The final debate is over and our focus is on the finish line. If you’re like me, you are watching the news and the polls, attempting to discern who our fellow citizens would like to entrust with one of the most difficult and important jobs on earth—the presidency of the United States. At times it seems that the whole country is tense with anticipation.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: Barack Obama, Democrats, Politics, Republican National Committee, Republicans
Yesterday I opened an email from the Republican National Committee titled “Excuses: Barack Obama’s Year of Failure.”
While I’m basically an Independent politically, at some point I started getting info from the RNC because I offered to campaign for a person I thought maybe I could believe in. Now I don’t even remember who that was, so apparently they were just as disappointing as all the rest.
Anyway, when I got this current message I was okay with what they said until I got toward the bottom of the message. At that point, of course (and would I expect less) they spun it all around to ask me for money so that they could put their (less than) ‘people’ back in office. Now that made me mad because they presume that I think that their candidate will be a better choice than the Democratic candidate.
Frankly, I’ve come to doubt that there is any human out there in our country who is actually fit for any political office. No one can seem to overcome the pressure of handling the imbued or supposed power that they think comes with the office. I was so mad, and have such strong opinions that I wrote the following. Maybe you should write something similar – the email address is at the bottom.
Dear RNC:
While I totally agree that Mr. Obama has really screwed things up – first by throwing $1.4 trillion dollars at banks and businesses that no more deserved it than China deserves to be able to export their products to the United States, and has helped to construct the most ridiculous cumbersome, unwieldy healthcare plan imaginable, I can honestly say that he did NOT do this alone!
Not only did the Democrats voraciously come front and center to put their stamp of appoval on this whole mess, but Republicans also joined in the melee.
Please remember that in the midst of a heated presidential campaign where both candidates swore that they would cut 
spending, give us more jobs, provide a healthcare plan for all people, both candidates dropped what they were doing to rush back to Washington so they could vote for the $850 billion bank bail out. This money went to institutions who then distributed it to overpaid executives in the form of bonuses for having bilked their consumers into bankruptcy and more. Now you jokingly say you’re going to make the banks pay back $33 billion – to which they say, no we won’t do it. Big surprise.
Neither the Democrats nor the Republicans have taken action against NY Dem Barney Frank who led the charge on the 125% mortgage, principal-payment-only debacle that sent the housing market into a tailspin, causing the highest mortgage default rate in history. Even with all that, he remains in charge of the Finance Committee.
Of all the things in this country that needs an extreme makeover, I can think of absolutely nothing that needs it more than the Federal Government. You are nothing but a bunch of out dated, out moded, do nothing, get rich on the backs of the middle classes – what’s left of us anyway – blowhards. You only talk about real life when it suits you; you are as out of touch with real life in these United States as the moose that live in Canada.
If you really want our support, come out of your ivory tower. Stop with the fake reform and really overhaul the system. Show me you have some guts, some brains, some compassion and that you really want to do something that SCREAMS CHANGE IN ACTION!
Here’s my plan:
1. Change the election law: Representatives, Senators and the President may each have one six year term. Period. No re-election possible. No pension or other long term perks result for this service.
2. Reform your pay. Your state decides your pay with those who employ you, the voters, deciding what that amount is. What other organization can you work for where the employees get to give themselves raises? This proves just how ridiculously out of control you all are!
3. No per diem for being in D.C. That’s what a paycheck is for.
4. No junkets here and there disguised as ‘fact findinig’ missions but are really vacations to places you’ve never been. If you want to go somewhere save your money or run up your own credit card; stop spending my money!!
5. Drive your own car (even it’s a 1998 Chevy Lumina with over 300,000 miles like my hard working husband’s) and pay for your own gas – even if it’s $3.69 per gallon. Live like everyone else!
6. Pay into Social Security so you can have a retirement. No over paid pension plans.
7. Participate in the people’s healthcare plans so you can know what it’s like to have to have a 12 month pre-existing condition codicil to the plan and you have to wait to get a surgery. Oh, yeah and when you leave office, and have no income other than unemployment coming in, be sure to take advantage of Cobra – the snake that really bites – so you can pay 1.5 times what you were paying while working at a time when all’s you get is $250 a week from unemployment.
8. Stop taking lobbyist $$
9. Stop holding so many hearings for stuff that doesn’t matter and get down to the nitty gritty.
10. Create and pass bills that are pure. Stop using ‘let’s make a deal’ tactics with pork barrel additions. We’re all so over it!
11. Censure and force the resignations of House and Senate members who do things like not pay their taxes, embezzle money, take kickbacks and otherwise compromise the ethical structure of our government – although it’s already pretty much too late to save that part.
12. Remember that it’s not a right that you hold office. It’s a privilege that you are awarded each time we cast a vote for you. We do that hoping that finally, you are the person who will behave differently when you get into office. Unfortunately for us, one by one you prove again and again that absolute power corrupts absolutely and at a faster rate than even I can believe.
One last item: Why the blazes are you trying to set up an entirely new health care plan when you could just use Medicare which is already set up? The only adjustment you would need to make is to set up a reasonable sliding scale price structure that people could use to purchase health care. No one could be refused; no 12 month pre-existing condition codicils allowed. You add some employees to manage the increased business and the whole thing can get up and running fairly fast and actually be good for something instead of what you’re doing which is soooo good for nothing!
And by the way….if a person can’t afford to purchase health insurance, how is it you think they can afford to pay the idiotic fine you want to impose to punish them for not buying the insurance in the first place.
Don’t worry. Even though I took the time to tell you what I think, I’m no fool. I already know that the only thing you’ll do with this is have a good laugh before you toss it in the trash.
Very sincerely, June Jagunic
Not at all to my surprise came this immediate response:
Title: Thank you for your thoughts and comments
Thank you for contacting the Republican National Committee. We certainly appreciated your email, and will include your thoughts in our report to the Chairman. Please do not hesitate to contact us in the future with your opinions or observations.
Office of Constituent Services
National Republican Committee
That’s the best response they can handle and the best any of us can hope to receive. They mail it in because they’re all out to lunch, pounding one another on the back for so successfully hoodwinking the American public. Shame on us for letting them.
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