Sweetwater Reporter (Sweetwater, Tex.), Vol. 113, No. 146, Ed. 1 Tuesday, May 3, 2011 Page: 7 of 10
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Sweetwater Reporter
Tuesday, May 3, 2011 ■ Page 7
East Ridge announces perfect attendance
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East Ridge Elementary announced its A-B Honor Roll for the fifth six weeks. Those receiving the honor in the
First Grade are David Diaz, Matti Humphries, Jaden Humphries, Antonio Neri, Madison Sosa, Zoie Zarate,
Caitlin Carr, Grace Cravey, Matthew Hickson, Abby Ledbetter, Siara Ramirez, Ariah Olguin, Acacia Sterling,
Morgan Templet-Pointer, Addison Torres, Camilo Salcedo, Mayra Martinez, Ela Patridge, Kaylee Valdez,
Kaylee Aguilar, Jayton Cunnings, Markus Reed and Christian Reid
' •; * 1 ■ ..1
*
East Ridge Elementary announced its A-B Honor Roll for the fifth six weeks. Those receiving the honor in the
Second Grade are Geordan Flores, Nathan Humphries, Rhianna Parker, Seth Garcia, Sebastian Gonzales,
Gabriella Mermella, Adrianna Moreno, Jalon Thomason, Braxton Gomez, Sergio Gonzalez, Aaron Gutierrez,
Bryan Hill, Kaleb McCoy, Jaden Smart, Gretchen Sweek, Jacob Cantu, Angelina Cedillo, Scott Garza, Brianna
Salazar, Rowdy Zumwalt, Hannah Boone, Brendan Delgado, Dyllan Lindscy, Mya Sarabia, Jacelin Smart and
Raizel Valdez.
East Ridge Elementary announced its A-B Honor Roll for the fifth six weeks. Those receiving the honor in the
Third Grade are Blayke Bewley, Kathryn Browning, Silas Carrillo, Damien Jones, Hailey Orozco, Isaiah Pena,
Rylan Torres* Gregory Williams, Michael Ford, Cooper Hrbacek, Hannah Sharp, Andrea Vaughn, Brianna
Alaniz, Anastasia Alva, Victoria Clowers, Madison Hernandez, Gatlyn Hoskins, Makenna Milner, Austin
Moreland, Skyler Painter, Gavin Reyes, Baylor Trevino, Adrian Villa, Marissa Villanueva, Isabelle Boone,
Madison Hickson, Dylan Jeffrey, Brooklynn Thomasson, Jaythan Coale, Marisabella Diaz, Jayden Harms,
Ethan Peacock, Destiny Sanchez, Mason Smart, Kailey Soles and Blayne Trotter.
Committee OKs plan to close gap in Texas budget
APRIL CASTRO
Associated Press
AUSTIN, Texas (AP) — A Senate committee on Monday
approved a plan to use $3.25 billion from Texas' Rainy Day
Fund to close a shortfall in the state's current budget, but
a plan for the next two-year budget remained stalled in the
Legislature where members are divided over using more
reserve funds to help avoid massive teacher layoffs and
nursing home closures.
Official projections put the state's Rainy Day Fund at
$9.4 billion at the end of the 2013 budget year if it's not
tapped, but Sen. Steve Ogden, the Senate's chief budget
writer, has predicted it could reach as high as $12 billion
because of the high price of oil and increased production.
The plan approved by the Senate Finance Committee on
Monday and already approved by the House would allow
the state to close a deficit of about $4 billion in the current
budget year by drawing on that fund. The measure would
allow the state to make a $600 million payment to public
schools needed because of lower property tax receipts and
give about $40 million to the Texas Forest Service to help
cover the costs of fighting recent wildfires.
Ogden, a Repub -can, said he hopes the legislation,
known as the supplemental budget, could be considered by
the full Senate on Wednesday. He left open the possibility
of adding $3 billion more from the Rainy Day Fund to that
measure instead of putting that in a plan for the next two-
year budget.
"We've discussed that at length and the answer is:
maybe," Ogden said. "I would like to postpone (that discus-
sion) until we get it to the floor."
Republicans have opposed using Rainy Day money in
the next budget. They say the reserve fund needs to be left
untouched, so it will be available to deal with future state
emergencies. Democrats argue proposed cuts to schools
and other programs are inhumane when the reserve fund
is available.
The division has stalled work on the next budget. Senate
leaders had intended to bring the $176 billion spending
proposal up for a vote last week and again Monday. But
with wavering support, they haven't been able to muster
the needed votes. Senate Republicans have a 19-12 major-
ity, but a longstanding tradition requires two-thirds of the
chamber to agree before any legislation can come up for
debate.
Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst complicated the situation last
week after newspaper reports in which he criticized of the
proposal to use rainy-day money. He later released a letter
asking senators to support the proposed budget.
With just 28 days left in the legislative session, the stalled
budget has increased the likelihood of a special session
over the summer. The House has approved the plan with-
out the rainy day money, and Republican Gov. Rick Perry's
staff has been working behind the scenes to get a plan out
of the Senate and into conference committee negotiations
with the House.
Perry has opposed using the Rainy Day Fund for the next
state budget but stopped short of threatening to veto. He
met with House Speaker Joe Straus and other top legisla-
tive leaders Monday afternoon for what Straus called "a
checkup" on the Legislature and upcoming deadlines.
"We need to get this bill in conference (committee) as
quick as possible," said Rep. Jim Pitts, the chief House
budget writer. "1 mean, time is moving."
But he warned that additional use of the Rainy Day Fund
would likely be rejected in the conservative House.
"I think the House is pretty firm about it," Pitts said. His
message to senators: "Don't send us anything with Rainy
Day Fund. Because we can't pass it."
Dewhurst met separately with Perry and said afterward
that he thought some progress had been made. He declined
to give details on what was discussed.
Associated Press writer Jay Root contributed to this
report.
'Closure': Americans find
comfort in clear ending
TED ANTHONY
AP National Writer
To surf American airwaves, to read American com-
ments on the Internet by the thousands, to walk
American streets Monday after Osama bin Laden's
astonishing demise meant you'd almost certainly hear
some variation of a single telling word: "closure."
As in ending. As in end of story — at least, the primary
story arc of Osama bin Laden, which for most Americans
began in the eastern United States on Sept. 11,2001, and
ended in Pakistan in the early moments of May 2, 2011,
in one of the most dramatic undoings imaginable.
While Americans reveled in the demise of global
terrorism's most public face, the prevailing mood was
unsurprising for the culture that produced Hollywood:
After so many years of uncertainty and mass aggrava-
tion over no resolution at all, here, finally, was some
kind of coherent ending.
Listen to Republican Rep. Peter King, one of many
whose satisfaction in the hours after bin Laden's death
focused on resolution and wrap-up. Of the 9/11 victims'
families, he said this: "Now they can finally have some
sense of closure and some sense of justice."
Or Mike Low of Batesville, Ark., whose flight atten-
dant daughter died aboard American Airlines Flight 11:
"It certainly brings an ending to a major quest for all of
us."
Or Lisa Ramaci, celebrating early Monday in New
York's streets, where the champagne-and-goodbye-
chants atmosphere at times resembled that of a major
pro sports victory: "We had this 10 years of frustration
just building and building, wanting this guy dead, and
now he is."
Surely one man's eradication cannot offset survivors'
years of pain. But the American hunger for definitive
Hollywood endings is boundless — to the point where
we grow deeply irritated if something seems too open-
ended. The quick-cut, sound-bite culture so frustrating
to politicians and other leaders produces an appetite for
resolution that's hard to satisfy.
Add to that the enduring, horrific echoes of 9/11 and
two protracted wars that have no discernible endpoints
in sight, and you have a populace primed to applaud
the end of a major chapter, even if it isn't unfettered
victory.
Part of it is the nature of U.S. warfare in recent
decades. Americans today are as likely to fight wars
against amorphous enemies as they are nation-states.
Because of that, conflicts tend to lack distinct endings or
formal surrenders like a Yorktown or an Appomattox —
events that say, "Hey, the war's over."
There was no Treaty of Versailles with Saddam
Hussein, and certainly no one in America expects ever
to have a V-E Day or V-J Day with al-Qaida. In modern
U.S.-backed warfare, the big, solemn, identifiable end-
ing is virtually obsolete. So a major milestone like bin
Laden's death is, for the United States, a cause for buoy-
ancy in a frustratingly unresolved conflict.
That's how Democratic Sen. Charles Schumer cast
it. "The war on terror is not over/' he said Monday
on MSNBC, "but maybe this was the Saratoga or the
Gettysburg where things turned."
But there's something else at play, too. Bin Laden
himself was the closest thing the modern world had to
a James Bond-style supervillain — someone who, to
hundreds of millions of Westerners, was truly, mono-
chromatically dastardly.
Owen Gleiberman, writing on Entertainment Weekly's
website, identified it immediately in a piece called "Say
Goodnight to the Bad Guy."
"That perception of 9/11 as big-screen-action-disas-
ter-gone-real, widespread though it was, seemed rather
indefensible at the time because to say it, or even to
think it, risked trivializing the devastation," Gleiberman
wrote.
"Yet 9/11, there's almost no denying it, did live in our
minds like a giant motion picture," he wrote, "and part
of what made it so wasn't simply the vastness, the sheer
terrifying spectacle, of the tragedy. It was that behind it
lay a villain of nearly mythological proportion."
And now we get to the heart of the matter. Could it
be that, for a worried and wean nation, such a soul-
wrenching event as 9/11 required an appropriately
cataclysmic resolution for the man who masterminded
it? Would a bomb from the air — or, worse, a revelation
years later that he had died — have been as satisfying?
Would a less sharply defined bin Laden death have
allowed for the jubilant summoning of American reso-
luteness that was being bandied about so freely Monday
from the White House to the streets of New York City
and Washington.
When you take in the words that people in America
used Monday — "emotionally held hostage," "finally/' "a
symbol," "an important milestone" — you realize what
the ending of bin Laden means right here, right now: It
gives Americans something to pin their feelings on, to
carry with us when we say, "What has all this meant?"
It means, for now, that one of the key demands of a
story — that something actually happens that means
something — has just unfolded before our eyes. The
fact that the manner of bin Laden's death might have fit
perfectly into a pre-Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger movie
is not incidental.
For the moment, Americans have our resolution —
something to pin our feelings on. We have all-important
closure, even though —in the real, messier, non-cine-
matic world — the country of big endings still must wake
up tomorrow and fight another day.
EDITOR'S NOTE — Ted Anthony writes about
American culture for The Associated Pi'ess.
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Sweetwater Reporter (Sweetwater, Tex.), Vol. 113, No. 146, Ed. 1 Tuesday, May 3, 2011, newspaper, May 3, 2011; (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth229462/m1/7/: accessed July 17, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu.; crediting Sweetwater/Nolan County City-County Library.