SILICON VALLEY REPUBLICAN WOMEN FEDERATED

April 2009

President: Laura Riffle (408)263-0990 ~ 1st V.P & Program: Ellen Longworth (408)354-0419

~ 2nd V.P/Membership: June Fromm  ~ Treasurer: Naomi Blais ~

Secretary: Gloria Estes ~ Newsletter Editor/Legislation: Eve Bretzke  

Website: www.svrwf.org.  Mailing Address: 1909 Grand Teton Dr., Milpitas, CA 95035

SVRWF Meetings are now being held at the Blue Pheasant Restaurant

22100 Stevens Creek Blvd., Cupertino, CA 95124. 

 

Our next luncheon meeting is Thursday, April 2^nd.

“A reservation made is a reservation paid!”

 

Luncheon Meetings: Social 11:30 AM., Lunch 12:00 PM, Cost $20.00*

 

Menu Choices: Cobb Salad (bleu cheese, bacon, tomatoes and eggs) with ranch style dressing OR Shrimp Scampi (w/ bordelaise sauce)

Call Louise Kenney 739-4724 or Alice Wilson 733-6352 for reservations.

 

Our guest speaker this month is Roger Riffenburgh, his topic is “McCain, My Computer, and Me: A Republican Adventure".

Roger Riffenburgh, our speaker for April, is a former software engineer.  Roger is also an active member of the Santa Clara County Republican Committee and is very knowledgeable of our local political landscape. 

 

As the editor of the Bay Area GOP Newsletter, Roger stays informed and updated on what is happening around our region politically.  Roger served as an Alternate Delegate to the 2008 Republican National Convention and will share with us his experience of attending this large and prestigious GOP event. 

 

We look forward to seeing everyone at our general meeting this month.  Bring a Friend and Talk Republican.

 

SILICON VALLEY REPUBLICAN WOMEN FEDERATED NEWSLETTER – APRIL 2009

 

PRESIDENTS MESSAGE   (03/23/09)

 

Happy Easter, 

 

You will all be glad to know that by the time I write my next “President’s Letter”, the tax season will be over and my mind will not be completely on numbers and the tax code.  It certainly has been an interesting tax season for me with some of my clients completely in the bag for Obama and others scared to death about the unknown with him as president. 

 

It has been a bumpy ride since he was elected and we have our work cut out for us if we want to smooth out those bumps.  We need to keep our eye on the ball and take every opportunity to help Republicans get elected.  As Obama pulls Democrats from elected offices to serve in his administration, we must take the opportunity to replace them with Republicans.

 

Please consider sending a check to the Santa Clara University College Republicans. The address is Jonas Pauliukonis, 731 Camino Drive, Santa Clara, CA 95050.  Any donations would help them in their work to get California Republicans get elected to office, especially local non-partisan offices from which we can recruit candidates for partisan offices.

 

Please send in your volunteer sheets so that I can fill out our award report and hopefully get back the Diamond Award status we proudly held for many years.  I know many of you have worked on different elections so please give me your hours so I can tally them up.

 

We owe a special thank you to Alice Wilson’s son Doug who paid for the renewal of our website and keeps it up for us.  Without the help of our wonderful associates where would we be?  If you haven’t gone to our website lately it is www.svrwf.org.  It is great!  Thank Alice… for having such a wonderful Republican son.  And thank you Doug… for helping us out so much!

 

Keep you calendars open for our “First Annual” miniature golf tournament being chaired by Eve Bretzke.  It will be taking place this fall as our spring is just too full. What a wonderful way for us all to get together… and hopefully get other Republicans involved.  It will be at the challenging Sunnyvale Golfland.  Louise Kenney’s son has generously donated the use of the Golfland facilities to us.  We are truly blessed to have such wonderful family support for our organization.   Reminder… April 15th is the deadline to file and pay your taxes unless you are in line for a cabinet position in the Obama administration. 

 

Laura Riffle

President, SVRWF

 

UPCOMMING EVENTS

 

Apr 2               General Meeting – General Meeting – Speaker: Roger Riffenburgh,  Noon

 

Apr 9               Board Meeting – Laura Riffle’s office

 

April 12           Easter Sunday

 

April 15           National Tea Party Day  –  Call Congress and the president at noon (Reps. and Senators, 202-224-3121; President, 202-456-1414) and protest tax increases.

 

May 7              General Meeting:  Gloria Hom- Propositions on the ballot

SILICON VALLEY REPUBLICAN WOMEN FEDERATED NEWSLETTER – APRIL 2009

 

MEMBER NEWS

Northern Division Spring Conference Update by Ellen Longworth

Shirley Harvey, and I attended the Northern Division CFRW Conference in Redding March 13-15, 2009.  Alice Wilson was ill and not able to be there with us.  The drive (270 miles each way) was beautiful and Friday.  You can see Mt. Shasta covered with snow for at least 50 miles away from Redding.  The rural members were happy to see us there.  We all enjoyed talking Republican.  We noted to send a complementary resolution to President George Bush for his service to our country, keeping us safe.  Dr. William Wagner talked about how Radical Islam wants to take over the world.  Doug La Malfa told us California’s budget has so much red ink it could fill a lake.  All the farmers and the Indians are worried that the “Environmentalists” will destroy the dams on the Klamath River.  The north of our state is full of cattle, rice, olives, almonds, and many other farm products - the water supply is critical to all farmers.  Our last speaker, Second District of Congress, Wally Herger gave a great speech, Steve Barie warned us to pay more attention to who we elect as judges. 

 

ACTION ITEM:  Send a Green Tea Bag to your local and state representatives to reminded them to “cut taxes” – this is a small way for us to remind our elected officials who they serve.

 

LEGISLATION

California Update from CRWF and other sources

“States are not facing budget deficits because they don’t tax enough. The fundamental problem is overspending taxpayer dollars. State spending has grown at an unsustainable rate over the past decade; up 124 percent over where it was just 10 years ago. State debt increased 95 percent during that same period.” --- Jonathan P. Williams, Director of the Tax and Fiscal Policy Task Force, American Legislative Exchange Council

Taxes, taxes and more taxes.  On April 1, 2009, Californians will see the first of a series of higher taxes. On that date, California's base sales tax will increase by one percent. If Prop 1A passes, that increase will be effective through June 30, 2012. If Prop 1A is defeated, that increase will sunset on June 30, 2011. Analysis that is targeted to be complete by April Fools' Day could see income tax for this year rise from between .125 and .25 percent.  And then there is May 19th. That is not only election day,  but also the date that the vehicle license fee increase takes effect raising that fee from .65 percent to nearly 1.15 percent of the value of a vehicle. The sunset date of this measure is June 30, 2013.

National Update from NRWF and other sources

Rep. Jose Serrano (D-NY) introduced H.J. Res. 5, which reads, "Proposing an amendment to the Constitution of the United States to repeal the twenty-second article of amendment, thereby removing the limitation on the number of terms an individual may serve as President." The prospect of King Obama brings to mind Benjamin Franklin's words: "There is scarce a king in a hundred who would not, if he could, follow the example of Pharaoh, get first all the peoples money, then all their lands, and then make them and their children servants for ever..."

House quietly gives up carbon-neutral crusade - Speaker Nancy Pelosi's bold 2007 statement to make the House of Representatives carbon-neutral by December 2008 died a quiet death this past month with barely any word in the media. Promising to lead the nation by example, Pelosi's "Green the Capitol" initiative would have reduced the House's carbon footprint to zero through the use of more efficient energy production and the purchase of carbon offsets. The House discovered, however, as many of us already knew, that it is virtually impossible to determine the environmental benefits of such a program in an unregulated market of carbon trading. While the House was able to reduce carbon emissions, they fell short of their target and became a symbol of the very problem that plagues the onerous regulations.

 

SILICON VALLEY REPUBLICAN WOMEN FEDERATED NEWSLETTER – APRIL 2009

The House passed H.R. 1388, "The Generations Invigorating Volunteerism and Education Act," conveniently mislabeled as the "GIVE Act," by a vote of 321-105 Wednesday. The measure expands AmeriCorps and similar government-paid programs that will replace true volunteerism with low-wage government employment. A companion bill is working its way through the Senate as S. 277.

The Senate passed the Public Lands Act Thursday, which sets aside more than two million acres in nine states as federally protected land. The Senate had passed similar legislation in January, but it was defeated in the House where Republicans fought for an amendment allowing concealed carry of guns in national parks. Supporters hail the bill as the most important conservation measure in decades. Sen. Tom Coburn (R-OK), however, contended that the bill would hamper energy production on millions of acres of federal land.

"President Obama's team, unlike Bush's team, demonstrates a thinness of skin that shocks me. When I somewhat obviously and empirically judged that the populist Obama administration is exacerbating the crisis with its budget and policies, as evidenced by the incredible decline in the [stock market] averages since his inauguration, I was met immediately with condescension and ridicule rather than constructive debate or even just benign dismissal. I said to myself, 'What the heck? Are they really that blind to the Great Wealth Destruction they are causing with their decisions to demonize the bankers, raise taxes for the wealthy, advocate draconian cap-and-trade policies and upend the health care system? Do they really believe that only the rich own stocks? What do they think we have our retirement accounts in, CDs? Where did they think that the money saved for college went, our mattresses?" --MSNBC's Jim Cramer

 

The eye-popping national debt surpassed $11 trillion Monday, the largest in U.S. history.  The new Treasury Department figures on the national debt were released as the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office is expected to project that the annual budget deficit will be higher than previously estimated by the White House's Office of Management and Budget. The debt, which refers to the cumulative amount of money the government owes, hit $10.9 trillion on Friday. -- March 18 2009,  Politico.com

 

Other

"To go against the dominant thinking of your friends, of most of the people you see every day, is perhaps the most difficult act of heroism you can have." --American journalist and historian Theodore H. White (1915-1986)

 

"The great advances of civilization, whether in architecture or painting, in science or in literature, in industry or agriculture, have never come from centralized government." -Economist Milton Friedman (1912-2006)

"All of Obama's economic policies thus far are designed to drive America into full embrace of socialism. His chief means for this transformation: inflation. He is attempting to inflate the currency through two primary means: intense deficit spending, and pushing up production costs through union subsidization. In order to make these measures politically palatable, he cites FDR as an example of good deficit spending; he cites the credit crunch as an excuse for inflationary monetary policy; and he recommends unionization in order to boost wages. It's a beautiful strategy for purposefully trashing capitalism, all the while blaming capitalism for its own downfall. John Maynard Keynes, the liberal economist who championed government intervention during recessions, recognized Obama's inflationary strategy for what it is: 'Lenin is said to have declared that the best way to destroy the capitalist system was to debauch the currency,' said Keynes. 'Lenin was certainly right. The process engages all the hidden forces of economic law on the side of destruction, and does it in a manner which not one man in a million is able to diagnose.' Obama pursues inflation -- government devaluation of the currency -- with the zeal of the newly converted. His deficit spending will be financed either through higher taxes or through inflation. Obama says he will push higher taxes -- after all, he wants to appease the Chinese, who don't want their U.S. securities paid off with inflated dollars. But covertly, Obama fully intends on inflating the currency to pay of the massive deficit he has shoved through Congress. ... It's the same tried and true policy that created the Great Depression." --columnist Ben Shapiro

SILICON VALLEY REPUBLICAN WOMEN FEDERATED NEWSLETTER – APRIL 2009

 

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