Webster County

Cross posted at dailykos for the world to see instead of just us.

A child miseducated is a child lost-JFK

The counties in the Ozarks are holding their citizens hostage every day. Is that terrorism? Of a kind, yes it is. If you lose your driver's license you are a walking non person. So you have to consider some alternatives.

I suggest all of us go to Court days once or twice a month to observe what is going on. Here's what I recorded:

People given speeding tickets or going through stop sign tickets for 5 miles over the limit, or what is known as a California Stop. You know, look both ways and slide on through as you have seen it is safe to do so. Ha! Until you are seen, ticketed, and go to Court. I capitalize Court with the last remaining respect I can scrape off my tongue.

These offenders are given the most amazing sentences. If they have jobs they have missed a day of pay to attend court. If they plead guilty and accept the penalty, here's what the punishments were: pay a $250 fine and attend a safe driving course in Springfield for six months to a year. Good Jehovah! That means drive to Springfield once a week (70 miles RT from here), so that's a minimum of two gallons of gas or $10 to $20 dollars times let's say ten trips, maybe twenty and you see we are getting into a sizable amount for someone who works minimum wage. Plus the lost work, or child care, or just sleep time. So that extra five miles an hour is beginning to add significant money to the town coffers. The offenders are in a Catch-22 situation. They are damned if they do or don't. They must keep their drivers' licenses so.......Of course they could have just paid the fine when they got the ticket and been put in the database as guilty with points against their driving record. That's also a bad choice. Hint:There are no good ones. I figure at $57 for about five minutes max of their time that judge is making (5 into 60 is 12 and 12 X $57 is $684 an hour! And we elected him! That's just slightly less than a good criminal lawyer in NYCity!) And he is in there at least two hours seeing whether people want a court trial or swallow the poison pill of punishment because they didn't just sign the ticket guilty and write the check. And how many do just that?

If you demand a court trial then you risk having the fine, added court costs, another lost day of work and no guarantee you will present your case in such a way as to be judged innocent. Hire a lawyer and you all know what that will cost. If you qualify for a public defender rest assured that they will make a deal with the judge and you will end up paying about what you would have paid had you pleaded guilty and probably a significant bit more. But by then you will have been tortured into submission, just kidding so you will say bye and do what you are told.

Harassing citizens is an abysmal way to get coinage for the realm. If we all start observing and blogging about this here and http://www.dailykos.com and other places, (just ask me I'll tell and you won't have to waterboard me)until we shame them.

We need to start running for offices on the democratic ticket. I know the standard wisdom is if you want to get elected you must run as a repug. Fie on that I say! Let's open up a two party system as Crashing the Gate the new book by Marcos Moulitas (Kos to you)has told us to do.

I was planning to run as a write-in for mayor, but it is too late in the game. I shall run on the dem ticket in 2008 instead. At least they are going to hear some different stuff from me. Any others want to go along? We can do it in Webster, Ozark, Douglas, Wright, and you get the idea.

Let's start by making them accountable for what they do in Court. Watch them and tell. I know nice boys don't kiss and tell, but nice girls might. Go and take notes and post here at FiredUp for starters. We can start writing editorials too. The Springfield Leader is very open to voices protesting the status quo.

by abbeysbooks crossposted at http://www.dailykos.com
Thu Aug 24, 2006 at 12:12:53 AM PDT

Talent stole votes from Jean Carnahan in MO, Dem votes, and this is how he did it. Santorum does the same in PA. They play on the strings of the Puppy Mill haters. They condemn them, rail about them and get Dem votes. It smells Rovian.

abbeysbooks's diary :: ::
MO and PA are known as the Puppy Mill Capitols of the US . Until you have experienced a puppy mill or a dog rescued from one you have no idea of the horror of the daily lives of these breeding dogs. Take a minute and go to: http://puppymillrescue.org to see and read some of their stories.

Are you back now? Have you wiped away the tears? So of course you are going to vote for the person who is against them, wants them inspected, closed down etc. But Talent and Santorum are not going to destroy the very lucrative businesses in their states. They are not going to stop any of it. They are playing on your heartstrings.

Jean didn't wake up. Claire McCaskill has to wake up. She must come down on them to get back the votes of her party.

Last Saturday in Cabool MO there was a dog auction. The director of my rescue group went there. She spent $1700 dollars rescuing 25 doggies. They will be vaccinated, spayed/neutered medically taken care of and adopted. She said there were only two rescue people there counting herself, no families buying a pet, as all the rest were breeders. A breeder will make about $15,000 on a female dog and will rarely if ever, spay her to pay back a little of what has been taken from her. She has lived in a cage, her feet never touching grass. My HoneyBee fell on her side the first time I put her in the grass. Her toenails were curled into her pads so she could grasp the wire floor of her cage. She couldn't walk and her left hind leg trembled all the time. She slept 24/7 for four months after I got her and she never left my side. This past week she ran during an entire walk to a lake in St. Louis. The first time she has run more than a few feet. She can bark now instead of a horse rasping sound. and best of all, she has learned to kiss and play with another dog. It has taken over a year. Some never learn.

The auction was jammed with Amish and Mennonite breeders. These are the cruelest. They just shoot unadoptable dogs. The horse ride to the Humane Society for euthanizing is too long for them. Bang, bang, you're dead now. I don't have to feed you anything anymore. You can't have any more babies, no good to me. There were beautiful pedigree dogs being dumped for $25.00 and many went begging back to home in a cage. My director was so much in despair she said she would never go back. But she will. Next time I'll meet her there to help her through it. She's tough, but not that tough.

Claire McCaskill, are your people reading this? Don't let Talent take these votes. The puppy mill people are not ever going to vote for you. They all have Bush/Cheney stuff stuck in their yards and bumper stickers. They voted for Bush/Cheney and Talent even though he spoke against them. They knew he would never destroy economic gain from a puppy mill.

check out this diary at http://www.dailykos.com for additional cocmments made by people from all over the US. It will appear again in election diary rescue.

A child miseducated is a child lost-JFK

A child miseducated is a child lost-JFK

There are always those cans and jars at the convenience stores around here asking for change to help the medical bills of someone is desperate need. I carry around a black marker to write on them.

Vote Universal Health Care

Vote Stem Cell Research when it is a child with cystic fibrosis, spinabifada,or multiple sclerosis or other genetic problem such as infant heart surgery.

Sounds like a return to the glory days of Christianity -- where only certain people were "educated," where the powerful and wealthy ruled the church AND politics ... where enlightment, education, intellect, and reason were shoved aside to make sure we believed ... and believed the same thing ... or else ... a thousand consecutive years of no advances in science, math, politics, medicine ... a thousand years ... should be fun to head backwards again and see what it felt like so long ago when Christians ruled the western world, when Christians decided who would and would not be educated, when Christians decided who would rule and who would be ruled ... when filth, poverty, squallor, tyranny, greed and corruption were the hallmarks and benchmarks of the "church" ... hey good luck down there!

A child miseducated is a child lost-JFK

I would like to talk about home schooling from time to time. There is some excellent homeschooling going on here and some that is so deplorable it makes me want to lobby against Missouri's homeschooling law. Many parents homeschool without a lick of intelligence or education in order to control their children's lives,make it impossible for them to meet any other children with different lives and opinions from theirs. A building is being renovated in town and the parents homeschool. Hah! Homeschooling means that they get to be in house slaves while the work of renovation and now the business goes on. One can't read and the other I talked with doesn't read,whatever that means. The parents are uneducated,cannot discuss problems and the mother immediately starts yelling and screaming. I cannot imagine someone like this being able to educate her children much less be a good parent. This type of thing is going on all over the counties in Missouri and I believe it is one of the reasons Missouri ranks so low in the nation in terms of education. It is the rare,enlightened,educated parent who homeschools.

The religious schools I have visited are the saddest classrooms I have ever been in. Please visit some to check on my words. Rote learning is the rule. Parroting.

Of every parent and student in the public schools here in my neon red town all but one family has expressed hatred,disdain,and disgust for the public school system here. I would like to write more about this and do interviews to put them on the spot. There are so many high school drop outs,and they are encouraged to drop out when they have disagreements with the teachers and principals. The children are mostly small town and rural here in Webster County.

If we cannot have an educated citizenry in Missouri's red counties,then we are never going to win democratic elections here. We will always have to depend on St. Louis to pull us through.