15 - The Unger Memorial Library - MyPlainview.com

Page 4A - Thursday, September 15, 2011 - Plainview Herald www.MyPlainview.com
Herald
OPINION
LETTER TO THE EDITOR
Thanks for BBQ dinner support
To the Editor:
On behalf of the Plainview
Kiwanis Club, I
would like to thank all of
those who came out to eat
barbecue before the Bulldogs’
fi rst home football
game against Big Spring on
Friday.
Thanks also goes to
United Supermarkets, Frito-
Lay, Walmart Supercenter,
Covenant Hospital, Reddy
Hotel, YMCA, Boy Scout
Troop 250, KKYN, Estaca-
ANOTHER OPINION
The generals running
Egypt’s military services
need to decide what kind of
future they want for their
country, and they must
decide quickly.
Initial reports of the mob
attack on Israel’s Cairo embassy
suffer from the usual
faults of reporting in chaotic
conditions: incomplete
information mixed with
rumor and allegation. We
do know Egyptian soldiers
eventually rescued Israeli
personnel trapped in the
building. Israeli media claim
that the Egyptian military
ignored the Israeli pleas for
assistance and only reacted
after American diplomatic
Mallard Fillmore
do Jr. High, the Herald and
our own club members who
all contributed to making
our 17th annual barbecue
dinner a great success.
We always have a good
time at this fundraiser, and
all proceeds will be distributed
to local youth-oriented
organizations.
Thanks again for your
support.
Karen Crim
President, Plainview
Kiwanis Club
Better access to affordable
electricity in the summer
The state Public Utility
Commission should be
receptive to a proposal by
Entergy Texas to join an
electric grid serving the Upper
Midwest for a number
of reasons.
The National Weather
Service confi rmed that this
summer was Texas’ hottest
on record. The average
temperature from June to
August was a sizzling 86.8
degrees. Moreover, the ongoing
statewide drought is
expected to linger through
this winter. If it does, the
state’s energy demands
could be high again next
year.
Numbers like that support
efforts by Texas companies
to pursue power-sharing
agreements with other
utilities. Entergy’s proposal
is appealing because it can
provide access to affordable
electricity in the summer.
That kind of planning
ahead should be encouraged
by state agencies. The last
thing Texans want to hear
about in the midst of a bad
summer is the possibility of
power blackouts. — BEAU-
MONT ENTERPRISE
intervention. We will know
more in the coming weeks.
The mob assault and the
target, the Israeli embassy,
are undisputed facts. Substitute
the U.S. for Israel,
and the Cairo action mimics
Tehran 1979, when Iranian
mobs, organized and
controlled by the Ayatollah
Ruhollah Khomeini’s Islamic
revolutionaries, seized
the American embassy.
America was the Ayatollah’s
target of passion, the
surface target, but his deep
target was Iranian modernizers.
In Egypt 2011, Israel is
defi nitely a target of militant
Islamists, but so is the Egyp-
tian revolution. To subvert
the Egyptian revolution,
militant Islamists must
undermine and discredit
the generals in the Supreme
Council of the Armed
Forces (SCAF), which is
functioning as the interim
Egyptian government.
The attack on the Israeli
embassy serves this purpose.
The Egyptian generals
know this, and so do the
Israelis. The Israelis have
a right to be outraged.
Diffi cult as it is, the Israeli
government’s best political
response to revolutionary
Egypt is a cool, distancing
“give us a ring when you
need help building a modern
country, because you will.”
If the Israeli government can
manage that, it will minimize,
though not eliminate,
Israel’s utility as a political
scapegoat.
Since the embassy attack,
the generals have restored
emergency rule. Hosni
Mubarak’s government
employed emergency decree
and the use of state security
courts. Muslim Brotherhood
activists have condemned
the SCAF’s action as an attempt
to crush the revolution
— the goal of discrediting
the SCAF is accomplished.
However, this could be
a very short-lived political
coup for the extremists. The
mob violence and embassy
assault actually give the
SCAF a political opportunity
to begin marginalizing
extremist factions, should
the generals have the courage
to use it.
Recent history is a powerful
weapon. Here is an
outline of the history lesson
that should pervade Egyptian
media, from twitter to
offi cial statements.
Since the fi rst demonstrations
began in Cairo this
past spring, everyone knew
the moment would arrive
when militant Islamists
would try to subvert modernizing
revolutionaries.
That moment is now. The
Islamist militants recent
actions, however, have exposed
them and reveal their
long term goals.
They are now following
Khomeini’s Iranian
Islamic revolutionary script.
Denouncing the U.S. and
Israel provided Khomeini
with rhetorical cover for
intimidating, imprisoning or
killing democratic revolutionaries.
Now Khomeini’s
political descendants oppress
their own people’s
political and material aspirations,
and assist Syria’s
Assad regime in its attempt
to stay in power.
Subsequent history has
rendered a verdict on robed
dictatorships — their social
product is poverty, violent
oppression, and even more
Page 4A
Thursday, September 15, 2011
MyPlainview.com/opinion
Political careers of Perry, Sharp intertwined
Rick Perry and John
Sharp have crisscrossed
paths for more than four
decades.
For the fi rst two, they
were buddies.
In the third, their political
paths collided, and they
became enemies.
Halfway through the
fourth, they made up.
They met at Texas
A&M University in 1968,
both from small towns:
Perry, Paint Creek, north
of Abilene; Sharp, Placedo,
southeast of Victoria.
They were among 58
freshmen in Squadron
Six of the Aggie Corps of
Cadets. They marched to
meals together, ate together,
lived in the same dorm —
and were among the 13 who
survived the hazing and
were still there as seniors.
Sharp was elected
sophomore class president,
and student body president
their senior year. Perry
was elected yell leader as a
junior and senior.
They later joked that each
had stories that would ruin
the other’s career.
Perry wanted to be a
veterinarian, a pre-vet
major for two years, “until
the dean suggested I try
something else. He didn’t
think my 2.5 GPA was good
enough. So I got my degree
in animal science and went
into the Air Force.”
Stationed at Dyess Air
Force Base in Abilene,
close to his home turf, he
was fl ying C-130 transport
planes all over the country
and world.
Perry had planned to
make the Air Force a career.
But after 4½ years, tired of
being gone, he returned to
ranch and farm with his dad
in Haskell County.
Sharp joined the Army
Reserves, was a Legislative
Budget Board examiner
and got a master’s degree in
public administration from
Southwest Texas State University
in San Marcos (now
Texas State University).
In 1978, Democrat Sharp
won a Texas House seat
from Victoria, his home
county. In 1982, he won a
Texas Senate seat, and in
1986 a seat on the Texas
Railroad Commission.
Perry won a House seat in
1984 as a Democrat, fl ying
the eight-county district in
his 1952 Super Cub.
In 1989, Perry helped
lead a battle to limit
progressive Democratic
Agriculture Commissioner
Jim Hightower’s ability to
regulate pesticides. That
August, he mused that the
conservative rural Democrats’
days were probably
numbered.
“I don’t think there will
be any doubt that I’ll have
a Democratic primary opponent
and I think I’ll have
a Republican opponent,”
Perry said. “I’ve never had
a Republican opponent,
but I think I’ll get one this
time.”
Perry also said he
wouldn’t run for higher
offi ce.
Six weeks later, Perry
didn’t get a vacant chairmanship
of the powerful
Calendars Committee he’d
wanted. Ten days after
that, he announced he was
switching to the Republicans.
In December, days after
legendary pitcher Nolan
Ryan turned down the Texas
Farm Bureau’s request
he oppose Hightower, Perry
said he would.
Sharp was also running in
1990 to replace state Comptroller
Bob Bullock, who
was running for lieutenant
governor.
With Karl Rove as his political
consultant, Perry ran
TV ads showing him riding
a horse and Hightower
holding African-American
Jesse Jackson’s hand aloft,
endorsing him for president
in 1988.
Hightower hadn’t raised
enough money to compete
on TV. Perry’s 1.2 percent
victory margin came in
urban TV markets.
Perry and Sharp were
re-elected in 1994. But
competitive juices were
bubbling. When Sharp held
a press conference in 1995
to back a constitutional
amendment to promote processing
Texas agricultural
products in Texas, Perry
crashed it.
In June 1997, Lt. Gov.
Bullock announced he
wouldn’t seek re-election
in 1998. Sharp and Perry
quickly said they would.
On a GOP ticket just
below popular Gov. George
W. Bush, Perry eked out a
narrow victory, even though
he ran 691,984 votes behind
Bush.
Perry became governor
in 2000 after Bush won the
presidency, and in 2002
won four more years. Sharp
ran for lieutenant governor
in 2002, losing to Republican
David Dewhurst.
In 2005, Perry and Sharp
bumped into each other at
a gun store and decided to
call off their feud.
They decided Sharp, the
former state tax collector
and current tax consultant,
would head a Perry-appointed
committee to fi nd ways
to cut local property taxes,
but recover the money
elsewhere.
After they announced that
at a press conference, Sharp
was asked about his political
future.
“I’m not very good at
politics, probably because I
don’t like it,” Sharp joked.
“If I were good, I’d be appointing
him.”
Never mind that the
Perry/Sharp tax swap has
left an annual budget defi cit
of $2 billion-plus, which
Perry has done nothing to
cure.
Sharp has now been
named chancellor of Texas
A&M University by a Perry-appointed
board. Perry is
running for president.
And at this point, those
stories either could tell to
ruin the other’s career are
unlikely to be told.
Dave McNeely writes
about Texas politics.
davemcneely111@gmail.com
Egyptian Islamist militants following Khomeini’s script
AUSTIN
BAY
DAVE
MCNEELY
insidious corruption and
cronyism than those that existed
under Mubarak. These
are the shackles Egyptians
seek to escape. Must our
grandchildren launch an
Arab Spring in 2061 against
an Egyptian clerical dictatorship?
Abolhassan Bani-Sadr,
Iran’s fi rst president after
the revolution (and living
in exile since 1981, when
Khomeini toppled him),
serves as a fi rst-hand source.
In January, Bani-Sadr
warned Tunisian revolutionaries
that they must protect
their revolution from the
fate that befell Iran’s. Most
Iranian political organizations,
Bani-Sadr wrote, “did
not commit themselves to
democracy. Lacking the
unity of a democratic front,
one by one they became
targets of power-seeking
clergy in the form of the
Islamic Republic Party, and
were pushed aside.”
The SCAF should offer to
guaranty the security of an
Egyptian democratic front
and be a unifying political
component of that front.
Austin Bay of Austin writes about
military and foreign aff airs.