9/18/08
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 impacting your pocket book, your personal freedoms, and your rights. I hope you will read the column regularly and it occasionally influences your opinions and actions.
Our wonderful nation is struggling. I believe we are standing at a crossroads in our nation’s history. The American population is almost split perfectly into a 50%-50% mix of opposing, basic philosophies.
The core aspect of this disagreement is whether or not our nation should continue as a capitalistic democracy based on personal freedoms, contributions, responsibilities, and accomplishments…or if our nation should continue its evolution into a socialistic, government dominated, system where individualism is discouraged. This division in our government creates a situation where it is difficult to enact the meaningful legislation which is needed for us to properly react to the elements that today threaten our economy, our national good, and our society.
How has this potentially disastrous situation developed? It hasn’t been easy. It has required assembling an enduring group of Senators and Congressmen over a thirty year term that have been willing to always follow the crowd, respond to every self serving offer made to them, and to cocoon themselves inside a beltway institutionalized environment that separates them from the real world of the average American.
Over this period of extended lunacy they have either failed to take needed actions…or have taken actions in error that may have resulted in the ruination of our great free enterprise, Christian based democracy. I have listed some of the most critical elements of their folly.
Error #1. - In order to assure reelection, jump aboard every movement that appears to be popular and will win you votes. This would include the concepts of a "global economy", "free trade", and "world market". As part of this movement enter into flawed trade deals where we give away industry after industry to other parts of the world by allowing low cost, competing foreign made products to enter our market freely…while those nations continue to restrict our products from entering their markets. Then doggedly hang on to these flawed concepts while job after job, plant after plant, and industry after industry moves out of the country. Solution: We should only allow open trade on a par for par basis. When the incoming product values from a nation exceed our outgoing product values to them…duties are again applied.
Error #2. – Be sure and also jump aboard the popular passing parade called the "green" movement. Appear to become an avowed, tree hugging political environmentalist that will promote and enact any crazy, costly, unnecessary idea that any nerdish, close-minded, environmental scholar dreams up. Create a massive environmental bureaucracy called the EPA and allow those endowed bureaucrats to enact any regulation or requirement they desire on industry or the general population. Be sure to include restricting all drilling for oil in Alaska and anywhere off shore. Prohibit mining all oil shale in the Rocky Mountains, do not allow any new refineries to be built, and never, never consider allowing any more nuclear plants to be built. This will effectively kill any attempts to make our nation energy independent, and will allow our Arab enemies to effectively destroy what strength our economy has after we have given away most of our industries. Solution: Create a qualified, non-political oversight board comprised of people from environmental concerns, industry, and educational sectors to approve all environmental restrictions. Perform cost-benefit analysis on all proposed environmental rules and legislation. Elect legislators with common sense.
Error #3. – Destroy the moral, Christian based family structure that has been the foundation of our nation since its inception. Create a liberal Supreme Court that will make rulings encouraging amoral activities, reduce the effectiveness of the churches, impair family relationships, allow bombardment of the nation’s youth with a destructive, pornographic, "cool", drug oriented culture. Create a society where over 50% of the children are born out of wedlock, and the drug culture prevails. Make being "politically correct" more important than being sensibly correct. Solution: Elect Politicians that will only select conservative Supreme Court Justices….and return our society to basic Christian values.
Error #4. – Destroy the effectiveness of the educational system. Encourage the "Dumbing of America". Lower the educational standards down to the level where any social or cultural group can pass…instead of elevating the students in those groups. Unionize the teachers so that they become more interested in their benefits, their tenure, and their retirements than they are in the students. Make the schools totally dependent on Federal and State funding so that these entities can create bureaucratic rules, regulations, red tape, and special needs programs within school systems that effectively escalate costs, restrict local control, and bog down all processes. Solution: Return local control of schools to local officials. Return to basics in teaching. Raise expectations and create other development paths for those that can not or will not learn. Encourage those with superior abilities.
Error #5. - Prostitute the political process so that most qualified citizens will not and can not seek to participate. Allow "big money" special interest groups to donate heavily to the process so that only their "chosen few" are elected. These groups would include labor unions, industrial associations, political party organizations, professional associations, and thousands of other special interest lobby groups and PACS each hoping to bribe a candidate for their favor. Make the entire election process too expensive for any one person to afford, thus opening the door for criminal involvement, fraud, and deception of the general public. Allow illegal immigrants to freely enter our country and encourage them to also become "illegal voters". Solution: Only allow a very limited amount of well defined funds to be raised. Publish the funding sources for every candidate including second and third party transactions. Require television stations and other media forms to provide a defined amount of government financed public exposure for qualified candidates. Strengthen voter identification systems in every state.
Error #6. – Create a welfare, government dependent society that will obediently follow any requirement laid out by their overseer, "big brother" government. Allow government to grow and expand all of its programs at every level, until every choice, every personal action, every aspect of their lives is determined by government regulations and oversight. Tax all fruits of their labor, take away as much of their disposable income as possible, and then redistribute these earnings among the population so that everyone is essentially equal in lifestyle. Create an environment where individuals who are willing to take risks, work hard, and those with the skills needed to succeed are not rewarded enough to make it all worthwhile. Remove all incentive to be productive. Remove all personal choice and personal responsibilities for actions. Create a concept where the role of government is to provide housing, food, medical care, spending money, entertainment, safety, disaster restoration, and all other needs of the population. All government should ask in return is relinquishment of all personal freedoms of choice, all abilities to make any decisions, and complete obedience to all political and bureaucratic authority. Solution: Elect only candidates that will promote a minimum of government regulation and a maximum of individual freedoms.
If you are getting yourself and your family informed and ready to vote in a few weeks…you are "Getting It Right".
Rudiments: Odds and ends worth mentioning-
♦ In case you are wondering how our nation failed to develop an energy independence policy and thus became totally dependent on our Arab enemies……we couldn’t check our oil, All of the "Dipsticks" were in Washington!
♦ Our economic "cow" is getting sicker and sicker, I think we should quit milking for awhile.
♦ For your information, the mortgage banking regulations were significantly loosened during the Clinton administration in a bipartisan social agenda to make it where every American could own a home….whether they could pay for it or not.
♦ I drove up highway 73 to Dothan this week. It might be my last view of those beautiful trees on each side of the road that shade the drive.
♦ Isn’t it amazing how gasoline prices flow upward so much easier than they flow downward? I wonder if there is a scientific rule of physics involved….no I think it is merely an economic characteristic. I think the name for it is greed. Their Golden Rule appears to be "Do it to others before they can do it to you!" Where is "Big Brother" when you really need him?
♦ Next week’s issue of the Times will feature that day of hell in Marianna…the day the Yankees took our town.
Note: The opinions stated in this column are solely those of the author and do not represent those of Hatcher Publications.
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