Category: Commentary

    “Informational Meeting with Senator Charles Schwertner”

    September 4, 2022 by Mark L. Torrey in / / / / / /

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    Bastrop County Republican Party and Bastrop County Conservatives are holding a joint informational meeting with Texas Senator Dr. Charles Schwertner, MD as our guest speaker. The meeting will be held September 26th 2022, at Casa Chapala, at 1800 Walnut Street in Bastrop. Networking will begin at 5:30pm, with the program starting at 6:30pm. Remember to arrive early to ensure you are seated.

    Dr. Charles Schwertner, MD, resides in Williamson County near the small, central Texas town of Schwertner, that bears his family name. He is a lifelong Republican, a sixth-generation Texan, and a committed fighter for conservative values. Since 2013, Dr. Schwertner has represented Texas Senate District 5, an eleven-county region of central and east Texas that includes Bastrop County.

    In 2010, Schwertner was elected to the Texas House of Representatives for District 20. In 2012 he campaigned for and won the Republican Primary for his current seat in the Texas Senate with over 75 percent of the vote. His current term ends in 2027.

    Throughout his time in the Texas Legislature, Schwertner has championed a host of diverse and important policies, passed sweeping reforms to the regulation and oversight of the state’s electrical grid and authored one of the strongest Constitutional Carry laws in the nation. In prior sessions, Schwertner fought to expand access to mental health services, reform the state foster care system, strengthen landowner rights, cut taxes for small businesses, protect seniors from abuse, and lower tuition at public universities.

    As Chairman of two powerful Senate Committees, he oversees a number of critical policy areas for the state of Texas. Schwertner also serves as a member of the Senate Committees on Education, Finance, State Affairs, and on the Legislative Budget Board, was also appointed to Chair the Texas Sunset Advisory Commission.

     

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    Get Out The Vote Workshop – September 21st, 2022

    September 2, 2022 by Mark L. Torrey in / / / / / / / /

    [vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]Bastrop County Republican Party is hosting a condensed 3 hour “Get-Out-The-Vote Workshop”, Wednesday, September 21, 2022 from 5:30pm to 8:30pm. The workshop will be held at Casa Chapala, 1800 Walnut Street in Bastrop Texas and presented by instructors from The Leadership Institute.  Preregistration (and $10 fee) is required for the workshop and covers enrollment, course materials, and a meal. The Get-Out-The-Vote (GOTV) Workshop advances a comprehensive voter contact strategy, and you will learn ways to effectively implement targeted outreach to your supporters.

    You will learn how to develop a systematic plan to get the most out of phones, door-to-door, early and absentee voters, and Election Day operations that deliver successful results. Additional on- demand content, which compliments this material, is available to program enrollees.

    Ideal attendees for the GOTV Workshop are elected officials, current or future candidates for political office, campaign operatives, party officials, precinct chairs and campaign volunteers.

    Attendees will learn how to:
    • Recruit and manage volunteers
    • Identify and target voters
    • Use absentee and early voting tools • Coordinate Election Day activities
    • Turn out their voters

    More workshop, course and instructor information can be found on their Website, including Registration and sample Agenda links.

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    5th Annual Boots and Barbecue Fundraiser

    August 29, 2022 by Mark L. Torrey in / / / / /

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    Join your fellow Republicans Saturday, September 24, 2022, for the

    5th Annual Boots & Barbecue Fundraiser !!

     

    Welcome Lt. Governor Dan Patrick as our Keynote Speaker,
    US Congressman Michal McCaul and
    TX Senator Charles Schwertner
    as our Guest Speakers for the evening!

     

    Bastrop Convention and Exhibit Center
    1408 Chestnut Street
    Bastrop, Texas 78602

    Doors open at 4:45 pm
    Cocktail and VIP Receptions 5:00 – 6:15 pm
    Dinner at 6:30 pm.

    Dinner is provided by Billy”s Pit Barbecue
    Cash Bar provided by Casa Chapala
    Silent and Live Auctions for your bidding pleasure
    as well as an evening of fun and friendship!

    Click here for printable (PDF) registration form, or for on-line registration.

    For more information contact:
    Sue Beck – phone: (512) 913-7917, email: , or
    Deb Layland – phone: (512) 814-9299, email: .

    Update on Guest Speakers ...

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    INFORMATIONAL MEETING – AUGUST 22ND, 2022

    August 14, 2022 by Mark L. Torrey in / / / /

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    Come and meet the TEAM…..
    A NIGHT OF INTRODUCTIONS!!

    The BCRP would like to invite you to come and hear from our newly elected State Board of Education District #5 candidate, Perla Hopkins; State Republican Executive Committeewoman Susan Lucas; State Republican Executive Committeeman Bill Fairbrother; County Chair Curtis Courtney and your current Precinct Chairman or Chairwoman. This will be a night of getting to know who represents you in Bastrop County, ask questions and get to know each other.

    The SBOE election is an important race between Perla Hopkins and a woke, liberal democrat from Austin. Perla will need your help to win this race. The SREC committeeman and committeewoman represent you and the Bastrop County Executive Committee at the state level. The SREC is the governing body of the Republican Party of Texas. While the SREC represents you at the state level, your precinct chairman represents you on a county wide level through the County Executive Committee.

    It will be an interesting night of introductions, discussion, questions and answers. I would encourage your participation.

    The meeting will start at 6:30 pm on August 22, 2022 at our local county office located at 443 W. Highway 71, Bastrop, TX 78602. If you have any questions, please contact Curtis Courtney, County Chair, phone: 512-925-6034, or email .

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    BCRP Website Updates

    July 5, 2022 by Mark L. Torrey in / / /

    The Bastrop County Republican Party website will be under construction. We’ve officially started the 2022-2024 session. Website changes and updates will include:

    • Improved Site Content
    • Executive Committee Members, including:
      • New County Chair, All Precinct Chairs and New Officers
      • Calendar updates for Events and Activities

    We will also be updating Republican Party of Texas links to the latest:

    • Rules, SREC Bylaws, State Platform and Legislative Priorities.

    Also, we’re expecting to add new features, updating calendar events, general website clean up and restructuring.

    Please stay tuned.

    Thank you for the opportunity

    June 12, 2022 by Mark L. Torrey in /

    [vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]THANK YOU FOR YOUR SUPPORT

    Chairman Mike GepnerI want to thank everyone for their support for the Republican Party of Bastrop County.  As of tomorrow, June 13, my term as your Republican County Chairman is over.

    Together, we have been able to keep Bastrop County Republican and contributed to keeping Texas red.  This is only because of you. Your hard work at working the polls, poll watching, telephone calls, door to door talking with people, volunteering, and so much more. Thank you for your contributions to this effort.

    I’m putting my support for our new Republican Chairman Curtis Courtney. I pray that you will put your support with him also. We need to continue to work together for our REPUBLICAN Party, Republican candidates, and Republican elected officials.

    It has been a joy to serve you. Thank you for the opportunity.

    Mike Gepner[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row]

    Commentary: Innocent suffer in border surge

    April 9, 2021 by Mark L. Torrey in / / /

    [vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]Courtesy Don Loucks
    Contributing columnist to The Statesman

    It is difficult to understand the video showing two small girls ages 3 and 5 being dropped over 14-foot-tall border wall in Texas and then left there while the perpetrators fled back into Mexico. However, as the saying goes, “follow the money.”

    Human trafficking — modern slavery, really — is a booming and very lucrative business. In fact, it is only a close second behind the illicit drug trade. How big, one wonders? Hundreds of billions of dollars big.

    There are many facets to this tragedy; many layers and intensities of activity are in play. The dropping of children over the border and border walls is only one small part. Human beings in various capacities are valuable commodities.

    Keep this in mind: This horrible human tragedy would not be happening if President Joe Biden had not cancelled the Trump plan to complete the border wall and strictly control who may enter the United States. It is clear that the word went out very early after the election that Biden would stop enforcing control of our borders. His administration cannot even call this crisis a crisis.

    Set aside America’s Southern border crisis for a moment and consider something that came to light in late 2019 in the form of a so-called pandemic. Certainly, COVID-19 can be a deadly disease, but how was it so rapidly distributed from Wuhan, China, to other parts of the world such as Los Angeles, New York City, Florence, Italy, and Madrid, Spain, to name just a few?

    The answer to the “why” is slave labor. Communist China provides laborers to other countries. In the case of COVID-19, it was primarily textile workers (clothing makers) who were contracted out to do clothing manufacturing. Who was paid?

    The Communist Chinese regime “owns” its citizens. The money paid for their labor goes to their government, which takes a nice cut, then a pittance is paid to the laborers. This is slave labor. The Communist Chinese government owns its citizens, they are considered property.

    To whom do the people crossing our Southern border then belong?

    One of the terrifying smuggling techniques for monetary gain is to charge a large sum for conveying a person into the United States. Reported amounts of $5,000 to $15,000 dollars are common. Then, one would ask how these supposedly destitute people obtain such funds when the countries form which they originate are so poor?

    Evidently, the new method is a form of “installment plan.” The coyotes (smugglers) take a deposit from the person seeking passage, and then the now-indentured slave is made to promise to send direct deposit payments monthly to the coyote’s bank accounts. If the payments are not made, the collateral (families of the migrants back home) are harmed or killed. This is serious business.

    It is also reported that the drug and human smuggling cartels are intertwined and are so powerful they have become the actual government of most of northern Mexico. Is it possible for Americans to imagine the entire Southwest United States being controlled, government and all, by the Mafia? Please imagine that because that is exactly what it would be.

    Some of the illegal immigrants act as “mules” for smuggling drugs across the border. If caught they are subject to drug smuggling charges and can be incarcerated. But there are other, more efficient means of smuggling drugs, such as tunnels, disguised shipping containers and even model aircraft and drones.

    As a public, we have been aware of drug smuggling and the effects of drug addiction for many decades. It has only been relatively recently that the human trafficking and slavery prostitution have become newsworthy. The number world-wide is estimated to be 25 million slaves.

    The Jeffery Epstein scandal, where under-age girls were taken to his private island for the pleasure of well-heeled clients, is just the tip of the iceberg. More coverage of kidnapping and sex slavery will be included in the second of this two-part column series.[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row]

    Commentary: The U.S. Senate must preserve the filibuster to protect America from radical laws

    March 25, 2021 by Mark L. Torrey in / / /

    [vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]Courtesy Don Loucks
    Contributing columnist to The Statesman

    Democrats warn that if they do not get their way in passing their radical legislation through the U.S. Senate, they will do away with the legislative filibuster in order to do so. That’s a dangerous threat.

    Let’s review some history of the Senate.

    In the original U.S. Constitution, Senators were selected by their state’s legislatures. In the unamended Article I, Section 3, “The Senate of the United States shall be composed of two Senators from each State, chosen by the Legislature thereof, for six Years; and each Senator shall have one Vote.”

    Senators were not elected by the voters. Rather, the state legislators who were elected by the people, chose their state’s U.S. senators, accurately described as each state’s ambassadors to the federal government. Thus, there was a degree of separation between the popular culture and governance.

    Then came the populist movement in 1913 under Progressive Democrat Woodrow Wilson. The loud complaint was that the Senate was too stodgy and obstructive, and popular and progressive (liberal) legislation was unfairly killed or modified. Also, after the Civil War, many disagreements among state legislators left vacancies in the Senate, some lasting a long time and leaving states without representation in that chamber.

    The founders, however, left Senate picks to state legislatures because they knew the dangers of a public that could be easily or temporarily swayed by appealing fads, like socialism.

    Then came 17th Amendment — one of several destructive changes to U.S. governance.

    The 17th Amendment restates the first paragraph of Article I, section 3 of the Constitution and provides for the election of senators by replacing the phrase “chosen by the Legislature thereof” with “elected by the people thereof.” In addition, it allows the governor or executive authority of each state, if authorized by that state’s legislature, to appoint a senator in the event of a vacancy, until a general election occurs.

    Before the 17th Amendment, states were somewhat protected from legislation unfavorable or harmful to them.

    The legislative filibuster, a parliamentary procedure used to delay or block legislation in the Senate, also enhanced that protective function.

    As it was with the progressives of 1913, our radical Democratic Senate majority of this Congress sees the filibuster as just another impediment to their leftist goals. If the filibuster is eliminated, states will be run over by harmful, unstoppable legislation.

    The filibuster is defined by a Senate rule. Under this rule a senator may halt the progress to vote on a bill by invoking their right to continue debate on it. A filibuster may be stopped if three-fifths of all Senators (usually 60) vote to end debate. This vote is commonly called “cloture.”

    However, because it is a rule, it can be changed or removed by the Senate if two-thirds of the senators present vote for the change, which would be very difficult to achieve. Senators know the filibuster protects the minority party in that chamber.

    Also, the filibuster protects senators from political toss-up states. Those senators are leery of voting for legislation that is unpopular with those who elected them – gun control is a good example.

    The Democrat leadership in power now, however, may not honor their desires and may attempt to change the Senate rules without the 67 votes currently required for such a change. The loophole is a provision that requires only a simple majority of 51 votes, to virtually circumvent a Senate rule by an arcane maneuver of claiming “precedence” by allowing for a simple majority vote. This “nuclear option” has been used by Republicans and Democrats, most recently Sen. Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., used the option in 2019 to advance President Donald Trump’s executive and judicial nominees.

    With Democrats in power now, they will do absolutely anything to ram their radical agenda through to be signed by the president.

    Watch closely in the coming weeks to see what the Democrats will try to pass, and watch just as closely as what Congress actually passes.[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row]

    Commentary: Texas winter storm power outages were bad. An EMP attack would be catastrophic.

    March 11, 2021 by Mark L. Torrey in /

    [vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]Courtesy Don Loucks
    Contributing columnist to The Statesman
    Part 3 of a 3-part series

    After the Great Texas Winter Storm of 2021, we have heard much about the lack of preparedness on the part of various governments and utilities. One news account in the Statesman described the storm as “unprecedented.” It was not. The winter storm of 1899 was nearly identical to the February event, but it happened so long ago – 122 years – that it was mostly forgotten.

    It is never a good idea to forget such events. Just like the Carrington Event of 1859 — a massive Coronal Mass Ejection coupled with a devastatingly powerful electromagnetic pulse — that we tend to disregard for two reasons. First, it happened too long ago; and second, we fail to understand how such an event might affect our country now with its current level of technical sophistication.

    In 1987, Jerry Emanuelson wrote in a letter to a scientist colleague: “An EMP attack on the U.S. does seem plausible to me. Three or four (or maybe even one) nuclear weapons detonated in space would instantly shutdown the U.S. economy. It would cause billions of dollars-worth of direct damage to electronics equipment and a much greater loss in indirect costs to the economy.”

    Times have certainly changed. “Billions” is now certainly many trillions, and that’s not considering loss of life. What has changed is the complexity of interaction of our economy and society with computerization. A form of computerization is found in nearly every electrical appliance we use from coffee pots to cellular phones. What is most troubling is that we do not realize how much we depend upon that technology. In my previous column on the storm, the surprise we feel when a light switch does not turn on a light during a power outage was noted.

    Imagine nothing at all working; not a light, cell phone, television, car – nothing. Just silence for the entire country. Our sophistication just might kill us.

    Generally, the more complicated something – anything – is, the more vulnerable it is to failure. For example, compare a fountain pen and kerosene lamp to a personal computer. Our American society has become as complicated as our computers. Interdependence is the watch word. Look at the chaos even a truckers strike could cause. Remember all the changes to our lives brought about by COVID-19?

    So, let’s consider it a given that computers and devices with microprocessors are inextricable from daily life. What single thing can disable all of them, even the ones that control your cars and microwave ovens?

    The kill mechanism is overvoltage — the introduction of much higher electrical voltage into the very small circuits of a microprocessor.

    Before your eyes glaze over at the prospect of technical jargon, let’s make it simple by comparing electricity in wires to water in garden hoses. Voltage is just like the pressure of the water in the hose. If the water pressure becomes too high, the hose can burst and spray water to an area of lower pressure (outside the hose). If the voltage in a wire becomes too high the electricity can arc (leak) by sparking across to another wire or place of lesser voltage.

    When lightning hits the ground with 1 billion volts, it generally leaves a burn mark consisting in part of carbon, which conducts electricity. Carbon left on a microprocessor board can short out and kill a microprocessor.

    Easily available “surge suppressors” can lessen the chance of a power surge from utility lines when the line voltage going into a computer spikes on the high side for some reason. However, an electromagnetic pulse overvoltage is a quite different animal. By its nature, it bypasses the surge suppressor and induces the overvoltage directly into the computer’s microcircuitry.

    Remember the lightning strike and carbonized burned area I mentioned? If the tiny copper traces of a microprocessor arc from one to another there will be a carbon trace that will conduct electricity and short out the microprocessor’s delicate circuits, killing it.

    Is there a solution? We have heard about “hardening” the Texas electric grid, but that has not happened. It might be possible to harden some microcircuit appliances in your household by shielding them from an electromagnetic pulse. A “faraday cage 4, 5, 6” is the usual term for such a device. Essentially, it is a metal case or metal-laced bags to cover and shield a computer or even a cell phone from the effects of an EMP.

    No, the government will not be here to help. They will be in the same canoe, and also without a paddle.[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row]

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