At
this stage in life I have a better sense of flows and ebbs than I did
when I was younger. When I was a teenager I was in a town on the Mississippi
river. I saw the river often and the bridge that connected the two states on
each side. There were markers on the bridge pilings that measured the depth of
the water at any given time. The measurements were more important than I
realized. Memphis was a town built on cotton trade and when the river's
water level was to low the cotton couldn't get up the river to the
market. If the water level was high the river was flowing so quickly the barges
had problems getting up river. As a teenager this had little interest to
me simply because there wasn't any way I could connect the river stages to my
life, my family's life, or the financial life of the city.
Just
south of Memphis the Mississippi delta begins which at the time was one of the
most productive farming land anywhere is the world. Although not wide it
stretches a hundred miles and I didn't have any problem connecting the
river levels with the lives of the people who lived there. My grandmother had
relatives in the delta. Every few years, when there was a rainy spring,
the river would flood and the relatives would pack their belongings in the
wagon along with their three children and two dogs. After a few days on the
road they would show up on grandmother's front porch. They would stay until the
flood subsided, pack their belongings and back they would go not knowing
if their house was still intact or if it would be dry enough to get the cotton
planted in time to make a crop. For them the river levels measured on the
bridge pilings was more than a number. As a teenager I couldn't relate the
river levels to my family or the city's finances but could link the river
numbers to people in the Delta who I knew.
Numbers
in and by themselves aren't important but what the numbers represent has impact
indirectly and often directly on each of our lives. Such as these massive
deficits that will also impact our the children and grandchildren's lives, as
well as the financial life of towns, states, our country and the
countries that do business with us.
Today
we are bombarded with numbers from our government that represent every aspect
of our lives. More often than not what the numbers represent simply are not
understood. We hear them so often they become meaningless sound bites.
How many people hear 7.8 unemployment numbers and know what they mean in a real
sense to them at a personal level? If you count the people on the Food Stamp
program along with the myriad of other government social services and include
all the people who manage these program within the government they are growing
to as many people who have productive jobs.
These
numbers, like the river level numbers on the bridge pilings, are warnings.
There
is a small percentage of people in our country who know and understand what all
of the government reported numbers mean and because of this knowledge they are
safe and can profit no matter if the river rises or falls. While we or our
wives go to the local grocer after stopping to top off our gas tank and wonder
what just happened. Spent more - got less. Later in the evening watching the
less offensive anchorman/woman inform us that our government spent more money
today than it had and our debt per household is greater than the amount
of money most of us make in two years and we wonder how did this happen.
So
long as we continue to wonder "how did this happen" it will continue
to happen. So long as we don't know what numbers represent and how government
works it will never stop. The Tea Party hopes the answer is to get rid of the
'good-old-boys-and girls and elect a new group of good-old-boys-and girls. We
have shuffled the deck before and it has helped…. Helped in the sense of
slowing but not solving the problems in any long term way. Most of our
'NEWLY" elected boys and girls have been invited into the cloak room in
the House and Senate and are quickly seduced to the dark side. In these dark
places they have been assured that their lust for power and wealth is good and
that the fraternity will protect and help them achieve their real goals.
Ignorance,
popular socialist leaders, and the liberal media are the dangers to our
way or life and wellbeing. The leaders prey on the ignorant. The
liberal press guides the ignorant. This ignorance has nothing to do with color,
education levels, or financial status. Within this group there is a need to be
taken care of… a reliance on government to protect them and their families from
real and perceived dangers. No matter how many examples they are confronted
with each day they still believe that government is their protector, their
friend, and their ally. Abandon all hope for no amount of education, cajoling,
or personal experience will sway them. This is a character disorder of
magnitude and unlike personality disorders, which are responsive to learning
and change, the character disorders are not.
The
country is divided along many different fronts. What was once the political
conservative party is divided. Alvin Toffler wrote over twenty years ago
predicting these divisions within the nation and explaining how these divisions
would come about, saying the outcome would be that all power would be taken
from the citizens and centered in government.
The
Rubicon is crossed. All of the shortcomings that lie within a democracy have
happened. The voters through our leaders have voted to take from the productive
and transfer to the unproductive. All of the promises made to the
good-old-new-boys and girls in the cloak rooms will come to pass.
This
government has already run out of 'other people's money' and has been borrowing
money to keep the show on the road. Europe is showing us the cost of this way
of governing. We see the numbers, we hear the outcries, but like the numbers on
the river pilings we don't link them to our lives.
All of
our cities where government has been most proactive are dangerous, decaying,
bankrupted cites, such as Detroit, Memphis, New Orleans, along with the
bankrupted cities in California where citizens live in poverty and fear. Where
city fathers did their cloak room deal, expanding their wealth and power, while
the children kill children, where children kill adults, and where adults
assault and kill children. Moral and financial decay. Memphis has accepted that
it cannot educate their children and gave up their school charter to the state
which turned the problem to the county school system which has no real means of
managing the Memphis school system. Now the county school system, which was
doing a good educational job, will now be lowered if not brought down by the
financial burden.
Stories
like this one come into our homes every day and we think that is a problem in
Memphis, Detroit, or Stockton. Mississippi has been at the bottom of the
State's education ladder. It is as if that position is ours to protect.
Recently Mississippi Senate passed a bill allowing chartered schools and
the House rejected the bill. (Cloak room
guidance warns against meaningful changes.)
For
any reader who has gotten this far into this article I want to assure you that
this is simply my view and I am hopeful. Change happens over time. Buildings
see a useful life span and so do people along with ideas and values. The best
we can hope for is to have some say in the change that is inevitable.
Every
democracy in history has failed. They all failed for the same reason and more
or less and in the same way through lust for power on the part of the
good-old-boys and debt. Our democracy has lasted longer than most.
Our
President, some in Congress, and the media tell us we are not in a financial
crisis. We are not. We will not be in a crisis until there is no more money to
transfer and the national debt comes due. Then we will be in a crisis and only
then will the electorate say, "Oh, that’s what all those number
meant."
America,
its government, business, and citizens have a history of doing things in a big
way. No nation has had so many trillions of dollars of debt. I assume this is a
true milestone. Never have we had such a small percentage of the work force
paying most of the taxes.. That for sure in a milestone. Never have
we had so many people living off
government support programs. As the various countries in Europe, through
social government managing their economies, wake up in crisis they are
surprised even though for years they have been warned there would be a
consequence to the massive wealth transfer. These governments could no longer
prop up their economy and their debt came due. Crash and burn….The warning
numbers were there for all to see.
To
redirect the finger pointing, the numbers are here for all our citizens to see
but our social express has left the station. As we lost any and all sense of
responsibility things changed. In the European countries the non-producers
checks are in the mail. The wealthy are moving their money to other countries
and the working middle class buys less because the money is worth less. In our
country our working middle class is able to buy less because their dollars are
worth less and many of the businesses they work for are closing their doors
while they are beginning to pay more
hidden taxes.
If our
economy crashed and burned who would be hurt? What would happen? The social
program group's checks would still be in the mail but would buy less.
Government employee jobs would be safe and their money would buy less. In the
chaos government would step in and take more power over business and people.
More money will be printed leading to a greater devaluation of the buying power
of the dollar.
Younger voters have never lived though a real economic
down turn. Middle age voter have lived through a couple but for the most part
they were too young at the time to appreciate what was happening. Older voters
have lived through many and each time the middle class working person was
forced to pay for government mistakes. Contrary to what government and the
liberal media says, all businesses price their goods and services with the
estimated tax build into the price of their goods and services. At some point
after the sale the business transfer the
tax collected from the consumer to the government. All the economic
blunders came about through government's social engineering. Reality is often difficult to recognize but simply put the
more we govern, citizens life through entitlement, taxes, and regulations
rather than allowing freedom, choice, and personal responsibility. The outcomes
are the same and undesirable here, around the world, and throughout the history
of fallen nations.
Pessimism
is a word that leads to and is the cause of
non-action. Pessimism grows like an untreated cancer. Seems like the low
older conservative turn-out in the last election was a direct result of
pessimism and the loss of the election. The battle in the nation is about
beliefs, values, and principles. These are taught in most families but it take
time and life experiences for them to be full understood, appreciated, and
incorporated into people's lives. Government social programs over generations
prevents this maturing process to take place. In history 'good' serfs got to
live in the shadow of the castles but not inside that walls. Inside was the
administrative people, supporters of the realm, along with the leader's guards.
This is where we find ourselves.
"If there is
anything that links the human to the divine, it is the courage to stand by a
principle when everybody else rejects it." -- Abraham Lincoln… I love this
quote and at the time it was made Abe could safely assume that all men had principles
to stand by. The word itself is never used by politicians nor uttered on the
national media. In this current narcissistic fragmented society principles are
hard to find and people who hold them are few.
We
have been able to find electable conservative leaders in the last two
elections. Not nearly enough. In 583 days we will go to the voting booth again.
Finding more electable conservative leaders is a difficult process as we have
seen. The candidates we find will not be the choice of the national GOP and
once again we will be fighting two battles. For us to have a voice in the
national GOP we must be part of the state and local GOP. Simple idea but
difficult to do but it is a 'must do' in each state and voting district. There
will be no welcome mats.
We are
living in a unique time that none of us have ever seen… Government and society
is no longer making changes here and there or taking from and adding to this or
that law or program which has been the direction since the mid sixties. All of
the small changes, over many congresses, has finally summed to the
transformation of America as we have known it. The Rubicon has been crossed.
The
nation is fragmented.
The
river is rising, all the warning signals are blinking red, time is not on our
side.
We
know how to win this battle and we can win.
Ron
docnick37@gmail.com
