. Mercer’s actions will keep it that way. That’s all the reason I need to send him packing in November by voting for Dr. Rebecca Bell-Metereau.

Our Internet Sold Out for Campaign Contributions

Failure to adequately regulate industry has within the last two years led to the collapse of Lehman Bros., the banking system and the U.S. economy as well as the environmental disaster in the Gulf of Mexico that British Petroleum is responsible for. The collapse of our financial markets hurt us all and has put about 10% of the labor force out of work, the oil spill in the Gulf is more localized but will harm that locality for as much as a generation. Both the fishing and tourism industries are likely to suffer for years not to mention many species of fish and birds including Louisiana’s state bird, the brown pelican, which was removed from the endangered species list just six months ago.

Now the telecommunications industry wants internet services to be unregulated. This as we’ve so recently seen is a recipe for disaster. The websites that so many of us have come to rely on and enjoy are at risk of being shoved aside by telecommunications companies that seek monopolize control of access and use of the internet in order to maximize their profits. They claim to want to advance innovation when in fact they want to stifle it. Innovation is a messy business that is most often accomplished by small organizations and seldom by monopolies.

The telecommunications industry like the Wall Street bankers and oil industry before them have exerted pressure on our elected representatives. 73 Democrats in the House including Congressmen Henry Cuellar, Ciro Rodriguez and Charlie Gonzalez have submitted to that pressure. You ask what kind of pressure, how about anywhere from $23,000 to $36,750 in campaign contributions.

It is time we had a campaign finance solution that removed the influence of special interests from the equation. It’s time we passed the Fair Elections Now Act, HR 1826, which provides for voluntary public campaign financing. Call you congressman and urge him to support Net Neutrality and co-sponsor HR 1826.

Elections should be won, not bought

About 30 members of MoveOn.org, Common Cause and the League of Women voters held a rally in support of the Fair Elections Now Act at Congressman Lamar Smith’s San Antonio office Thursday afternoon. We were there to let the Smith know that we “the People” believe that elections should be won, not bought.

The Fair Elections Now Act would provide public financing of congressional campaigns to candidates who voluntarily participate. This bipartisan bill creates an alternative to big special interest money in politics by allowing congressional candidates to run a viable campaign on public funds and unlimited small contributions from ordinary citizens.

Just think, if our legislators weren’t beholden to unions and corporations for campaign contributions they could actually work for the citizens who elect them. Maine has been incredibly successful with a similar plan for state level legislators with about 80% of them participating in the plan.

Don’t you think that banking reform would be much easier to pass with strong consumer protections and regulations that would prevent the need for future bailouts if our legislators weren’t, as Senator Dick Durbin put it, “owned by the banks”? If you want Congress to work for you and not special interests call your representative today and urge him to co-sponsor the Fair Elections Now Act, HR 1826.

Ken Mercer would destroy our religious freedom in the name of Christianity

Ken Mercer and the other extremist members of the State Board of Education claim that the United States was established as a Christian nation and seek to bring down the wall of separation between church and state. This extremist cabal seems to have forgotten their history lessons regarding one of the primary reasons that many European colonists came to America. We all learned that the Pilgrims came here seeking to escape religious persecution.

The Founding Fathers were not so far removed from the European religious wars between Catholics and Protestant sects all over Europe that they could fail to understand the value of separating religion and the state. In the years 1553 to 1660 there was religiously inspired violence or war between Christian sects somewhere in Europe each year almost without exception.

Mary I, Queen of England (1553-1558), restored Catholicism and in the process had almost 300 religious dissenters burned at the stake in the Marian Persecutions.

In France between 1562 and 1598, there were eight civil wars and other outbreaks of violence that were clearly motivated by religious differences.

The Thirty Years' War (1618-1648), began in Bohemia when Ferdinand II became the king in 1617 over Protestant fears he would recatholicize it.

The English Civil War (1640-1660) involved various Protestant denominations and Catholics and included the beheading of Charles I in 1649.

Ken Mercer doesn’t understand that separation of Church and State protects his freedom of religion and our children’s, but our founders did.

Radicals on State Board of Education seek to undermine religious freedom

At the last meeting of the State Board of Education the members proposed and discussed various aspects of the proposed curriculum developed by the volunteer teachers and subject matter experts. Board member Mavis Knight offered the following amendment: “examine the reasons the Founding Fathers protected religious freedom in America by barring government from promoting or disfavoring any particular religion over all others.” Knight pointed out that students should understand that the Founders believed religious freedom was so important that they insisted on separation of church and state.

Board member Cynthia Dunbar argued that the Founders didn’t intend for separation of church and state in America and claimed instead that the Founders intended to promote religion. She called the amendment “not historically accurate.”

Almost all constitutional scholars agree that separation of religion and state is clearly expressed in Article VI paragraph 3 of the United States Constitution which states: The Senators and Representatives before mentioned, and the Members of the several State Legislatures, and all executive and judicial Officers, both of the United States and of the several States, shall be bound by Oath or Affirmation, to support this Constitution; but no religious Test shall ever be required as a Qualification to any Office or public Trust under the United States.
Ken Mercer voted with the rest of the historical revisionists to defeat the amendment. If you value your right to practice your religion and teach your children that religion Rebecca Bell-Metereau must be elected to the State Board of Education.