Remembering the Un-Remembered

During my 20 years in the military during a relatively peaceful time of our history, I managed to lose several dear friends to many small, unremembered skirmishes around the world. There are literally thousands that have given their lives in the defense of their country on unknown missions all over the world in all time-frames back to the Revolutionary War, during both war and peace. I wish there was a way to call those names out in public, drawing attention to the valor, honor and heroism with which they proudly served. Public acknowledgement of relatively secret, or un-publicized, deaths.

One that comes to mind, which you can research if you want, regards a C-130 aircrew that was shot down in 1958 over Armenia during the Cold War. It wasn’t publicized in the mainstream media at the time, being a relatively covert mission. The remains of 6 crew members were returned to the US government, and 11 more crew members remain missing today… It was strongly believed that these 11 suffered imprisonment for years, and may possibly have been integrated into Soviet society later.

http://www.nsa.gov/public_info/_files/c130_shootdown/cold_war_recon_shootdown_60528.pdf

I wish we could publicly remember everyone that ever gave their life for this country and its people.

 

Happy Memorial Day

On this Memorial Day, I’ve been adrift in old thoughts of long ago memories.  I retired from military service in 1999 where I was a member of the US Air Force for just over 20 years.  I’ve known a lot of folks that served with great distinction.

It is an incredibly powerful holiday for me for many personal reasons.  I am humbled by the memory of those that have fallen, given their all, that we might have freedom to enjoy.

 

Thinly Veiled Apology

If you’ve been looking for me to post to this blog over the last week or so, I offer my apologies. As ill as I have been, I hardly had enough energy to get through the day. On the road to recovery now, and hopefully back to the bloggery grindstone. So much has been going on in the news, it will be hard to find one single string of thoughts to get down to written word. But, I’ll give it my best shot.

 

Self Determination and Conservatism

The concept of self determination seems like a no-brainer to me.  Parsing the words, to me it means determining for yourself exactly who and what you want to be.  But, it goes a little farther than that, doesn’t it.  It also means, “and making that happen.”

When our nation’s founders put so many of our establishing documents together, they took great pains to describe how every American should have the freedoms and rights to find their own happiness.  Let’s see… How was it worded again?

In the Declaration of Independence, the document that railed against King George III and stated quite clearly that we are NOT part of the English kingdom anymore, it was said in the never misunderstood:

“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”

You remember that from elementary school, don’t you?  (I usually misquote the word “unalienable” myself and instead misuse the word “inalienable”, but the intent is the same for me… )

“…they are endowed by their Creator…” (a gift given to every person) with the right to “Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”  The ability to live, and have the “creator given” right to seek out that which is pleasing to the person.

When I was considering what to write about for this article, the big news in the media seemed to be all about the cost of interest payments (amount of interest) on Stafford Loans for college education.  At first, the conversation seemed to be about whether the Republicans would get their way and RAISE the interest rates by double (according to the Democrats), or whether the Democrats would keep the interest rates where they are today.

But, I could literally write for a very long time if I went down that path.  And since so many other bloggers and mainstream media outlets have already beat that horse, the topic led me to how it all relates to “conservatism”.

It really boils down to this for me… If you do not determine your own destiny, it will be determined for you… Are you a slave to your reality, or do you accept your own greatness?  (in my own words… I’m not sure if anyone else has made similar statements)

In a recent conversation with an acquaintance of mine (who I hope will become a friend), I discussed this concept and realized it truly is a driving force in my own life.  It may seem a little “mean”, or uncaring, or uncompassionate, but… I strongly believe that we are WHO we are because of choices we make, no matter how we began life (socially speaking).

My friend asked me, “Are you saying the unemployed and poor are that way because they CHOSE to be that way?”

To which I responded, “You can trap yourself in your reality by not accepting your own greatness. Listening to others… Being limited by them… So short answer yes.”  So, I continued to describe my own story.

I started in very humble surroundings.  As young as I can remember, I knew that this is not the lifestyle I was intended to have.  I don’t think anyone really is intended to wonder where their next meal is coming from, or whether they will have to move again very soon because the rent can’t be paid.

My greatest example for getting out of that mess was in watching how my mother (divorced mom of 4) dealt with her own ability to provide for us.  She never accepted any form of welfare or handouts from anyone… She worked hard.  When I say hard, she was a letter carrier for the Post Office; backbreaking work that often became dangerous for a woman when approaching homes with big dogs.  But she did anything she could legally in those days to keep good care of us.  Cake decorating at the local grocery store… Cashier for another grovery store… She was a very determined woman… Not ever allowing herself to be determined by anyone else.

But there were so many good examples in those days.  Growing up around the age of 9, our economic status seemed to get gradually better.  But, even then, my oldest brother couldn’t really see any way his mom and step-father would be able to help with his college, IF he was going to get any college at all.  So, he worked a couple years in menial jobs, eventually landing work at a shipyard working in a drafting department, to help pay his way through the first couple years of a community college.  His grades in high school combined with his stellar grades in the junior college allowed him to apply for scholarships and grants and move on to a real 4-year college… In those days, the 60s and 70s, people from our neighborhood never expected to have any opportunity for college.  But he DID IT.

My next brother decided that the college route initially was just a little too far off the path he wanted.  It was not very common in the early 70s for men to volunteer for service in the military, but my brother did exactly that.  He enlisted in the Navy and for the next 20 years served his country with honor AND distinction, being not only highly regarded but also highly decorated.  His work was a hard life as he was in a position known as Machinist Mate, which you and I might refer to as engine room mechanic.  It is an incredibly HOT and dangerous job, to be at sea in the belly of a small ship being tossed on huge swells, knowing you won’t see your family for many months at a time… In the beginning, during the Ford and Carter years, his pay was very very low.  But, it was much higher than most of our neighbors… He had found his way out as well.

Me?  Fast forward to 1999 when I retired after 20 years in the US Air Force.  Joining the civilian sector as a very low level employee was a culture shock was was ill prepared for.  I had negotiated my way into a job which I thought was going to provide reasonable follow-on pay to support me and my family.  OH how I was sadly mistaken… I ended up moving from one state to another… and then another… to find work that paid a little more, and a little more.

In 2007, after watching many companies buy each other in my industry, the company I worked for was bought up by a world-class giant.  In almost all of the cases I had previously witnessed, employees of the smaller company were typically pushed out in some sort of “buy out” or “lay off” situation.

At this point, I had a bit of an epiphany… It came in the form of the sentence I gave you way up in this article:

“If you do not determine your own destiny, it will be determined for you…”

I was tired of having other people determine WHO I was and WHAT I was and WHERE I could work.  I determined then and there that I was not going to wait around for a lay off… I was not going to wait to see what kind of “buy out” package they might offer me.  Nope… I was done.

I called my new boss whose office was in south Texas and asked him what the potential was for promotion within his organization.  His answer left me feeling that even though he gave the idea lip service, it was not likely to happen anytime soon for anyone… “Not until after the New Year at least, when I get my new budget,” he said.

That conversation was on a Friday… I took a week to talk it over with my wife… Called my oldest brother and asked his advice… Hiked in the woods once or twice to clear my head… and on the following Friday, I called him back.

“Clem…” I started the conversation, “I know I’ve only really worked for you for a week now.  But, I want to tell you it has been nice working for you…”  I tendered a two-week notice and left the company to form my own.

It is my feeling that anyone in any condition has a skill that they can bring to form a company of their own.  If you can use a computer to surf the net and read blog articles like mine, you have a skill that can be sold to someone.  If you can stand on a street corner and hold a sign telling passersby about a sale in the nearby mall (a common sight here in GA), you have a marketable skill.

Do not let the world determine your happiness.  Determine it for yourself and make it happen…

James Baldwin, an American novelist, essayist, playwright, poet, and social critic, once said:

“Freedom is not something that can be given. Freedom is something people take, and people are as free as they want to be.”

He was also a black man who grew up with the hardships associated to 1920s Harlem…

Now you might ask, what does all this have to do with conservatism?  To which, the answer really should be “nothing at all.”  But the problem is, based on that conversation about college loan interest rates… or the conversation about social welfare… or the conversation about whether you are a productive part of society, or the part that sucks its existence from the productive part… then, those liberal concepts are not in harmony with the idea of self determination.  At least not in THIS time…

Remember when that great conservative, John Fitzgerald Kennedy made that great comment about self determination and patriotism when in his inaugural address he said:

“Ask not what your country can do for you – Ask what you can do for your country!”

Determine your own reality… and quit expecting others to feed you, clothe you, house you, educate you and employ you.

Related Articles:

http://workplaceterrorism.wordpress.com/2012/04/28/the-internet-college-substitute/

http://youviewedblog.wordpress.com/2012/04/28/todays-occupier-is-tomorrows-teapartier-hmmm/

http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2012/03/may_i_have_a_dose_of_personal_responsibility.html

http://www.cnbc.com/id/44945979/Johnson_Whatever_Happened_to_Personal_Responsibility

 

From ‘Hope’ to Hypocrisy: The Senator Who Became a Sellout

Need I say more?

 

Obama’s Much Ado About “No Silver Spoon” Lie

About four days ago, President Obama was making a speech about how much he has done for job creation during his time in office.  A single comment he made during the speech apparently caused a bit of a stink.  See this article from ABC News to see some of his comments.  Shortly after his comment stirred a lot of resentment, he made an apology to Mitt Romney, sort of, through his Press Secretary, Jay Carney.  (It was not stated as an apology, but was widely reported as such.)

The specific words said by President Obama that brought the ire of so many were:

“I wasn’t born with a silver spoon in my mouth.  Michelle wasn’t.  But somebody gave us a chance, just like these folks up here are looking for a chance.”

Now, I think that Mitt Romney and the rest of mainstream media has missed the honest comeback to Mr Obama’s words.  Someone needs to call him on the lie that he was somehow born into poverty, or even something in the middle class.  In fact, it seems in just the last four days, most news services are beginning to bury the story as if it never happened…

President Obama was born in a time when most black families in the United States were not doing well at all economically.  Most had jobs, but in most families, blacks were hardly getting by.  It was so bad for most that the Civil Rights movement in the 1960s (Obama’s youth) had taken violent twists and turns, both getting attacked and causing violence from time to time themselves.  The fact that most black families were at some layer beneath the middle class is well documented.

Obama was not born into that world, however.  Assuming all that he says about being born an American citizen are true, he was born into a family of substance.  Does that meet the definition of “silver spoon in his mouth”?  Let’s analyze a little…

On March 18th, I wrote an article here called “A Truth of Convenience (aka The Road We’ve Traveled)“.  The article is fairly long concerning the television infomercial President Obama’s campaign had just released at the time.  In that article, I mentioned several truths of convenience (lies) including some background on the president’s mother.  I said:

“In very recent news, Mr Obama and Mr Biden have both famously taken issue that Mitt Romney cannot understand the life of the common man because he is just too rich.  Then, in the statements above, Mr Obama wants you to believe (propaganda) that he DOES understand because he lived a common life.  Heck, even his poor old mother had to wade through tons of insurance paperwork and wasn’t sure they would pay for her coverage… her treatment… her healthcare.”

Stanley Ann Dunham (aka Mrs Sutoro), the president’s mother, graduated from high school in 1960 (the year I was born, and the year before Barack Obama was born).  After her graduation, Ann’s parents moved the family to Hawaii to find business opportunity in the newly established state.  Barack Obama Sr had also recently come to Hawaii looking for higher education.  They were married in Feb 1961, and Barack II was born in Aug 1961… (do the math)  Turns out the marriage was illegal (what a pesky word) since Barack Sr was still married to his first wife, Kezia Obama, in Kenya.  (Father’s Day was probably the most confusing holiday in the Obama Sr household)…

Immediately after giving birth, Ann took her new son to Washington state for her enrollment in new college classes, leaving her new husband in Hawaii.  But, Barack Sr wasn’t there long, after denying a scholarship to a different college, he opted to attend Harvard instead.  Beginning in 1963, Ann having moved back to Hawaii for more classes, her parents helped raise Barack II.  She also married Lolo Soetoro in 1965, just after he earned his MA in Geography.  In 1967, Ann received her own BA in Anthropology (eventually earning her PhD later).  College degrees were not very common in the early 1960s, and were very rare for black men at all.

Madelyn and Stanley Dunham were Ann’s parents, the grandparents that helped raise baby Barack.  By the time of Barack II’s birth, grandma worked for a bank in Hawaii (eventually becoming the first female VP in 1970) and grandpa was a furniture store salesman.

Barack II attended Punahou School, a prestigious private school, from the 5th grade onwards.

Now, for the summary analysis to our original query, “Was Barack Obama born with a ‘silver spoon in his mouth’”???

• born in a very racist time (early 1960s), where most black families were destitute economically…
• born to parents who both had college degrees (in a time when college degrees were not common in the middle class)…
• mother traveled several times for college education…
• biological father educated at Harvard University; very rare for a black man to attend Harvard in the 60s…
• step-father had a Masters degree in Geography
• and raised with the help of grandma (banker) and grandpa (salesman)…

I would not consider Barack Obama as having been born into a middle class family, based solely on the above.  But, I suppose depending on the definition of the term “silver spoon in your mouth“, it is still possible that he wasn’t.  According to Wikipedia, the term generally assumes:

“…wealth, especially inherited wealth…”

I was raised in ‘white’ neighborhoods in Norfolk and Hampton, VA at about the same time-frame (early 60s).  My mother was a ‘single mom’ and did NOT get any help from her parents in raising 4 sons.  My mom was not enrolled in college, and there were no ‘affirmative action’ projects to help her out as a woman.  She also would not accept ANY form of welfare or as she called them, “handouts”.

In MY neighborhood(s), Barack would have been seen as being born with a ‘silver spoon in his mouth’… He certainly was born into a situation far and above most of his peers.  That was a far different time with far different societal standards.  Anywhere in the south, he would have likely had a much different experience (sadly).

 

Twitter Account

Just a short message to let you all know that I just did something I had put off for a very long time… I opened a Twitter Account.  Yeah, I know… Oh well…

Mostly, I did it because I thought it would allow me to follow some of my favorite conservatives.  Might be the quickest way to get certain kinds of news, announcements and updates.  But, looking around, my interest is growing as I can see a lot of potential there as well for “short messages” that would not work so well in a “blog”.

So, if you are a Twitter user, you can follow me @MyConservatism.  I don’t know if I will be using it much to ‘transmit’ rather than ‘receive’, but you can also see my latest tweets on this blog, to the right of this post, near the top.

We’ll see how this goes… I’m not quite sold on Twitter yet.  Does this make me a ‘twit’ now?

 

‘Victim’ or ‘In Control’

It has taken me a long time to narrow down my feeling of the biggest difference between liberal thinking and conservative thinking.  At first it seems to boil down to a discussion of entitlements.  But, as I really gave that some thought, I tried to figure out what is it that makes a person feel ‘entitled’ in the first place.

Several weeks ago, sitting in a local bar with my wife, I overheard a political discussion getting a little heated.  In fact, both people were on the same side of the argument but they were getting quite animated in their passion for the topic.  As I listened, I realized they were both saying something along the lines of how the government isn’t doing enough for the people in the way of job creation. Not surprisingly, they were both young (early 20s) and both needed the government to create a job for them.  So, I decided to let another side of the argument slowly creep in from my side of the room.

At first I just listened intently, nodding my head from time to time in agreement with one point here and there.  One of the guys started to notice that I was watching and said to the other, “Let’s ask that guy.  He seems to have an opinion…”  Since I am obviously at least 25 – 30 years older, he probably thought I would bring a more conservative thinking into the discussion and he seemed honestly curious.

“I don’t think it is the government’s job at all to create a job for you…” I said firmly.  Although I don’t think I shocked either one of them, they did seem a little surprised.

“So, you are probably a conservative,” the first guy started, “Don’t conservatives talk about lowering taxes on the rich so they can create jobs?”

I told him that lowering taxes has been proven to allow some people to create jobs, but that my point is that government does not create jobs in a capitalist society.  People and companies create jobs.

“Ok, fine,” the other guy responded, “if you wanna’ split hairs.  But they wouldn’t create jobs if they didn’t get a tax cut?  Of course they would!”  He and the other guy then went into a bit of a tirade about how job creators have always created jobs, with taxes or not, because they wanted to get richer.

“Do you want to get richer?” I asked.  Both of them responded that, “of course we do”, to which I responded, “Then what is holding you back?”

Silence… They thought for a second, then one said slowly, “I can’t get richer without a college education, and I can’t get that without a job that pays me enough.”

This conversation had turned directly down the paths I had hoped it would take.  We were discussing rather than debating… As long as I can keep them on topic, we’ll be fine.

“Do you realize,” I said, “how many millionaires have existed in the last hundred years who had no more than a high school education, and some didn’t even have that?”  Of course, they countered with a “that was then, this is now” kind of argument.  So again, I asked, “What is holding you back from starting your own business?”

The second guy responded first with, “Who would invest in any small business idea I could come up with?”

“Most of those millionaires that had no education also had only themselves investing in their business in the beginning,”  I said.

Silence… Then the conversation took what I thought was a totally weird turn down an alleyway I had not expected.  One of the young men was African-American (or black, I can never remember what the latest correct term is).  So he asked me, “Do you think a black man can open a soul-food restaurant in downtown Atlanta and make any profit?”

“Um, yeah…” I responded, “if his cooking is good and he finds ways to be competitive.”

“Man, you don’t know nothin’ about the black community then.”  I was completely stammered… “

What does ‘black’ have to do with it?” I countered, “Supply and demand works no matter what race is involved.”

“Oh, so you think that a black man could open a soul food restaurant in north Georgia?”  For those of you that don’t know Georgia, there is a strong belief that anything north of 33 degrees North latitude is very intolerant of blacks.  For those of you who can tolerate the terms, a lot of black people feel like that part of Georgia is teaming with KKK or red necks or ‘bubbas’…

“I honestly think you’d have an easy time setting up an authentic soul food restaurant there because I don’t know of a single one,” I said, “So, with the laws of supply and demand, there is no supply and there is a lot of demand for it.  You’d be a success.”

He laughed, took another sip of his drink, and asked, “Man, are you serious?”

I told him a story about how my wife and I had just taken a drive through Mississippi from the southwest part of the state to the northeast.  When we stopped for lunch, it was at a soul food restaurant and it was full of nothing but white clients.  If they could make it work in Mississippi, of course he could make it work here.

Again he laughed, and the conversation went on for some time about how I just don’t get it.  Little did he know, but I understood better than many people.

In 2007, I worked for a very large telephone company that was acquired by another larger phone company.  The tradition in such a merger, as in most industries, is to get rid of duplicated jobs as fast as possible.  Realizing that my job was duplicated by someone in two other parts of the company, I decided to leave before they made me leave.  As a result, I decided to form my own company… I walked out the door on Friday (after a two week notice), and walked into my new job on the following Monday (three days later).  I formed a consulting company and had my first client before I ever walked out the door of the first job.

Did I wait around for someone to create a job for me?  No… I determined that I had a skill and the knowledge, and created my own company.  I have been incredibly blessed to have been consistently employed in contracts since 2007 without a break.

It occurred to me from this discussion I had, that the difference between liberals and conservatives is probably greatest when it comes to a feeling of responsibility.  I am responsible for myself and the welfare of my family… In a liberal house, I would probably expect that ‘bad things‘ happen ‘to me‘ because someone in a position of ‘power and riches‘ has no heart and is ‘keeping me down‘… As a victim (liberal), the government that I elected owes me a better living than what I have now.  I am entitled to that because I am a human being.

There was a time when people were embarrassed by being on any form of government subsidy.  Living in subsidized housing, picking up an unemployment check, getting food stamps… All of that would have killed my mom if she’d have done it.  She was a single mom, in the 1960′s, trying to keep her 4 boys fed, clothed and housed.  She could have leaned into the government… But she would have lost a lot more than she would have gained.  (THANK YOU MOM)

Related Posts:

http://polyop.wordpress.com/2012/04/18/americans-avarice-get-itis-and-entitlement/

http://vancouverthoughtspot.wordpress.com/2012/04/17/housewives-of-entitlement/

http://jamesbosco.com/2012/04/09/is-the-fed-promoting-recovery-or-desperation/

 

Obamanomics vs. Reaganomics

Yesterday, President Obama evoked the name of Ronald Reagan in a feeble attempt to promote his “Buffett Plan” increase on taxes for the wealthy.  He even recommended that he would be willing to change the name of this bill from the Buffett Rule to the Reagan Rule if it would convince Republicans to vote for the bill.

Did you notice the ‘switch up’ sort of subliminal message that President Obama made about 5 minutes into the statement?  He said:

“Now next week members of Congress are gonna’ have a chance to vote on what we call “The Buffett Rule”, and it’s simple.  If you make more money, uh, more than one million dollars a year… Not if you have one million dollars, but if you make more than $1 million a year, you should pay at least the same percentage of your income in taxes as middle class families do.  If, on the other hand, you make less than $250,000 a year like ninety-eight percent of American families do, your taxes shouldn’t go up… That’s all there is to it.”

Wait… What?  What about the folks between $250,000 and $1 million?  Did he intentionally mess that statement up, or is there something he omitted from saying?  I think I missed something…

At about 6 minutes into the statement, Mr Obama lets us know his personal achievement in cutting taxes for middle class families and businesses… He said:

“What they won’t tell you is the truth; that I’ve cut taxes on middle class families each year that I’ve been in office… I’ve cut taxes for small business owners not once or twice, but 17 times…”

This is where I have to stand up and call HOGWASH on his claim.  I am a small business… My total revenue for last year was almost exactly the same as the year before.  My federal tax for the year, after all considerations, was within $1,000 of being the same and was slightly higher than last year.  His statement is too broad to be true if he cut taxes for a small sector or small businesses… If he didn’t cut it for all small businesses, he should not make a statement so broad.

But I also have issue with him taking credit for any tax cuts, since Congress is the only body with the power to raise or lower taxes in this country.  He didn’t say “we lowered taxes”, he definitely used the “I” pronoun in claiming credit.  What a team player…

But, I digress… The key to understanding the press conference seen above is in the over-used phrase “fair share”.   I didn’t count how many times he uses that phrase (or the word “fair”), but it seems to come up about every other sentence in some parts of his statement.  So let’s consider what “fair share” means…

Warren Buffett claims that he pays far less taxes than his secretary.  I believe him.  Warren Buffett is paid a salary of around $100,000 from his company and famously demands that they will NOT pay him any more than that.  We do not know what the salary of his secretary is, but I’d assume for her to pay more taxes, she either makes more salary or has fewer ‘deductions’ available to her.  But, she is no millionaire and he is.

It is no secret that Mr Buffett makes most of his money through investments and NOT through his salary.  So, assuming he makes less salary than his secretary and assuming he pays taxes only on his salary, we are led to assume he pays lower taxes… and rightfully so.  Is that his fair share, or should he be taxed on money he ‘makes’ from his investments?

At first blush, a lot of you might say he should pay taxes on ALL income, regardless of where it comes from.  But think of this… If you invest $1,000 into Company X, you are loaning your money to that company.  There are essentially two ways that money ‘makes money’.  Either the company pays out a dividend to you, or the value of the stock you invested in goes up.

In a year, assume the stock goes up a meager 6% overall… You’ve just ‘made’ $60, right?  Well… Sort of… The value of the stock went up, but there is no new money in your pocket.  You didn’t sell the stock to someone for $1060, but it is worth $1060.  Sometimes, a stock goes up a large percentage in a single day and then down an even larger amount another day… Should you pay taxes on the $60 in that case?

In the case of a dividend, most people typically ‘let it ride’ (meaning re-invest) it in that same stock (or another).  So again, it isn’t money in your pocket, it is money still in the market as an investment.

Warren Buffett has been in that game for a very long time.  It took him a long time to reach the point of being labeled a ‘millionaire’.  He earns most of his money from the stock investments he makes, but certainly much of those earnings are in ‘value’ increases.  Should he be taxed on money he hasn’t withdrawn from the market to fill his bank account?

In his statement, President Obama would have you believe that President Reagan would have supported this tax bill which targets people with annual income more than $1 million.  However, in this video, we see in the Reagan / Bush debate of 1980 that candidate Reagan supported tax DEcreases in order to increase tax revenue.  His point of view would later be called Reaganomics as a kind of slur from the pessimists that expected it to fail.

The result of his plan was a historical increase in tax revenue.  Why?  How is it possible to have more revenue if you are charging people less for being productive citizens?

Reagan’s theory, dubbed ‘Reaganomics’, contended that tax revenue goes up when total employment goes up because more people are paying taxes… Total employment goes up when more jobs are created as a result of lowering taxes on “job creators”.  They create jobs with the money that they don’t have to pay in taxes.

President Obama’s plan, The Buffett Rule, does not lower taxes on the job creators.  Obamanomics is nothing like Reaganomics, regardless of how much President Obama would try to mislead us.

I am going to find, download and read the bill the president is promoting so that I can understand every word and concept.  I hope that you will do the same… Meanwhile, I will post an article on my research to let you know what I find.

Related Articles:

http://crossroads2012.wordpress.com/2012/04/11/barack-obama-distorts-the-truth-with-reagan-reference/

http://blog.american.com/author/jpethokoukis/

http://twitchy.com/2012/04/11/harry-reid-helps-obama-push-buffett-rule-equals-reaganrule-lie-on-twitter-twitter-debunks/

 

America IS Becoming an Entitlement Society

This blog entry is in response to a post made by Tim Prosser on his blog, http://timprosserblog.wordpress.com.  He posted an article aptly entitled “America is NOT Becoming an Entitlement Society” to which I took the following exception.

Until the 20th century, in this country, no one was entitled to any form of welfare from the government. You are right that neighbors generally helped neighbors for the previous two hundred years. But if a neighbor did not show appreciation by helping his neighbors after they helped him, he often found himself unaided by those same neighbors afterward. There was no entitlement to neighborly help.

In the 20th century, several evils had become national embarrassments. Husbands left wives to seek out fortune elsewhere, leaving the wives to care for the children without support from the husband… Various forms of “barons” surfaced in industries like railroad and manufacturing near the end of the 19th century. These guys hoarded money and treated workers very unfairly, again without any sense of entitlement to jobs or money. Starvation existed in virtually every American city at the turn of the 20th century as well.

To combat these evils, the government stepped in to begin providing for the truly needy. These were people that needed assistance because their lives had spiraled out of control through no fault of their own. Handicapped people… Wives who could not work… Children abandoned to orphanages… These folks needed help and could not help themselves.

As time progressed into the 20th, a sense that the government would nurture not just this definition of needy, but all definitions of needy arose. If a man lost his job for any reason, the government became expected to provide him money to tide him over until he could find work again… If a woman left her husband and took the kids, she was expecting the government to provide her money just as if the husband had abandoned her.

Education for children, before the mid-19th century, was only done at home by the parents. Then, the government stepped in to provide for those who could not provide for themselves. After the turn of the 20th century, not only did everyone expect the government to provide education for all children, but now there were truancy laws to enforce parents to send their children to a school (public or private). Education had become an entitlement which did not exist at the beginning of our great nation.

Today, we see that even healthcare is becoming a basic human need to be provided by the government. Never has that been done in the history of this nation before the 20th century when “public hospitals” showed up on the scene. I was raised in a very poor family until I turned 9 years old, so I know what I am talking about on this specific point. My mother, raising 4 boys alone, had no one provide any welfare of any kind. In the 60′s, when women did not normally work, she found several jobs to pay the rent, feed and clothe her kids, and get them to a reasonable doctor. She taught us to never rely on the government for subsistence of any kind, and to refuse it as long as we could. The feeling then was to be on welfare was to admit defeat, to lose face, to be an embarrassment.

Today, there is no stigmatization attached to accepting welfare. Instead, the feeling is becoming more like that welfare is an entitlement. I think THAT is what the conservatives are trying to say.  I think this is also why some of us refer to President Obama as “the food stamp president”.

Related Articles:

http://leadstrategic.com/2012/04/08/entitlement-vs-thankfulness/

http://coffeeandsleeplessnights.wordpress.com/2012/04/08/its-sheeple-like-this-that-will-vote-for-obama-again/

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/02/08/luis-gutierrez-food-stamps-gingrich_n_1263164.html