SILICON VALLEY REPUBLICAN WOMEN FEDERATED NEWSLETTER

           June 2008          

 

President: Ellen Longworth (408)354-0419 ~ 1st V.P & Program: Carol Greenleaf (408)867-5680

~2nd V.P/Membership: Laura Riffle (408)263-0990 ~ Treasurer: Naomi Blais ~

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

Website: www.svrwf.org, Address: PO Box 2153, Sunnyvale, CA 94087

 

All SVRWF Luncheon and Dinner Meetings are held at the Ramada Inn,

Silicon Valley located at 1217 Wildwood Ave. Sunnyvale, California.

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

 

Our next luncheon meeting is June 5th at 11:30 AM. 

Menu Choices:  New York Steak Sandwich Served Open Faced on French Roll with Sautéed Onions OR Caesar Salad - Traditional Caesar with Strips of Grilled Chicken.

*Please note that our lunch prices have increased to $20 each.

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

“A reservation made is a reservation paid!”

 

Our guest speaker this month is Detective Jason Jenkins.  He will be speaking on “Identity Theft Prevention and Protection.” 

 

Jason Jenkins is a Detective Agent assigned to the Financial and High Tech Crime Unit of the Palo Alto Police Department.  He began his law enforcement career wit the US Air Force Military Police in 1994 and spent four years serving on active duty at a number of military installations throughout the world. 

 

In 1998 Jason while still in the Air Force Reserves, embarked on a career in civilian law enforcement.  He began employment with Vero Beach Police Department in Florida.  In 2001, Jason transferred to the Palo Alto Police Department where he has been employed for the past six years and is now a full-time investigator with collateral duties as a Driver’ Training Instructor and a Crime Scene Investigator.

 

Detective Jenkins, Police Officer with the Financial and High Tech Crimes Unit will be speaking on financial and credit card theft otherwise known as “Identity Theft”.  We all are threatened by this criminal activity.  He will educate us on how to prevent it from happening and what to do if it happens of us. 

 

Let’s welcome Detective Jenkins to this month’s luncheon meeting.  Bring a friend!

 

SILICON VALLEY REPUBLICAN WOMEN FEDERATED NEWSLETTER – JUNE 2008

 

 

 

PRESIDENTS MESSAGE (5/22/08)

 

Here it is Sunday morning with another warm day coming up.  It’s a good day to spend time digesting the news of the week. Sit down, enjoy your air conditioning at home and sort out all the stories you haven’t had any quiet time to contemplate what is going to happen.  Everyday we face national and world disasters in the world we live in.

 

We Republicans must get off the dime and rally around our candidates.  First of all whether or not you agree with Senator McCain, there is no one else running for President of the United States who has anything close to his qualifications.  Don’t let the one sided TV and newspapers sway your devotion to our Republican values.  The campaign the Democrats are conducting has been consuming all the news.  Republicans must come forward and blow their horns about all the good ideas we have to solve our problems.

 

All of us can help our party by writing letters and by coming forward and supporting our men and women candidates.  I know we lead busy lives but making an effort to focus on the future of our country should be number one on your list.  Plan on coming to our meeting on June 5^th to hear an excellent speaker, Detective Jenkins, on how to keep your identity from being stolen.  See you there.  

 

Regards,

 

Ellen Longworth,

President, SVRWF

 

 

 

 

UPCOMMING EVENTS

 

Jun 3                Primary Election Day in California - GO VOTE!  Today is our normal (non-presidential) Primary Election day for federal, state and local offices. These contests will decide who is on the ballot in November. There is a Voter Guide in this newsletter for your information. 

 

Jun 5                Regular Luncheon Meeting, 11:30 AM Social, 12:00 PM Lunch.  Detective Jason Jenkins - Speaker, Topic:  “Identity Theft Prevention and Protection”.

 

Jun 14             Flag Day – Fly your Flag!

 

Jun 19              An Evening with Steve Poizner, California Insurance Commissioner sponsored by SPARC and Palo Alto Republican Women Federated at Ming’s, Palo Alto.  For information visit www.sparcgroup.org or call 408 650 917 9125.   See the flyer in this newsletter.

 

SILICON VALLEY REPUBLICAN WOMEN FEDERATED NEWSLETTER – JUNE 2008

 

MEMBER NEWS

Thank you to everyone who helped out the club by participating in the “No Bake” Sale last month.  An extra special thank goes out to Jane Reed for all her efforts in making this fundraiser a success.

 

Please bring donations for Adopt-A-Chaplain to the meeting.  They are in real need of beef jerky and cash donations for postage due to the recent price increase right now.  All donations are greatly appreciated.  Thank you for supporting our soldiers through Adopt-A-Chaplain all year.

 

This will be our last newsletter until September.  Our next regular meeting will be September 4^th, 2008.  Enjoy your summer!

 

LEGISLATION

 

California Update from CRWF and other sources

 

Pending Legislation - CFRW Legislative Analysts are currently tracking more than 100 bills of interest to our members and prioritized by the Republican Caucus. California Federation of Republican Women has taken a position of opposition on new taxes and fees emphasizing that a fee is simply a tax that does not require a two-thirds vote. AB 2421, AB 2422, and AB 2418 are part of Assemblyman Bob Huff’s bill package on illegal aliens and prison reform. We are working daily with Republican legislators to get these bills passed. Assemblyman Chuck DeVore’s AB 1758 will give tuition assistance to California National Guard men and women. California currently is the only state that does not offer this assistance. AB 1758 is currently in Appropriation Committee waiting to be assigned a hearing date.

 

May Budget Revise Time - The Governor's May budget revise seems to be looming over the Capitol and putting pressure on all inside. The state's projected $20 billion budget deficit and the real threat that the state may run out of cash in August is adding to the pressure within the building. Republican legislators and staffers are quietly working in their offices as if they were in bunkers getting ready for a battle. The lines in the sand have been drawn. The Democrats still deny that there is a spending problem and insist that the problem is state revenue. They continue to maintain that the state's budget deficit can be fixed by taxing the citizenry of the California back to the middle Ages.

Our Republican legislators have a more balanced approach of cutting the fat in state programs and living within our means. That Republican viewpoint is clearly evidenced in the plan for the California education budget.

 

When in Rome - The federal judges and California liberals who support letting prisoners out early in an attempt to improve conditions at our state’s prisons might wish to learn from Italy’s recent experience.  The Wall Street Journal reported last week that Italy faced a similar crisis: a prison system designed for 48,000 that was holding 60,000.  “It swung open prison doors and let more than a third of the inmates go free. Within months, bank robberies jumped 20%, as did computer crime, arson and purse snatchings.” -- Leonard Letter 4/28/2008

CA Budget Lottery -- California RINO Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger is proposing to close the state’s estimated $20-billion budget shortfall by gambling on the lottery. Schwarzenegger wants to raise $15 billion over three years by selling bonds based on anticipated lottery revenue and use a third of that to help with the deficit, leaving $10 billion in a reserve fund that will be part of his budget reform. Both proposals will be on the ballot in November, a place where the governor’s ideas have not seen much success in the past. Notably, the lottery brought in only $3.3 billion last year, a problem Schwarzenegger plans to remedy by allowing bigger prizes in order to attract more revenue.

If he fails at the ballot box again, the backup plan is—drum roll please—a one-cent sales-tax increase. It would be temporary (of course) lasting only three years. Then again, “temporary” and “tax increase” rarely end up staying in the same sentence.

 

SILICON VALLEY REPUBLICAN WOMEN FEDERATED NEWSLETTER – JUNE 2008

 

National Update from NRWF and other sources

 

Our Children Deserve Education Reform -- Through a grassroots, issue advocacy campaign titled No Child Left Behind, the National Federation of Republican Women is speaking out about the desperate need for education reform.
America's public schools are drowning in a decades-old, federally-mandated system of bureaucracy and mediocrity that has yielded few tangible results. Federal education spending is at an all-time high, but student achievement continues to lag behind. As the most prosperous nation in the world, the U.S. should have the best education system, but our children's test scores sag below those of most industrialized nations. Instead of preserving a system that doesn't work, we should be building public schools worthy of all of our nation's children. No matter what their economic or ethnic background - our children deserve better. They deserve the best! But our system is failing them miserably.
The time for education reform is now, but who will provide the leadership and the plan to help states, school districts and parents chart a path to greater student achievement? -- NFRW Capital Connection, The Week of April 21, 2008

 

Other

 

“[Al] Gore’s new climate-change campaign calls itself ‘We,’ as in ‘wecansolveit.org.’ But its focus is not on how We can reduce our greenhouse gas emissions now. No, it focuses on how We can tell others how They should think about global warming. We’s focus is not on what We can do to reduce emissions, but what We can do to get Them to walk and talk in lockstep with the crowd. So when you click on ‘We are Succeeding,’ you don’t read about how entire towns

have begun to carpool or that Hollywood biggies are giving up private jets to save the planet. No. For the most part, success is tallied by a convert count. As in: ‘Thousands Urge the Press to Ask Questions on Global Warming,’ ‘Stunning Response to Calls for a Global Treaty,’ ‘State Department Feels Public Pressure in Run-Up to Climate Conference.’ Then again, the global warming movement always has been more about symbols and professing belief than results.” —Debra Saunders, April 28, 2008

 

"According to government estimates, there is enough oil in areas accessible to America -- 112 billion barrels -- to power more than 60 million cars for 60 years. The Outer Continental Shelf alone contains an estimated 86 billion barrels of oil and 420 trillion cubic feet of natural gas. Had President Clinton not vetoed exploration in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR) in 1995, when oil was $19 a barrel, America would currently be receiving more than 1 million barrels a day domestically, all of it taken by better technology than existed more than 30 years ago. That was when the Alaskan pipeline was built despite protests from environmentalists who claimed it would destroy the caribou. It didn't, but the environmentalists are back with the same discredited arguments. Because most of the oil remains 'off-limits,' we are becoming more dependent on foreign oil." -- Cal Thomas, Syndicated Columnist, on America's Dependence on Foreign Oil

 

“We, the members of the New Republican Party, believe that the preservation and enhancement of the values that strengthen and protect individual freedom, family life, communities and neighborhoods and the liberty of our beloved nation should be at the heart of any legislative or political program presented to the American people... Our task now is not to sell a philosophy, but to make the majority of Americans, who already share that philosophy, see that modern conservatism offers them a political home... The job is ours and the job must be done. If not by us, who? If not now, when? Our party must be the party of the individual. It must not sell out the individual to cater to the group. No greater challenge faces our society today than ensuring that each one of us can maintain his dignity and his identity in an increasingly complex, centralized society. Extreme taxation, excessive controls, oppressive government competition with business... frustrated minorities and forgotten Americans are not the products of free enterprise. They are the residue of centralized bureaucracy, of government by a self-anointed elite. Our party must be based on the kind of leadership that grows and takes its strength from the people. Any organization is in actuality only the lengthened shadow of its members. A political party is a mechanical structure created to further a cause. The cause, not the mechanism, brings and holds the members together. And our cause must be to rediscover, reassert and reapply America’s spiritual heritage to our national affairs. Then with God’s help we shall indeed be as a city upon a hill with the eyes of all people upon us.” -- from Ronald Reagan’s “New Republican Party”

SILICON VALLEY REPUBLICAN WOMEN FEDERATED NEWSLETTER – JUNE 2008