The Calhoun County Democrats Club will meet on Thursday, July 25, at the IBC Community Room, located on the 2nd floor, 311 N. Virginia, Port Lavaca, with social at 5:30 p.m. and meeting at 6:00 p.m. Angelle Adams, an attorney and President of the Texas Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty, will speak about the pros and cons of abolishing the death penalty.

The public is invited. For more information, please call Evelyn Burleson at 552-2791.

A 30 cubic yard roll-off bin will be located behind the fence on 16th and Harrison for M.U.D. customers to bring bulky waste to be hauled off. The bin will be there for one day, on Saturday, July 27, 2013. The bin may be used from 8:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m. M.U.D. customers only may deposit large items like carpet, furniture, mattresses, stoves, etc. Auto batteries may be left outside the bin. M.U.D. Customers must sign in with their name and Port O’Connor physical address. No commercial waste will be accepted; this is for residential waste only. Paint, tires, gas cans or any unacceptable waste should not be placed in the bin.

Public meeting on the draft “Habitat Conservation and Coastal Public Access Plan” for the San Antonio Bay System to be held at the Seadrift Public Library Meeting Room July 25 from 5:00 to 7:00 p.m.

The San Antonio Bay Partnership (SABP), founded in 2010, is a stakeholder-based, 501(c)(3) non-profit organization dedicated to “protecting, restoring and enhancing the natural resources and human uses of the San Antonio Bay System.” SABP is currently developing a Habitat Conservation and Coastal Public Access Plan for the San Antonio Bay System.

San Antonio Bay and its surrounding estuary are one of the least developed bay systems on the Texas Coast, providing a home for the endangered North American whooping cranes, notably the last wild flock.

A group of stakeholders has organized the San Antonio Bay Partnership to develop a management plan that protects, restores and enhances the natural resources and human uses of the bay and estuary. The plan will guide efforts and resources into activities that achieve these goals. The San Antonio Bay Plan is being developed through public and stakeholder input and scientific research.

Stakeholder interests include the following: commercial and recreational fisheries; ecotourism; boating and aquatic recreation; farming and ranching; petrochemical processing; water-borne transportation; real estate development; wetlands and marsh habitats; public access; water quality; and species diversity.

SABP is hosting a public/stakeholder meeting on July 25, 2013 for the purpose of presenting information on the draft Habitat Conservation and Coastal Public Access Plan, including locations recommended for habitat protection, restoration or enhancement projects, and locations which provide public access to recreational resources within the San Antonio Bay area.

Public comments on these topics will be welcomed, especially in terms of identifying any needs/issues not already addressed in the draft plan.

For more information, see the SABP website: www.sabaypartnership.org or contact James Dodson, SABP Facilitator: 361-649-1518; jdodson27@gmail.com

“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.

A Dysfunctional Presidency

The duties of the President of the United States are spelled out in Article II, Section 3 of the Constitution, which states that the President “shall take Care that the laws be faithfully executed.” As Stanford Law Professor and former federal judge Michael McConnell stated in a recent Wall Street Journal, “This is a duty, not a discretionary power. While the president does have substantial discretion about how to enforce a law, he has no discretion about whether to do so.”

The Obama Administration announced over the 4th of July weekend, through a Deputy Assistant Secretary of the Treasury, that contrary to federal law, the employer mandate of ObamaCare shall not become fully effective in months beginning after December 31, 2013, as required in Section 1513(d) of the (Un)Affordable Care Act (aka ObamaCare)’ but only in months beginning after December 31, 2014. ObamaCare is a train wreck and he wants to postpone the obvious bad effects until after the 2014 election. This is a transparent partisan political maneuver, and Gross Malfeasance, contrary to his mandated Constitutional duties.

But this is only the latest in a long list of Obama’s disregard for ‘Existing Law’ that he has refused to enforce if the ‘Law’ conflicts with his intended Agenda. He refused to enforce the Federal laws against Voter Intimidation in the 2008 election. He has consistently refused to enforce Immigration Law and deport violators. Two members of his family have been ordered deported by courts and are still in the US, along with millions of others; many are dangerous criminals. He refused to enforce the Defense Of Marriage Act, a law passed during the Clinton administration with wide bipartisan support, but unpopular with his homosexual supporters. Now he refuses to enforce his own signatory legislation for political reasons. He wants to wait until after the 2014 election before the economic damage caused by this very faulty law becomes clear to many of his current supporters.

ObamaCare is a very complex piece of legislation, about 2,700 pages (in the Bill itself, and the new regulations that go along with it come to 21,000 total), that creates hundreds of new bureaucracies empowered to write regulations that affect every part of “health care” and much more. It is loaded with ‘pork’ and special exceptions. There will be ‘rationing’ of procedures. I believe it was designed to fail, only to be a transitional phase that will cause a demand for Total Govt Health Care, that has been the Liberal Progressives’ goal all along – what they call “The Single Payer System”. It is a bureaucratic nightmare, subject to great manipulation by whatever administration is in power and by the bureaucrats running it. It is a promise of “Free Health Care” to poor and Low Information Voters, but a huge parasite on most levels of the economy. It is a Political Creation to be constantly manipulated for political gain.

And we have another huge political boondoggle currently in Congress. The Amnesty Bill. The 1986 Amnesty gave us about 4 million new ‘citizens’ and great promises of a Secure Border from liberal Democrats. After the Amnesty took effect, the Democrats abandoned their promises to support and fund border security and millions more immigrants were brought in legally and illegally. Illegal immigration is easy and even if you are caught, there are few bad consequences along much of our southern border. Now there now are estimated to be 12 to 20 million illegal immigrants in the US. There has been no real effort by any administration to control this criminal invasion of our land, or the drug smuggling and other crimes that accompany it. The cost to social services, welfare, and law enforcement have forced taxes higher and higher. Unemployment is way too high, and the administration is putting healthy workers on ‘Disability’ to keep the ‘Unemployment numbers’ down. More people are on some ‘public assistance’ than are employed in the private sector.

For these reasons, I say that we must secure the border before any Amnesty or Comprehensive Immigration plan can be considered. In fact, we should stop any new legal immigration until the problems can be addressed. And NO MORE Democrat promises! They didn’t follow through after 1986, and what happened to the 2006 Border Fence Law? And the billions allocated? The Border must be secured, demonstratively secure, before any Amnesty can be considered. Without it, for every alien amnestied, we can expect 3 or 4 more in the next 10 years.

Another symptom of this dysfunctional Presidency is the constant deterioration of our relations with Muslim countries. Obama’s constant apologies and appeasement of violent elements of Islamist Jihad have made us a laughing stock among Muslims and others around the world. The Benghazi debacle lead to his minions lying to the media and the American people. We know that security was reduced to fool the US Media about Stevens’ mission to smuggle missiles to Syria by way of Turkey, while Obama publicly denied any military aid to Syrian rebels.. As the investigation continues we know it was a planned attack to kidnap Ambassador Stevens by al Qaeda militants that were going to turn him over to the Muslim Brotherhood. The story that al Qaeda militants killed him by ‘lethal injection’ is true only because the sedative injected was lethal because he had suffered lung damage from smoke inhalation and, with further suppression of breathing by the sedative, he suffocated. There are only a couple more pieces to this puzzle that need to come out. These are held by Hillary Clinton, Huma Abedin, and probably others. At that point the Gross Malfeasance and Incompetence may become provable treason. It is very close. The Benghazi attack was a kidnap attempt on Stevens to trade him for “The Blind Sheik”.

Walid Shoebat wrote an excellent article on this, June 30, 2013 : http://shoebat.com/2013/06/30/benghazi-turning-a-blind-eye-for-the-blind-sheikh/ Shoebat states, “On November 14, 2012, four-star Admiral James Lyons (Ret.) appeared on Fox Business Network with Lou Dobbs. During that interview, Lyons said he believed the only reason that made any sense relative to Ambassador Stevens being in Benghazi on 9/11 was a kidnapping operation in which Stevens could be traded for the “Blind Sheikh”. For more info on Benghazi, documented as it happened, see: http://theobamafile.websitetoolbox.com/post/Benghazi-Obama-the-movie-and-the-coverup-6007329 There are 782 entries and comments here as of 7/12/2013, with more added as news breaks.

Update: Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano resigned today. Quietly and on a Friday. I wonder what will happen next? Is there a new scandal at DHS?