[youtube:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_YXqf_6ug54 450 300]
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There are some who would scoff at U.S. politics, and claim “there’s no difference, they’re all alike.”
But most likely, it’s those of you who were in shit-pants when Jimmy Carter and his foggy crew ruled the waves and admonished us to wear sweaters and snap out of our distaste for price controls and overregulation. Heck, even I barely remember those bad ole days, but I remember them sucking.
Then we washed that crap right out of our hair with just the right guy at just the right time. A lot of us grew up in the light of that re-dedication to free-enterprise, strong markets and strong defense. We were like fish swimming in clean water, not really knowing what pollution even smelled like.
But then we got lazy, and cynical. We started to take things for granted. We noted how well even the Clinton years went — after the Great Man had left and his weak sister Veep had taken over to less than spectacular result. Heck, weak sister Veep raised taxes and then Bill Clinton, his successor, did too. Sure, we flirted with disaster with that passive-agressive lefty President, but the election of 1994 set everything aright again. With a split government (Congress GOP, Executive Dem), the introduction of the Internet, the disappearance of the USSR and the subsequent boom that newly-lowered capital gains had engendered made us think we were nearly invulnerable to that Carter malaise from so long ago.
But all good things come to an end, and there’s no paradise on this earth, is there?
Just as the bubble popped and we entered recession, we were treated to a hotly disputed Executive election, where Son of Reagan’s Veep took the reigns amidst an economic turndown and soon after, great national tragedy. War followed, and greater recrimination, and along with war spending came more domestic spending, including additions to Medicare that would prove egregiously expensive.
Even with the 2003 tax cuts in place, the economy healing and unemployment low, the deficits continued to climb to hundreds of millions a year. Our government continued to collectively push an easy money policy both to assist the economic recovery, and more nefariously, to achieve its goals of increased home ownership — the same stated plan that some claim led to the first great market crash and subsequent Great Depression.
By 2004, the Republicans that had seized power on the notion of smaller government had become the Establishment. The myth that deficits could be financed into perpetuity as long as rates remained low and the economy kept growing became entrenched. The U.S. Congress became a pig fest, and conservatives began abandoning their party in disgust. In 2006, that disgust and the desire to balance out a War President with a Congressional counter brought Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid to power in the U.S. Congress.
This did little to help our deficits, as you can see, and in fact led to policies that would almost ensure a bad ending for our housing bubble, while affording the government-first types the cover of a war and an economic foreboding to add their own Executive — another government-firster– to the already boiling mixture.
The Fall of 2008 brought financial market crisis like we had not seen since 1987, and it was accompanied by great uncertainty and subsequent unprecedented Congressional and Treasury action. It also brought us a combined and unconstrained government that sought to fundamentally unmoor — or perhaps complete the unmooring– of the United States from its Constitutional underpinnings.
Here we are, almost four years into the Pelosi-Reid era, and two years into a very busy Obama Presidency, and the people haave grown tired already of this heavy mantle of “change.” Some may cynically claim there is no difference with whom is entrusted the power of government, but I think history tells us different.
I have no doubt we will continue to make mistakes as a people, but I also have no doubt that this great document that was left to us will allow us to set those mistakes aright once again. The sovereignty of the people and the right to free use of their private property is the foundation of this great Republic, and those tenets have not been completely quashed yet. The people own this country, like no country ever in the history of the world. And the people will take this country back from those in elected office who would wrest it’s responsiblities and freedoms from them.
November is coming, my friends, and thank God for that:
[youtube:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6weDMH-SCOE 450 300]
My best to you all, and thanks for your weekend attention.
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