Our moneys worth

Eustache Deschamps, a French poet of the 14th century, was not wrong when he said that human beings are endowed with reason but they prefer folly. An ancient sage wasn’t either when he defined all fools as occupying but two distinct division, namely; the fool and the d----- fool. But between the two extremes of fools there is another brood. It is the otherwise sensible man or woman who can no longer believe that the Democrat party even cares to save the tax-payers money. Rather these citizens prefer to let "big brother" take care of them even though they do not understand the ramifications of their position. These people, at every turn, shun private investment in favor of governmental control. Can you believe that the savings rate in 1988 was 7% and today is .4%? They use the excuse that they cannot get ahead in these perilous economic times, times, by the way, that move forward relentlessly with the calendar and successive years. The political Democratic donkey twists and turns his tail to swat every conservative or sensible gadfly that dares to irritate his grazing on America’s pastures owned and operated by the government. Barak Obama’s gaff about bitterness and small town America merely points out the elitist dream cycle of clinging to government, become bitter about its failure to deliver, turning to religion until times improve, then returning to the ‘dole’ for solace until it fails again when religion beckons again...

When the Democrats are in control flubs are normal. Recently conservative leader Newt Gingrich brought to the public awareness the disaster in Detroit. Under Democratic control, with the help of the sympathetic teachers’ union machinery, the educational system remains fundamentally and hopelessly flawed. Decades of government oversight have left the system in shambles and thousands of children haplessly un-educated. What is most distressing is that local government continue to thwart attempts of good-intentioned citizens and a few visionary leaders to solve the crisis Vouchers for school choice are verboten. Waste is disgraceful. Newt singles out Detroit as an example of deep national problems of dependency and mismanagement needing bold solutions. Yet little is being done in other large, inner cities such as Philadelphia, Chicago, Indianapolis, Los Angeles, New Orleans and Chicago that play cards in the same suit as Detroit.

The problem is just not Detroit’s. Every American city and town faces the same challenge of resistance at some lever or another. Even though problems pop up like heads on the Hydra, we are still free to pick and choose our battles. We cannot and should not let history repeat itself to the point where great, inner cities or our wonderful smaller communities fail to serve our best interests. Here’s another relevancy from the past. The year was 1934 in the midst of the New Deal, and the Postmaster-General Farley requested Congress to grant him $525,000 with which to construct a government plant for manufacturing Post Office furniture in West Virginia. A responsible and reputable Winton-Salem businessman wrote to Mr.Farley a letter offering to turn over his already well-equipped factors in North Carolina to the government for only $52,500 and to pay out of his own purse the transportation expense of the 124 West Virginia miners to be turned into furniture makers. Even more, he offered to give his expert services in training these miner for a whopping charge of$1.00 per year. Nor forgetting the materials, free of charge, 400,000 feet of excellent lumber. This private citizen’s primary purpose was to induce the Federal Government to save $472,500 and at the same time bring another enterprise to his home city of Winston-Salem, North Carolina. Well, what did Postmaster -General Farley do to prove his appreciation of this gentleman’s patriotic proffer? He simply filed the man’s letter - it just might still be filed away today. Why did Postmaster-General Farley file the letter? He was a progressive thinker, not a member of the working man’s proletariat. As a liberal Democrat he believed that government, not private individuals should make policy and solve problems. What if American leaders had "filed" away Thomas Paine’s writings believing that government could do the job better than the people?

Consider Michigan millionaire and philanthropist Robert Thompson, who in 2003 offered the city $200 million to build 15 Detroit charter high schools. He was rudely dismissed. The long list of private citizens attempting to reform outside of the Democrat political machine goes on but action has been taken on nary a proposal. Those who believe government itself can bring about proper change are fooling themselves. Former Republican Governor John Engler, who made Detroit school reform a priority, tried a 1998 school-board takeover and passage of legislation approving charter schools. At every turn, these reforms were met by intense resistance from intrenched unions and their Democratic puppets.

One must be alert to the piffle that you hear from Democrats. The world "gobbledygook" was coined by a Democrat Congressman in the Roosevelt administration in the 1930's to describe the convoluted verbiage used to confuse people and facilitate their assent to numerous and ongoing helpful government programs and solutions to their problems. Code words such invest mean spend. Change means more taxes. Hope means give up the touch struggle in Iraq. Equality means seat belts, helmets, condoms, food stamps, stupid lead-laden lightbulbs, no guns or Egg McMuffins or carbonated beverages for anyone. A vote for Democrats, won’t get you your money’s worth. Rather it will get you to gladly volunteer to donate more of it to equalize opportunity (another coded phrase).

Democrats love to tinker with the machinery of governing, trying to improve the running gear and speed up the forward motion of the machine. My bugbear regarding automotive freedom is the example of sobriety check points held occasionally around the nation. A recent, local effort netted one arrest for drugs out of 473 stops and 3 for alcohol. Ratios of 473/1 and 473/3. This initiative (another code word) obviously is a bad idea whose time has come that costs the taxpayers thousands of dollars paid out to law enforcement officers. Perhaps the city officials ought not to tell the drivers when and where the checkpoints are being held; of course, that would be counterintuitive to mandated political correctness from liberal Democrat principles of fairness. Isn’t this the epitome of tinkering with individual freedom by simply throwing a monkey-wrench into the cog-wheels of the machinery of living -to continue the automotive analogy?