Dear American Citizens:
Lend me your ears! Tea Parties are all well and good but so far, they have not effected any major change in what’s taking place in Washington, D.C.
Listen to me: If you want change, your opportunity is just around the corner.
Tuesday, May 4, is Primary Election Day. It’s the day when you can start a snowball down the hill of change.
Listen people: This is not about any party – Tea, Democrat nor Republican. It’s about YOU taking the time and energy to have a look at every candidate, regardless of party affiliation, who is running for any public office.
Contrary to some movement’s suggestions, it’s not about just automatically displacing an incumbent with a new body. It’s about looking for the person who actually has ingrained into his very being the integrity and ethical conduct that would cause him to only give voice to issues he will actually follow through on.
He is a person who will truly and fully research an issue, present an accurate accounting of what’s at stake for all of us then listen and act on what his/her constituents want. He or she is the person who, when they say they will act on your behalf, mean that if we say overwhelmingly “don’t vote for reduction of Social Security benefits” or any other major/minor issue, he won’t.
The person you must vote for is the one who will never cave in to the financial offerings of lobbyists. He or she will not trade favors ‘across the aisle’ to enhance his own personal position. He or she will not trade away the stated desires of his constituents for his own personal gain. This person is the one who will fight unfailingly for the desires of his hometown and home state constituents. He will also encourage those around him to do the same!
Friends, if you want to effect change, really look into who the candidates are; examine their very moral fiber. In life before candidacy, what did they do? How did they handle themselves in business? What would a customer say about them? What would their neighbor say? Is their speech just what you want to hear or are they supporting their talk with good examples of how they mean to move it forward once in office? If they’re tossing mud at their opponents, are they doing that to keep you from focusing on the mud they, themselves, are sitting in? Do they just show up for every photo opportunity right around election time or are they accessible all of the time?
Your vote shouldn’t be a mindless click of the keyboard. You need to go into that voting booth armed and dangerous with knowledge that can help you effect a much needed change! Do your homework. Make your vote actually count.
Filed under: Bankruptcy, Change, Democrats, Ecology, Global Warming, Government, Jimmy Carter, Legacy, News, Nostalgia, Politics, Pollution, Republicans, Taxes
I did not write this. I got it via email from a friend who also did not write it. However, we both think it’s worth the read and is very indicative about how our ‘gubmint’ works. Read on and feel free to copy it and send it to anyone you think might care or those who are too gullible to actually think this is the way it really is. Maybe they’ll finally ‘get it’.
Once upon a time the government had a vast scrap yard in the middle of a desert. Congress said, “Someone may steal from it at night.” So they created a night watchman position and hired a person for the job.
Then Congress said, “How does the watchman do his job without instruction?” So they created a planning department and hired two people; one person to write the instructions and one person to do time studies.
Then Congress said, “How will we know the night watchman is doing the tasks correctly?” So they created a Quality Control department and hired two people; one to do the studies and one to write the reports.
Then Congress said, “How are these people going to get paid?” So they created the following positions: a time keeper and a payroll officer, and then hired two people.
Then Congress said, “Who will be accountable for all of these people?” So they created an administrative section and hired three people; an Administrative Officer, Assistant Administrative Officer, and a Legal Secretary.
Then Congress said, “We have had this command in operation for one year and we are $18,000 over budget. We must cutback overall cost.” So they laid off the night watchman.
NOW slowly…let it sink in. Does anybody remember the reason given for the establishment of the DEPARTMENT OF ENERGY during the Carter Administration?
Anybody? Anything? No?
Bottom line. We’ve spent several hundred billion dollars in support of this agency…the reason for which hardly any person who reads this can remember!
Ready?
It was very simple…and at the time, everybody thought it very appropriate.
The Department of Energy was instituted on 8-04-1977, TO LESSEN OUR DEPENDENCE ON FOREIGN OIL. Hey, pretty 
efficient, huh???
And now it’s 2010 — 33 years later — and the budget for this “necessary” department is at $24.2 billion a year.
They have 16,000 federal employees and approximately 100,000 contract employees; and look at the job they have done! (this is where you slap your forehead and say, “what were they thinking?”)
Thirty-three years ago, 30% of our oil consumption was foreign imports.
Today 70% of our oil consumption is foreign imports — good ‘ole bureaucracy.
And now, we are going to turn the banking system, health care, and the auto industry over to the same government?
Quietly, we go like sheep to slaughter.
Filed under: Bankruptcy, Barack Obama, Change, Democrats, Government, Healthcare, Jobs, Legacy, Politics, Taxes
I’ve been hearing, and then reading in today’s paper, about various of our representatives and senators who are being threatened by members of our populace. While it is regrettable, it should not be unexpected.
“When the people fear their government, there is tyranny; when the government fears the people, there is liberty.” ~ Thomas Jefferson
When there is talk of overhauling anything, you will never hear our federal government mentioned and yet the federal government is probably the most antiquated, out of touch, cumbersome, greedy, chaff-like bunch of blowhards grouped together anywhere on earth.
While they depend on us, their constituents to elect them to office, often that is the end of their relationship with us. While they are trying to be elected they say things that they think we want to hear. However, there is no connection between what they say to us and what they actually do for us. Doing for us is the least of their concerns once elected to office. Making bigger and larger government, lining their pockets with lobbyist dollars, and living a lifestyle only they are privy to is what consumes them once in office.
It is paramount these days that if you plan on walking into the Capitol Building you must automatically leave your integrity and the desires of your constituents outside the door! It doesn’t matter how many of your constituents jam your phone lines or how many thousands of emails you get asking, no begging you to vote a big fat NO on a subject, your seem to think that your job as a representative of the people is only to do whatever the nearest lobbyist or senior senator or representative wants you to do.
Regardless of how many times we vote you out and vote someone new in, we fail to effect any change and that’s because there is no longer even one good person who can stand firm, stick with the constituents, do as they ask. To a man, everyone can now be bought. Every man has his price and isn’t afraid to ask for it. Constituents? Who are they?
“States are not moral agents, people are, and can impose moral standards on powerful institutions.” ~ Noam Chomsky
To our discredit, we, the voters have sat back infinitely too many years allowing these shenanigans to go on. I think we did it because we weren’t so much affected – we still had our jobs, our bank accounts. Life was comfortable.
Well, life is changing. Life is no longer comfortable for us. Suddenly we see what you’re doing over there, how well you are living. We recognize, even if you don’t, that the $1.5 trillion that you’ve thrown at cheating, lying banks and car companies is coming out of our over picked pockets. Now, against all sanity, you’ve managed to throw another gazillion billion at a health care plan that is past the ridiculous – even though we asked you not to. Next on the horizon? Taking over the educational system and loans for higher education!
Other countries are getting tired of your approaches for more loans, more money. Your interest rates are going higher as you pass out money you don’t have. You think you can just tax us; but we can no longer afford to give you our money because you’ve worked it out wonderfully that most of our jobs, and our income, have evaporated into the Chinese, Japanese, and Mexican air through the world treaties that you’ve created!
“It does not take a majority to prevail… but rather an irate, tireless minority, keen on setting brushfires of freedom in the minds of men.” ~ Samuel Adams
Americans are holding tea parties because we are now angry: angry at ourselves for having allowed you to hoodwink us for so
long; angry that we’ve let you get away with it all. Americans want to take our country back, out of your misshapen hands and darkened minds and put it back on keel before we all find ourselves as the first of a new form of third world nation – the bankrupt, bereft, 300 million victims of choices made by 535 men and women!
You won’t listen. You won’t pay attention. You don’t vote according to what your constituents desire. In your pit of avarice you convince yourselves that you know better what we need here in the Mahoning Valley (or Anywhere, USA) than we do. Well, you don’t and in the current climate, sooner or later, you will pay a price. There is a consequence for every action; the choice of that consequence is yours.
“You can only govern men by serving them. The rule is without exception.” ~ Abraham Lincoln
Filed under: Ecology, Food, Global Warming, Government, Legacy, Pollution, Storms
This morning, well actually for the last few days, the talking heads were batting global warming around like a tennis ball made of silly putty.
Here’s how the ball bounces: The Al Gore-ites are all for it. A number of scientists are skeptical.
Big Al has looked into it via the internet that he invented. He pretty much knows what’s going on and even made a 
documentary that got on public TV and won him a peace prize. He wanted us to know so we’d stop doing the stuff that caused global warming in the first place.
The scientists, on the other hand, are skeptical of Big Al’s contention. Their point is that it’s difficult to prove that current weather patterns are caused by global warming. They contend that it’s very possible that the current weather patterns are nothing more than part of a recurring, historical cycle. This cycle is not very well documented because Al Gore didn’t invent the internet till the mid-1950′s, so people didn’t have many concrete methods to make note of previous weather cycles. At least not by methods that stand up to scientific examination. Pictures on cave walls don’t seem to count for much.
But I digress….
Here’s what I think: People are asking the wrong questions and concerned about the wrong stuff.
Sit down for a moment. Now, write down all the names of people who you know have cancer or had cancer in the last 10 years even if they are already dead. Next, if you’re over age 35, write down the names of all the people you remember who had cancer 25 years ago. Compare the list.
If you’re like me, your list of currently knowns with cancer (or recently deceased from the disease) is much longer than the list from 25 years ago. Hmmmm….
For an interesting road trip that will add more information to our sudo-scientific search, go out for a ride through the countryside. Tell me how many new ‘mountains’ (or at the minimum, very large hills) you see that you don’t remember being there when you were a kid. I’m thinking you’ll see a significant number.
Those are garbage dumps that are buried to look like mountains. They’re springing 
up everywhere! Their stench in some places pollutes the air; their decay leaches into our water systems. One of these days, Columbus will no longer be nestled on the flat plains of Ohio. It will rest among the mountains.
If you live in the Youngstown area, stand outside for an hour and count how many very large C planes use your house as landing directionals in take off and landing maneuvers from the local air base. If it’s a clear day, tell me what you see as they fly over. If you said a cascading gray emission coming out of the back of the engines, you’d be correct!
What is that? It’s the exhaust debris. Where is it going? Into our watershed, onto our crops, into the grass that cows are eating and consequently, into our bellies to be spread throughout our bodies. It’s called toxic waste and it messes with 
something in our bodies known as ‘free radicals’. Not good.
I”m not picking on the Air Force. Their gunk is just more visible.
We also need to be highly aware of all the pesticides used on crops and even our lawns.
Here’s what we’re told about that: As long as you wash the produce, the fruit, the potatoes, etc., you’ll be fine. Uh, I don’t think so. That stuff they put on the crops to kill the weeds, kill the bugs, grow uber tomatoes (that taste like straw) and delicious apples the size of a baby’s head, is sprayed across the crops, lands in the ground, is sucked up by the plant’s 
roots, embedding itself in something that you’re going to buy at the store or the local farm market then eat. Where will it go? Into your belly to ‘nourish’ your body.
So, what’s the problem? The problem is that your body doesn’t recognize that junk. Your body wasn’t created knowing what to do with the unrecognizable. Sometimes it will manage to expel it; unfortunately, more often the junk is deposited into your body tissue, your organs – pancreas, liver, kidneys, lungs. The body tries very hard to deal with it and does for awhile. But then it can’t deal anymore.
Next thing you know, you’re on the list you just made of people you know who have cancer or MS, or MD, or any number of diseases that can’t deal with a ruptured ecology.
So how’d we get here? Greed. People learned that if they used chemicals, they could improve 
their produce, improve their crop sales, make more money. Steel and oil barons learned that they could build empires worth billions while easily forgetting that their sludge and run off was going directly into our water sources. The tobacco companies started with a cigarette then built a ‘better’ one, filled with 10 times the nicotine our parents got from each puff. They used their technology to hook in more consumers, get more sales, fill their greedy coffers with more dollars.
Americans, in an effort to make life simpler, have created a need for fast foods, bright packaging that sells more products, plastics that won’t break down for thousands of years, and a hellish host of things, including TV’s, computers, furniture and good old every day garbage, that ends up in dumps that are turned into mountains.
The earth shudders. The weather changes. The earthquakes come. The K-Mart closes; the building is torn down; the parking lot is empty. The earth gets her chance and if you watch carefully, you’ll see her begin to reclaim what is hers. All’s she needs is a chance.
Will we give her that chance before it’s too late?
Filed under: Barack Obama, Government, Healthcare, Jimmy Carter, Jobs, News, Over reaction, Poll - Take One, Racism, Taxes, Work
Ladies and gentlemen.
I have experienced a dearth of ideas, meaning I just haven’t had an idea for days. Until today when the world has seemingly gone mad all at once (again)! Now I have about a half dozen ideas.
So, starting at the top – pun intended.
The criticism of President Obama and Jimmy Carter’s assessment.
First of all, I don’t believe, as Jimmy Carter is saying, that people are necessarily criticizing President Obama as a person, as a partial African American, nor as a man. Nope, I’m pretty sure they are not.
Many, if they are criticizing him, are taking cracks at him because of his infinitely unwise decisions.
Remember back in the campaign days when Mr. Obama assured us – as have so many before him – that he would hold down the spending and especially the pork barrel spending? Yet in the middle of the campaign, both he and John McCain ran back to D.C. to vote for the first $700 billion bailout. This turned out to be an $850 billion bailout that included numerous pork barrel items and one of the first instances where words didn’t 
match actions for either Mr. Obama or Mr. McCain.
Our displeasure in these people had nothing to do with either man’s race. Their actions, however, should have caused a lightning bolt action running through our psyches telling us we shouldn’t vote for either man, black, white or otherwise.
Then there was the auto maker’s bail out. I was really against this one but Mr. Obama championed the cause and the senators and congressmen yet again, did not heed our tortured, crictical screams. Next thing you know the American taxpayers became the not-so-proud owners of the Government Motors Company. Our displeasure had nothing to do with Mr. Obama’s race – only with his stupid response to a ridiculous situation that would have been better off left alone.
A small aside here: General Motors handed their bail out money to the Chinese government in order to extend their factories and auto production in China. I’m not sure why they didn’t ask China for the bailout? Oh, wait, yes I am. The Chinese government wouldn’t have given them one red cent. They’re not that gullible.
So now Mr. Obama is promoting a healthcare plan that will cost the American public $835 billion – so far. The plan is so unwieldy that I’m pretty sure no one, not even the lady who had to type it all up, knows what it says. The one thing that has been noted is that families who don’t subscribe to some form of health insurance will be fined $3,800. Maybe that’s how Congress plans to raise the $835 billion?
Stick with me here while I do the math on all this. $850 billion + $35 billion + $835 Billion = 1.720 TRILLION dollars of non existent taxpayer dollars earmarked for spending in less than a year by our first, partially African American president.
I don’t know about you, but I’m not on this rant because Mr. Obama is partially African American. I’m on this rant because I do have a brain and I am living and breathing in America. I’m ranting because I do resent someone who would give my hard earned money to crooks and thieves who have either stolen from the accounts of or raped the American people by stealing their jobs and giving them to the Mexicans and Chinese in order to make greater profits.
I am ranting because it is unbelievable to me that anyone would look at what has taken place in the last year and still have the gall to say people are picking on Mr. Obama because he’s our first partial African American president!
Have you lost your minds? Do you seriously think the caucasians would be sitting around saying ‘gee, we’re so glad the white guy in office dumped us into the cesspool of a 1.720 trillion dollar debt’ if John McCain had gotten into office and committed these financial atrocities? If you do, then it’s time for more than a change in American government; it’s time for a change in its people.
9/16/09 – 11:25 p.m.
I’ll be brief.
Why do we need the government butting into everything and everyone’s business?
I objected to the government bail out of both GM and banking institutions who participated in nefarious activities that should
have caused their demise. If they wanted to bail out someone, they should have bailed out the individuals who were affected by the stupidity of those institutions and let the institutions go ahead and die. As an aside to this, if you’ve noticed, Ford didn’t show up at the Capitol Building asking for money. Nor are they taking on overseas partners. YEA Ford!
Now, Pres. Obama wants to do something, anything with healthcare. One yahoo I heard yakking said that one plan would force all Americans to get health insurance by fining us $1,000 for not having it! Okay, so let’s think about this: a person making $6.25 an hour without benefits probably can’t afford to purchase health insurance for, say $400 per month. How will they pay this $1,000 fine? Hmmmm….a bit of faulty thinking (as usual) on the part of someone.
More faulty thinking involves President Obama, along with 500+ congressmen and senators behaving as though there is 
money to spend on this stuff, before or after the bail outs. As a taxpayer, I’m pretty tapped out. Thanks to the economy, I’m not just supporting myself, I’m also supporting a member of my family plus a boatload of members of numerous other families who are collecting unemployment and have managed to get on the state-funded health insurance policies. I don’t have any more money to give for taxes to cover universal healthcare.
Maybe a better solution would be for pharmaceutical and medical equipment companies to bring their prices down to truly affordable. Thirty days of pills shouldn’t cost $300 should it? That’s $10 a pill if you take one a day.
Since we pay exorbitant rates to insurance companies, maybe they should up the amounts that they will actually pay 
hospitals for procedures to at least the amount that will cover actual costs! When I worked at the doctor’s office, the cost for an uncomplicated pregnancy was $2,300. Care Source and the other state owned Medicaid insurances paid the doctors $1,400, a $900 shortfall. I believe they pay hospitals at a 40% rate. How do they expect the hospitals to continue, especially those who have a very high indigent population? They can never make that up no matter how good everyone else’s insurance is.
Back in the 60′s, you went to the doctor and you paid him cash at a very reasonable rate for the visit. Some doctors even took chickens as payment. A hospital visit didn’t cause you to refinance your house. We didn’t have health insurance then. We didn’t need it. Government had nothing to do with it.
Is there a moral to this story?
