While several have suggested that our electorate has the “resolve” to stand by and work through some of the strains we’ll all have to go through as/if our politicians develop their “best” approaches to solving our burgeoning debt crisis by substantially reducing spending, I’m afraid that I don’t see it that way at all. While almost all Americans don’t believe that any of our elected representatives have the “resolve” to start to really solve our growing debt crisis by dramatically decreasing their voracious spending habits, I don’t believe that our electorate has that much needed “resolve” to solve our debt crisis, either. Why would I think that? Because, from every news report that I’ve seen and heard, while most older Americans say, “Yes. I agree. We must substantially reduce our federal spending.” But they are usually quick to add, “But don’t touch my Medicare.” I’d like to see and hear, at least a steady “buzz,” or, better yet, several loud “rants” that we have to start to solve our debt crisis NOW. Right now our country (or at least the country that it used to be) is in great danger of collapsing. Unlike the progressives, greens, liberals, and Democrats, I am not making this statement to instill fear into the electorates’ hearts.
We have only ourselves (and I do mean ALL of us) as Americans to blame. As I have heard, read about, seen, and written about over the past 17-19 months, our nation has ceased back then to be a nation where the majority rules. Statistically, today, the average politician – from the local level all the way up to the federal level – is elected today by not quite a third of those who are registered, and we are all not registered, either. Politicians – although sometimes they do appear to be – are not stupid, either. They know where, when, and how to use polling data, computer analysis, targeted mailing and phone calling, etc. to reach and get their messages (as full of scare tactics, lies, or anything else along those lines that they could get away – and many
times, beyond, that, too) to those people that VOTE. As for the rest of us who DON’T vote, so what?
Basically, those same politicians have learned a number of years ago that “I’ll say what I need to for public consumption, but I’ll vote the way that those who put me there want me to.”
Although any politician today won’t say so publicly, he or she is basically thumbing their noses at the rest of us Americans because “you don’t vote anyway.” For the last ten years in my own small city community on the Maryland part of the Delmarva Peninsula , a public petty battle has been going on between our “operating” mayor and our city council. A day couldn’t go by without 2-3 letters being published in our daily newspaper denigrating either the mayor or the city council. In the past seven years there have been three different city elections for either mayor, or city council, or both. Voter turnout for each election, in spite of an apparently large portion of this city’s residents being quite upset about how the mayor and/or city council were running things, – judging by the numbers and tone of the letters to the letters – was absolutely abysmal. Despite all of the weeping and gnashing of teeth, voter turnout for all three of those elections barely topped 11 percent.
Whether we like it or not, in spite of all of the nationwide weeping and gnashing of teeth, quite frankly (and this scares the Hell out of me), when election time rolls around next year, right now, I’d bet on both Obama getting re-elected with even more Democrats calling the shots in the new Congress to follow. How can that be, you ask? The majority of Americans have basically become brain dead since the early-70s, totally apathetic about politics at all levels (“My vote doesn’t count anyway”), have no idea about money and fiscal policy and responsibility, how badly our debt load is relative to revenue and expenses, nor even who buys our bonds to finance our burgeoning debt, and the like, etc. They don’t even read newspapers to get – and think about – what the balance of the real story is about, preferring, instead, to get almost all of their news quickly from the television or cable networks. These are the same television news operations that openly admit to their overt liberal and Democratic bias. It’s also the same media who has given us, thus far (as I write this), five straight days of the growing “news” about did he or did he not – D-NY Representative Anthony Wiener) - “tweet” pictures of himself in his underwear to a young lady in San Francisco, CA? Now THAT was the type news that the entire country was waiting to hear more of with bated breath.
Who are Obama’s cabinet members and advisors? With few exceptions, most are younger individuals who come from academia. Most have never run a business, made a payroll, or even been in the military. Scratch the surface, and what do you find? Obama is the exact same way. That’s all he knows. Save for a few years where he “worked” as a “community organizer, he’s been in some sort of an institution of higher learning or an elected political office for most of his adult formative years. In those institutions, he was taught by college professors most, of whom, are members of the so-called “liberal elite.” That group has been teaching its brand of revisionist history, hatred of America , and its socialist vision of an America
Moreover, I have to believe that many of his “kiddie” advisors could or should be advising Obama, that, at best, his economic policies, coupled with his “war” against business (small, medium, or large), made worse by his vows to add new taxes to begin to whittle down the debt, rather than even address the need to reduce spending, has been totally ineffective. Perhaps they’re afraid of his rumored quick temper, enhanced by his supposed “salty” language used against those cabinet members or other WH staffers who would dare question his decisions. With respect to his professors’ vision of an American utopia, I wonder if anybody has ever asked or even detailed who will work in what industries, service or otherwise; how income will be raised; what will those businesses be; how will bigger government pay for all of these “redistributions” of wealth – if there is any; what those utopian businesses will have to pay in expenses; and how will that bigger government pay for that “redistribution of wealth” and other public “entitlement” programs – keep borrowing money?
Obama, himself, has never run a business, made a payroll, or been in the military. As a matter of fact, very few people even know how he was supporting himself after his college graduation, where and who did he work for, how did he and his wife amass such a substantial net worth of several millions of dollars, etc. While no one is concerned about his amassing that much personal wealth, most people would, indeed, like to know how he did it. Purporting his previous job to be as a “community organizer,” we’ve all, apparently, been working too hard as engineers, truck drivers, commercial fishermen, car salesmen, newspaper reporters, or any other job you can think of. We should have all become “community organizers.”
I used to think that the individuals on this list were akin to preaching to the choir. I’m very sad to say that, from where I sit, most of the people on this list are tape recorders, rather than members of a choir. With some notable exceptions, everybody listens, but nobody gives much, if anything, back. You’ve all heard the phrase, “Let George do it!” Well, think of me as “George.” This “George” has made two efforts at volunteering to organize an effort where most of us – as U. S.
Going back to my first volunteering effort made not quite two years ago, along with my resumption of that effort about four months ago, I now have a total of seven of us (counting me) who expressed their willingness, hopefully, to educate a large number of Americans what the stakes really are if we don’t get this “sleeping giant” to wake up and start to work together again. For those who have volunteered to help, please e-mail me at quoteman3 (at) aol (dot)com and, working together, we’ll figure out how best to use your talent and interests to their best advantage in helping us to – if we work hard enough and smart enough – educate the rest of America as to what they’ll lose if they do nothing. To those who read this write-up, I do appreciate your reading this, my latest, “rant.” Now, let’s all start to work together and turn this train around and get it going back in the right direction, not toward the train wreck that, right now, seems almost certain.
If nothing else, where the GOP seems to be ineffective or content to allow Obama and the rest of his liberal, progressive, Democratic Party backers to make outrageous comments laced with lies and fear tactics without responding, somebody has to up the ante – if you will – to counter those lies, demagoguery, and fear tactics with, at least, a fact-check squad who can immediately respond to those lies and scare tactics by getting the true story out NOW. For example, while Obama et al have been castigating the GOP for “dismantling” Medicare and putting the added costs for that “dismantling” on the “backs of our financially-distressed seniors to give tax breaks to the rich,” no one has countered that false charge with the fact that the Obama/Pelosi “team,” back when the Obamacare health plan was being designed, basically, in secret, transferred over $500 million dollars from Medicare to better “balance the books” of Obamacare to make its costs and cost savings look better on paper.
Why can’t we, and all other Americans, be that fact-checking truth squad? Unless people throughout this country get off their collective backsides and start to FIGHT for this country, we ARE in great danger of losing it, along with all of the work, sacrifices, and dead, wounded, and disabled service people who have fought for this country in all of those past wars, police actions, or UN “peacekeeping” adventures all over the world.
Best regards,
Paul Rendine
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