My Grandfather's Fathers

This country is really good at measuring things. All sort of things..How tall we are, how much we weigh, how much we make, how much we have, what our life expectancy is, etc….With the goal being a use the numbers as tool for us to use so we can assign values to whatever it is. What we are not so good at is measuring values of relationships. Fathers day is here…A day set aside for celebrating fathers in general and our fathers specifically. The fathers value to every son and daughter is mostly felt without any need to measure. How we walk, talk, move through the world, raise our kids, conduct all aspects of our lives is to a greater of lesser extent directly related to our relationship to our fathers. What is often not realized is the impact of our grandfathers and great grandfathers have had on our lives. Usually we know little about our grandfathers and less still about their fathers yet without our knowing how they also had a hand in directing and molding our lives. For many of us our fathers are gone but none has or will be forgotten.

Happy Fathers Day.

Took some time off from reading news letters, special reports, sorted stories of congressmen's latest behavior outright lies printed by the liberal press, data packaged in incomplete ways coming out of the many governmental departments, tornados after tornados, floods after floods, leaving my head feeling more like a pinball in a pinball machine being thumped by really good pinball players. Got my wife packed in the car and headed north into northeast Tennessee to the Cumberland Gap area.

I hadn't been to the Cumberland Gap since I was young and much too young to understand the significance of that mountain gap or why the forty thousand are so people a year who traveled through it. Both of my grandfathers' fathers came through that gap with their wives and children in tow. Each had little or nothing and asked little or nothing from anyone. Just chasing a dream of having a place to call theirs. Many died and many were killed fighting Indians. Daniel Boone lost his brother and two sons fighting Indians.

Over time and some generations later one side of my family found their way in to Pontatoc County and the other into Lafayette County. One of the grandfathers did his growing up in Lafayette and marrying in early 1900…Bought this farm I am currently living on in 1921 and produced lots of aunts and uncles and they in turn produced nineteen first cousins for me to grow up with.

Not being 'bombarded with the news' every day gave me time to think about all this history. Trying to look at the relationship between back then and now. I know the DNA is still in tact but everything else is just wild guessing. Could we today take a little piece of land and feed ourselves? Could we raise our children without doctors? What would we do if the crop failed? What would we choose to teach our children? How would relationships be different? What we think of our then government or would we think about it at all?

Well, our government thinks about us and has answered all of the above questions and solved all of the above problems. Government decided what our children should learn…feeds us if the crops fail…pays Doctor bills… There is about half of us in this country who think that is a good thing. The other half doesn't…

Tea Party folks question what government is doing for us. Government tells us they are doing all these things for us because that is what 'good' government does…They say they know what's best and are shocked that we don't seem to appreciate their efforts. I mean, after all, who doesn't want something for nothing?

Government has become an enigma wrapped in convoluted logic. Effort is taxed and non-effort is rewarded. (Go figure.) We have some forty nine million on food stamps and other social programs. Many have been of food stamps and social programs for generations. A working person doing productive work supports ever government worker and all the other people who are not working. If the people pouring through the Cumberland were told this is what will happen if you migrate through the mountains, 1) Would they ever have believed it, and 2) If they believed it would they have come through the gap?

Those pilgrims knew if they didn't work they would starve. Their life and the decisions they made became very simple very quickly. Today our life is not so clear and not so simple.

We have a mass of low poorly educated people who would work IF there were jobs they could do. These kinds of jobs are fewer and fewer. We have tens of thousands baby boomers retiring who have been financing a large part of these social programs for this mass of people. We have millions of college graduates coming into the job market each year discovering there aren't many jobs waiting for them and often with a choking burden of student loans. As more people come the to American table, the American apple pie is being sliced thinner and thinner.

European countries and, one can assume, Obama sees socialism or central government deciding who gets what. We have a front row seat watching Greece, the birthplace of the democratic form of government implode each night on our TV tube. We know what is going on in other governments in Europe and yet our leaders are in total denial that the same could happen here. But it has happened here and it is happening in this moment. (Turn on your 'debt clock' and watch the individual and family debt climb.)

I am lobbying for a new law that requires all computers must have a 'debt clock' that loads each time on the home screen and can't be turned off for five minutes. I have no supporters and am making no headway with this new law. However, I think it's a good idea. Be sure you put the debt clock on your home page, please. A cup of coffee and reading the debt clock, I promise, will start your day with a bang.

I want our next batch of office seekers'to uphold the constitution. I want them to overturn any and all laws that impinge on our personal freedoms. I want them to defund and close most government departments, etc…..Also, and just as important I want to know if 1) they see the problems this nation faces clearly, and 2) what are their ideas on fixing these problems…., and 3) do they understand corporations don't pay taxes. They are tax collectors for the federal and state governments… and 4) do they understand regulations inhibit business growth..and 5) do they understand we are not the 'mother' of the world…

Without this clarity we are voting, once again, for a pig in a poke.

I was happy to see that parts of the Tea Party are going after the long time incumbent Orin Hatch in Utah…. We have got to instill fear in the borderline sitting Republicans congressmen. Its seems the Dems thinks he's a Dem pretending to be a Repub. He sure has voted like one.

The Australian Tea Party has just crossed the two million members mark. That may not sound like a big number to us but in a country of twenty one million that’s a lot of mems. That percentage swings elections. (At-a-boy Australian's Teaers.)
The Tea Party movement is not some small group tied to one country. People are waking up. (Except in Greece.)

The Oxford Tea Party through many articles over the last few years has been focused on the important tool of "recalling" an elected official. Recalling an elected official at any level of government is the beginning of The End Game. Recalling is not always successful but if scares politicians like few other things…

Next is a article by Robert Knight and comes from Town Hall.com…(This site is a good read.) It’s a long article but please plow through it.

In Wymore, Conn., citizens got fed up with a councilman who kept leaving meetings. So last Tuesday, May 10, they voted him out in a recall election.
It’s part of a nationwide pattern, as citizens discover that they don’t have to wait until the next election to throw the bums out.

In Chattanooga, Tenn., a recall effort against Democrat Mayor Ron Littlefield has been tied up in court since September. But organizers who filed an appeal are not giving up, and say they expect the case to go to the Tennessee Supreme Court.

In Florida, tax-happy Miami-Dade Mayor Carlos Alvarez, a Republican, was recalled on March 15 when 88 percent of voters gave him the boot.

In Omaha, voters on Jan. 25 narrowly failed to remove Democrat Mayor Jim Suttle. As Ballotpedia puts it, “Under Suttle's mayoral stint, property taxes increased 15%, despite a campaign promise not to do so. The 'wheel tax' on cars grew more than 40%, from $35 to $50. Restaurants were also handed a 2.5% tax increase.”

In Akron, Ohio, USA Today reports, “lawyer Warner Mendenhall led a failed 2009 effort to recall Mayor Don Plusquellic, a Democrat who has been in office 23 years. ‘The spending has gotten out of hand,’ says Mendenhall, who calls himself a liberal Democrat. ‘The mayor had spent us into a deep, deep hole and needed to go.’”

Of course, recall is a two-edged sword. In Wisconsin, nine senators – six Republicans and three Democrats – are facing recall elections this summer over Republican Gov. Scott Walker’s bold move to end much of the state’s collective bargaining with public employee unions.

In Ohio, public employee unions are pushing a bill aimed at recalling Republican Gov. John Kasich for his backing of a new law that sharply curbs public union power.

In Illinois, voters approved a new law in November that allows recall of the governor. In 2003, California voters dumped Democrat Gov. Gray Davis in a recall election.

In West Virginia, which allows cities to recall elected officials, a bill was introduced to extend recall to federal elected officials but did not pass before the legislature adjourned on March 18.

In January, four Republican legislators in Hawaii co-sponsored HB 197, a broadly worded recall law that could include federal officials. It did not get a hearing in the Democrat-dominated Judiciary Committee before the session ended on May 5.

And so it goes across the land. Recalls have become such a threat to incumbents that the U.S. Conference of Mayors (COM) released a video on April 12 at the National Press Club entitled “Recall Fever: Stop the Madness.” The 30-minute documentary looks at recall campaigns in Omaha, Miami, Akron and Chattanooga. A panel of mayors addressed “the destructive and costly impact of local recall elections [and] to share survival strategies.”

A COM press release noted that 57 mayors “faced recall attempts last year, up from 23 in 2009” and that 15 mayors had already been targeted in 2011. At their upcoming meeting June 17 to 21 in Baltimore, the conference will hear from embattled politicians, including Nancy Pelosi. Now, there’s a canny selection. If anyone can give tips on how to keep a tin ear regardless of public sentiment, that would be the former House Speaker and now Minority Leader.

Sacramento-based Tea Party activist Christina Botteri, a founding member of the National Tea Party Federation and Nationwide Tea Party Coalition, said that recalls appeal greatly to Tea Party members, who are growing impatient with both parties.

“Across the country, people are getting wise to the fact that they don't have to suffer under the wrath of a bad elected official until election day,” she said. “We're seeing more and more constituents, outraged at misrepresentations by their office holders, taking matters into their own hands through the recall process.”

Tom Cochran, CEO and executive director of the mayor's conference, told USA Today:

“There is inside this country right now an anti-tax, anti-spending mood. It's a new thing in America: We're going to kick you out of office. They don't have to wait anymore.”

Actually, recall has been around since before the American Revolution (see www.recalltherogues.org), and most current state recall laws were enacted at the turn of the 20th century. Nine states have such broadly worded recall laws affecting “any, all or every” elected official that they may include U.S. senators. Another 29 provide for recall of either state or local officials.

New Jersey’s recall law, enacted in 1995, explicitly includes members of Congress. Last year, New Jersey Tea Party groups tried to recall Democrat Sen. Robert Menendez over his votes on Obamacare and other spending, but the state Supreme Court delayed a decision on the petition, making the issue moot because Menendez will be on the 2012 ballot.

In light of an increasingly restive public, Ms. Botteri has some advice for office holders who might be tempted to write off “recall fever” as a temporary ailment: “If I could send a message to those politicians defying their constituency: Take a few minutes today to become familiar with the recall process in your state. I guarantee your electorate is.”

Recall is in place in most states because history has taught us that time and people change. It teaches us that people fib and do a mired of other things to get elected. Mostly history has taught them that once they are elected they don't have to keep promises and they are safe till the next election cycle. That is the history and our passivism is the cause.

There are only 506 days, 2 hours, and 20 minutes before the poll close on the 2012 elections. Do you know who your net convert will be?

Ron
 
docnick37@gmail.com
 
http://theoxfordteaparty.blogspot.com/

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