Records

Senator John Cornyn came by with his wife Sandy and north Texas regional director Jim McGee to speak to a small group of Asian American community and business leaders at the Greater Dallas Asian American Chamber of Commerce yesterday afternoon about the issues before the US Senate that the senator is focusing on, specifically immigration reform and Social Security reform.

We now have governor Rick Perry, senator John Cornyn, congressman Kenny Marchant, congressman Pete Sessions, congressman Michael C. Burgess, MD, congressman Sam Johnson, congressman Jeb Hensarling from the lone star state as honorary co-chair for our Freedom March in our nation's capitol on Saturday, April 30th.

It is so true that you don't learn until you have trasmitted, whether it's the gospel or Social Security. I've shared with many people through the VPAC-DFW radio show and just talking to people about the real and urgent need for Social Security reform. Yesterday, I again had an opportunity to share the idea of why personal accounts must be a cornerstone of structural reform of the Social Security system with a few friends yesterday at lunch. Their #1 concern was the risk in the stock market, playing Russian roulette as Harry Reid was lying, the problem of people who think they know what they are doing but really don't and lose all their retirements. I had to explain to them that teachers, professors, federal employees and employees of Galveston county, Texas all basically are happy with their personal accounts and the risk is being minimized there with limited conservative lines of investment. I am getting them to start faxing letter of support for personal accounts to their congressmen and our senators. This article pointed out why the Democrats are doing what they are doing and also punch a whole right through their arguments that personal accounts allowing investment in high-yield stocks is risky.

Our youthgroup had a potluck dinner and fellowship Saturday night and then a few of us who live far away from church slept over because we had a sunrise service at six o'clock the next morning. We ended up talking until 3:30 in the morning Sunday and only got a couple hours before waking up for the service. We had a great tradition of the youthgroup cooking breakfast for everyone after the sunrise service. I had a long but wonderful Sunday and then came home and crashed since five in the afternoon yesterday, except to wake up for dinner. Easter should be the biggest celebration among all the celebrations for Christians because it is the one and only event in history that separates Christianity from every other religion of this world. Even though Christmas with the virgin birth is also another one and only event in human history in and of its own, every other religion claims miraculously events surround the birth of their religious leaders, still there is only one indisputable resurrection.

We took off half day at work yesterday for a picnic at Lake McKinney, a small and look artificial lake. Had fun playing sand volleyball. Quite a few times the ball got into the lake and we waited for the ball to be blown over to the other side of the lake and then fished it out. There were an Easter egg hunt on the grassy shore.

This morning was the first time ever I have to pay more than $2 for a gallon of gasoline. The new railroad commissioner is right when she said we have had it good, taking into consideration inflation and all that. Now it's just market forces balancing it out but it sure will take some time to get used to paying $2.03 for a gallon of regular unleaded gas. My uncle in Germany and friends in Canada and Australia have been paying $1 a litter for a while now.

I am glad to learn that Pascal Kropf is running for Texas Federation of College Republicans Vice Chair on the same ticket with Margaret Ritzert, who is running for state chair. Both are fine Republicans I would love to do anything to support them.

Congressman Henry Bonilla (TX-23) stopped by and hung out a little bit with the Dallas County Young Republican and made official his intention to run for the senate seat vacating by senator Kay Bailey Hutchison if and when she decides to run against incumbent and fellow Republican governor Rick Perry.

Camp went well except we need improvement with the foods and snacks. As far as the three main meals, we can only hope for better foods next year. For snacks, we the staffs need to provide more varieties of soups like Saturday and cut back on instant noodles. We had a lot of fun playing group games on Friday afternoon: steal the bacons with balloons filled with water as bacon, sack jumping, ..., and team sports on Saturday afternoon: dodgeball, volleyball and canoe racing. We didn't have enough time to play basketball on Saturday afternoon. We will need to spread out the team sports and mix it up with group games next year. The three messages from Rev. Donald Phan: the Supremacy of Christ, the Sufficiency of Christ, Christ is All, and six workshops by Rev. Bruce Nguyen, Thom Luu and Donald Phan were very good.

Now that camp is behind, I have some time and I don't anticipate to have to suddenly do any necessary heavy lifting, I came in to the Carter Bloodcare location in Addison to donate one pint of blood. Only six more pints and I would achieve my 3rd gallon. The only thing on the sheet of vital information the staff gave me that I didn't really know the normal level was the hemoglobin so I went and checked it out. Reading about the different normal level for men and women, I thought of all the feminists out there who adamantly claim that men and women are definitely equal in all aspect and just smiled.

The radio show went well tonight. We talked about Social Security reform, to fix it once and for all with personal account. I want to know that at least some part of the 12.4% of my income that I pay in is going to be tie to my very own Social Security number. We highlighted a few things about the local municipal races. We talked about our Freedom March in Washington DC on Saturday, April 30th, 2005. So far, we have senator John Cornyn, congressman Kenny Marchant, congressman Pete Sessions, and congressman Michael C. Burgess, MD agreed to serve as honorary co-chairs for the event. I expect the list to continue to grow. Check out VPAC-DFW for the most up to date list.

Right after the Freedom March on Saturday, we will hold our second annual Vietnamese American National Gala on Monday night. Check out the Trivia and Facts section.

I am getting ready to head down to Pineywoods for our 5th annual springbreak camp, organized by the Vietnamese Alliance Youth, southwest region. It runs from Thursday through Sunday and I don't expect to have internet access.

An interesting article about credit card balance carried by members of congress.

County judge Margaret Keliher was our speaker tonight at Northern Dallas Pachyderm Club monthly meeting. Dallas has one of the lowest county tax rate compare to the surrounding counties but because of Parkland and consequently the hospital district tax rate, the combined tax rate is highest among all the north Texas counties. State law only allows Dallas county to request re-imbursement from other counties when the person from the other counties being treated at Parkland has an income below 21% of the federal poverty level, which amount to about $4,800 per year. It's obvious that is of no help at all.

Went and got my tax done today since I will travel almost every weekend and won't have a lot of time to do it on my own.

Nicolee Ambrose is currently the strongest candidate for chairman of the Young Republican National Federation this year.

The Texas Young Republican Federation has their annual leadership conference this weekend at the historic Menger Hotel in downtown San Antonio, almost right across from the Alamo. Our speakers on various topics include: Rene Diaz, newly appointed judge on the 224th Civil District Court who formerly was a partner at Brock & Person, P.C. and also General Counsel to the Republican Party of Texas; newly appointed commissioner Elizabeth Ames Jones of the Texas Railroad Commission and formerly district 121st state representative; congressman Mike Conaway of the 11th district, who is a CPA by trade; and Bill Noble who is the man that runs the 72-hour ground game in Texas. My flight back to Dallas was 18:40 so I missed the talk about the media factor by Sherry Sylvester. The more I fly Southwest, the better I like them.

We were talking about Social Security and taxes and there was an interesting question to congressman Conaway about how many CPA there are among 435 members of the US House of Representatives. The answer is among Republicans, there are congressman E. Clay Shaw from the 22nd district of Florida and congressman Mark Kennedy from the 6th district of Minnesota.

The Democrats are crying that personal accounts is the equivalent of gambling but they forget to mention that all teachers, university professors and federal employees do not put their 12.4% into the Social Security "Trust" Fund but rather personal retirement accounts. The employees of Galveston county, Texas also opt-out of paying the Social Security or payroll tax when they still had a chance and are doing much better than the rest of us.

Had breakfast with a group of about 10 people from VOAAA and city of Plano mayor Pat Evans this morning at Poor Richard. I learned for the first time about the arts hall that is going to be built on a 138 acres piece of land that was donated. It is located within the city of Allen in the tri-cities area of SH 121 and Custer Rd., where the boundaries of Plano, Allen and Frisco meet. If the voters of Plano decide shell out money to build it on the local election on Saturday, May 7th, when completed, it would be bigger than the Eiseman Center in Richardson, and be in the same class with the Bass Performance Hall in Fort Worth and the Meyerson Symphony Center in Dallas.

A great story about George and Amelia Limpert which I first saw quoted in the weekly update by Tony Perkins of the Family Research Council.

We had a productive conference call to make sure we got everything cover for our Vietnamese Alliance Youth - Southwest Region springbreak camp at Pineywoods next week, Thursday night through Sunday afternoon. This would be our fifth annual camp.

A guy from the campaign of Lee Lutz, candidate for Garland city council district 8, called me yesterday and again this morning. She is the challenger to my friend, incumbent councilman Randall Dunning.

Yesterday, I emailed Mike, senator Cornyn's legislative aide, to thank the senator for the introduction of S 394, the OPEN Government Act of 2005.

A great summary of all the races in the metroplex by the Dallas Morning News. Similar list by the Fort Worth Star-Telegram. This one has the DISD board of trustees races.

Executives compensation for different companies, all in one place.

Jan Woody, a great friend both personally and generally of the Asian community, has decided to run for Dallas County Schools Board of Trustees. I urge everyone lives within the boundaries of Dallas County Commissioner's Court District 1 to vote for her.

The Carrollton Library Board had its second bi-monthly meeting of the year yesterday. We had a briefing from Rudy who is in charge of access and technical services for both libraries. A very concise and informative presentation in which Rudy mentioned the possible future deployment of RFID to track items in the library when the budget would allow, the technology has been tested out, cost of deployment has gone down to more affordable level ($0.25 instead of the current $0.79 per item) as well as questions regarding privacy and many other related issues have been addressed. It is interesting to note that Allen Public Library and Grapevine Public Library have already gone ahead with the technology.

I have never heard of either of these gentlemen until today but I am glad I did. This piece about Hans Bethe on the New York Times mentioned Edward Teller as the conservative counterpoint politically.

I have seen these car sharing programs a while back and decided they were impractical. I am looking at them again today but it's still more expensive than just go out and rent a car. I checked out Zipcar for the DC area, the rate is $59 per day or $8.5 per hour; and that is on top of $25 annual fee. The other one is City Car Share, which is not really any better: $44 a day and $0.44 each mile in addition to $300 deposit. Whoever is doing price structuring need to continue working on it I guess.

I was fortunate to have collected enough loyalty reward points to book two nights at the Candlewood Suites - Arboretum Northwest this weekend in Austin. Even though the hotel was less 8 minutes from church according to MapQuest, I was a little late checking out of my hotel this morning so I arrived late at the Vietnamese Alliance Church - Austin for Sunday worship. However, I came in right when the senior pastor was praying the opening prayer so I guess they must have also started late. This congregation is very unique among the more than 70 churches spreading all over the US in our Vietnamese district of the Christian and Missionary Alliance. Every family brings a little plate every Sunday so they are always able to have lunch together after the service. I had lunch and joined their youth group for fellowship and also promoted the upcoming Pineywoods springbreak camp.

In addition to South Carolina, TSRA announced that reciprocal agreement reached with the state of Pennsylvania now allows me as a Texas CHL to carry in the commonwealth. Great job by the attorney general Greg Abbott and the governor Rick Perry.

VASCON went very well. Had an opportunity to meet Yung Krall, who was the best agent the CIA had against communist Vietnam in the late 1970s. Also met Ysa Le, executive director of ViFF, in person after we have been talking on the phone a couple times. I will be coming to Orange County the weekend of April 8th to volunteer there, meet the directors and film makers and network to try to organize a film festival like what ViFF is but in a much smaller scale here in the Dallas/Fort Worth metroplex area.

State senator Kyle Janek were our speaker at the Golden Corridor Republican Women last night at the Parkway Hills Baptist Church. He talked about asbestos, silica, and tort reform in general as well as answering various questions from our members regarding the proposed payroll tax, tuition deregulation, reducing property tax, texas school finance, the proposed trans-Texas corridor and tollway in general, spending more money in the classroom and higher pay for teachers instead of administration and other related matters ....

Martha Stewart is a great example of not so much what happened to you but how you response is more important.

I am all ready to head down to Austin for VASCON this weekend afterwork today.

Dallas place 14 council race is not the only one with many candidates. Remember San Jose place 7 council open seat where three candidates of Vietnamese descent are running, saw this in the San Jose Mercury News:

"Taking out nominating papers were: Andrew A. Diaz, 62, a perennial council candidate; Ramon Duran, a 41-year-old small-business owner; Madison Nguyen, 30, a Franklin-McKinley school board trustee; Rudy Rodriguez, 47, a public-affairs specialist for State Farm Insurance; a woman who goes by the name Mahealani, 52, who works for the Silicon Valley Workforce Investment Network; Bob Dhillon, 62, a former San Jose planning commissioner; Buu Thai, a field representative for Assemblywoman Sally Leiber, D-San Jose; attorney Linda Nguyen, 28; and Beth Gonzales, 54, an Oak Grove High School history teacher.

Zandria L. Elbert, 27, has filed a notice of candidate intention statement with the city clerk."

A good summary by the League of Women Voters of Dallas on why you should vote NO on the strong mayor city charter amendment, present to voters on May 7th in the form of the petition by Beth Ann Blackwood.

It appears that congressman Jim Langevin of Rhode Island, a prolife Democrat is considering a run to challenge incumbent Republican senator Linicoln Chafee, who I know is a RINO and I think is pro-abortion. Even though rumors have it that Langevin may have a chance of defeating the incumbent, the Democrats are out to make sure he does not run because he's prolife, and that is unacceptable for them.

John K. Zareva, Director of Development for the Institute for Policy Innovation was the speaker for our monthly DCYR meeting last night. It was the best presentation regarding Social Security reform I have seen so far.

Interested in a more conservative version of the AARP, check out USANext.

Check out this fiscal policy report card of our governors by the Cato Institute.

I have never worked as a waiter, even during highschool summers or during college so I don't know how frustrating it is personally although I had friends who did and heard complains. I find there are actually sites dedicating to this subjects: stainedapron.com and bitterwaitress.com. Honestly, I try to tip roughly 15%, but usually round to the nearest whole dollar, so it could be 14% or 16%. Even when service was bad, it's still 10%, never below.