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"Tea and Sympathy"
Photo reference for painting
Dear readers,
I quickly have come to conclusion that I have created a habit that is killing me. I get up everyday and read the newspapers and get upset. I then go to my studio with intentions of reading a few emails and going back to my paints and brushes. But then I turn on Glen Beck and read emails from activists...and I get even more upset. I find myself so immersed in the tragic destruction of my country that I am completely ignoring the life I was living and the tasks at hand. I spend hours researching political subjects instead of painting beautiful paintings. My heart is in shreds over our country....and I am letting those who are involved in the socialist/fascist corruption of America wreck my life's gift and direction. Do I let them do this in my efforts to stop them from destroying my country? Or can I find some balance between painting joyful subjects and having my heart ripped out at the same time? I guess we'll see.
The next painting is from the above still life I have on my art table at the moment. If I succeed at the painting, I'll post it when finished. While I will still post now and again, and I will follow the news...I have to get back to my work. My love reaches out to all who have come my way in our efforts. (Especially a guy named Carl in New York who is a fine fine guy!!)
Back sometime later...
Cheryl
P.S. I hope like me you are praying for Glenn Beck's safety every day. He has a patriot's courage to stand up and speak out where angels fear to tread. His expose´ today of the Cap and Trade scam was investigative journalism at it's best. While he says he is not Woodward and Bernstein...I disagree. He is what they used to be....only better. He is entirely correct with his facts and his assessment of the crimes we are witnessing. The question becomes, is there anyone with any authority who will be brave enough to start the prosecutions. When does collusion to scam the public out of billions of taxpayer monies become enough to bring charges? When the crime syndicate owns the justice department and the White House, who in the country is the sheriff? I've said for quite a while now that Al Gore should be brought up on RICO charges. Now that we know about the Chicago Carbon Exchange, we can add Obama to the list of climate crime bosses. Conflict of interest evidently isn't recognized in this country anymore as corruption. Why is that?
Signing off ....for now. Pray hard, folks.
Having owned a business in my life, and coming from a small business heritage where my Dad owned his own business, this gives me a perspective that some people in America evidently don't have. And before I go on, you should know that I love business. I have a great admiration and appreciation for individual enterprise and creativity. Having said that, marketing and positioning are seriously important facets of doing business. What people are not seeing is that there are some corporate schlickmeisters in our government today who are using the power of government to run everything in our lives right now. These business scions are misusing our government for their own benefit. Tangling business with government is one of the corruptions that the founders made efforts to eradicate. What has happened is a massive "insider trading" scheme led by government to scam the public. I guess this post qualifies as another "Oh what a tangled web we weave, when we practice to decieve" article. Thank you William Shakespeare.
One of the tricks of marketing is to latch onto a product that is either needed in the extreme or rare enough to command high demand and prices. So, lets say you are Al Gore, having failed in politics, you want to make a killing in business. You, Al Gore, do not produce anything, but you notice that people need the environment of the earth to live. Or let's say you are Jeffrey Emmelt, CEO of GE and you want to clean up using public money. You, Jeffrey Emmelt, produce lightbulbs and windmills having noticed that people need light and they need electricity. You take a look at what people need in the extreme. Hmmmmmm....so you conclude air and energy are two commodities that people need. You ask yourself what is the best way to cash in?
First thing you do, if you are Al Gore, is create a perception of scarcity. You grab a bunch of people who are also looking to cash in and you create a media blitz on the dire situation of coming doom. You are so desperate to scam the public that you lie and say that even necessary elements of life, like CO2, are pollutants. You hire scientists using government grants to support your theory of scarcity and pollution. This way you don't even have to fork over your own money for investing in your scam, you can use public money. Meanwhile, you set yourself up with Enron-like corporations who are using the Enron model to trade in "carbon credits." (Look up carbon credits and you will see how people are making money trading air "pollution," i.e. CO2, for "clean" air, thereby skimming money from businesses no matter which side of the trade they are on) Just as Enron execs scammed people and went to jail for it, Al Gore should be facing the same fate. But nooooo. Al Gore has created a huge and successful media indoctrination blitzkrieg for his scam and convinced millions of useful idiots that the world is going to come to an end if you don't buy into his carbon credit trading scam. He uses government subsidized scientists to support his theory and then, if cap and trade goes through, will use American taxpayers to pay for carbon credits through his carbon credit trading company. Nice work if you can get it, eh?
Back to Emmelt and GE: This is another story with the same methods in play. Emmelt runs a company who owns NBC and MSNBC. He is looking to cash in on CFL lightbulbs, windmills, and much more. So he instructs his purveyors of "news" to inform the public of how bad Americans are for using so much energy. Through his media outlets he convinces millions of people that America must change its ways of using energy in order to save the world. He creates a demand for compact-fluorescent light bulbs which his company is importing from China. He creates a public campaign for windmills which his company is manufacturing. Then, to force an entire country to buy his products he sends millions of dollars into the democrats campaigns so they will then legislate using taxpayer money to buy and/or subsidize his products, even to the point of outlawing any other type of light bulb but compact fluorescent ones. All of this is under the guise of "the good of the earth and the country."
Rarity. Scarcity. Demand. Media. Public money. These are just two obvious examples of people corrupting the government to use taxpayer money in America to enrich themselves. Other examples are abundant in every aspect of the government these days. Banking. Investing. Cars. Home mortgages. Food. On and on.
The robber barons would be jealous. They hadn't figured out yet how to use government politicians to their own benefit, though I think they tried. Times have changed. Smart business creates a marketing blitz, a perceived demand, and a revenue stream. Today, smart businesses are using our government to do the work for them, costing the American taxpayers millions if not billions. While socialists say they condemn private business enterprise and private property ownership, what socialists do is confiscate every enterprise and piece of property out of the hands of private ownership. (Actually maybe fascism mixed with socialism is the hybrid method of the moment) It isn't that they hate business and private property. It is that they covet business success and use their power to take it from private citizens. Politicians and businesses alike are raping the economic stability of America for their own enrichment. Those like Gore and Emmelt have figured out a way to take capital by force through government from taxpayers, not to make the world a better place, but simply to enrich themselves.
Some evidently are breathing rarified air...and it isn't the taxpayers in America.
I've written before on the idiocy of windfarms and also the scientific truths of CO2 benefits to our atmosphere.
If you read my blog often you know what I believe on the subject of "global warming." Truck loads of evidence is mounting on my side of the argument by the minute. The question remains, is truth going to will out over the lies, propaganda, and power of the elitist scammers who are perpetrating the hoax for their own gain. Again...please some lawyer out there start a RICO investigation! PLEASE!!
Anyway, back to the evidence, I suppose it is too much to ask for a closed mind to become enlightened to the truth. Nevertheless, I offer some more for the uneducated to digest in the article linked below showing how manipulated data is enriching even those in organized crime. The scam IS organized. The tentacles of the scam are running deep into governments across western Europe and America.
Read Anthony Watts' site, Guest columnist Thomas Fuller
The American public is being ripped off at warp speed under this administration. There are only a few options for us to attempt to stop this economic rape: Elections, spreading the truth through emails, blogs, websites, and word of mouth, and somehow refusing to comply with the Obama government edicts as they rain down on us. Speak up. Speak out.
Get off your duff and warn everyone you know.
I live in a small city adjacent to a big city...close to Charlotte, North Carolina. There is a primary coming up on May 4th. I've picked a state senate candidate to support. Her name is Kathy Harrington. Reason? She supports freedom from "big government" mandates and more local control over our tax dollars. She supports issues against corruption in local, state, and federal government. She is not an over-blown egotistical control freak who wants to micro-manage everyone's life. That alone is enough to attract my attention.
The other day I happened to meet one of our county commissioners. I've met him before and he is a decent, regular, every-day kind of guy who stepped up to try to help our county. In the course of our conversation he related this to me: "Only 17 cents of every tax dollar generated from our county is in our discretionary control. The rest of that dollar is mandated by either the State or the Federal Government." Those mandates are wealth re-distribution in the manner of services for the "poor." Like everywhere else across the south, we have our share of illegal immigrants receiving all kinds of services, i.e. education, housing, medical care, etc. I mention that because that is just another burden laid on the tax payers here, but it isn't the whole picture. Our area, fortunately not as devastated as Detroit, is depressed. Nafta and Cafta have long ago eroded the business model that succeeded here. Businesses have left for greener pastures. Our tax rates are high. Our property taxes are as high or higher than Charlotte. Multiply this picture across the entire country and ask yourself why do you suppose the TAXED ENOUGH ALREADY movement has taken root and is growing.
The outcry here is usually something like this: "We want more goodies and we want them now. We want more parks and recreation. We want excellent schools. We want downtown renovations. We want more commerce. We want high value properties. We want road widening projects. We want to be the new, green, superior destination to attract more high paying jobs. We want amenities."
You get the picture. Like a three year old yelling for more more more goodies, our city and county leaders want more more more. They want it now! So what do they do? After chasing away any semblance of free enterprise, replacing it with collectivism, they capitulate principles to get State and Federal money.....with strings attached. What do we get? 17 cents on the dollar in discretionary spending. What do you get for the rest of that dollar? Subsidized housing. Subsidized parks. Subsidized education. Subsidized medical care. 17 cents is not enough to pay for those downtown renovations or newly paved and widened roads. What does the three year old do? Borrow money. With interest. Force someone else to face a higher debt load, smile with smug satisfaction having won the temper tantrum trick, and kick the can down the road for future persons to pay.
America is suffering from a terrible disease. Borrowing to the point of insolvency has become a national sickness. While there is a valid place for capital loans in the private sector, borrowing from taxpayers is a completely different and insidious form of indentured servitude. This is what unconstitutional social justice (socialism) does to a nation. Using Social Security and Medicare as the model and the excuse, our government officials, at all levels, decided over the last decades to borrow money with interest, making working people pay for services to the poor and the elderly and then...on top of that...all of the other goodies on the wish list, such as greenways, downtown renovations, light rail, parks and sidewalks, on and on. In our case, our local government is asking to borrow more money for roads and parks, putting a burden of interest on the taxpayers here. The insanity is that if our local government didn't bow down to the mandates, the money collected here would stay here and we would have the money to do all of these things without paying interest. 83 cents of every dollar is mandated money....being laundered in the maze of big government bureaucracies and only 17 cents is left for us to use at our own discretion. This is the failure of our country. Look at Detroit. Look at Greece. Look at Europe. Look around you. Are your poorer for borrowing money for goodies? Would you be better off to save up and keep the money close to home?
When, in your life, did you think it was a good idea to hand over 83 cents of every dollar to someone else so you could keep only 17 cents to use as you see fit? Common sense would tell you that's a bad idea. Locally we have an opportunity to stop another case of government borrowing. I hope we succeed. It starts here and now.
IED's are strategically placed right there in the road, like land mines, and like floating mines in the water, just sitting there waiting to go off at a moment designed to do the most damage. Such is the work of leftists in America with politically charged laws that disguise themselves as "for the good of all," but in reality are conceived for the distinct purpose of taking down the United States.
My first example of a strategic ticking time bomb comes by way of Jimmy Carter. The Community Reinvestment Act he signed in 1977 was a vehicle to force banks to lower standards for loans and money to people who could not support a mortgage loan with their own income. The loans were structured as adjustable rate mortgages which had balloon payments. Over time, the Feds put more and more pressure on the banks to create more and more of these loans. Clinton put the CRA on steroids in 1995 and increased the amount of risk to the taxpayers by subsidizing Fannie and Freddie's purchase of the high risk, subprime loans. Meanwhile, Fannie and Freddie stocks were sold to the public as a "safe" investment to the public, touting the idea that the whole thing was backed by the solid and sound U.S. Treasury. The FDIC and the SEC were charged with oversight to assure that banks were complying with the "quota" system set up by the CRA. A bank could not expand, grow, continue to operate, or even put in an ATM unless it was giving away low interest risky loans to low income folks in the proper percentages to satisfy the Federal Government. These loans, which are now referred to as toxic assets, were money losers for the banks. What does a good bank do to make up the difference? Any number of creative things, some of which were bundling the loans as derivatives and selling them to other financial investment institutions such as Goldman Sachs, AIG, Washington Mutual, Lehman, etc. The derivatives were bought and sold again to international banks who wished to own American investments. Voila! What do we get when the loans implode? An international, global financial crisis. Who gets rich from short selling the derivatives? George Soros, who told everyone last year he was having a very good crisis.
The "Progressive's" ticking time bomb always involves investments from either unsuspecting investors or the taxpayers of the American public. This is what happens when America allows its government to create a maze of tangled money systems which co-mingle private money with government money. A few people who are aware of the machinations of the systems know how to benefit from them. Those at the top of the schemes know exactly what is going on and come out of it with boatloads of taxpayer monies, while taxpayers get soaked and the solvency of the American privately held corporations, having been manipulated by the Federal Government, goes straight down the tubes. For a hundred years or more, there have been deals struck between private corporations and individuals to buy favor from the U.S. Government. But the size and scope of the Community Reinvestment Act and its damage to the solvency of privately held banks is the largest ticking time bomb ever invented by Progressive politicians. The bomb went off in the fall of 2008, but the answer from our government was to double down on the explosives and use more taxpayer money to prop up the redistribution schemes.
Meanwhile, back at the press desks across our nation, Progressives have infiltrated nearly all of the media outlets in our country. The message from these Progressive newscasters has been to promote the redistribution of private wealth into the hands of socialist programs, and emphatically demonize banks, wall street, and any other successful private business that does not play their game or adhere to the socialist goals of redistribution.
In each of the ticking time bombs is forced and complicit cooperation of private industries. The Feds forced the banks to comply. Wall Street paid boatloads of campaign contributions to Democrats to try to ward off regulations which would limit their abilities to operate successfully. AARP donates tons of money to and supports the Democrats on Health Care to try to position itself to survive the take down. GE goes off promoting "Green" all over its media outlets, NBC and MSNBC and pushes "Green" appliances, lightbulbs, etc. Why? So GE can stay in business with the blessings of the Federal Government....and then GE can buy off political favortism for its business. It has become a circular back patting convention of industries greasing pols and pols greasing the skids for industries. Eventually all of these players become arms of the Feds. Now we have an entangled web of lies and schemes being foisted onto the American public
The ticking time bomb enacted this year by the Progressive Socialist congress and Obama? The Health Care Bill. It won't work for the very same reasons the CRA took down the financial system. It will do to our health care exactly what the CRA did: create insolvency, reduce the availability of care, take out insurance companies and medical facilities across the country. Who did you hear were the demons? Doctors and Insurance companies. What do you get? Voila! Complete Federal take over of health care, a la Britain and Canada.
Next up: Cap and Trade...taking down the energy industries.
The formula is always the same. The outcome is always the same. Failure. In our case, the death of America. It's the Marxists dream come true.
None of this is the way our Constitution was constructed. The Constitution was constructed to protect the American people from just this sort of abuse. Limiting the power of the Federal Government was and is the only answer to stop this type of tyranny. Yet, here we are. Ticking time bombs going off all around us and the Constitution being ignored by politicians and tycoons alike. We didn't get here over night. It is going to take monumental efforts by Americans to reverse the damage and heal America. Not sure if this is comforting or depressing but here is a stat: It only took 300,000 Bolsheviks to take down 130,000,000 Russians. If we are the majority in America, for God's sake, we cannot let the Bolsheviks take us down.
Sources:
On Health Care and the Tenth Amendment
American Thinker on the Financial Crisis
National Review on Communism
Pajamas Media - Who Caused the Financial Crisis
I never did believe Social Security would be viable by the time I reached the age to collect it. I remember learning about it in a government class in high school ( a very long time ago in the age of hippies in the '60's) and saying to myself that Social Security was a dumb idea and would never be able to pay for itself. First, I reacted to it as a socialist scheme that I find repulsive. And second, I saw it as a Ponzi scheme that would eventually fail for any number of reasons. So I never thought I would collect any of it. And frankly, I would love to not have the need to collect any of it. The idea that other people and their children would be paying me some stipend for my existence just doesn't sit well with me. Partly that is pride, but mostly it is my sense of right and wrong.
Over time Congress has appropriated 4 trillion dollars from the "lock box" that was supposed to be Social Security and Medicare and replaced the money with IOUs. Today both funds are completely bankrupt and there is no money to fund them. That means you and I will now borrow and tax from ourselves and future generations to pay a pittance back to ourselves in Social Security or Medicare, which will suffer major cuts a la the Obama Health Care fiasco. Oh goody. So now we can pay interest on top of the debt, all because the money that we paid in was stolen.
Anyway, below is an article I found from George Mason University that says it all. If you want to bury your head in the sand, this article is not for you. If you want to throttle some very malicious traitors in Congress and in the Executive Branch, I'm with you. Why are these people not wearing orange jumpsuits and cleaning up the roads in chain gangs?
Oversight of Federal Financial Management
Testimony before the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, Subcommittee on Government Management, Organization, and Procurement
Veronique de Rugy | Apr 14, 2010
America’s financial situation is unsustainable. In 2009 the federal government spent $3.5 trillion but collected only $2.1 trillion in revenue. The result was a $1.4 trillion deficit, up from $458 billion in 2008. That’s 10 percent of gross domestic product (GDP), a level unseen since World War II. The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) projects that we will be running large deficits for the foreseeable future. According to its data, the annual deficits could average $1 trillion during the next 10 years.
While these figures are dramatic, they pale in comparison to what the federal government owes to foreign and domestic investors. According to the CBO, in 2009 America’s debt held by the public reached $7.5 trillion, or 53 percent of GDP, the highest it has been in 50 years. In 2010 the debt will cross the 60 percent threshold, a level at which many economists believe a country is putting itself in financial peril.
Maybe more importantly, the financial accounting of our financial troubles can lead us to underestimate the gravity of the situation. For instance, while the Department of Treasury’s Financial Statement of the United States depicts the financial situation of the country much more accurately than the Office of Management and Budget’s Budget of the United States, it leaves out some important elements that could hinder lawmakers’ realization of the urgency to address our financial situation. For instance, it accounts accurately for the IOUs in the Social Security Trust Fund, however, fails to account for how the federal government will pay its debt to social security and what it means for our debt levels.
NOTE: I'm writing this one for a local issue, but you can extrapolate the lesson to all of the government spending insanity we face across the country. There are politicians here jumping up and down and screaming, "WE NEED A TOLL ROAD." They claim it will be a "pay as you go" project. They claim the tolls will eventually go away once the project is paid for. Are you laughing yet? Here are some facts on toll roads.
The Gaston Gazette editorial on Monday proposes this: "Toll roads will bring a reality into focus in North Carolina." Reality does not concur with that conclusion. Facts do not bear out the idealistic theories on toll roads. It sounds so nice, the idea that the users pay their way, that paying tolls would be a capitalistic approach to public roads. But the history of toll roads do not bear this out. Floating the idea that the tolls will go away once the financing for the road is paid for is a ruse that investors love to use to promote their investments, but it never happens. And if anyone hasn't noticed, combining "public use" money with private investments, such as the "White Water Park" adventure, is not exactly working out to be a viable method or best use of public money. Instead it creates unreal expectations and wastes taxpayer money that might be better used by private citizens to create more useful businesses.
Just down I-85 from here, in Greenville, SC, a very similar toll road was foisted onto the public as a winning way to get a loop around Greenville, linking I-85 with 395. This toll loop was sold to the public by way of a non-profit public-private partnership, using tax free bonds to fund construction. The toll road opened in 2001. Today the public-private non-profit association is bankrupt and has defaulted on its financing obligations. The bonds were to be paid over thirty-five years with the proceeds from toll collections. The projected growth never materialized and the majority of the revenue collected went to consulting fees, marketing, paying toll employees, and legal fees. Source Consequently, this toll road was built on previously privately owned property, took millions of dollars in both public and private investment, used tolls collected for use other than the road itself, produced no noticeable growth, and generally wasted time, energy, tax dollars, and materials.
In Georgia, the Georgia State Road and Tollway Authority is now proposing to keep the tolls on the Georgia 400 toll road, in spite of the bond indebtedness being paid off in 2011. The voters and taxpayers were told that the toll booths would be taken down after the debt was paid. "I see it like the mortgage company forcing me to keep paying monthly on my house even after said mortgage is paid in full," states Georgia resident, Steve Williams. His blog here
In Tennessee we have this: "From the 9-25-07 Joint Transportation Committee, Senator Jack Johnson asks if the Tolls on Toll Roads would go away after the toll road debt is paid off. Ed Cole, with TDOT, says no, the money will continue to go into a toll fund so it can be used on other projects." Taxing Tennessee
In Washington DC, the Dulles Toll Road rates are to be increased by 2012, not to pay for the road, but to pay for a new metro-rail line to Dulles International Airport. This metro-line is to be paid for, not only with the tolls but with your Federal tax dollars. Not only users of the road pay, but now we all pay. Instead of stopping the tolls, the politicians have figured out how to increase them and use the money for yet another project. Source: Washington Post
The appetite for revenues in the political sector is insatiable. They will say anything to convince voters that their grand schemes of taxing the public are going to bring prosperity and untold wealth. Once established, tolls rarely ever go away. I could go on ad infinitum with real anecdotal evidence that the proponents of the Garden Parkway are lying about the intentions of a toll road enterprise linking us to Charlotte. But if you believe the idea that the tolls will go away once the debt for the road is paid, I've got a toll road to nirvana I'd like to sell you. If you think the projections are more real than fiction, maybe I could hook you up with an investor named Madoff. Also, if you like the idea of the government tracking you with transponders in your car, as the Gazette touts as another great idea, I can get you a few copies of 1984 or Animal Farm you might want to read.
How long is it going to take for the public to catch onto the lies and schemes of some power grabbing politicians? Just a rhetorical question that I wish could be answered in my lifetime.
"Surrender of Cornwallis"
I live in a unique place. It reminds me somewhat of Dicken's "A Tale of Two Cities." In fact, the small city in which I live is more than a little divided. You see there are two historical events and places connected to this area which represent the opposite sides of our current national struggle.
One is just west of town, a national military historical park commemorating the Battle of Kings Mountain, a major turning point in the Revolutionary War. The other one, the Loray mill, is on the west side, in town. There sits a dilapidated building that is the remnant of a large textile mill where, in 1929 a union strike fueled by Communists took place and two people were shot. The irony for me is that one place is the remembrance of how our freedom was defended, while the other place represents a tragedy of how communism influences labor unions.
Kings Mountain National Military Park commemorates the bravery of patriot mountain men, in 1772, who triumphed over Cornwallis' troops led by Patrick Ferguson, and made them turn back. The Battle of Kings Mountain was a decisive rout for the patriots and Cornwallis was stunned. King George was learning that the cause of freedom would not be turned back in America.
The other place is a sad story of how poor mill workers were used by Communists to foment a riot. The police were called in and a woman was shot to death. Somehow the police chief was shot to death, possibly by accident by his own forces. The National Textile Workers Union, a communist labor union, was led by a man named Fred Beal. He was released on bail after subsequent trials following the strike and he promptly fled to the Soviet Union. He became disillusioned in the Soviet Union and returned to the United States, surrendered to North Carolina authorities, but was later pardoned. The strike was not successful and the methods of the labor unions and communists were, henceforth, very unpopular in the South.
So now and again someone makes some big deal about the Loray Mill. It has been put on the National Register of Historic Places, all because of a communist plot to wreck the textile business and ruin the owners. The textile industry created a lot of wealth for this area of the country. In fact, our small city would not have thrived at all were it not for the textile industry. A thriving industry is a point of pride for those who own it and those who put their labor to work for it. The Loray mill is now a large brick building with broken glass windows and it sits like an empty ghost of the tragic events. The city leaders are always looking for some developer to come in and turn the place into some fabulous condos or commercial, mixed use development, but at the same time they want it to be a symbol of "the workers' unions" and their ability to demonize those bad mill owners. So far no deals have come through. There are people in town who think this relic is a monument to the struggles of humanity. It is often written about in the local paper as if this 1929 event was some great and glorious thing that we should all have tatooed on our hearts. The Loray Mill may become the largest tax credit project in the state. Our small city has no other major ties to history than this one dismal event, so it is looked at as something to commemorate.
No, I don't support the abuse of employees. And I do support employment safety laws that have been put in place to protect people to a reasonable degree. Laws have been put in place preventing labor abuses in the United States. But, here we are. From the Revolutionary War to the Marxist revolution, today we exist in the middle of divergent paths and will either emerge victorious on the side of our Constitution or be consumed by some collectivist, mistaken theory of utopia that cannot work.
Two historical events. Two sets of ideology. One for freedom. One for collectivism. One event fought for liberty. One event fought for mob tyranny. One fought for the opportunity to create wealth. The other fought for despising that wealth and forced wealth distribution. One side fought for property rights. The other side fought for the destruction of property rights. One hundred and fifty seven years apart. Just a few miles apart. These places might as well be light years apart. Encapsulated in one community lies the metaphor for our time. Do you celebrate the creation of industry and wealth which brings jobs and livelihoods to our people? Or do you celebrate the collective destruction of industry and wealth? If you are trying to attract industries to take root in our area, are you really thinking that celebrating a communist labor union is a good enticement? Is that a statement of support for industry? Or is it a statement that industries better beware, that this community doesn't like wealth creation with the attached work force to go with it? It's a choice. When faced with a decision on what history to celebrate, would you decide to celebrate communism or a victory for human freedom?
Lastly, I believe that if this community would take a stand for freedom, self-determination, and encouragement of wealth creation, industries would flock here. Our unemployment rate is 14.5%? Do you think that might have something to do with what our community supports and celebrates? What attitudes prevail here? What private ownership would want to buy a property in a depressed area that commemorates a communist ideology? Maybe there are some, but isn't there a conflict of purpose in this? If you want to find the answer to why industries are leaving the United States and why our area, in particular, is floundering, you just might want to ask yourself what ideology you are promoting. Communism or freedom? Collectivism or property rights? When you realize that individuals create wealth, that freedom promotes industry, and that collectivism destroys all of it, maybe you will be able to celebrate a real and sustainable prosperity. Until then, we are stuck in a self-defeating spiral of debt and poverty, looking for tax credits to develop property and, thereby, turning private property into a collective, communist project.Let’s decide which history we defend and celebrate.
"Tea and Sympathy"
