Sadness hit Port O’Connor very hard in the past few days. First, we had the terrible loss of our very dear friend Bill Reevs. “Brother Bill” was pastor of our church for several years, followed by being our church pianist for over 10 years. Bill Reeves was a dear friend and enjoyed the work of the Lord more than you can imagine. Bro. Bill officiated over more Port O’Connor funerals and weddings than all the Port O’Connor pastors combined. Port O’Connor will miss Bro. Reeves, but we all know he was received in Heaven with open arms.

On Saturday, October 5, 2013, I attended the sad funeral for Wyatt Cole O’Neill, the son of Nathan and Jenny O’Neill. The funeral home overflowed with Port O’Connor people who came to pay their respects. The Port O’Connor Fire Department was there in full force and the service was very inspirational. Nathan O’Neill is a member of the Fire Department and the Fire Department were the pallbearers and one of the Fire Trucks transported the tiny coffin to the Port O’Connor Cemetery. I am sure Wyatt will make a very handsome tiny Angel in Heaven!

Port O’Connor will be remembering in prayer the family of Bro. Bill Reeves and Nathan and Jenny O’Neill.

The Church had eight senior adults attending the Fall Senior Adult Retreat at Camp Zephyr this past week. Those attending were Kenneth Clark, Doyle Adams, Jim and Diane Cooley, Alice Pittman, Mary Nell McGee, and Donnie and Shirley Martin. The Retreat was outstanding in every way! The fellowship was super; the Gospel Music outstanding; the devotions were enriching; the preaching inspirational, and the Bible study was fantastic. The camp is situated on the banks of Lake Corpus Christi, on the outskirts of Mathis, Texas – just a perfect setting for a beautiful Christian camp. Three great meals a day, all the refreshments and beautiful motel rooms for 3 1/2 days for $100 per person. You can’t beat it!

The Church is looking forward to the annual “Great Day in the Morning” on Sunday, October 27. This is “High Attendance Day” with the goal of 100 in Sunday School and Church. The morning service at 11:00 a.m. will be very special with congregational singing, solos, and other special music by the choir. Immediately after the morning service, everyone will go to Fellowship Hall for a Great Fried Chicken Dinner with all the trimmings, salads, and an array of homemade desserts. Everyone is invited to attend all the services, and especially the dinner!

This year’s Port O’Connor “Thanksgiving Service” will be held in First Baptist Church on Sunday evening, November 24, 2013 at 6:00 p.m. The Thanksgiving message will be delivered by St. Joseph’s Catholic Church. The service is sponsored by the three Port O’Connor churches: Fisherman’s Chapel, St. Joseph’s Catholic Church, and First Baptist Church. A special love offering will be taken during the service to purchase Thanksgiving and Christmas food baskets for those in need in Port O’Connor.

See you in church Sunday!

“The Way I See It” is an attempt by the guest columnist to enlighten readers on a subject, as he views it,
and does not necessarily reflect the views of this publication.

ObamaCare, or the misnamed Affordable Care Act (ACA), was intended to fail.

Gerald Friedman, an Economics Professor at the University of Massachusetts, is also a senior fellow in the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA), the largest Marxist group in the US. Writing an article, A Century and Counting: The Campaign for National Health Insurance,

http://www.dsausa.org/national_health_insurance, he explains how DSA protege, Barack Hussein Obama has maneuvered the ACA into existence to create popular demand for socialized health care.

“After a century of struggle, the ACA commits the United States to providing universal access to health care. This is a great achievement, one to be treasured and nurtured. Now the real fight begins, to turn this commitment into a reality that the ACA itself cannot produce. Barack Obama was right the first time: only a single-payer program can provide universal coverage, and only a single-payer program can control costs.”

Obama Care was a hoax from the very begininig. It was written as a huge bureaucratic boondoggle that no one really understands, not even the people that wrote it. It was passed by Democrat politicians that didn’t read it, but were coerced with threats and bribes by Obama and the Democrat leadership. It has now expanded to 10,535 pages of bureaucratic nightmare regulations. Speaker Nancy Pelosi infamously said, “We must pass the bill to see what is in it.” Possibly the dumbest statement made by a political leader in modern history. The gutless RINOS in the Republican leadership were so buffaloed by Media accusations of “Racist!” that they would not attack the bill or the supporters, but counted on the Supreme Court to throw it out because of the blatant unconstitutionality of the bill and the way it was “passed”.

Since its being signed into “law”, Obama has wasted many billions of dollars on implementing it and propagandizing the American people to accept it. Also he has given millions of exemptions to Congress, Federal workers, Unions, and other political cronies. The “law” that they intend to enforce is not what was passed and signed and certainly not what was promised. But it is still hailed as a major victory by the Socialist/Totalitarians and loyal Obots.

The Average Citizen is horrified to find out what ObamaCare really means. The Health Care Plans they had and were promised to be able to keep are all illegal under ObamaCare. All insurance coverage must meet ObamaCare objectives and provide contraception, abortion, alcohol and drug abuse treatment, and all “Mental Health” issues including ‘sex-change operations’. Most American don’t want or need these services and don’t want the govt bureaucrats involved if they did. Especially at these greatly inflated prices to pay for all the bureaucracies that “provide” mandated End of Life Counseling for all over 65, Rationing (Death) Panels for those that refuse to obey the End of Life Counselors, and the endless questioning on life-style, personal beliefs, and political ideas that may well be the major ‘evidence’ considered by these panels that decide whether you ‘qualify’ for the needed treatment. You can refuse to believe this, but you will see it, and soon.

The NSA govt computers can capture all communications world-wide and store billions of bits of info on millions of people for a year at a time, longer if you are ‘a person of interest’, but the govt computers can not register people for ObamaCare? This is a huge boondoggle, it defies belief, but it is real. The Congressional Budget Office is constantly raising the expected cost to taxpayers, currently about 3 times more than expected, because they have to base their projections on the lies of the Administration.

If there was any doubt that ObamaCare was designed to be a wasteful and very expensive failure, they were removed by the incompetence, failures, and revelations of “what is really in it” over the past 11 days. The $634 million website is still failing miserably. The ObamaCare implementation was designed to provide a multi-billion dollar “Slush Fund” for “Navigators” hired and trained by loyal Obama supporters OFA and the dozens of new ACORN offshoots. OFA, Obama For America is Obama’s superPAC, staffed by people from his campaign. These groups register and indoctrinate Obama Voters and have often been responsible for massive vote fraud. This is just the beginning, Obama is demanding that Congress raise the Debt Ceiling so he will have an “Unlimited Credit Card” to buy votes and contributions for “Democrat” (Obamunist) Candidates in the 2014 elections. Also, his Amnesty plans to provide another huge block of socialist voters for the Democrats. He must consolidate and increase his power now, or The Agenda will be in jeopardy as the Low Information Voters learn what ObamaCare and the entire Obama Agenda really means.

If Obama succeeds, and he has already demonstrated his intent to ignore the checks and balances of Constitutional govt, our economy is doomed and the continued deterioration of our Constitutional Republic will result in a socialist totalitarian welfare state run by the most radical leftists in the Democrat Socialist Party. That too will fail, and will collapse into a Communist Dictatorship, the true goal of all Marxists, and their plan is well documented. The only practical alternative is the secession of states with reasonably successful economies, the desire to re-industrialize, and put people back to work. This will leave the ObamaNation with only the failing liberal/progressive states. This “Post-industrial Society” is a utopian fantasy of people that know nothing of how wealth is created, but much about “socialist theories” that have failed everywhere they are tried. Ultimately Communism kills. Look at the difference between North and South Korea.

10/11/13 And now the cowardly Republicans have offered to cave and fund it until Dec. 15.

Note: I invite questions or arguments on the website. There is not room in these articles to give sources and specific details.

As 2013 is slowly coming to end, the Chamber will be preparing for the Christmas Party along with their year end meeting.

Lets recap 2013:

May : Crawfish Fest & Memorial Day Kids Fishing Tournament; July: Awesome Fireworks Show put on totally by raised money and donations; August: Labor Day Beach Bash with Larry Joe Taylor

It is time to mark your calendar for the Annual Lighted Boat Parade sponsored by the Chamber of Commerce. This December 7th event is a growing event and lots of fun to attend. It is in conjunction with the Annual Toy Run from Freeport. If you have never attended, this is something to see. The boats normally start arriving into the POC ICW around 3.This event happens rain or shine. Contact chairman Bill Tigrett at bill@tigrett.com; 361-983-2671 or the Port O’Connor Chamber of Commerce at poccc@tisd.net. In December, we will also have the Annual House Lighting Contest. Watch the next addition with all the details.

We would like to add a few more “Thank Yous” for the Labor Day Beach Bash, in addition to the ones mentioned last issue:

Victoria All Sports
Rusty Brhlik
Cheryl Lowe
Ricky and Frances McKinney
Dr. & Mrs. Fry
Joe Cohen
Fred Eppright
Speedy Stop
Richard Severance
Scott Wheat
Capt G’s

With the year winding down, it’s almost time for the election of the Directors who have fulfilled their second term, along with the annual election of new officers for 2014. There will be five Director positions to be filled. If interested, please email or call the Chamber to have your name added to the ballot. The ballot will be submitted in November and election will be held at the Annual Christmas meeting on December 9th.

This year we will be looking for interested folks to jump aboard with this awesome team and let’s continue to move forward to improving King Fisher Beach and other projects. Our meetings are the second Monday of each month at the Community Center at 6:30 p.m. The November meeting will be on the 11th at 6:30 p.m. in the meeting room of POC Community Center.—-361-983-2898—-poccc@tisd.net.

The following is the opinion of the author and does not necessarily reflect the views of this publication.

Part VIII:  Same As It Ever Was

This month, El Hyena will discuss parallels in our nation’s history.  El Hyena is very interested in history, and spends a great deal of time reading history books.  He has discovered that when reading about something that occurred 200 years ago, similarities to today’s events are readily apparent.  In other words, in some ways it’s déjà vu all over again.  Please note, if El Hyena was a scholarly author, he would at this point include a footnote attributing this quote to the eminent philosopher Yogi Berra.  But thinking out loud is not a particularly scholarly pursuit; that and the fact that El Hyena does not know how to do footnotes.

Anyway, El Hyena has been reading a book about Thomas Jefferson and Alexander Hamilton, both of whom played major roles in the creation of our nation’s government.  While participating in the Revolutionary War, directly or indirectly, both voiced their own complaints about how the “government” of the newly independent states wasn’t working to their liking.  Hamilton, an officer serving in the Continental Army, was unhappy because the troops weren’t being paid or properly supplied, mostly due to the Congress having no power to do much of anything.  He wanted a strong federal government that would have the power to take charge and do things, like solve problems that needed to be solved whether the individual states, or the people themselves, liked it or not.  Jefferson, on the other hand, was a big “states’ rights, weak federal government” guy who felt that regular people should have some, but not much, say in the matter.  While governor of Virginia, his problem was that other states weren’t contributing money and militia to Virginia when it was being invaded and ransacked by British troops.  Although he favored a system of government where individual states’ sovereignty trumped centralized control, he didn’t like it when other states were slacking and not doing what he considered to be their fair share to help Virginia when Massachusetts wasn’t being affected.

After the Brits gave up and went home, the folks now lauded as our Founding Fathers commenced to fighting among themselves about how the United (sort of) States ought to be run.  George Washington, having commanded our victorious army, adopted his usual style of remaining quietly on the sidelines until everybody else begged him to step in and save the country.  Jefferson and Hamilton, on the other hand, were more into “working the crowd” by writing anonymous newspaper articles arguing their respective preferences about what kind of government ought to be created.  Under the Articles of Confederation, all of the states pretty much did whatever they wanted in support of their own interests with little concern about how it affected the country as a whole.  Jefferson, being from Down South, thought that the new country should be an agrarian society with a very weak federal government (he was, after all, a big planter who owned slaves), and despaired of an industrialized, merchant controlled society which he thought would be too much like England and it’s monarchy.  Hamilton, on the other hand, being from Up North, wanted a new constitution that would establish a strong federal government overriding the individual powers of the states and being run only by the right kind of people, i.e. rich aristocratic merchant types who would model the system in England (he did, after all, have experience in the merchant business and married a really rich heiress).  He thought having a king was the better idea, whereas true democracy was dangerous in that regular people just weren’t the right kind of folks to be allowed to participate in government.  Jefferson admired the French Revolution, while Hamilton admired the British constitutional monarchy.

To make a long story short, this is basically how government comprised of two opposing and antagonistic political parties was born.  Jefferson and Hamilton hated each other’s guts, and both led opposing political parties, both of which hollered loud and long that their party was best for the country while the other party was doing its best to destroy the country.  Jefferson and Hamilton each spent considerable time bad-mouthing the other to our first President Washington.

One can imagine what it would have been like if only they’d have had cable TV, SuperPACs, the Internet, and social media.  Jefferson (Republicans, then Democratic-Republicans, then Democrats) and Hamilton (Federalists or, as Jefferson called them, Monarchists) would have been making the talk show circuit on Sunday morning and having TV press conferences every news cycle, each blaming the other and pandering to their “base”.  Scandals would have been manufactured and then “tweeted” and argued in “comment threads”.  Each party would have had its own think tanks writing op-eds and grass roots organizations running TV commercials in selected markets.

From an historical viewpoint therefore, as far as El Hyena can tell, there is little difference between yesterday’s Founding Fathers and today’s Foundering Fathers.  Back then they had The Federalist Papers, today we have “Fed Up”.  Both historical periods had, or have, those who want a strong, all powerful federal government as opposed to those who think the federal government has too much power and should be made small enough to drown in a bathtub.  Both historical periods had, or have, elected or appointed officials whom some perceived, or perceive, as corrupt and beholden to private interests.  Then, as now, everybody hated, or hates, everybody else.

History provides a valuable lesson, but it can also be re-written to suit your tastes.  Take your pick, this is nothing new.

AMI Information Meeting
Thursday, Nov. 7
Bauer Community Center
2300 TX 35, Port Lavaca
Victoria Electric Cooperative continues to install Advanced Metering Infrastructure, and invites its members in the Port Lavaca, Seadrift and Port O’Connor service area to attend its fourth AMI Information Meeting.
They will be going over the benefits of the AMI system and explaining what members can expect before, during and after the meter exchanges.
Also, VEC staff will be on hand to answer any questions. There will be a fifth and final meeting to follow for the rest of their customers in their service area.