“The principle of spending money to be paid by posterity, under the name of funding, is but swindling futurity on a large scale.”
-Thomas Jefferson
As many of you are quite aware now, the state of California is now broke. The politicians are turning to their same old games once again on blaming each other so as to keep us well distracted. The state in order to operate is now passing out IOUs, the same ones we use to hand out as children. I am lucky to not live in California at this time, because all an IOU really is, is leveraging this money on the children of the state. These young children in grade school, playing kickball have no idea the debt that we are shoving upon them or the poverty which we are going to shove upon them. The even sadder news is, this isn’t just California many states are being forced into the same situation, and California is just the first in the series of dominos.
The major problem is, is that the states want to help everyone, and as they stretch their dollars thin, they need more taxes to fill the gaps. Now rather than cut their plans and ideas down, they opt for the more destructive plan, they tax more. The problem is that at a certain tipping point, the voters fight back, and they hold off. This is where we currently are at, politicians have pushed taxes as high as they were going to go, and we don’t want to pay anymore. State recently tried taxing the rich more, and the rich have moved from those states, causing less revenue. This situation has run into the proverbial end of the line, they are running out of money, yet they just keep spending. To me it seems like they just can’t help themselves, they are spending themselves out of existence. Their amount of IOUs will only keep growing, and when people realize that they are worthless, they will stop accepting them. Once the IOUs are gone, then they have two actions, tax more or cut spending drastically….and if history dictates, they will tax more until the politicians and the absolute poor are the only ones left.
This isn’t just a state level problem, even though many states are experiencing the same problems, the federal government is doing the same thing. There is just one catch though, the federal government can just keep printing the money and keep circulating it…this doesn’t solve their problem, just makes it harder to see…though we’ll all pay when the dollar is worthless. Our politicians spending are ruining this country…and we are the ones who all pay. Why should children playing in a school yard today be held with the frivolous spending of us currently? When did they agree to be saddled with our debt and our mismanagement? I think politicians need to wake up slash all spending by 75% and cut their juicy benefits. Then get this country out of debt and make sure I, you, and our children get as much of our hard earned money as possible. Politician’s pet projects need to be stopped, and instead of adding more laws they need to be cutting useless laws.
We need to watch California, so that we all don’t make the same mistakes in our states. With the Governor blaming one and the democrats blaming him…and nothing gets done. With the 4th of July that just passed, think about freedom, because freedom and protecting everyone’s liberty will cut spending…even if we don’t agree with it.
I’ve spent a lot of time watching the news and following their over-reporting of the swine flue epidemic. Though at this point there have only been 3 confirmed deaths of swine flu, which is statistically nothing. About 1,000 people die a month from drunk driving from the people at Alcohol Alert and only 3 have died from swine flu. It goes you show you just how small this problem is and just how bad the media can make us paranoid with absolutely nothing to show for it. If you asked people what they where more afraid of the flu or during of drunk drinking, most would choose the flu as their worse fear.
The main problem I have with the 24 hour news media, is that there isn’t 24 hours worth of news…heck you can see that even if you watch your local news at morning or night…they generally only have about a half hour of news, and then just repeat it. So what would you do in that situation, well we would probably do what they are doing, taking something as simple and as unimportant as swine flu and make people believe that it’s possibly the end of the world, and have all sorts of “experts” on to make your case. Have discussion panels on what you can do to be safe, and shock people into not changing the channel.
The problem with this is, that most people buy into this, I mean they do have experts. We aren’t experts in everything, so we have to trust what they say, the problem is, that we react to what the news tells us. I think half the problem with the recession was that news was saying it’s bad, so businesses to prepare themselves cut staff, and then the news reported that unemployment was up and we stopped spending. Regardless how independent we think we are, we tend to think in a herd mentality and that hurts us. Especially when these problems comes from what we call the “news”.
I hear from more and more people who are now fed up with the government or close to being fed up with them. I’ve even heard of several major cities having “Tea Parties” in fact there are 350 major tea parties that the organizers have planned. These hark back to the Boston Tea Party, which Boston colonists threw tea into the harbor to protest taxation on them. Yet the name is where the similarities end, anyone who would pay attention to history would know that the people of Boston boycotted (the best they could) and where punished for what they did. These Tea Parties are mostly symbolic and most of them will end up paying the tax.
If we want to compare ourselves to our revolutionary counterparts, maybe we need to stick the commitment. We as Americans today don’t know the commitment that is needed to stand up to a tyrannical government. I think that if the revolutionary time is now…it would be less revolutionary and more “hey, it’s the best system around”. The people at the tea party, risked their lives for the protest, and I don’t think anyone at these tea parties is risking their lives or their freedom for their cause. We as Americans if we really are fed up with the politicians then we need to let them know, and not by doing something symbolic. We saw what symbolist protest gets us, like when congress symbolically wanted us out of Iraq with a non-binding resolution. We can’t do this, because politicians won’t really listen…they may fake listen and pretend to listen…but the best way to show them is to replace them….replace them with people willing to cut government. I was very much a guy who thought the government spent money to help people, I was very naive. I started listening to a radio show called “Free Talk Live” which is liberty oriented. Now I admit I am not a radical people when it comes to programs like that. I never want to completely get rid of government, because I honestly know that I don’t trust other people and know the masses can be led…because I was. Yet, I find myself agreeing with them on many things, the government is too big…they have lost touch with the people they “represent”. They use their own agenda’s to oppress people, when they should just make sure that we are safe…from others and not ourselves.
When you look at the government and their taxes, you can see a problem there. They need to keep pumping funds into their projects and their charities…and when in a recession people start spending less, they need to tax higher to get the same result. One of the most recent was the tax increase on the cigarettes, which proportionately effects the poor more than anyone. Yet, they say it’s to recover the cost of smokers on the system. How about the easier method…you don’t raise the tax and you don’t pay for medical benefits of smokers…in fact then we can choose what we want to do, and then no taxes are needed at all. If we want freedom from taxes, we need to drop this symbolic nonsense and really take the lawmakers to task…and I don’t care how mad people are…but most of these politicians that caused this tea party…will most likely be re-elected…yea…We’ll show them.