WARNING: You are about to enter an alternate universe.
It was during my campaign for a second term that my recollections arrive in the Twilight Zone. So surreal I do not imagine you will believe, but they are so, and although my memory might confuse the exact order of things, they all happened just as I will describe them.
I had not enjoyed being a State Senator but without ideas leading elsewhere I decided to run for re-election. Besides, my favorite part was coming up, meeting with thousands of voters in a re-election effort, a goodly number of which had become friends.
It was in that happy spirit that my first mailed vote arrived, a few months early, in a plain white envelope without any return address or markings. When I opened the letter, its sole contents, a shiny, heavy lump dropped out and landed in my lap.
Now, I had not been much interested in hunting since I was about 10 when I hit a dove with my Christmas BB gun and watched it die. As result, I cannot tell you the caliber. I wasn’t worried and didn’t even report it. This was long before such threats and shootings became common place. Asking around, no other Senator had received such a gift and I just shrugged it off.
I was more concerned with the pending flop. The flop being my major re-election fund raiser that disabled my toilet plunger and completely unable to handle the mountain of crap to come.
It was about two days before the fundraiser when I pointed out to my wife that no one would be attending. The “no one would be attending,” remark was referencing the event’s dismal ticket sales, and I thought served as a punch to her midsection, since it was she who was managing my campaign and presumably the fundraiser. She wasn’t hurt or concerned. She had her own life to run and had handed off most responsibilities to a campaign manager she had hired with the kind of skills and experience we could afford. His name was “Broom” Hall. Broom, a name he earned for an ability to beat all comers in pool halls using only a broom handle.
Anyway, the flop had been advertised as vaudeville, and as it turned out there were more people signed up to be on the stage than there were people in the audience. It was a bit humiliating, but partly saved by the local firefighters and my brother Bob.
The firefighters, who adopted me during the campaign, went backstage and put on pillowcases in such an unusual way that they made them all look like four-foot-tall Pillsbury Dough Boys without elbows or knees. They humored the seated dozen or so with five minutes of relief, and then we all went back to waiting for a crowd that would never appear.
I walked over to my mother, who never wanted me to follow my father into political life and now stood there, as only my mother could, with that same cocked, rigid look that used to say, “It’s your bedtime.”
Concerned or just embarrassed for me, my brother Bob, who spent a few months on the streets singing my praises to anyone that would listen, didn’t like such events or crowds suddenly stood up. Bob was not supposed to be part of the program, but he marched up to the stage and began an impromptu 15-minute monologue that had the lucky few howling with laughter again and again. More importantly, he made them and me feel all was right with the world despite the empty room. It was a peerless performance that would later that night make me cry, and as unassociated as it was, tell my wife I wanted a divorce.
The fundraiser had little to do with my decision to separate from my wife. The fundraiser failure was only an event, but I felt it made as good a catalyst as any, to make my long agonized-over position known. I was just coming to recognize a flaw in my character: no activity, no matter how initially exciting, ever sustained my interest. I would get bored with most every game, sport, hobby, friend, or person I ever knew. I inevitably just wanted to experience something else. However, as it applied to people, this did not mean I did not care or was not loyal. I was perhaps offensively loyal, always struggling to sustain any and every relationship, but much the way most keep the relics of their past in pictures, to recall how much fun it once was, I wanted to keep the people themselves, only at a space apart.
I had not yet come to grips with this character flaw and so duped myself into believing that there were two episodes that caused the breakup.
One was coming home early one day, some weeks earlier and overhearing my wife tell her friends how she had demanded that she be able to keep her own last name when we married. She did not know I was there.
For days before proposing, I had agonized over the precise words and arguments I would use to persuade her to keep her maiden name. I had never understood why women gave up the name they had been born with and so closely associated with for their entire lives. A woman keeping her maiden name was still unusual, but I was pretty sure Carole would want to but might feel a little uncomfortable talking to me about it. I wanted her to feel great about keeping hers and thus in my marriage proposal I included a virtual insistence that she do so.
My often-unforgiving nature in the face of some perceived injustice could not forgive this violation of trust. This indirect condemnation of me in front of ultra-liberal friends was minuscule but impossible for me to choke down.
More fundamental and perhaps not entirely as self-duping was that we were entering our thirties and she had informed me that she still did not want to have children. I wanted them badly but was in no position to force her cooperation.
My handling of the divorce was unconscionable. I would not make the slightest effort to reconcile or talk to anyone about it. She could have everything (which was nothing) and within a day she had moved to her parents, I had thrown out my campaign volunteers, locked the doors and went on a cowardly three-day binger, drinking as heavily as one can and remain breathing. I had desperately wanted to make sure I was more miserable than I imagined I had made Carole, who I loved and greatly admired to this day. I just could not live with her.
When I did come out filthy, unshaven, and not particularly coherent, volunteers asked if I would see a doctor. Being there “leader” and still in my self-absorbed early years, I refused, instead deciding to give a little more door-to-door a try. It was then that one opened into the Twilight Zone.
Getting close to home, maybe three blocks away, I knocked on a final door. A heavy-set woman, maybe in her 60s, in a coffee stained and tattered robe, threw the screen door wide open hoping to hit me. The hatred smeared across her face was real, possibly dangerous. She backed me up the sidewalk with her thundering voice, “You bastard! I heard what you did.” She kept coming at me. “What are you talking about?” I blurted. “You liberal commie bastard! You think we all do not know what you did. Everyone knows your wife caught you sleeping with that blond bimbo. We saw, we all know she chased you out with a frying pan.” She kept coming at me. “I knew you were a lying bastard when I heard you moved here from Illinois with all that labor money. You lying, fucking bastard!”
It was, of course, difficult to know exactly how to handle this particular voter, who had gotten her information from the Klingon Star Ship. But getting her vote was not likely, so I kept backing away. Bodily harm was her desire, but I was pretty sure I could out jog her slippers if need be.
Her bit about a blond, money and Illinois, a state I had never been to – what the Hell was that all about? I wouldn’t find out until sometime later when tens of thousands of leaflets arrived in voter’s mailboxes. For the moment, I was just thinking of an escape route. She continued to rant as I back peddled. I heard sirens approaching on our street and thought, please hurry. My hands were raised palms out in a gestured effort to pause the onslaught and protect myself from any knives or hatchets that might suddenly appear. I made it to the corner and my chance to escape. Spinning around I jogged down the street toward my house and it was then that I entered the Twilight Zone.
The pace of my escape was as in a dream, where try as you might, with all of your might, you just can’t accelerate in the goo. For as I gazed down the street, I saw a number of police cars at my house with two more squealing around a corner, doors popping and guns out.
Starting with no supporters coming to my fundraiser, the kind of guilt that only comes from hurting someone you love, piled on by a neighbor and constituent’s revulsion of everything that is you, and now this massive police presence: Exactly how horrid a creature was I?
I slowed as I approached home. What I thought must be a policeman, only very nicely dressed in a suit, approached me. He explained the scene around my house as well as anyone could. “Senator Kimball, you and the President have been threatened.” The President of what I asked. “President Jimmy Carter,” he said. “Huh!” was the best I could manage. He repeated himself and I struggled in vain to digest the comment. It was as if all the parts of my brain had suddenly become unscrewed. I didn’t feel worried, threatened or concerned about anything that he said, I just couldn’t grasp it. I was only concerned with the crazy lady who I was certain must have tracked me and about to pounce from behind. Thankfully she had vanished.
Oddly, as I began to mull over what the officer had said, I noticed that I felt a tiny twinge of pride. “The President and me you say?” Some wacko put us in the same category. “I am with the Secret Service,” he said, “Please come with me.”
We walked over to a group of Phoenix’s finest, who informed me that I couldn’t go into my home right now, that they were searching for the suspect and evidence. “Do you know who it is?” I asked. “We are looking for a fellow named Broom Hall.”
Admittedly, Broom was a little strange and I had learned that much of his money came from an adorable little wife who made itsy bitsy stage outfits for strippers, but an assassin? No, this was all wrong. Despite his oddities, he seemed such a nice, even thoughtful fellow. “Listen there has to be some mistake here,” I said to the various badges now surrounding me. “NO! There is no mistake,” the agent barked. “We deal with threats all the time; we had him on the phone for some time and this one fits the profile we do not mess around with. We have to find him, now.”
An hour later I was to learn that Broom owned a number of guns that were now missing from his home, that he had gone after his pregnant wife because she knew too much. She was now nowhere to be found.
The warning or threat began with a police caller, who the Secret Service, with little difficulty, figured out was Broom himself. The caller had said that I would be taken down at a Democratic Party fundraiser scheduled for later that week by a man pretending to be and made up to look exactly like my campaign manager.
The various officers in charge insisted that I not sleep at home for a few days while they staked it out. After hearing about Broom, the guns and his wife, and the event to happen at the party fundraiser, I thought the idea of my sleeping elsewhere a good one, so I picked my jaw up off the pavement and dragged it down the street where my little brother had just moved into a little house.
Out of the blue, just as I was packing up a few things, Broom’s pregnant wife showed up. She was scared as hell and after the Secret Service interviewed her, she asked if I could help her find a place to hide out. I found a place that the officers thought a good one on the other side of town and then got us out of there.
I didn’t have to go far, which was good, because I would still have access to my home office and files when needed, but what had been bizarre was about to go freakish.
My littlest brother, who if anything spent more time in the Black Hole of adolescence than his four siblings had a surprise of his own. My brother’s place was perfect, I thought. He wasn’t involved in my politics at all, few knew him, his house was just few doors away, and no one knew him. Perfect I thought, the police could stake out my house, try to trap Broom and I could still access my campaign files when necessary.
A policeman escorted me over and agreed it would be fine. An hour after the officer left, I was putting some my stuff on the top shelf of my new bedroom closet and discovered that my baby brother was in the drug business. He had a little marijuana trouble with the law years earlier and spent months in a Mexican prison for it. There were two rather large foil-covered bricks of tightly packed marijuana.
The coming headlines scrolled through my imagination!
The Arizona Republic, the state’s largest newspaper, was led by a heavily-medaled military leader, who no longer served in the military but greatly enjoyed his uniform and commendations and wore them at formal occasions. It would later be discovered that he had never earned those ribbons or medals, or even served in the military, but unfortunately for me, this absurd masquerade had yet to be exposed and for the moment, he possessed real power and a lack of affection for me.
When he got wind of all that was going on around my house, I thought he would have a difficult dilemma. What headline would he choose?
KIMBALL IN SEX SCANDAL
KIMBALL CAMPAIGN MANAGER PLANS HIS ASSASSINATION
KIMBALL CAUGHT IN BROTHERLY DRUG DEALS
It would all be bullshit but that never seemed to matter to this fellow and his paper. I imagined that an after the fact simple headline might be the best result for me:
Not a real word yet, but used enough, and it will be. Comes from a Mensa Lexophile competition and perfectly describes the impenetrable mucous protecting Trump supporters from thought.
Carole and I moved to Phoenix, where she studied for the Arizona Bar while I tried to do anything I could to help pay some bills. When she passed her Bar exam, I knew I was in trouble. My talents were miniscule, my education little better than that of a performing monkey, fortunately the one profession left to me needed no training and most monkeys could do it and actually do, do it — politics.
It was Christmas 1979, I was sitting in the living room with Carole, now a lawyer, and Steve, her former boyfriend, a talented artist, teacher, and good friend to us both. What should I do with my life was the question and run for office became the answer.
We knew a bit about politics, or at least enough to know that voters would elect just about anyone. None of us knew anything about local Phoenix politics or had any money. In fact, Carole and I had just moved to Phoenix, where her family lived, had no idea who the State Legislative incumbents were, let alone whether they were doing a good job or not. That not knowing, made us no different than you, or close to 100% of you who wouldn’t recognize your state representatives if they dropped in for dinner. Despite these impediments, we made 2 decisions that evening that 11 months later would remove a nice guy and pretty fair legislator from office.
First, was a catchy slogan. Every new, first-time, unknown candidate should have a good slogan I thought, some message that helps people remember the name. A very big deal when running for those little offices that few citizens ever go to the polls for. As with all local candidates we would largely be dependent upon the spillage from those on the top of the ticket, the Presidential, Gubernatorial or Congressional candidates who get the ink, resources, and attention necessary to be known and stimulate the electorate. All of which is completely backwards. The top of the ticket gets all the glamor while it is the bottom, those little candidates, the state legislators, city councils and school boards that have the power to impact you, and your family’s everyday life. Constitutionally the president may decide what to do with the people of Iraq, but he can’t do much about your neighborhood and most of us spend a lot more time there.
Anyway, after much discussion, I decided on, “Richard Kimball is Running.” An absurd slogan for sure, but political success is often built on the absurd. In this case, my name happened to be the same as a popular Hollywood TV series and later movie called the Fugitive, where an innocent man named Dr. Richard Kimble, is forced into running from the law. It was perfect. We even put a little running man logo on our signs so the point wouldn’t be missed.
It was an instant hit. And arguably, the only popular thing I ever did in my 7 years as a politician. The second important decision we made that night was that I would run for the State Senate against a popular Republican incumbent who also happened to be a local television personality. It would clearly be an uphill slog but a person who has a lot of energy and nothing else to do, can do a lot as a political candidate.
I would spend the next 11 months going door to door, thousands of doors, speaking to an amazing assortment of beings living in anything from dumps to palaces, but all with two things in common — They all lived in my district, and none knew who the Hell I was.
I distinctly remember the four doors I knocked on early that first morning. The first two, I was a little nervous and to my relief, no one was home, so I wrote out a note that as it turned out, I would write thousands of times on my campaign brochure. It said, “Sorry, I missed you. If you have any questions, please don’t hesitate to call me at my home.” Signed Richard with my number.
She was home at door number three, and the image is forever etched in my memory. She wasn’t more than 22 or 23, with tangles of long blond hair sweeping over her shoulder and sleep still dozing in her beautiful round blue eyes. She stood barefoot, dressed only in a bathrobe that was gloriously snagged on the doorknob. This vision launched my desire to knock on door number four and the thousands to come over the next eleven months.
Door number 4 was different, a whole lot different, and a revelation that would steel me for all the doors to come that would close in my face, beginning and ending with me in mid-sentence about my running for office.
My mind still smothered in the delights of door number 3, I knocked. “Who is it?” the voice barked. Shocked out of my dreamy fantasies, “Sorry to bother you Mame,” I stammered. ”My name is Richard Kimball, I’m running for the State Senate. I just wanted…” Suddenly the door swung open. Her hand grabbed to secure the lock on the screen. “I just have one question for you,” she huffed. “Great, what is it?” I said. Glaring at me, she jammed her words into my ears, “If elected, will you promise to support a law requiring the castration of all men accused of rape?”
Now I had given a great deal of thought to many issues, but castration of the accused had not been one of them. We talked for quite a while. I was pleasant, sympathetic but never told her that I could support mutilation before conviction as a proper punishment. None the less my concern convinced her that I was a sympathetic friend, and as I imagined what horror this woman must have suffered, she became my first vote.
For a pitiful few, it is a most valuable lesson. It isn’t so much what you stand for as it is what you feel, the language you use and manner with which any normal human would instinctively respond. All of this came very naturally to me, I did not need to pretend, be bombastic or solicitous in any way. I needed to follow Franklin Roosevelt’s advice, “Be short, be sincere and be seated (or in this case quiet).”
Never liking to draw attention or talk, I was a gifted listener and empathizer with almost anyone’s view no matter what it was. It was where it came from that was of interest to me.
Going door-to-door suddenly became fun, often stimulating and endlessly educational. In fact, it would occur to me some years later that I may have been the only candidate ever who truly enjoyed campaigning but hated serving. When serving, I would learn, real people were part of your past.
In the months ahead, door after door, with my passion and interest clear to all I slowly gained support. I walked the streets of central Phoenix seven days a week, every week, from 8 in the morning to 8 in the evening for those 11 months. At some point a few people started to welcome me, they had heard I was coming from friends or relatives in neighborhoods I had been through weeks before. Sometimes they would offer me a soda or a sandwich and actually seemed to enjoy talking to me. One day a photographer showed up and wanted to take a picture of all the shoes I had worn out. I was having a good time. Most of the people were kind, thoughtful and full of all kinds of notions, and it was clear that no one had ever shown any interest in what they thought.
NEWSPAPER PHOTO OF MY WORN OUT SHOES
My little running man went up in yards and on street corners. On Election Day, State Senator Tim Hayes, a popular television personality, a good and decent man and fair Senator was gone. I don’t think he ever knew what hit him. For me, winning was one of those precious moments in life never to be repeated. The experience was pure joy.
Thousands of Arizonians took time out of their day to go to the polls, grab a ballot find my name and say, “Ya! You’re our guy!” That is the nonsensical notion that germinates the “BIG HEAD” all politicians grow. It is a complete dumpster load of the smelly stuff, as I said, people are drawn to the polls by the top of the ticket and just blindly vote for one party or the other on down the ballot. My funny little running man nudged me over the top in what had been thought a Republican district.
The experience of winning with family, friends, and supporters all about, was the purest joy but had sobered by morning.
No one seems certain what WOKE means. All words have a life, like people, they change with age and never more so than a newly born one.
It is how a word is used that defines its meaning. Right now the use of WOKE seems most like a synonym for political correctness particularly as it applies to any class of disadvantaged.
If it stays on that track I hope that one day it will get its due: That is to say, every single one of us owes a debt to WOKE. If there were not enough WOKE, no one would have the vote, certainly not women, we would still have slavery, ovens for Jews would still be in operation and Christians could find themselves lion food in the Colosseum.
Now we, as the LUCKIEST GENERATION, choose to live unearned lives on the gains made by our fathers and their fathers before them. Lives that all previous generations in human history could never have imagined.
Yes, we spent much of what was earned and saved in the past and much of what has yet to be earned in the future, all to enjoy today.
Mention rational adjustments to our spending on Social Security, Medicare/Medicaid or defense and we will butcher you.
______
Richard Kimball, Vote Smart Founder
Sign up on my blog at RichardKimball.org
or Medium.com at: https://medium.com/@daffieduck2016
Deny elections, deny vaccines, deny climate change, deny wages, deny all abortions and health care for the poor. Defund social programs and public education. Support assault weapons, a paralyzing defense budget, and a Christian nation.
Eisenhower, Nixon, Goldwater, Ford, Reagan, the Bush’s, and every other Republican leader in history weren’t!
So much politics to write about and suddenly struck dumb, unable to hold a solitary thought for more than a blink of my red puffy eye. A strobe blinks out endless distractions, a sneeze, an aching jaw, hip, shoulder, an uncontrolled “toot” of the troubles below to come, a throat wincing at the endless hacking release of gluey phlegm so indigestible by the bathroom sink my wife begs me to spit into the trash instead.
Three years after the “Shit Show” started in Wuhan, after getting every vaccine and booster, and a few cases of N95s, I have the Covid.
And yet, I feel lucky. I live in a country that saved and is saving millions of lives all over the world, including mine. We Americans did that. As I come out of my misery, I toast us!
Decades ago, my congressman boss would joke: You know what the difference is between a cactus and a congress? With a cactus all the pricks are on the outside.
HUH?
Give me a switch and it would be tough to choose who to smack first: The Republicans who cower at the feet of their lowliest, or those Democrats acting joyous at the spectacle.
This is what happens when the mindless self-obsessed of our number, once only seen in the crassest of local politics, are elevated to the highest offices in the land.
This is the opportunity, for what is left of reason, to come together from both sides and put our nation back on track. Not Republican vs. Democrat, but the rational/thoughtful vs. the galactically stupid.
A simple equation of enormous significance to anyone that understands it and now with this week’s useful proof of it, stand ready to save the world.
equation by Vote Smart
Democracy equals education/facts multiplied by infinity.
You simply cannot govern yourself without unlimited education and access to facts.
It is that equation that you must focus on and why Vote Smart began. Vote Smart: a simple idea, where people get the facts and citizens have enough knowledge (education) to use them successfully.
At its core, it is not difficult to understand. If you support turning over the rules that govern your life to millions of strangers that you do not know, who you will never know, you must struggle to insure they have access to education and the facts. That is what was began begun at VoteSmart.org.
What are we thinking?! We get an entertainer if we free a mass-murdering thug selling arms to our enemies, anti-aircraft missiles to shoot down our pilots, someone convicted of conspiracy to kill Americans.
If you, as an American citizen are captured, tortured, murdered, and dismembered with a bone saw it’s A-OK with Joe.
That is precisely what your President said last week when he gave immunity to Prince Muhammed bin Salman of Saudi Arabia, in an obviously agreed to subterfuge using international precedents.
That would be the same Prince that imprisons, tortures, and kills dissenters in Saudia Arabia and sends his agents elsewhere in the world to torture and dismember our fellow Americans like Jamal Khashoggi.
That would be the same two-faced Joe who previously called the prince a “thug” who had “shocked him to his very core.” The same Joe that promised he would make him a “pariah” on the world stage.
Want to celebrate American backbone Thursday by eating some off a turkeys? Just go to Joe’s house.
I have employed hundreds of people over my years helping to run a company called the United States of America.
In the old days most applicants I reviewed made a real effort to impress me. They were often pleasant, always seemed to appreciate my time, sometimes nervous but always smiling through it, and to a person, each would struggle to answer the questions I required answers to.
Questions that always had to do with their experience, and how much they knew about the job they were applying for, or issues I was concerned about. More often than not, they would give cogent responses about what they would do if they were given the responsibilities.
Today, that is all gone. Now I am not given time to talk and must listen instead to each one moan on and on about how horrid the other applicants are.
I, of course don’t feel very good about hiring any of these kinds of people. Hell, I wouldn’t hire a dishwasher that behaved that way, but what choice do we have when those are the only ones applying?
I will tell you why: Because no respectable member of your community would put themselves up or push their families into such a bloodbath. So, you are left with NO choice.
These people do not make your causes right, they just use your anger to claw their way to power.
Now, the end of this round is coming Tuesday, and most of us will toss in the towel, knowing it a mess and we’ll simply vote for what money we imagine can be kept for ourselves. To paraphrase a famous line, “My money, stupid, my money.
For those of you that still believe in the dream, I would suggest you try VOTESMART.ORG, an organization that has collected the facts about those craving the power to control your life.
CUCKOO BEES lay their eggs amongst the eggs in another bee’s nest, hoping their larvae hatch earlier, allowing its young to feed on the provisions stored for the other’s eggs. Then with their extra-large mandibles they dessert on the others’ eggs as well.
Feeding on the haves to engorge the have nots with little demanded in return.
SHREWS don’t look like much to worry about but are total bastards. They secrete venom from their jaws, paralyzing prey, not to kill but to keep alive for prolonged feeding.
At first, Shrews look like a joke, no real threat but now they come for November 8th where democracy will be paralyzed, and the main course served.
EXTREMISTS now control the dialogue, the considerations, and in the end, the actions with too few remaining to bring reason.
Get the facts at VoteSmart.org and good luck to us all this election.
Then uneducated, ignorant of democracy and unable to think critically, I was set free and found my faith in what I wanted to believe rather than what I should believe.
Once American education was the envy of all, our student performance second to none, our skill at self-governance a beacon the world over.
The attack on education, truth, and the facts is no accident. The dimmer we become, the more malleable we are.
The only remedy is to sustain at least one source for trusted facts that any citizen can turn to in confidence — facts without interpretation and protected from influence.
VoteSmart.org is exactly that, but requires a people’s will to use it, believe in it, and to support it. A source to which all conservative and liberal citizens can turn in confidence for the facts and the truth that is dependent upon those facts. Without that, we cannot sustain an ability to self-govern successfully.
It can be done, ensuring its integrity with an elected board balanced between the multiple sides on major national issues. Supported without dependence upon self-serving interests and operated by those willing to commit their time and expertise in the national interest and not financial self-gain.
That is what VoteSmart.org strived to be. As a young man, my boss once said, “You’re entitled to your own opinions, but not your own facts.” Without VoteSmart.org or an organization very much like it, it is not the meek that shall inherit the earth, but the stupid.
If you are not white, male and don’t own land, you can’t vote. That is the way we introduced self-governance to the world, with most people still not being actual people, as in “…of the people, by the people, for the people.” Women and most non-whites were not really defined as people in that wonderous American phrase.
It wasn’t till 1920 that most Americans would finally be considered people and allowed to vote — but not all, including the first Americans, native Americans. For those that were first, one or maybe two gazillion years before anyone else — well for them, it would take a tad longer.
The freedom and the liberty that comes with that vote, has been a slow, torturous march for most of us, with barriers erected by the people, against those not yet people, all along the way.
Your vote is your personal hard chunk of power, fought for through the suffering of others, and finally giving you a say. If you do not use it, your power doesn’t go away, it simply marches over and adds its power to those other chunks that are used, by the people who get to order you about.
“If you’re young and conservative, you have no heart. If you’re old and liberal, you have no brain,” a favorite Churchill quote and spot-on description of me.
For me the money I earn is a super-efficient warehouse where I can store my future needs, food, clothes, shelters, etc. And the taking of it (taxes) a levy I willingly pay for the items I need but cannot afford on my own: roads, schools, protection from fire, crime, war, and yes, even my desire to assist those amongst us in trouble who cannot take care of themselves.
But why should you be forced to give what you earn to those choosing not to earn or those taking and not repaying? Those that demonstrate no sense of responsibility or value you. There are all kinds of bailouts, some given before they’re needed or requested. You experience and pay for bailouts of banks, insurance companies, the health care industry, military contractors, right on down to students, the poor and even a member of my own family.
Expectations of paying back, performing better or even a thanks are not required but should be. Requiring those we give to, to participate in the giving or to pay back as their conditions advance does not sell well, as you have seen with all that “Too Big to Fail” nonsense, but it also applies to some you may not have thought of. I remember one of my old bosses, Sen. Daniel Moynihan of New York saying that millions would be plunged into poverty, and we would “find children sleeping on grates,” back in 1993 if we changed welfare programs that simply gave away cash into less generous, time-limited, work-required programs. It is hard to argue that that switch had nothing to do with child poverty and family welfare rolls being cut in half.
Politicians — Democrats and Republicans — all like bailouts for their friends or those they hope will become friends, blue collar or white. It is just easy to spend other people’s money and amongst politicians your money is just other people’s money.
It was America’s longest private meeting. With the windows and doors closed they argued for months in the gluey heat of a Philadelphia summer. Then on September 17th the doors and window were finally opened.
When a Mrs. Powel of Philadelphia asked Benjamin Franklin, “Well, Doctor, what have we got, a republic or a monarchy,” Franklin responded, “A republic, if you can keep it.”
F
Perhaps more clearly than ever, every single American adult will be asked to respond to Dr. Franklin when they stand alone in that voting booth this November 8th.
Dr. Franklin feared what all the founders feared, and what every thinking American now fears. Are the institutions the Founders and a dozen other successive American generations made possible and built these past 244 years all to be swept away? Is every citizen to be allowed to vote? Is all future opposition journalism to be oppressed? Is every fact to be cloaked and skewered?
Your knowing what you are doing on that first Tuesday in November is what Dr. Franklin and all who have championed freedom for over two centuries bet on. It will be time for you to stand and answer.
Please use VoteSmart.org to get the facts, the truth and defend yourself and your fellow citizens.
