Opinions

Death and taxes remain the two certainties in life. But in the City of Clarendon’s case, while taxes remain a certainty, when you will get your tax bill is anything but certain.

You could get your city tax bill in October, but it is more likely that it will show up sometime in November. Regardless of when it shows up, you’ll still owe taxes.

The reason for all this uncertainty has to do with the animosity that has gripped City Hall for several months and more specifically due to the paralysis of the Board of Aldermen after three of its members resigned in June.

Much work has been left undone because of the city’s inability to get a quorum. No new budget could be adopted, for example. The budget from fiscal year 2013 will carry forward and become the budget for 2014 and will have to be amended as necessary after a new Board of Aldermen is seated following a special election.

Most of the city’s day-to-day functions have been undisturbed though, and for the citizens’ part, we have probably welcomed the quietness that resulted from not having one or more city meetings every month.

There are still hard feelings from the arguments that arose in the months leading up to the mass resignations. Time may heal those, but a pesky issue has arisen with regards to the city’s tax rate.

The law prescribes that if a city doesn’t set a tax rate, the cheaper of the current or the effective rate will become the new rate. In Clarendon’s case, that rate is 65 cents per $100 valuation, which has been the rate since 2008. But the law was written for cities where councils were deadlocked or refused to act. Here we don’t have a council to act, and the rub is that even though the rate is set, it still has to be ratified by a supermajority (four of five members) of the board.

And that’s when City Hall blew the dust off the state constitution and found a “holdover provision” which basically stipulates that these aldermen who resigned are actually still in office until their successors are appointed or elected. Therefore if two “former” members would agree to meet with the two remaining aldermen, the city could ratify its tax rate and move on about its business, and the Donley Appraisal District could send its combined tax notices out on time next month.

But, as Alderman Will Thompson said this week, there is too much bad blood for this to happen easily. To her credit, “former” alderman Debbie Roberts showed up at City Hall Monday night to try to help resolve this issue. But two other “former” aldermen were no shows. One is out of state attending college and can’t just drop everything to come to Clarendon. The other, unfortunately, has had very unpleasant conversations with the mayor and will only come to a meeting if the mayor resigns.

This city needs a fresh start, and it will hopefully have one following the November 5 election

Forgiveness is a hard thing to give. It is especially hard if the person you want to forgive is recalcitrant and will not admit to having wronged you. It’s difficult to say “I forgive you,” when the other person doesn’t first say, “I’m sorry.”

It would be nice if for the good of our community, all hatchets could be buried – even if temporarily – so that the necessary people could meet for five minutes and take a quick vote.

Will the world end if this doesn’t get done? No. It will be an inconvenience for the city, for the appraisal district, and for the citizens. There will be confusion of tax bills and a delay in revenue for the city, but all the bills will still get paid. It certainly isn’t worth burning bridges, destroying relationships, or making empty threats.

The situation was and is completely avoidable. The parties involved should appeal to their better angels to put the people’s good above all else. And if they don’t… well, it will be okay. But we still all have to live together and we need to find a way to keep small town politics from tearing us completely apart.

Summer is over, school’s back in session, and lots of parents are thrilled to death. But sadly, I’m not one of them.

Some may relish the hustle and bustle of the school year with all its rules, regulations, dates, and deadlines. But as the father of a six-year-old boy, I prefer watching my child enjoy summertime fun and the carefree days of playing outside, climbing trees, riding bikes, and building sand castles.

Don’t get me wrong. School is important, and my family has always placed a premium on getting a good education. Unfortunately, I remain a product of the 1970s, when a Big Chief tablet, two fat pencils, eight fat Crayolas, a bottle of Elmer’s paste, some rounded-off scissors, and a card board pencil box were all you needed for Mrs. Little’s first grade class.

Monday my son trudged off to the first day of school lugging a backpack that weighed as much as a healthy newborn baby and filled with stuff that I still don’t understand the purpose of sending. Why does he need a whole box of Ziplock bags? And why should he take dry erase markers at all? Didn’t we raise taxes to pay for things like that? And then of course I’m still puzzled over the buck fifty he needed for an Accelerated Reader folder that costs 50 cents or less.

My first grade year – all the way up through third grade, in fact – was days that started at 8 a.m. and were over by 2:30 p.m. and in between we got the foundation of a good education… all without snack time or PE class. By comparison, my son loses an extra hour of his young life every day of the academic calendar to stretch it out to 3:30.

I don’t blame the teachers for any of this. We have always been blessed with outstanding teachers, and my son’s teachers have been no different. But I do think the system itself is broken… too involved with guidelines, testing, quantitative data, the lure of federal money, and new age “discipline” methods that don’t produce the same results a good old whippin’ did.

I miss simpler times when schools weren’t gated, cafeteria food didn’t have to meet the approval of the First Lady, and you could drink out of the water fountain instead of packing a water bottle every day.

Sure some things are better now, and I have no doubt that Ben will turn out just find. But the old ways were fine too, and they sure seemed a lot less stressful. Although maybe I was just shorter and younger then.

By Roger Estlack, Editor

The Republican Party has some soul searching to do about the basic tenets of freedom and limited government.

Many Americans, including your humble editor, were outraged when a British newspaper (have a think about that for a moment) exposed the fact that the US government is actively engaged in spying on its own citizens.

Those of us who have protested the usurpations of privacy and civil liberties under the PATRIOT Act were not really surprised by the news. America – with the support of both parties – gave up too much, too fast, with too little oversight. Extracting the federal tentacles from our lives will be difficult, and this has been clearly proven in the last several days.

Last week, the US House of Representatives defeated an amendment to the defense appropriations bill that would have halting the unconstitutional seizure of American phone records by a 217-205 vote. Ninety-four Republicans and 111 Democrats voted to kill the program. But 134 Big Brother loving Republicans and 83 Obama lackeys across the aisle kept it alive.

The program narrowly upheld by the House was approved by a secret court, and it makes all of us suspects in the War on Terror. God forbid you send the wrong text or make a flippant remark on your cell phone, because if you do the Watchers might declare you an enemy combatant and cause the Imperial President to pick up his Wii controller and fly a drone down your chimney.

What would Ronald Reagan think of this? What would Thomas Jefferson think of it? America is not free if we cannot trust our government to stay out of our business. But when we know the government is spying on us and treating us like the enemy, then surely we have crossed the line between a free republic and bureaucracy that is bordering on becoming oppressive.

Unfortunately, the program has powerful backers, and it is they who are using fear as a weapon against us in this supposed War on Terror.

Last week, Gov. Chris Christie weighed in on the subject. The New Jersey Republican is frighteningly considered a strong contender for the GOP presidential ticket in 2016. He said that those of us who oppose the NSA spying on American citizens just need a little reality check by visiting with the relatives of those who died in the 911 attacks. But frankly, we don’t need any more laws driven by emotions, especially the emotion of fear.

Christie went on to criticize people like Senator Rand Paul and the patriotic Republicans and Democrats who voted to kill the NSA spying program.

“This strain of libertarianism that’s going through both parties right now and making big headlines I think is a very dangerous thought,” Christie said.

No, sir. What’s dangerous are politicians who oppose personal privacy and liberty. What’s dangerous are a bunch of government types who think my Verizon cell phone account is somehow any of their damn business. What’s dangerous is a government that operates in secret, distrusts its own people, flaunts the Constitution, and pursues an agenda of spying on its own citizens.

The Republican Party needs to decide if it is for freedom or against it; and if it’s for it, then it has to stand up and stop these abusive programs.

Meanwhile…

Speaking of stopping abusive programs, it is becoming more and more apparent as the days go by that ObamaCare will be a national train wreck that must be stopped by any means necessary. Health care premiums, which are supposed to be going down, are going up. Large employers are moving more and more to part time workers in order to avoid mandatory health coverage costs, and even the Obama administration has acted to delay implementation of the law (which is not something the executive should be able to do).

The US Senate – with its Democratic leadership and a number of spineless Republicans like John McCain – is a lost cause, so the ad nauseum attempts by the US House of Representatives to repeal the so-called Affordable Care Act are futile. However, the House still controls the purse strings since all spending bills must originate there, and that is the only way that ObamaCare will ever be defeated.

There was some chatter in the news over the weekend that House Republicans might threaten to shut the government down rather than fund Obama-Care, but a few days later that had died down. That is unfortunate. The House leadership, if they are truly in favor of getting rid of this monstrosity, should pull the plug on the whole thing.

But this will not happen. Republicans have not exhibited that kind of courage since the Clinton administration when they forced the president’s hand to reform welfare and balanced the budget. Today’s Republicans are only mouthpieces when it comes to limited government. Their actions too often do not match their words.

Shouts of spontaneous glee went up at the Enterprise office and around Texas last Tuesday when Gov. Rick Perry announced that he would not be seeking re-election next year. What a blessed day it was for Texas!

Perry has been in office longer than any other Texas governor, assuming the post in December 2000 when Gov. George W. Bush resigned after being elected president. Perry then won three full four-year terms of his own and put his indelible brand of conservatism on the state and on the Republican Party.

Your humble editor first met Perry while he was serving as Agriculture Commissioner in the 1990s, and the West Texas former Democrat appeared harmless enough at the time. But Perry’s politics seemed to harden after he became Lieutenant Governor in 1999 and then took ownership of the Governor’s Mansion.

Since the time after Reconstruction, Texas has had a constitutionally weak governor with the office holding very little power other than a bully pulpit and an occasional appointment of some state official. But Perry came into office at a time when the governor’s term was increased from two years to four years, and with three elections under his belt, Gov. “Good Hair” had the chance to appoint any positions that could be appointed, putting his people on every board and commission in the state and exercising greater than usual influence over the legislative process.

Throughout the last 13 years, Perry Republicans have led the state further and further to the right, which has not always been a good thing, and we can look to the state of our education system as just one example of conservatism gone too far.

Republicans have demanded accountability from and imposed “standards” on public schools and put in place testing that causes elementary students to have anxiety attacks and basically destroyed the classical education system that most of us grew up in. My mother, who spent 37 years of her life teaching, would have been miserable in the current education system, which does not demand student discipline but does demand that all students meet goals set by a group of pinheads in Austin instead of what their teachers and local authorities believe they need to know.

This last Legislature, with Perry’s blessing, reduced the number of end-of-course exams. But what needs to happen is the elimination of state testing altogether and let schools get back to the business of educating. Pursuing a political and social agenda is not a good formula for educating kids.

Perry Republicans have also developed austere budgets in order to cut taxes or avoid tax increases. Those are both admirable objectives; but after you cut something to the bone for two or three legislative sessions, you’re pretty soon cutting into the marrow or even amputating entire limbs.

This state has an obligation to educate its people. Our survival as a free republic depends on an educated citizenry, but two years ago Perry Republicans went “Jack the Ripper” on the education system and stripped $5 billion from public schools. Some funds were restored this spring, but it still wasn’t enough to keep many school districts – like Clarendon – from having to approve higher local taxes to deal with the cuts.

And the public schools’ woes are nothing new to the higher education system, which has been subjected to Republican assaults on funding for several years. Clarendon College along with other colleges and universities have been forced to pass the costs of education on to their students in the forms of higher fees and tuition rates. As a state, we benefit from an educated workforce that results from having affordable higher education opportunities. Unfortunately, Perry Republicans believe that the only one who benefits from your college degree is you and you should therefore be glad to mortgage your future with student loans in exchange for a diploma.

Perry Republicans also have little use for culture or the arts, and the budget hawks often turn their talons to these programs. Where Gov. Bush launched the Texas Courthouse Preservation Program – which restored the Donley County Courthouse, the current crop of Republicans a few years ago discussed defunding the Texas Historical Commission.

Perry also seems to have forgotten his West Texas roots while in office. Programs benefiting rural communities have atrophied, and our area too often seems to be forgotten among the state’s priorities. Our area Texas Department of Transportation offices seem to have been subjected to a lot of cuts, notably the elimination of many of our roadside parks; and yet Perry’s people have left him a legacy of beautifully decorated overpasses in urban areas.

Perry’s embarrassing attempt to run for president last year probably sealed his political career. It is not impossible that he won’t try it again in 2016, but let’s hope not.

Now the scramble begins to see who will be the new leader of the Texas Republicans. As the Enterprise goes to press, Ag Commissioner Todd Staples was about to appear at the Clarendon College Bairfield Activity Center as he begins his campaign to be Lieutenant Governor. And downstate, Greg Abbott and Tom Pauken were staking out their territory in the race to fill Perry’s post.

Let’s hope Perry’s successors will govern with an attitude of what is best for Texas and not just pursue a political ideology and social agenda at the expense of our state’s future.

There was a time when Clarendon was wet and free.

This information always comes as a shock to many who think of Clarendon only as “Saints’ Roost” – the temperance colony founded in 1878 by Rev. L.H. Carhart on the banks of the Salt Fork of the Red River a few miles north of here. But after the town moved to the railroad, Clarendon was indeed wet from 1887 through the 1890s, and it was a bustling community. Churches of different denominations popped up left and right, a Catholic academy was founded, the region’s first college – Clarendon College – was opened, and all of it happened in the midst of alcohol sales and consumption.

Then, in 1902, the prohibitionists won out and Donley County was voted dry, and with the exception of the City of Howardwick after 1972, it has remained dry.

But now local rancher/artist Jack Craft and a merry band of supporters (including your editor) want to change things, and they have economic development on their minds. They have nothing personal against anyone or any business. They only want to see Clarendon and Donley County grow and prosper. The group points to studies that show alcoholic beverage sales have a positive financial impacts on communities, and the numbers are compelling. An analysis paid for by the Canadian Economic Development Corporation estimates that Hemphill County could reap $7.6 million in business activity annually and see the creation of 116 new jobs if alcoholic beverage sales were legalized. Additionally, local governments there could gain $426,000 annually in new tax receipts.

Of course, that’s in Canadian. If Donley County could reap one-fifth of that, it would certainly be a benefit to our community, and the study does not measure the potential sponsorships that might be available from Coors, Budweiser, and other companies for local events if the county were not dry.

Craft’s petition on the sale of alcohol in the county must gain a minimum of 413 registered voters in just the next few days in order to get it to commissioners in time to call a November election. The petition is the first step to having a good debate about the merits of alcohol sales and then letting the people of the county decide the issue.

As best we can tell, it’s been 35 years since any Donley County voter outside of Howardwick has voted on the alcohol question. Does the majority now support it? The only way to find out is to put the matter to a vote and see, but to do that the petition has to go through.

Already, those opposed to legalizing alcohol sales throughout the county are putting forth their positions and voicing their concerns that legalization will lead to increased criminal activity, immorality, higher law enforcement costs, and other social ills. Are they right? That’s a question worth asking other towns that have become wet in the last few years, places like Silverton, Shamrock, Childress, and others.

If the petition garners enough signatures, we can spend the next four months looking at this question from all sides, hearing the pros and cons, and finding out what other towns’ experiences have been.

And what of the economic question? Canadian’s numbers look amazing, but what could Clarendon expect? Again, if the petition garners enough signatures, we can spend some time trying to determine what – if any – financial reward has been realized by legalizing alcohol in towns more similar to Clarendon.

We are currently enjoying something of mini-boom as a petroleum byproduct pipeline comes through our area, causing a couple of hundred people to temporarily call Clarendon their home. Sales taxes receipts were up 41 percent in April. With traffic to Greenbelt Lake seriously lagging, the pipeliners have been a blessing in bolstering our economy. But they are only here for a little while. What can we do to keep the economy humming after they leave? Allowing alcohol sales may be one thing that will stimulate the economy.

There may be dollars and jobs that are slipping through our fingers, and maybe we can catch them if we take action. Signing the petition won’t automatically make alcohol legal, but it lets us talk about it and gives us an opportunity to vote on it. Maybe it passes, or maybe it gets soundly defeated. Maybe after we explore the realities of legalized sales, most people will embrace the idea, or maybe not.

There will be good people on both sides of this issue; and for some folks whose lives have been touched by alcohol abuse, the topic might be doubly sensitive and the position might be twice as strong. But disregarding all the heated politics we’ve been through lately, we believe that Donley County residents can discuss and weigh this issue with open minds and a willingness to listen to each other. Civility and neighborliness should be our guideposts if the petition reaches its goal and we begin a path to November.

If we keep our focus on what’s good for our community and treating each other with respect, then surely the voters will make the decision that is right for Donley County. Whatever that decision may be.

Edward Snowden is on the run. And he should be given that he has made a lot of powerful enemies in the United States government. If you watch enough movies or television, it’s easy to see how this guy could have “an accident” while trying to avoid extradition back to the US. But if you keep up with current events, it’s even easier to think he might just get droned.

Snowden took a job with a government contractor apparently for the sole purpose of finding out what all nasty business the government is up to. He then took that information to the press, and a foreign newspaper shined the light on secret surveillance activities being conducted on American citizens and others in the name of national security.

One of the biggest revelations was that the government had obtained a secret court order forcing Verizon Communications to turn over tons of “metadata” on millions of cellular phone users. Basically, every Verizon customer, including your humble editor, has had their Fourth Amendment Rights violated by our government.

And that was just the tip of the iceberg. Below the surface there are now other known surveillance activities being conducted against the American public for our own good.

We likely would never have known about much of this except for the actions of Mr. Snowden. We can’t be sure what his personal motivations were or are, but he has found himself demonized for his actions. He’s been called a traitor and accused of treason, and you can be sure the federal government has a stack of criminal charges lined up against this guy if they ever get their hands on him.

Or, as has already been mentioned, the administration might just declare him an enemy combatant, blow up his taxi, and trumpet the whole thing on the evening news.

Rather than condemn Snowden, someone ought to give this guy a medal. And all these high-ranking DemoRepublicrats who are calling for his criminal prosecution need to take a good long look in the mirror at what they and this government are becoming.

Snowden and a few allies in the press have pulled back the curtain and exposed some pretty ugly government cockroaches to the sunshine. But rather than scurry off into the shadows, government officials have thumbed their noses at outraged citizens and pledged to continue these “necessary” programs.

It is disgusting what has happened to our government. And it’s been a bipartisan track that has led us here. President George W. Bush’s administration fueled by the attacks on 9-11 got sweeping powers to violate civil liberties under the guise of pursuing terrorists with the passage of the PATRIOT Act by wide majorities of both parties. President Obama first criticized some of those policies… but has continued them and apparently expanded them. We should be reminded that power corrupts, and freedoms lost are hard to regain.

As we approach the anniversary of our nation’s independence, it is a good time to ask what we have become. It’s already obvious that our government is largely unrecognizable from the small, limited federal republic described by our Constitution. But now we have examples of a bureaucracy and power culture that truly appears to be growing out of control to the point that no president can even know what’s happening under him much less be in command of all the forces of the Executive.

We see examples of Internal Revenue agents giving extra scrutiny based on political motives. We see agents of the press harassed and intimidated for crossing the administration. We see federal employees refuse to answer basic questions from the elected Representatives of the People. And now we know that our National Security Agency considers We the People to be the enemy… or at least possibly the enemy and worthy of scrutiny.

There is probably little about our present government that our Founding Fathers would recognize, and they would certainly be appalled to learn what we’ve given up in order to be “safe.”

Imagine if you will what would have happened if government officials had approached Postmaster General Benjamin Franklin with a secret court order. “Mr. Franklin, we don’t want to know the contents of people’s mail. We just want to know who is writing to whom, where they are when they write the letter, where the recipient of the letter is when they get it, and how long the letter is. Is all just for safety’s sake. After all, the Brits still have friends here in America and you never know what they might be up to.”

I’m sure old Ben would have told the government agents to go to hell, and then he would have done just what Mr. Snowden did and blow the whistle so every American could know just what was happening.

Far from condemning Snowden, America should be thanking him. It is time to roll back the power of the federal government. It is time for the People to demand that our representatives pull the plug on these activities, and it is time for those who continue to defend these policies to find other lines of work. It is time for Americans to be free again.