Cliptoons by S&S

Thursday, April 10, 2008

Getting It Right- Has The Public Finally Reached The Limit of Endurance?

October 18, 2007


By: Sid Riley


This column presents a non-partisan, conservative viewpoint about items of interest in our community and our lives. Focus is on items that are impacting your pocket book, your personal freedoms, and your rights. I hope that you will read the column regularly and that it occasionally influences your opinions and actions. Now, on to the subject of the week:
"As government continues to grow and in the process continues to take more and more of the public’s disposable income, to reduce their standard of living, to take away their personal and property rights, and becomes more and more inept and wasteful, …will the public finally reach a point of dissatisfaction that forces reaction and correction of the system?"
I recently read a suggestion that our national symbol, the bald eagle be changed. Originally the majestic eagle stood for the brave, fighting spirit of the nation, the government and the population. The writer suggested that another creature should now be selected that more aptly matches the type of government and social order that exists here in the world of today.
The writer went on to suggest that the new national symbol become a giant sow with a belly full of nipples, and hundreds of little piglets eagerly scampering over each other as they attempt to nurse from the giant sow.
I can envision the symbol, with the sow appropriately labeled "Mother Government", and nursing piglets with labels such as "government grants", "school funding", "highway funding", "food stamps", "government housing", "Medicaid", "earned income tax credits", "public transportation", "defense contracts", "engineering contracts", "architectural contracts", farm subsidies", "government paid legal fees", "construction contracts", "environmental contracts", "college funding", "political pork projects", "foreign aid", "special interest funding", "excessive government pay and benefits", "corruption", "waste", and many, many more.
Above the scene you could have hundreds of poverty stricken taxpayers, dressed in rags, shoveling feed into the sow’s giant mouth. The nuggets of feed should be labeled, "income tax", "property tax", "gas tax", "utility tax", "capital gains taxes", "inheritance taxes", "luxury taxes", "sales taxes", "road taxes", "licenses", "fines and penalties" and many, many, many, more.
As sad as reality is, this is a reasonable depiction of the way our society and government systems function in this socialistic democracy that we have allowed to evolve and take over our national system. The governments (national, state, and local) suck in all of the funds they can get their hands on, and then everyone grovels before them in an effort to get a grant, a hand out, or a juicy contract.
When our founding fathers drafted our constitution they did so with a great fear of creating a powerful central government that would dominate the citizens. They attempted to write safeguards that would assure the national government only dealt with international matters, and all internal matters were controlled by state and local governments.
Through decades of action involving misinterpretation of the constitution by the judiciary, enactment of federal legislation, and most importantly through creation of federal taxation laws, our central government has taken the form and position most feared by our founders. The primary tool that is used to obtain and administer this federal control is through funding controls. The federal government doles out funding to the states, local governments and schools. With each check written they attach requirements and rules impregnated with liberal Washington political philosophies that thus take away most of the local control. In order to suckle Mother Government and continue to get the federal funding, they have to follow the federal procedures.
As the government "sow" grows, she absorbs more and more of the national business structure and the national labor force. If we could count what percentage of our national economy is government and it’s employed bureaucracies, professional service companies that exist through services provided to government, companies that exist only because of government contracts, and closely regulated industrial activities, we would be astounded at what percentage of our total national GNP is government created. I believe it is approaching 70%. We no longer have an economy of free enterprise ruled by laws of "supply and demand". We have evolved into a government dominated, socialistic society.
I believe this change in our basic economic structures will eventually destroy our national wealth and way of life. I fear the system has become so huge and ingrained that correction will only come when the existing system begins to self destruct. It will take some great national threat from outside, or critical failure of our economy to finally awaken the voting public and force a stop to this fatal evolution. It will probably be our children and grand children that are forced to deal with this calamity.
It is the awareness of the fearful ultimate result of the increasing growth in the cost and social impact of government that motivates me to write this column. I have nothing against any of the dedicated government employees. It is the ill conceived systems and philosophies that they function within that I resist and fight at every opportunity. I do it out of love for our nation and a desire to protect what we enjoy here. Help in this effort and you will be "Getting It Right!"
RUDAMENTS: (Odds and Ends Worth Mentioning)
- The city water fee funded road project on Kelson Avenue appears to be another example of poor management, waste, and unnecessary cost to citizens. The project has only been underway for approximately seven months, and I understand that it is already an astounding 135 days behind schedule. It is time for some forceful management action to correct this developing bad situation.
The businesses on that street are certainly losing business because of the road condition, the poor home owners are surely growing tired of the conditions, and the poor parents that struggle through the area each day to deliver and pick up their children at Golson School are probably ready to scream. It is time for our city administration to take action against the contractor if necessary. (I strongly suspect it is the same crew that worked on the mill pond bridge project during the past two years. Or, it might be part of the crew that was a year late finishing the new high school.)
It does appear that activity has picked up on the project during the past two weeks. Weekly activity reports should be given to the city management by the contractor, with man hours expended and updated schedules. They need involved city oversight.
- I want to express my appreciation to all of the local law enforcement agencies for the great work they are doing in fighting drug use and trafficking in Jackson County. I feel that most of the crimes in our area are either directly or indirectly related to drug use, and I can only imagine what our area would be like if our local police were not actively impeding their progress. I would bet that all three of the crimes that occurred this Monday evening were directly or indirectly related to drug use. The police are doing a great job in this arena, and I encourage them to continue to focus on these problems instead of wasting time being "traffic cops".
- Those poor, suffering insurance companies that got our state legislators to allow them to increase their property insurance premiums to horrendous levels for anyone living in Florida, have now enjoyed two years of claim free, no hurricane years while reaping the income from these inflated rates. They have to be making record setting profits. Soon they will be giving their officers and directors multi million dollar bonuses and stock options, and building new, higher buildings in Atlanta…..and the people of Florida will have paid for it all.

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