Black’s Letter to the President: “The current debate over what it will take for Congress to agree to raise the debt ceiling is one of the most vital debates the 112th Congress will engage in, yet the voice and leadership of the President of the United States is missing. Americans deserve to hear your plan.”

TODAY (June 29, 2011)
President Obama at a press conference—specifically addressing Republican criticism of his leadership: “They need to do their job.” [CBS.com, 6/29/11 VIDEO at 0:35]

Obama: If Malia and Sasha can finish their homework a day early, why Congress can’t treat their responsibilities — namely, reaching a deal on the debt ceiling — the same way.

BACKGROUND
FACT: Rep. Diane Black and Republicans already voted for a budget that would increase America’s debt more than 60% (and destroy Medicare), but voted AGAINST raising the debt limit.

Los Angeles Times: PAUL RYAN BUDGET WOULD INCREASE U.S. DEBT 60%. The Paul Ryan Budget that U.S. Reps. Phil Roe, Jimmy Duncan, Chuck Fleischmann, Scott Desjarlias, Diane Black, Marsha Blackburn and Stephen Fincher voted for, would increase the debt limit over 61.5% from $14.3 trillion today to more than $23.1 trillion by 2021. [Los Angeles Times, 4/15/11]

Let’s get some things straight about Roe vs. Wade. First, do opponents really think we do not have a right to privacy? Is a person’s health care everyone’s business?

Secondly, I have been in the health-care field for 30 years, and I know of no one that is for abortions. I think we would all like to see every pregnancy be a planned event, or at least a welcome event. However, the reality is that this is not the case.

The only way to achieve the goal of total welcome pregnancies is through comprehensive, reality-based education and easy access to effective birth control. Reliance on “abstinence-only” programs is not effective. Every clinic that performs abortions has anecdotes of conservative and religious members of their community who quietly seek services when they are in a desperate situation.

Recent data show that half of pregnant teens were not using any form of birth control. Education must be reiterated and emphasized at multiple grade levels until this trend shows improvement. Meanwhile, reproductive services must be kept safe, legal and private.

Jim Maddox Hendersonville 37075

www.youtube.com/watch?v=7ZjWjkc8lZ0

To help out, please bring school supplies or a donation to our next SCDP meeting, where Jeanette Jackson will collect the supplies and contributions.  Please make checks payable to Sumner County Democratic Women.

Our next meeting is this Tuesday, July 19 at the Gallatin Civic Center.  The meeting begins at 6:30 and will end promptly at 8:00.  For a link to the Facebook Event page, click here.

If you have any questions about this project, please contact SCDW President, Jeanette Jackson by emailing her at scdwpresident@comcast.net

“Look no further than this week’s announcements by Standard & Poor and Moody’s credit agencies. In the July 13th statement from Moody’s, they announced that the organization “has placed the AAA bondrating of the government of the United States on review for possible downgrade given the rising possibilitythat the statutory debt limit will not be raised on a timely basis, leading to a default on US Treasurydebt obligations.”

Indeed, what the Obama Administration has been warning us of for months is true. The US is at serious risk of losing it’s AAA credit rating if it doesn’t forge a balanced solution to the deficit. Given the citizenry’s mood and growing demands for fair revenue increases, has she decided to do the rational thing and raise revenues by closing tax loop-holes and putting a end to billionaire tax dodgers? Don’t for a minute imagine that.  What, give up the hostage by improving our Nation’s fiscal health & security? Never!  You see, the GOP still believes that we must… wait for it… stop spending. Period. Oh the nightmare of… spending!

Never mind that the debt ceiling must be raised not to accomodate new spending, but to pay the bills they’ve already run up in the previous decade. I guess it’s like when you buy your billionaire friends extravagant Christmas presents using Great-Aunt Betty’s credit cards: “…and here’s a big contract for you Halliburton, and a big tax dodge for you Exxon-Mobil, and we wouldn’t forget the Koch boys: here’s a big stocking of risky mortgage lending deregulation. Have fun!” Then, instead of paying the balances, just shred the bills when they arrive in the mail box . “Aw, too bad Aunt Betty, your credit rating is ruined! But here’s a can of cat food. Oh, were you going to pay for prenatal appointments for your daughter’s first pregnancy? Oops. And that retraining program for your out-of-work son? Not gonna happen. Buh-bye, I’ve got some stocks & bonds to count!”

Diane’s Black and her partners have the answer to it all:

“In order to restore certainty in our economy to bolster job growth and keep America competitive, we need to stop spending money we don’t have.”

Really? With a plan called “Cut Cap and Balance” that breathes not a word about raising revenues, Black and the GOP truly believe that Americans are stupid enough to agree with this Cut Down America Plan? We’ll see our communities gutted, our homes foreclosed on, and our personal incomes eclipsed by inflation (if we haven’t already been laid off)  and still line up behind the GOP to blame Obama and vote for Michelle BachMittPerry?

In fact, spending money they don’t have is exactly what the GOP is best at, except they only spend it on their billionaire bosses and cronies. Remember the rationale behind the “temporary” Bush tax cuts? There was a surplus that year! Yay! Money! We were rolling in it! The fact that it was a Democratic administration’s surplus that should have been locked-down for future Social Security solvency didn’t stop the burning hole in their GOP pocket. What better way to transfer those assets to the upper crust than to “cut” taxes. Now they want the cuts to rain down on the working and middle class. For the surplus is spent but the greed never leaves them, their appetite must be fed.

No, the Congresswoman has decidedly NOT come to her senses. Clearly that the word “balance” is beyond her reckoning. She closes:

“All politics aside, I am committed to getting our country’s fiscal house in order.  This burden of debt will be with us long after the debate over raising the debt limit is decided, and I am in this fight for the long haul.  Securing our country’s fiscal future remains a top priority of mine, one that will last well past August 2nd.”

Is she lying, or does she believe that the condition of her stock portfolio & her fellow millionaires tax write-offs is the measure of our great Nation’s fiscal future? I would not doubt that her vision is so narrow and her ideology so rigid that she believes that if she is doing well, the rest of us must be just fine. What, Aunt Betty’s eating cat food? Who could have predicted? I am here to report that millions of Americans, no less the hundreds of thousands of her constituents here in the 6th district, will be soon telling her she is mistaken.

Come join us for our next Hendersonville Regional Meeting where we will follow up with the issues and priorities raised at our last meeting! Even if you didn’t make it to the last meeting, be sure to come out for this one! We will be meeting the large meeting room in the Hendersonville Library.

WHEN:  Thursday, July 28 · 6:00pm – 7:30pm

WHERE:  Hendersonville Public Library

Link to Facebook Event Page, CLICK HERE.

IN CONGRESS, July 4, 1776.

The unanimous Declaration of the thirteen united States of America,

When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.–That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, –That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.–Such has been the patient sufferance of these Colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former Systems of Government. The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States. To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid world.

He has refused his Assent to Laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good.
He has forbidden his Governors to pass Laws of immediate and pressing importance, unless suspended in their operation till his Assent should be obtained; and when so suspended, he has utterly neglected to attend to them.
He has refused to pass other Laws for the accommodation of large districts of people, unless those people would relinquish the right of Representation in the Legislature, a right inestimable to them and formidable to tyrants only.
He has called together legislative bodies at places unusual, uncomfortable, and distant from the depository of their public Records, for the sole purpose of fatiguing them into compliance with his measures.
He has dissolved Representative Houses repeatedly, for opposing with manly firmness his invasions on the rights of the people.
He has refused for a long time, after such dissolutions, to cause others to be elected; whereby the Legislative powers, incapable of Annihilation, have returned to the People at large for their exercise; the State remaining in the mean time exposed to all the dangers of invasion from without, and convulsions within.
He has endeavoured to prevent the population of these States; for that purpose obstructing the Laws for Naturalization of Foreigners; refusing to pass others to encourage their migrations hither, and raising the conditions of new Appropriations of Lands.
He has obstructed the Administration of Justice, by refusing his Assent to Laws for establishing Judiciary powers.
He has made Judges dependent on his Will alone, for the tenure of their offices, and the amount and payment of their salaries.
He has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harrass our people, and eat out their substance.
He has kept among us, in times of peace, Standing Armies without the Consent of our legislatures.
He has affected to render the Military independent of and superior to the Civil power.
He has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution, and unacknowledged by our laws; giving his Assent to their Acts of pretended Legislation:
For Quartering large bodies of armed troops among us:
For protecting them, by a mock Trial, from punishment for any Murders which they should commit on the Inhabitants of these States:
For cutting off our Trade with all parts of the world:
For imposing Taxes on us without our Consent:
For depriving us in many cases, of the benefits of Trial by Jury:
For transporting us beyond Seas to be tried for pretended offences
For abolishing the free System of English Laws in a neighbouring Province, establishing therein an Arbitrary government, and enlarging its Boundaries so as to render it at once an example and fit instrument for introducing the same absolute rule into these Colonies:
For taking away our Charters, abolishing our most valuable Laws, and altering fundamentally the Forms of our Governments:
For suspending our own Legislatures, and declaring themselves invested with power to legislate for us in all cases whatsoever.
He has abdicated Government here, by declaring us out of his Protection and waging War against us.
He has plundered our seas, ravaged our Coasts, burnt our towns, and destroyed the lives of our people.
He is at this time transporting large Armies of foreign Mercenaries to compleat the works of death, desolation and tyranny, already begun with circumstances of Cruelty & perfidy scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous ages, and totally unworthy the Head of a civilized nation.
He has constrained our fellow Citizens taken Captive on the high Seas to bear Arms against their Country, to become the executioners of their friends and Brethren, or to fall themselves by their Hands.
He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us, and has endeavoured to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian Savages, whose known rule of warfare, is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions.

In every stage of these Oppressions We have Petitioned for Redress in the most humble terms: Our repeated Petitions have been answered only by repeated injury. A Prince whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a Tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people.

Nor have We been wanting in attentions to our Brittish brethren. We have warned them from time to time of attempts by their legislature to extend an unwarrantable jurisdiction over us. We have reminded them of the circumstances of our emigration and settlement here. We have appealed to their native justice and magnanimity, and we have conjured them by the ties of our common kindred to disavow these usurpations, which, would inevitably interrupt our connections and correspondence. They too have been deaf to the voice of justice and of consanguinity. We must, therefore, acquiesce in the necessity, which denounces our Separation, and hold them, as we hold the rest of mankind, Enemies in War, in Peace Friends.

We, therefore, the Representatives of the united States of America, in General Congress, Assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions, do, in the Name, and by Authority of the good People of these Colonies, solemnly publish and declare, That these United Colonies are, and of Right ought to be Free and Independent States; that they are Absolved from all Allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political connection between them and the State of Great Britain, is and ought to be totally dissolved; and that as Free and Independent States, they have full Power to levy War, conclude Peace, contract Alliances, establish Commerce, and to do all other Acts and Things which Independent States may of right do. And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor.

What:  Hendersonville Regional Meeting
When:  Thursday, June 30 at 6:30 p.m.
Where: Mimi’s Cafe, 298 Indian Lake Blvd, Hendersonville

For a link to the Facebook Event page, click here.

SCDP will also host Brandon Puttbrese, TNDP Communications Director. Formerly of the Gallatin News Examiner, Puttbrese brings his strategic know-how to Tennessee Democrats with sharp communication and timely insight. Puttbrese will speak about current issues and answer your questions about bringing Tennesseans together to create jobs and protect our values.

Also, updates on our future events (Save the date! 3 Star 2011 is August 20th!) and a recent round-up of county, state, and national issues. Did you hear: the County Commission took the School Board’s budget and refuses to give it back!

Bring family and friends to get tuned in and have your voice heard!
We’ll see you this Thursday, 6:30 pm, at the Gallatin Civic center. It’s Your Party!

For questions e-mail us: stillblue@sumnerdems.org

scdp announcement 6-21-11