Steelworkers President Explains 'Why I Switched', Supports Right to Work, Opposes Card Check

Georgetown GOP chair Tom Swatzel has warmly welcomed James Sanderson, Jr. to the Republican Party.

Sanderson, President of the United Steelworkers of America local in Georgetown, S.C., has signed a statement declaring his support for the state GOP platform, including support for Right to Work and opposition to stripping the secret ballot in union elections.

We salute Mr. Sanderson and predict that he will be shown to be the true representative of working men and women in South Carolina who are so eager to flee Obama-socialism that they'll do the unthinkable this fall: embrace the GOP.

In the following column from Wednesday's edition of The Augusta Chronicle, Mr. Sanderson explains his reasons for joining the Republican Party:

Why I switched to Republican: We need jobs

By James E. Sanderson Jr.
Guest Columnist
Wednesday, Feb. 17, 2010

Certainly, it has surprised some in our community that as a lifelong Democrat and a member of the United Steelworkers of America for 36 years, I decided to become a Republican.

It wasn't a choice I made capriciously, nor was it something that hadn't already been a long time coming.

I'D LIKE TO START out by saying that I'm proud to be a steelworker, and proud for standing up for jobs in Georgetown County, S.C. I've been president of USW Local 7898 for 22 years.

But now, the plant is idle and people around here are hurting. Men and women, committed to putting in a hard day's work to provide for their families, are now doing whatever they can to get by.

I don't need to tell you that a person's work is important. Just look at a man who has been out of work, then look at one who just got a new job, or just got called back to work after a layoff. It's night and day. Unfortunately, around here, we've been seeing a lot more people out of work than those getting jobs. That has to change.

The fact is, Democrats aren't doing it. They aren't getting it done when it comes to creating jobs and securing a good business climate.

For years, I was a Democrat because I thought they represented the interests of working people. That's certainly not true anymore. They seem to have forgotten that when you harm businesses, you take away their ability to hire new people or even keep current employees on staff.

One example is the cap-and-trade debacle that they've taken up. This will take a giant sledgehammer to the American manufacturing base. The plant I worked in for so many years would probably never reopen. All those people I worked so hard for on behalf of the union would be dealt a critical blow.

I moved to Georgetown County in 1974. Democrats have been in control of the county council for almost all of the ensuing years. What do they have to show for it? Precious little. Over the years, it's become very obvious that the Republican Party in the county is the real standard-bearer for job creation. It's not that hard to figure out.

WHEN YOU'RE pro-business, you're pro-worker, too. As companies prosper and expand, people get hired, and get raises and better benefits. A company that's doing well doesn't want to lose good employees. So, if they're doing a good job, and you're doing a good job, everybody wins. That's why we can't tax and regulate businesses to within an inch of their lives.

Republicans understand this. I've been for lower taxes for as long as I can remember. You can't do what the Democrats are doing -- raising taxes on people -- while the government is spending money on foolish items and programs. You can't slap massive tax increases on companies and expect them to go on a hiring blitz. It simply defies reality.

Some people don't know this, but a lot of union members, like myself, are conservative. We believe in faith and family. We have a reverence for tradition. We love our country, and want it to be strong.

WE OPPOSE ILLEGAL immigration and support strong borders because America doesn't need people breaking the law coming into the country to take our jobs and take advantage of our government programs without paying the tax dollars that fund those programs. Our nation is one of immigrants, but legal immigrants. If you want to live and work here, you have to obey the law like everyone else.

I've talked to the membership in the local, and a good portion of the members are coming with me, working to help get Republicans elected. I don't see a contradiction in my being a union member and a Republican, because the only party out there busting its hump for job creation is the Republican Party.

(The writer lives in Georgetown, S.C.)

Lautenberg Diagnosed with Curable Stomach Cancer

Senator Frank Lautenberg, at 86 the nation's second oldest U.S. senator, has curable lymphoma of the stomach, his office said Friday.

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Fox News Reports on Fort Jackson Poisoning Attempt

Shipments of Medical Aid to Haiti Delayed by Massive Condom Overload

From LifeSiteNews
By John-Henry Westen and Kathleen Gilbert

The flow of medical supplies waiting to be distributed to tens of thousands of earthquake victims in Haiti was delayed for weeks by a massive supply of condoms dominating the space of the main storage facility there, an eyewitness with insider information has told LifeSiteNews.com (LSN).

The central pharmaceutical supply center, known as PROMESS (Program on Essential Medicine and Supplies), is home to the operations of the World Health Organization (WHO)/Pan American Health Organization (PAHO) in the area. "Without PROMESS we would have had a second catastrophe," Dr. Alex Larsen, Haitian Minister of Health, said at the PROMESS warehouse recently.

However, the glut of condoms at that same warehouse delayed the massive influx of aid pouring in from around the world, according to an inside source, and may have cost lives. The source reported that shipping containers of medical supplies were unable to be unloaded, sorted and distributed since an enormous supply of condoms clogged the facility till early February, when the condoms could be removed. The condoms were estimated to take up about 70% of the space in the 17,000 sq. ft. warehouse.

The supplies pouring into the region are enormous. Reliefweb reports that “from 16-21 January alone, 483,091 kg of pharmaceutical supplies and 4,990 kg of non-pharmaceutical health supplies, like rubber gloves and masks, arrived at Port-au-Prince airport.”

Nicholas Reader of the UN's Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs said he was "not aware" of the problem, and directed LSN to the World Health Organization for more information. Paul Garwood, the communications officer for emergencies and humanitarian affairs at the World Health Organization, also said he was unaware of the issue. Garwood forwarded the request to colleagues in Haiti, who have not responded as of press time.

While WHO officials are not speaking specifically about the condom clog, they have in more general terms admitted logistical hardships in dealing with the influx of supplies.

"Trying to both respond to the massive health needs in Haiti following the quake and organize the large volume of supplies entering the country has been a great challenge," according to WHO/PAHO representative in Haiti, Dr Henriette Chamouillet.

The scenario of medical supply buildings in the developing world taken up mostly by condoms and severely lacking in health care supplies is not new.

When Canadian General Romeo Dallaire returned from Rwanda in the aftermath of the Rwandan Massacre he noted in a 1996 speech that military personnel referred to UN and other foreign aid as "covering the country with rubber."

Dallaire explained that tons of condoms and other contraceptives were being shipped to and distributed around the region in quantities far beyond what the population could use and in place of much more needed food, medicine and other critically needed aid. Medicine stores, he said, were filled with contraceptives and extremely short of any supplies to treat wounded Rwandans.

With business-savy ingenuity some in the developing world have turned the condom dumping by the West to their advantage. The BBC reported in 2004 that in one Indian city alone 600,000 condoms a day were used in the sari-weaving industry. Sari weavers use the lubrication in the condoms to soften the loom's shuttle making weaving faster, without risking stains to the silk.

The United Nations strategy of massive promotion of condoms as the primary solution to the AIDS crisis is reflected even in recent reports, with no sign of letting up.

For cultures which value life, and family, the condom push into their cultures is highly offensive. Carol Ugochukwu, President of United Families of Africa in Enugu, Nigeria, commented in a 2000 interview noting that Western delegations at the United Nations were trying to "exterminate the whole race" with their promotion of condoms.

Ugochukwu expressed exasperation that Canada, the US and Europe wasted most of the time at UN conferences trying to gain approval for homosexuality while the needs of African women such as food, shelter, and clean drinking water were largely ignored. "[B]ig organizations," she said, "spend so much money, but when they find out you are dealing with all that [dying children and mothers] they are not interested. You have to say you are dealing with reproductive rights before you are given support."

Ugochukwu concluded, "[Westerners] now come in with condoms - condoms are everywhere! They spend so much money on condoms and they make our children promiscuous. They say it will stop AIDS - but it is getting worse! It makes no sense to me."

Dick and Liz Cheney Address CPAC

Broad New Hacking Attack Detected

Who knew the Chicoms have a stake in the SC Comptroller and Education Commissioner races?

Global Offensive Snagged Corporate, Personal Data at nearly 2,500 Companies; Operation Is Still Running

From The Wall Street Journal
By Siobhan Gorman

Hackers in Europe and China successfully broke into computers at nearly 2,500 companies and government agencies over the last 18 months in a coordinated global attack that exposed vast amounts of personal and corporate secrets to theft, according to a computer-security company that discovered the breach.

The damage from the latest cyberattack is still being assessed, and affected companies are still being notified. But data compiled by NetWitness, the closely held firm that discovered the breaches, showed that hackers gained access to a wide array of data at 2,411 companies, from credit-card transactions to intellectual property.

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Girl's Arrest for Doodling Should Concern Us All

"They put the handcuffs on me, and I couldn't believe it," Alexa Gonzalez, 12, said of her arrest.

The following story is an illustration of how very broken the public education establishment is in this country.

We aren't known for bleeding heart liberalism here, and we don't condone the defacing of public property, but arresting and handcuffing a seventh-grade girl for doodling on a desk says so much about the state of big, centralized, bureaucratic, government schools. It shows how large bureaucracies lose all sight of common sense and the goals toward which they should be directed. It makes clear that in a system governed by contracts negotiated by big labor unions, workers, not professionals, will work to the contract and are devoid of any sense of vocation, service, common sense and compassion for those whose minds and characters they should be forming. It is an example of a bureaucracy that exists for its own sake, not the students, and instead of acting like human beings with responsibility for changing and forming hearts and minds, they refer the matter, machine-like, to another bureaucracy charged with another set of bureaucratic solutions.

If dumbed-down curricula, national illiteracy, soaring dropout rates, and mediocre results even in the best schools serving the most advantaged students are not enough to make liberals and conservatives agree that the system isn't working, maybe the trauma and damage done to this 12-year-old will force us to see this evil system for what it truly is.

Girl's arrest for doodling raises concerns about zero tolerance

From CNN
By Stephanie Chen

There was no profanity, no hate. Just the words, "I love my friends Abby and Faith. Lex was here 2/1/10 :)" scrawled on the classroom desk with a green marker.

Alexa Gonzalez, an outgoing 12-year-old who likes to dance and draw, expected a lecture or maybe detention for her doodles earlier this month. Instead, the principal of the Junior High School in Forest Hills, New York, called police, and the seventh-grader was taken across the street to the police precinct.

Alexa's hands were cuffed behind her back, and tears gushed as she was escorted from school in front of teachers and -- the worst audience of all for a preadolescent girl -- her classmates.

"They put the handcuffs on me, and I couldn't believe it," Alexa recalled. "I didn't want them to see me being handcuffed, thinking I'm a bad person."

Alexa is no longer facing suspension, according a spokeswoman for the New York City Department of Education. Still, the case of the doodling preteen is raising concerns about the use of zero tolerance policies in schools.

Critics say schools and police have gone too far, overreacting and using well-intended rules for incidents involving nonviolent offenses such as drawing on desks, writing on other school property or talking back to teachers.

"We are arresting them at younger and younger ages [in cases] that used to be covered with a trip to the principal's office, not sending children to jail," said Emma Jordan-Simpson, executive director of the Children's Defense Fund, a national children's advocacy group.

There aren't any national studies documenting how often minors become involved with police for nonviolent crimes in schools. Tracking the incidents depends on how individual schools keep records. Much of the information remains private, since it involves juveniles.

But one thing is sure: Alexa's case isn't the first in the New York area. One of the first cases to gain national notoriety was that of Chelsea Fraser. In 2007, the 13-year-old wrote "Okay" on her desk, and police handcuffed and arrested her. She was one of several students arrested in the class that day; the others were accused of plastering the walls with stickers.

At schools across the country, police are being asked to step in. In November, a food fight at a middle school in Chicago, Illinois, resulted in the arrests of 25 children, some as young as 11, according to the Chicago Police Department.

The Strategy Center, a California-based civil rights group that tracks zero tolerance policies, found that at least 12,000 tickets were issued to tardy or truant students by Los Angeles Police Department and school security officers in 2008. The tickets tarnished students' records and brought them into the juvenile court system, with fines of up to $250 for repeat offenders.

The Strategy Center opposes the system. "The theory is that if we fine them, then they won't be late again," said Manuel Criollo, lead organizer of the "No to Pre-Prison" campaign at The Strategy Center. "But they just end up not going to school at all."

His group is trying to stop the LAPD and the school district from issuing the tickets. The Los Angeles School District says the policy is designed to reduce absenteeism.

And another California school -- Highland High School in Palmdale -- found that issuing tardiness tickets drastically cut the number of pupils being late for class and helped tone down disruptive behavior. The fifth ticket issued landed a student in juvenile traffic court.

In 1998, New York City took its zero tolerance policies to the next level, placing school security officers under the New York City Police Department. Today, there are nearly 5,000 employees in the NYPD School Safety Division. Most are not police officers, but that number exceeds the total police force in Washington, D.C.

In contrast, there are only about 3,000 counselors in New York City's public school system. Critics of zero tolerance policies say more attention should be paid to social work, counseling and therapy.

"Instead of a graduated discipline approach, we see ... expulsions at the drop of a hat," said Donna Lieberman, an attorney with the New York branch of the American Civil Liberties Union.

"If they have been suspended once, their likelihood of being pushed out of the school increases," she said. "They may end up in jail at some point in their life."

One of Lieberman's clients was in sixth grade when police arrested her in 2007 for doodling with her friend in class. The child, called M.M. in court filings to protect her identity, tried to get tissues to remove the marks, a complaint states.

Lieberman says police subjected M.M. to unlawful search and seizure. A class-action lawsuit, filed in January on behalf of five juveniles, is pending. It maintains that inadequately trained and poorly supervised police personnel are aggressive toward students when no criminal activity is taking place.

Several studies have confirmed that the time an expelled child spends away from school increases the chance that child will drop out and wind up in the criminal justice system, according to a January 2010 study from the Advancement Project, a legal action group.

Alexa Gonzalez missed three days of school because of her arrest. She spent those days throwing up, and it was a challenge to catch up on her homework when she returned to school, she said. Her mother says she had never been in trouble before the doodling incident.

New York attorney Joe Rosenthal, who is representing Alexa, plans to file a lawsuit accusing police and school officials of violating Alexa's constitutional rights. New York City Department of Education officials declined to comment specifically on any possible legal matters.

"Our mission is to make sure that public schools are a safe and supportive environment for all students," said Margie Feinberg, an education department spokeswoman.

Several media outlets have reported that school officials admitted the arrest was a "mistake," but when asked by CNN, Feinberg declined to comment specifically on the incident. She referred CNN to the NYPD.

The NYPD did not return CNN's repeated phone calls and e-mails. It is unknown whether charges will be pressed against Alexa.

Kenneth Trump, a security expert who founded the National School Safety and Security Services consulting firm, said focusing on security is essential to the safety of other students. He said zero tolerance policies can work if "common sense is applied."

Michael Soguero recalls being arrested himself in 2005 when, as principal at Bronx Guild School, he tried to stop an officer from handcuffing one of his students. A charge of assault against him was later dropped. He says police working in schools need specific training on how to work with children.

In Clayton County, Georgia, juvenile court judge Steven Teske is working to reshape zero tolerance policies in schools. He wants the courts to be a last resort. In 2003, he created a program in Clayton County's schools that distinguishes felonies from misdemeanors.

The result? The number of students detained by the school fell by 83 percent, his report found. The number of weapons detected on campus declined by 73 percent.

Last week, after hearing about 12-year-old Alexa's arrest in New York, he wasn't shocked.

"There is zero intelligence when you start applying zero tolerance across the board," he said. "Stupid and ridiculous things start happening."