ARMY CORPS OF ENGINEERS, DAM BUSTING, CREATING A WATER SHORTAGE

I'm seeing articles Here and There where the left wing is trying to plant the idea that concerns over Agenda 21 are "conspiracy theories" from "tin foil hats" and are ridiculous attempts to discredit the environmental movement. So for those of you who may be sitting on the fence or on the left and buying this idea, I think it is high time to get the record straight.

There is no conspiracy theory. There are no tin foil hats. And, if you would be so gracious to educate yourselves, you can go straight to the horses mouth Here and see for yourself. City council members and county commissioners who have never heard of Agenda 21, but keep implementing the principles of Agenda 21 are the worst offenders of ignorance on the planet. But I digress.

For today's reading pleasure, I bring to you more evidence of Agenda 21 being played out in what I believe to be government lead crime against the people. The incidents I cite are from last spring and early summer when the waters normally fill up the rivers and, heretofore, were controlled by carefully constructed dams. While this did not happen this week, the story deserves revisiting for the sake of enlightening the clueless who refuse to see the truth right in front of them.

A report here describes quite well what the Army Corps of Engineers has been doing to destroy farmland and the family owned farms along the Missouri River.

Excerpt here:
"Today, a Missouri farmer completed a conference call about the federal government sending letters to flooded farmers in the Missouri River flood plain and bottoms, notifying them that the Army Corps of Engineers will offer to buy their land. One critic, Ann Barnhardt of Capital Management, Inc. summarized these events Monday:

* "Intentionally flood massive acreage of highly productive farmground.

* Destroy people’s communities and homes.

* Catch them while they are desperate and afraid and then swoop in and buy the ground cheap."

Barnhardt traced some of the major investing to George Soros who is “investing” in farmground through the same company he used to get into the grain elevator and fertilizer business, Ospraie Management Fund, that is buying up farmground in a joint venture with Teays River Investments as a partner.

Read more here

Mismanagement of water, I would say, is another sign of the degradation of our ability to survive. Why would that be promoted by our government? Now we hear about the latest scare tactic, a coming water shortage. (We are told we are facing energy shortages, yet our government chooses energy starvation policies....sound familiar?)

I typed in a google search with these words: Coming Water Shortage. Try that and you will see thousands of dire and desperate claims of how we will be suffering for lack of water within the next 15 to 30 years. Excuse me for being skeptical, but does this look like another manufactured crisis? By blowing up the dams, our government is creating scarcity in four (4) areas of necessity. Land, food, water, and electricity. Flooding farmland, reducing our capacity to raise food, reducing available water quantities, and reducing hydro-electric capacity. Of course, all of the articles cite rising population as the culprit. It's a Fabian Socialist's dream. No water. No food. No energy. No land. No babies.

Meanwhile, our city a few years ago implemented a "storm water runoff fee." This is basically an impact fee for handling storm water runoff. The more impermeable surface on your land, the higher the fee. The supposed justification for this is you are causing headaches and costs to the city to catch and direct the water. Seems to me that if there is a shortage of water, the city should be paying land owners for more runoff that can be caught, purified, and used. Our property taxes are already supposed to be paying for water management. But now...we should be punished for the size of house, driveway, patio, etc. Never mind that the runoff from your roof, driveway, and patio, is still going into the water system, whether into the land and downstream to the rivers, or into the drainage system and into the city reservoirs. Some cities are going so far as making rain barrels illegal or demanding water licensing rights to have one.

I think from this, you would have to be deaf, dumb, and blind, to not understand that our country is under an internal threat. The threat is less about ecology than it is about control of resources. The threat continues to come from government. The question remains, how do we stop it?


Rain Barrels Declared Illegal
Collecting Rain Water Now Illegal
Description of Charlottesville, VA Water Shortage Hoax Here

THE RULING CLASS IN AMERICA - Angelo M. Codevilla

I found the most articulate description of our circumstances on The American Spectator website The article is written by Angelo M. Codevilla. It is a very readable, however long, dissertation on the history of how we have landed into an era of corrupt aristocracy that the Founders abhorred and tried their best to avoid. It is well worth your time to read it.....an excerpt below:

"By making economic rules dependent on discretion, our bipartisan ruling class teaches that prosperity is to be bought with the coin of political support. Thus in the 1990s and 2000s, as Democrats and Republicans forced banks to make loans for houses to people and at rates they would not otherwise have considered, builders and investors had every reason to make as much money as they could from the ensuing inflation of housing prices. When the bubble burst, only those connected with the ruling class at the bottom and at the top were bailed out. "

"Similarly, by taxing the use of carbon fuels and subsidizing "alternative energy," our ruling class created arguably the world's biggest opportunity for making money out of things that few if any would buy absent its intervention. The ethanol industry and its ensuing diversions of wealth exist exclusively because of subsidies. The prospect of legislation that would put a price on carbon emissions and allot certain amounts to certain companies set off a feeding frenzy among large companies to show support for a "green agenda," because such allotments would be worth tens of billions of dollars. That is why companies hired some 2,500 lobbyists in 2009 to deepen their involvement in "climate change." At the very least, such involvement profits them by making them into privileged collectors of carbon taxes. Any "green jobs" thus created are by definition creatures of subsidies -- that is, of privilege. What effect creating such privileges may have on "global warming" is debatable. But it surely increases the number of people dependent on the ruling class, and teaches Americans that satisfying that class is a surer way of making a living than producing goods and services that people want to buy."

When Progressives of either party use the power of taxation to exalt themselves, annihilate the Constitution, pick winners and losers, and create the "pay to play" game, we are ALL LOSERS. America has become the worst of what we knew as the Soviet Union. It is disgusting and unforgivable. And those participating in this "fundamental transformation" of America should be tried for treason. However, the Progressives own the Judicial branch, the Legislative branch, and the Executive branch....therefore no one will be tried and punished for ruining our country.

Our elections have been violated by criminals. Literally. We have discovered this week that Al Franken was elected by felons who voted illegally in Minnesota. Can you spell A C O R N, anyone? What have we come to when a comedian gets elected to the United States Senate by felons voting illegally? What a country. Or should I say...in what country do we reside? (hint: Chicago is not a country) (This election will not be judicially over-turned in spite of this fraud....why? Because Obama owns the Judicial branch of the government. Can you spell ERIC HOLDER?) Those of us, now lacking the uncorrupted power of our own votes, just sigh and wonder....why vote? Since affirmative action our electoral districts are gerrymandered to ignore "one person, one vote." The electoral system has been rigged by Progressives. Without undoing this, our elections will henceforth be corrupted to suit the "ruling class." The law, which used to stand between us and the corrupt, now is so broken that we have no Lady Justice to hold our virtues. Our Lady is no longer blind, but she has been made into a thug for the privileged ruling class, twisted and bribed and crumpled into a useless hunk of historical ideology that no longer applies to us.

I had a conversation with a lawyer once.....a lawyer who actually had some level of honesty I had not seen before from a lawyer....who, when I groused over the unfairness of the opposition to my case, said, " If you are looking for justice, you won't find it on this earth or in this county." "You 'll have to look beyond this life." Naive as I was at the time, I was shocked at this revelation. I now see so clearly what he meant. And, I am grateful to him for handing me that bit of reality....though unhappy for the knowledge.

Read the article....you will find the tangled web of bondage woven around us by a "ruling class" which sneaked up through public schools and universities and are now strangling the life out of the American people and our way of life. They are parasites who will eventually kill the host and then.....they will cannibalize the world. The knowledge in the article is enlightening, as it should be. But it is not comforting. The "ruling class" is so entrenched that our knowing does not daunt them. They mock and laugh and thrust the economic knives in harder than ever. Theirs is arrogance at the pinnacle of power.

It is our turn to take that power away and put down their not so "soft revolution" of aristocracy. We will either take back America or we will be suffocated into extinction. It's a choice.

WHAT FREE MARKET?

Those of you who think free market capitalism is a good thing, please stand up. Those of you who think free market capitalism has been alive and well in America for the last many decades, please take a flyer to Never Never Land. Those of you who hate free market capitalism, tell me when the last time was that you saw such a thing.

From the early 1900's, since Woodrow Wilson and the establishment of the Federal Reserve, there has been a steady and deliberate destruction of free market capitalism in America. Once the politicians created a separate bank, one which they could use to control the money supply, the idea of a free market was at risk of manipulation by said politicians.

So, for over 100 years, our livelihoods have been played like puppets to the tune of enriching politicians, depending on who and what industry was in or out of favor of any particular time. The question is, how are we to retrieve a free market based system that has been missing for a 100 years? Some industries tried to escape the talons of the federal government, and lost. The others decided it was easier to get in bed with the government in order to try to survive. Consequently, our America has been at the mercy of greedy politicians for much longer than I have been alive. When all Americans really want is to conduct business without the corruption of politicians interfering. Oh, how naive I must be to hope for such liberty. My family, some Irish and some German, all came here to escape the tyranny of governments who became so corrupt. And now we find ourselves wrapped up in the same thing we tried to escape, a couple of generations later. Tyranny. Without economic liberty, there is no liberty. Period.

All of that came to mind when I read an article from Big Government.com I live in North Carolina, whose citizens are struggling, like all those in other states, to wrestle themselves out from under the thumb of heavy handed government interference. The onslaught is relentless. The killer is that some really stupid or greedy (not sure which) keep electing unscrupulous officials who are in it for the money. Democrat, junior Senator Kay Hagan is just such a government official. She is supposedly on the warpath to get rid of "payday" lenders, citing them as bad for consumers and predatory towards the poor and misfortunate. But her campaign money is coming from who? The commercial banks who would like nothing more than to put other competitors (payday lenders) out of business. Kay would like to pay back her cronies, you know. In case that alone is not enough to convince you of Hagan's corruption, here is an excerpt from the article:

"Hagan is also carrying the water for the corrupt Center for Responsible Lending, the group who took $15 million from John Paulson, a key figure in the Goldman Sachs scandal. This money was used to undermine the subprime lending market that helped millions of Americans buy their first homes. While witnessing this, Hagan’s cronies reaped billions of dollars off of their bets against the American dream. The Center for Responsible Lending – author of the Hagan bill – was involved in a scheme with John Paulson and Senator Chuck Schumer to destroy IndyMac Bank that allowed Paulson to buy pieces of IndyMac at fire sale prices and collect billions for himself and his cronies."

Americans don't have a prayer against this type of government corruption. It was one thing for the lobbyists to pay off politicians to try to eliminate regulations. It is just another, yet worse, side of the coin when politicians are using laws and regulations to wreck companies and then profit from the devastation. It has become so obvious that we are left with our heads spinning wondering how in the hell they are getting away with this. What used to be criminal and punishable by law, is now common government practice and being promoted as the Democrat ideal. The criminals in our government are running around patting themselves on the back for their cleverness, and have corrupted the media to spin the message to convince the public that they are actually doing something good. The entire scenario is straight out of "Atlas Shrugged" by Ayn Rand, would that the public had read and understood the book.

Freedom and prosperity are cohabitants. Without freedom, the only prosperity is that of the powerful elitists pulling the strings. If we don't get the crime out of government, we will not survive the coming decade as the America we love and want to remain. My message is: STOP ELECTING THESE CRIMINALS.

ALLIGATOR PIE

"Alligator in South Carolina"
Photo by H_Roach on Flickr
(
Many thanks for sharing this photo)

Just to put the smile on your Thanksgiving dinner this year, I suggest we begin serving Alligator pie. I'm not sure how much sugar it would take to sweeten Alligator meat, but I'm guessing it would take quite a bit. You see, there is a connection between sugar and alligators.

In Florida there are an estimated 1 million alligators, which translates to 1 alligator for every 18 people. The alligator was removed from the endangered species list in 1987, after making a huge recovery due to hunting bans. Britannica Online It only took 20 years for alligators to proliferate from the 1967 listing on the endangered species protection to 1987 when they rebounded in great numbers. There are alligator breeding farms in many areas of the south where the critters are bred for harvest, the hatchlings grow twice as fast as in the wild, and the hides are shipped all over the world. In short, there is an abundance of alligators in the American south.

Now to sugar. Last year, Charlie Crist, the governor of Florida, forced the buyout of U.S. Sugar to placate environmentalists. In order to put the "save the planet" feather in his cap, he used taxpayer money to buy out U.S. Sugar, shutting them down in order to return the Everglades to the alligators. A University of Florida study at the time projected three counties would take the major hit, Palm Beach, Hendry and Glades. Palm Beach Post article July 2008 The drop of personal income for those three counties was an estimated $553 million per year, and local, state and federal tax revenue losses would total $127 million per year. This is on top of the taxpayer money used for the buyout; $1.75 billion. The estimated job losses? 8,935 people out of work. Include the ripple effect of supporting businesses and a whole lot of unemployment and subsequent revenue loss is the result. But that's O.K. as long as we have more habitat for alligators.

Supposedly we are importing a lot of cheap sugar from Brazil and Thailand which is squeezing the U.S. sugar producers out of business. But the retail price of sugar is rising, not dropping. We can pay shipping charges on necessary goods that we could produce here instead? Why is the price of sugar going up? What is the carbon footprint of importing necessary products? Could it be that environmentalists are pushing the prices by diverting the use to bio-fuels? Maybe it is the obesity police pushing the prices up? Sugar: the new villain.

Corn is being used for bio-fuels instead of corn syrup. The mass production of corn for bio-fuels has caused increased pollution in the Mississippi River delta. But that's O.K. because it is supposed to be for the anti-oil folks. Cane plantations are vilified for taking up wild lands. Sugar is now the fall guy, along with textiles, furniture, car manufacturers, and tobacco. The farmers are next on the hatchet list because those bad cows produce methane.

Have you noticed that the thousands of Americans who were employed in these industries are the ones who take the hit? Hard working Americans who provide products in our country are being sacrificed for the lofty idea of some do-gooders who think they know better than you how Americans should eat, thrive, work, and live. American industries are, one by one, being decimated by regulatory taxes, undermined by environmentalists, and shut down by government officials who are trying to kiss up to some radical constituencies, not because the goods are no longer wanted or necessary. They are being shut down for some fictional ideology that makes no sense whatsoever.

There is balance and common sense to be gained in the issue of environmental responsibility, but not as long as radical control freaks are manipulating the media and the government.

No pumpkin pie, mincemeat pie, or pecan pie this year folks. It's alligator pie for all, if you can find enough sugar to get that to go down the pipes.

You Thought You Knew The News?

Vociferous voices on the left over the last several years have ranted and raved about the so-called corruption of profit making capitalistic ventures, as if the idea of making a living from a profitable business is evil consort with the devil. Those "evil profiteers" are just the scourge of the earth, as portrayed by such people as the Speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi, who recently proclaimed the insurance companies as "evil" for making profits. (Her family net worth is somewhere between $15 and $55 million USD. and she owns shares in energy co's. which will gain "profits" under the Cap & Trade bill.) How many times over the past several years have you heard the main stream media and congress bash the oil companies for making "profits?" (Fact you should know: Oil companies make .13 per gallon while government makes .58 per gallon in California. In other words, government is making 16% profit with no investment, while oil companies are making 3.7% profit and making all of the investment.)

The voices on the left want you to think that they are taking the "profits" out of government and decimating those dastardly special interest groups who "profit" from government. They want you to think they are doing this for your benefit. This is a blatant lie and I blame journalists for throwing away their ethical obligation to bring you unbiased news reporting. But journalists have been bought out. In fact, the whole category of main stream journalism has been completely usurped by leftist profiteers and their message has become so corrupt that the public is sitting there in the dark, not knowing whom to believe.

So who is corrupting journalism while making profits from news which lies to the public? I would point to the most obvious perpetrator, GE, who owns MSNBC. By lying to the public to get Obama elected, GE is getting government contracts and various other gratuities to build green energy facilities and make huge profits from the government. Great, you say, because that must be better than Haliburton making money from wars. If you say this, you are missing the point. The point is, you were lied to in order to insure another segment of government is playing the corporate corruption game. On the one hand, Haliburton was outsourced by the U.S. to defend the nation. On the other hand, GE is outsourced using public money to make your energy prices higher and higher. You may not care about defending the nation, but do you care if you are lied to in order to enrich a corporation to make your energy prices unaffordable? The Cap and Trade energy policy, benefiting GE, will just make life harder for everyone, including the poorest among us who won't be able to pay the higher energy prices. Your high and mighty environmentalist arrogance just made poor people even poorer. And you just made a corrupt deal with the devil, journalists on the take, who lied to you. Did MSNBC explain that to you?

Yet another example of who is behind this journalistic bombast of lies is a profiteer couple named Herbert and Marion Sandler. You may not have heard of them because they are part of the "behind the scenes" funding operation behind the Democrat / Socialist Party. The Sandlers are former CEO's of Golden West which they sold to Wachovia for $26 billion USD. They personally made around $2.4 billion from the deal. The subsequent near failure of Wachovia is blamed by analysts on the Sandlers mortgage policies which mirrored the failed policies of the CRA (Credit Reinvestment Act). The Sandlers made their billions from the Fannie and Freddie government policies constructed by the left with your tax dollars. Recently the Sandlers have donated to and operate a non-profit journalistic venture called ProPublica, supposedly an investigative journalism organization. They have committed $10 million USD to ProPublica and Mr. Sandler serves as chairman. The Sandlers are major donors to the Democratic Party and are top funders of ACORN, MoveOne.org, the American Civil Liberties Union and other far-leftist groups like Human Rights Watch. Along with George Soros, they are among the top three contributors to the Democrat Party.

So what, you ask? The Associated Press has announced that it is allowing its subscribers to publish, free of charge, work by ProPublica and three other leftist organizations. 1500 American newspapers are subscribers to AP. Folks, AP used to be a respected news source. Now AP has decided to give you more left-wing bias and more unethically bent reporting by people who are Socialists. Why would you believe anything you read in any AP report from this day forward? You know from the outset that it is coming from the Democrat Party, Soros & Co., John Podesta, MoveOn.org., ACORN, and others who have no interest in ethical reporting in journalism in America. Their interest is in twisting the truth to make you believe their lies. Their interest is in eliminating the United States Constitution and national sovereignty, replacing it with global interests and your taxes going into their pet projects from which they make "obscene" profits from our government policies.

Oh, and that sweet fella, Al Gore? He is just saving the planet for you and your children, right? He left the congress with under $1 million USD in 2000. He is now worth in excess of $120 million USD , thanks to MoveOn.org (brought to you by George Soros and the Sandlers) and the media reporting his lies on Global Climate Change, formerly known as Global Warming, formerly (way before that) as Global Cooling. His connections to MoveOn.org are common knowledge. Now do you see who is "profiteering" from our government and your taxes? Now do you see who is lying to you to further their own selfish agenda? And do you really think this is some altruistic, utopian, Democrat Party who is just doing such great things for you and your life? Can you believe AP? Hmmmmm....I don't think so.

So while you are wondering why the media is attacking Sarah Palin and Rush Limbaugh, ask yourself why? An uninformed and misinformed public is the best friend of the left. Live it, love it, eat it for breakfast with your morning newspaper. Read Marx's "Communist Manifesto" for lunch. And read Alinsky's "Rules for Radicals" for dinner. Read George Orwell and Ayn Rand before bedtime. Keep the U.S. Constitution with you at all times. You will see things a lot clearer. Unless you are lazy and you really don't care what disasters are lying ahead for your children.

The Curious Case of Mr. Bing

Before I get to Mr. Bing...I want you to read this quote:
Norman Thomas, the six-time Socialist Party candidate for U.S. President, said the following in a 1944 speech:

"The American people will never knowingly adopt socialism. But, under the name of 'liberalism,' they will adopt every fragment of the socialist program, until one day America will be a socialist nation, without knowing how it happened.... I no longer need to run as a Presidential Candidate for the Socialist Party. The Democratic Party has adopted our platform."
_______________________________________________________________________________________

Just wondering about that gorgeous jet that brought the two "so called" journalists back from North Korea yesterday. It occurred to me if that this was supposedly a state department operation to retrieve the two women from the clutches of Kim Jong Il, why was the plane not a U.S. military plane? A new name popped up when I went looking for the answer: Steve Bing.

So who is Steve Bing? According to American Thinker, Mr. Bing is one of the wealthy elite backers of the now Communist Democrat Party. You can read the entire article here: American Thinker But here are some excerpts for you....

"He provided the airplane that flew the Clinton team in and out, with the journalists in tow on the way back."

"Steve Bing is heir to a large real estate fortune who produces forgettable, inane movies. But, more importantly, he is (along with George Soros) one of the prime funders of 527 groups in America. These are often partisan groups posing as "activist" groups-and contributions to them are tax-deductible (though they should not be when such groups engage in politics; the IRS has never scrutinized these groups-and they certainly will not do so under Barrack Obama who relied on them to win the Presidency). MoveOn.Org is a 527 group, for example."

More on Bing from Discover The Networks:

"Today he is a close friend and associate of the billionaire financier George Soros."

"A notorious playboy and tabloid magnet, Bing is deeply devoted to the Democratic Party and its affiliated causes. In 1998 he ranked as the 13th leading campaign donor to the Democrats. Beyond contributing $759,000 to assist individual Democratic candidates in the late 1990s, Bing provided $1 million to help bankroll the party's 2000 national convention. During the 2000 election cycle, he gave $200,000 to Democratic nominee Al Gore's presidential campaign. A report by the Center for Public Integrity further found that, between August 2000 and August 2004, Bing wrote checks totaling $15,382,555 to pro-Democratic "Section 527 organizations," tax-exempt activist groups unofficially allied with the Democratic Party (for instance, the MoveOn Voter Fund), making Bing the third leading contributor to the Democratic party behind George Soros and Progressive Corp Chairman Peter Lewis."


You can also find out more on Mr. Bing at: Discover The Networks

So friends and patriots....who actually owns the United States of America today? The Democrat Party is a front group for a Shadow Government. David Horowitz wrote a book not too long ago exposing this take-over of our country. And, no, I haven't started wearing a tin foil hat. However, I might be proud to be called a "bitter clinger." We have suffered what is known as a "bloodless coup." Soros & Co. own the Democrat Party. Soros & Co. money bought the media. Soros & Co. money has infiltrated every branch of government. Unions and communists have taken over the public schools. (and you wonder why the schools are producing such unintelligent students.) The left wing political elites now own the banks and the car companies. They are in the process of trying to grab our health care and our energy supplies. I am not sure at this moment how we are going to get our country back, but please be aware that we are up against some very wealthy un-American power mongers. The front men are Obama and his czars. But you need to keep asking, who is behind this and why. And you need to keep asking your friends if they are willing to fight for our Constitution and win our country back from these diabolical snakes.

The Democrat Party is not who you used to think they were. The Democrat Party has long leaned toward Socialist ideology and now, after years of infiltration, it is completely off the charts into Communism, Collectivism, Marxism, Fascism, and all things un-American. And yes, I do mean un-American. The rights of the individual are assaulted on all fronts by this government. The Constitution is a mere memory. The freedoms we used to know.....slipped away by gradual erosion for years....and now, poof!!....gone in 60 seconds by one very corrupt election.

So now you know whose plane brought back Al Gore's flunkies. What you don't know is what quid pro quo was exacted for their release, what America paid to prop up Kim Jong Il in the process.

Even Ian Fleming couldn't write this stuff.....

Celebrating Dependence Day

As the Fourth of July approaches I am finding myself perplexed at the idea of celebrating a non sequitur. The day which brought independence to a nation of self-reliant people because of the freedom it promised is now gone. The dregs are left along with a few patriots who still think independence is a good thing. The reasons for celebration are lying on the ash heap of history. The day seems more like a funeral this year than a celebration of anything.

Evidence of this non sequitur came this week in a pamphlet from the City of Gastonia. The pamphlet is entitled, "Good News" and is brought to us in our utility bill. The entire front page is devoted to Federal Stimulus Money being divvied up in Gastonia as if it is Manna from Heaven. The author of this front page announcement is none other than our city manager, Jim Palenick. The article touts the $6.5 million in funds that our fair city is being granted from the Federal Government. Aren't you deliriously happy?

Independence Day was all about self-reliance. It was a commemoration of all that is good about freedom from oppression and being able, without government oppression, to take care of yourself and your own. We are a far cry from that freedom and self-reliance when an oppressive government puts entire towns and an entire population on the dependent list. As I read about all of the money coming into Gastonia, I thought about every town in America being usurped by a Federal Government gone amok. First the Federal Government and the States created policies which have undermined the free enterprise of this country through heavy regulations, taxation, illegal immigration, disallowing energy independence, and generally wrecking any semblance of sanity and common sense when it comes to fiscal policies. Then, to make sure every citizen gets the point of it, congress keeps passing more inane laws in order to create more dependence on the government and whip Americans into line. And the local politicians, wanting to get on the bandwagon, do more of the same. They grab the power by legislating your dependence and your unwilling cooperation.

So now we have $2.1 million dollars of Federal money to "redevelop" a building downtown, create condominiums, and redevelop other neglected properties. We have over $2 million of Federal money to purchase new hybrid buses. Federal money to buy police cars. Federal money for landscaping along the insane "Thread Trail," which is some conjured up way to pretend we are celebrating a textile industry that the government has near annihilated. People in Wyoming are paying for Gastonia's wish list. People in Gastonia are paying for some other city in some other state's wish list. In short, no city, county, or state is apparently immune from becoming the beggar to the all, omnipresent Federal Government.

And this has nothing to do with real need. It has everything to do with need created by government officials. It has everything to do with political power over our lives. This is the very antithesis that the Fourth of July is supposed to celebrate as a marker of our freedoms. Freedoms which have been thrown out of the window because some greedy politician or city manager wants to tell you they took money from the Federal coffers to landscape your downtown. And that is supposed to make you happy? We have "Movies on Main." We have "Rock the Avenue." What we really have is circuses and games to keep Gastonians distracted while politicians are busy taking away your economic liberty. Note: in this Sunday's Gazette that 5 businesses within a block on Union Road are all going under. More unemployment results while we are "enjoying" that Federal money.

Dependence used to be either a sign of extreme disability or carried the shame of laziness. Self-reliance was a banner of pride and with it came the safety and confidence to know you are not depending on a totalitarian to run your life. Today, our city is waving an American flag proudly proclaiming its dependence, not its independence. This is a sad turn for Americans. It is no badge of courage to find yourself dependent on the Federal Government or the State for anything. The very same government oppression from King George has reared its ugly head in the form of American government wearing a costume and mask of a benevolent dictator. And believe me, there is no such thing as a "benevolent dictator." Blood spilled, lives given in the quest for liberty, independence won, but all given up for some Federal, State, and local programs you don't need, while your jobs and economic freedom have been forcefully taken from you.
So enjoy that new landscaping, downtown development, and the buses. The price you have paid is higher than you think. Happy Dependence Day, Gastonia!