Greg Awtry

As I write this editorial column on Sunday, December 30, 2012, to be published on Wednesday, January 2, 2013, I have no way of knowing if you will ever read it.

As publisher, it is my job to lead this newspaper through the often times opposing views of journalism and capitalism. To do this we have to approve an annual budget, establish subscription and advertising rates, ensure all the logistics of printing and distribution are in place, and adhere to all the government’s regulations. On top of this we are expected to produce an excellent product five days a week and do so at a profit.

We should have done all this work in the latter half of 2012, but we were too busy trying to cover the election and fighting the pipeline route, so we “kicked the can” down the road until after the election. Then we spent the next seven weeks arguing amongst ourselves about the entire process. Then, we decided since it was the Holidays we would just wait until the last day of the year to do all this, so we could spend more time at home.

So today (I mentioned this was written on Sunday, December 30, 2012) I called our management team together to see if we could actually produce newspapers in 2013 and avoid the fiscal cliff we made for ourselves by not doing our jobs as our readers expected us to do in 2012.

Around the table we have Kathy Larson, our Advertising Director, Steve Moseley and Melanie Wilkinson our Managing Editor and News Editor respectively. There is Bryan Emick our Circulation/Distribution Director, Valerie Nunnenkamp who leads our Creative Department, and Eric Eckert, our Online Director. All of these individuals are instrumental in leading their departments and represent important elements to all of our readers.

I open the meeting by telling those present at the table, we need more revenue, and just like President Obama’s budget, which calls for a 64.2 percent increase in personal income tax rates over the next five years, I ask the team to raise rates by 62 percent, but that we should consider only raising subscription and advertising rates on the richest readers and largest advertisers.

Kathy Larson in sales immediately says that is not fair and balanced. Bryan Emick in circulation says we don’t know how much money our readers make so we would have to ask everyone for their tax returns to see if they should pay more.

Eric Eckert, our digital expert and Valerie Nunnenkamp suggest we cut out expenses instead. Eckert says let’s stop printing the paper and make everyone read the paper online. Nunnenkamp says let’s drop all color ads so we don’t have to print the paper in color.

Moseley and Wilkinson in our news department want us to expand the paper so we can print more news stories and more photographs.

Larson says if we raise ad rates by sixty percent that nobody will buy the ads and we will actually bring in less revenue. Emick says if we raise subscription rates by sixty percent people will cancel their subscriptions and a hundred newspaper carriers will lose their jobs.

I just want to play golf and take the family to Hawaii, and if we can’t get this done, we’ll fall over the fiscal cliff and possibly won’t be able to produce newspapers our readers deserve!

Of course none of this really happened. But if we actually ran our newspaper like Washington is running our country, I guarantee we would have readers more outraged than they are with the way our federal government is taking care of the peoples’ business right now.

We would have hundreds of York News-Times readers writing us letters to the editor and calling to cancel subscriptions. Our advertisers would be outraged and threaten to cancel advertising contracts. Our contracted carriers who are up in the middle of the night trudging through snowdrifts would picket our office in fear of losing their jobs.

Yet most of us sit idly by watching Washington mismanage our country to the point it jeopardizes our future, while placing a near insurmountable burden on our children. Where is the outrage?

Have we all given up on the notion that our country was founded on principles that the people would rule through representatives? Are you happy with the way they are doing the job we hired them to do? Have you contacted them and told them about your feelings?

All of us here at this newspaper try desperately each and every day to put out a paper that is representative of our community. We are not perfect and don’t claim to be, and when we mess up, you let us know, and you should! When our nation is in peril and your congressman, senator or president mess up, do you let them know? You should!

My resolution in 2013 is to watch our Washington, Lincoln, and York representatives like a hawk. You deserve that from your newspaper. Your job, if you choose to accept it, is to help us. Help us build by letting us publish your opinions on how well (or not so well) our elected officials (your employees) are doing.

Here, at the News-Times, Larson, Moseley, Wilkinson, Emick, Nunnenkamp and Eckert did their jobs in 2012 so we could keep our business running efficiently and profitably in 2013.

If Obama, Reid, Boehner, McConnell or Pelosi, were to apply for work at the News-Times, they would be turned down, not qualified based on poor job performance.

Sitting around the Whitehouse on the last day of the year trying to figure out how pay for a government we can no longer afford is no way to run a country, which is why we could never hire any of these national leaders. They don’t deserve to sit around a negotiating table with people of real integrity like we have here at the York News-Times.

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Nobody wants to be an illegal immigrant. We don’t have children around the world dreaming to be an illegal immigrant when they grow up. And adults? I am sure they don’t lie awake at night with aspirations of making a career out of becoming an illegal immigrant.

What we do have are millions of people who dream of coming to the United States to improve their lives in a land with a rich history of immigration success stories that date back hundreds of years.

What we do have is a government with a tragically flawed immigration policy and a Congress that doesn’t have one tenth of the guts of a family close to dying in a Mexican or American desert in an attempt to get into our country.

These illegal immigrants risk their lives to come here while our politicians won’t risk a vote to solve the crisis.

You have heard all the claims. Since the last “immigration reform” in 1986 under the Reagan presidency, amnesty was granted to illegals and the border was to be sealed. Well, Congress failed, which is one of the few things they are very, very good at, and didn’t seal the border. The press continually tells us the Democrats want the immigrants’ votes and the Republicans want the inexpensive immigrant labor.

And folks, that is where we are today, stuck in a political climate of fear, afraid to solve a crisis because it may cost the political elite their job if they come out and try to do the right thing.

The question: What is the right thing? Oh, you can say we must deport all the illegal immigrants. Come on, be realistic.  We don’t even know how many illegals are here because of the way they enter the country, but estimates have the number somewhere between ten and twenty million. Our country is not going to deport fifteen million people, nor should we.

They are here because we failed to protect our borders. Are they illegal? Yes, they are. Should there be consuquences for them breaking our laws. Unquestionably. Should they have tried harder to come here legally? Maybe they should have. But Roy Germano, a Ph.D. from the University of Texas at Austin who has written and studied our entire flawed system extensively, says because of our antiquated and illogical immigration laws this may be near impossible.

Germano says, “Take, for example, a 30-year old Mexican with a high school education and a sibling who is a U.S. citizen. According to data compiled by Forbes magazine, “playing by the rules” and applying for a green card could mean waiting in a line that stretches back an estimated 131 years!!! In most visa categories for Mexicans and Filipinos… applicants are looking at least a fifteen to twenty year wait…”

Once again the fault lies not with the immigrant, but with Congress, the body in charge of our immigration law.

I am a “white” American. Therefore I must be a descendant of an immigrant. Did my earlier relatives come to this country legally? I don’t know. Did yours? You may know the answer, but many of us don’t. I could be here illegally, but for the fourteenth amendment that states if I was born in the United States I am a citizen and can stay here.

So what of the thousands of children born here to illegal immigrant parents? Does the fourteenth amendment apply to them? Well, whether you agree or disagree, the answer is, yes it does.

So what’s the answer to illegal immigration and the illegals already here? More on that next time, but it is obvious the answer lies in the Halls of Congress. Yes, that same cowardly body, afraid of taking on the big issues of our time because they are unwilling to make the difficult, possibly career jeopardizing decisions.

So if you are one of the “mass deportation” folks, may I suggest the first step in solving the immigration crisis is to first remove the problem, by looking east to Washington D.C. instead of to the south, and consider mass deportation from inside the beltway via the ballot box.

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It was hot out last Tuesday. I was driving around downtown York on my way to the City Auditorium to vote in the primary election. As I drove by Grand Central Foods, I saw Opie and Aunt Bea sitting on a bench eating ice cream cones. Right across the street, the police station, and I wondered what Andy and Barney were up to on Election Day in our town.

Okay, maybe it wasn’t Aunt Bea and Opie sitting on that bench, and maybe Andy and Barney weren’t really in the station. But I really was driving around downtown York on my way to vote.

As I pulled up to the Auditorium there was a line of pickups parked along 6^th Street. I couldn’t help but notice there were several with the windows down. On my radio I was listening to a national talk show and somehow the two didn’t seem to go together, an urban loud-mouth trashing our country, and hard working pickup driving Americans taking time out of their busy day to exercise our right to vote.

It was right then and there I realized the enormous disconnect.

On one side of the disconnect we have Washington. Many of you have been there. It is an island of sorts, surrounded by the beltway, a ten-lane Interstate more often than not crawling at the pace of a York city street cleaner. Inside the beltway you have large stone buildings filled with bureaucrats, and a Capitol building filled with politicians. Running down the center is the “Mall”, with the Reflection Pool as the centerpiece, flanked by monuments and museums, recognizing our greatest Americans, our greatest sacrifices, and amazing history.

On the other side of the disconnect, we have us. And by us, I mean pickup driving farmers, moms and dads working jobs, maybe two jobs, trying to make a living. It is a world far removed from Washington, because here in the heartlands, we make things and we grow things. In Washington, they talk about things.

In Washington, they make rules. In York, we follow rules. In Washington they work for us. In York, it seems like we work for them. In Washington, they spend our hard earned money. In York, we send them our hard earned money.

In York we balance our budget. In Washington, they not only don’t balance a budget, they won’t even pass one! In York we support our schools. In Washington they tell us how to run our schools. In York, we don’t burden our children with debt. In Washington they burden all our children with generations of debt.

Folks, we have a disconnect and it is a growing problem in our nation.

Washington is broken. Do you realize there about six billion people on earth? Do you realize we (the U.S.A.) have to borrow about four billion dollars a day? That’s just short of a dollar a day for every single human being on earth! Do you realize there is no plan to stop this?

We have a choice to make.

We can either continue to let Washington squander 230 years of the most incredible nation-building in human history, risking the future of our children and grandchildren, or we can demand Washington stop this insanity, and return our country to fiscal solvency. There are countries in the world, like Greece, showing us what’s in store for us if we continue down this path. We see it. Why doesn’t Washington?

So Washington, if you are listening, remember this. You don’t create wealth, you consume wealth. You don’t make commerce, you regulate it. You don’t grow the food, farmers do. You don’t educate children, teachers do. You don’t drill for oil, make cars, build homes, or construct roads. The people do all that. You don’t produce products, create profits, or pay taxes. The people do.

Washington, you talk. That’s all you do. And it’s time you start talking (and working) together to create an environment that will restore opportunities allowing the people to do what they do best, work, build, grow, and protect our way of life. Washington, you didn’t make a great country, the people did.

As much as I may long for the innocent days of Mayberry, I realize those times are gone, but the greatness of this country is not. Washington is broken. They have lost sight that their power never did reside in Washington. It lives in the people, in York, Nebraska, and a thousand other Yorks. Yes, Washington is broken, we are not.

As I left the Auditorium, it felt good that I voted. I had to drive by Grand Central Foods again on the way back to work at the newspaper office. Opie and Aunt Bea were gone. There wasn’t a single police car in front of the station. We had a newspaper to put out that night, and people had all gone back to work. It was Election Day and we have a nation to build.

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The big debate for Nebraska Republican Senatorial candidates came and went without substantial and specific dialogue about how any of the candidates would solve the nations’ problems.

Deb Fischer, Jon Bruning and Don Stenberg spent the entire hour with the tired old position statements, “I’m for this,” or “I am against that.” The debate began flat, stayed flat and ended flat.

Here they were, debating at a college campus, and not a college student in sight. No live audience, very little pressure from the panel to seek out specifics, and voters had to come away with more questions than answers on who best will go to Washington with a plan and a vision to fundamentally change this country.

All three candidates said time after time they supported a balanced budget amendment. All three do not want to increase taxes. That means we would have to cut a trillion in spending each year to balance the budget. Folks, that is cutting one third of our government.

Here’s a question that wasn’t asked. “What specifically would you cut or eliminate that would add up to a trillion dollars a year?”

All three said they are against illegal immigration, and do not support amnesty for millions of illegals who are already here. Here’s a question that wasn’t asked. “What would you do with the millions of illegal immigrants who are in the United States right now?”

Would they deport millions of people? Would they aggressively go after employers who are illegally hiring immigrants? They all want a secure border. Are they in favor of a fence? How would they secure the border?

Instead we got questions about who could they work with in the senate or explain a mistake you made and regret. We got questions asking about opponents’ weaknesses which to his credit, Bruning refused to answer.

All three candidates want to reduce the size and scope of the federal government. My question would be, “Please explain and be specific!”

All three want to drastically reduce the regulatory burdens of federal agencies. My question would be, “Please explain and be specific!”

The panel that questioned these candidates missed a heck of an opportunity to dig past the “position statements” and uncover the candidates’ real solutions to problems facing America.

The voters were left empty handed with no more knowledge of the candidates and their solutions, if any, than when the debate began.

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There is no possible way we can tax ourselves back to prosperity. Everyone knows that we will have to drastically reduce spending. Nobody wants to seriously address the inevitable cuts. Not even Paul Ryan who has proposed two consecutive budgets in the House and although they are a step in the right direction, neither comes close to the heavy lifting necessary to get the debt under control.

President Obama is AWOL. Yes, AWOL on the entire debt crisis. He is more than just Commander in Chief. He is also the CEO of the entire federal government. Any CEO worth his salt must know something about budgets. But not this president. He hasn’t a clue.

Take his last two budgets. He had trillion dollar deficits in each. He had the insulting nerve to submit them to the American people. Last year the Senate voted on Obama’s budget. The vote was 0 to 97. Not one single “Yes” vote.

This year the vote went to the House. The result, 0 to 414. How’s that for fiscal leadership from the Whitehouse? If Obama was the head coach (and he is) and went 0 and 511 for his last two years, I think people would be looking for a new coach, right?

Listening to the President one would think the answer is to tax the rich under his make-believe Buffett Rule. His plan would add $4.7 billion in additional taxes each year. That would fix the entire problem, right?

Folks, we spend $10 billion each and every day. In order to do that we have to borrow about $4 billion each and every day. So the President’s answer to our fiscal insanity, the Buffett Rule, would cover what we borrow for one day! We can’t tax our way to prosperity!

Why can’t we fix it? Incumbents! The Washington “ins” want reelected to their royal positions. They believe if they were to do the inevitable (drastically cut spending) they would not get reelected. They are too afraid to do what every single one of us do all the time, which is say, “We can’t afford it.”

Washington and the representatives we sent there to do the hard work are not doing it. They have found it is a lot easier to spend money that to cut spending. They have found the way to get reelected is to promise things we can’t afford and send the bill to our children and grandchildren.

Every parent and grandparent should demand this stops now. Don’t vote for anyone who doesn’t make it crystal clear how they intend to stop taking money from children.

We are adults. We can handle the hard news. We work hard to give our kids better opportunities, better lives and a better nation than was left to us, and now, we have a slew of politicians taking that away. I don’t want my children and grandchildren spending the rest of their lives paying for our excess.

If a candidate or current politician is unable to explain exactly how they will balance our federal budget, then I consider them no more than a common thief who has their hands in my children’s piggy bank. And what, I ask you, is lower than a person who would steal from children?

President Obama won’t change. The United States Senate, under Harry Reid’s leadership won’t change. For crying out loud, they haven’t passed a budget in over three years in the Senate and Obama’s budget is so bad even the Democrats won’t vote for it. They are common thieves, and we pay them for it!

Meanwhile, the Republican controlled House of Representatives has voted and passed two budgets, only to have them sent to Harry Reid’s black hole of intelligent legislation. It doesn’t take much more than a box of rocks between our ears to see where the problem lies.

We have a primary in a couple weeks, and a national election in six months. If you want to vote for more thieves, go ahead. That’s what so great about this country. It’s not a crime to be stupid. As for me, I choose to negate your vote and elect someone who will work day and night to stop robbing my grandchildren of dollars they haven’t even earned yet.

Mothers, fathers and grandparents, I urge you to go to the polls on May 15^th unlike never before and help change the nation. Then do it again in November. Then let’s never allow the people we hired to steal from our children again. It’s should be a crime.

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