HCRP Announces DR. Ben Carson as Lincoln/Reagan Keynote Speaker

Posted by Staff | @CorridorNews | @Corridor_News

At the time of publishing, Dr. Ben Carson has not announced that he is running for president. A source has informed SM Corridor News that a decision should come sometime in May of 2015.

Hays County Republican Party, “tickets will not go on sale until middle to the end of January, and additional details will not be available until after the first of the year.”

We have also included his National Prayer Breakfast Speech Published on Feb 15, 2013 in our Video Gallery

The Hays County Republican Party has announced that Dr. Ben Carson will be their Keynote Speaker for their annual Lincoln/Reagan Gala, which is scheduled for Friday, April 17 2015 at Embassy Suites.

A GOP strategist Tyler Harber has noted that Carson’s team has been attending conservative events ever since 2012 collecting names and email addresses. “The man’s running. He’s been running for two years.”

Who is Dr. Ben Carson?

Carson was born in Detroit, Michigan, the son of Sonya (née Copeland) and Robert Solomon Carson, a Seventh-day Adventist Minister, and his parents were both from rural Georgia. He is genetically 80% African and 20% European. When he was 8 years old, his parents divorced and their mother raised him and his 10-year-old brother, Curtis.

Dr. Carson attended Southwestern High School in Southwest Detroit and graduated from Yale University, where he majored in psychology. He received his M.D. from the University of Michigan Medical School.

Carson was a professor of neurosurgery, oncology, plastic surgery, and pediatrics, and he was the director of pediatric neurosurgery at Johns Hopkins Hospital. At age 33, he became the youngest major division director in Johns Hopkins history, as director of pediatric neurosurgery. He was also a co-director of the Johns Hopkins Craniofacial Center.

According to Johns Hopkins Hospital literature, “Dr. Carson focuses on traumatic brain injuries, brain and spinal cord tumors, achondroplasia, neurological and congenital disorders, craniosynostosis, epilepsy, and trigeminal neuralgia. He is also interested in maximizing the intellectual potential of every child.”

In 1987 Carson successfully separated conjoined twins, the Binder twins, who had been joined at the back of the head, making them craniopagus twins. The 50-member surgical team, led by Carson, worked for 22 hours. At the end, the twins were separated, but one died. As Carson said in an interview:

I was talking to a friend of mine, who was a cardiothoracic surgeon, who was the chief of the division, and I said, “You guys operate on the heart in babies, how do you keep them from exsanguinating” and he says, “Well, we put them in hypothermic arrest.” I said, “Is there any reason that — if we were doing a set of Siamese twins that were joined at the head — that we couldn’t put them into hypothermic arrest, at the appropriate time, when we’re likely to lose a lot of blood?” and he said, “No.” I said, “Wow, this is great.” Then I said, “Why am I putting my time into this? I’m not going to see any Siamese twins.” So I kind of forgot about it, and lo and behold, two months later, along came these doctors from Germany, presenting this case of Siamese twins. And, I was asked for my opinion, and I then began to explain the techniques that should be used, and how we would incorporate hypothermic arrest, and everybody said “Wow! That sounds like it might work.” And, my colleagues and I, a few of us went over to Germany. We looked at the twins. We actually put in scalp expanders, and five months later we brought them over and did the operation, and lo and behold, it worked.

Carson figured in the revival of the hemispherectomy, a drastic surgical procedure in which part or all of one hemisphere of the brain is removed to control severe pediatric epilepsy. He refined the procedure in the 1980s, encouraged by Dr. John M. Freeman, and performed it many times.

In addition to his responsibilities at Johns Hopkins, he has served on the boards of the Kellogg Company, Costco, and the Academy of Achievement. He is an emeritus fellow of the Yale Corporation.

In March 2013, Carson announced he would retire as a surgeon, stating “I’d much rather quit when I’m at the top of my game, and there’s so many more things that can be done.” His retirement became official on July 1, with Carson saying he would leave the decision of whether to go into politics “in the hands of God, but much can be done outside the political arena.”

Carson is a member of the American Academy of Achievement, and the Horatio Alger Association of Distinguished Americans. In 2008 the White House awarded Carson the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation’s highest civilian honor. In 2010, he was elected into the National Academy of Sciences Institute of Medicine. Carson has been awarded 38 honorary doctorate degrees and dozens of national merit citations.

He is an accomplish author and  has written six bestselling books published by Zondervan, an international Christian media and publishing company: Gifted Hands, Think Big, The Big Picture, Take the Risk, and America the Beautiful, and One Nation. The first book is an autobiography, and two are about his personal philosophies of success that incorporate hard work and a faith in God.

On July 8, 2013, Carson joined The Washington Times as a weekly opinion columnist, and also writes for a digital magazine aimed at conservative African-Americans, called American Current

Carson’s Criticism of The Affordable Care Act

On October 11, 2013, Carson spoke at the conservative Values Voters Summit in Washington, D.C., where he called the Affordable Care Act (ACA) “the worst thing that has happened in this nation since slavery.” In his speech, Carson claimed that the entire push for the legislation originated with Vladimir Lenin and quoted Lenin as saying that “socialized medicine is the keystone to the establishment of a socialist state.” Lenin did not actually say this, although the purported quote appears on a number of conservative websites. After being criticized for his comments, Carson wrote a Washington Times column on October 15 denying that he was “equating Obamacare with slavery” and criticizing the “PC police” for attempting “to discredit and … silence” him. Carson also acknowledged that there was controversy over whether Lenin used the “exact words” quoted and said that “the larger point is that and his followers certainly subscribed to the philosophy symbolized by these words.”

During the White House Prayer Breakfast, Carson commented on the ACA:

“We’ve already started down the path to solving one of the other big problems, health care. We need to have good health care for everybody. It’s the most important thing that a person can have. Money means nothing, titles mean nothing when you don’t have your health, but we’ve got to figure out efficient ways to do it. We spend a lot of money on health care, twice as much per capita as anybody in else in the world, and yet not very efficient. What can we do?

Here’s my solution. When a person is born, give him a birth certificate, an electronic medical record and a health savings account.”

Sources: ABC News, FOX News, Wikipedia, and The Political Insider