Friday, December 02, 2005

Some Holiday Thoughts

This time of year always has folks thinking about family. This past Thanksgiving we began to think of family in a new way.

Our Thanksgiving was unique in several ways. We are a newly-announced-public-office seeking family, it’s the last year we will have a child living at home during the holidays - and a voice from the past spoke to our hearts.

About 6 weeks ago we received a call from David, a resident of the state of Missouri. We had not seen or heard from David since 1985 when we provided a 9 month foster home for him. He was a quiet, sad, but charming 16 year old who suffered brain damage from physical abuse from his biological father, lived on the streets with three sisters and his mother for 4 years and, until we got him, had been living in various in state institutions since he was 5 .

David found us again by looking for all the "Larry Stallings" in the United States. He is now 37, has no one to call family and wanted to connect with us. He asked during that first phone call, “Well, is there a chance we can be a family again?” Through our tears, we said, “Yes”. And so we welcomed a bit of our past to this year’s Thanksgiving, and found a bit of our future.

David is married to a lovely lady named Jeanna, a very independent deaf woman who keeps him on the straight and narrow, has 5-year-old twin boys and a 14-month-old baby girl who likes getting into cupboards as much as our daughter Faith did, and with as much single-minded determination, too.

We talked non-stop, ate a lot and played with the kids. We brought each other up to date and look forward to a new, more inclusive future as family. Even though we only had David for 9 months of his childhood, the seeds of family were planted in his heart, and he nurtured those small seeds enough for them to take root and allow him to become the fine husband, father and citizen that he is.

There are only two commandments:
Love God with all your heart and soul and mind.
Love your neighbor as yourself.

David was our neighbor and is our son.


Larry Stallings

Thursday, December 01, 2005

Commander In Chief

That's the TV show that is the favorite in our house. Only problem is, son Billy is not often home to watch it, Larry's usually only listening to it while he sends out Precinct 3 emails, and I forget to turn it on unless Billy reminds me it is on. I was supposed to have TIVO'ed it while we were at the John Edwards speech (and, BTW, a big THANK YOU to Trinity University and the sponsors for allowing the community at large in for free), but I forgot (It's such an ordeal trying to remember how to do it each time). Now Billy, who is away competing in his sport, is to blame, for he usually leaves me a note in the kitchen reminding to record it; he didn't this week. But when we're all finally home together, we lay out a tablecloth on the coffee table, and eat our dinner watching Geena Davis kick butt. I love that she is my son's current TV hero. I also love that Larry Stallings is as pro-woman as any candidate for public office could be; and that is the polar opposite of his opposition, Frank Corte, whose right wingnuttery comes out in a bill or two every session that oppresses women in some way, which you can read about just below. Larry is planning on the fight of his life for this seat - it should be fun to watch him shred Frank Corte on this issue alone.

Wednesday, November 30, 2005

Vouchers - Robbing Peter To Pay Paul (And Everyone Loses)

Here's the deal - Frank Corte is a right-wing legislator (I use the term legislator a little loosely here) who is supported almost completely by a guy named James Leininger, a hospital-bed magnate. His biggest issue is school vouchers - so big, in fact, that he issued privately-funded vouchers to poor families in an impoverished school district in San Antonio. Of course, that effort was pretty much a failure, and the whole issue has gone underground in San Antonio; but Frank Corte doggedly, every session, tries to introduce the idea in one form or another. He is such a crappy legislator, though, that he hasn't been successful in making vouchers a part of the law here - yet. Neither he not Leininger are about to give up. He is so bad a legislator that Texas monthly has twice named him worst legislator of the year. (To read the articles you must be a subscriber, but you can see the "winners" at the link.)

Instead of really showing us in cold, hard numbers why vouchers are such a good idea, these folks are doing this - they are doing all they can to make public education fail, rather than helping school systems adjust to a new millenium; then they propose vouchers that support private, often for-profit schools to "fix" the problems they created by not doing their jobs in funding education. For legislators like this, this is actually easier than proving vouchers will do what they say vouchers will do. Because vouchers will not do what they say they will. Vouchers will not get anybody off welfare, educate those kids with problems, or get kids into college. Nor will it help anybody get work - except private companies who have fooled some folks into thinking that privatizing everything makes everything work better. It usually only works better in enriching for-profit enterprises.

This controversy serves to illustrate the big, underlying problem in Texas and all over America. It is that we have been conditioned to think our personal good, our personal values, our personal desires should always be the highest priority of government. What we seem to have forgotten is that this country was founded in order to allow us as many personal freedoms as are consistent with the common good. And the idea of the common good that was so obvious when I was a kid, disappeared, somewhere in time - around, say, 1980. Greed became good, government became bad. It became so bad, in fact, that I am surprised that so many people who hate it, are making it their life's work.

Happy Birthday, COMM-D!!!

Today is the 31st birthday of contributor COMM-D, mother of 2, social worker, graduate student, and beader, who no longer has time to bead. Thanks for coming on board, GF. Next year, in Austin!

And Republicans Are Supposed To Be Against Taxes!

The Trans Texas Corridor is an elaborate plan conceived by Rick Perry, and supported by Frank Corte, that forces Texans to pay to drive on roads we constructed with our own tax dollars!

That’s right. We pay twice.

Sal Costello of Austin found that no time in the history of U.S. transportation did a state or city build a road and then turn it into a toll road effectively taxing citizens twice. Why would our Republican Governor and his supporters do such a thing? In December 2004, investigators learned Rick Perry had taken in more then one million dollars in campaign contributions from toll and road lobbyists. In the entire United States, only 5000 miles of roads are tolled. Perry plans to add 4000 miles of toll roads in Texas alone. The price tag is over $180 billion. This is House Bill 3588. To read the bill in its entirety, with the relevant sections highlighted in red, click here.

Governor Rick Perry, Frank Corte, and other members of the inner Republican political circle are currently holding secret meetings with Cintra, part of parent company, Ferrovial, located in Spain, about the management of the concessions. The no-bid award of a 50-year lease is currently being discussed. Cintra would reap the profits from fuel stops, restaurants, transfer points and other revenue-producing businesses on the 4000 miles of toll roads. Such a contract would impact hundreds of small businesses already located on the access roads by limiting the transfer points on the toll roads.

And the taxation is not a minimal expense. The estimated cost is $3000 per Texas family, per year.

We cannot allow the taxing of public highways. People for Effective Transportation write, “We can longer vote along party lines. We must shop the ballot, de-elect the looters and elect the better candidate”. In Texas District 122, that candidate is Larry Stallings.

Tuesday, November 29, 2005

Chores

UPDATE! It seems the little bit below about Frank's vouchers have stirred up a bit of kerfuffle over at BOR. The comments have gotten a little hot. Check it out.


Well, we are starting to get going. Treasurer Terry is away, so we cannot get those sig cards signed at the bank, but we got all the special numbers and the forms and such filled out. This part of the campaign is not fun, much. What has been so good, though, is that some of the most inspiring folks have let us know they support Larry's campaign. Larry sent out an email notifying the Pct3 folks about a meeting, and I picked up the phone a few days later to hear a musical voice ask for directions. This beautiful voice, that sounded like cane syrup set to music belongs to a lady who came to a Pct3 meeting right after having a chemotherapy treatment! Then I started thinking about all those voters during the general election last year in Ohio who stood in the sleet for 9 hours, some of them with their kids in tow, to vote Democratic. I realized that there are plenty of gallant Dems to whom we owe this race.

So, when I finally met the embodiment of that musical voice, I met an absolutely gorgeous woman, dressed to the nines, flawlessly made up with a huge smile on her face that reflected her warmth and joy in living. I realized I could wear panty hose now and then during the campaign, I could smile even when I am worried about the leaky plumbing, my grandkids grades, and that ominous knock in the truck's engine, if she could come to a little political meeting to take back Texas from the likes of Mr. Corte.

Speaking of whom, our daughter asked me why he introduced a bill to give, specifically, $6,000.00 a year in school vouchers. She wondered where that specific amount came from, since it is generally more than our local districts spend per child anyway. I didn't know why, so she set out to find out where that specific amount came from. Why $6,000.00? Why not $7.000.00? Why not $4,368.00? Well, she called last night at about 10 PM with an answer. Evidently, Mr. Corte used an amount fairly familiar to him - the tuition, plus $100.00 (for uniforms?) at his own kids' school matches that proposed amount.

I, myself, was privately educated in parochial schools back in the '50's and '60's. Believe it or not, even back then, special tax breaks were beeing proposed in California where I was raised, to help parents whose kids went to private schools. My dad, although a staunch Irish Catholic, was against that. He said to me when I asked him why, "It is our choice, we pay for that choice. If we took money from the state, it would be taking money away from kids whose parents don't have a choice." My mother disagreed with him, but he was firm in his view. He was a product of public schools himself, and supported them, even though his own kids went to parochial schools. Why don't we think about the common good anymore, like my dad did?

Monday, November 28, 2005

Welcome to Our House

Larry was asked by some Democratic SDEC-types to run against Frank Corte in Texas Legislative District 122 about a month ago. He is a Warm Body that has been showing up, working to organize Bexar County Commissioner's Precinct 3, and backing local candidates in local races for a while, and written a few checks to them as well. Although not a Deaniac, he respects Governor Dean trememdously for being a no-nonsense guy who can actually get stuff done, like governing a state, and now organizings Democrats nationally. When Howard said at the national Hispanic Summit a few months back that every race must be run, no seat should be left unchallenged, Larry heard, and took note.

Larry has a biblical mind-set. He knows that God is not a Republican or a Democrat, but he knows that right now, the Democratic Party is more representative of New Testament values than the Republican Party is. He told his family, when asked why he was willing to take this on, "Ecclesiates 3:7. There's a time to be silent, and a time to speak. Now is the time to speak."

So this blog will be our living room, where anybody who wants can come sit down (our coffee table is big enough for a lot of feet) and be heard. Larry plans to do a lot of speaking the truth here, and invites y'all to do the same.

About Larry:

Larry is a 58 year old father and grandfather. He was born and raised in Amarillo and graduated from Tascosa High School in 1966. Larry joined the Marine Corps immediately after graduation and served a total of 30 years in various military components, 20 of them as an Army Medical Service Corps officer. Larry completed a Bachelor of Arts (Summa Cum Laude) degree, and a Master of Public Administration (Summa Cum Laude) degree while on military duty. He was awarded more than two dozen medals and citations, served on two combat deployments and was awarded a Bronze Star and Legion of Merit. He is a credentialed community college instructor in Virginia and California, teaching business and management classes. Larry worked as a mental health case worker (QMHP) for two years and continues to be an advocate for mental health issues. He is married to Diane and they have two children; Faith, married with two children, and Billy, a senior at the International School of the Americas, a magnet school on the Lee High School campus. They have a dog and cat; both rescued. Larry and Diane have been foster parents and hosted many international exchange students since 1981. Larry is employed by the premier trauma center in the region, University Hospital in San Antonio, as the Director of Central Supply. And he is Running against Frank Corte for State Representative in District 122.

Welcome to our house.