COS+Indiana+Newsletter+10112021-3.html

View this email in your browser
62,316 INDIANA STRONG!
Passed State #06
COS Indiana Vision: To build a strong, engaged army of self­governing activists.
STATE NEWS
709 Events & Festivals | Visit Indiana – schedule and host a booth for COS!

COS INDIANA EVENTS CALENDAR
Click on the Events Calendar to go directly to Teamup for more details.
Make sure to schedule your events in Teamup so they will be listed in the calendar!
COS INDIANA LIVE BROADCAST
With State Director Dale Parrish

Dale's weekly broadcast is live­streamed on Facebook and Youtube
Mondays at 7:00 PM Eastern Time
Scheduled guests for COS LIVE in September include:
Debbie Stewart, and new District Captains!
Don't miss the Roundtable discussion on October 25th!
Roundtable special guest: COS President Mark Meckler!
MARENGO MIKE
Created by COS Indiana State Comms Director, Ken Kashuba
PAST EVENTS A SUCCESS!

SEPTEMBER ROUNDTABLE HITS THE MARK!
An expert panel led by State Director Dale Parrish, Paul Phillips, Ken Kashuba, George Ward, Gary
Harbaugh, and facilitated by John Aukermann fielded audience questions about what a Convention of
States can do to effectively and constitutionally resolve many hot­button topics and issues of the day.
Drive­in fun for the whole family, 120+ attended & concessions sold out!

Each person received a free copy of the constitution!
Gary Ridenour reported: A picture from yesterday at the Largo fund raiser for Riley's Childrens
Hospital. Had a great day – the rain held off till about the last hour. But we had 10 petitions
signed and educated a lot of people on our Constitutional rights.
PROMOTE YOUR EVENTS HERE!
Submit info to COS Indiana Event Coordinator Rick Lyon to apply for national funds well in advance
of events. Post details of your event on the Teamup Calendar and pictures on Slack!
Promote your event in advance
Apply for national $ assistance
Coordinate resource materials
Recap your event – inspire others
Inform and motivate our Patriots
Increase attendance at the event
Recruit volunteers to staff event
Issue a Call­to­Action in your area

IDEALS OF SELF–GOVERNANCE
"SHARE THE PETITION" MONTHLY CHALLENGE
These are critical times! Forward this newsletter to your family and friends!
Explain why this project is so important!
THE CHALLENGE:
Share the COS Project with at least one person who signs the petition each month!
THE GOAL: 70,000 SUPPORTERS
www.conventionofstates.com
AUGUST 2021 LEADERS
Congrats to Victoria Moring
and the Region #3 Team!
1. Region #3 – with 180 signatures!
2. Region #9 – with 96 signatures!
3. Region #7 – with 81 signatures!
SEPTEMBER 2021
LEADERS
Congrats to Larry Hutson
and the Region #4 Team!
1. Region #4 – with 472 signatures!
2. Region #6 – with 434 signatures!
3. Region #9 – with 367 signatures!
Welcome to new Region Captains Michael Baugh (RC 9) and Cheryl Schopmeyer (RC 8)
PATRIOT VOLUNTEERS

PATRIOT VOLUNTEERS
Servant leadership is important for COS. We appreciate our volunteers!
Welcome New District Captains:
Robert Bratch IN18
Susan Gervais IN15
Lori Light IN28
Jackquline Mair IN66
Mary Murphy IN09
Troy Randolph IN42
James Sheffield IN66
Chad Talley IN70
Steven Tingle IN05
Jon Zigler IN33
Mission Excellence Point
Recognition:
Region Region 3 Leader high
points!
Diane Jones
Don Linn
Ed Paragi
Fred Dennison
Jill Jones
Welcome to 35 Other New
Volunteers!
LEADERSHIP AWARD
PRESENTED TO DALE PARRISH AT ANNUAL STRATEGIC PLANNING MEETING

OTHER AWARDS PRESENTED:
CHALLENGE COIN: JOHN AUKERMANN
CONGRATULATIONS TO ALL OF OUR DESERVING RECIPIENTS!
SELF­GOVERNANCE PIN – MARTY WOOD
PATRIOT PINS: SHELBY RIDENOUR & LARRY HARTMANN
STATE CAPITOL NEWS
COS INDIANA LEGISLATIVE REPORT
Legislative News: the Indiana Legislature is out of session.
Paul Phillips, our Indiana Co­State Director & Legislative Liaison, encourages all Region Captains

and District Captains to take advantage of this time to:
become involved in their local and state governments as citizen activists.
set up meetings with their legislators to establish good relationships.
ONE NATION UNDER GOD
Aspirational Goal: To bring a Political and Spiritual Awakening to America.
TALKING TO GOD ABOUT YOUR FEARS
by Tim Heidenreich – SIA and Prayer Coordinator – COS Indiana Team
This is a time of great turmoil in the world today, and many people are very fearful. Maybe you
feel that way, too. If so, I encourage you to just simply find a quite place, alone, and talk to your
Father in Heaven. Tell Him what’s on your mind, and what is scaring you. Ask him for help and
wisdom and guidance ­ and you will receive it if you just trust in Him to send it. There are no
special words to us – no need to add a lot of thee’s and thou’s and thine’s. Just talk to him in your
own words and open up your heart.
Some people have said “I’ve done everything I can, there’s nothing left to do but pray.” I say that
is backwards. The first thing we should do is pray.
Phil 4:6­7 tells us this: "Don’t worry about anything; instead, pray about everything; tell God
your needs, and don’t forget to thank him for his answers. If you do this, you will experience
God’s peace, which is far more wonderful than the human mind can understand. His peace will
keep your thoughts and your hearts quiet and at rest as you trust in Christ Jesus.”

I believe that guidance ­ it has served me well to follow it. I hope you do, too!
Warm regards,
Tim Heidenreich
SIA and Prayer Coordinator – Indiana COS Team
Please join us in praying for:
Jennifer Heidenreich – in need of comfort and healing (cancer treatment)
David Trombly – in need of comfort and healing (for cancer treatment)
Olivia Parrish – in need of comfort and healing
Call or email Tim with your prayer requests at Tim's Phone: (317) 910­2992
Email Prayer Requests
TRADITIONS
Veterans Day is a time for us to pay our respects to those who have served. For one day, we
stand united in respect for you, our veterans. This holiday started as a day to reflect upon the
heroism of those who died in our country's service and was originally called Armistice Day.
OPINION / EDITORIALS
Opinions expressed in the following articles are solely the expressed views of the authors.

THE TRUE COST OF POVERTY
by
An Ordinary Citizen
The do­gooder and the politician both love band aids, surface solutions that focus on the obvious,
rather than the underlying cause. But why? What is the draw?
For the politician, band aids are the path to power and control. They provide the illusion of cure, and
cover up the real problem for which the politician has no real solution. For the do­gooder, band aids
are a path to superficial satisfaction, plastic proof of self value.
For both the politician and the do­gooder, political and moral band aids are a subtle cover for
something each suspects is neither a cure nor a proof of value. So it is with the poverty money trap.
The Attack on Children
The year was 1969. A young woman just out of college had just taken her first real job – as women and
girls’ director of a small, inner­city YMCA in Fort Wayne, Indiana. The demographic for this small
YMCA was somewhat typical for that area of the city: approximately 60% low­income African
American, 20% low­income Appalachian white, 10% low­income Hispanic, and 10% middle­income
African American. The first three groups lived in the neighborhood because housing was cheap and they
could not afford to be anywhere else. For the last group it was the family home and community, and
though the neighborhood was haggard and greyed, they didn’t want to give up on it but instead
doggedly fought to bring it back.
The young woman was very good at finding things to do for the women and teenagers in the
neighborhood. But the little ones were a bigger challenge. There wasn’t a park, a playground, or much
fun available for the little girls. So one lovely spring day they went for a walk, and sat down under a big
tree for a chat. She started by asking them all to dream for a minute…to think of what they would like to
do, to be, when they grew up. They gave the kind of answers typical for females in that era…teacher,
secretary, nurse, beautician. All except for one little girl. She said, “I want to grow up, go on welfare,
and have babies, just like Mama.” She was not being facetious, but honest. As the saying goes, children
learn what they live. And this little girl learned well. At 7 she was already a victim of the downward
poverty spiral that had gathered speed with President Lyndon Johnson’s inaugural address in 1964.
The War on Poverty turned out to be a war on families but especially, most especially, on children.
The reason the attack on children occurred was that Johnson’s legislation was different from the Aid to
Families and Dependent Children Act passed in 1935. Johnson’s legislation focused on families with no
father in the home. Single mothers received money and other benefits to care for their children…and
the more children, the more money. This legislation not only provided money and benefits, it changed

the culture in
low­income neighborhoods and nearly 60 years later our country is paying the price for this very
expensive band aid.
No Dad and Paving The Road to Hell
The intent (or one of them) of the War on Poverty was to provide additional help to single mothers in
order for them to raise their children out of poverty and become independent of government
assistance. A good intention, but also quite adept at paving the road to destruction because it provided
the incentive to not only care for the children already in the family, but to have more in order to
increase income. What we incent, we get more of.
In addition, the actual father didn’t matter; the sperm was what was needed. This by extension tells
young men that fatherhood was a sign of virility, but that fathers were not necessary to raise children.
How wrong that I s.
To paraphrase President Barack Obama, children who grow up without a father are five times more
likely to live in poverty, five times more likely to commit crime, nine times more likely to drop out of
school, and 20 times more likely to end up in prison. They are also more likely to have behavioral
problems, run away from home, or become teenage parents themselves and the foundations of our
community (the entire community) are weaker because of it.
https://www.politico.com/story/2008/06/text­of­obamas­fatherhood­speech­011094
On the other side of the political spectrum, we find this from the Brookings Institute’s study on Poverty
in 2013. There are 4 rules that poor teens should follow to rise up out of poverty and enter the middle
class:
· Graduate from high school.
· Get a full time job.
· Wait until you’re 21 to get married and then have children.
· Do these things in that order.
The research the institute conducted showed that of American adults who followed those three simple
rules, only about 2 per cent were in poverty and nearly 75 percent had joined the middle class. While
these may not be the only influences on the life of a young person, following these rules can set the
individual on a path that leads away from poverty and toward the middle class.
https://www.brookings.edu/opinions/three­simple­rules­poor­teens­should­follow­to­join­themiddle­class/
By the way, I realize that Dr. Ben Carson proves the exception to this rule but, in addition to working
two minimum hourly­rate jobs, his mother raised two exceptional sons because of her fierce devotion
to her children and their education that is rarely seen anywhere, at any economic level. Because of her
devotion, the world has benefited.

A Changing Culture
Thomas Sowell is an economist who turned 90 last year, but it hasn’t slowed him down any. He’s a
recognized authority on economics, an often­published author, college professor, senior fellow of
public policy at the Hoover Institution, and a former Marxist scholar turned free­market capitalist. As
his career progressed, he increasingly wrote about the impact of public policies on the problems those
policies were created to “solve.”
Case in point: the War on Poverty.
When Johnson signed the law into existence, he said that the “days of the dole in our country are
numbered.” Not only was that, at best, a hoped­for delusion, at worst it was an opposite and cruel
prophecy. Since 1964 we have aimed a variety of programs at the effort to win this war, to the cost of
more than 15 trillion dollars. Are all of those programs bad? Of course not, but the war wages on, and
the culture in poverty­ridden communities has changed for the worse.
Why?
Because our public policy supports behavior that favors dependency and discourages independence.
And the recipients of the benefits of those policies achieve a perceived independence at a dreadful cost.
In essence, they trade actual independence for dollars and goods as long as they adopt the stance of
victimhood required by those who grant the dollars and goods. It’s easy to see why that little girl in Fort
Wayne, Indiana dreamed of being “like Mama.”
Why They Don’t Leave
“Wait a minute,” you say. “There are options, there are loans, there are educational programs…anyone
can get out if they want to.”
How middle class of us.
Career schools are, as the name implies, a school where students learn a career. Since career schools
are accredited in part according to their placement rates, on graduation most students are placed in a
full­time job in the careers for which they are trained. However, directors of education in those schools
can tell story after story of students who, when nearly done, will drop out. The reasons they give for
dropping out are varied: money, time, child care, transportation, etc. But, if that’s the case, how have
they been progressing through school to that point, while dealing with those same issues? The real
reason for dropping out is fear.
Once they graduate, and get a full­time job, they are different and they know it. They are no longer
dependent, they are different from their families, their friends, their community, their entire support
system. Further, that support system derides them for their difference. It’s the crab bucket effect gone
national.
The actual rewards from that support system for those who work toward gaining independence are few.
Brandon Tatum (The Officer Tatum Show on YouTube) says that when he graduated from college there
was little, if any, recognition. But, when a relative came home from prison, there was a large
celebration. What message does that send?

So the choice facing anyone in this situation is simple: keep going and step out into the unknown or stop
and stay acceptable to those who have been your entire world up to that point.
We’d all like to say we’d keep going, but really?
What Can We Do?
Okay, so the situation seems to be hopeless. What can one person do? Here are a few ideas – none of
them are foolproof, but each is something.
· Give a hand up to anyone who needs it – not a hand out. It’s that old thing about the difference
between giving someone a fish and teaching that person to fish.
· If given the option, refuse to vote to increase or pass give­away programs, including the ones that
benefit us. Independence (like charity) begins at home.
· Urge your representatives to support programs that provide opportunity rather than handouts.
· Support law enforcement efforts aimed at reducing crime and violence, and establishing a healthy,
working relationship with low­income communities.
· Acknowledge that providing a handout (vs. a hand up) costs the recipient, and gives a false sense of
self­value to the one doing the providing.
· Check out investing in opportunity zones. This is particularly valuable if you have an excess of capital
gains.
The True Cost of Poverty
After all this, what is the true cost of poverty? It is not measured in dollars and cents, though those are
impressive. It is measured in the loss of hope, of true independence, of achievement, of human spirit.
Those losses mount up.
For every young man or woman who ends up in prison rather than in the workforce, we lose.
For every person who sees victimhood as a badge of honor rather than something to toss off, we lose.
For every life spent in poverty rather than in opportunity, we lose.
For every person who dies as the result of violence in a community where violence is prevalent, we lose.
It is impossible to put a dollar amount on these losses, but there is one remaining question.
When will this stop and how much more can we afford to lose before it does?

IS DEBT "CEILING" THE RIGHT TERM?
by Leo Morris
A modest request to news organizations: Please stop referring to the federal “debt ceiling.” It is a
grotesquely inappropriate term.
It is preposterous to refer to something that is constantly being moved as a “ceiling,” which we all know
is fixed in place forever. Remember that other ceiling metaphor – the “glass” one that women in
business are trapped by? They can see through it, forever tantalized by the perquisites on the other
side, but never breach it.
But that debt ceiling just keeps going up and up.
It was way back in 1939 when Congress passed a law that replaced various separate limits on
government debt with the general restriction now known as the debt ceiling. The initial ceiling was set
at $45 billion. That amounts to about six hours of federal spending at today’s level, as of Friday, Oct. 1,
per the Data Lab website.
The ceiling today, through a series of suspensions and other tricks too complicated to fathom, is about
$28.5 trillion, which is less that the current national debt, which will be about $29 trillion and
mounting rapidly by the time you read this. If the ceiling isn’t raised again – or suspended or otherwise
finessed – dire things could happen, including a temporary and/or partial federal government
shutdown.
Some of us think that wouldn’t be such a bad thing, but that’s another column.
That ceiling, by the way, is not to enable the government to keep borrowing and therefore spending. It’s

just to cover the spending the government has already done. Suppose you sign the papers to buy a
house, then sit down and figure out how much you have available to spend and how much you need to
borrow. That’s how the government operates all the time.
If you have the time, go online and look at a graph charting the increase of the debt ceiling over the
years. Note the graceful upward arc. Our monstrous debt has been a happily bipartisan collaboration
for decades, so any politician trying to score political points on the issue deserves nothing but withering
scorn.
The same must be said, alas, for those brave few who claim to be fighting against the trend.
Consider an analogy.
Imagine America as a house with a basement. The debt is the rapidly rising water in the basement.
When politicians call the flooded basement a crisis, what they end up arguing about is whether to keep
adding to the water a quart or a gallon at a time. And those claiming to really understand the problem
are proposing to remove the water a teaspoon at a time, and they expect us to be eternally grateful to
them.
The basement analogy helps illustrate the uselessness of the ceiling terminology. We surely cannot let
the water rise above the basement ceiling, because it would encroach on our habitat. We could, through
heroic engineering feats, raise the ceiling, but that would also squeeze us out of our living space.
No, there is no ceiling, and our politicians know it. What they really think they are dealing with is the
basement floor, which they think they can break though, making the hole beneath us ever deeper
without hurting the foundation of the house above it.
Of course, that can’t go on forever without the whole house crashing around us, and everybody knows
that, too.
In the meantime, you know what happens to a basement full of water. It gets dank and smelly, becoming
a disgusting cesspool of disease­ridden pestilence.
Like a swamp, which brings up another modest request: Swamp, good word; don’t be afraid to use it.
Leo Morris, columnist for The Indiana Policy Review, is winner of the Hoosier Press Association’s
award for Best Editorial Writer. Morris, as opinion editor of the Fort Wayne News­Sentinel, was
named a finalist in editorial writing by the Pulitzer Prize committee. Contact him at
leoedits@yahoo.com.
RAND PAUL SENDS WARNING:
"BE AFRAID OF YOUR GOVERNMENT"

Appearing on Fox News Wednesday, Senator Rand Paul warned Americans that they should now “be
afraid of your government,” adding that watchlists of dissenters are actively being compiled by the
Biden administration.
Paul addressed the ongoing saga with the Biden government’s plan to target angry parents who have
spoken out against critical race theory being taught to their children, as well as opposing vaccination
mandates in schools.
“I think criminalizing dissent is something that we should all be appalled with,” Paul told host Ben
Domenech.
“I would say be afraid,” Paul said. “Be afraid of your government. That’s a sad thing from someone in
the government to say, but the thing is, is those lists already exist.”
The Senator continued, “For example, people in northern Virginia that have gone to [protests], have
been then sought out by the school council, by the members of the school board and retaliated [against]
in a sort of legalistic way to try to put them on some sort of list and chill their speech by letting them
know there’ll be a penalty for showing up and protesting.”
Paul urged that the crackdown on free speech is exploding worldwide, noting “it’s become so
normalized to use government to search out and seek out your opponents.”
“There are people I know on the left who should have stepped forward and should have said how wrong
it is to use this foreign intelligence court – that uses a standard lower than the Constitution – to go after
a political campaign,” Paul continued.
“Yet, the left — once it became about Trump, their hatred of Trump trumped everything else, and I
have a feeling and a fear that the left has become more authoritarian than we can really even imagine,”
the Senator further declared.
Original Article – Click Here

THE REHEARSAL IS OVER
by Charles Eisenstein

A friend wrote me about her dilemma. She owns a company employing hundreds of people and is a
staunch critic of that­which­shall­not­be­named. She said she has been trying to fly under the radar
until sanity is restored, but with looming mandates for large employers, the radar will soon turn on her.
What will she do?
I will share with you the inner monologue that her note provoked in me.
* * *
A return to sanity? Sanity will not be restored for us by others. We are the ones that must restore it. We
cannot wait for others to be brave on our behalf. We are here in this initiatory moment to choose who
we are. The choice of whether to capitulate or to act is a declaration: Who am I to be? What is the world
to be? Am I serious enough about my vision for the world to risk my security for it? That is not a
challenge meant to goad myself into action. It is simply true. Through my choice, I will know myself as I
am. I will become as I choose. The rehearsal is over.
* * *
Many people trust the authorities and willingly comply with their rules. They face no dilemma, no
initiatory moment, no self­defining world­creating choice point, not yet.
But as the authorities’ narratives devolve into absurdity and their rules devolve into oppression, more
and more of us face this choice:
To live your truth out loud, or
To live by a lie, consoling yourself with secret protest.
To do what you know is right, or
To cave in to the pressure, consoling yourself with words you don’t believe. “I had no choice.”
Yes, for many of us it has come to such a choice. The rehearsal is over.
* * *
Maybe, I think, maybe now is not the time to be brave. Maybe now is not the time to speak out. I’ll wait
until it is a little safer.
But it will never be safe to be brave. Never.
If not now, when? If not I, who?
Shall I wait for others to do what I dare not do? We are ready. we’ve been preparing and being prepared
for a long time. The rehearsal is over.
* * *
The message is not “Act now.” Do not accept pressure, coercion, bribes or threats. Don’t let me or
anyone else tell you what to do or when to do it. We are fighting for the end of the time of dictating each
other’s choices, thinking I know better than you what you should be doing.
I trust you to know the right choice. Being trusted is an invitation to be trustworthy. Trusting you to be
brave, you become brave, just as I become brave when people see me as brave. Bravery is not a
personal achievement; it is a community function. It is a contagion. It is a mutual awakening.
Bravery means acting when you know it is time to act. It isn’t the convenient time. It is simply the time.
It is the moment of, “Enough!” It is the moment of, “It is time to do something about it.” It is the
moment of truth over consequences.

In that moment you act not because it is brave, but because it is necessary. You recognize that the
moment has come. Why now? Because it is time. No other reason is needed.
Bravery means doing what is yours to do, when it is time to do it. Denying that knowing locks your heart
in a box. Life becomes a chore. Despair descends like a fog, turning everything gray. Hope withers,
leaving behind the dry empty husk called wishful thinking. And you face the dread of living the rest of
life knowing, “I did not do what I was here to do, when the moment came and it counted.”
The rehearsal is over.
* * *
If I am not brave, what reason have I to hope others will be? Courage and cowardice both are
contagious. My choice establishes a principle of human nature. It declares not only who I am, but what a
human being is. and what the world shall be. Each choice is therefore a prayer. Our choices scaffold
divine creation.
That is why synchronicity so often congeals around bravery. Synchronicity is the snapping of the laws of
probability as reality shifts to align with brave choices.
Seeing that creative power, one knows the despair was based on false premises. The ego’s cautious logic
is reversed. The ego says, “Give me a guarantee that it will work and I’ll be OK, then I’ll do it.” The ego
says, “Promise me that enough other people will resist, and then I’ll resist too. Prove to me it won’t be
in vain. Guarantee that others will join in.” God says, “Show me that you want a more beautiful world
enough to actually risk something with no guarantee. Then you will see results beyond all reckoning.”
Is your time for choosing here? You will recognize when it is. No one can escape that feeling of
recognition when the moment comes. If you have read this far, that time is close. You know exactly
what I’m talking about.
The rehearsal is over.
GOVERNMENT OVERREACH.
IRRESPONSIBLE SPENDING.
CAREER POLITICIANS.
POLITICAL CORRUPTION.
WASHINGTON IS BROKEN!
We have a solution as big as the problem!
Donate Here
Convention of States Project
www.conventionofstates.org

Susan Lyon – Editor COS Indiana Newsletter
Submit articles for review to the Editor at: susan.lyon@cosaction.com
Dale Parrish – COS Indiana State Director
Ken Kashuba – COS Indiana Communications Director
Copyright © *|CURRENT_YEAR|* *|LIST:COMPANY|*, All rights reserved.
*|IFNOT:ARCHIVE_PAGE|* *|LIST:DESCRIPTION|*
Our mailing address is:
*|HTML:LIST_ADDRESS_HTML|* *|END:IF|*
Want to change how you receive these emails?
You can update your preferences or unsubscribe from this list.
*|IF:REWARDS|* *|HTML:REWARDS|* *|END:IF|*