Stop Milking!! The Cow is Almost Dead

This column presents a 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.


The U.S.A. is in the midst of an economic downturn which threatens to hurl the nation into a miserable condition which would destroy individual and corporate wealth, weaken our nation, and move us into despair and unthinkable lifestyles. As families and small businesses struggle to survive in this faltering economy, our federal, state, and local governments continue to put the needs of the bureaucracy ahead of the plight of the people. At the same time, monopolistic semi-private functions such as utilities continue to dig deeper into the almost empty pocketbooks of the families they serve (misnomer?) as they continue to make profits without sacrificing anything.

We stand back and watch quietly as family homes are foreclosed and those involved lose all they have worked for. At the same time personal and commercial bankruptcies are keeping once starving lawyers busy. These sad results for families and small businesses are being caused as greedy banks and credit card companies continue to squeeze and milk debtors; as City Governments, County Governments, School Systems, and State Governments continue to increase fees, assessments, fines, taxes, and all other revenue flows coming from the pockets of the defenseless public; as greedy utilities exercise their monopolistic advantage to the maximum by steadily increasing rates; and as those industries which have lobbied enough to create corruptly legislated robbery of the public such as insurance companies, oil companies, pharmaceutical companies, and most elements of the health care industry all exploit the suffering public. Meanwhile, the Federal Government outdoes them all by spending at unbelievable levels while they borrow and print money as fast as they can.

As this process continues, more and more failures occur, and with each our nation sinks a little deeper into the mire. We must unite in our efforts to stop this destructive cycle. The old wasteful ways of dealing with public monies by our governments must end, greedy monopolies must be controlled, and legislated advantages for certain industries must be repealed. Our nation must get its house in order, or it too, will soon end in foreclosure.

Rudiments: Odds and Ends Worth Mentioning -

• I noted where three local citizens in Cottondale have been indicted by Attorney General Bill McCollum for Medicaid fraud. I applaud the officials for taking time from doling out public money to work on stopping some of the rampant fraud occurring in the Medicare-Medicaid systems. However, the information was given to Medicaid fraud investigators in 2004 By the Dept. of Children and Families Adult Protective Services….and it only took them five short years to execute an arrest. During the interim the culprits stole another hundred thousand dollars from the taxpayers. However, they may recoup $40,000 by including a fine in their sentence….speedy work, “Welfaricrats”!

• Please read the short story titled “Rotary Report”. In it is presented information from Attorney Wade Mercer’s speech to the Rotary in Marianna last week. Note the fact that Cottondale is reaping over $150,000 per year (today’s traffic fines rates) from their ‘speed trap” operation on Highway 231. They are giving tickets at a rate 15 times greater than Marianna, which is much larger. In my opinion, Chief Watford, the City Commissioners, and the Citizens of Cottondale should be ashamed of what is going on. It will only give their city a bad name in the long run. Locals should shut this operation down. If they do this….they will be “Getting It Right”!

• There are farmers going out of business, and some 34,000 farm workers on unemployment in California because our “Green” crowd has blocked use of available irrigation water for the crops over some three million acres in the fertile San Joaquin Valley. It seems an endangered smelt minnow is in the lake where the needed water is contained. Some liberal, numbskull judge in California ruled against the farmers and in favor of the tree huggers and their minnow. What a world!

Note: The opinions stated in this column are solely those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of Hatcher Publications.