Texans for Fiscal Responsibility

QUOTING...  "If we lose freedom here, there is no place to escape to. This is the last stand on Earth." -- Ronald Reagan

It's a sad truth that conservatives around the state and nation are being bullied. Will we cower in silence, or stand up and fight? At TFR, we're going to fight.

Almost daily we come across evidence of the three-letter agencies – from the I.R.S. to the E.P.A. to the T.E.C. – being used by powerful office-holders as weapons to silence conservatives and attack entrepreneurs. It's time to put a stop to it. Rather than cower at the sucker-punches thrown by political bullies, we're going to be punching back. Hard.

Liberty County Sheriff's Office Public Announcement

This year’s annual “Public Servant Awareness Day” will take place on Saturday, September 21^st. in the City of Liberty Park from 1:pm until 8:pm that evening and the entire community is invited to come out and participate in this FREE event. The event coordinators, Brett Audilet and Sherry Walton wish to stress that this event is a day set aside each year where county wide public servants come together to give a little back to the public and many of the emergency agencies will be on hand to do so. Friday, September 20^th. will be reserved for a “cook off” between these agencies and is not open to the public but the following day IS open to the public and all the “goodies” cooked the day before will be served to the attending public for as long as the food last.

A community dance with live music provided by the “Southern Breeze” band will run from 4:pm to 8:pm. The band which consist of Jay Knight, Carl Landrum, Rob Austin Jr. J.R. Ungels, Luke Landrum and Ronald Lee will be putting on this free concert for the evening’s entertainment.

Some of the agencies and equipment that will be on display for the public to view and in some cases, actually get “hands on” experience with will be Law Enforcement, Fire Departments, EMT’s ambulances, Sheriff Department’s Search and Rescue Mounted Posse, Texas EquuSearch as well as the Office Of Emergency Management to name only a few.  

Activities will include……

* Fire hose handling for the kids to actually “squirt” the water.

*“Smokey the Bear” for the kids to meet and take pictures with.

* Emergency vehicles and equipment for the public to look over and examine “up close and personal”.

* FREE give aways to include smoke alarms, gun locks, coloring books, pamphlets and much more.

* FREE BBQ from the prior days cook-off to the public ( … as long as it will last. ).

* There will be live demonstration by local fire departments that will be cutting up cars with the “Jaws of Life” to show the public how it works and how it can save lives.

* Medical Helicopters will be on hand for the public to view up close.

All this and MUCH more is all FREE to the Public on Saturday, September 21^st.

MEDIA: ANY ASSISTANCE YOU CAN GIVE BRETT AUDILET AND SHERRY WALTON IN THEIR EFFORTS TO GET THE WORD OUT TO THE PUBLIC WOULD BE GREATLY APPRECIATED.

Thanks to all for your assistance,

Ken DeFoor

SUMMER ENDS WITH NO COURT DATE FOR OLD CHILD RAPE CASE

What message does it send to women who are victims of rape when they witness how the Liberty County District Attorney’s office has handled the Shauberger case?

The summer of 2013 officially ended this weekend, but there is still no court date for the criminal case the Liberty Police Department presented to Liberty District Attorney Mike Little many years ago. It appears to some that the current Liberty County grand jury may have asked to hear this case independent of Mike Little’s handpicked successor, current District Attorney Logan Pickett. That grand jury agreed with the Liberty Police Department, as have readers of Liberty Dispatch who have seen some of the evidence, and they indicted Edward Shauberger.  A case investigated in the early 2000's by law enforcement, then referred for prosecution by investigators and given to the Liberty County DA's office in 2008 and then buried by DA Mike Little till April of 2013.

But what does it say when two girls (who now are both grown women), the local police department, and the people of a community all say minors should have their day in court for what they say Edward Shauberger, their adoptive father, did to them when they were children? How can years and years have gone by with no action by longtime District Attorney Mike Little and his young protégé?  Why, according to sources, have neither of the daughters been contacted by the District Attorney’s office before or after the grand jury handed down an indictment?

If someone is a regular reader of Liberty Dispatch they will know our answer to this question. One word: p-o-l-i-t-i-c-s.  It has been said that Mike Little can indict a ham sandwich. He may indeed. And every citizen of this county ought to be concerned that a political and vindictive District Attorney like Mike Little could make life miserable for anyone by digging his claws into them by using his office and a long protracted prosecution to pile up legal bills ruin innocent people’s lives even when the verdict will be innocent. Some have undoubtedly pled guilty for lesser penalties to avoid the consequences of this kind of abuse of office.

On the other hand, while indicting a few ham sandwiches, the District Attorney can use people accused of a crime that have real evidence with which to be prosecuted for his own purposes. It is not unusual for a devious, manipulative prosecutor to get a pass by the public. A nice suit and tie and a smile and a kind “how is going” versus people who are already under the cloud of accusation is an easy public relations win for district attorneys. But longtime District Attorney Mike Little is not from the kind of stock that deserves a pass. After years of no one questioning whom this man is, a very superficial look into his family background and how he conducted the business of his office indicated things have gone on in the darkness of secrecy that would never be tolerated if seen in the light of public scrutiny.

The Shauberger daughters should have their day in court. It should be a priority. If not, then Little’s protégé’ should do something Little never felt obligated to do – call a press conference and explain what is going on! It never happened with the Beausoliel mail tampering case and so many other cases. No explanation of why what appeared to be a case the public would hear about after a trial never went to court.

Explain please sir… Voters who entrusted you with this elective office deserve an explanation. What is the court date? Are you ignoring the victims? Why? Have your investigators questioned the children’s mother since the indictment? If so, in light of the fact she is now living separately from Edward, is she more cooperative?

What assurances do you have for rape victims and people that are victims of other serious crimes that you will seek justice and give them their day of court in a timely manner regardless of your politics and your ability to use their case to force criminals to help pursuit your enemies?

Please Mr. Pickett, with all due respect, this community deserves to know what is happening, and if possible, what has happened with cases that have been vented in the local media but left unaddressed by their district attorney.

Texas Pig Bombs

kshn:

Feral Hogs: The massive property damage caused by feral hogs is a growing problem in town and in the country. Liberty County Extension Agent Cory Long said a single hog can wreck as much as an acre of land in one night. He said there are no chemicals that repel feral hogs, so the only approved methods for dealing with them are hunting and trapping. It’s against the law to release them. For more, call the ext. office at 334-3230.

Russia sends at least 12 warships to Syria

In a move considered aggressive by US and European officials, Russia has sent at least 12 warships to patrol waters near its naval base in Tartous, Syria.

The deployment appears to be a warning to Israeli and Western officials against military intervention in Syria’s bloody civil war, which has now claimed the lives of over 80,000 people.

Russia’s increased presence in the region — which began raising eyebrows in the US three months ago — represents one of its largest sustained naval deployments since the Cold War, the Wall Street Journal reported on Thursday.

“It’s a show of force. It’s muscle flexing,” a top US official told the Journal.

Russian news sources reported earlier Thursday that five warships had entered the Mediterranean Sea to bolster the country’s new regional task force. The vessels were scheduled to dock in Limassol, Cyprus.

In March, Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu announced that the naval task force was needed in order to protect Russian interests in the region.

Also Thursday, Russia’s Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov shrugged off Israeli pleas not to sell sophisticated S-300 air defense systems to Bashar Assad’s regime, saying Moscow would fulfill its contract with Damascus. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu reportedly warned Russian President Vladimir Putin, in emergency talks on Tuesday, that the sale could push the region toward war.

Liberty County Tax Rates Remain the same for 2013

All the recent reports about a countywide tax increase need to be revised, just as the falsehood that the current officeholders have spent the majority of the fund balance needs to be corrected.

Liberty County Commissioners court contrary to previous administrations adjusted the effective rate in order to make the changes in the appraisals moot. Taxpayers should see no increases in the amount of money they pay because of local decisions by elected officials.

Also political perversions of what has eaten up the $18 million fund balance need to be corrected. The Fitzgerald regime ate up most of the fund balance. The last year Phil Fitzgerald was in office was a terrible year for taxpayers as elected officials embarrassed drunken sailors by the way they spent our money. Those who support that regime can use statistics to make the current officials look bad claiming that the current officials cutting back and leveling off the amount of money that is spent in one year that is above the amount of money that is taken in is not good enough. But according to what we have seen when they were in power, the big spenders of our recent past would never have even tried to turn this around. Again, their last year in office was their worst.

Liberty Dispatch is optimistic that IF the current decision makers will make decisions based on the principles they ran on, we will see a quicker recovery than any other approach.

Local liberal, democrat activist and political challengers have distorted the truth about Liberty County taxes as usual in a failed attempt to profit from lies.

State Rep. John Otto(R) seeks re-election bid

Texas State Representative John Otto(R) of Dayton has announced he is seeking re-election to the Texas House of Representatives. The Dayton native was first elected to the Texas House in 2004. He serves District 18, which includes all of Liberty, San Jacinto and Walker counties.

THE REAL COUNTY JUDGE

Liberty Dispatch readers have various thoughts on what they want our county judge to be doing. With the county judge election coming up in 2014 and rather than repeat one more time why we think Liberty County should re-elect Craig McNair, we thought it would be helpful to sort out just what County Judge McNair has and has not done in his two and a half years in office. One of the main reasons we feel this is necessary is that Judge McNair has spent less time campaigning and promoting and defending himself than any Liberty county judge in recent history. His insistence on focusing on action, rather than speeches and photos for the newspapers, has left his opposition an open field to interpret or even invent things in ways that might affect voters to take their side. Readers should decide whether they want four more years of the type of leadership Judge McNair has actually provided rather than what his enemies say he has done.

His enemies are saying things like this, “What we need is a county judge who can stop blowing money on his pet projects and quit giving huge raises to his relatives. Everybody is going to have to tighten their belts and quit spending like crazy.”

We ask these people to explain their accusations. "What raise did McNair give to his relatives? What 'pet projects' are they talking about?" If these folks would like to approach some sort of rational and honest campaign rumor mongering, then they need to answer these questions.

The reality of the next county judge race is that if a voter wants someone to loosen the purse strings and go back to the good ole boy ‘you scratch my back and I’ll scratch yours' way of doing business then they should not vote for McNair. If they do not like that he has practically anchored himself in front of the county treasury and been the undisputed champion of holding spending down, then they should vote for someone else.

In anticipation of more disinformation about the newest building in Liberty, let’s clear up some things. First, anyone that runs against McNair should let their voters know where they stand on McNair’s decision. The federal government chose Liberty County as the best location to build a building for catastrophic emergencies.  All of the funding for the actual building of the emergency center came from the federal government. The only decision Judge McNair was told to make was does Liberty county want the building or not. The federal government would build the center in another county if Liberty County did not want a multi-million dollar headquarters during hurricanes etc. McNair said, “Yes, build it here.”

Opponents cannot legitimately argue that the expenditure was taxpayer money whether it was local, state, or federal money and therefore this is an example of a big spending “pet project’ by McNair. McNair did NOT get to decide whether the money was going to be spent or not. This was a “pet project” of the federal government and it was going to be built, period.

Opponents need to be honest and indicate what they would have done. They can point to the fact the federal government is not going to provide funding to man the building they have built and act like that is scandalous. That argument might appeal to non conservatives who prefer the federal government to direct local affairs or to someone who is only looking at the short term economics. But in the specifics of Judge McNair’s decision to allow the building to be located here was the fact that after ten years Liberty County is in total control and ownership of the building. In other words, while the building was not free with any strings, the strings will soon be cut.

Any voter who believed we needed a no nonsense leader who could navigate all of the attacks and disinformation that comes with telling other politicians “NO!” they got him when Craig McNair was sworn in two and a half years ago. Anyone that wanted a county judge that spent his time working on economic development rather than holding the hands of potential political enemies and making them feel important got him when they elected Craig McNair.

Liberty Dispatch does not fraternize or socialize with the current county judge or any potential opponent that we know of and we welcome SPECIFIC FACTUAL criticism of this and any other elected official so our readers will have the facts. If someone disagrees and is reluctant to send their objection to us and reveal who they are, they will almost surely have an open invitation from all other media. Otherwise, they are asking voters to depend on their political attacks in hopes that they will not be rebutted or they are hoping the voters want a more liberal county judge. We welcome a race that argues whether we can solve Liberty County’s problems with a more liberal approach or with someone claiming to be conservative who is unwilling to face reality.

Dear Liberty Dispatch Readers and Contributors

I have heard slick clever politicians with carefully crafted words all of my life, but the announcement that Jay Knight wants to go from Dayton city councilman to County Judge exposes him as neither slick nor clever.

Read just one quote of many from his announcement: “County employees know their jobs and what it takes to expedite their jobs in both a timely and fiduciary conscious manner. Although, everyone involved in our County government and services must become more efficient at using what we currently have to work with, I think that if these folks involved are better informed of our economic situation, and believe that they are a part of the solution to an economic problem, then they will work together and diligently for options to alleviate this problem.”

I called one of my friends that works for the county and told him that he needed to read his wannabe boss’ pandering. If we ever have a Judge Knight he thinks the employees being “better informed of our economic situation” is an important part of any solution to the county’s woes! You just can’t fix stupid. This man better get a better stump speech or someone may try!

I am told the current County Judge, Craig McNair, sat and listened while one Commissioner insisted he had to have money for uniforms for his workers because every other commissioner bought some for theirs. Really! Starting providing uniforms is that important while we need more deputies on duty.

Judge McNair continued to listen while one commissioner opined about not having enough money to fix all of the roads in his precinct. Really! He wants enough money in this years budget to fix all his roads. Roads in every county in the state are prioritized and fixed as the money and the manpower allows, but this rookie commissioner wants us to bankroll him to fix them all this year?

Some may say this County Judge is not listening, I say he is not stupid. I could never have stayed quiet while one department head said she could not afford paper for the copiers. Even though paper cost less than 3 cents a sheet, she said the county would get $1 a copy but she just can’t fit more paper in her budget. Really! It is ashamed we cannot send this employee to a junior high school economics class. Or maybe she would do better in homemaking eco where she would learn to list your priorities first when making a budget. For years county employees have been arguing they need more money by choosing something they figure everyone will want them to have and saying if their budget is not increased this can not be bought. You just can’t fix stupid. Buy the paper as a top priority and the money spent will increase the amount of money in your budget ….. duh! But some of the other things in your budget, like uniforms, you may have to wait until better times to purchase.

The County judge has listened. The County Judge has spent a good bit of time with Sheriff Rader. He has correctly tried to guide commissioners and department heads toward using their own knowledge of what they can get by without to try and hold the budget down so the Sheriff can start accumulating the assets previous administrations should have when they were frittering their budget away on things like a secret inactive special task force.

I could go on and on, but let me just say this. Jay Knight needs to lose the not very well hidden insincere compliments to employees which he obviously intends to replace raises. He needs to stop trying to make it sound like the problem is his opponent is inappropriately giving raises to a chosen few. He needs to stop acting like the McNairs being gone on weekends occasionally is the problem. The problem is Liberty County is in the same economic struggle most counties are in. He needs to be open and honest with questions like:

Which county employees would he give a raise to?

Would he have refused the federal money that built the new center in Liberty even though the only decision that was made was the location? Liberty County or elsewhere?

Would he go further than McNair has in “listening” to county employees? The facts being that McNair has had an open door policy all along plus he has had numerous workshops with opportunities for communication for all employees from department heads to the lowest paid county employee. What would he do if some employees persisted in saying nobody is listening to them simply because he did not agree to increase their budget?

Knight and Day

Yesterday Liberty Dispatch was disappointed to read Jay Knight started his bid for 2014’s county judge race by cozying up to one of the two most infamous critics of Republicans in this county. We, however, are NOT disappointed in Mr. Knight exercising his right to run again on the Republican ticket. This article seeks to determine whether Mr. Knight has no beef with the way Craig McNair is doing the job as Knight has said, or whether he is open about an entirely different agenda than the incumbent.

Rather than focus on Jay Knight choosing “a conversation” with the most liberal, anti-Republican blogger in Liberty County history to try and ascertain what his candidacy adds to the voters’ choices in the 2014 county judge race, Liberty Dispatch has chosen one paragraph from what appears to be a press release rather than a conversation in reality.

Here is the sentence/evidence we will focus on today from Knight’s press release: “This lingering revenue problem didn’t occur overnight and it’s not going away overnight. You will never hear me say that I inherited this problem. What you will hear me say is: Let’s work together to fix it.”

The first thing someone reading this sentence who is trying to decide whether they should stick with incumbent County Judge Craig McNair or not, is that Knight correctly points out that the problems with the budget were there before Judge McNair was elected. That is a nice thing to admit and should make the reader want to continue reading to see why Knight is running. But the next sentence reminds us all of what we do not like about politicians. After admitting his opponent was not responsible for the problem, Knight writes that he would “never” say he “inherited the problem”. Of course what he said he would NEVER do is exactly what he did in the sentence just before his declaration. This is not clever and we may all be country folks around here but we are far from illiterate. Knight is now on record saying the problem was there before … or that the problem was inherited.

Nevertheless, after getting past a lapse in common sense and a weak effort at political spin, we are still hunting for what a Knight candidacy offers that should make conservatives vote for someone other than the first Republican county judge in a century that they just elected.  The next sentence seems to be the key to what Knight’s press release identifies as the problem with Judge McNair and what Knight would do different. Knight is saying he will “work together” or in a different place in the press release he uses the word “teamwork”.

These are the kinds of words that polled well when President Obama ran for President. The President’s experience was “community organizing” and he indicated he was an expert in bringing people together to solve problems. He said he was a uniter not a divider. He said he would do a better job of “working together” or “teamwork”.

There are some politicians who wish they were the county judge and that Craig McNair would spend a great deal of time consulting with them and what they mean by whispering he does not work with anyone is: “I want a bigger budget and he refuses to spend more money in my department.” To these people, I would sincerely hope that though they may be Knight’s key supporters, he would deny their request if he was elected.

As for working as a team, the commissioners and the county judge have talked about everything from sharing equipment to sharing ideas. Like these commissioners and this county judge or not, they are working more like a team than any group we have seen in twenty-five tears of observing.

Note: With no money to spend and already good relations between leaders, Liberty Dispatch will continue to search Knight’s press release in search of why he is running.