Wharton Journal-Spectator (Wharton, Tex.), Vol. 124, No. 3, Ed. 1 Wednesday, January 9, 2013 Page: 4 of 12
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Opinion
Wtjarton Journal-Spectator
www. j ournal-spectator.com
Wednesday, January 9, 2013 • Section A Page 4
Sounding Board
To the editor:
Shop Wharton First: I was going to a
wedding and wanted to get my hair done.
Two weeks before, I called and made an
appointment. The day of my appointment, I
showed up at 1 p.m. and was told they didn’t
have time to do my hair (a simple shampoo
and blow dry).
Strike 1.
I ordered two meatball sandwiches (one
with cheese, olives and spices and the other
with onions only). I told the lady to put
them in separate bags because I was going
home to Boling and my daughter was going
to work. Of course we got the wrong sand-
wiches.
Strike 2.
After working 10-hour shifts three days
in a row, I made an appointment for a mani-
cure on my way home from work. Instead
of a relaxing experience, I left even more
frazzled because of all of the small children
running around screaming and crying.
Strike 3.
I wanted to shop at a baby store for gifts
for my 2-year-old great-grandson and my
1-month-old grandson. No more baby stores
in Wharton.
So when I want to shop, I will take a
short ride to Rosenberg.
Barbara Gustafson
Boling
Agree, disagree or have something else to say? Please send letters to the editor under
500 words to: P.O. Box 111, Wharton, TX 77488 or e-mail your letter to
kmagee@journal-spectator.com. Please include name, town, and phone number.
"I'M WAITING
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Fiscal cliff may call for fiscal
penalty... to Congress.
If you were a momma and the Congress
was under your watch, and you encountered
this fiscal cliff fiasco, you’d probably at least
put them in timeout. Maybe even wash their
mouths out with soap.
What is this brinksman-
ship? Though, that may
be a misnomer to have the
“man” in there. It seemed
like a long, long time before
enough members of Con-
gress could “man up” and
do the things necessary to
allow the country to work.
The Texas Founding
Fathers were pretty direct
about their desire for their lawmakers to get
the work done. When they wrote their post-
Civil War constitution in 1876, they tried to
make legislators work efficiently by ceasing to
pay them after a certain time.
That constitution set their per diem for
living expenses at $5 per day — a little more
than $100 in today’s dollars — for the first 60
days the legislators met. And then, the per
diem dropped to $2 per day thereafter.
Get it done, the Founding Fathers said,
and then vacate Austin to get back home. Or,
if you’re going to hang around Austin, do it on
your own dime.
That arrangement was tinkered with over
the years — partly because the Founding
Fathers hadn’t anticipated the impact that
special sessions would have. As the 60-day
limit came, legislators would adjourn, and
then have to be called back in special session
to continue their business.
In 1930, legislators were awarded an
annual salary of $4,800. And, the per diem
was adjusted to $12 per day — about $160
in today’s dollars — for the first 120 days of
regular legislative sessions, and for the first 30
days of special sessions.
But the no play-no pay idea in Texas per-
sisted into the mid-20th Century.
There’s a current national effort to bring
that stern momma pressure to bear on the
Congress. It’s ramrodded by a non-partisan, or
multi-partisan, group called “No Labels.” More
about that in a minute.
As late as the 1940s, Texas voters at-
tempted to make their legislators work, and
then get out of town, by paying their higher
per diem through the first 120 days of their
regular biennial session, and then cutting it
for the days thereafter.
The no play-no pay finally petered out
in the Texas Legislature a few decades ago.
But the idea is gaining some traction at the
national level.
The co-founders of www.nolabels.org
include Texas’ own Mark McKinnon, of
Hill+Knowlton Strategies. The group aims to
help spur members of Congress to reach for
cooperation, by cutting their pay if they don’t
avoid the Fiscal Cliff.
McKinnon is a media
political consultant, who
has ranged the political
spectrum from working for
Democrats Lloyd Doggett
and Ann Richards in the
1980s and 1990s, to Repub-
licans George W. Bush and
John McCain in the later
1990s and 2000s. He’s also
consulted for cyclist Lance
Armstrong and singer
Bono.
An email from McKinnon for No Labels on
New Year’s Eve, while the cliff was still out
there, started like this:
“The fiscal cliff is a disaster. Washington
dysfunction is at its worst - and we’re up
against the deadline.
“It doesn’t have to he like this. Our leaders
can — and have — worked together to accom-
plish big things.
“No Labels has a strategy to make it hap-
pen. We’re putting pressure on Washington by
pushing for No Budget, No Pay — legislation
saying if members of Congress can’t pass a
budget and all spending bills on time, they
should not be paid — and calling for common-
sense reforms to our government to give them
space to work across the aisle like having
members of Congress actually meet together
every month.”
McKinnon says No Labels has already
gotten more than 90 members of Congress
signed up to carry legislation to make the pay
for members of Congress contingent on doing
their work — on time.
As is to be expected, “No Labels” is also
trying to raise money to spread its message, as
you’ll find if you go to their website.
That said, it’s time for a push to try to end
the dysfunction in the Congress, wrought by
congressional redistricting having pushed
the representation to the poles of the political
spectrum.
It’s time for stepping up to deal with educa-
tion, health care, transportation, an aging
population and other matters without a blood
feud over everything.
And next, we might think about having
members of Congress live under the same
systems of health care, retirement, and other
entitlements, or lack thereof, as most other
Americans —just to know, and experience,
what it’s like.
Contact Dave McNeely at davemcneelylll@
gmail.com or 512-458-2963.
Inspiration for 2013
Some of the regular emails I receive
come from the Patriot Post, The Essential
Voice of Liberty. They are well worth sub-
scribing to.
I thought you might
like a taste of inspira-
tion shared in this past
Monday’s Patriot Post. It
quotes a news item writ-
ten by Lee Cowan of CBS
News:
“For most parents,
when a child leaves the
nest it’s usually for good.
But at age 51, Tony Tol-
bert has come home again.... He announced
he was moving back home, because he
was giving up his own fully furnished L.A.
home, rent free, for a full year - to a fam-
ily he’d never even met. You don’t have to
be Bill Gates or Warren Buffet or Oprah,’
Tolbert said. We can do it wherever we
are, with whatever we have, and for me, I
have a home that I can make available.’ But
to whom? Tolbert sought out a shelter for
homeless women and children called Alex-
andria House. It was there he found Felicia
Dukes. Needless to say, she couldn’t believe
the offer when she heard it. ‘They had a
young man that wanted to donate their
house to you for a year,’ Dukes recounted.
‘And I’m looking at her, like, what? Like
- Are you serious?’... Tolbert also became
emotional when he talked about the life les-
sons he learned from his father, who is now
suffering from Alzheimer’s Disease. ‘Kind-
ness creates kindness. Generosity creates
generosity. Love creates love,’ he said. ‘And I
think if we can share some of that and have
more stories about people doing nice things
for other people, and fewer stories about
people doing horrible things to other people,
that’s a better world.’ Not a bad thought to
begin the new year.”
Another inspiration for me came during
the holidays from reading 1776 by Pulitizer
Prize winning author, David McCullough.
Of course, most of us recognize 1776 as
the birth of our nation with the signing of
the Declaration of Independence in July of
that year. Rather than that event, Mc-
Cullough focuses on the much less known
military maneuvers — and near defeat of
the American cause that year.
While a great victory for the colonists
came in March as the British evacuated
Boston, after the signing of the Declara-
tion momentum shifted dramatically. The
Americans under General Washington
were defeated on Long Island at the end of
August forcing a retreat. Throughout the
Fall he was repeatedly outmaneuvered and
ultimately had to evacuate the New York
City area. And an attack on the British
in Canada had ended in
failure in 1776. Those
defeats as well as lack of
food, clothing and pay led
many American soldiers
to leave as their enlist-
ment periods came to an
end.
But while Washington
may have been outma-
neuvered by British
commanders with much more military ex-
perience than he, Washington tenaciously
believed in the cause of liberty and worked
tirelessly to rally his troops. Having re-
treated to New Jersey he knew that the
enlistment of many more of his troops was
scheduled to end at the year.
Scheming the almost unthinkable,
Washington planned a surprise attack on
the enemy at Trenton. To do so it took a
crossing of the Delaware River planned for
December 25th at midnight. McCullough
writes that where they crossed the river
was about 850 feet wide “and the current
strong, the ice formidable, as all accounts
attest.. ..About eleven o’clock, the storm
struck a full blown northeaster.” With the
crossing of the river and further travel the
attack on Trenton did not begin until about
8 a.m. but resulted in a rousing victory for
the Americans. Then rather than rest on
their laurels Washington struck again at
Princeton at sunrise on January 3rd and
again came out victorious.
McCullough concluded, “From the last
week of August to the last week of Decem-
ber, the year 1776 had been as dark a time
as those devoted to the American cause had
ever known - indeed, as dark a time as any
in the history of the country. And suddenly,
miraculously it seemed, that had changed
because of a small band of determined men
and their leader.”
Two different examples of men living
for a just cause. As 2012 ended and 2013
has begun, Tony Tolbert’s generosity and
George Washington’s tenacity and persis-
tence have provided inspiring examples to
continue to press on for right causes.
Peter Johnston, an East Bernard resi-
dent, earned a history degree from Cornell
University and is a former high school his-
tory teacher. He can be reached at colum-
nist.peter.johnston@gmail.com.
Peter
Johnston
A Heritage
and a Hope
v‘ " -r'
Definitely redneck, fer sure
When you are born poor, it is hard to
get used to the idea of having an unlimited
amount of cash. Take the case of the four
guys from Louisiana who invented some
duck calls. They discov-
ered that if they modified
the call slightly they could
imitate a sound that was
species specific.
If you wanted Mal-
lards you used one duck
call, if you wanted Teals,
Canvasbacks, Pintails,
etc. you used another.
There are 56 varieties in the U.S. alone so
it is easy to see how sales could be repeated
to the same customer.
One of the rednecks was computer liter-
ate so he started advertising on the inter-
net and to his surprise he soon had orders
for hundreds of thousands of duck calls.
So they raised the price. When people saw
such a high price they figured it must be
really good so sales went up even more.
Their cost for materials was almost
nothing because they harvested downed
trees for parts and had the factory in an old
cabin. About all they had to buy was sand-
paper, paint, varnish, and a few computers
to keep track of orders. As one might expect
their net profit was astronomical, a word
they could comprehend but not spell.
One ice-cold day the Stud Duck, as the
elderly CEO liked to call himself, was de-
livering a truck load of duck calls to Fed Ex
and his cell phone received a text message
from an employee. It read, ‘Windows froze
up. Advise.” He texted back, “Try pouring
hot water on windows.”
After a while the assembly line worker
texted back, “Didn’t work. Now computer
won’t work at all.”
These four guys went everywhere to-
gether, trying to spend all their new found
wealth. They stopped in a donut shop and
challenged each other to a hot donut eating
contest. The Stud Duck, in his 70s, eas-
ily won the $80 pot by eating 27 donuts
and licking his fingers. “I’m gonna parfait
this into another fortune,” he cackled then
promptly had a heart attack.
The three guys rushed
him to the nearest hos-
pital. They decided to go
out in the parking lot and
ha ve a beer. They could
see the old geezer through
the ground floor window
and he waved to them as
they sat on the tailgate of
the truck.
Suddenly the room was filled with
hospital staff and a flurry of activity
began. “He’s havin’ another heart attack,”
said one, “look they’re shocking him with
them paddles.” The staff shocked then
stood back. The geezer sat upright, looked
through the pane to the guys and gave
them a thumbs-up sign then passed out
again. Each time they would shock him to
restart his heart he would sit up and give
them another sign, like A-OK, etc.
Finally he was stabilized and released
a few days later. On the way back to the
duck call factory the younger guys re-
marked that they were impressed that the
Stud Duck was giving them those comfort-
ing signals. He said, “Comfort my foot. I
was signaling for a cold beer and more hot
donuts.”
■
Hey folks: Our next Java Jam will be
Friday, Jan. 25 at the Milam Street Cof-
fee Shop in downtown Wharton. We’ll be
sticking with Fridays until further notice.
It seems to be the most popular and con-
venient day. Melody Kirschke will be our
special guest. More on that later.
Doc Blakely is a humorist and motiva-
tional speaker who resides in Wharton. For
more information, visit www.docblakely.
com.
Wharton Journal-Spectator
Established 1889
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Wallace, Bill. Wharton Journal-Spectator (Wharton, Tex.), Vol. 124, No. 3, Ed. 1 Wednesday, January 9, 2013, newspaper, January 9, 2013; Wharton, Texas. (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth655155/m1/4/?q=Lamar+University: accessed June 6, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu; crediting Wharton County Library.