Stop Protecting Me

 

  My mediocre life began many decades ago. In fact, it was so long ago, there were only 48 states in America when I was well into school.

Way back then, we lived a simple life with few rules and fewer legal obstacles through which to navigate life. I’m not implying things were better, just simpler. And I like simpler.

Take the automotive industry, for example. Before Alaska and Hawaii were included in the United States, automobiles sold here were largely made here in America. They were large, heavy vehicles that got us where we needed to go with semi-comfort, while surrounded with steel.

Pickup trucks were fairly rare because they were used by farmers and construction folks who needed to regularly tote stuff. The average person who saw a need to haul things on a regular basis bought and used something called station wagons.

Station wagons were, in essence, pickup trucks with covers over the open beds. In other words, they were vehicles that larger families bought for those trips to the beach or camping. They were purpose specific vehicles.

Owning guns is another area of interest that morphed into something now unrecognizable. As a kid, born following World War II, I often found myself hearing gripping stories from neighborhood veterans regaling their tough times and adventures during The War. Occasionally, they would bring out a towel which held a war trophy of a handgun or bayonet. As kids, we respected both the veterans and weapons, while being awestruck these show-and-tell items were able to be shared with us.

I occasionally found myself reading Popular Mechanics magazine for which my Dad had a subscription.

He received this publication because they contained articles and plans for building such things as creating a picnic table, roofing garden sheds, maintaining grass yards, along with a smattering about auto maintenance.

Not unlike many other magazines of that era, the back advertising section was chock full of mail order places to buy guns. It seems as though there were plenty of firearms that were surplussed from The War. They were easily had by sending in cash, a check, or money order to the vendor, no questions asked.

We also experienced a time when in its infancy, television was thought to be teetering between good and evil. They were known as black and white (B&W) because the broadcast signals were sent that way. Screens were small, akin to watching a toaster oven. Nevertheless, television was novel.

Most of the made-for-TV shows were westerns, while movies were war-related or science fiction. And kid fare was freely available to entertain and educate young brains of mush such as mine.

And school was a necessity, each day beginning with the Pledge of Allegiance, plus a morning prayer, while dressed in a pressed shirt and tie and dress slacks. There were rules, and they were expected to be followed.

No provocative clothing, dyed hair, or t-shirts were permitted. We were expected to fit in without excluding others because of differences beyond their control.

Yet here we are sixty-years, or so, later, and we now find ourselves in an unrecognizable world that was once familiar and comfortable.

Take, for example, those aforementioned vehicles once made of stout American steel. Throughout the decades, greed, tariffs, union actions, climate hysteria, and inflation have summarily changed the texture of the domestic automobile to reflect new vehicles made here, flimsier and more cost effective.

Rather than mounting giant windmills on vehicle roofs for propulsion, the steel has been replaced by aluminum, carbon fiber, plastics, and, I’m wagering, papier mȃché. While all these technological wonders made the vehicles lighter, they also became less durable and safe. Is the advancement worth lives?

Finally, a practical wind powered car

Moving on to the pickup truck side of the motor vehicle discussion, we find ourselves with replacements for oversized station wagons in favor of sport utility vehicles (SUV), that actually bur more irreplaceable fossil fuels than wagons once did. Not the stellar punch in the gut for which environmentalists were hoping.

Leading us to the aforementioned gun situation. It seems as though many, many Americans have gravitated away from the sports of recreational hunting, home defense, and target shooting, to appeasing new and newer generations suffering from hoplophobia by demonizing guns and gun owners.

Hoplophobia is the irrational fear of firearms which may be brought on by previous experiences or media influence, creating blind fear for those inanimate objects. To calm any fears of guns, politicians have chosen to remove Constitutional rights to pander for votes. Such actions make no one safer.

Schools, oddly enough, have taken a giant leap to the left rather than confront hipsters, as well as urban youth, when addressing the subject of proper and modest clothing. Because each school is different, rules are applied on an “as needed” basis, often turning a blind eye to provocative girl’s clothes, plus offensive messaging t-shirts. Uniforms have settled those sticky issues for decades.

Although no one issue mentioned above is critical enough to bring a nation or society to its knees, the utmost lesson herein is that if rules don’t apply to everyone, or are modified to exempt an anointed few, they are useless and actually apply to no one.

Creating loopholes to avoid conflict, or to defer a potential issue while sidestepping inconvenient rules and regulations, just begs for a test for the societal water depth. And if not uniformly addressed, any and all issues become more, not less, dangerous to a cohesive nation.

To all politicians attempting to improve life for me: Stop protecting me, please. You’re doing a horrible job.

One More Time

 

  Once again I need to tell you something important: They think you’re stupid and they hate you.

Indeed, Democratic politicians have been proving that statement true since before the Civil War. With expert lies from expert liars, they promise things that would make a used car salesman green with envy, only to discover it was your fault that you misheard them.

Let’s take a moment to dive into the world of smarmy politicians to see how they make the world their oyster.

As of this writing, the federal guvment is deeply submerged in a stalemate because of money issues. Not unlike money matters in your personal home, the guvment cannot spend more money than they have. What they have is what Congress appropriates through the Department of Treasury.

Treasury gets their money from taxes that are imposed upon citizenry and businesses throughout our nation. Those tax dollars are then given to Congress in what can be described as a checkbook. Nearly everyone once had a checkbook in which their paychecks were deposited.

When you visited your A&P Grocery store, for example, you wrote a check for the food stuffs you wanted to buy. It was considered as good a cash, only safer because a check required your signature as endorsement. Without your signature – a promise to pay – that check was useless.

With the exception of common thieves who would write “bad” checks that were stolen, or knowing there was not enough money in the account to cover these bogus checks. That is considered “theft.” Another good term is “stealing.” Even better is “misappropriation.”

All these words have their place in the American lexicon. But misappropriation fits the best. It’s one of those lawyer-words that provides enough wiggle room to say one thing, yet mean another. While used in conjunction with other words, they can hit a home run.

Being a politician is one of those “non-job jobs,” in which the person gets paid lots of money for little work and no consequences for their actions.

Politicians find donors to “give” them money to run for an office in which the politician gets paid money from the voters, also known as: constituents. Constituents blindly trust that this stranger, who desperately wants your vote to get into office, is someone who will look after your interests.

But let’s back up for a moment. Why would a donor “give” money to someone to run and win in an election? I’ve had plenty of jobs in my life and no one – NO ONE – ever gave me money to get a particular job. I would get paid once I had a job, only not before. Just saying.

It would seem as though paying someone to run for an office might imply they would be looking for future payback, perhaps in the form of favorable legislation, maybe land deals, or even a high prestige job for themselves or a relative.

Of course, that’s all speculation. What happens if the politician doesn’t win the election?

Hoping eventually, they would be elected, they could then repay any “debt.” Consider it a running tab like in a bar.

You see, you and your interests have not yet come into this story. It’s all about the politicians and their mentors. Once they receive their political position, politicians are quick to realize there’s all sorts of money available in the halls of government.

Television game shows often used a glass phone booth-style contraption with a fan on the floor of the box. On the floor along with the fan was a stack of folding money – green currency – that whirled about this transparent enclosure creating a tornadic effect.

Cash Cube full of payola

The contestant inside this box was supposed to grab as much of this moolah as possible. If anything, it was entertaining, often maddening that they were unable to scoop up even more money than they did. In any case, this is a segue of how monies seem to flow to politicians at the seat-of-guvment.

Soon after a swearing-in ceremony, representatives from defense manufacturers, petroleum companies, airplane manufacturers, shippers, auto builders, and pharmaceuticals are likely to be found prowling the bowels of guvment in an effort to find an ally.

While this behavior has become commonplace for both sides of the aisle, Democrats seem to have excelled at finding this trough of seemingly endless financial sustenance. Hillary Rodham Clinton (HRC), wife of former President William Jefferson Clinton had a vision to improve life for potential sick American people.

HRC urgently promoted health care for uninsured and under-insured Americans, for several years. Her take on this crisis was that a single illness could possibly financially bankrupt a family, and that was unacceptable. Working with doctors, hospitals, and insurance companies, HRC attempted to strike a deal that would be the problem to her newfound solution. It didn’t materialize.

President Obama eagerly grabbed the healthcare baton to create the Affordable Care Act (ACA), also known as: ObamaCare. It was a brilliant effort to frighten the American populace into believing this giant illegal Ponzi scheme would keep them safe from financial ruination. Obama actually referred to this theft of 1/6th of the federal budget as a “shellacking.” Nice.

Yet here we are. The federal budget has come up for approval, just as it does every year, due on September 30^th, every year. Every year. Each year. Including this year. But the Democrats have been secretly gambling that President Trump would cave to their demands to simply tack an additional few bucks onto this year’s budget.

President Trump, however, is not caving because the budget is due – in case you missed it – every year on September 30^th. But why would those smarmy Democrats need more money? Please read on.

With great foresight to relocate the financial burden into the future, well beyond most memories, blame for its shortcomings has arrived. “While federally funded through 2025, ObamaCare enhanced premium tax credits are about to expire. This means increased costs for taxpayers.

If these credits are not extended, the average premium payments for enrollees could more than double,” according to a DuckDuckGo search.

Further, “The ACA has led to increased enrollment in health insurance plans, with over 24 million people currently enrolled in the marketplace. However, without continued financial support, many may lose coverage, which could lead to higher costs for emergency care an other public health expenses,” the DuckDuckGo search continues.

Unfortunately, this significant investment by taxpayers aimed at increasing access to health care, has brought us to the threshold of future necessary subsidies that are needed to continue this guvment grift. These are the same politicians who have now frozen the federal budget.

That Congressional checkbook is empty and has been so for years. There’s no mo’ money. From whence will it come?

The answer is higher taxes. Because that brilliant ACA wasn’t so brilliant after all. It was merely another way for money to quietly change hands from one entity to another.

In this case, it was the insurance industry that is being funded by the taxpayers who had their pockets picked by greedy politicians lying about the nobility of their actions.

A stalemate has ensued in guvment, with Democrats blaming Republicans for not increasing the budget by another $1,000,000,000,000. That’s a trillion dollars.

Stop lying. Stop spending money you don’t have. Place the blame where it belongs: on the party that gave you the Ku Klux Klan, segregation, an illegal alien invasion, failed schools, civil unrest, lenience for criminals, open drug policies, unfettered abortions, males participating in female sports, and an anti-American media...the Democratic Party.

And one more time, “They think you’re stupid and they hate you.”

Stealing Our Money

 As luck would have it, I'm taking this week off.  We are well into the throes of the Democrats' federal guvment muscle flexing - where the Left side of the aisle decided to shut down the guvment - to blame this debacle on President Donald Trump for padlocking the doors, in lieu of passing the ANNUAL budget.  

Evidently, the Dems didn't realize we only had 365-days in this year.  So, while I'm striper fishing, please enjoy this resurrected story from June 2024.  

I'll be back next week...and thanks for reading!

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

  My late father had a few standard sayings that really evoked thought. “Save your money,” “Be frugal,” and “That costs too much,” were but a few. Those with added value, however, often contained prognostications only Nostradamus could muster.

Upon returning from the service/gas station, supermarket, or lumber yard, Dad would spend the next hour, or so, grousing about the cost of everything he just saw, touched, or bought. My favorite was his foretelling the world’s road to perdition.

His thoughts on life were to trade honest work for an honest paycheck; he did so with great pride. And what he brought home in pay was what he expected to be as just compensation. The thing is, other people got in the grift without recourse, and that was not fair.

“Just wait,” he’d begin. “Someday – SOMEDAY – they’ll figure out how to charge us for air!” remains his best loved guess at the future, largely because it came true. Oddly enough, most of his episodes with ESP also have been realized, much to my surprise.

Paying good money to park your car, turning on a faucet for water, driving your own car on roads for which you were already taxed, and giving more money to the guvment for the benefit of receiving your Social Security (SS) fund money, were but a smattering of his favorite topics.

Looking both back on history, and forward to tomorrow, his complaints were nothing more than tearing a page off the calendar, only to be re-dated without altering any other notations.

When city dwellers turn on the water faucet in their homes they pay for both water and sewer; water being charged by the gallon, plus added sewer charges for the municipality to recoup treatment of the dirty water, ensures it will be resold to city dwellers again. That’s paying for water.

Finding yourself on the road with a low-on-air tire, you make your way to the nearest gas station. There, you will discover a self-service pump which requires money to refill your tire. Costing upwards of one-dollar for several minutes, this amounts to paying for air.

Let’s not forget the SS benefit checks we get from the fund in which we dutifully and “voluntarily” paid for at least 40-quarters. FYI, it was no more voluntary than succumbing to gravity. Legalized theft is a pretty good description for the another guvment-generated Ponzi Scheme.

In the Great Depression Era, Willie Sutton, a prolific career bank robber, was asked why he robbed banks. Sutton simply replied, “Because that’s where the money is.”

Sutton’s philosophy wasn’t much more profound than my Dad’s. Basic answers to basic dilemmas.

Don’t think that those lizard-like politicians we’ve all come to know and love haven’t been paying attention to your savings.

Enter the anointed, self-centered, sleazy, smarter-than-thou, narcissistic, politicians who are at the helm of our nation’s economic ship. And it’s sinking.

In 1913, the federal income tax system was born. At that time, our nation taxed only 1% of the top 1% of Americans to help fund our rapidly growing country. By 1919, the top tax rate was 77%. Not bad work if you’re a professional thief disguised as a Congressman or Senator.

Admittedly in the throes of World War I, and with a rapid decline of available blue collar workers, the tenor of America was quickly changing into a monster that would only grow, and never shrink. If you need an excellent example, please read on.

Something of which you may never have heard is likely the National Helium Reserve (NHR), also known as the Federal Helium Reserve. It is a federal guvment agency created around World War I to ensure the United States guvment always had enough strategic helium for the war effort.

It seems as though brilliant guvment minds felt it necessary to maintain a healthy stockpile of helium in case we needed to fight a war with helium balloons. Yes, indeed.

A facility near Amarillo, Texas, once held 1,000,000,000 cubic meters of helium, just in case. Then something shocking happened: it was decided the NHR would be shut down in 2021.

What???

For the record, it is 2024, and the haggling over who will auction what off to whom, and when, remains in limbo, with a decision likely soon. Maybe.

See what I mean when I use the words “a monster that would only grow, and never shrink?”

Our nation has been spending money we don’t have. For years, our bloated budget deficit has been inflating faster than Nancy Pelosi’s ego. Currently $34,000,000,000,000 in arrears, our professional politicians have finally connected all the dots and arrived at a solution to their money woes.

Indeed, it is to force hard-working people to pay even more of their earned dollars to the guvment because you’re too stupid to handle your money wisely. After all, you proved your lack of intelligence by electing, re-electing, re-re-electing, and re-re-re-electing these same politicians to office. Right?

A knockoff of The Three Stooges

Enter Bernie Sanders, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (AOC), and Elizabeth Warren. These three deep thinkers genuinely believe they have a right to your money, like it or not. Riding President Biden’s coattails to bringing America closer to Communism, these mooks merely ignore your pleas for financial relief.

Their simple-minded solution to this astronomical deficit is to tax their way out of it. Using a tried and true method – not unlike obese dieters eating their way to weight-loss – this Gang of Three (GOT) feel that spending to feed the beast will only result in prosperity.

Imagining they have rights to your precious overtime, vacation compensation, savings, stock market investments, real estate holdings, coin collections, classic car collections, even unpaid life insurance policies, the GOT wants your money, and pronto.

How do I know? Because they said so.

During a CNN interview between Jake Tapper and AOC, on September 18, 2018, Tapper asked her a question worth $40,000,000,000,000. That’s 40 trillion dollars – in the event your eyes glazed over.

Attempting to explain her compassionate take on giving free healthcare to everyone through a single-payer system that will only cost $40T, AOC insisted a simple tax increase on the wealthiest Americans would do the trick.

Unfortunately, her calculator batteries passed away before she could muster a comprehensive budget idea. She mentioned that this brilliant idea of hers would be so well fashioned that “We need to realize when we look at something like Medicare for all, Medicare for all would save the American people a very large amount of money.” Of course it would, just as the Affordable Care Act, aka: Obamacare, collapsed under its own weight.

By the way, her business acumen was acquired at Boston University College of Arts and Sciences, where she received a degree in economics.

Yes, you read that correctly: economics. Boston University must be very, very proud. But I digress.

Tapper proceeded to query her as to from whence this giant savings was going to come; she stuttered while searching for an appropriate fabrication and arrived at: tax increases would supply $2T, over ten years. A relentless Tapper continued by asking about the remaining $38T void.

AOC cleared her throat and mumbled something about changing the name of her astronomical tax increases to “investments.” Yeah, that should do it; problem solved!

Another bird of a feather, Senator Bernie Sanders, agrees with AOC when it comes to taking other people’s money. A multi-millionaire himself, Sanders considers himself self-made because he’s been sucking on various local, state, and federal guvment teats since 1981. Not the arduous dirt-under-your-fingernails work you’d expect from an 82-year old gasbag with his hand on your wallet.

AOC and Sanders, alike, are two aspiring Communists who feel they are smarter than you, and they are. You see, they have both been elected and re-elected by their constituents who clearly enjoy the games these two are playing.

Not to be outdone, Senator Elizabeth Warren, professional kook from Massachusetts, has been proudly announcing her ardent attempt to secure federal funding – probably because there’s such an enormous surplus – to grab more of your cash to pay for electric school buses, “Symbols of how we are fighting climate change.”

Again, using money from everyone except her, Warren couldn’t be happier ‘sticking it to the Man,’ otherwise known as corporate titans. Always working for the little man, Warren has a proven track record of promoting the confiscation of money, higher minimum wages, Israeli animosity, plus killing innocent babies, may now be up for the Women’s Movement canonization award.

Between the GOT, they’re tied, running neck-and-neck to outdo every other politician claiming to do more for you, while they remain deaf to your actual needs and wants. Lower prices, less social hostility, more law and order, and speaking the truth, may help ingratiate themselves with hardworking Americans. Oh, and free air.

On the other hand, they’re still anointed, self-centered, sleazy, smarter-than-thou, narcissistic, lizard-like politicians.