THE GRAYSON COUNTY COMMISSIONER'S COURT SAID NO!!!!

After the hearing at which the Grayson County Commissioner's Court & County Judge said yes to a private jail & no to the citizens of the county who wanted an up & down vote on the issue. I started to fire off an email to all the commissioners & the county judge to vent my disgust at the Court's attitudes of aristocracy that they displayed at the final hearing on Monday, July 13, 2009.

On the county's website I noticed this list of Commissioner's Court & County Judge's duties. A mission statement of sort. Number 7 on the list is of particular interest.

Duties of the County Judge as Chairman of the Commissioners Court

Together, the County Judge and four Commissioners comprise the Commissioners Court. Despite the name, Commissioners Court is not a judicial court but is the general governing body of the county. Among the major duties of the Court are:

1. Set the tax rate and adopt the county budget;

2. Appoint county officials and hire personnel;

3. Fill elective and appointive vacancies;

4. Establish voting precincts, appoint precinct judges and call county bond elections;

5. Let contracts and authorize payment of all county bills;

6. Build and maintain county roads and bridges;

7. Build, maintain and improve county facilities including jails;

8. Provide for indigent care, public welfare and veterans assistance;

9. Manage all county facilities;

10. Provide for the data service and archival needs of the County; and

11. Appoint an Administrator to oversee the operations of those departments reporting to the court.

Now we can add hypocrisy & dereliction of duty, to describe their behavior.

OBAMA's AMERICAN GRADUATION INITIATIVE

Community Colleges are the largest part of our higher education system, enrolling more than 6 million students, and growing rapidly. They feature affordable tuition, open admission policies, flexible course schedules, and convenient locations, and they are particularly important for students who are older, working, need remedial classes, or can only take classes part-time. They are also capable of working with businesses, industry and government to create tailored training programs to meet economic needs such as nursing, health information technology, advanced manufacturing, and green jobs, and of providing customized training at the work site. Read the Initiative here AMERICAN GRADUATION INITIATIVE

TELL THE GRAYSON COUNTY COMMISSIONER'S COURT NO!!

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Protect Your Tax Dollars
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Do Not Let Your Commissioner’s Court Risk Our Tax Payer Dollars!

These are the facts!Privatizing Your County Jail will result in Loss of Local Control.

Your taxpayer dollars will go to a Louisiana Private Prison Company.

Your County Tax Dollars is at risk for increased inmate lawsuits.

Tax dollars will back the prison funding with no risk to the private jail company.

The private jail company can walk away from operating the jail leaving the tax payers at bay.

This is a no lose deal for the private jail company as they are not putting up any money.

This proposed deal has no projected increased cost in operations for the next 20 years.

What appears to be cost savings today will be paid for in the future.

There are too many unknowns to line the pockets of a private prison company with our tax payer dollars.

Attend the next Commissioner’s Court Meeting at

9AM Monday July 13

Tell the Commissioner’s Court NO!

Information provided by the officers and employees of the Grayson County Sheriff’s Department.



Read more have some Grits for Breakfast.

Annie's List - Changing the Face of Power

Annie's List - Changing the Face of Power

CLEAT Calls On Grayson County Sheriff To Stop Jail Privatization - KTEN.com

KTEN TV Sherman & Denison, TX
It seems to WannaBeBlue that a for profit jail means more incarcerations. This is an Incarceration Enterprise. Making money on the backs of the uneducated underprivileged low income folks who get arrested & should have a reasonable bond set. The educated & privileged folks can afford bail even if it is set ridiculously high like this county. A new jail should be authorized by the voter’s who pay the taxes. Why are the Commissioners & the County Judge afraid to let the voters decide the jail issue????

Juneteenth Denison,Texas 2009

 

 

 

 

An Open Letter to the Democratic Senators in Congress

The people of the United States want universal health care. If you believe that universal health care is a basic human right. You must stand for a public option. One’s right to health care should not be subject to obscene profits conspired by corporate entities. We want health care not health insurance.

A recent pew poll asked if the federal government is responsible to make sure all Americans have health care coverage, or are that not the responsibility of the federal government. The results were responsible 62% - not responsible 38%. The poll found that 55% of Americans favor completely rebuilding the health care system & 65 % of voters believe that every American should have access to quality Universal Health Care.

The Universal Declaration of Human Rights, adopted by the United Nations in 1948, proclaimed that “everyone has the right to a standard of living adequate for the health and well-being of oneself and one’s family, including food, clothing, housing, and medical care.” The time has come for the U.S. to fully recognize the universality of all human rights, and to join others in implementing a health care system that provide the human right to health care.

Take heed to the voter numbers Senators; they will increase if a public option is not part of the health care bill. If you are concerned about votes or need more votes you would be wise to be an advocate for the American people's right to Universal Health Care or a public option to compete with insurance companies.

Please help by sending a message to the Democratic Senators. Click here > U. S. Senators

GRAYSON DEMOCRATS.COM

WannaBeBlue wants you to know. The Grayson County Democratic Party has a new website check it out. While your there you can renew your membership by making a donation to help defray some of the cost for this multi-functional site.

Mohammed loves Jesus

By Henry H. Bucher, Jr.
Jun 4, 2009

“Jesus Killed Mohammed,” titles Jeff Sharlet’s piece in Harpers Magazine (May, 2009). In describing today’s US crusade for a Christian military, he takes his title from a large red script in Arabic on a Bradley Fighting Vehicle in Samarra, Iraq, spring, 2004. Sharlet details how some significant parts of our military are bringing “freedom” to Iraq while paradoxically breaking their oath to our Constitution to keep religion separate from government.
Ironically, the Qur’an reveres all Jewish, Christian, and Muslim prophets including Jesus (Issa), born of a virgin named Mary. Some Shia Muslims believe he will come again in judgment with their Twelfth Imam. Many Muslim men have the name Issa, as are many men in cultures of Spanish influence named Jesus. The Qur’an refers many times to Jews and Christians as “People of the Book” who should be protected as spiritual sons and daughters of Abraham.
The perversion of faith is only one important aspect of our tragic military occupation of Iraq. The role of religion in the US military is not limited to our presence in Iraq. Soldiers have prayed, worshipped, and sought counsel from chaplains provided by our military since day one. That is not at issue.
The major issues here are: 1) proselytizing within the military; 2) attempting to convert those we do battle against; thus aiding our foes by being what they have always claimed we are—a new form of the Christian Crusades in continuity with those in the Middle Ages; and 3) creating a dangerous situation for the Iraqi Christian communities that date back to the first century.
Seeking converts within military ranks has been litigated at the Air Force Academy in Colorado. The Bush-Cheney-Rumsfeld team, who inserted scriptures to headline official Pentagon memos, is gone; and this practice has been discontinued, we are told. Still, some in our military see themselves as “spiritual warriors” thus mirroring the militant jihadists—the enemy.
Attempting to convert Muslims in the lands we occupy could be seen by some Christian soldiers as at least one argument that “makes sense” out of an otherwise confusing situation. Thousands of Bibles in Pashto, the language of Pashtuns in southern Afghanistan and northwestern Pakistan, are arriving through our military. Some US fundamentalists parallel this modern crusade with supporting Israel against the Palestinians in preparation for the Second Coming of Christ—for generations now “around the corner,” “soon,” “in our lifetime.” Much of the world see the USA and Israel in alliance since 1948 without any religious significance, but disagree over how to encourage peace in the area.
Iraqi Christians and Muslims know that thousands of Jews, Christians and Muslims were massacred in and around Jerusalem during Europe’s First Crusade (1095-1099). These Christian soldiers, once in control, protected the local Christians, who later became targets for having collaborated with the Crusaders. While some US military today see proselytizing as a part of their “mission,” the US-led occupation as a whole, has caused enormous damage to the indigenous Christians who have lived in the area before Islam and fourteen centuries under Islam. Those who have not become refugees are often seen as collaborators with the USA; and upon our leaving, will be even less secure. Christians numbered 1.4 million in Iraq in 1989; today they are about 400,000. The Pentagon does not keep records of total Iraqi deaths but many more Muslims have been killed, displaced and maimed.
These issues go far beyond Iraq, Afghanistan and the Middle East. Since the late 1800s, a favorite hymn among US Protestants was “Onward Christian Soldiers,” which used military metaphor right from scriptures. When some wanted it removed from the hymnbook, defenders noted that all was metaphor speaking to the “inward struggle --a spiritual one--calling on all Christians to “put on the armor of God.” After World War Two, however, with the Cold War and the reality of almost permanent real wars in Asia, Latin America and the Middle East, the hymn was removed from some hymnbooks because the image of a soldier with the cross in the left hand and a sword in the other was incongruent with following the Prince of Peace.
What is happening in some sectors of the US military today is a conflation of the war metaphor into a reality that confuses military conquest with spreading the faith—not unlike what Mohammed’s armies did in the seventh and eighth centuries, and the Christian Crusaders in the Middle Ages. History books point out that Jews and Christians were protected by Mohammed’s armies as “People of the Book.” In 2009, we should be learning more about all the daughters and sons of Abraham, not killing each other; nor killing others for that matter.

Henry H. Bucher, Jr.
Adjunct Associate Professor Emeritus / Humanities
Comparative World History / Africa & Middle East
Austin College # 61555
Sherman, TX 75090-4400
hbucher@austincollege.edu
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Ten Things To Know About Judge Sonia Sotomayor

1. Judge Sotomayor would bring more federal judicial experience to the bench than any Supreme Court justice in 100 years. Over her three-decade career, she has served in a wide variety of legal roles, including as a prosecutor, litigator, and judge.

2. Judge Sotomayor is a trailblazer. She was the first Latina to serve on the Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit and was the youngest member of the court when appointed to the District Court for the Southern District of New York. If confirmed, she will be the first Hispanic to sit on the U.S. Supreme Court.

3. While on the bench, Judge Sotomayor has consistently protected the rights of working Americans, ruling in favor of health benefits and fair wages for workers in several cases.

4. Judge Sotomayor has shown strong support for First Amendment rights, including in cases of religious expression and the rights to assembly and free speech.

5. Judge Sotomayor has a strong record on civil rights cases, ruling for plaintiffs who had been discriminated against based on disability, sex and race.

6. Judge Sotomayor embodies the American dream. Born to Puerto Rican parents, she grew up in a South Bronx housing project and was raised from age nine by a single mother, excelling in school and working her way to graduate summa cum laude from Princeton University and to become an editor of the Law Journal at Yale Law School.

7. In 1995, Judge Sotomayor "saved baseball" when she stopped the owners from illegally changing their bargaining agreement with the players, thereby ending the longest professional sports walk-out in history.

8. Judge Sotomayor ruled in favor of the environment in a case of protecting aquatic life in the vicinity of power plants in 2007, a decision that was overturned by the Roberts Supreme Court.

9. In 1992, Judge Sotomayor was confirmed by the Senate without opposition after being appointed to the bench by George H.W. Bush.

10. Judge Sotomayor is a widely respected legal figure, having been described as "...an outstanding colleague with a keen legal mind," "highly qualified for any position in which wisdom, intelligence, collegiality and good character would be assets," and "a role model of aspiration, discipline, commitment, intellectual prowess and integrity."

Judge Sotomayor is an historic, uniquely qualified nominee to the Supreme Court. Let's get the word out and make sure we get a prompt, fair confirmation on her nomination.

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