Sibby Online

Will South Dakota accept Obama's preschool railroad job

The federal governemnt is again using borrowed money and deficit spending to take control over our lives:

Just weeks ago, the state House of Representatives blocked a governor-backed plan that would have established the framework for public preschool programs in South Dakota.

But lawmakers might not have stopped it all.

Members of Gov. Mike Rounds’ Cabinet are preparing to decide whether to recommend that the governor pursue the plan anyway and seek a federal grant for the Early Learning program’s establishment.

Their deliberations come at the same time that the South Dakota Board of Education has proposed new rules regarding preschools.

The board wants to require that public school districts must submit their preschool enrollment data to the state education department, starting with the upcoming 2010-11 academic year.

The proposed rules also would create for the first time a definition of a full-time preschool student and a formula for determining part-time preschool students.

Those new rules are scheduled for a public hearing May 17 before the state board.

A spokesman for the federal Administration for Children and Families said Wednesday the agency, which is part of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, plans to send letters to all governors in the coming weeks regarding the federal Early Childhood Learning and Care program.

The letter will ask whether the state intends to apply and what the target date is for the state’s submission of its application.

“We hope to have responses from each state by the end of May,” said Kenneth Wolfe, deputy director for the federal agency’s Office of Public Affairs.

The federal agency has allocated $500,000 as South Dakota’s potential share of the $100 million grant program. The program operates on a funding split of 30 percent federal and 70 percent state, meaning South Dakota would need to come up with $1,167,000 as its match.

The federal criteria don’t require a state to adopt any laws to qualify for the grant. Instead a governor is allowed to attach the state’s Early Learning Council to an existing entity.

The state legislation rejected by the House of Representatives in March would have created a South Dakota Early Learning Council intended to foster preschool programs for low-income students statewide.

The legislation had the strong support of several members of the governor’s Cabinet including Education Secretary Tom Oster and Social Services Secretary Deb Bowman.

It would have established a process for comprehensive pre-kindergarten plans to be developed by communities and reviewed for acceptance by the council.

The Rounds administration has made pre-K programs one of its priorities but has been repeatedly blocked, meeting the most resistance in the House.

The rules proposal and the federal Early Learning grant could be the governor’s last opportunities to establish a foothold for future preschool funding as he completes his eighth and final year in office.

Oster said Wednesday that Education and Social Services officials plan to meet next week to discuss the federal grant and the Early Learning Council. The federal grant criteria include a requirement that the governor establish an Early Learning Council.

“After our meeting, we plan to meet with the governor and present our recommendations,” Oster said.

Obama teaming up with UN to attack Second Amendment

Chuck Norris is predicting a gun fight:

Right now, Washington is scheming and scamming to erode then erase the Second Amendment from our Constitution. And it will accomplish it through the signing of international treaties on gun control, bypassing the normal legislative process in Congress, tightening regulations upon firearm and ammunition manufacturers, using the antigun financing of tycoons and ultimately confiscating all firearms under the guise of terrorism patrol and enforcement. Without public debate and cloaked in secrecy, gun control will covertly come upon us like a thief in the night. One day, we will wake up to discover that the U.S. has signed a global treaty that will prohibit any transfer of firearm ownership, force reductions in the number of firearms privately owned and eventually eradicate the planet of guns for law-abiding citizens. Of course, the criminals will still illegally have their guns. And on that day, if you do not comply with that global treaty, you will be fined and face imprisonment. This is not a fictitious story or false warning. As sure as government health care has been shoved down our throats, so will the barrels of our guns. And left with little defense, we will go as lambs to the slaughter.

I believe the political stars are aligning right now for just such a "perfect storm" of domestic disarmament: via the election and work of an antigun president, the disarmament passions of the Washington elites and the United Nations, the appointments of gun prohibitionists from the White House to the Supreme Court, and the funding of an anti–Second Amendment movement by billionaire progressives like George Soros.

This is Part One of three articles in which I'll be addressing the evidence – the smoking gun, if you will – of the pressing threat to the Second Amendment and our firearm freedoms.

As Wayne LaPierre, executive vice president of the National Rifle Association, wrote in the American Rifleman (February 2010): "President Obama's political mantra of 'hope and change' has morphed into a very real threat. Obama's deep curtsy to international arms control has given 'hope' to the international gun-ban crowd that they will prevail."

It was no surprise when Obama was elected that the nation was consumed with other domestic issues and had selected a president with one of the most anti-firearm records in American history. During his presidential campaign, the National Rifle Association outlined more than two dozen ways that Obama has fought against America's Second Amendment firearm freedoms over the years. So much so, that the NRA graded Obama's (and Hillary Clinton's) voting records among other presidential candidates as an "F." (Does that give any freedom-loving firearm bearer any hope now that both are now part of the same administration?) No wonder a Gallup poll in October 2009 revealed that 41 percent of all Americans and 52 percent of gun owners believe that Obama will try eventually to ban the sale of guns.

It was also no surprise, therefore, a year ago this month when Obama personally promised Mexican President Felipe Calderon that the White House would push to ratify through the Senate the CIFTA (the Inter-American Convention Against Illicit Manufacturing of and Trafficking in Firearms) treaty, which has sat tabled and unapproved by the U.S. Senate since 1997.

But then, as quickly as he initiated the debate, the president just as quickly ceased trying to ratify CIFTA in the U.S. Senate. Why was that? Cato Institute scholar Ted Galen Carpenter said there was a reason that the treaty was tabled a year ago by Obama. I agree. I believe that reason was Obamacare. He knew he couldn't tackle and force through Congress two incredibly hot and volatile issues at once, at least of this caliber. But now that Obamacare is law, it's no surprise that both CIFTA and a separate U.N. small-arms treaty are experiencing a renewed life. And like Obamacare was pitched solely under "health-care reform," you can bet that a small-arms weapon ban will be pitched under "a fight against global terrorism and drug wars."

Trust me that what sounds like a tool being used against terrorism or illegal arm trade will actually further restrict Americans' right to bear arms. Under the disguise of an effort to combat drug violence, the passage of CIFTA or its equal will further clamp down upon our Second Amendment freedoms.

Big lay off in Howard South Dakota wind energy company

Cory Heidelberger's economic development strategy took a hit in Howard South Dakota:

A company that makes and repairs wind turbine blades said Wednesday it is laying off about one-third of the work force at its plant in the eastern South Dakota town of Howard.

Knight & Carver Wind Group Inc. is laying off 16 of the Howard plant's 55 workers this week, and the firm might temporarily close the plant in about a month, said Gary Kanaby, a company vice president in San Diego.

The company, which has operated in Howard for about three years, is having to slow down production to deal with a lull in the wind energy industry. More layoffs could be possible if the situation doesn't improve, Kanaby said.

"We are committed to this community and we're not picking up our bags and leaving," he said. "It just looks like we're probably are going to close it for a little while."

Wind industry employment remained steady in 2009 with about 85,000 U.S. workers, according to the American Wind Energy Association. Due to the many turbines on the market in 2008 and the credit crisis, 1,500 manufacturing jobs were lost during the year, the association said.

Public schools meant taking control of education from the parents and placing it in the hands of social engineers and the government

Patrice Lewis is spot on here:

If you read the sobering history of public schools, it becomes painfully clear that their purpose is not (necessarily) education; it's social change. "The public-schools movement began in the 1830s, led by Horace Mann," notes George L. O'Brien in "Government Schools in Crisis." "Supposedly, the goal was to ensure that every child would have access to an education. However, from the beginning there was another agenda, and that was to control what was being taught so as to create so-called model citizens. Public schools meant taking control of education from the parents and placing it in the hands of social engineers and the government."

The early successes of these social-engineering experiments were limited because most school districts were independent and under the power of a local school board (meaning parents). But then the "unified school" movement came along at the turn of the century, which destroyed the system of local control. After World War II, educational jurisdiction was transferred to state governments. Things spiraled down even faster under President Carter, who created the U.S. Department of Education.

"Once the parents lost control of the schools," laments Mr. O'Brien, "the schools quickly became laboratories for social-engineering experiments. … The central struggle, of course, is money. As long as the government schools take so much money from parents in taxes, it is hard for parents to afford to send their children to nongovernment schools. Attempts to change this through tax credits and vouchers have resulted in vicious counterattacks from the NEA among others."

Since schools are the mandatory gathering place of our society's future, it's the natural laboratory for any agenda – anything at all – to be forced upon our children. Since teachers' unions are extremely left-wing, it's the left-wing propaganda that gets pushed. Anything green, anything abortionist, anything feminist, anything homosexual, anything victimized, anything revisionist – it's all there, shoved down our children's gullets.

And since the liberal education machine is obsessed with sex – and make no mistake, liberals as a whole are obsessed with sex – schools are unwilling to comprehend, much less encourage, family values. Therefore, children become corrupted.

Which is why we now have sex education in kindergarten.

Declaration of Independence determines the political divide

Star Parker is spot on here:

Now that President Obama is getting ready to make his second Supreme Court nomination, the usual banter is taking place about the court and judicial philosophy.

The Supreme Court, of course, profoundly influences the character of our country.

Although, for instance, many look back on the policies of Franklin Roosevelt and his New Deal programs as the beginning of the real growth of the American welfare state, it is really key Supreme Court decisions during that time that enabled all of this. Court decisions changing the interpretation of "general welfare," interstate commerce and the authority of the federal government to tax changed the game and opened a new era of big government.

At the beginning of the 1930s, the federal government's take of national GDP was a little over 10 percent. By the mid-1940s it was over 20 percent, and the trend has been only upward since.

Although much of the discussion about judicial philosophy contrasts how conservative and liberal judges relate to the Constitution, I think the real key to conservative and liberal divergence is the worldview these judges already have when they sit down to interpret the Constitution.

The statement of vision defining American values appears in the Declaration of Independence. Understanding that vision is where I think the most fundamental conservative-versus-liberal divide exists.

Consider how President Obama relates to the Constitution, as he wrote in his book "The Audacity of Hope": "Implicit in its structure, in the very idea of ordered liberty, was a rejection of absolute truth. …"

Our president is a moral relativist. So we may expect that he doesn't take very seriously the idea, as stated in the Declaration of Independence, that there are absolutes, that we have God-given rights that precede government and that the job of government is to secure them.

Rather than seeing government's job as securing our rights, the liberal sees it as inventing them. The politician – or the empathetic judge – defines what is moral and just.

There's a lot of speculation about what is driving the tea-party movement and why. As reflected in the latest survey by the Pew Research Foundation, Americans' trust in government is at an all-time low.

I think most fundamentally it's discomfort with this moral relativism that is driving the pervasive unrest.

The whole unique idea of American government – the idea of human liberty – was that there are absolute truths and that individual citizens can and must be protected from arbitrary rulers – whether it is a king or a political class with arbitrary powers.

Sioux Falls taken over by far-left banker

THe Hildebrand lead campaign of Mike Huether has now taken over South Dakota's largest city:

With 100% of precincts reporting, Mike Huether has been elected the next mayor of the city of Sioux Falls.

Huether is a political unknown with a background in banking. 10 months ago, he quit his job as vice-president of First Premiere Bank to run for Sioux Falls mayor.

Huether describes himself as a political moderate who utilized a grass roots, door-to-door campaign. He sees what he lacks in political experience he makes up for in business acumen. He says he will use that business experience to shape the city budget. He also says he will make bringing new jobs to the city a priority.

The banks created the financial meltdown. How can anybody expect a banker to fix a budget problem? Another lesson to learn here is that the big government liberals are in bed with "Crony Capitalists". This is the exact opposite of what free-market capitalism that conservatives support. Want a real education, then read Tim Carney's Obamanomics.

Obama's legacy so far

From Pat Boone:

For years now, as modern life for most citizens has become more diverse, pressured, distracted and uncertain, powerful – and power-hungry – forces have seized the opportunity to mold government into their image of what it should be. When an unknown, inexperienced but articulate Barack Obama rode into the White House, vowing openly to "radically transform America," the liberals felt they could now ride roughshod over the citizenry, disregard the constitutional limits on the branches of government and truly transform a democratic republic into a socialist never-never land.

In one short year, the Obama administration and the shadow figures surrounding and abetting it rammed through legislation piling trillions of dollars in unsustainable, unpayable debt on the already beleaguered taxpayers – and made promises and proposed other coming entitlements that would add trillions more.

They took control of two of the big three auto manufacturers, chose winners and losers among the biggest banking institutions, bailed out Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, and threatened and cajoled lawmakers and insurance companies and hospital and medical suppliers into helping pass a trillion-dollar takeover of the health-care system in this country, thumbing their noses at the 60 to 80 percent of Americans who loudly didn't want it. All this while maintaining piously that this was "historic" and for the good of all Americans. The "right thing to do."

This new president, while always vowing to be "transparent," signed executive orders giving over $200 million to Planned Parenthood without so much as a "by-your-leave" to taxpayers, who've made it very plain they don't want to pay for abortions, and authorizing billions more in "foreign aid" to countries that oppose us at every turn. He apologized for America's "failing to live up to our ideals" and vowed he would stop our policies of "torture." He declared America is "no longer a Christian nation" and courted Arab favor in Egypt as he cited his great respect for and early acquaintance with Islam. Six months into his presidency, he quietly named June "Gay Pride Month" and all but ignored the National Day of Prayer.

He has increasingly insulted and tried to browbeat Israeli leaders, singlehandedly corrupting a relationship that has bound two allies together in championing democracy and liberty in the Middle East. He has shown much more regard for Hamas and its claims than the God-given right of Israel to live, prosper and defend its own soil.

And while all this has happened in broad daylight, over mounting and vociferous protest across the nation, his attitude and that of his advisers is, "Let 'em eat cake, while they can afford it. We know what's best for this country, and we're gonna use our congressional majority to do whatever we deem appropriate. We've waited a long time to gain this superiority – and a crisis is too good to waste."

But happily, America is still America. It's still the land of the free and the home of the brave. And now, NOW, is the time for all good men to come to the aid of their country!

And that's what's happening, pure and simple. The political pundits, the liberal politicos, the cynical comedians, the soldout media, can't comprehend that an informed, aroused citizenry can still mobilize all by itself, locally, regionally and nationally – that millions and millions of ordinary folks can call each other, e-mail each other, rouse each other and come together to figure out how to take back their governance.

But it's happening, and it's gaining force, coming on strong, not weakening. I'm exuberantly part of it. Are you? If not – why not?

Time to talk about sex

From Greg Laurie:

A little boy who listened to his Sunday School teacher go over the Ten Commandments was a little confused about the seventh commandment and decided to ask his dad about it. As they were driving home from church, he said, "Daddy, what did the Sunday School teacher mean when she said, 'You shall not commit agriculture'?" The father knew his son was referring to the commandment that says, "You shall not commit adultery" (Exodus 20:14 NIV). So he said, "Well, let's see, son. That means you are not supposed to plow the other man's field."

Imagine how different the world would be today if people kept this commandment – if adultery were never committed. Imagine how different our news headlines would look. Imagine how many divorces would be avoided. Imagine how many families would still be together and how many fathers or mothers would still be at home to raise their children.

Sex is not sinful or evil in and of itself. There is nothing wrong with sex. In fact, sex is a good thing; we wouldn't be here today without it. Sex was created by God, and no shame or embarrassment needs to be connected to it – if it is done God's way. And God's way is in a marriage relationship between a man and a woman. Within that confine, within the safety and protection of marriage, God can bless sex.

However, if taken out of God's order, it can be destructive. Adultery is when you have sex with someone other than your spouse, while fornication is when you have sex before marriage. God says that both are sins, and he doesn't want us to commit them.

Therefore, sex is not the issue; it is the place of it. In marriage it is blessed, enjoyable and fulfilling. Outside of marriage it is harmful, damaging and destructive. We are told in Hebrews 13:4, "Marriage should be honored by all, and the marriage bed kept pure, for God will judge the adulterer and all the sexually immoral" (NIV).

Yet some insist that illicit sex doesn't hurt anyone. I think it hurts a lot of people, however, including the people involved. It damages them spiritually. And according to a University of Tennessee study, it can even cause depression. The study found direct correlations between illicit sexual behavior and serious emotional problems. Then there is the issue of teenage pregnancy. Every year, 1 million teens become pregnant, and many of these pregnancies never make it to term. One in every five abortions is performed on a woman under the age of 20. Of the 1.6 million abortions conducted annually, 400,000 are done on teenage mothers.

Does illicit sex hurt anyone? What about the woman who carries the shame of abortion throughout her life? What about the baby who is never given the privilege of living out his or her life? Who knows what some of these children could have done in our world today – the difference they could have made? That is why the Bible warns against this sin, because it does hurt, and it does bring spiritual devastation.

Diversity not

More truth Progressives like Cory Heidelberger can't handle:

Beware of  the ubiquitous “diversity.” Diversity does not mean needed difference, as in a community of religiously diverse people — for example, a Harvard with plentiful booths in the free speech area promoting Mormonism, or ROTC, or support for Israel, or anti-abortion. “Diversity” does not mean 51-49 % votes in the faculty Senate over condemning or supporting the Iraq War of 2003.

“Diversity” does not equate to a faculty department equally divided among Marxists, liberals, conservatives, and libertarians. No, sadly “diversity” is a second-generation word that was by needs reinvented to supplant the Orwellian “affirmative action.”

In the 1980s, American elite culture grasped that the old superstructure of racial preference was both too cumbersome and too narrow all at once: Too cumbersome in the sense that too many were asking uncomfortable questions like, “Why are we giving preference in hiring or admission to a Spanish aristocrat named José Lopes, as if he were a supposedly  underprivileged Mexican-American who suffers from a legacy of racism?,” or “Why is someone in the upper-middle class who is half African-American given preference, and not a poor darker Mohinder Singh from the Punjab who in theory would encounter as much or more discrimination?,” or “Why are all these cynical white-looking kids claiming their grandmothers were one-eighth Cherokee?”

And yet affirmatives action was also all too narrow in the sense that should not upper-class women, and wealthy gays or hyper-achieving, wealthy Asians, likewise, be entitled to help?

In answer to both the contradictions of racial preferences and its narrowness, “diversity” came onto the scene. To the degree that anyone could establish that they were not completely white, male, Christian and heterosexual, they were  “diverse” members of the community and could perhaps find some advantage or boost in the fierce competition for jobs and influence and money.  No one could define diversity, but miraculously all seem to recognize it when they saw it.

The real diversity — that of differences in thinking and independence of opinion — was hardly welcome, and any sort of call for such genuine diversity of thought  was seen as hostile and sometimes had to be dubbed “reactionary,” “racist,” “homophobic,” “sexist,” etc.

So we ended up with “diversity” meaning “university” — a synonym for monolithic intolerance, for everyone worshiping “diversity” without exception. If that seems harsh, it is also the way things are.

Break down of the family causing welfare spending

Phyllis Schlafly brings forward some truth that most refuse to take seriously today:

The news that the United States has become a two-class society – i.e., half of Americans pay federal income taxes and half don't – has bounced around the media and shocked Americans. Most people had no knowledge of this appalling economic fact.

Even worse is the reality that 40 percent of Americans receive federal-government handouts of cash and valuable benefits. Those handouts are financed by the people who do pay federal income taxes.

Those handouts create a tremendous bloc of people who depend on the government for their living expenses. The Tax Foundation reports that 20 percent of Americans now get 75 percent of their income from the federal government and another 20 percent get 45 percent of their income from the government.

Obama's stimulus law will add nearly $800 billion in new means-tested welfare spending over the next decade. That means about $22,500 for every poor person in the United States, which will cost over $10,000 for each family that pays federal income taxes.

According to the Tax Foundation, married taxpayers pay three-fourths of all federal income taxes, whereas two-thirds of single parents who file as head-of-household pay no income tax at all. According to a Heritage Foundation report, taxpayers (mostly those who are married) will spend more than $300 billion providing welfare aid to single parents (mostly women).

The pundits like to divide Republicans into two classes, the fiscal conservatives and the so-called social conservatives, and pretend that their interests are different and mutually exclusive. In fact, the overwhelming reason for big government's extravagant spending, which is properly railed against by limited-government conservatives, is the breakdown in our culture, which social conservatives have been battling for years.

If limited-government conservatives are dreaming of taking back America for fiscal sanity in the November elections, they should study how the unprecedented decline in marriage and the increase in illegitimacy are the major causes of our bloated government and its gigantic welfare spending.